The reader of the philosophie positive will also observe that Comte has not grappled with a fundamental question which has to be faced in unravelling the woof of history or seeking a law of events.  I mean the question of contingency.  It must be remembered that contingency does not in the least affect the doctrine of determinism; it is compatible with the strictest interpretation of the principle of causation.  A particular example may be taken to show what it implies. [Footnote:  On contingency and the “chapter of accidents” see Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des idees et des evenements dans les temps modernes (1872), i. 16 sqq.  I have discussed the subject and given some illustrations in a short paper, entitled “Cleopatra’s Nose,” in the Annual of the Rationalist Press Association for 1916.]

It may plausibly be argued that a military dictatorship was an inevitable sequence of the French Revolution.  This may not be true, but let us assume it.  Let us further assume that, given Napoleon, it was inevitable that he should be the dictator.  But Napoleon’s existence was due to an independent causal chain which had nothing whatever to do with the course of political events.  He might have died in his boyhood by disease or by an accident, and the fact that he survived was due to causes which were similarly independent of the causal chain which, as we are assuming, led necessarily to an epoch of monarchical government.  The existence of a man of his genius and character at the given moment was a contingency which profoundly affected the course of history.  If he had not been there another dictator would have grasped the helm, but obviously would not have done what Napoleon did.

It is clear that the whole history of man has been modified at every stage by such contingencies, which may be defined as the collisions of two independent causal chains.  Voltaire was perfectly right when he emphasised the role of chance in history, though he did not realise what it meant.  This factor would explain the oscillations and deflections which Comte admits in the movement of historical progression.  But the question arises whether it may not also have once and again definitely altered the direction of the movement.  Can the factor be regarded as virtually negligible by those who, like Comte, are concerned with the large perspective of human development and not with the details of an episode?  Or was Renouvier right in principle when he maintained “the real possibility that the sequence of events from the Emperor Nerva to the Emperor Charlemagne might have been radically different from what it actually was”? [Footnote:  He illustrated this proposition by a fanciful reconstruction of European history from l00 to 800 A.D. in his UCHRONIE, 1876.  He contended that there is no definite law of progress:  “The true law lies in the equal possibility of progress or regress for societies as for individuals.”]

6.