Short Studies on Great Subjects | Page 5

the opportunities which people have had
of knowing better or worse. In the efforts which we make to keep our
children from bad associations or friends we admit that external
circumstances have a powerful effect in making men what they are.
But are circumstances everything? That is the whole question. A
science of history, if it is more than a misleading name, implies that the
relation between cause and effect holds in human things as completely
as in all others, that the origin of human actions is not to be looked for
in mysterious properties of the mind, but in influences which are
palpable and ponderable.
When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralised by what is
called volition, the word Science is out of place. If it is free to a man to
choose what he will do or not do, there is no adequate science of him. If
there is a science of him, there is no free choice, and the praise or
blame with which we regard one another are impertinent and out of
place.
I am trespassing upon these ethical grounds because, unless I do, the
subject cannot be made intelligible. Mankind are but an aggregate of
individuals--History is but the record of individual action; and what is
true of the part, is true of the whole.
We feel keenly about such things, and when the logic becomes
perplexing, we are apt to grow rhetorical about them. But rhetoric is
only misleading. Whatever the truth may be, it is best that we should
know it; and for truth of any kind we should keep our heads and hearts
as cool as we can.

I will say at once, that if we had the whole case before us--if we were
taken, like Leibnitz's Tarquin, into the council chamber of nature, and
were shown what we really were, where we came from, and where we
were going, however unpleasant it might be for some of us to find
ourselves, like Tarquin, made into villains, from the subtle necessities
of 'the best of all possible worlds;' nevertheless, some such theory as
Mr. Buckle's might possibly turn out to be true. Likely enough, there is
some great 'equation of the universe' where the value of the unknown
quantities can be determined. But we must treat things in relation to our
own powers and position; and the question is, whether the sweep of
those vast curves can be measured by the intellect of creatures of a day
like ourselves.
The 'Faust' of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly knowledge,
calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the spirit of the
Macrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he ventures that
tremendous experiment, and he summons before him, instead, the spirit
of his own race. There he feels himself at home. The stream of life and
the storm of action, the everlasting ocean of existence, the web and the
woof, and the roaring loom of time--he gazes upon them all, and in
passionate exultation claims fellowship with the awful thing before him.
But the majestic vision fades, and a voice comes to him--'Thou art
fellow with the spirits which thy mind can grasp--not with me.'
Had Mr. Buckle tried to follow his principles into detail, it might have
fared no better with him than with 'Faust.'
What are the conditions of a science? and when may any subject be
said to enter the scientific stage? I suppose when the facts of it begin to
resolve themselves into groups; when phenomena are no longer
isolated experiences, but appear in connection and order; when, after
certain antecedents, certain consequences are uniformly seen to follow;
when facts enough have been collected to furnish a basis for conjectural
explanation, and when conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly
vague, that it is possible in some degree to foresee the future by the
help of them.
Till a subject has advanced as far as this, to speak of a science of it is

an abuse of language. It is not enough to say that there must be a
science of human things, because there is a science of all other things.
This is like saying the planets must be inhabited, because the only
planet of which we have any experience is inhabited. It may or may not
be true, but it is not a practical question; it does not affect the practical
treatment of the matter in hand.
Let us look at the history of Astronomy.
So long as sun, moon, and planets were supposed to be gods or angels;
so long as the sword of Orion was not a metaphor, but a fact, and the
groups of stars which inlaid the floor of heaven were the glittering
trophies of