In another way, Comte's system may be criticised for failing to cover the ground, if it is regarded as a philosophy of history. In accordance with "the happy artifice of Condorcet," he assumes that the growth of European civilisation is the only history that matters, and discards entirely the civilisations, for instance, of India and China. This assumption is much more than an artifice, and he has not scientifically justified it. [Footnote: A propos of the view that only European civilisation matters it has been well observed that "human history is not unitary but pluralistic": F. J. Teggart, The Processes of History, p. 24 (1918).] The reader of the PHILOSOPHIE POSITIVE will also observe that Comte has not grappled with a fundamental question which has to be faced in unravelling the woof of history or seeking a law of events. I mean the question of contingency. It must be remembered that contingency does not in the least affect the doctrine of determinism; it is compatible with the strictest interpretation of the principle of causation. A particular example may be taken to show what it implies. [Footnote: On contingency and the "chapter of accidents" see Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des idees et des evenements dans les temps modernes (1872), i. 16 sqq. I have discussed the subject and given some illustrations in a short paper, entitled "Cleopatra's Nose," in the Annual of the Rationalist Press Association for 1916.] It may plausibly be argued that a military dictatorship was an inevitable sequence of the French Revolution. This may not be true, but let us assume it. Let us further assume that, given Napoleon, it was inevitable that he should be the dictator. But Napoleon's existence was due to an independent causal chain which had nothing whatever to do with the course of political events. He might have died in his boyhood by disease or by an accident, and the fact that he survived was due to causes which were similarly independent of the causal chain which, as we are assuming, led necessarily to an epoch of monarchical government. The existence of a man of his genius and character at the given moment was a contingency which profoundly affected the course of history. If he had not been there another dictator would have grasped the helm, but obviously would not have done what Napoleon did.