as he professes to be, and as it is commonly taken for granted he is — whether he really possesses that knowledge of his subject which justifies him in writing upon it, or whether, in a word, he is an impostor.
Apart from the historical excursions of modern philosophers which we have spoken of, and with which Mr. Buckle has not thought fit to make himself acquainted, the great problems of civilisation which he tries to solve have been discussed within the last few years by three eminent men, whose works have some points of similarity with his own. In 1853 a French diplomatist, M. de Gobineau, published the first portion of a work which he has since completed in four volumes, Essai sur l’Inégalité des Races humaines. Familiar with all the latest researches of French and German writers, he investigates in great detail the laws which regulate the progress and the decline of civilisation. He finds that it depends entirely on purity of blood. The deterioration produced by the mixture of races is the sole cause of decline : "A people would never die if it remained eternally composed of the same national elements" (i. 53). The fate of nations is unconnected with the land they inhabit ; it depends in nothing on good government or purity of morals. Even Christianity has no permanent influence on civilisation : "Le Christianisme n'est pas civilisateur, et il a grandement raison de ne pas l'être" (p. 124). Whether we admit or reject these conclusions, it is unquestionable that they are founded on most various and conscientious research, and an abundance of appropriate learning, strongly contrasting with the dishonest affectation of knowledge by which Mr. Buckle deludes his readers. There is, moreover, a learned appendage to Gobineau's book, in the shape of a pamphlet of 275 pages, by Professor Pott. About the same time an anonymous work appeared at Marburg, in three volumes, bearing the somewhat obscure title, Anthropognosic, Ethnognosie und Poltgnosic, in which also the laws which influence the political and social progress of mankind are explained with uncommon erudition. It was by a well-known political
