The filSTORICAL METHOD. 



6ol 



in the following passage, extracted, 

 with some alterations, from a criticism 

 on the negative philosophy of the 

 eighteenth century,* and which I 

 quote, though (as in some former in- 

 stances! from myself, because I have 

 no better way of illustrating the con- 

 ception I have formed of the kind of 

 theorems of which sociological statics 

 would consist : — 



" The very first element of the social 

 union, obedience to a government of 

 some sort, has not been found so easy 

 a thing to establish in the world. 

 Among a timid and spiritless race 

 like the inhabitants of the vast plains 

 of tropical countries, passive obedience 

 may be of natural growth ; though 

 even there we doubt whether it has 

 ever been found among any people 

 with whom fatalism, or, in other words, 

 submission to the pressure of circum- 

 stances as a divine decree, did not 

 prevail as a religious doctrine. But 

 the difficulty of inducing a brave and 

 warlike race to submit their individual 

 arbitrium to any common umpire has 

 always been felt to be so great, that 

 nothing short of supernatuial power 

 has been deemed adequate to over- 

 come it ; and such tribes have always 

 assigned to the first institution of civil 

 society a divine origin. So differently 

 did those judge who knew savage men 

 by actual experience, from those who 

 had no acquaintance with them ex- 

 cept in the civilised state. In modem 

 Europe itself, after the fall of the 

 Roman Empire, to subdue the feudal 

 anarchy and bring the whole people 

 of any European nation into subjec- 

 tion to government (though Christi- 

 anity in the most concentrated form 

 of its influence was co-operating in 

 the work) required thrice as many 

 centuries as have elapsed since that 

 time. 



"Now if these philosophers had 

 known human nature under any other 

 type than that of their own age, and 

 of the particular classes of society 



* Since reprinted entire in Dissertations 

 and Discussions, as the concluding paper of 

 the first volume. 



among whom they lived, it would 

 have occurred to them, that wherever 

 this habitual submission to law and 

 government has been firmly and dur- 

 ably established, and yet the vigour 

 and manliness of character which re- 

 sisted its establishment have been in 

 any degree preserved, certain requi- 

 sites have existed, certain conditions 

 have been fulfilled, of which the fol- 

 lowing may be regarded as the prin- 

 cipal : — 



"First, there has existed, for all 

 who were accounted citizens, — for all 

 who were not slaves, kept down by 

 brute force, — a system of education, 

 beginning with infancy and continued 

 through life, of which, whatever else it 

 might include, one main and incessant 

 ingredient was redrainirKj discipline. 

 To train the human being in the habit, 

 and thence the power, of subordinat- 

 ing his personal impulses and ain\^ 

 to what were considered the ends 

 of society ; of adhering, against all 

 temptation, to the course of conduct 

 which those ends prescribed ; of con- 

 trolling in himself all feelings which 

 were liable to militate against those 

 ends, and encouraging all such as 

 tended towards them ; this was the 

 purpose to which every outward mo- 

 tive that the authority directing the 

 system could command, and eveiy in- 

 ward power or principle which its 

 knowledge of human nature enabled 

 it to evoke, were endeavoured to be 

 rendered instrumental. The entire 

 civil and military policy of the ancient 

 commonwealths was such a system of 

 training ; in modem nations its place 

 has been attempted to be supplied, 

 principally, by religious teaching. 

 And whenever and in proportion as 

 the strictness of the restraining dis- 

 cipline was relaxed, the natural ten- 

 dency of mankind to anarchy reas- 

 serted itself ; the state became dis- 

 organised from within ; mutual con- 

 flict for selfish ends neutralised the 

 energies which were required to keep 

 up the contest against natural causes 

 of evil ; and the nation, after a longer 

 or briefer interval of progressive de- 



