SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 



6ii 



§ 3. There is another distinction 

 often neglected in the discussion of 

 this subject, which it is extremely im- 

 portant to observe. The theory of the 

 subjection of social progress to in- 

 variable laws is often held in con- 

 junction with the doctrine that social 

 progress cannot be materially influ- 

 enced by the exertions of individual 

 persons or by the acts of governments. 

 But though these opinions are often 

 held by the same persons, they are 

 two very different opinions, and the 

 confusion between them is the eter- 

 nally recurring error of confounding 

 Causation with Fatalism. Because 

 whatever happens will be the effect 

 of causes, human volitions among the 

 rest, it does not follow that volitions, 

 even those of peculiar individuals, are 

 not of great efiicacy as causes. If any 

 one in a storm at sea, because about 

 the same number of persons in every 

 year perish by shipwreck, should con- 

 clude that it was useless for him to 

 attempt to save his own life, we should 

 call him a Fatalist, and should re- 



himself of the artifice resorted to by the 

 Political Econoiuist, who leave* out of con- 

 sideration the generous and benevolent 

 sentiments, and founds his science on the 

 proposition that mankind are actuated by 

 ucquisitive propensities alone,"not because 

 such is the fact, but because it is necessary 

 to begin by treating the principal influence 

 as if it was the sole one, and make the due 

 corrections afterwards. *' He desired to 

 make abstraction of the intellect as the de- 

 termining and dynamittil element of the 

 progression, eliminating the more depen- 

 dent set of conditions, and treating the 

 more active one as if it were an entirely 

 independent variable." 



The same friend of Mr. Buckle states that 

 when he used expressions which seemed to 

 exaggerate the influence of general at the 

 expense of .special causes, and especially at 

 the expense of the influence of individual 

 minds, Mr. Buckle really intended no more 

 than to afiirm emphatically that the greatest 

 men cannot effect great changes in human 

 affairs unless the general mind has been in 

 some considerable degiee prepared for them 

 by the general circumstances of the age ; 

 a truth wiilch, of coin-se, no one thinks of 

 denying. And there certixinly are passages 

 in Mr. Buckle's writings which speak of ihe 

 influence exercised by great individual in- 

 tellects in as strong terms as could be de- 



mind him that the efforts of ship- 

 wrecked persons to save their lives are 

 so far from being immaterial, that the 

 average amount of those efforts is one 

 of the causes on which the ascertained 

 annual number of deaths by shipwi-eck 

 depend. However universal the laws 

 of social development may be, they 

 cannot be more universal or more 

 rigorous than those of the physical 

 agencies of nature ; yet human will 

 can convert these into instruments of 

 its designs, and the extent to which 

 it does so makes the chief difference 

 between savages and the most highly 

 civilised people. Human and social 

 facts, from their more complicated 

 nature, are not less, but more, modi- 

 fiable than mechanical and chemical 

 facts ; human agency, therefore, has 

 still greater power over them. And 

 accordingly, those who maintain that 

 the evolution of society depends ex- 

 clusively, or almost exclusively, on 

 general causes, always include among 

 these the collective knowledge and 

 intellectual development of the race. 

 But if of the race, why not also of 

 some powerful monarch or thinker, or 

 of the ruling portion of some political 

 society, acting through its govern- 

 ment ? Though the varieties of char- 

 acter among ordinary individuals 

 neutralise one another on any large 

 scale, exceptional individuals in im- 

 portant positions do not in any given 

 age netitralise one another ; there was 

 not another Themistocles, or Luther, 

 or Julius Caesar, of equal powers and 

 contrary dispositions, who exactly 

 balanced the given Themistocles, 

 Luther, and Caesar, and prevented 

 them from having any permanent 

 effect. Moreover, for aught that ap- 

 pears, the volitions of exceptional 

 persons, or the opinions and purposes 

 of the individuals who at some par- 

 ticular time compose a government, 

 may be indispensable links in the 

 chain of catisation by which even the 

 general causes produce their effects ; 

 and I believe this to be the only 

 tenable form of the theory. 



Lord Macaulay, in a celebrated pas- 



