other tribes of animals are described by enumerating all the properties of their species or kind, and when this task has been completely accomplished, the problem is exhausted, except so far as varieties may be produced by domestication. One generation of elephants, or monkeys, or lions, has nothing to distinguish it from another. But man, in addition to that physiological character which he has in common with other animals, and which, like their physical type, is unvarying, has also attributes which distinguish one community of men from anotherand, again, one generation of the same community from another generation. It is the sum of the acts of a society, as they occur in succession, which constitutes its history, and distinguishes its state, not only from that of other societies, but also from its own states, both anterior and subsequent.

With respect to the determination of the future in human affairs, there are two cases, which, though they do not admit of being very precisely distinguished from each other, yet require to be considered separately.

The first is, when, from a view of all those circumstances which, taken in the aggregate, constitute the actual state of any society, we predict its state at some definite future period. Although a philosophical survey of the course of history may lead to certain general results as to the progress of society, and the order in which certain political and social changes may be expected to follow one another, yet it is impossible to predict a future social state with any approach to certainty :*

Prudens futuri temporis exitum

Caliginosâ nocte premit Deus.

* Upon the meaning of " a state of society," and the extent to which it can be predicted, see Mill's Syst. of Logic, b. VI. c. 10.

Such anticipations, even of the most sagacious judges, can have scarcely better claim to confidence than the predictions of a weather-almanac. For example, who, in the year 1788, could have predicted the social and political state of France and a large part of Europe at any period of the Revolution, the Consulate, or the Empire? That an extensive and profound study of history did not necessarily give an insight into this futurity, is proved by the remark of Gibbon upon the early stages of that great change. "How many years,' (said he, writing at the end of 1789,*) "before France can recover any vigour, or resume her station among the powers of Europe!" And even if he had then predicted the great development of popular and military energy which ensued in France upon the invasion of the French territory, and the attempts to restore the royal authority, his prediction must have been founded on such uncertain and arbitrarily chosen grounds, as to deserve little more than the name of a guess. Who, in January, 1848, could have predicted the series of events which have occurred on the continent of Europe since that period; and who, if he had happened to conjecture something near the truth, could have ventured to say that his prediction was derived from sure data?

But, secondly, in the practical management of affairs, the problem for our solution presents itself in a less intricate and more tractable shape. We are commonly called upon to predict the effects of some given cause, viz., of some proposed legislative or administrative measure, or of a treaty or war with a foreign country. Predictions of this sort, with respect to the body politic,

*Milman's Life of Gibbon, p. 338.

are analogous to the predictions of the effects of a certain medicine or diet with respect to the body natural. They are also analogous to predictions with respect to the working of a new and untried machine, or instrument. Having been framed by means of inferences from observed and generalized facts, they approximate more or less closely to the truth; but the plan requires a process of verification before its actual working can be securely ascertained.

In human affairs, whether relating to public or private interests, such predictions, (as Mr. Mill has truly remarked*) can never be absolute; they must be limited to the affirmation of tendencies, and not venture to lay down positive effects. In dealing with human actions, we can only presume to say that a certain cause, if not counteracted, will produce a certain effect; and that, therefore, its tendency is to produce that effect. But those future miscellaneous causes which we cannot calculate, and which we are forced to set down to the account of chance, are so numerous, as to prevent us from saying that it will produce that effect. Even our predictions of tendencies, moreover, in the great majority of cases, can only be made by empirical maxims-by propositions not true universally, but qualified by considerations of time and place. For example, the expediency of a new legislative proposal must be judged by very different criteria in England and in Hindostan. The differences of climate, race, religion, degree of mental and moral culture, political habits and institutions, state of the useful arts, and other determining circumstances, would necessitate the application of different rules of

* System of Logic, vol. ii. pp. 523, 565.

judgment, and different canons of prediction, in the one case, from those applicable in the other.

It may be remarked, that those things which are comprehended under the denomination of news-which are collected in newspapers, and circulated in this shape, for the information of the public-belong in general to the class of events to which our powers of prediction apply either imperfectly, or not at all. Sometimes a newspaper may describe the appearances of an eclipse, or other remarkable celestial phenomenon, which astronomers have foreseen; but no newspaper informs its readers of the course of the seasons, the succession of day and night, the rising and setting of the stars, or the alternation of the tides. Storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other similar incalculable events in the realm of nature, together with the acts and fortunes of men, both in a political and a private character-battles, revolutions, debates of senates, trials by courts of justice, accidents, crimes, voyages, births, marriages, deaths, &c. compose the intelligence which a newspaper furnishes. The avidity for news is owing to the difficulty or impossibility of foreseeing the events: in proportion as the events are important and unexpected, is our curiosity to learn them.

Even, however, with the assistance of all those means which the admirable inventions of modern science have contrived for the accelerated despatch of intelligence, we are hardly ever, in any complicated case, informed at the moment of decision and action with respect to all the contemporaneous events. Circumstances are changing, more or less, at every instant; and we are left to infer the present state of things from their state at a recent period. Hence the necessity, according to the just

remark of Turgot, of predicting the present: our belief as to the immediate present must always be founded, to a certain extent, upon conjectures derived from an antecedent period. A general, for example, when he issues his orders successively in a battle, cannot know the state of things, at each moment, so exactly and completely as he may ascertain them after the battle, from the information of different persons and the comparison of their several accounts.

Do

§ 11. Now in the attempt to predetermine the future, with reference to some practical measure, the deliberation of competent judges affords the best security; though we see, especially from the debates of legislative assemblies, to what an extent their judgments and predictions conflict with respect to practical affairs. what we will, the future, to a great extent, eludes our grasp, in all matters dependent upon the volitions of other men. Nevertheless, by careful deliberation and the adoption of prudent counsels, and by a rigid adherence to a sound method of observation and reasoning -or by following the advice of persons who themselves adhere to such a method, we can reduce the amount of uncertainty; we can eliminate many elements of chance, and, to a considerable extent, bring the future under our control. From time to time, undoubtedly, great catastrophes occur, which no prudence could have anticipated, and whose consequences, not having been guarded against, must be endured. Such great moral convulsions are like storms and hurricanes in the physical world, which, though doubtless they have their appropriate and constant laws not less than the equable course of the weather, yet defy the predictions of the meteorologist. But, in the ordinary course of human affairs, the future can, to a great extent, be anticipated for practical pur