THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. LXXIX.

APRIL, 1862.

ARTICLE I.-BUCKLE'S HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION.

History of Civilization. By HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. 2 Vols. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1861. 8vo. pp. 677, 476.

BUCKLE'S History of Civilization in England is a specimen work of the best and worst results of modern science. Its high generalizations, its many indubitable and far-reaching principles, its broad and often careful comparison of facts, and its connection of these in causal relations opening up civilization in its effective forces, constitute it a work of great labor and value.

So fortuitous has the action of man seemed, so accidental in its governing circumstances, that not till science had gained confidence and experience in departments more obviously subject to law, did it dare to advance upon history, or was it able to displace narrative with philosophy, the naked connections of time with the sequence of events issuing in order from known causes. In this field, Buckle has labored with great boldness and yet greater diligence, and the results are such as to enable him justly to magnify the work in hand, to invite to

its completion sound and patient science, and to commend his own efforts to the candor of an appreciative criticism.

This book in its spirit belongs to that Positive Philosophy which finds a distinguished advocate in Comte. Let us not underrate the value of this positive method. In what it accepts, it commands our respect, in what it scornfully refuses, it provokes our scorn. The physical bias, which thought early received in England, and later in France, while it has been the source of most manifest external advantages and a quickened civilization, has also occasioned, by its inadequate and partial tendency, not merely an oversight, but an absolute denial of important mental phenomena, and a supercilious contempt of all questions and investigations not immediately within its own prescribed path. This positive spirit has much of the dogmatism which it ostentatiously despises, arrogates to itself the term science, and attributes modern civilization to its own efforts. It would be foolish, because annoyed by these extravagant claims, to underrate our indebtedness to its patient. investigations of physical forces. While many of the peculiar features of modern civilization are obviously due to this spirit, not all that is best and most potent in the present is referable to this method, and much that is barren and degrading has accompanied its too broad and exclusive application. Matter has overpowered mind, and the methods and principles applicable in the investigation of the first have been unphilosophically carried over to the second. The effort has been made to subject mind to the same species of causation which reigns in matter, and the peculiar powers, by which it rises above the sphere of the strictly natural, have thereby been either degraded, denied, or overlooked. Nothing can be looked for in the higher department of mental philosophy from a method which makes physical truth the complete type of knowledge, and sneeringly groups all beyond under the now opprobrious title of mataphysical; or, if this fails to fill the measure of its acrimony, characterizes the obnoxious inquiry as theological.

The effect of such a method on religion is most obvious and inevitable. While theology has nothing to fear from natural science, and is, at times, signally strengthened by it, its most needful auxiliary is correct, mental philosophy. All that sub

ordinates man to nature, or weakens the spiritual element, will quickly show itself in religious faith, banishing what is distinctly supernatural and redemptive, and rapidly narrowing it down to the dead formula of physical law. The God of the Bible will be rejected, and his place left vacant, or supplied by the god of science, who is little more than the last of its generalizations.

Now this is the result, not of just, but of one-sided and so far delusive science. Man is not bound to nature, nor measured by nature. This fact is the basis of religion, and a philosophy that does not broadly recognize it, of inherent necessity, becomes irreligious. How can such a method as develops itself in Darwin's work On the Origin of Species, fail to be irreligious, a method which systematically rejects everything but physical causation, and grafts man with all his high capabilities on the stock of natural forces, which have gone before him? Man so rooted in carth, growing out of the earth and fed on the earth, can neither require nor find that spiritual element, that supernatural aliment which Christianity furnishes. The whole spirit of the Bible is in direct antagonism to this spirit. There, all is intervention, suspension, the use of the lower by the higher; here, all is law, inexorable, universal, not less for the higher than for the lower. Every personal element is driven back to the remotest points or utterly excluded.

No such philosophy can breathe freely or move unconstrainedly till it has learned either to forget or despise revelation, and we frequently find in this class of writers a complete oversight of the real or apparent conflict of their theories with inspiration. They are checked no more by Scripture records than by pagan mythologies.

