This is from Chapter V of Volume I of History of Civilization in England:
By applying to the history of Man those methods of investigation which have been found successful in other branches of knowledge, and by rejecting all preconceived notions which would not bear the test of those methods, we have arrived at certain results, the heads of which it may now be convenient to recapitulate. We have seen that our actions, being solely the result of internal and external agencies, must be explicable by the laws of those agencies; that is to say, by mental laws and by physical laws. We have also seen that mental laws are, in Europe, more powerful than physical laws; and that, in the progress of civilization, their superiority is constantly increasing, because advancing knowledge multiplies the resources of the mind, but leaves the old resources of nature stationary. On this account, we have treated the mental laws as being the great regulators of progress; and we have looked at the physical laws as occupying a subordinate place, and as merely displaying themselves in occasional disturbances, the force and frequency of which have been long declining, and are now, on a large average, almost inoperative. Having, by this means, resolved the study of what may be called the dynamics of society into the study of the laws of the mind, we have subjected these last to a similar analysis; and we have found that they consist of two parts, namely, moral laws and intellectual laws. By comparing these two parts, we have clearly ascertained the vast superiority of the intellectual laws; and we have seen, that as the progress of civilization is marked by the triumph of the mental laws over the physical, just so is it marked by the triumph of the intellectual laws over the moral ones. This important inference rests on two distinct arguments. First, that moral truths being stationary, and intellectual truths being progressive, it is highly improbable that the progress of society should be due to moral knowledge, which for many centuries has remained the same, rather than to intellectual knowledge, which for many centuries has been incessantly advancing. The other argument consists in the fact, that the two greatest evils known to mankind have not been diminished by moral improvement; but have been, and still are, yielding to the influence of intellectual discoveries. From all this it evidently follows, that if we wish to ascertain the conditions which regulate the progress of modern civilization, we must seek them in the history of the amount and diffusion of intellectual knowledge; and we must consider physical phenomena and moral principles as causing, no doubt, great aberrations in short periods, but in long periods correcting and balancing themselves, and thus leaving the intellectual laws to act uncontrolled by these inferior and subordinate agents.
Such is the conclusion to which we have been led by successive analyses, and on which we now take our stand. The actions of individuals are greatly affected by their moral feelings and by their passions; but these being antagonistic to the passions and feelings of other individuals, are balanced by them; so that their effect is, in the great average of human affairs, nowhere to be seen; and the total actions of mankind, considered as a whole, are left to be regulated by the total knowledge of which mankind is possessed. And of the way in which individual feeling and individual caprice are thus absorbed and neutralized, we find a clear illustration in the facts already brought forward respecting the history of crime. For by those facts it is decisively proved, that the amount of crime committed in a country is, year after year, reproduced with the most startling uniformity, not being in the least affected by those capricious and personal feelings to which human actions are too often referred. But if, instead of examining the history of crime year by year, we were to examine it month by month, we should find less regularity; and if we were to examine it hour by hour, we should find no regularity at all; neither would its regularity be seen, if, instead of the criminal records of a whole country, we only knew those of a single street, or of a single family. This is because the great social laws by which crime is governed, can only be perceived after observing great numbers or long periods; but in a small number, and a short period, the individual moral principle triumphs, and disturbs the operation of the larger and intellectual law. While, therefore, the moral feelings by which a man is urged to commit a crime, or to abstain from it, will produce an immense effect on the amount of his own crimes, they will produce no effect on the amount of crimes committed by the society to which he belongs; because, in the long-run, they are sure to be neutralized by opposite moral feelings, which cause in other men an opposite conduct, Just in the same way, we are all sensible that moral principles do affect nearly the whole of our actions; but we have incontrovertible proof that they produce not the least effect on mankind in the aggregate, or even on men in very large masses, provided that we take the precaution of studying social phenomena for a period sufficiently long, and on a scale sufficiently great, to enable the superior laws to come into uncontrolled operation.
