PARKER, SON, AND BOURN, WEST STRAND.

1861.

The Author reserves to himself the right of Translation.

LONDON :
PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,

Great New Street and Fetter Lane.

TO

MY MOTHER

I DEDICATE

THIS

THE FIRST VOLUME

OF

MY FIRST WORK.

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

STATEMENT OF THE RESOURCES FOR INVESTIGATING HISTORY, AND PROOFS OP

THE REGULARITY OF HUMAN ACTIONS. THESE ACTIONS ARE GOVERNED BY

MENTAL AND PIIYSICAL LAWS: THEREFORE BOTH SETS OF LAWS MUST BE

STUDIED, AND THERE CAN BE NO HISTORY WITHOUT THE NATURAL SCIENCES.

PAGK

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.

Materials for writing history

1-3
Narrow range of knowledge possessed by historians

3-5

Object of the present work

6

Human actions, if not the result of fixed laws, must be due to chance

or to supernatural interference

8

Probable origin of free-will and predestination

9-11

Theological basis of predestination, and metaphysical basis of free-

will

12-16

The actions of men are caused by their antecedents, which exist
either in the human mind or in the external world

17-18

Therefore history is the modification of man by nature, and of nature

by man

19

Statistics prove the regularity of actions in regard to murder and

other crimes

20-24

Similar proof respecting suicides

25-27

Also respecting the number of marriages annually contracted 29-30

And respecting the number of letters sent undirected

30

The historian must ascertain whether mind or nature has most in-

fluenced human actions; and therefore there can be no history

without physical science

31-32

NOTE A, Passages from Kant on free-will and necessity

. 33-35

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