gards even the distinction of sex as some- | famous sheet of blank paper-with a how a mere product of circumstances, and mere accretion of external accidents. therefore non-essential, because he is The man is everywhere the same; it is afraid of giving an opening to the intui- only the coat that changes. Yet a man tionist. Admit a single fixed element into cannot be built up entirely of coats, and the general flux of things, and the in- therefore the fixed element cannot be tuitionist will at once conjure up some altogether abolished, although it may be a priori principle of practical application. made as uniform as possible. And thereHe has the necessary πоυ σTM for the doc-fore we do not, after all, get rid of absotrine that some races are doomed to per- lute types, though they are got out of the petual slavery, and one sex to perpetual way of practical questions. Evolutionists, subjection. The intuitive truth is as un- since Darwinism has made it possible to manageable as the divine ordinance of an accept evolution without mysticism or older school. And thus a continuous transcendentalism, leave us a different polemic against all such assumptions was mode of meeting the dilemma. They adnot more a part of Mill's philosophic ac- mit, on the one hand, that the differences tivity than of his crusade as a political not only of negro and white, but even of reformer against recognized abuses. man and beast, or animal and plant, may No reformer who duly estimates the in one sense be due to the influence of gigantic power of impregnable stupidity circumstances. But, on the other hand, should underrate the value of this scepti- the specific qualities of an organism are cism as at least a provisional frame of not mere external additions, superinmind. Undoubtedly we are grievously duced upon a uniform stock. They cor inclined to regard transitory customs, respond to the properties of a type fixed for political and intellectual, as part of the the moment, although slowly changing; unalterable framework of the universe. and therefore implying not an element But when the provisional scepticism takes of the unconditional and unchangeable, a dogmatic shape, it involves an assump- but a continuous growth under determition as arbitrary as that of the antagonist nate conditions. The man does theory. When people said that the negro differ from the monkey by an impassable slaves were lazy because they were ne- gulf; nor, on the other hand, is he simgroes, and therefore doomed by nature to ply a monkey minus a tail and plus a a perpetuity of flogging, it was necessary more flexible thumb and an erect posture. to point out that the laziness might be He is a new form which has taken the due to the slavery as well as to the negro-place of the old by imperceptible stages, hood. But it is a gratuitous assumption and who has developed a set of organic that slavery explains the whole diver- properties, corresponding at every period gence, and that a negro differs from a European only as a man in a black coat differs from one in a white. The assumption becomes even grotesque in the case of sex. Yet Mill and his followers are apt to slide into such conclusions, and to lay down the equality of man as positively as the most dogmatic of a priori metaphysicians. In truth, Mill and Buckle seem to be always haunted by a dilemma pressed upon them by their antagonists. They have to choose between absolutely fixed types, with the consequent admission of a priori laws, or else to regard all the characteristics of a race or class as mere external appendages. To say that any peculiarity is due to the "influence of circumstances" is with them to say that it is merely arbitrary, and therefore can be put on and off like a coat. Trying to remove as much as possible from the category of absolutely fixed to purely accidental qualities, they postulate a kind of colorless and uniform substratum - the not And to the requirements of his life. To The The new method is as fruitful in its Buckle had, indeed, a remarkable prebearing upon sociology as in its bearing decessor. At the end of his first volume upon natural history. Darwinism has he observes that the Germans had created enabled the empirical school to annex the theory of philosophic history.* history; for they are no longer frightened them, however, he owed little. by the bugbear of a priori principles and Hegelian doctrine, had he ever seriously absolute rights. They are no longer attended to it, would have repelled him forced to choose between a fixed order, as mystical and transcendental. But he imposed by supernatural sanction, and had studied and been greatly impressed accidental combination capable of instan- by Comte. His biographer rejects M. taneous and arbitrary reconstruction. Littré's statement that, without Comte, They dare to carry out the principles of Buckle would never have written. I Burke or Coleridge, and to recognize in should be more inclined to regret that society, as in individuals, the develop- Buckle did not learn more from Comte; ment of an organic structure by slow for I cannot affect to doubt that Comte, secular processes; for such a structure however crude and hasty may be some of has no longer an aspect of mystery. The his opinions, was as superior to Buckle in evolutionist admits that a truth may be reasoning power as Buckle was superior a priori relatively to the individual with- to Comte in power of literary expression. out having therefore a transcendental Comte in particular, has a far clearer view character; and in the same way he rec- of history as a process of organic develognizes in social relations a permanence opment. If we reject his views, we canand relative necessity which correspond not say that they are on the face of them to the development of the social organ- trifling or irrelevant, which is more