with the most charming simplicity, not only forgets, but tries to make his readers forget also. Having arbitrarily settled the limit of his history ; having, in so many words, recognised that things do exist outside of these limits, which, however, do not require his attention, as they do not influence the precise matter on hand ; having confessed that the constant variation of moral qualities in men is "owing to causes of which we are ignorant" ; that to individuals, or a small number of persons his rules will not apply, because there " the individual moral principle triumphs, and disturbs the operation of the larger and intellectual law," and that "we are all sensible that moral principles do affect nearly the whole of our actions," — yet he goes on to treat his science as exhaustive, as including every possible kind of human actions, and as furnishing the true key to the only real "history" of the human race. Let us see how Mr. Buckle manages to turn this wonderful intellectual somersault. We must suppose that the man who has written so remarkable a book had the whole plan of it in his mind. He knew that he was to write about men, not as individuals, but in masses. He knew that all his proofs were to be statistical, that is, winnowed from all personal detail, lumped together, averaged, and reduced to mathematical symbols. Yet, for all this, he pretends to begin from persons. The fundamental question of his book is thus stated : "Are the actions of men, and therefore of societies, governed by fixed laws, or are they the result either of chance or supernatural interference?"[1] He discusses these latter alternatives, not mathematically, or metaphysically, or logically, but by means of a fanciful theory, illustrated by an apologue. He imagines man to have been originally a wild and savage hunter, sometimes finding game, sometimes starving, and attributing his good or ill success only to chance ; next the savage becomes agricultural, and seeing that seasons succeed regularly, and that the crop answers to the seed, the first notion of " uniform sequence "arises, and ripens into that of "law of nature"
- ↑ P. 8.
