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principles out to their utmost possible limits. At page 20 
he says : — 
“ The actions of men are, by an easy and obvious division, separated into 
two classes — the virtuous and the vicious : and as these classes are relative, 
and when put together complete the total of our moral conduct, it follows that 
whatever increases the one will, in a relative point of view, diminish the 
other ; so that if we can at any period detect a uniformity in the vices of a 
people, there must be a corresponding regularity in their virtues ; or if we 
could prove a regularity in their virtues, we should necessarily infer an equal 
regularity in their vices — the two sets of actions being, according to the terms 
of the division, merely supplementary to each other. Or, to express the 
proposition in another way, it is evident that if it can be demonstrated that 
the bad actions of men vary in obedience to the changes in the surrounding 
society, we shall be obliged to infer that their good actions, which are, as 
it were, the residue of their bad ones, vary in the same manner ; and we 
shall be forced to a further conclusion, that both variations are the results of 
large and general causes which, working together on the aggregate of society, 
must produce certain consequences without regard to the volition of those 
particular men of whom society is composed.” 
I am not prepared to deny that there is a considerable 
amount of truth in several of these statements ; but the 
mixture of error deprives them of much of their value. The 
truth which they contain was much better expressed by 
another philosophical historian, who wrote nearly 400 years 
before the Christian era. I need not say that the historian 
to whom I allude is the great historian Thucydides. He 
was content to write a philosophical history without the 
ambitious attempt to force all things divine and human into 
conformity with an a priori theory and the principles of the 
Positive philosophy. The Greek tells us that he wrote his 
history in the full belief that like causes would for the most 
part produce like results ; but, notwithstanding this, he was 
a foolish believer in the freedom of human actions. Mr. 
Buckle, however, could not be satisfied unless he attempted 
to reduce the whole moral and spiritual worlds to a sequence 
as invariable and necessary as the connection between cause 
and effect ; or, to use the more approved phraseology of the 
Positive philosophy, between antecedent and consequent in 
the material universe. It seems never to have occurred to 
him that, to enable him to have the smallest chance of 
attaining such a view of human things, a greater aid must 
be invoked than the science of statistics, on which he 
mainly relies. As I have already hinted, it will be neces- 
sary for him to invest himself with the attribute of Om- 
niscience, for nothing short of it can take a comprehensive 