than ism, without admitting that the necessity can be said for many of Buckle's unsystranscends all conditions. And hence he tematic and haphazard generalizations. can draw a distinction, the full apprehen- In any case, however, Buckle worked sion of which is essential to the founda- upon his own principles, though helped tion of any sound sociology, but which is by many suggestions from predecessors; seldom fairly grasped by Mill and Buckle, and his book has the interest of being the though, as we shall see, Buckle at least first and only considerable attempt to is always feeling after it. In short, it is construct a science of history upon the of vital importance to distinguish be- basis of English empiricism. The probtween the profounder processes, which lem, indeed, which he really attacked constitute the organic growth of a society, came to be considerably narrower than and those relatively superficial changes his language implies, though wide enough, which may vary between different states, in all conscience, for any human being. or in accordance with individual influ- If he did not try to "reduce to a single ences or special legislative arrangements, science all the laws of the moral and physwithout implying any organic change. ical world," he sought to throw some light When all social or political arrangements upon the most interesting problem impliare regarded as in some sense arbitrary, cated in such an attempt. He shared, in because due to the "influence of circum- fact, that practical impulse which, as we stances,” there is a tendency to put them have seen, animated Mill's philosophy. all upon the same level. The distinction Intuitive truths were to be attacked in the between the profound and the superficial, interests of "progress," and history was between the vital and the organic on the to be methodized in order that we might one hand, and the merely accidental or understand the conditions of progress. temporary on the other, becomes con- How and why does the England of to-day fused, because confusion as to the first differ from modern Spain-where progprinciples of such a distinction under-ress has been arrested-and from the lies the whole method. Buckle, holding England of two thousand years ago, where rightly that political science must rest progress was rudimentary? To answer upon observation, so interprets the phrase such questions was not merely to systemas to make every truth revealed by obser- atize the knowledge of the past, but to vation equally superficial. He finds it give the secret of progress in the future. impossible properly to separate the essen- And, if Buckle did nothing else, he at tial from the accidental. He is attempt- least called attention to the vast imporing to annex history without the conceptance of the problem itself, and to the tion which alone made the attempt importance of treating it by scientific possible, and his error was in great meas ure inevitable at the time. * Vol. i., p. 807. met and exce But Fr גד methods. If his confidence in himself So many men are naturally told off in and his belief in his cause were rather in London to be chimney-sweeps. If anyexcess, we may forgive a man for the ex- body wondered that whilst each man aggerated estimate of possibilities, which dressed according to taste, a fixed prois so often a condition of minor success. portion of men always walked about with But to appreciate his performance we soot-besmeared clothes, we should laugh must look more closely at the special at him. There is a fixed demand for results obtained. sweeps, and therefore the number of From the first chapters we become sweeps is constant. The individual who aware of the imperfection of his method. becomes a sweep takes into account the He begins by disposing of the preliminary number of existing sweeps, and therefore objection to all scientific method based the fixity of the number is intelligible upon the free-will doctrine. After reject- from the individual point of view. In ing the theory, he hastens to safer other cases the cause of uniformity is ground. Whatever we may think of free- more obscure, but not therefore more will, statistics prove the existence of mysterious. The motives for committing certain uniform sequences. There are so murder are more various, and the causes many murders, marriages, and undirected of murder are not immediately connected. letters every year. To this tolerably fa- Each man is prompted by his individual miliar fact he manages to give a paradox- peculiarities. But as each man's character ical turn, which appears to have startled is partly the result of inheritance from a his readers most effectually. He infers slowly varying stock, and partly the effect that human actions depend more upon the of subsequent conditions, dependent upon general state of society than upon the a slowly varying social order, there is no peculiarities of each individual. And this, wonder that the total number of murderas interpreted by the average reader, ers should not change arbitrarily. Setcame to mean that a certain number of ting aside the metaphysical puzzle of freeindividuals were told off to commit mur-will, the whole air of paradox is imparted der in every year by some mysterious law by a simple device. It depends upon such embodied in the " general state of so- a statement of the case that collateral ciety." Palmer fancied that he was poi-effects from a single fixed cause are first soning Cook from motives of his own; represented as independent because the but he was in reality the victim of a hid- immediate conditions are independent, den force. Such a theory might fairly be and then arguing that they must be decalled fatalistic; and Buckle, if he saw pendent because the number of effects is through the sophistry, must have been proved to be constant. No man commits more