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ment of his various faculties and the entire system of the circumstances which govern his life; and as, on the other hand, this equilibrium always establishes itself spontaneously to a certain extent, it is impossible to compare in a positive way, either by sentiment or reasoning, the individual welfare which belongs to social situations that can never be brought into direct comparison: and therefore the question of the happiness of different animal organisms, or of their two sexes, is merely impracticable and unintelligible. The only question therefore is of the effect of the social evolution, which is so undeniable that there is no reasoning with any one who does not admit it as the basis of the inquiry. The only ground of discussion is whether development and improvement, the theoretical and the practical aspect,-are one; whether the development is necessarily accompanied by a corresponding amelioration, or progress, properly so called. To me it appears that the amelioration is as unquestionable as the development from which it proceeds, provided we regard it as subject, like the development itself, to limits general and special, which science will be found to prescribe. The chimerical notion of unlimited perfectibility is thus at once excluded. Taking the human race as a whole, and not any one people, it appears that human development brings after it, in two ways, an ever-growing amelioration, first, in the radical condition of Man, which no one disputes; and next, in his corresponding faculties, which is a view much less attended to. There is no need to dwell upon the improvement in the conditions of human existence, both by the increasing action of Man on his environment through the advancement of the sciences and arts, and by the constant amelioration of his customs and manners; and again, by the gradual improvement in social organization. We shall presently see that in the Middle Ages, which are charged with political retrogression, the progress was more political than any other. One fact is enough to silence sophistical declamation on this subject; the continuous increase of population all over the globe, as a consequence of civilization, while the wants of individuals are, as a whole, better satisfied at the same time. The tendency to improvement must be highly spontaneous and irresistible to have persevered notwithstanding the enormous faults,-political faults especially,— which have at all times absorbed or neutralized the greater part of our social forces. Even throughout the revolutionary period, in spite of the marked discordance between the political system and the general state of civilization, the improvement has proceeded, not only in physical and intellectual, but also in moral respects, though the transient disorganization could not but disturb the natural evolution. As for the other aspect of the question, the gradual and slow improvement of human nature, within narrow limits, it seems to me impossible to reject altogether the principle proposed (with great exaggeration, however) by Lamarck, of the necessary influence

of a homogeneous and continuous exercise in producing, in every animal organism, and especially in Man, an organic improvement, susceptible of being established in the race, after a sufficient persistence. If we take the best marked case, that of intellectual development, it seems to be unquestionable that there is a superior aptitude for mental combinations, independent of all culture, among highly civilized people; or, what comes to the same thing, an inferior aptitude among nations that are less advanced,-the average intellect of the members of those societies being taken for observation. The intellectual faculties are, it is true, more modified than the others by the social evolution: but then they have the smallest relative effect in the individual human constitution: so that we are authorized to infer from their amelioration a proportionate improvement in aptitudes that are more marked and equally exercised. In regard to morals, particularly, I think it indisputable that the gradual development of humanity favours a growing preponderance of the noblest tendencies of our nature,-as I hope to prove further on. The lower instincts continue to manifest themselves in modified action, but their less sustained and more repressed exercise must tend to debilitate them by degrees; and their increasing regulation certainly brings them into involuntary concurrence in the maintenance of a good social economy; and especially in the case of the least marked organisms, which constitute a vast majority. These two aspects of social evolution, then,-the development which brings after it the improvement,—we may consider to be admitted as facts.

Adhering to our relative, in opposition to the absolute view, we must conclude the social state, regarded as a whole, to have been as perfect, in each period, as the coexisting condition of humanity and of its environment would allow. Without this view, history would be incomprehensible; and the relative view is as indispensable in regard to progress, as, in considering social statics, we saw it to be in regard to order. If, in a statical view, the various social elements cannot but maintain a spontaneous harmony, which is the first principle of order; neither can any of them help being as advanced, at any period, as the whole system of influences permits. In either case, the harmony and the movement are the result of invariable natural laws, which produce all phenomena whatever, and are more obscure in social science merely on account of the greater complexity of the phenomena concerned.

And now occurs, as the last aspect of social dynamics, the quesLimits of poli- tion of the general limits of political action. No tical action. enlightened man can be blind to the necessary existence of such limits, which can be ignored only on the old theological supposition of the legislator being merely the organ of a direct and continuous Providence, which admits of no limits. We need not stop to confute that hypothesis, which has no existence but in virtue

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of ancient habits of thought. In any case, human action is very limited, in spite of all aids from concurrence and ingenious methods; and it is difficult to perceive why social action should be exempt from this restriction, which is an inevitable consequence of the existence of natural laws. Through all the self-assertions of human pride, every statesman of experience knows well the reality of the bounds prescribed to political action by the aggregate of social influences, to which he must attribute the failure of the greater number of the projects which he had secretly cherished ; and perhaps the conviction is most thorough, while most carefully hidden, in the mind of the most powerful of statesmen, because his inability to struggle against natural laws must be decisive in proportion to his implication with them. Seeing that social science would be impossible in the absence of this principle, we need not dwell further upon it, but may proceed to ascertain the fitness of the new political philosophy to determine, with all the precision that the subject admits, what is the nature of these limits, general or special, permanent or temporary.

Two questions are concerned here: first, in what way the course of human development may be affected by the aggregate of causes of variation which may be applied to it; and next, what share the voluntary and calculated action of our political combinations may have among these modifying influences. The first question is by far the most important, both because it is a general principle, which the second is not, and because it is fully accessible, which, again, the second is not.

