In every century, in every generation, there must be born some men with more than average ability for some special purpose, and a few with extraordinary genius or force of character. Civilization can have no tendency to prevent such births, and it has every tendency to disclose them. Whereas formerly there were few ladders of ascent for the few, and none, or almost none, for the many; now, superior and original capacity can emerge at numerous points from the whole population.

In one sense, nevertheless, 'the variety of situations' appears to be less than it was. The circumstances which surround different classes and individuals and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighbourhoods, different trades and professions, lived in what might be called different worlds; at present, to a great degree, in the same. Great as are the differences of position ..which remain, they are as nothing to those which have ceased.'*

The truth appears to be, that artificial varieties of situation have been superseded by natural ones, conventional and local differences by individual ones; and that personal ability, personal energy, peculiar genius and taste, are yearly more favourably circumstanced. One might even go so far as to say that the gradual disappearance of national diversities of life and character, however undesirable at present, would prove in the end an .accession to the triumphs of individual bent and power over traditional and topical limitations. When every county had its own dialect, every trade its own laws and government, every class its own peculiar dress, there were many visible distinctions among the crowd which are now effaced, but they were so many positive restraints upon individual liberty, and the symbols of many more. The education of the people of Europe by nations has been one of the chief means of their improvement; but it has been so, not by its exclusions, but by its inclusions; not by dividing men from each other as foreigners, but by uniting them as fellow-citizens; by giving to friendship and sympathy the noble area of patriotism, and inspiring every man with a grand theme of daily thought.

*

Essay on Liberty. By John Stuart Mill. Page 131.

The mechanical revolution which the world has undergone and is still undergoing, the close proximity of states, their easy intercourse and common politics, although not unattended with grave immediate dangers, combine with commerce, science, and literature to enlarge the sphere of every individual's interests and choice of life and habitation. The juxtaposition, too, of a variety of conflicting opinions has always been found in the long run conducive to the toleration of each, as our own religious history remarkably exemplifies. Recollections of the Roman Empire, described by Gibbon as one vast prison, may lead to misapprehensions respecting the prospects of liberty from the tendencies to ultimate assimilation perceptible in modern nations. That a great common country may be a free one for all its citizens, the condition of the British Empire proves. Even in France, under the present monarchy, the majority of the inhabitants have far more real liberty than when it was divided into numerous petty tyrannies, when the weak were always at the mercy of the strong, and the poor man was plundered with impunity by the rich, when abject wretchedness, ignorance, and superstition were the inheritance of the millions, and knowledge and independent thought were passports to the flames. Moreover, if France is yearly coming closer to England with a centralized despotism and an army of conscripts, England is approaching France at the same pace with a House of Commons, a free press, and a nation, as one may say, of volunteers, since the voluntary principle prevails in every department of British life.

Meantime the approximation of the countries has had one result which Adam Smith, though a political economist, would have rejoiced to witness. In barbarous societies of hunters and shepherds, every man is a warrior (he said), and every man too is in some measure a statesman.' But the division of labour, by confining the industry of the masses to mechanical and sedentary operations, tended, he thought, 'to render them incapable of any generous and noble sentiment, or of forming any judgment upon the great interests of the country, and to corrupt both the courage of their minds and the activity of their bodies."

* Wealth of Nations, book v., c. i.

As regards the public spirit which animates each individual of the body, a hunting tribe or nomad horde might perhaps be compared more justly with a herd of buffaloes or a pack of wolves, than with a society of warriors and statesmen. But the structure and situation of English society really tend to render 'every man in some measure a statesman,' and, if necessary, every man a warrior.' And this takes place, not as in the republics of antiquity, through the interference and compulsion of the State, but by the deliberate choice and voluntary action of the individual citizen.

