Buckle(23)had some qualifications of the rarest kind.He had been prevented by delicate health from coming into contact with contemporaries at school and college,and his intellectual tastes made him abandon a business career.He had from an early age devoted himself to a life of study.He absorbed enormous masses of knowledge,learned many languages,and had ranged over the most varied fields of literature.A most retentive memory and methodic habits of work gave him a full command of his materials,and the consciousness of intellectual force suggested a daring ambition.He proposed to write a general history of civilisation,though his scheme,as he gradually became aware of the vastness of his task,narrowed itself to a history of civilisation in England,with preliminary surveys of other civilisations.Buckle had been educated in the religious and political atmosphere of the average middle-class type.Foreign travel and wide reading had sapped his prejudices,and he had become a Liberal in the days when J.S.Mill's influence was culminating.Buckle shared the enthusiasm of the period in which the triumph of Free Trade and the application of Adam Smith's principles seemed to be introducing a new era of peace and prosperity and the final extinction of antiquated prejudice.He cannot be reckoned as a simple Utilitarian,but he represents the more exoteric and independent allies of the chief Utilitarian thinker.He accepts the general principles of Mill's Logic,though his language upon metaphysical problems implies that his intellect had never been fully brought to bear upon such questions.The general sympathy with the Utilitarians is,in any case,unmistakable,and the most characteristic tenets of the Mill school of speculation are assumed or defended in his writings.Buckle was thus fitted to interpret the dominant tendencies of the day,and his literary ability was fully adequate to the office.He has much of the clearness and unflagging vivacity of Macaulay,and whatever defects may be discoverable in his style,no writer was better qualified to interest readers outside the narrow circle of professed philosophers.The book was accepted by many readers as an authoritative manifesto of the scientific spirit which was to transform the whole intellectual world.
Buckle's aim is to fill the gap in the Utilitarian scheme by placing historical science upon a basis as firm as that of the physical sciences.Statistics,he argues,reveal regularities of conduct as marked as those which are revealed by the observation of natural phenomena.He gives a fatalistic turn to this statement by speaking as though the 'laws'somehow 'overrode'the individual volitions,instead of simply expressing the uniformity of the volitions themselves.Fate,it seemed,went round and compelled a certain number of people every year to commit suicide or post undirected letters in spite of themselves.Without asking how far this language,which not unnaturally startled his readers,might be corrected into a legitimate sense,we may pass to a further application.The laws by which human conduct is governed may,he says,be either 'physical'or 'mental,'the physical having more influence in the early,and the mental in the later,stages of development.This corresponds to the distinction,now familiar,between the 'organism'and the 'environment,'and requires an obvious correction.The two sets of laws refer to two factors present at every stage of human development.The 'organism'is,from first to last,dependent upon its 'environment,'but the action of the environment depends also upon the constitution of the organism.The 'mental'and 'physical,'therefore,do not act separately,but as parts of a single process.Buckle's language,however,expresses an obvious truth.As civilisation advances,the importance of the 'mental'laws in explaining the phenomena increases.The difference between two savage races may be explained simply by the difference of their surroundings;but the civilised man may vary indefinitely,while his dwelling-place remains constant.The earlier stages are those which,in Buckle's language,are under the predominant influence of physical laws.Climate,food,and soil on the one hand,and the 'general aspects of nature'on the other hand,represent these influences.To show their action at the dawn of civilisation,Buckle points to India,Egypt,and the ancient empires in America.In those regions arose great governments,displaying remarkable coincidences of structure,and thus suggesting the operation of some ascertainable causes.If we possessed a complete 'sociology,'these phenomena would clearly illustrate important laws,working with great uniformity,though in complete independence,and therefore,it may be inferred,revealing some general principles upon the origin of governments.
