ed, had also appreciated its importance. But Montesquieu drew
general attention to it, and since he wrote, geographical conditions
have been recognised by all inquirers as an influential factor in the
development of human societies. His own discussion of the question did
not result in any useful conclusions. He did not determine the limits of
the action of physical conditions, and a reader hardly knows whether to
regard them as fundamental or accessory, as determining the course of
civilisation or only perturbing it. "Several things govern men," he
says, "climate, religion, laws, precepts of government, historical
examples, morals, and manners, whence is formed as their result a
general mind (esprit general)." This co-ordination of climate with
products of social life is characteristic of his unsystematic thought.
But the remark which the author went on to make, that there is always
a correlation between the laws of a people and its esprit general, was
important. It pointed to the theory that all the products of social life
are closely interrelated.

In Montesquieu's time people were under the illusion that legislation
has an almost unlimited power to modify social conditions. We have seen
this in the case of Saint-Pierre. Montesquieu's conception of general
laws should have been an antidote to this belief. It had however less
effect on his contemporaries than we might have expected, and they
found more to their purpose in what he said of the influence of laws on
manners. There may be something in Comte's suggestion that he could not
give his conception any real consistency or vigour, just because he
was himself unconsciously under the influence of excessive faith in the
effects of legislative action.

A fundamental defect in Montesquieu's treatment of social phenomena is
that he abstracted them from their relations in time. It was his merit
to attempt to explain the correlation of laws and institutions with
historical circumstances, but he did not distinguish or connect stages
of civilisation. He was inclined to confound, as Sorel has observed,
all periods and constitutions. Whatever be the value of the idea of
Progress, we may agree with Comte that, if Montesquieu had grasped
it, he would have produced a more striking work. His book announces a
revolution in the study of political science, but in many ways belongs
itself to the pre-Montesquieu era.

2.

In the same years in which Montesquieu was busy on the compos