powers, beyond any precedent, are vested in the positivist hierarchy, will be seen on noticing the following points:They have an arbitrary control over the treasury. They are the sole expounders of a law which claims to reach all points of conduct, and which pretends, not merely to be a statute, to be obeyed when announced, but to be a part of each man's internal constitution, obedience to which, announced or unannounced, is to be exacted under the severest penalties.

They create, by consecrating the dead, at once the God to be worshiped, and the heaven to be sought.

They are the sole educators of the people, and the supreme task-masters who are to determine at what, where, and how each man is to work.

d. POSITIVISM AS MODIFIED BY MR. BUCKLE.

§ 226. Mr. Buckle, so far as we can draw his views as a system from the very remarkable volume which is now the only avowed product of his pen,* accepts and teaches Comte's theory of positive law with the following modifications:

Comte, at least in his late writings, insists that ecclesiastical authority and a derivative creed, are essential to complete social development. Mr. Buckle considers the first always mischievous, and declares that no religion is of value. that is not the spontaneous product of the believer's intel

* History of Civilization in England. By Henry Thomas Buckle. Vol. i. From the second London edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1858.

lect. The former makes the sanction of religion external and prescriptive; the latter makes it subjective and voluntary. Each is strongly tinged by his national ties the first admiring France and Roman Catholicism, the latter England and Protestantism, as the better types of political and ecclesiastical development. Each rejects a divine revelation, but they differ in their proposed substitute-the one providing a creed to be announced by an absolute hierarchy, the latter a sentiment to be evolved by the believer himself.

Comte recognizes a variety of agencies by which antecedents are connected with sequences; Mr. Buckle but one, intellect; though in this respect, as will presently be seen, his incidental teaching differs widely from his direct.

Comte's basis for induction includes almost every branch of human knowledge, except metaphysics and psychology, which he rejects; Mr. Buckle avowedly, at least, confines himself to statistics.

Mr. Buckle's argument, when analyzed, falls into the following positions :

The actions of men are produced, not by their volitions, but by their antecedents.

These antecedents, which in this sense may be treated as law, are to be collected from statistics.

The philosophical office of history, therefore, is to classify these statistics so as to be able to announce these laws.

These points may be considered in the above order, taking first that which treats human action as dependent, not on volition, but on antecedents.

Now here we must not confound Mr. Buckle's position with that of the necessitarians, in the controversy just

noticed.*

The last-mentioned thinkers consider the necessity acting on man to be moral, not material. The forces that bear on him, they hold to be very different from those which bear on matter. To man there always remains choice. He yields, often, it is true, as an inferior to his superior's influence, but always voluntarily. On the other hand, Mr. Buckle makes mind the subject of law in the same sense as is matter. Freedom of will he utterly and vehemently rejects. The position that consciousness. proves this freedom, he meets by denying the competency of consciousness to speak on the subject at all. He admits, it is true, that consciousness thus speaks, but he declares that consciousness is not trustworthy. But is not this objection untenable from its very generality, in the same. way that a similar objection to a witness in a common law court would at once be overruled by the judge on the ground that it indicates no specific disability? "I object to consciousness as a witness," says Mr. Buckle, "because it is liable to err." But as this is an objection to all testimony, it is an objection to no testimony. The unimpeached testimony of concurrent consciousness can no more be rejected on this ground than can the unimpeached testimony of concurrent by-standers, on the ground of a similar liability to

error.

Again, the fallacy of this position may be demonstrated through its consequences. If law acts on mind as on matter, why is the man who shoots another with a gun any more culpable than the gun itself? The Duke of Wellington

* See ante, 2 114.

once told a story, as illustrating the distinction between
moral and physical courage, of a soldier who was trembling
on the battle-field. "You are afraid,” said one of his com-
rades. "If you were half as much so," was the reply,
"you would long since have run away." The more wary of
the positivist philosophers, as they stand trembling over
this very danger, might well apply the same remark to the
dashing young volunteer who prances so gaily up to a mine
so fatal.
Did he know as much, he would be as timid as
themselves in attempting to reconcile morality with posi-
tivism. But he does not, and he achieves the result by throw-
ing morality overboard altogether. It is of no account,
he substantially tells us; it is only a superannuated agency,
incapable of moving itself, and therefore of moving others.
Mankind in the aggregate, he announces, are not in the least
affected by moral principles; why then trouble ourselves
about them? Morals are stationary; and hence, like a fort
which when once passed by an invading fleet, only wastes its
powder by firing its guns; morality may be permitted to dis-
charge the slow thunder of its oracles without exciting more
than the smiles of that philosophy which has passed out of
its reach. Intellect is now the only motive power of the
human race; morals have long since been laid on one side.

§ 227. Now in one sense, Mr. Buckle is right in his position, though it is a sense fatal to his whole theory. Morals, it is true, are stationary; but they are stationary in the same way as the water-tanks which are placed along a railway. They are, it is true, permanent, and are supplied by one and the same element. They nevertheless are essential to the motive energy of the train. Intellect is in this sense the

mere conduit of morals. It resorts to them for a force, and at its best serves merely as the agent, or acts as the conductor, by which that force is applied. Hence it is that the fact that morals are "stationary," is no reason why they do not influence mankind. For they are the eternal and immutable principles of right and wrong, applying themselves to each juncture with specific and appropriate energy, pronouncing their decision on each new combination of circumstances in the same way that the common law, while its dogmas remain the same, gives its impulse to, and pronounces its judgment on, each contingency that arises. Thus the common law, from its stationary base, supplies the energies by which at one time the watchfulness of the sailor is sharpened, at another the skill of the ship-builder refined, at another the zeal of the mechanic stimulated. It says to the capitalist, "You I hold responsible for your employees' negligence;" to the machinist, "you for your machine's defects." So it is with morals. While stationary, they pronounce from time to time decrees on each issue that arises in the educationary advance of our race. Thus toleration of the opinions of others is an eternal principle of morals, and is written in the New Testament; and yet its application to the successive stages of human history has been from time to time delayed, until those stages require its action. First, it is limited to mere oral divergencies, guaranteeing, in all matters not touching the peace of civil society, freedom of speech. Then, as the printing-press is introduced, it imposes on the printer a range of duties specially belonging to his office, and it imposes on government another range. So it is with the precept to love our