To this school of philosophy Buckle evidently belongs, both by his excellencies and his faults. We find in him, indeed, a liberal and just estimation of intellectual forces, yet, in the same connection, that systematic depreciation of moral and religious influences which marks his relations.

One of the most satisfactory chapters is that on "The influ ence exercised by physical laws over the organization of society, and over the character of individuals." Yet, the facts

here established plainly point, we think, to the necessity of a moral force wherewith to meet and rule external tendenciesa force whereby man in all climates and conditions is made the master, and not the slave, of nature. Undoubtedly, the easy conditions of mere life, and the consequent abundance and subsequent depression of life on such a soil and in such a climate as those of India, render the conflict between man and external physical forces more severe and adverse to the former, than in Europe; yet, there are latent moral forces in man which, fully developed, will not merely resist this prolific and overawing power of nature, but find their advantage in it. Man is first his own slave, and then the slave of the world. A fallen monarch becomes even more abject than his former subjects.

Amid the excellencies of this discussion, we miss a recognition of the latent energy of moral manhood. This is not to us a word or a phantom, but a fact, rare it may be, yet as effective and startling when it does appear as the most demonstrative natural law.

While speaking of the merits of the work, we cannot omit the fullness with which the causes of the French Revolution are traced, and still more the able treatment of the protective system.

The relation of government to civilization, we apprehend, is rightly rendered. Because a good government is an early fruit and first requisite of civilization, much more has been ascribed to its influence, and a stricter dependence upon it by the people been thought to exist, than the facts in the case show. Good government is less an antecedent than a consequent of progress; less an efficient than a final cause. Its office is rather to conserve what has been wrought out and intrusted to it, than to enlarge it. It is even too much to expect that it will often be able to recognize and favor the legitimate expression of the great principles incorporated in it. Civil institutions have rarely sufficient elasticity to suffer the needful growth of liberty. The duty assigned them is so habitually that of stern maintenance of constitutional law, that they are seldom prepared for the new issues of time, or possess that greatness which, without predilection, adjudicates between e old and the new. Almost all progress has the necessity of

revolution forced upon it by the resistance of government. Indeed, a certain measure of resistance must ever belong to an authority which would sustain itself, and thrust back fickle changes, till they are resolved into irrepressible principles. Rarely will there be found in any government that strange wisdom which seizes the right moment to pass from resistance to concession; which pushes reform to its proof, and then accepts it.

But, above all, has government been over-estimated in the amount that has been entrusted to it, and expected from it. Religion, literature, commerce, the mechanical arts, have been regarded as the foundlings of government. Nothing could prosper save in the sunshine of its patronage. The people, unable to guide themselves or watch over their own interests, were in helpless dependence, to be sheltered under its protection, and led in and out like a flock. This whole notion of the extended and parental function of the ruler, of a king, as the father of his people, sprang from the ignorance and consequent weakness of subjects. Civilization shows itself instantly in a resumption of power by those to whom it belongs. The people have thus become the source of religion and of literature, and their uncurbed enterprise, the ruling power of commerce. The ruler is now a public servant, doing that, and that only, which the people leave to him or lay upon him. So far as community is organic by natural laws, by inherent forces, the meddling spirit of government is suppressed, and those labors alone left it which, by necessity, fall to civil law. Thus, more and more, the truth is recognized, that that is the best government which is content to supplement natural forces, and preserve the conditions of their freest action. Thus, in religion, faith becomes all that it can religiously be, the faith of the individual. In art and literature, a free, catholic, and creative spirit is received, whence alone it can be fully received, from human nature, opened up in the diverse and multitudinous life of man. Composition thus escapes the private stamp, which the patronage of a class is wont to affix, and becomes strictly literature, the voice of man to man. In mechanical and commercial enterprise, the power of private interest is left