monarchy, or the establishment of a creed, they do but
half their duty if they merely relate the events. In an account, for
instance, of the rise of Mahometanism, it is not enough to describe the
character of the Prophet, the ends which he set before him, the means
which he made use of, and the effect which he produced; the historian
must show what there was in the condition of the Eastern races which
enabled Mahomet to act upon, them so powerfully; their existing beliefs,
their existing moral and political condition.

In our estimate of the past, and in our calculations of the future, in
the judgments which we pass upon one another, we measure responsibility,
not by the thing done, but by the opportunities which people have had of
knowing better or worse. In the efforts which we make to keep our
children from bad associations or friends, we admit that external
circumstances have a powerful effect in making men what they are.

But are circumstances every thing? That is the whole question. A
science of history, if it is more than a misleading name, implies that
the relation between cause and effect holds in human things as
completely as in all others; that the origin of human actions is not to
be looked for in mysterious properties of the mind, but in influences
which are palpable and ponderable.

When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralized by what
is called volition, the word Science is out of place. If it is free to
man to choose what he will do or not do, there is no adequate science of
him. If there is a science of him, there is no free choice, and the
praise or blame with which we regard one another are impertinent and out
of place.

I am trespassing upon these ethical grounds because, unless I do, the
subject cannot be made intelligible. Mankind are but an aggregate of
individuals; History is but the record of individual action: and what is
true of the part is true of the whole.

We feel keenly about such things, and, when the logic becomes
perplexing, we are apt to grow rhetorical about them. But rhetoric is
only misleading. Whatever the truth may be, it is best that we should
know it; and for truth of any kind we should keep our heads and hearts
as cool as we can.

I will say at once, that, if we had the whole case before us; if we were
taken, like Leibnitz's Tarquin, into the council-chamber of Nature, and
were shown what we really were, where we came from, and where we were
going, howe