reach of mind needed to suggest the identity of these two; the difficulty in such a case is to prove that an obvious and apparent identity is real and deep, or so close that what is known of the one member of the comparison may, with absolute certainty, be believed of the other. Whereas in other instances the discovery is difficult, but the proof easy, in this the discovery is easy, and the proof difficult. With the intellectual operations required to ascertain the reality of an identity seen by the intellectual glance of similarity, the logic of the case, we are not at present concerning ourselves.

31. The Successions that make Human History, present a choice field of illustration of the mental force of Similarity. Nowhere are comparisons, good and bad, more abundantly struck. Plutarch is not the only writer that has set to work expressly to construct historical parallels. In the situations that arise in public affairs, in the problems that have to be solved, in the issues of critical periods, and in the catastrophes that have overwhelmed empires, the intellect of enquiring and observing men finds numerous identities. Sometimes we compare the past with the present, sometimes one past epoch with another. And such comparisons are seldom barren efforts of the identifying faculty; they are usually employed for some end of mutual illustration, or in order to infer in the one all the good or bad features belonging to the other. The rise of the British empire is compared by one class of minds to the history of the great empires of antiquity, the object of the comparison being to carry out the analogy to the full length of anticipating for Britain a similar course of decay. The parallelisms that set forth popular government as conducting to anarchy and ending in military despotism have been sufficient to satiate the reading mind of modern times. It is not these very large comparisons that illustrate happily the operation of the principle now under discussion, or that show the results of identification in enlarging the grasp of the human intellect. For these ends I should choose rather to

See the interesting volumes under this title, published by Charles Knight.

HISTORICAL COMPARISONS.

505

point to comparisons made in very limited chains of historic succession. The narrower the field of view contemplated, the more chance there is of hitting upon a real and instructive comparison. Take the following from GROTE's History of Greece. In discussing the changes made in Sparta by the institutions of Lycurgus, the historian calls in question the alleged re-partition of the lands of the state among the citizens. He shows that this is not stated by the earliest authorities, and that it appears to have gained credence only after the revolutionary proceedings of Agis and Kleomenês in the third century, B. C.; at which time he thinks the idea grew up in consequence of its being strongly suggested by the present desire for a similar re-division. It was under the state of public feeling which gave birth to these projects of Agis and Kleomenês at Sparta, that the historic fancy, unknown to Aristotle and his predecessors, first gained ground, of the absolute equality of property as a primitive institution of Lycurgus. How much such a belief would favour the schemes of innovation is too obvious to require notice; and without supposing any deliberate imposture, we cannot be astonished that the predispositions of enthusiastic patriots interpreted according to their own partialities an old unrecorded legislation from which they were separated by more than five centuries. The Lycurgean discipline tended forcibly to suggest to men's minds the idea of equality among the citizens,―that, is the negation of all inequality not founded on some personal attribute-inasmuch as it assimilated the habits, enjoyments, and capacities of the rich to those of the poor; and the equality thus existing in idea and tendency, which seemed to proclaim the wish of the founder, was strained by the later reformers into a positive institution which he had at first realized, but from which his degenerate followers had receded. It was thus that the fancies, longings, and indirect suggestions of the present assumed the character of recollections out of the early, obscure, and extinct historical past. Perhaps the philosopher Sphorus of Borysthenês (friend and companion of Kleomenês, disciple of Zeno the Stoic, and author of works now lost both on Lycurgus and Socrates and

on the constitution of Sparta) may have been one of those who gave currency to such an hypothesis. And we shall readily believe that if advanced, it would find easy and sincere credence, when we recollect how many similar delusions have obtained vogue in modern times far more favourable to historical accuracy - how much false colouring has been attached by the political feeling of recent days to matters of ancient history, such as the Saxon Witenageomote, the Great Charter, the rise and growth of the English House of Commons, or even the Poor Law of Elizabeth.'" The comparisons contained in this last sentence are such as both to suggest the explanation above given of the rise of the belief in question, and to give probability to it when suggested. The same historian has effectively illustrated the general body of Grecian legends by a comparison with the middle age legends of the Roman Catholic Church. The range of knowledge possessed by an historical enquirer on the one hand, and the force of his identifying intellect on the other, are the sources of his fertility in those comparisons that illuminate the darker specks of the ill-recorded past. Whether those comparisons are strictly applicable and good, depends on a quite different mental peculiarity, already more than once touched upon, his sense of accuracy and precision, or what is sometimes called the logical faculty. We find in history no less than in zoology, the characteristics of the Oken mind; a fulness of analogical suggestiveness with an absence of the logical discrimination of soundness.

