inconsistent it is, for instance, to suppose the scientific movement to be subject to positive laws, while the political movement is regarded as arbitrary; for the latter, being more composite, must overrule individual disturbances, and be therefore more evidently predetermined than the former, in which individual genius must have more power. Any paradoxical appearance which this statement may exhibit will disappear in the course of further examination.

If I confined myself strictly to a scientific view, I might satisfy myself with proving the fact of social progression, without taking any notice of the question of human perfectibility; but so much time and effort are wasted in groundless speculation on that interesting question, argued as it is on the supposition that political events are arbitrarily determined, that it may be as well to notice it in passing, — and the more because it may serve as a natural transition to the estimate of the limits of political action.

NOTION OF HUMAN PERFECTIBILITY

We have nothing to do here with the metaphysical controversy about the absolute happiness of man at different stages of civilization. As the happiness of every man depends on the harmony between the development 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 favors 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.

LIMITS OF POLITICAL ACTION

And now occurs, as the last aspect of social dynamics, the question of the general limits of political action. No 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 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 selfassertions 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 MODIFIABLE

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 to 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, or 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 the 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 filiation. To suppose that they could, would be to exalt the disturbing above