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Updated: May 11, 2025
Every one read, or at least professed to have read, the wonderful book, and many believed that its author was the greatest genius of his time. During the first year of my residence in Russia , I rarely had a serious conversation without hearing Buckle's name mentioned; and my friends almost always assumed that he had succeeded in creating a genuine science of history on the inductive method.
But he responded sympathetically, both with tongue and tail. I had not frightened the little ladies away from the High Street, it seemed. I saw them again two days later. They had been out as usual, and some trifling mischance having happened to the Spanish saddle, they called at Mr. Buckle's door for repairs.
Perhaps Buckle's "History of Civilisation" and Mill's "Liberty" were the most alarming, but they neither of them reached the substratum of the reading public, and Ernest and his friends were ignorant of their very existence. The Evangelical movement, with the exception to which I shall revert presently, had become almost a matter of ancient history.
Buckle's dreary gospel was a reality, and men were machines, and life was an affair to be tabulated in averages. He had just had a letter from Willie Caird, too, and it had irritated him. The wounds of a friend may be faithful, but they are not always welcome. David determined to drop the correspondence. Willie was going one way and he another. They might never see each other again; and
After Comte's works, the book which found, for a time, most favour was Buckle's "History of Civilisation," which seemed to reduce history and progress to a matter of statistics, and which laid down the principle that progress is always in the inverse ratio of the influence of theological conceptions.
Buckle spoke golely for himself; he did not express the opinions which this Magazine upholds, nor commit for one moment the staff of men who write in it; and, as one insignificant individual who has penned a good many pages of Fraser, I beg to express my keen disapprobation of Mr. Buckle's views upon the subject of Christianity.
They "go in for general information," like the Tom Toddy in Mr. Kingsley's 'Water Babies; but their hard heads have, fortunately, no likeness to turnips. This, however, is a digression. Mr. Benjamin Buckle, Mrs. Benjamin Buckle, Jemima Buckle, their daughter, Mr. Buckle's apprentice, and the "general girl," or maid-of-all-work, were all in the shop to receive us.
His analysis of the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is drawn, of course, from Gibbon, but I have met those who prefer the interesting story of Lecky to the majestic sweep of the great master. Much less brilliant than Buckle's "History of Civilization," the first volume of which appeared twelve years earlier, the Morals has stood better the test of time.
But in the study of the history of man, the important facts have been neglected and the unimportant ones preserved. The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to generalize historical phenomena must collect the facts as well as conduct the generalization." Buckle's ideal of the office and acquirements of the historian was of the highest.
Whatever the defects of Buckle's system: whatever the inaccuracies that the advance of thirty years of patient scientific labors can easily point out; however sweeping his generalization; or however dogmatic his assertions, the book must be allowed high rank among the works that set men thinking, and must thus be conceded to possess enduring value. From the 'History of Civilization in England'
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