sketches introduced into history, as that of Italy by Polybius, and of Arabia by Gibbon, likewise fall under the category of descriptions. In legal proceedings, all descriptive amplification is rejected, and the naked narrative is alone retained. Even here, however, description is sometimes necessary in order to make a narrative perspicuous, as when the plan of a building is exhibited in court.

§ 6 The history of a political community is analogous to an epic() or dramatic composition, or to a novel; inasmuch as they both narrate a succession of human acts and sufferings. It is also analogous to the history of a science, or art, or mechanical invention, which is the subject of successive treatment by different men; for example, astronomy, or painting, or the steam-engine. (2) In such a history as this, the successive performances of a variety of men, in relation to the same subject matter, are narrated, each being portrayed individually, and referred to its proper author and moment of time. It is also analogous to the clinical history of a medical case; in which the successive symptoms of the patient's malady, and the successive stages of the treatment, are chronicled day by day; or to a ship's logbook, in which the progress of the vessel, as regulated by the navigator through the opposing or advancing influences of winds, tides, currents, &c., is registered. Lastly, it bears a certain analogy to a physical history of the earth, or of a portion of it; such as, a history of geographical or geological changes in the earth's surface, (2) or a narrative of the progress of a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, a hurricane, or an inundation. In a

(23) On the historical character of the epos, see Col. Mure's Hist. of the Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 171.

(24) In the article, Bibliography of the History of Inventions,' in Beckmann's Hist. of Inv. vol. i. p. 475, 8vo, the various histories of this sort are classified.

(25) See Montesquieu, Projet d'une Histoire Physique de la Terre Ancienne et Moderne, 1719: Œuvres, tom. vii. p. 55. Ritter (Ueber das Historische Element in der Geographischen Wissenschaft; Berlin Transac tions, 1833: Hist. Phil. Klasse, p. 41), elucidates the historical treatment of geography, in so far as it contains an element subject to successive changes.

history of this sort, there is no question of human volition or intelligence, but only of a series of changes produced by physical agents, in which its essential distinction from political history consists. Geographical history, however, and narratives of great physical catastrophes, contain much which relates to the works and sufferings of men.(*)

There is another characteristic point of difference between historical and physical facts, arising from the individual nature of the former, to which it is proper for us to advert.

Facts, in the physical sciences, either recur in definite cycles, as the phenomena of astronomy, of animal and vegetable life, and of foliation and fructification; or they recur at indeterminate intervals, as the phenomena of mechanics, optics, heat, and electricity. The latter are in many cases reproducible at our volition, as in all experimental phenomena. Historical facts, on the other hand, cannot be reproduced. They are not recurrent, either in fixed cycles, or at uncertain intervals; but, having once happened, are not repeated. They succeed each other in an interminable and perpetually varying series. (27)

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Now it is true that a physical fact is as much a complete and past event as a historical fact. For example, the fact that at Rome, on the ides of March, in the year 44 B.C., the sun appeared above the horizon in the east, at a certain moment, is as much an event past and gone as the fact that, on that day, Julius Cæsar was assassinated in the senate-house. But the physical fact of the sun's rising recurs every day; whereas the historical fact has never been, nor can ever be, repeated. If all the observed facts upon which any physical science is founded were lost and forgotten, the observations might be renewed, and from these observations the science might be reconstructed.(28)

But

(26) For example, Pliny's account of his uncle's death, Ep. vi. 16; the description of the earthquake at Lisbon, in the Universal History; Sir J. D. Lauder's Account of the Floods in Scotland, &c.

(27) On the difference between physical and historical facts, see Daunou, Cours d'Etudes Historiques, tom. i. p. 8; tom. vii. p. 195.

(28) Sir J. Herschel remarks, with respect to astronomy, It has been asserted (and we believe with truth), that were the records of all

when the evidence of historical facts is lost, nothing can replace them; and although inferences as to human life and society may be drawn from other facts, still the void created by the loss in question can never be supplied. If the observations by which Kepler calculated the orbit of Mars had been destroyed by fire, they might have been replaced by subsequent astronomers; but if the work of Thucydides had perished, we should have been deprived for ever of his authentic and instructive narrative.(")

It is for this reason that the preservation of historical evidence is of primary importance. When once destroyed, it can never be restored. The chemist can at any moment reproduce the phenomena of matter; he can elicit the electric spark, or decompose water; but no human power can evoke the long series of events which must (for example) have occurred on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, before the dawn of authentic history. Hence, too, it is a mistake to suppose that erudition is distinct in its aim from science; and that the collection of facts relative to a past age of the world is a barren exercise of misdirected diligence, or the mere caprice of a frivolous curiosity. It is the business of erudition to collect, verify, weigh, compare, arrange, expound, and illustrate, the testimonies to ancient facts connected with man: the learned are the pioneers and ministers of history, and furnish the materials out of which the philosophy of politics and human nature is,

observations from the earliest ages annihilated, leaving only those made in a single observatory (Greenwich), during a single lifetime (Maskelyne's), the whole of this most perfect of sciences might, from those data, and as to the objects included in them, be at once reconstructed.'-Disc. on the Study of Nat. Phil. § 67.

