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238 outline sufficient for illustration of the fact that a principle—or law, if you will—underlies the course and progress of the human race. History is this record; this record is history. Human affairs must be looked upon as in continuous movement, not wandering in an arbitrary manner here and there, but proceeding in a perfectly defined course. Whatever the present state, it is altogether transient. All systems of civil life therefore are necessarily ephemeral. Time brings new external conditions; the manner of thought is modified; with thought, action. Institutions of all kinds consequently must participate in this fleeting nature, and though they may have allied themselves to political and to ecclesiastical power and gathered therefrom the means of coercion, their permanency is by no means assured; for sooner or later the population upon whom they have been imposed, following the external variations, spontaneously outgrows them, and their ruin, though it may have been delayed, is none the less certain. No man, no nation, can stop the march of destiny.

The great conception of Comte, that human affairs, like physical facts, are ordered by law—by a law working within them and directing their course—and therefore may be subjected to scientific analysis, has been so fully worked out by Mill, Spencer, Buckle (in English), and by an army of competent sociologists in all leading modern languages, that it would be useless in these days to argue it further with those who might deny it. The unity of history is, in consequence, the great fact of history. When we go into the analysis we find causes and effects, or trace effects back to causes. Astonishing things have occurred, and will yet occur, in human history. But there are no "breaks" in the chain. All events pursue a regular, orderly, consistent, and inevitable course. But often it takes a while to see it. You can not get the full effect of the