the education appear to explain many of the differences in the character of the two nations. We must say that we prefer our own country, though we own that much is to be said on the other side. If our English isolation and independence of individuals, indifference to each other and repression of external sympathy, makes our political liberty possible, it also makes many an excellence impossible to us. If France cannot compete with us in constitutionalism, we cannot compete with her in her missionaries, whom the love of souls transforms into apostles and martyrs. If we gain by our freedom from the functionising mania, we lose by our want of interest in, and devotion to, the welfare of our fellow-creatures. While the French unity of theory and practice enables multitudes of Frenchmen to exhibit the Christian apostolate in action, our principle of indifference threatens to put an insuperable obstacle in the way of our filling up the nineteen army chaplains' places which the spontaneous or calculated liberality of a government in difficulties has offered to us. MR. BUCKLE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. IN our last Number we explained the theory which Mr. Buckle's book is written to prove, and estimated his merits as a philosopher. We have now to consider his attainments as a scholar. We have to examine his competency for the task he has undertaken, and the degree of success with which he has executed it. This is the more imperatively necessary, that it would be very unfair to Mr. Buckle to judge him by the merits of his system only; for the system is not his own. We may praise him or blame him for his judgment in adopting it, certainly not for his skill in devising it. His view of" the principles which govern the character and destiny of nations" is borrowed partly from Comte and partly from Quetelet, and has already been applied, not indeed by historians, but by natural philosophers. We find it stated, for instance, by the celebrated physiologist Valentin, as follows (Grundriss der Physiologie, 1855, p. 10): "Chance, to which we ascribe the event of an isolated case, must make way for a definite law as soon as we include a greater number of cases in our observation. No fixed rule appears to regulate the proportion of the sexes to each other, or the relative number of twins that are born, or the kind of crimes committed within a given period. But if we extend our range of ob servation over millions of cases, certain regular quantities constantly recur. Where this is not the case, the causes of the fluctuation can often be ascertained by the rule of probabilities. Here, as every where, chance vanishes as a phantom of superstition, as a result of that shortsightedness which has burdened the history of human opinion with so many apparently higher, but in reality degrading and erroneous, ideas." This nearly describes the theory which Mr. Buckle has transferred from the history of nature to the history of man. He can hardly be said to challenge inquiry into its truth. He is at small pains to recommend it to those who are not predisposed in its favour. He is more inclined to dogmatise than to argue; and treats with placid scorn all who may not agree with him, and who are attached to one or other of the creeds and systems which have subsisted amongst men. It is a characteristic of certain diminutive parties to make up by the confidence and doggedness of their language for the small support they are able to command in public opinion. It is the same spirit in which Coleridge used to be worshipped at Highgate, and Jeremy Bentham at Westminster. Taking a survey of literature from the pinnacle of his self-esteem, Mr. Buckle repeatedly affirms that history has been generally written by very incapable men; that before his time there was no science of history; that "the most celebrated historians are manifestly inferior to the cultivators of physical science" (p. 7); and much more to the same purpose passim. He gives us, moreover, to understand, that he is as much at home in ethical as in historical literature; and delivers the valuable opinion, "that a man, after reading every thing that has been written on moral conduct and moral philosophy, will find himself nearly as much in the dark as when his studies first began" (p. 22). Having thus cleared the way for his own appearance on the neglected fields of history and philosophy, he leaves us to infer that there are very few people capable of appreciating his performance, or for whose judgment he cares a pin. He writes for a school; and uttering its oracles to the world, he may question the competency of any tribunal which does not in some degree admit his premises and consent to judge him out of his own mouth. But if we are unworthy to judge his theories, his facts at least are common property, and are accessible to all men; and it is important to see what they are worth, and how much Mr. Buckle knew about the matter when he endeavoured to make history subservient to his philosophy. The attempt to reconcile philosophical speculation with the experience of history, and to harmonise their teaching, is VOL. X.-NEW SERIES. H 66 perfectly natural, and, at a certain stage, inevitable. Both are unbounded in their range, and in some sense they may be said to include each other. Neither science is perfect till it obtains the confirmation of the other. "Man," says Jacobi, 'requires not only a truth whose creator he is, but a truth also of which he is the creature." Yet the comparison could take place only at an advanced period of the progress of philosophy and of the knowledge of history. Philosophy must be seen by the light of history, that the laws of its progress may be understood; and history, which records the thoughts as well as the actions of men, cannot overlook the vicissitudes of philosophic schools. Thus the history of philosophy is a postulate of either science. At the same time, history, unless considered in its philosophic aspect, is devoid of connection and instruction; and philosophy, which naturally tends to embrace all the sciences, necessarily seeks to subject history, among the rest, to its law. Hence arose the philosophy of history. "In history," says Krug, "philosophy beholds itself reflected. It is the text to which history supplies the commentary."* Both sciences had attained a certain maturity of development before they sought each other. "Philosophy," said Schelling, "ought not to precede the particular sciences, but to follow after them."