This is all that Mr. Buckle's design includes, all that logically he has any right to pretend to discuss. Defining, as he does, civilisation to be that mass of ideas, knowledge, and production which remains over and above when you have abstracted all transitory actions, all the results of politics, war, or religion, of course his history of civilisation ought to be confined to the genesis of this product, and the rules on which he proceeds to such as are applicable only to such a history. For instance, as virtues, vices, and all transitory actions are excluded from his view, of course he has nothing to do with the question of the force on which they depend ; hence he is quite right in eliminating free-will from his laws of civilisation. Man's knowledge depends not on his will, but on his intellect ; now it is his will, not his intellect, that is free. A man cannot refuse to see that which he does see, nor force himself to disbelieve that which is demonstratively proved. It is only when he has to decide whether he will open his eyes to see, or whether he will act on that which is proved to him, that he is free to do as he chooses. Again, it is only to men as persons that free-will belongs : look at them in masses, and they become machines ; with their personality you abstract their freedom. Looking, therefore, at mankind as Mr. Buckle does, not as individual persons but as masses of producers, he could not allow free-will to come into his calculations. So again with Providence. Providence dealing with the world is that creative and preservative force which conducts the universe according to "a law which shall not be broken" ; the expression of Providence is this law, wherein no personality can be proved. But Providence dealing with persons is the action of a Personal God upon his personal creatures ; warning them, teaching them, judging them. Eliminate personality from your science, and of course your science has nothing to do with the personal providence. Nothing can be clearer.
But then, again, nothing can be clearer than this, that when you have cut off a part from anything, the thing is no longer a whole. This very clear truth Mr. Buckle,
