order.' 'The actions of men, and therefore of societies, are governed by fixed eternal laws,' which 'assign to every man his place in the necessary chain of being,' and 'allow him no choice as to what that place shall be.' One such law is that, 'in a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own lives:' another, that a certain number of persons must commit murder; a third, that when wages and prices are at certain points, a certain number of marriages must annually take place, 'the number being determined not by the temper and wishes of individuals, but by large general facts, over which individuals can exercise no authority.' These are general laws; but the special question as to who shall commit the crimes or the indiscretion enjoined by them, 'depends upon special laws, which, however, in their total action must obey the large social law to which they are all subordinate.' A Science of History would consist of a collection of 'social laws,' duly systematised and codified, by the application of which to given states of society the historical student might predict the future course of political events, with a confidence similar to that with which he could foretell the results of familiar chemical combinations, or the movement of the planets.[22] This is the theory which a few years ago was so much discussed, and against which, notwithstanding the singular fascination it evidently possesses for some minds, the moral sense of a much larger number indignantly revolts, rightly apprehending that its establishment would be subversive of all morality. For, if the actions of men are governed by 'eternal and immutable laws,' men cannot be free agents; and where there is not free agency there cannot be moral responsibility. Nor are the apprehensions entertained on this score to be allayed by the answer, ingenious as it is, which has been given to them[23] by one of the ablest and most judicious apologists for the new creed. It is true that human actions can be said to be 'governed' only in the same metaphorical sense as that in which we speak of the laws of nature, which do not really govern anything, but merely describe the invariable order in which natural phenomena have been observed to occur. It is true that the discovery of invariable regularity in human affairs, supposing such a discovery to have been made, would not prove that there was any necessity for such regularity. It is conceivable that the orbs of heaven may be intelligent beings, possessing full power to change or to arrest their own course, and moving constantly in the same orbits merely because it pleases them to do so. Invariable regularity, therefore, would be perfectly consistent with free agency. All this is perfectly just, but it is also altogether beside the question. The offence given by the writers on whose behalf the apology is set up consists not so much in their asserting that there are, as in their insisting that there