[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I hope that your
readers who own cars will not be led by J. M.'s letter in The Spectator of May 28th to argue from the fact that the number of people killed on the road is more or less the same every week that they have no free will and are not (even more or less) responsible for any people they may kill.
The vogue of this strange argument for Determinism, which I have come across more than once in Hyde Park, seems to be due to Buckle's History of Civilisation (1857), a book which the Dictionary of National Biography says "won for its author a reputation which has hardly been sustained." A fuller oriticism of his work may be found in Lord Acton's Historical Essays and Studies Nos. X and XI, "Mr. Buckle's Thesis and Method" and "Mr. Buckle's Phihrophy of History."—Yours, &c.,
CLEMENT F. ROGERS.
2 Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn, W.G. 1.
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