32. It is not stepping far out of the class of instances typified in the foregoing paragraph to advert to Institutional comparisons, whether of different ages or of the same age. The social and political institutions of nations and races have often points of agreement in the midst of great diversity; and a penetrating mind, in other words a strong identifying faculty, can bring together the like out of the enveloping clouds of unlikeness. It is easy, for example, to identify the fact of government as belonging to every tribe of men that act together; it is not difficult further for one absolutism to

*Vol. ii., pp. 538-40.

INSTITUTIONAL COMPARISONS.

507

bring up into the view all the other instances of absolutism that have at different times been impressed on one's mind; and so with the consideration of free or responsible governments. By this operation we gather up various classifications of agreeing institutions, the one throwing light upon the other, and the whole concurring to make one broad luminous effect, which we call the general impression of government; of absolutism, of constitutionalism, &c. The vast complexity and seemingly endless variety of human institutions is thus simplified in a remarkable degree; out of chaos order arises, as soon as similarity begins to draw together the agreeing elements of the discordant heap. Our great writers on Society, Aristotle, Vico, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Millar, James Mill, have shown admirable tact in this kind of Comparative Anatomy, and with all the effects of intellectual illumination and expansion that flow from the bringing together of remote samenesses. What the historian does incidentally the writer on Society does upon system; he searches the whole world for analogies, and finds if possible a class for every variety that presents itself. Forms of Government, of Legislation and Justice, Modes of Industry, Distribution of Wealth and Arrangement of Rank, Domestic Institutions, Religion, Recreative amusements, &c., are identified and classified so far as they agree with notification of difference, and out of the particulars drawn together in a powerful identifying mind there crystallizes one after another the corresponding generals, and the human reason has made one great step in its endeavours to comprehend this wide subject.*

33. To return to successions. There remains one other class to be cited in illustration of our general theme, namely, Cause and Effect, or those successions where the consequent depends on its antecedent, and is always produced by it. Here we have to remark that often the same link of causation occurs in circumstances so widely apart, that the sameness is veiled from the perception of the general mass of mind;

*See MILLAR on Ranks, and the examination of the Hindu Institutions in MILL'S History of British India.

indeed it not seldom happens that until some preparatory operation has had the effect of drawing aside the veil, the identity does not disclose itself to the most piercing intellect. Thus to take the two phenomena of combustion and the rusting of iron, it was not possible for any mind to see a common feature in these two effects as they appear to the common eye. A long series of investigations to ascertain more particularly the import of each of the two actions apart had first to be gone through. Other phenomena had to be interposed having relations to both, in order that actions so unlike should be seen as like. The experiments of Priestley upon the red oxide of mercury were a turning point in the rapprochement. These experiments showed that when mercury was burned it became heavier by taking in some substance from the air, which substance could again be driven off, and the metallic mercury reproduced. The act of combustion of the mercury was to all appearance identical with the burning of coal in a fire, while the resulting change on the substance, the conversion of the metal into a red powder, might suggest the process of the rusting of iron, the chief point of diversity being the time occupied in the two different operations. Through an intermediate phenomenon like this, the two others might come together in the mind as identical, and they are now known to be the results of the same operation, or effects of the same cause, namely the combination of the solid material with the gaseous oxygen of the atmosphere.

In the great problem of Inductive science, stated to be the discovery of the effects of all causes, and of the causes of all effects, there are many intellectual operations gone through; -the problem puts on many different aspects. But the importance of a powerful reach of the identifying intellect is constantly made manifest. Some discoveries turn upon this exclusively; and no succession of discoveries can proceed without it. In truth the very essence of generalization being the bringing together of remote things through the attraction of sameness, this attractive energy is the right hand of a scientific inquirer. To cite the greatest example that the history of science contains, the discovery of universal gravitation,