LIFE AND WORK OF BUCKLE.*
(FIRST NOTICE.]
Tax biography of Mr. Buckle has sent us back to the perusal of the History of Civilisation, and the perusal of that work has been the occasion of not a few curious reflections. No one has praised liberty more loudly than Mr. Buckle has done ; no one has more fiercely denounced the tyranny of social custom, and the reactionary tendencies of morals and religion, as embodied in the Church, and represented by the clergy. In these respects, he is indeed only the representative of a large class ; but the tendencies common to him and to them have, in his writings, obtained their most complete expression. Now, the strange thing is, that those who are loudest in their praise of liberty, and who welcome with uproarious applause every symptom of revolt from current opinion, are precisely those who are strict and rigorous determinists, and are earnest advocates of the view that the actions of men are necessary consequences of preceding circumstances. That invariable, certain, and uncondi- tional sequence rules the actions of men, is the doctrine of John Stuart Mill. And Mill wrote a book advocating a liberty of the widest sweep. Mr. Buckle's determinism is even more pro- nounced than that of Mill, and yet the great bulk of his big book consists of the praise of freedom, and of the things and tendencies which make for freedom. Tall-talk about freedom, and unlimited panegyrics on this glorious England of ours, as the place where men may think as they like and do as they please, have a strange sound in the lips of those who, in the same breath, tell us that the actions of men are as rigidly deter- mined as are the ebb and flow of the tide. A new definition of freedom—a definition which will bring it into harmony with the philosophy of determinism—is sorely needed. As matters stand at present, we have determinists using language in its time- honoured and wonted sense, while the principles and method
• The Life and Wriiings of Henry Thomas Buckle. By Alfred. Henry Huth. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Riviogton. 2 vols. 1880.
of their philosophy make these terms meaningless, and con- tradict the facts which they symbolise. The wisest of the Necessitarians was Hume, for he consistently indulged in no idle platitudes about progress and freedom, but left his doctrine of necessity to produce its proper fruits. Personal and social freedom on the footing of determinism seems, to us, to have no meaning.
We have sought in vain in the pages which record Mr. Buckle's philosophy for anything to justify Mr. Huth in writing a biography of Mr. Buckle, as he has written it. We should have expected to find from the pen of a biographer who is also a disciple of Mr. Buckle an account, not only of the education, the social position, the temperament, the character, and the- thought, sayings, and doings of Mr. Buckle, but an attempt to show how all these circumstances and doings of his were the outcome of a vast social law, or laws, and the necessary consequences of preceding circumstances. It would have been a splendid verification of the principles of Mr. Buckle, to have shown how all his actions were the results of invariable- sequence. If it could be shown that his want of education up, to the age of eighteen, his vast scheme of writing the history of civilisation, vaguely formed before or while he was nineteen years of age ; his great industry—his working eight hours a day—his friendliness, charity, love of truth, and also his odd bachelor habits, such as smoking cigars in bed, we say, if Mr. Huth had been able to show that each and all of these were merely the product of the general condition of society, and the- necessary result of preceding circumstances, what a triumph it would have been for the philosophy of Mr. Buckle ! Mr. Huth has missed a great opportunity, and in writing this biography he has forgotten the theory common to. him and to Mr. Buckle, and has spoken like an ordi- nary man. He calls on us " to consider the youth of Mr. Buckle, his delicate state of health, his self-educa- tion, the enormous drudgery he went through, and vast amount of reading he achieved ; his self-denial, his love of truth, his kindness to others, his charity and warmth of heart. These raise him personally above the average of men. Consider, again, the breadth and depth of his speculations and vast powers of assimilation." All these things we would willingly consider,. and would not withhold our sympathy and admiration, if we could get these "vast social laws" out of our head. But we have just read once again the History of Civilisation, and whenever Mr. Huth records any beautiful deed, or calls on us to admire the character and work of Mr. Buckle, as something personal to him, we find ourselves continually muttering, " outcome of the general condition of society,—only a link in the sequence of events." We found ourselves doing what Mr. Huth has refused to do,—looking at Buckle in the light of his own system. For Mr. Buckle wrote " that suicide is merely the product of the general condition of society, and the individual felon only carries into effect what is a necessary consequence of preceding circum- stances." " If there is a uniformity and a method in the vices of a people, there must be a corresponding regularity in their virtues." When we try to judge Mr. Buckle as we would judge other people, we are perplexed with the applications of these principles, and we are haunted with the fear lest when we praise and admire the good features of Mr. Buckle's life and work, we- are guilty of the unphilosophical habit of praising a person when we ought to be prostrate in admiration of the product of the general condition of society, and of the necessary conse- quence of preceding circumstances. Mr. Huth has not felt the difficulty we have experienced. He speaks of Mr. Buckle lovingly, admiringly, with quite a beautiful enthusiasm. He speaks as if the individual counted for something in the history of human progress. He speaks of him as personally above the average of men ; and, indeed, in many places he speaks as if Mr. Buckle were an uncaused cause of future phenomena. He might have sacrificed the personality of Mr. Buckle on the altar of Mr. Buckle's philosophy. But he has chosen other- wise, and at the cost of the philosophy has vindicated the per- sonality of that eminent man.
