 Given that individuals are subject to such laws, there is little reason to think that the societies composed of individuals will not be subject to natural laws (System, VIII: 879). And, indeed, Mill thinks it possible to specify laws by which societies evolve from the state of barbarism to civilization—“laws which regulate the succession between one state of society and another” (System, VIII: 912)—and chart, scientifically, the process of history (Levin 2004; see also Macleod 2017). “The order of human progress” is guided with “a sort of necessity established […] by the general laws of human nature” (System, VIII: 938).