The following authors have theorised on history in accordance with naturalist or positivist principles :

1. Eugène Véron.-He is a well-known publicist, who has written a number of able works, and is the chief editor of the journal 'L'Art.' His 'Progrès Intellectual dans l'humanité: Superiorité des arts modernes sur les arts anciens' (1862), is of most interest for the historical philosopher. The alternative title indicates what is its chief theme; but a philosophical view of the history of humanity is also presented. That history is supposed to have commenced with the lowest stage of savagery; to be divisible into two great periods-the first the period of objectivity, and the second the period of subjectivity; and to be indefinitely or infinitely progressive. On this very slender thread M. Véron has contrived to hang a wonderful amount of ingenious, and even of true thought. In regard to Art and its history he is especially informative and suggestive. His later writings 'L'Esthétique,' 'La Mythologie dans l'Art,' 'Histoire naturelle des Religions,' and 'La Morale,' are also largely historical; and necessarily so, seeing that, like Comte, he despises introspection and psychological analysis. Of course, he has often recourse to them, although unconsciously and inconsistently.

2. Paul Mougeolle. His 'Statique des Civilisations' is an elaborate attempt to prove that civilisation has developed from the equator towards the poles. This thesis I have already had to refer to in treating of Charles Comte. 'Les Problèmes de l'Histoire' (1886) of M. Mougeolle is a pleasant book to read, being written in a light and lively style; contains a great many interesting ideas and facts, suggestions and criticisms; and is comprehensively planned, and, externally at least, well arranged. It is divided into four parts. The First Part treats of "the Facts, or the matter of the Drama," and is composed of three books, which treat respectively of the facts in relation to one another, in relation to time, and in relation to space. As regards their relations to one another, he dwells on the proportionality, equivalence, and constancy of these relations. As regards their relations to time, he assails the theory of the fall or decadence, and the theory of cycles, and argues in favour of the theory of progress. And as regards their relations to space, he seeks to establish (unsuccessfully, I think,) what he calls the law of altitudes not the law of latitudes-meaning thereby that the earliest cities were built on hill-tops and that the plains were only built on comparatively late, and that civilisation has spread from the equator towards the poles. The socalled law of longitudes, which affirms that civilisation has moved from east to west, he maintains, and, in my opinion, on much stronger grounds, to be a false generalisation. The Second Part treats of "Men, or the actors of the Drama," and is divided into three books, which have for their several subjects Individuals, Societies, and Races. Kings and political leaders, founders of religion and their apostles, poets, philosophers, scientists, and inventors, are represented as having had far less influence on history than is supposed. The biographical method which has hitherto prevailed in the writing of history is strongly condemned; and it is maintained that it must give place to the democratic method, which sees in history the work not of a few great individualities but of the innumerable multitude of individuals which have made up the successive generations of mankind. The refutation of the theory which explains history by the action of races is, perhaps, the most satisfactory portion of M. Mougeolle's work. The Third Part expounds his own theory. It treats of "the Medium, or the author of the Drama." "The medium," we are told, "makes men." The stable elements and the shifting scenes which surround humanity compose and evolve the drama of history, and even create and train the actors in it; such is the hypothesis which alone finds favour in M. Mougeolle's eyes. The Fourth Part is on "Historians,

or the critics of the Drama." These are distributed into three schools,-the German, British, and French,- -on grounds which are very worthy of consideration, although they may be, perhaps, not quite conclusive. M. Mougeolle touches on a great many of the problems of history in an exceptionally interesting way, but too lightly to reach, except rarely, sound solutions of them. The chief defects of his work, I must add, are clearly indicated in the "Preface" to it, written by M. Yves Guyot. It might be of great public advantage if authors generally were to get their works prefaced by such perfectly candid friends.

3. Louis Bourdeau.-He is the author of one very remarkable and important book, which I have had special occasion to study in another connection. I refer to his 'Théorie des Sciences' (2 vols. 1882), an elaborate attempt to improve and advance the work of Comte, in the spirit of Comte, and to expound an "integral" or universal science into which shall enter no metaphysical or theological conception. In his 'Histoire des Arts Utiles' he has made a valuable contribution to the history of industry. But his 'L'Histoire et les Historiens' (1888) is, on the whole, disappointing. M. Bourdeau considers that of true history there is as yet almost none, and that the foundations of a science of history have still to be laid. He begins his treatise by attempting to define history, with the result which I have already noticed on page 11. He then discourses on "the agents" and "the facts" of history; and strongly complains that historians have attended exclusively to celebrated personages and to striking or singular events, not seeing that, in reality, the human race is only to be known aright by studying it in its average condition, and in its general, regular, or functional facts. He devotes only six pages to "the methodical analysis" or "rational distribution" of history, and more than two hundred to an attack on "the narrative method." He would have been well advised, I think, if he had done just the reverse. Thierry, Buckle, and others have sufficiently entertained us with accounts of the blunders and defects of the older historians. And if M. Bourdeau's collection of instances of error and of prejudice on their part had been even a hundredfold more copious than it is, it would not have justified the historical scepticism into which he falls -a scepticism almost as extreme and irrational as that of Father Hardouin. Strange to say, none of his instances are drawn from the pages of modern historians imbued with the critical spirit, although it is surely manifest that before condemning the historical method hitherto exclusively employed as altogether untrustworthy and useless, it was its latest and most accredited practitioners whom he was especially bound to expose and discredit. To the narrative method he would substitute a mathematical or numerical method, the statistical method. It is only by this method-by measurement, enumeration, and caleulation-that, in his opinion, true history can be obtained, and a positive science of history established. He eulogises the method, and explains how he would apply it, but he shows no perception of the proper limits of its applicability. He does not seem to have studied its history, logic, or relationships; to know anything of the researches and discussions of a Guerry, Dufau, Guillard, Legoyt, or Leplay, of an Engel, Wappäus, Wagner, Drobisch, von Oettingen, &c. He treats, in conclusion, of the laws of history: first, of its special laws, which are either laws of order or of relation; next, of its general law, the law of progress; and then, of the demonstration of the laws. The law of progress he represents as a necessary law, and as of a mathematical nature like other laws; the theory of progress as still an hypothesis, like Newton's theory of attraction; and the formula of progress as one analogous to that of gravitation.