II. But if we admit that the character or volition of individuals exercises a powerful and increasing influence upon the progress of society, must we conclude that human history is placed beyond the reach of human science? To put the interposition of individuality in its most forcible instance, must we incline to the belief that the one fact that genius is occasionally present in the world, is enough to prevent our ever discovering any regular sequence in human progress, past or future?'*

That the frequent intervention of persons of extraordinary genius or power does not render a scientific interpretation of the history of mankind impossible, is the main proposition to the support of which the following arguments are meant to contribute something. Two or three preliminary observations. must, however, be made. In the first place, science never explains the whole order or sequence of things. It is always only a partial explanation. Being always progressive, it always leaves much for future discovery. Moreover, no science, as such, predicts events unconditionally, or asserts unqualified or undisturbed sequences to come,+ least of all should a science

* The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History, p. 42. In this lecture Mr. Kingsley had not confined his arguments to the establishment of the incontrovertible proposition that history cannot be made, by any conceivable method, the subject matter of an exact science, properly so called, that is, of a science which treats of laws or forces, the action of which can be explained with numerical precision. In this sense metaphysics, political economy, geology, botany, physiology, and several other branches of human knowledge and inquiry, are inexact sciences.

Sir George Lewis, in his chapter On Predictions in Politics,' has put this with great clearness. The anticipations of science are general, and merely

of history, which is by its very terms only an explanation of the past, be challenged to read the future with absolute prescience. If indeed, from their comparatively short and partial study of human nature and experience, statesmen and legislators can to a certain extent foretel events, can provide for remote generations, and foresee the operation of human laws and passions, it might well be hoped from philosophy, acting systematically and by the joint and successive labours of many men of genius, undisturbed by personal and transient interests, to look still farther into distant time; but that extraordinary visitations of various kinds-earthquakes, famines, pestilences, wars, revolutions, accidents so called*—are in the present state of human knowledge beyond scientific prevision, seems to be a fact quite consistent with the possibility of tracing a regular sequence in the past career of nations, of measuring the character of mankind from a great variety of instances, and of judging how they will be affected and act under circumstances analogous to those of which we have a full account. There may be a science of geology, though it does not presume to assert that no changes in the earth's surface will ever take place from causes below its depths and above its sphere; and some predictions, founded on the experienced stability of nature, may notwithstanding be drawn from it. No astronomer can absolutely insure to the world the continuance of its present climate and seasons, or even the light of the sun, for the next thousand years; yet

affirm that in a hypothetical and abstract state of things, a certain cause will produce a certain effect. . . . In comparing the powers of physical and political science, we must bear in mind that no science can properly be said to predict anything. The general affirmations of a science apply indeed equally to the future and to the past; but this is true of political as well as physical science, so far as human nature, the subject matter of politics, is unchangeable.

. . In strictness of speech, scientific astronomy merely determines and describes the relations of the heavenly bodies, and the laws of their real and apparent motions, and predicts nothing. By the aid of these laws and general formulæ the practical astronomer and almanac maker calculate the future events of astronomy, and refer them to their computed terms. But astronomical theory itself makes no predictions. ... Political history, though it does not itself predict the future, furnishes the materials out of which political predictions are constructed.'-On the Method of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, vol. ii., pp. 329, 332, 338, 350, &c.

* Hume. Essay xiv.

astronomy is a science upon which we may build many calculations with the best possible human security.

In like manner, and with the same qualified certainty, we may, from the past conduct of our race, foretel that the distance in time between all the capitals of Europe will be shortened before the termination of this century, and that so long as men are men, their approximation and intercourse with each other will have some results of a well-known character.

But the proper business of historical philosophy is the interpretation of the past career, not the anticipation of the future progress, of our species; and in this, its proper business, it provides ample and worthy occupation for the most capacious scientific genius. Already, for example, we can trace a regular sequence on the one hand in the events which led to the fall of the Roman Empire; and on the other, in those which have built up the Empire of Great Britain; but it remains for future researches to explain the mystery of race, and account for the different fortunes and mental constitution of the Celtic and Teutonic offspring of a common ancestry. Of this and similar discoveries the student of history should not despair; nor should he forget that wherever he is met by inexplicable difficulties, which for the present he must accept as ultimate facts, he is still in the true path of science, whose mission it is to separate the discoverable from the undiscovered, and the operations of the known from those of the unknown laws of nature. Thus, for example, it is possible—and this is the main proposition on which the present argument turns-that the appearance, employment, and influence of men of extraordinary genius may be subject to ascertainable social conditions, although the secret of their birth may be for ever undiscovered, and although mankind may never acquire the art which the bees possess, of producing on emergency an individual of their species gifted with inherent sovereign qualities.

If, then, it be suggested that human science can give no solution of the career of prodigies of human genius, can trace no sequence between their epochs, we are brought to a question of fact. We may undoubtedly conceive the apparition of human beings superhuman in their natural powers, and exercising,