anxious to startle than to persuade. a murder in order to make up a tale; and For it is obvious enough that society is yet the number of murders is approxinot an entity differing from all the con- mately fixed. This looks as if mere blind stituent parts, and therefore that its gen- fate or "law" forced men to make up eral state cannot be independent of the the list. But the real explanation is, of peculiarities of individuals. All that can course, that given a fixed social order, a really be meant is that whilst each indi- certain crop of murders will be produced vidual has his own character and acts as naturally as a certain crop of potatoes. from his own motives, there is a certain Whilst population presses against its limuniformity in the individual character, and its, there will always be a fixed margin of therefore in the aggregates of individuals. misery, ignorance, and crime due to this In this there is certainly nothing start- cause; and to alter the cause is to alter ling. When we think of society as an the whole system of social life. When, in organic growth, a whole made up of mu- brief, society is regarded as a mere agtually co-operating and interdependent gregate of independent individuals, the parts; when we see that each individual existence of any uniform social phenomis placed from his birth in a given com- ena has something apparently mysterious partment and subject to fixed influences; about it, and suggests a fixed external that the development of any social organ fate. When we recognize the way in and its decay imply a series of adjustments which a society is really organized, we see and readjustments throughout the whole that the fate only represents the fixed body politic, we see that innumerable conditions inherent in the social strucminor uniformities must be produced, though in any given case the play of cause and effect is too complicated to be unrav elled. ture, about which there is nothing more or less mysterious than in the persistence of any other organic law. The difficulty is that which runs through the whole mode Cheap t argum of thought. When the empiricists rep- The antithesis of man and nature as of ther resented all events as arbitrarily stuck two separate agents comparable in respect classe together, and all beliefs as due to external of strength, is of course an intrusion of is association, the "scientific laws," and the rhetoric into science. He can only mean m "uniformity of nature," to which they that the physical conditions of Europe constantly appeal, take the form of an are on the whole the most favorable to And t arbitrary necessity forming the facts into progress; which looks like a tolerably Ad a fixed mould, instead of being general safe proposition in view of actual facts. expressions of the facts themselves. Yet a glance at America is sufficient to When Buckle tries to discover some show how little it possesses of real sci-d particular laws the difficulty reappears.entific value. In America nature must sound History depends, to use a later phraseol- have been stronger than man, for the Rede ogy, upon the relation between the organ- Indian is still a savage. But when a race ism and the environment; and Buckle elsewhere civilized spreads into America, begins at the beginning when he proposes the relation is reversed, and the Yankee to consider the two factors separately, or, conquers the natural forces, which were in his own language, to consider first the too much for the Ojibbeway. Remem physical and then the mental laws. And bering how widely the same principle here, of course, he has no difficulty in applies, that, for example, even European discovering some of those formulæ about civilization is itself the work of races climate, which since Montesquieu have which have stamped out the savage abo been part of the regular stock in trade of rigines, we see that the formula is faulty the political philosopher. Of course they on the face of it. If there is any sense have some value. Climate must be a in comparing man with nature, we must condition of progress, for it is a condition admit that man is a very variable term, of life. Nobody, and therefore no civil- and may be stronger or weaker than_naized body, can live permanently at the ture as he is more or less civilized. The pole. But we wish to find some rule formula therefore, however interpreted, which will help us to discover the condi- could not possibly determine whether he tions of progress where life is possible. is civilized or not. It is not, as it proNow the most cursory examination will fesses to be, a definite test, but so elastic show that the relation between climate as to be absolutely nugatory. and civilization is not constant. The It is, indeed, conceivable that it might qualities which distinguish the inhabi- state the limit imposed upon the growth of tants of tropical from those of temperate an indigenous civilization. And Buckle zones may be noteworthy; but in any tries to show why, outside of Europe, case they cannot be sufficient to deter- progress is rigidly suppressed. The unmine progress. In Europe, long ages of fortunate Hindoo, as the slave of absobarbarism have been succeeded by the lute government and quite incapable of highest known development of civiliza- appreciating trial by jury, naturally repretion; whilst in Asia civilization reached sents to Buckle a very low point in the a certain point much earlier, and then scale, especially as, in his view, remained stationary. The physical con- always represents a fixed unit consideraditions obviously fix a limit beyond which bly raised above the man of the prehisprogress is impossible, and within that toric ages, whose existence he scarcely limit they may impose certain character- recognized. Nobody, I fancy, ever atistics upon the corresponding kind of tached much importance to