Social phenomena modi

fiable.

We must observe, in the first place, that social phenomena may, from their complexity, be more easily modified than any others, according to the law which was established to that effect in my first volume. Thus, the limits of variation are wider in regard to sociological than any other laws. If, then, human intervention holds the same proportionate rank among modifying influences as it is natural at first to suppose, its influence must be more considerable in the first case than in any other, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. This is the first scientific foundation of all rational hopes of a systematic reformation of humanity; and on this ground illusions of this sort certainly appear more excusable than on any other subject. But though modifications, from all causes, are greater in the case of political than of simpler phenomena, still they can never be more than modifications: that is, they will always be in subjection to those fundamental laws, whether statical or dynamical, which regulate the harmony of the social elements, and the filiation of their successive variations. There is no disturbing influence, exterior or human, which can make incompatible elements coexist in the political system, nor change in any way the natural laws of the development of humanity. The inevitable gradual preponderance

of continuous influences, however imperceptible their power may be at first, is now admitted with regard to all natural phenomena; and it must be applied to social phenomena, whenever the same method of philosophizing is extended to them. What then are the modifications of which the social organism and social life are susceptible, if nothing can alter the laws either of harmony or of succession? The answer is that modifications act upon the intensity and secondary operation of phenomena, but without affecting their nature or their filiation. To suppose that they could, would be to exalt the disturbing above the fundamental cause, and would destroy the whole economy of laws. In the political system this principle of positive philosophy shows that, in a statical view, any possible variations can affect only the intensity of the different tendencies belonging to each social situation, without in any way hindering or producing, or, in a word, changing the nature of, those tendencies; and, in the same way, in a dynamical view, the progress of the race must be considered susceptible of modification only with regard to its speed, and without any reversal in the order of development, or any interval of any importance being overleaped. These variations are analogous to those of the animal organism, with the one difference that in sociology they are more complex; and, as we saw that the limits of variation remain to be established in biology, it is not to be expected that sociology should be more advanced. But all we want here is to obtain a notion of the general spirit of the law, in regard both to social statics and dynamics; and looking at it from both points of view, it seems to me impossible to question its truth. In the intellectual order of phenomena, for instance, there is no accidental influence, nor any individual superiority, which can transfer to one period the discoveries reserved for a subsequent age, in the natural course of the human mind; nor can there be the reverse case of postponement. The history of the sciences settles the question of the close dependence of even the most eminent individual genius on the contemporary state of the human mind; and this is above all remarkable in regard to the improvement of methods of investigation, either in the way of reasoning or experiment. The same thing happens in regard to the arts; and especially in whatever depends on mechanical means in substitution for human action. And there is not, in reality, any more room for doubt in the case of moral development, the character of which is certainly determined, in each period, by the corresponding state of the social evolution, whatever may be the modifications caused by education or individual organization. Each of the leading modes of social existence determines for itself a certain system of morals and manners, the common aspect of which is easily recognized in all individuals, in the midst of their characteristic differences; for instance, there is a state of human life in which the best individual natures contract a habit of ferocity, from which very inferior natures easily emancipate them

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selves, in a better state of society. The case is the same, in a political view, as our historical analysis will hereafter show. And in fact, if we were to review all the facts and reflections which establish the existence of the limits of variation, whose principle I have just laid down, we should find ourselves reproducing in succession all the proofs of the subjection of social phenomena to invariable laws; because the principle is neither more nor less than a strict application of the philosophical conception.

We cannot enlarge upon the second head: that is, the classification of modifying influences according to their order of morespective importance. If such a classification is difying influnot yet established in biology, it would be premature ences. indeed to attempt it in social science. Thus, if the three chief causes of social variation appear to me to result from, first, race; secondly, climate; thirdly, political action in its whole scientific extent, it would answer none of our present purposes to inquire here whether this or some other is the real order of their importance. The political influences are the only ones really open to our intervention; and to that head general attention must be directed, though with great care to avoid the conclusion that that class of influences must be the most important because it is the most immediately interesting to us. It is owing to such an illusion as this that observers who believe themselves emancipated from old prejudices cannot obtain sociological knowledge, because they enormously exaggerate the power of political action. Because political operations, temporal or spiritual, can have no social efficacy but in as far as they are in accordance with the corresponding tendencies of the human mind, they are supposed to have produced what is in reality occasioned by a spontaneous evolution, which is less conspicuous, and easily overlooked. Such a mistake proceeds in neglect of numerous and marked cases in history, in which the most prodigious political authority has left no lasting traces of its well-sustained development, because it moved in a contrary direction to modern civilization; as in the instances of Julian, of Philip II., of Napoleon Bonaparte, etc. The inverse cases, unhappily too few, are still more decisive; those cases in which political action, sustained by an equally powerful authority, has nevertheless failed in the pursuit of ameliorations that were premature, though in accordance with the social movement of the time. Intellectual history, as well as political, furnishes examples of this kind in abundance. It has been sensibly remarked by Fergusson, that even the action of one nation upon another, whether by conquest or otherwise, though the most intense of all social forces, can effect merely such modifications as are in accordance with its existing tendencies; so that, in fact, the action merely accelerates or extends a development which would have taken place without it. In politics, as in science, opportuneness is always the main condition of all great and durable influence,