That is to emphasise a remarkable set of facts,but not to make them more intelligible.The facts,that is,reveal a remarkable uniformity in the social organism;but that does not show what is the nature of its organisation.If we know that,we shall be able to understand the differences and the way in which similar forces have worked under varying conditions.Buckle's leap at a generalisation so far distracts attention from the most fruitful line of inquiry.Malthus and Ricardo will solve the problem offhand.The simple coincidence of despotism and fertility entitles us to set them down as cause and effect,without further analysis of the precise mode of operation.
Buckle's next step illustrates the same point.The 'physical'laws have thus determined the distribution.They also influence religion,art,and literature by the action of 'aspects of nature'upon the imagination.The powers of nature,as he oddly puts it,(31)'have worked immense mischief.'They generate superstition on one side,as they generated slavery on the other.
Here Buckle's doctrine is connected with Comte's.He accepted,as he says elsewhere,(32)Comte's conclusions as to the earliest stage of the human mind.The man ignorant of scientific laws attributes all phenomena to 'supernatural causes.'Comte was only putting into a compact formula a theory more or less assumed by his predecessors.Superstition represents a necessary stage in the intellectual development of the race.It embodies the crude hypotheses of an early stage which have been falsified by later experience.They continue to exist,however,when they have long been untenable to educated minds;and Buckle's remarks may help to explain their vitality.The 'aspects of nature'represent the impression made by apparently irregular phenomena.Superstition thrives where men's lives are at the mercy of events which cannot be foreseen.One special and characteristic instance is the influence of earthquakes.Spain,Portugal,and Italy are the European countries in which earthquakes are most frequent,and are also the countries in which superstition has been most rife.
The excessive stimulus to the imagination has led to the collateral result that while these countries have produced all the greatest artists,they have (with the partial exception of Italy)produced no great names in science.(33)The principle that superstition is fostered by such conditions may well be illustrated by these facts.Hume had remarked that the events which to good reasoners were the 'chief difficulties in admitting a supreme intelligence'were to the vulgar 'the sole arguments for it.'(34)Buckle might well extend the argument.But to say that earthquakes 'cause'Spanish superstition is a bold generalisation.It is an application of Mill's canon of simple agreement.Earthquakes and superstition coexist in two or three districts;therefore earthquakes are the cause of superstition.(35)On Buckle's own showing,earthquakes are only one of countless conditions which may produce superstition.Why is this special condition to be isolated?If Spain is now superstitious,must not that be due to the concurrence of innumerable causes?Have not other countries been steeped in the profoundest superstition though they had no earthquakes?How,indeed,is the amount of superstition in a country to be measured?If we were to explain a particular superstition by the apparent irregularity of the phenomena concerned --the belief in an earth-shaking deity,for example --the explanation might be adequate.The objection rises when it is presented as a general scientific formula.Since 'superstition'is a universal incident of early stages of human thought,it is clearly not explicable by the phenomena of special districts.That may be an instructive example,but cannot give the general law.It is illegitimate to single out the particular condition as if it were the sole cause.
The main point,however,is again the mode of arguing from the environment to the organism.The argument from the environment to the organism,from the earthquakes to superstition,has then an obvious limit.The constant condition can only explain the constant qualities.The palpable fact is that the same country has been occupied by races of most different characters.