Buckle's darprogress. Society is so far like a plant ing generalities about the effects of a rice which cannot grow at all in some soils, diet upon the liberties of mankind. The and which will flourish in others accord- method, however, is significant. He asing to the peculiarities of its habitat. In sumes, in the first place, the questionable Asia the soil might stimulate precocious proposition that the principles of the growth and early decay, whilst the reverse Ricardian political economy may be ap might be the case in Europe. Buckle plied off-hand to ancient India, and that tries with an exuberant display of varied the theory of the division of wealth into knowledge and much ingenious argu- rent, profit, and wages, is part of the mentation to supply us with some such formula. He lays down the very broad distinction that in Europe "man is more powerful than nature," whilst elsewhere "nature is more powerful than man."* * Vol. i., p. 222. man eternal order of things. But even Ricardo would certainly have disputed the old-fashioned sophistry which Buckle adopts with curious want of caution. In Îndia, he says (almost in direct terms) food is cheap; therefore wages are low; ress, says Buckle, may be moral or intellectual, and we have to inquire which is the more important of the two elements.* (Moral, I may note in passing, should mean the whole emotional side of human nature, though Buckle immediately proceeds to use it in the narrower or the purely ethical sense.) Now, he adds, and in full conformity with his whole theory, we have no ground for assuming "any permanent improvement in the moral or intellectual faculties of man." An infant born in London is not proved to be superior to an infant born in the Australian bush. Hence progress is "not of internal power, but of external advantage." How, then, is progress intelligible? To solve this difficulty we must ask what is the variable element in the causes of human conduct, and we may then assume that element to be the cause of progress. Now, "moral truths" are stationary, whereas intellectual truths are enormously variable. Hence the "intellectual principle" must be the main (or sole) cause of progress; for a stationary agent can only produce a stationary effect. This main and (as Buckle thinks) decisive argument is backed up by considering the causes of the decline of war and persecution. And Buckle rejoices in his demonstration. His conclusions, he says, are unpalatable, "and what makes it peculiarly offensive is that it is impossible to refute them." + therefore the condition of the laboring | tables on his tyrant, and in Europe we classes was very depressed."* That is, must study the mental laws. Now progif life is easy in India (and man, one would suppose, stronger than nature); therefore wages are low; therefore life is hard. And this rigid free-trader and worshipper of Adam Smith proceeds to show how disastrous have been the consequences of cheap food, not only in India, but in Iresland. Buckle was, perhaps, aiming at a sound principle, which it might be worth Rwhile at another time to disengage from his loose phraseology. Here I need only point out the conception implied in his argument. It implies, in brief, an inadeequate conception of what is called the social factor; he does not see that it is hopeless to obtain even an approximate statement of any law of progress without taking into account the varying phases of the social organism, in virtue of which the influences due to physical condition may produce varying reactions far too intricate and complex to be fitted into his easy generalizations. He sees nothing but "nature". that is, climate, soil, and I so forth - on one side, and the unit called "man" on the other. Man, as with Ricardo and Bentham, is an unvarying entity of constant properties; and in society a larger or smaller aggregate, which is held together partly by the repressive and, somehow, extra-natural force of government, and partly by the tyranny of "nature or physical conditions. The unlimited competition of the economists represents the rightful order of society; to give full play to the individual forces, and therefore to diminish government and to conquer nature, is the sole condition of progress. The earlier forms, in which government played a larger part, and man's power over nature was less, represent so many deviations from the "right" order, due to superstition, ignorance, and the abominable behavior of those great natural forces which, as Buckle quaintly remarks, "have worked immense mischief." † of The conception is more explicitly set forth in another doctrine, which seems to have given more offence than any other expounded by Buckle. Consideration of the "physical laws" has led to no more result than this: that in the vast and miscellaneous regions outside Europe, man must always be the slave of nature. In Europe, however, he has turned the Vol. i., p. 58. + Vol. i., p. 138. It is clear, indeed, though Buckle scarcely sees it, that, in one sense, they are a direct corollary from the utilitarianism which he accepted. For, on that view, moral conduct is conduct productive of happiness; and the individual being a constant, happiness is a constant. Hence an improved morality means simply an improved calculus of happiness. We are better than our ancestors so far as we calculate more accurately the consequences of conduct. It is superfluous, then, to argue that the moral is less important than the intellectual development; for it is simply a particular department of that development. Individuals, it is true, may vary in morality without a corresponding intellectual variation, as they may be more or less inclined to promote the "greatest happiness." But, as we assume the average individual to remain unaltered, this is irrelevant for our pur. Vol. i. 158 seq. † P. 166. |