odified by the
concomitance of fresh circumstances; or that they may not continue to
produce consequences differing from their former consequences not more
than in proportion to the modification undergone by the causes. Still
less is it pretended that certain human phenomena, with which human
motives have little or nothing to do, may not be repeated once and
again, notwithstanding the important changes constantly going on in
every human society. It is not denied that marriages may continue for
years together to bear much the same annual proportion to the
population, provided that during those years there be no material change
in the amount of the economical obstacles which commonly interfere, more
than anything else, with men's natural inclination to marry. Still less
is it denied that, in a given number of births, the number of girls may
always preserve nearly the same superiority over that of boys, or that
the proportion between red-haired and flaxen-haired children may
generally be about the same, or that the percentage of letters
misdirected in a given country may vary little during long periods. But,
in the first of these cases, men do not get married, as Mr. Buckle
imagined, irrespectively of their volition. If, for several years
together, marriages continue to bear about the same proportion to
population, it is because during that period circumstances continue to
present a certain amount, and no more, of opposition to men's connubial
proclivities. In the other cases, it is not at all because the parents
wish it that a girl is born instead of a boy, or with flaxen hair
instead of carrots; neither is it from any motive or intention that
letters are often misdirected, but, on the contrary, from want of
thought, and from the carelessness and haste with which letter-writing,
like most other human actions, is unfortunately too often performed.
But, before assuming that this carelessness and haste bear an invariable
proportion to numbers, we should inquire whether the proportion of
misdirected letters is the same in all human societies--the same, for
instance, in France and Spain as in England. If not--if varying
circumstances produce different results in this respect in different
countries--it may be inferred that a variation of circumstances may
produce a difference of result in the same country. It will, at any
rate, be clear that there is no 'necessary and invariable order' in
which letters are misdirected. In one se