he feeling of
the various armies, the attitude of the provinces, so that, as he says,
'_non modo casus eventusque rerum, qui plerumque fortuiti sunt, sed
ratio etiam causaeque noscantur_.'[47] But these and the like instances
in historical literature were only political explanations, more or less
adequate, of particular transactions; they were no more than the
sagacious remarks of men with statesmanlike minds, upon the origin of
some single set of circumstances.

The rise from this to the high degree of generality which marks the
speculations of Montesquieu, empirical as they are, was as great as the
rise from the mere maxims of worldly wisdom to the widest principles of
ethical philosophy. Polybius, indeed, in the remarkable chapters with
which his _Histories_ open, uses expressions that are so modern as
almost to startle us. 'People who study history,' he says, 'in separate
and detached portions, without reference to one another, and suppose
that from them they acquire a knowledge of the whole, are like a man
who in looking on the severed members of what had once been an animated
and comely creature, should think that this was enough to give him an
idea of its beauty and force when alive. The empire of Rome was what by
its extent in Italy, Africa, Asia, Greece, brought history into the
condition of being organic (+somatoeides+).' His object was to examine
the general and collective ordering of events; when it came into
existence; whence it had its source; how it had this special completion
and fulfilment--the universal empire of Rome.[48] Striking as this is,
and admirable as it is, there is not in it any real trace of the
abstract conception of social history. Polybius recognises the unity of
history, so far as that could be understood in the second century before
Christ, but he treats his subject in the concrete, describing the chain
of events, but not attempting to seek their law. It was Montesquieu who
first applied the comparative method to social institutions; who first
considered physical conditions in connection with the laws of a country;
who first perceived and illustrated how that natural order which the
Physiocrats only considered in relation to the phenomena of wealth and
its production, really extended over its political phenomena as well;
who first set the example of viewing a great number of social facts all
over the world in groups and classes; and who first definitely and
systematically inquired into