(29) In reference to the absence of extant contemporary historians, between Xenophon and Polybius, M. Daunou says, 'Ceci nous montre beaucoup trop sensiblement l'une des difficultés qui sont propres au genre d'études qui nous occupe. De pareilles lacunes, si grandes et si peu réparables, ne peuvent exister dans les sciences naturelles, ni dans celles dont les progrès dépendent de la profondeur des méditations, des efforts de la pensée, ou bien même de l'activité d'imagination, de la fécondité du talent. Le génie n'a point de limites, et ses forces lui suffisent pour étendre son domaine: l'histoire, au contraire, est une science; elle n'est exacte et réelle qu'en se circonscrivant dans le cercle des souvenirs positifs, authentiquement transmis, qu'en puisant à des sources que rien ne peut rouvrir quand la main du temps les a fermées.'-Tom. xii. p. 22.

in part, constructed. dealing with facts inferior in importance to physical facts, that the facts with which he deals are unique; if lost, they can never be replaced, inasmuch as they possess an individuality which can never be imitated. Whereas physical facts always recur, and can often be reproduced at will; and hence, whatever value may belong to accurate and intelligent observations in any department of physics, they certainly have not that value which consists in their loss being irreparable.

So far is the man of erudition from

The preceding remarks are sufficient for a general characteristic of history, and of the mode in which facts are observed and narrated by the historian. Inasmuch as it is chiefly by means of history that political facts are described and recorded, it will be necessary to return to the subject, and to give it a fuller consideration in subsequent parts of this treatise.(30)

§ 7 Having ascertained the manner in which political facts are noted and registered by the historian, we have next to consider what is the light in which they are regarded by the scientific writer on politics, and what is the character of the facts out of which he constructs his system. For this purpose, we will separate political science into its two branches, of positive and speculative.

The characteristic of observation, for purposes of positive political science, is, that it looks at the observed facts as specimens or samples of a class, and without reference to their individual identity. It considers the facts which it observes with relation to certain selected properties and attributes, pertinent to the matter in hand. Provided that the facts are so far determined, it is satisfied: it does not seek to identify each fact, so as to distinguish it from all other facts, and to exhaust its peculiarities by a detailed enumeration, or portray them by a pictorial description.

In positive politics, government and society are considered as being in a state of equilibrium, and their relations are described as they exist at any assumed moment, but without reference to

(30) See ch. 7.

any determinate period of antecedent time. The facts to which the positive branch of politics directs its attention, are the frame and construction of a government, and its relation to the people; how a government begins, and ceases to exist; what are the different forms of government, the circumstances which constitute a law, a right, an obligation; how rights and obligations arise, and how they are extinguished; what is a legal status; what are the relations of an independent and a dependent community; what are the relations of independent communities; what constitutes international law, and the like. The phenomena which are material for constructing true propositions on these subjects belong to a class which is in its nature recurrent, and is not dependent on the circumstances of a particular moment, or place, or person. Thus, the facts which determine the nature of a law, which, taken together, constitute our notion or conception of a law, are not peculiar to this or that law, passed, at a certain time and place, by certain persons. They may be taken as samples of the constituent elements of all laws, and therefore admit of being generalized. In this respect they resemble phenomena in physics, which are constantly recurrent; which are considered without reference to their identity, and merely as specimens of a class, and serve to establish formula which are universally true. The generalizations of positive politics (as we have already shown) have the genuine scientific character. They are true universally, so far as they represent the limited and abstracted facts upon which they are founded. The facts which serve as the basis of positive politics are observed solely with reference to their properties as members of a class; and all the circumstances which are irrelevant to his limited purpose, which do not admit of being brought under his generalization, are rejected by the observer, and excluded from his notice. The phenomena of governments, laws, and political states, which he notes, are universal, and independent as well of the individual persons concerned, as of time and place: they are not conceived as the terms of an infinite series, in which each term differs from every other, but as facts which must be reproduced,