+ Generalisation in history was not possible until a great part of its course was run, and the knowledge of its details tolerably complete. Nor could the history of philosophy be written before it had passed through many phases, or before it had attained a considerable development. Thus it naturally happened that the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy, as they proceeded from the same causes, began to be cultivated about the same time. They are scarcely a century old. The medieval philosophy had taken no cognisance of the external world, until, in the sixteenth century, a reaction took place. As theology had predominated in the middle ages, now physiology prevailed in its stead. The study of nature became the first of sciences; and in the age of the supremacy of the Baconian system, Kepler and Galileo and Newton were considered philosophers. To the philosophic investigation of nature was added, in the eighteenth century, the philosophic contemplation of history. The method by which Bacon had revolutionised natural science, "ab experientia ad axiomata, et ab axiomatibus ad nova inventa,"+ *Handwörterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften, ii. 217. Salat, Schelling in München, i. 60. De Augmentis, iii. 3. "From experiment to axioms, from axioms to new discoveries." came to be tried upon history. Since that time a philosophy of history has been attempted upon the principles of almost every system. The result has not always been to the advantage of history, or to the credit of the philosophers. "When things are known and found out, then they can descant upon them; they can knit them into certain causes, they can reduce them to their principles. If any instance of experience stand against them, they can range it in order by some distinctions. But all this is but a web of the wit; it can work nothing."* The first attempt to give unity to universal history by the application of a philosophic system was made by Lessing, in his celebrated fragment on the Education of the Human Race. It was his last work, "and must be considered the foundation of all modern philosophy, of religion, and the beginning of a more profound appreciation of history." He employs the ideas of Leibniz's Théodicée to explain the government of the world. Condorcet's Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind is inspired, in like manner, by the sensualist doctrines of Condillac. Kant, though perfectly ignorant of the subject, was incited by the French Revolution to draw up a scheme of universal history in unison with his system. It was the entire inadequacy of Kant's philosophy to explain the phenomena of history which led Hegel, "for whom the philosophical problem had converted itself into an historical one," to break with the system altogether. Thirty years later, when the supremacy of Kant had long passed away, and Hegel was reigning in his stead, he too set up his philosophy of history as the crown and end of his own philosophy, and as the test of its absolute truth.§ "It is for historical science," says his latest biographer, "to enjoy the inheritance of Hegel's philosophy." In like manner, the transcendental system of Schelling resulted in a Christian philosophy of history, of which a late able writer says that by it "the antagonism of philosophy and history, proceeding from a defective notion of the first, and an utterly inadequate view of the latter, was removed." So, again, the system of * Bacon, in Praise of Knowledge,-Works, ed. Bohn, i. 216. † Schwarz, Lessing als Theologe, p. 79. Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit, p. 45. § "Gewissermassen die Probe des ganzen Systems." Michelet, Entwickelungsgeschichte der neuesten Deutschen Philos., p. 304.-" Die wahrhafte Theodicee, die Probe von der Wahrheit des ganzen Systems." Huber, Deutsche Vierteljahrs Schrift, 1853, ii. 50—“Die unwidersprechlichste Bewährung des Systems." Haym, Allgem. Encyclop. art. Philosophie, sect. iii. vol. xxiv. p. 176. Haym, Hegel, &c. p. 466. Schaarschmidt, Entwickelungsgang der neuesten Speculation, p. 194; and Schelling, Werke, i. 480, 481. Krause presents a combination of philosophy and history in which their respective methods are blended together.* Especially since the publication of Hegel's Lectures, history has been generally considered by philosophers as belonging to their legitimate domain. And their dominion is such, that even a moderate acquaintance with the events of the past has ceased to be deemed a necessary or even a useful ingredient in the preparation of a philosophy of history. No system will confess itself so poor, that it cannot reconstruct the history of the world without the help of empirical knowledge. A Pole, Cieszkowski (Prolegomena zur Historiosophie, 1838), has a physical scheme for the arrangement of historical phenomena. According to him, light is the type of Persia, mechanism of China; Athens represents dynamic electricity, Sparta static electricity. The electro-magnetic system answers to Macedon, the expansive force of heat to the Roman empire. The dualism of church and state in the middle ages corresponds to the antithesis of acid and kali, &c. &c. The same ingenious person argues from the analogy of the natural sciences, in which, with the help of an old tooth, you can reconstruct an antediluvian monster, that history has to deal with the future, and cannot submit to be confined to the knowledge of the past. Twenty years ago, the well-known novelist Gutzkow was in prison; and not having books at hand to help him in writing a novel, beguiled the time by writing and publishing a philosophy of history. These recent examples may serve to show us that it is not to be wondered at that an attempt should be made to obtain for a new system the sanction of history; or that, having been made, it should have produced a ludicrous result, and should have furnished the most complete confutation of the system it was meant to confirm. But we have already said that the theory is not the most remarkable part about Mr. Buckle's book. It is by his portentous display of reading that he will impose upon many in whom the principles in their naked deformity would simply excite abhorrence. The theoretical portion is completely overgrown and hidden by the mass of matter which is collected to support it, and on which Mr. Buckle has brought to bear all the reading of a lifetime. The wonderful accumulation of details and extravagance of quotation have the manifest purpose of dazzling and blinding his readers by the mere mass of apparent erudition. "So learned a man cannot be mistaken in his conclusions," is no * According to his disciples, "der harmonische Haupttheil," "die Blüthenknospe" of the system. Erdmann, Entwickelung der Speculation seit Kant, ii. 676. |