I. _His View of Freedom._--Mr. Buckle's fundamental position is, that the actions of men are governed by fixed laws, and that, when these laws are discovered, history will become a science, like geometry, geology, or astronomy. The chief obstacle hitherto to its becoming a science has been the belief that the actions of men were determined, not by fixed laws, but by free will (which he considers equivalent to chance), or by supernatural interference or providence (which he regards as equivalent to fate). "We shall thus be led," he says (Vol. I. p. 6, Am. ed.), "to one vast question, which, indeed, lies at the root of the whole subject, and is simply this: Are the actions of men, and therefore of societies, governed by fixed laws, or are they the result either of chance or of supernatural interference?" Identifying freedom with chance, Mr. Buckle denies that there is such a thing, and maintains that every human action is determined by some antecedent, inward or outward, and that not one is determined by the free choice of the man himself. His principal argument against free will is the law of averages, which we will therefore proceed to consider in its bearing on this point. Statistics, carefully collected during many years and within different countries, show a regularity of return in certain vices and crimes, which indicates the presence of law. Thus, about the same number of murders are committed every year in certain countries and large cities, and even the instruments by which they are committed are employed in the same proportion. Suicide also follows some regular law. "In a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own life." In London, about two hundred and forty persons kill themselves every year,--in years of panic and disaster a few more, in prosperous years not quite so many. Other actions of men are determined in the same way,--not by personal volition, but by some controlling circumstance. "It is now known that the number of marriages in England bears a fixed and definite relation to the price of corn." "Aberrations of memory are marked by this general character of necessary and invariable order." The same average number of persons forget every year to direct the letters dropped into the post-offices of London and Paris. Facts of this kind "force us to the conclusion," says Buckle, "that the offenses of men are the result, not so much of the vices of the individual offender, as of the state of society into which he is thrown." The argument then is: If man's moral actions are under law, they are not free, for freedom is the absence of law. The argument of Mr. Buckle is conclusive, provided freedom does necessarily imply the absence of law. But such, we think, is not the fact.