Nor is Mr. Huth without warrant for the choice of this alternative. Certain dark and mysterious utterances in the History of Civilisation recur to our memory. We could make nothing of them at the time when we first read that book, nor are they quite clear yet, but the biography certainly throws a side-light on them, which makes them not quite so unintelligible as they were before. We quote first from the biography :—
"I do not think anything can be better on this most interesting -subject than the passages I have collected from Kant (at end of Chapter I.), in which he vindicates transcendently the freedom which he destroys logically. The logical deals with the universal understanding, the transcendental with the individual reason. The first explains without feeling; the second feels without explaining. The first, being performed by one mind, may be repeated and imitated by another. Tho second is, by its nature, incapable of being copied, because it concerns an eminently individual and, as it were, isolated process. Therefore it is, that logical truths ara dependent on the age in which they are found. That is to say, the state of surrounding knowledge supplies the major premiss. On the other hand, in the transcendental process the mind itself supplies the major premiss. From this it appears that if two minds are exactly of the same nature, they will arrive at the same transcendental conclusions, whatever be the difference of country or age in which they live. In regard, therefore, to their logical conclu- sions, they will arrive at different results iu proportion as the varie- ties of their surroundings. Knowledge supplies them with different ideas ; or, to give another illustration, the transcendental is statical, the logical is dynamical." (Life, Vol. I., p.136.)
Readers will note that this exposition of the words " trans- cendental and logical," is Buckle's, and not Kaut's, indeed bears no resemblance to Kant's use of the words. It helps us, how- ever, to understand Mr. Buckle when he says, "The European mind, barely emerged from its early credulity, and from an overweening confidence in its own belief, is still in a middle and, so to say, probationary stage. When that stage shall be finally passed, when we shall have learned to estimate men solely by their character and their acts, we shall then be able to form our religions opinions by that purely transcendental process of which in every age glimpses have been granted to a few gifted minds."
(History of Civilisation, Vol. I., p. 324.) If we understand this passage aright, and compare it with the passage quoted from the Life, we see that somehow, and at some time, we shall be able to perform that transcendental process which by its nature is " in- capable of being copied." The major premiss supplied by the state of surrounding knowledge, will finally coincide with the major premiss supplied by the mind itself. And the process which -explains without feeling will give the same results as the process which feels without explaining. Meanwhile, until that happy time shall have come, there are at present " most sacred prin- ciples of the human heart,—sublime questions which no one should rudely touch, because they are for each according to the measure of his own soul, because they lie in that unknown tract which separates the finite from the infinite, and because they are as a secret and individual covenant between man and his God " (History, p. 469) ; and also there are religious " truths which comfort the mind of man, raise him above the instincts of the hour, and infuse into him those lofty aspirations which, revealing to him his own immortality, are the measure and the symptom of a future life." (p. 695.) These are the results of the transcendental process which feels without explaining.' But they are purely individual, as yet.
Now, this seems to explain to us the principle and method on which Mr. Huth has constructed this biography. Not until the logical and the transcendental coincide can we venture to seek the verification of the principle of necessary consequences in the history of the individual. True, we can predict the behaviour of a gas under 'pressure, but there is nothing tran- scendental in a gas. We bad thought of trying to verify the philosophy of Mr. Buckle by an examination of Mr. Buckle's biography. But we found our way was likely to be barred by the raising of the previous question. Is there not something tran- scendental in Mr. Buckle ? Has he not moved in that uuknown tract which separates the finite from the infinite ? We recog- nise the validity of the plea. It falls in with the first principles of our philosophy, which certainly are not the principles ex-
pounded in the History of Civilisation. We have no hesita- tion in admitting that the philosophy of Mr. Buckle is quite inadequate to the task of explaining Mr. Buckle. In him we meet with a person possessed of a will, a conscience, who exer- cises the freedom of self-determination, who selects his motive and whose motive does not select him, and we unhesi- tatingly say that we have found in him much that is worthy of praise, of admiration, and of imitation. It is a comfort to us to find that we may lose sight of vast social laws, and necessary results, and histories of civilisation, in estimating the worth and work of an individual. It would be appalling to have to carry in our heads the history of civilisation, whenever we wrote a criticism of a man or of a book. Happily for us, Mr. Buckle has discovered a way of refuge in the transcendental process, and Mr. Huth has acted on the discovery. If this process does really overturn the principles of the History of Civilisation on which Mr. Buckle's reputation is based, that is the outlook of hint and of his biographer, not our outlook, in any way.
While taking refuge, in writing the personal history of Mr. Buckle, in the transcendental process, Mr. Huth devotes two chapters to a defence and exposition of the history of civilisa- tion, and to a defence of Mr. Buckle against his critics. We shall make one or two quotations, and then examine the validity of the claims which Mr. Huth makes on behalf of Mr. Buckle :— " Finally, came Buckle, who, with a precision hitherto unknown, has pointed out the real laws which govern human affairs. He is the first to have raised history to a science, because lie first wrote it scientifically. lie pursues the same method as scientific workers in other branches of knowledge, and substantiates his researches in the same way. Here there is no groping in the dark, uo ideas thrown out of which the author does not know the full value, no hap-hazard and uncorroborated statements. Everything is strictly logical ; not a logic of words, but a logic of facts Buckle, on the other hand, might have boon writing the Elements of Euclid, as far as his method is concerned. In his proof that men do not act, without motives, that their motives are the natural result of their circum- stances, and so on through his book, lie proceeds step by step, elimin- ating, as a chemist during an analysis, law after law. Ho then begins to confirm these laws, by.pointing out how every action of man- kind is explained by them. Though he probably has not connected man with nature as intimately as hereafter lie will be, he did connect for the first time all the known sciences with history, and is there- fore just as much the founder of the science of history, in the trno sense of the word, as Adam Smith was of political economy." (Life, pp. 245-6-7.)
We reserve our examination of these claims for another week.
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