doubt that a people are not really advancing, if on the one hand, their increasing ability is accompanied by increasing vice, or if on the other hand, while they are becoming more virtuous, they likewise become more ignorant. This double movement, moral and intellectual, is essential to the very idea of civilization, and includes the entire theory of mental progress. To be willing to perform our duty is the moral part; to know how to perform it is the intellectual part: while the closer these two parts are knit together, the greater the harmony with which they work; and the more accurately the means are adapted to the end, the more completely will the scheme of our life be accomplished, and the more securely shall we lay a foundation for the further advancement of mankind.

A question, therefore, now arises of great moment: namely, which of these two parts or elements of mental progress is the more important. For the progress itself being the result of their united action, it becomes necessary to ascertain which of them works more powerfully, in order that we may subordinate the inferior element to the laws of the superior one. If the advance of civilization, and the general happiness of mankind, depend more on their moral feelings than on their intellectual knowledge, we must of course measure the progress of society by those feelings; while if, on the other hand, it depends principally on their knowledge, we must take as our standard the amount and success of their intellectual activity. As soon as we know the relative energy of these two components, we shall treat them according to the usual plan for investigating truth; that is to say, we shall look at the product of their joint action as obeying the laws of the more powerful agent, whose operations are casually disturbed by the inferior laws of the minor agent.

In entering into this inquiry, we are met by a preliminary difficulty, arising from the loose and careless manner in which ordinary language is employed on subjects that require the greatest nicety and precision. For

the expression, Moral and Intellectual Progress, is suggestive of a serious fallacy. In the manner in which it is generally used, it conveys an idea that the moral and intellectual faculties of men are, in the advance of civilization, naturally more acute and more trustworthy than they were formerly. But this, though it may possibly be true, has never been proved. It may be that, owing to some physical causes still unknown, the average capacity of the brain is, if we compare long periods of time, becoming gradually greater; and that therefore the mind, which acts through the brain, is, even independently of education, increasing in aptitude and in the general competence of its views.10 Such, however, is still our ignorance of physical laws, and so completely are we in the dark as to the circumstances which regulate the hereditary transmission of character, temperament,11 and

10 That the natural powers of the human brain are improving because they are capable of transmission, is a favourite doctrine with the followers of Gall, and is adopted by M. A. Comte (Philosophie Positive, vol iv. pp. 384, 385); who, however, admits that it has never been sufficiently verified: sans que toutefois l'expérience ait encore suffisamment prononcé. Dr. Prichard, whose habits of thought were very different, seems, nevertheless, inclined to lean in this direction; for his comparison of skulls led him to the conclusion, that the present inhabitants of Britain, "either as the result of many ages of greater intellectual cultivation, or from some other cause, have, as I am persuaded, much more capacious brain-cases than their forefathers." Prichard's Physical History of Mankind, vol. i. p. 305. Even if this were certain, it would not prove that the contents of the crania were altered, though it might create a presumption; and the general question must, I think, remain unsettled until the researches begun by Blumenbach, and recently continued by Morton, are carried out upon a scale far more comprehensive than has hitherto been attempted. Compare Burdach, Traité de Physiologie, vol. ii. p. 253; where, however, the question is not stated with sufficient caution.

"None of the laws of hereditary descent connected with the formation of character, have yet been generalized; nor is our knowledge much more advanced respecting the theory of temperaments, which still remains the principal obstacle in the way of the phrenologists. The difficulties attending the study of temperaments, and the obscurity in which this important subject is shrouded, may be estimated by whoever will compare what has been said upon it by the following writers: Müller's Physiology, vol. ii. pp. 1406-1410; Elliotson's Human Physiology, pp. 1059-1062; Blainville, Physiologie Générale et Comparée, vol. i. pp. 168, 264, 265, vol. ii. pp. 43, 130, 214, 328, 329, vol. iii. pp. 54, 74, 118, 148, 149, 284, 285; Williams's Principles of Medicine, pp. 16, 17, 112, 113; Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. i. pp. 186, 190; Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. i. pp. 204, 205, vol. iii. p. 276; Renouard, Hist. de la Medecine, vol. i. p. 326; Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. i. p. 380, vol. ii.

other personal peculiarities, that we must consider this alleged progress as a very doubtful point; and, in the present state of our knowledge, we cannot safely assume that there has been any permanent improvement in the moral or intellectual faculties of man, nor have we any decisive ground for saying that those faculties are likely to be greater in an infant born in the most civilized part of Europe, than in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous country.12

Whatever, therefore, the moral and intellectual pro

p. 408, vol. iii. p. 21, vol. v. p. 325, vol. vi. p. 492; Esquirol, Maladies Mentales, vol. i. pp. 39, 226, 429, 594, vol. ii. p. 29; Lepelletier, Physiol. Médicale, vol. i. pp. 139, 281, vol. iii. pp. 372-429, vol. iv. pp. 93, 123, 133, 143, 148, 177; Henle, Anatomie Générale, vol. i. p. 474, vol. ii. pp. 288, 289, 316; Bichat, Anatomie Générale, vol. i. p. 207, vol. ii. p. 444, vol. iii. pp. 310, 507, vol. iv. pp. 281, 399, 400, 504; Bichat sur la Vie, pp. 80, 81, 234, 235; Phillips on Scrofula, p. 9; Feuchtersleben's Medical Psychology, pp. 143-145; Œuvres de Fontenelle, Paris, 1766, vol. v. p. 110; Cullen's Works, Edinb. 1827, vol. i. pp. 214-221; Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, pp. 76 83, 229-261, 520-533; Noble on the Brain, pp. 370-376; Combe's North America, vol. i. pp. 126-128. Latterly, attention has been paid to the chemistry of the blood as it varies in the various temperaments; and this seems a more satisfactory method than the old plan of merely describing the obvious symptoms of the temperament. Clark on Animal Physiology, in Fourth Report of the British Association, p. 126; Simon's Animal Chemistry, vol. i. p. 236; Wagner's Physiology, p. 262.

