and for a period sufficiently
long to embrace all possible combinations of the special causes, would
be found to produce constant results.'[26] This proposition seems to
proceed on the assumption that general causes are either of uniform
operation, or that, if they vary in their effects, their variations, and
also those of special causes, occur with a certain regularity, and
constantly recur within a certain definite period. But this is precisely
what cannot possibly happen. Among the general causes referred to, some
few are continuous--those, namely, which are inherent in human nature;
but even these are continually modified in their action by changes
continually taking place in those other general causes which constitute
the existing state of society, and which are not merely continually
changing, but are continually becoming more and more different from what
they were originally. So much is fully admitted by Mr. Mill himself, and
indeed can be scarcely more strongly enforced than by his own words.
'There is a progressive change,' he says, 'both in the character of the
human race, and in their outward circumstances, so far as moulded by
themselves; in each successive age the principal phenomena of society
are different from what they were in the age preceding, and still more
different from any previous age.'[27] It is admitted, then, that there
can be no recurrence of social phenomena; and it is obvious that, the
longer the period of observation, the less possibility can there be of
their recurring, since the greater is the certainty that new causes
will come into operation. But, even though it were possible that all the
external circumstances which have once influenced either communities or
individuals could be repeated, the same circumstances could not a second
time produce the same effects. Men of different characters are affected
in very different ways by the same influences, and the characters of any
particular generation of men are always very different from those of
every preceding generation. Let it be supposed, for the sake of
argument, that the French of the present day could be placed in
precisely the same social condition in which their fathers were towards
the close of the last century; still they would act very differently
from their fathers. Nay, even though they should, with one single
exception, have inherited the dispositions of their fathers, the
difference of character in one single individual might