cannot be intended in the same sense as when the terms are applied to
the sciences of inorganic nature; for it is impossible that acts
evidently proceeding from the human will could be ascribed to the agency
(at least immediate) of either divinities or abstractions. No one ever
regarded himself or his fellow-man as a mere piece of machinery worked
by a god, or as the abode of an entity which was the true author of what
the man himself appeared to do. True, it was believed that the gods, or
God, could move or change human wills, as well as control their
consequences, and prayers were offered to them accordingly, rather as
able to overrule the spontaneous course of things, than as at each
instant carrying it on. On the whole, however, the theological and
metaphysical conceptions, in their application to sociology, had
reference not to the production of phaenomena, but to the rule of duty,
and conduct in life. It is this which was based, either on a divine
will, or on abstract mental conceptions, which, by an illusion of the
rational faculty, were invested with objective validity. On the one
hand, the established rules of morality were everywhere referred to a
divine origin. In the majority of countries the entire civil and
criminal law was looked upon as revealed from above; and it is to the
petty military communities which escaped this delusion, that man is
indebted for being now a progressive being. The fundamental institutions
of the state were almost everywhere believed to have been divinely
established, and to be still, in a greater or less degree, of divine
authority. The divine right of certain lines of kings to rule, and even
to rule absolutely, was but lately the creed of the dominant party in
most countries of Europe; while the divine right of popes and bishops to
dictate men's beliefs (and not respecting the invisible world alone) is
still striving, though under considerable difficulties, to rule mankind.
When these opinions began to be out of date, a rival theory presented
itself to take their place. There were, in truth, many such theories,