The totality of human actions being thus, from the highest point of view, governed by the totality of human knowledge, it might seem a simple matter to collect the evidence of the knowledge, and, by subjecting it to successive generalizations, ascertain the whole of the laws which regulate the progress of civilization. And that this will be eventually done, I do not entertain the slightest doubt.- But, unfortunately, history has been written by men so inadequate to the great task they have undertaken, that few of the necessary materials have yet been brought together. Instead of telling us those things which alone have any value,—instead of giving us information respecting the progress of knowledge, and the way in which mankind has been affected by the diffusion of that knowledge,—instead of these things, the vast majority of historians fill their works with the most trifling and miserable details: personal anecdotes of kings and courts; interminable relations of what was said by one minister, and what was thought by another; and, what is worse than all, long accounts of campaigns, battles, and sieges, very interesting to those engaged in them, but to us utterly useless, because they neither furnish new truths, nor do they supply the means by which new truths may be discovered. This is the real impediment which now stops our advance. It is this want of judgment, and this ignorance of what is most worthy of selection, which deprives us of materials that ought long since to have been accumulated, arranged, and stored-up for future use. In other great branches of knowledge, observation has preceded discovery; first the facts have been registered, and then their laws have been found. But in the study of the history of Man, the important facts have been neglected, and the unimportant ones preserved. The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to generalize historical phenomena, must collect the facts, as well as conduct the generalization. He finds nothing ready to his hand. He must be the mason as well as the architect; he must not only scheme the edifice, but likewise excavate the quarry. The necessity of performing this double labour entails upon the philosopher such enormous drudgery, that the limitt of an entire life are unequal to the task; and history, instead of being ripe, as it ought to be, for complete and exhaustive generalizations, is still in so crude and informal a state, that not the most determined and protracted industry will enable any one to comprehend the really important actions of mankind, during even so short a period as two successive centuries.
On account of these things, I have long since abandoned my original scheme; and I have reluctantly determined to write the history, not of general civilization, but of the civilization of a single people. While, however, by this means, we curtail the field of inquiry, we unfortunately diminish the resources of which the inquiry is possessed. For although it is perfectly true, that the totality of human actions, if considered in long periods, depends on the totality of human knowledge, it must be allowed that this great principle, when applied only to one country, loses something of its original value. The more we diminish our observations, the greater becomes the uncertainty of the average; in other words, the greater the chance of the operation of the larger laws being troubled by the operation of the smaller. The interference of foreign governments; the influence exercised by the opinions, literature, and customs of a foreign people; their invasions, perhaps even their conquests; the forcible introduction by them of new religions, new laws, and new manners,—all these things are perturbations, which, in a view of universal history, equalize each other, but which, in any one country, are apt to disturb the natural march, and thus render the movements of civilization more difficult to calculate. The manner in which I have endeavoured to meet this difficulty will be presently stated; but what I first wish to point out, are the reasons which have induced me to select the history of England as more important than any other, and therefore as the most worthy of being subjected to a complete and philosophic investigation.
Now, it is evident that, inasmuch as the great advantage ot studying past events consists in the possibility of ascertaining the laws by which they were governed, the history of any people will become more valuable in proportion as their movements have been least disturbed by agencies not arising from themselves. Every foreign or external influence which is brought to bear upon a nation is an interference with its natural development, and therefore complicates the circumstances we seek to investigate. To simplify complications is, in all branches of knowledge, the first essential of success. This, is very familiar to the cultivators of physical science, who are often able, by a single experiment, to discover a truth which innumerable observations had vainly searched; the reason being, that by experimenting on phenomena, we can disentangle them from their complications; and thus isolating them from the interference of unknown agencies, we leave them, as it were, to run their own course, and disclose the operation of their own law.
For your convenience and quick reference, I've color coded three sections:
= significant point
= Isaac Asimov / Hari Seldon / Psychohistory connection
= that which doth most grievously burn
As for this Hari Seldon business....
If you haven't made the acquaintance of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, then I think it's something you might want to put on your bucket list. Originally it was a trilogy: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. Even though almost all of the plot details have vanished from my mind, I still vividly remember the thrill I got from reading those books when I was a little Brother K. The fulcrum for the series is the invention of psychohistory by Hari Seldon...which Wikipedia most aptly and succinctly defines thusly: "an algorithmic science that allows [Seldon] to predict the future in probabilistic terms." And there's much more, of course. Galactic Empires and all of that pre-Star Wars Star Wars stuff. As a matter of fact.... No, everybody knows that George Lucas stole Star Wars from Jack Kirby's New Gods, right? (I mean, come on...Darkseid / Darth Vadar, The Source / The Force, etc.) But maybe Jack Kirby stole New Gods from Asimov? Well...maybe not. But point is, if you like all of that galactic spanning action stuff, then Foundation has that in spades. And btw, thirty years after completing Second Foundation, Asimov was convinced to return to the series, and he then wrote Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth, Prelude to Foundation, and Forward the Foundation, the last two of which were prequels. And somewhere along the line was a Foundation's Friends book of short stories set in the Foundation universe and written by lots of super cool people. Oh, and fairly recently (in old man terms--which means less than twenty years ago) a "second" "trilogy" was released--Foundation's Fears by Gregory Benford, Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear, and Foundation's Triumph by David Brin (apparently there was a requirement that all participating authors have last names starting with the letter "B"). So if you like the original books, there's quite a bit of other territory for you to explore. In fact, there's even more than that, since Asimov hooked the Foundation series into his Robot series and maybe some other stuff as well. Probably thirty or so books all told if you like that kind of thing.
But really I just wanted to point out that this whole psychohistory concept is right there in Buckle's book...which preceded Asimov's by 100 years.
So there it is.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
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