24 
It is curious to see liow tliis intellectual temper sliows itself 
in dealing, not with religion, but with a kindred subject, — 
that of Moral Philosophy. The habit of dwelling on the laws 
of physical phenomena, to the exclusion of all others, has, not 
unnaturally, but most unhappily, led to the denial of all 
responsibility, and of the difference between right and wrong, 
save only as regards the effects of each action on the general 
utility, not as regards the character of the agent, and the 
essential nature of the action. In short, the mere men of 
science ultimately become thorough-going Fatalists. “ Place 
a man under certain circumstances,” they say, “ and he must 
inevitably act in a certain way. There is no such a thing as 
absolute morality ; men are under a natural necessity of obey- 
ing the conditions under which they find themselves ; actions 
differ only a posteriori, according to their results after per- 
formance : they cannot be said to have any character a priori. 
Integrate a moral phenomenon between limits a and b, your 
result is a good action ; integrate the same between p and q, 
and your result is a bad one ; humanity is but the x and y, the 
variable substratum, so to speak, in the grand equation of 
phenomenal being.” And thus we find Mr. Buckle, alleging 
— or, to speak more correctly, insinuating — as an argument 
against moral responsibility the theory of averages. This he 
illustrates by the curious fact that the number of letters 
posted without direction, throughout England, bears a nearly 
constant ratio to the total number posted. There is, therefore, 
he argues, a law that so many people per annum out of so 
many forget to direct their letters ; consequently, the person 
who commits tliis error does it under a necessity, in obedience 
to a higher law, and therefore is not culpable. 
The reply is patent. The fact that the percentage of undi- 
rected letters is invariable shows that people are just as care- 
less in one year as in another, no better and no worse ; a con- 
clusion of which I do not know whether we ought to feel proud 
or ashamed. Perhaps under the new educational system the 
percentage will diminish. But it does not prove that the will 
of each individual person was irresistibly impelled, either 
wittingly or unwittingly, towards the act of posting an undi- 
rected letter, so that he was withheld by an unseen and unper- 
ceived force from putting the address outside his letter as 
usual, and from recognizing and supplying the omission 
before the letter left his possession and became the property 
of the Postmaster- General. 
A similar reply may be made to the whole of the Positivist 
propositions on the subject of morality. An exaggerated view 
of the necessary sequence of phenomena has led to the entire 
