much with us. Our first care
should be to make the empirical law as nearly true as possible,
collecting as many as we can of the facts which the law is supposed to
generalise, and examining them according to the canons of Induction,
with due allowance for the imperfect applicability of those canons to
such complex, unwieldy, and indefinite instances. In the examples of
such laws given above, it is clear that in some cases no pains have been
taken to examine the facts. What is the inductive evidence that
Democracies change into Despotisms; that revolutions always begin in
hunger; or that civilisation is inimical to individuality? Even Mill's
often quoted saying, "that the governments remarkable in history for
sustained vigour and ability have generally been aristocracies," is
oddly over-stated. For if you turn to the passage (_Rep. Gov._ chap.
vi.), the next sentence tells you that such governments have always been
aristocracies of public functionaries; and the next sentence but one
restricts, apparently, the list of such remarkable governments to
two--Rome and Venice. Whence, then, comes the word "generally" into
Mill's law?

As to deducing our empirical law from a consideration of the nature of
the case, it is obvious that we ought--(a) to take account of all the
important conditions; (b) to allow weight to them severally in
proportion to their importance; and (c) not to include in our estimates
any condition which we cannot show to be probably present and operative.
Thus the Great-Man-Theory of history must surely be admitted to assign a
real condition of national success. The great man organises, directs,
inspires: is that nothing? On the other hand, to recognise no other
condition of national success is the manifest frenzy of a mind in the
mythopoeic age. We must allow the great man his due weight, and then
inquire into the general conditions that (a) bring him to birth in one
nation rather than another, and (b) give him his opportunity.

Mill's explanation of the success of the aristocratic governments of
Rome and Venice is, that they were, in fact, bureaucracies; that is to
say, their members were trained in the science and art of
administration and command. Here, again, we have, no doubt, a real
condition; but is it the only one? The popular mind, which little
relishes the scaling down of Mill's original law to those two remote
cases, is persuaded that an aristocracy is the depository of hereditary
virtue, espe