ances have a powerful effect in making men what they are.

But are circumstances everything? 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 neutralised by what
is called volition, the word Science is out of place. If it is free to a
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, however unpleasant it might be for some of us to find ourselves,
like Tarquin, made into villains, from the subtle necessities of 'the
best of all possible worlds;' nevertheless, some such theory as Mr.
Buckle's might possibly turn out to be true. Likely enough, there is
some great 'equation of the universe' where the value of the unknown
quantities can be determined. But we must treat things in relation to
our own powers and position; and the question is, whether the sweep of
those vast curves can be measured by the intellect of creatures of a day
like ourselves.

The 'Faust' of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly knowledge,
calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the spirit of the
Macrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he ventures that tremendous
experiment, and he summons before him, instead, the spirit of his own
race. There he feels himself at h