THE HISTORICAL METHOD. 



selfish ones, and those of a sympa- 

 thetic character which partake most 

 of the nature of sefishness) evidently 

 tend in themselves to disunite man- 

 kind, not to unite them, — to make 

 them rivals, not confederates ; social 

 existence is only possible by a discip- 

 lining of those more powerful pro- 

 pensities, which consists in subordi- 

 nating them to a common system of 

 opinions. The degree of this sub- 

 ordination is the measure of the com- 

 pleteness of the social union, and the 

 nature of the common opinions de- 

 termines its kind. But in order that 

 mankind should conform their actions 

 to any set of opinions, these opinions 

 must exist, must be believed by them. 

 And thus the state of the speculative 

 faculties, the character of the pro- 

 positions assented to by the intellect, 

 essentially determines the moral and 

 political state of the community, as 

 we have already seen that it deter- 

 mines the physical. 



These conclusions, deduced from 

 the laws of human nature, are in 

 entire accordance with the general 

 facts of history. Every considerable 

 change historically known to us in 

 the condition of any portion of man- 

 kind, when not brought about by ex- 

 ternal force, has been preceded by a 

 change of proportional extent in the 

 state of their knowledge or in their 

 prevalent beliefs. As between any 

 given state of speculation and the 

 correlative state of everything else, it 

 was almost always the former which 

 first showed itself ; though the effects, 

 no doubt, reacted potently upon the 

 cause. Every considerable advance 

 in material civilisation has been pre- 

 ceded by an advance in knowledge ; 

 and when any great social change has 

 come to pass, either in the way of 

 gradual development or of sudden 

 conflict, it has had for its precursor a 

 great change in the opinions and 

 modes of thinking of society. Poly- 

 theism, Judaism, Christianity, Pro- 

 testantism, the critical philosophy of 

 modern Europe, audits positive science 

 — each of these has been a primary 



605 



agent in making society what it was 

 at each successive period, while society 

 was but secondarily instrumental in 

 making them, each of them (so far as 

 causes can he assigned for its ex- 

 istence) being mainly an emanation 

 not from the practical life of the 

 period, but from the previous state of 

 belief and thought. The weakness of 

 the speculative propensity in mankind 

 generally has not, therefore, prevented 

 the progress of speculation from gov- 

 erning that of society at large ; it 

 has only, and too often, prevented 

 progress altogether, where the intel- 

 lectual progression has come to an 

 early stand for want of sufficiently 

 favourable circumstances. 



From this accumulated evidence, 

 we are justified in concluding that 

 the order of human progression in all 

 respects will mainly depend on the 

 order of progression in the intellectual 

 convictions of mankind, that is, on 

 the law of the successive transforma- 

 tions of human opinions. The ques- 

 tion remains, whether this law can be 

 determined, at first from history as 

 an empirical law, then converted into 

 a scientific theorem by deducing it 

 a pHori from the principles of human 

 nature. As the progress of know- 

 ledge and the changes in the opinions 

 of mankind are very slow, and mani- 

 fest themselves in a well-defined 

 manner only at long intervals, it 

 cannot be expected that the general 

 order of sequence should be discover- 

 able from the examination of less 

 than a very considerable part of the 

 duration of the social progress. It 

 is necessary to take into considera- 

 tion the whole of past time, from the 

 first recorded condition of the human 

 race, to the memorable phenomena of 

 the last and present generations. 



§ 8. The investigation which I have 

 thus endeavoured to characterise has 

 been systematically attempted, up to 

 the present time, by M. Comte alone. 

 His work is hitherto the only known 

 example of the study of social pheno- 

 mena according to this conception of 