CHAPTER XI.

HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CRITICAL SCHOOL.

I.

POSITIVE philosophy, in the acceptation of the positivists, is a legitimate stage or form of philosophy. All the various special sciences aim merely at the extension of knowledge of a particular kind, at the acquisition of truth in regard to certain specific objects. Each of them is confined within a sphere of its own, and has its own class of specialists. And yet not one of them is entirely independent and self-sufficient. They have all a community of nature, and are in various ways related. There are precedence and subordination, order and harmony, among them, so that many and diverse as they are they imply a whole not less than do the objects of which they severally treat, a system in which each of them should find its appropriate place. But this whole or system when discovered by a scientific investigation of the limits, methods, affinities, and inter-relations of the sciences, will be itself a science equally with the sciences which it presupposes, and of which it is the theory or doctrine. It will be of the same nature as they are, and differ from them only as general from special science, or as an organism from its members. There is manifestly not only room but need for such a science, even if it be nothing more than such a doctrine of the sciences as affords a synthesis and organisation of them. And such a science or doctrine is what the positivists call positive philosophy. Their philosophy is a science of the sciences which is a necessary complement of special science, and yet of the same nature, at least in their view. It assumes the special sciences, and builds itself up on what these sciences teach.

Now this is well so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. It is unsatisfactory, not because it is false, but inasmuch as it is superficial and inadequate. Positive philosophy, understood as indicated, in basing itself on the special sciences assumes their assumptions. It assumes that we know what knowledge and science, certainty and probability, are; that truth of various kinds is within the reach of the human mind; that it is to be sought by certain methods; and that there are fundamental ideas and fixed laws of thought on which we can rely in our investigations. All the special sciences make these assumptions, and must, if they are unsound, fall to the ground, and bring down the positive philosophy of which these sciences are at once the sole supports and the sole objects. Neither such science nor such philosophy is thorough, or capable of satisfying a completely rational being. A fully awakened mind is one awakened from the dogmatic slumber which accepts assumptions without examination: assumptions which may be denied not less than affirmed, and of which the affirmation and the denial alike require justification. "Scientific thought," to use here words which I have elsewhere employed, "is not necessarily self-criticising thought; on the contrary, mere scientific thought, however rigid and methodical, is essentially dogmatic thought. It is not dogmatism, but it is dogma. It is reasoned, yet unreflective. It builds up what is admitted to be knowledge, but it does not inquire what so-called knowledge is or is essentially worth. Positive philosophy is such thought at its highest perfection, or in its purest and most comprehensive form, but it has all the essential defects of such thought. It is merely an advance on special science, as special science itself is on ordinary knowledge, and ordinary knowledge on crude sensation. Along the whole line the mind never changes its attitude towards its objects; at the end this is just what it was at the beginning. The scientist often fancies that he is a man who takes nothing on trust; in reality, he takes everything on trust, because he accepts without question or reservation thought itself as naturally truthful and its laws as valid. Whatever a multitude of superficial scientists may suppose to the contrary, the fact is that the entire procedure of science, and of philosophy in so far as it is simply a generalisation of science, is assumptive

HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CRITICAL SCHOOL. 643

and dogmatic. At bottom, science, which is so often contrasted with and opposed to faith, is mere faith, implicit faith, and in the view of a serious and consistent scepticism must be blind faith. Thought may assume, however, and is bound to assume, a very different attitude towards itself and towards its objects. It may pass, and ought to pass, from a believing to an inquiring, from a dogmatic to a critical stage. It may turn, and ought to turn, its attention and force from a study of the relations of the known to an examination of the conditions and guarantees of knowledge." 1

The need for a critical philosophy was made apparent by the destructive work of Hume. Reid and his followers saw what was wanted, but only imperfectly supplied it. Kant gave the first general yet profound exposition of philosophy as a criticism of knowledge. The French critical school consists of thinkers who have deeply felt the influence of Kant, and who for the most part accept his principles even when they reject his conclusions. In the view of its representatives the inquiry neglected by the positivists, the inquiry into the conditions of experience and the assumptions of the sciences, is of primary importance. They recognise the absurdity of a man excluding metaphysics and theology from the sphere of knowledge, and including physics and sociology within it, although he has never taken the trouble to ask what knowledge is, whether it is attainable at all or not, and if attainable what its criteria. and limits are. And, as a consequence of thus differing from the positivists, they aim likewise at being more severely scientific; are much more exacting and difficult to satisfy in regard to proof; and have a keener sense of the uncertainty latent in general theories and complex inquiries, and less respect for the mere name of science and for much of what passes as science. They are not so positive as the positivists in the sense of being prone to make either decided affirmations or negations. They are well aware that for such intellects as the human the domain of probability is far more extensive than that of certainty, and are perhaps even apt to suppose that rational certainties are fewer than they are. The positivist is a dogmatist even when he calls himself an agnostic. The

1 Presbyterian Review, July 1885, p. 2.