6o8 



LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



that which is grounded on the doc- 

 trine of Free Will, or, in other words, 

 on the denial that the law of invari- 

 able Causation holds true of human 

 volitions; for if it does not, the 

 course of history, being the result of 

 human volitions, cannot be a subject 

 of scientific laws, since the volitions 

 on which it depends can neither be 

 foreseen nor reduced to any canon of 

 regularity even after they have oc- 

 curred. I have discussed this ques- 

 tion, as far as seemed suitable to the 

 occasion, in a fonner chapter, and 

 I only think it necessary to repeat 

 that the doctrine of the Causation of 

 human actions, improperly called the 

 doctrine of Necessity, affirms no mys- 

 terious nexus or overruling fatality : 

 it asserts only that men's actions are 

 the joint result of the general laws 

 and circumstances of human nature, 

 and of their own particular char- 

 acters, those characters again being 

 the consequence of the natural and 

 artificial circumstances that consti- 

 tuted their education, among which 

 circumstances must be reckoned their 

 own conscious efforts. Any one who 

 is willing to take (if the expression 

 may be permitted) the trouble of 

 thinking himself into the doctrine as 

 thus stated, will find it, I believe, not 

 only a faithful interpretation of the uni- 

 versal experience of human conduct, 

 but a correct representation of the 

 mode in which he himself, in every par- 

 ticular case, spontaneously interprets 

 his own experience of that conduct. 



But if this principle is true of in- 

 dividual man, it must be true of 

 collective man. If it is the law of 

 human life, the law must be realised 

 in history. The experience of human 

 affairs when looked at en masse, must 

 be in accordance with it if true, or 

 repugnant to it if false. The sup- 

 port which this A posteriori verifica- 

 tion affords to the law is the part of 

 the case which has been most clearly 

 and triumphantly brought out by Mr. 

 Buckle. 



The facts of statistics, since they 

 have been made a subject of careful 



recordation and study, have yielded 

 conclusions, some of which have been 

 very startling to persons not accus- 

 tomed to regard moral actions as sub- 

 ject to uniform laws. The very events 

 which in their own nature appear 

 most capricious and uncertain, and 

 which in any individual case no at- 

 tainable degree of knowledge would 

 enable us to foresee, occur, when con- 

 siderable numbers are taken into the 

 account, with a degree of regularity 

 approaching to mathematical. What 

 act is there which all would consider 

 as more completely dependent on in- 

 dividual character, and oa the exer- 

 cise of individual free will, than that 

 of slaying a fellow-creature? Yet 

 in any large country, the number of 

 murders, in proportion to the popula- 

 tion, varies (it has been found) very 

 little from one year to another, and 

 in its variations never deviates widely 

 from a certain average. What is still 

 more remarkable, there is a similar 

 approach to constancy in the propor- 

 tion of these murders annually com- 

 mitted with every particular kind of 

 instrument. There is a like approxi- 

 mation to identity, as between one 

 year and another, in the comparative 

 number of legitimate and of illegiti- 

 mate births. The same thing is found 

 true of suicides, accidents, and all other 

 social phenomena of which the regis- 

 tration is sufficiently perfect ; one 

 of the most curiously illustrative ex- 

 amples being the fact, ascertained by 

 the registers of the London and Paris 

 post-offices, that the number of letters 

 posted which the writers have forgot- 

 ten to direct is nearly the same, in 

 proportion to the whole number of 

 letters posted, in one year as in an- 

 other. " Year after year," says Mr. 

 Buckle, " the same proportion of 

 letter-writers forget this simple act, 

 so that for each successive period 

 we can actually foretell the number 

 of persons whose memory will fail 

 them in regard to this trifling, and, 

 as it might appear, accidental occur- 

 rence." * 

 * Buckle's History of Civilisation, i. 30. 



