d easily
falling tinder the empire of sensual enjoyments, that bluntness of
taste, that irregularity and those outbursts of conception which
arrest in him the birth of refined and harmonious forms and methods;
that disdain of appearances, that yearning for truth, that attachment
to abstract, bare ideas which develop conscience in him at the expense
of everything else. Here the search comes to an end. We have reached
a certain primitive disposition, a particular trait belonging to
sensations of all kinds, to every conception peculiar to an age or
to a race, to characteristics inseparable from every idea and feeling
that stir in the human breast. Such are the grand causes, for these
are universal and permanent causes, present in every case and at every
moment, everywhere and always active, indestructible, and inevitably
dominant in the end, since, whatever accidents cross their path being
limited and partial, end in yielding to the obscure and incessant
repetition of their energy; so that the general structure of things
and all the main features of events are their work, all religions and
philosophies, all poetic and industrial systems, all forms of society
and of the family, all, in fine, being imprints bearing the stamp of
their seal.

IV

There is, then, a system in human ideas and sentiments, the prime
motor of which consists in general traits, certain characteristics
of thought and feeling common to men belonging to a particular race,
epoch, or country. Just as crystals in mineralogy, whatever
their diversity, proceed from a few simple physical forms, so do
civilizations in history, however these may differ, proceed from a few
spiritual forms. One is explained by a primitive geometrical element
as the other is explained by a primitive psychological element. In
order to comprehend the entire group of mineralogical species we must
first study a regular solid in the general, its facets and angles, and
observe in this abridged form the innumerable transformations of which
it is susceptible. In like manner, if we would comprehend the entire
group of historic varieties we must consider beforehand a human soul
in the general, with its two or three fundamental faculties, and, in
this abridgment, observe the principal forms it may present. This sort
of ideal tableau, the geometrical as well as psychological, is not
very complex, and we soon detect the limitations of organic conditions
to which civilizations, the sa