that when we perform an action we perform it in consequence of some
motive or motives; that those motives are the result of some
antecedents; and that, therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole
of the precedents and with all the laws of their movements we could with
unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results.

History is the modification of man by nature and of nature by man. We
shall find a regularity in the variations of virtuous and vicious
actions that proves them to be the result of large and general causes
which, working upon the aggregate of society, must produce certain
consequences without regard to the decision of particular individuals.

Man is affected by purely physical agents--climate, food, soil,
geographical conditions, and active physical phenomena. In the earliest
civilisations nature is more prominent than man, and the imagination is
more stimulated than the understanding. In the European civilisations
man is the more prominent, and the understanding is more stimulated than
the imagination. Hence the advance of European civilisation is
characterised by a diminishing influence of physical laws and an
increasing influence of mental laws. Clearly, then, of the two classes
of laws which regulate the progress of mankind the mental class is more
important than the physical. The laws of the human mind will prove to be
the ultimate basis of the history of Europe. These are not to be
ascertained by the metaphysical method of studying the inquirer's own
mind alone, but by the historical method of studying many minds. And
this whether the metaphysician belongs to the school which starts by
examining the sensations, or to that which starts with the examination
of ideas.

Dismissing the metaphysical method, therefore, we must turn to the