12 We often hear of hereditary talents, hereditary vices, and hereditary virtues; but whoever will critically examine the evidence will find that we have no proof of their existence. The way in which they are commonly proved is in the highest degree illogical; the usual course being for writers to collect instances of some mental peculiarity found in a parent and in his child, and then to infer that the peculiarity was bequeathed. By this mode of reasoning we might demonstrate any proposition; since in all large fields of inquiry there are a sufficient number of empirical coincidences to make a plausible case in favour of whatever view a man chooses to advocate. But this is not the way in which truth is discovered; and we ought to inquire not only how many instances there are of hereditary talents, &c., but how many instances there are of such qualities not being hereditary. Until something of this sort is attempted, we can know nothing about the matter inductively; while, until physiology and chemistry are much more advanced, we can know nothing about it deductively.

These considerations ought to prevent us from receiving statements (Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, pp. 644, 678, and many other books) which positively affirm the existence of hereditary madness and hereditary suicide; and the same remark applies to hereditary disease (on which see some admirable observations in Phillips on Scrofula, pp. 101-120, London, 1846): and with still greater force does it apply to hereditary vices and hereditary virtues; inasmuch as ethical phenomena have not been registered as carefully as physiological ones, and therefore our conclusions respecting them are even more precarious.

gress of men may be, it resolves itself not into a progress of natural capacity, 13 but into a progress, if I may so say, of opportunity; that is, an improvement in the circumstances under which that capacity after birth comes into play. Here, then, lies the gist of the whole matter. The progress is one, not of internal power, but of external advantage. The child born in a civilized land, is not likely, as such, to be superior to one born among barbarians; and the difference which ensues between the acts of the two children will be caused, so far as we know, solely by the pressure of external circumstances; by which I mean the surrounding opinions, knowledge, associations, in a word, the entire mental atmosphere in which the two children are respectively nurtured.

On this account it is evident, that if we look at mankind in the aggregate, their moral and intellectual conduct is regulated by the moral and intellectual notions prevalent in their own time. There are, of course, many persons who will rise above those notions, and many others who will sink below them. But such cases are exceptional, and form a very small proportion of the total amount of those who are nowise remarkable either for good or for evil. An immense majority of men must always remain in a middle state, neither very foolish nor very able, neither very virtuous nor very vicious, but slumbering on in a peaceful and decent mediocrity, adopting without much difficulty the current opinions of the day, making no inquiry, exciting no scandal, causing no wonder, just holding themselves on a level with their generation, and noiselessly conforming to the standard of

13 To what has been already stated, I will add the opinions of two of the most profound among modern thinkers. "Men, I think, have been much the same for natural endowments in all times." Conduct of the Understanding, in Locke's Works, vol. ii. p. 361. "Les dispositions primitives agissent également chez les peuples barbares et chez les peuples policés; ils sont vraisemblablement les mêmes dans tous les lieux et dans tous les tems. Plus il y aura d'hommes, et plus vous aurez de grands hommes ou d'hommes propres à devenir grands." Progrès de l' Esprit Humain, in Euvres de Turgot, vol. ii. p. 264. The remarks of Dr. Brown (Lectures on the Mind, p. 57), if I rightly understand his rhetorical language, apply not to natural capacity, but to that which is acquired: see the end of his ninth Lecture.

morals and of knowledge common to the age and country in which they live.

Now, it requires but a superficial acquaintance with history to be aware that this standard is constantly changing, and that it is never precisely the same even in the most similar countries, or in two successive generations in the same country. The opinions which are popular in any nation, vary in many respects almost from year to year; and what in one period is attacked as a paradox or a heresy, is in another period welcomed as a sober truth; which, however, in its turn is replaced by some subsequent novelty. This extreme mutability in the ordinary standard of human actions, shows that the conditions on which the standard depends must themselves be very mutable; and those conditions, whatever they may be, are evidently the originators of the moral and intellectual conduct of the great average of mankind.

Here, then, we have a basis on which we can safely proceed. We know that the main cause of human actions. is extremely variable; we have only, therefore, to apply this test to any set of circumstances which are supposed to be the cause, and if we find that such circumstances are not very variable, we must infer that they are not the cause we are attempting to discover.

Applying this test to moral motives, or to the dictates of what is called moral instinct, we shall at once see how extremely small is the influence those motives have exercised over the progress of civilization. For there is, unquestionably, nothing to be found in the world which has undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems are composed. To do good to others; to sacrifice for their benefit your own wishes; to love your neighbour as yourself; to forgive your enemies; to restrain your passions; to honour your parents; to respect those who are set over you: these, and a few others, are the sole essentials of morals; but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homi