History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

I have been the more particular in stating the immense obligations history is under to Voltaire, because in England there exists against him a prejudice, which nothing but ignorance, or something worse than ignorance, can excuse;[935] and because, taking him on the whole, he is probably the greatest historian Europe has yet produced. In reference, however, to the mental habits of the eighteenth century, it is important to show, that in the same period similar comprehensiveness was being displayed by other French historians; so that in this case, as in all others, we shall find that a large share of what is effected, even by the most eminent men, is due to the character of the age in which they live.

The vast labours of Voltaire towards reforming the old method of writing history, were greatly aided by those important works which Montesquieu put forward during the same period. In 1734,[936] this remarkable man published what may be truly called the first book in which there can be found any information concerning the real history of Rome; because it is also the first in which the affairs of the ancient world are treated in a large and comprehensive spirit.[937] Fourteen years later, there appeared, by the same author, the Spirit of Laws; a more famous production, but, as it seems to me, not a greater one. The immense merit of the Spirit of Laws is, indeed, incontestable, and cannot be affected by the captious attempts made to diminish it by those minute critics, who seem to think that when they detect the occasional errors of a great man, they in some degree reduce him to their own level. It is not such petty cavilling which can destroy an European reputation; and the noble work of Montesquieu will long survive all attacks of this kind, because its large and suggestive generalizations would retain their value even if the particular facts of which the illustrations consist were all unfounded.[938] Still, I am inclined to believe, that in point of original thought it is barely equal to his earlier work, though it is unquestionably the fruit of much greater reading. Without, however, instituting a comparison between them, our present object is merely to consider the contributions they jointly contain towards a right understanding of history, and the way in which those contributions are connected with the general spirit of the eighteenth century.

In this point of view, there are, in the works of Montesquieu, two leading peculiarities. The first is, the complete rejection of those personal anecdotes, and those trivial details respecting individuals, which belong to biography, but with which, as Montesquieu clearly saw, history has no concern. The other peculiarity is, the very remarkable attempt which he first made to effect an union between the history of man and those sciences which deal with the external world. As these are the two great characteristics of the method adopted by Montesquieu, it will be necessary to give some account of them, before we can understand the place he really occupies, as one of the founders of the philosophy of history.

We have already seen that Voltaire had strongly insisted on the necessity of reforming history, by paying more attention to the history of the people, and less attention to that of their political and military rulers. We have also seen, that this great improvement was so agreeable to the spirit of the time, that it was generally and quickly adopted, and thus became an indication of those democratic tendencies, of which it was in reality a result. It is not, therefore, surprising that Montesquieu should have taken the same course, even before the movement had been clearly declared; since he, like most great thinkers, was a representative of the intellectual condition, and a satisfier of the intellectual wants, of the age in which he lived.

But, what constitutes the peculiarity of Montesquieu in this matter, is, that with him a contempt for those details respecting courts, ministers, and princes, in which ordinary compilers take great delight, was accompanied by an equal contempt for other details which are really interesting, because they concern the mental habits of the few truly eminent men who, from time to time, have appeared on the stage of public life. This was because Montesquieu perceived that, though these things are very interesting, they are also very unimportant. He knew, what no historian before him had even suspected, that in the great march of human affairs, individual peculiarities count for nothing; and that, therefore, the historian has no business with them, but should leave them to the biographer, to whose province they properly belong. The consequence is, that not only does he treat the most powerful princes with such disregard as to relate the reigns of six emperors in two lines,[939] but he constantly enforces the necessity, even in the case of eminent men, of subordinating their special influence to the more general influence of the surrounding society. Thus, many writers had ascribed the ruin of the Roman Republic to the ambition of Cæsar and Pompey, and particularly to the deep schemes of Cæsar. This, Montesquieu totally denies. According to his view of history, no great alteration can be effected, except by virtue of a long train of antecedents, where alone we are to seek the cause of what to a superficial eye is the work of individuals. The republic, therefore, was overthrown, not by Cæsar and Pompey, but by that state of things which made the success of Cæsar and Pompey possible.[940] It is thus that the events which ordinary historians relate are utterly valueless. Such events, instead of being causes, are merely the occasions on which the real causes act.[941] They may be called the accidents of history; and they must be treated as subservient to those vast and comprehensive conditions, by which alone the rise and fall of nations are ultimately governed.[942]

This, then, was the first great merit of Montesquieu, that he effected a complete separation between biography and history, and taught historians to study, not the pecularities of individual character, but the general aspect of the society in which the peculiarities appeared. If this remarkable man had accomplished nothing further, he would have rendered an incalculable service to history, by pointing out how one of its most fertile sources of error might be safely removed. And although, unhappily, we have not yet reaped the full benefit of his example, this is because his successors have really had the capacity of rising to so high a generalization: it is, however, certain, that since his time, an approximation towards such elevated views may be noticed, even among those inferior writers who, for want of sufficient grasp, are unable to adopt them to their full extent.

In addition to this, Montesquieu made another great advance in the method of treating history. He was the first who, in an inquiry into the relations between the social conditions of a country and its jurisprudence, called in the aid of physical knowledge, in order to ascertain how the character of any given civilization is modified by the action of the external world. In his work on the Spirit of Laws, he studies the way in which both the civil and political legislation of a people are naturally connected with their climate, soil, and food.[943] It is true, that in this vast enterprise he almost entirely failed; but this was because meteorology, chemistry, and physiology, were still too backward to admit of such an undertaking. This, however, affects the value only of his conclusions, not of his method; and here, as elsewhere, we see the great thinker tracing the outline of a plan, which, in the then state of knowledge, it was impossible to fill up, and the completion of which he was obliged to leave to the riper experience and more powerful resources of a later age. Thus to anticipate the march of the human intellect, and, as it were, forestal its subsequent acquisitions, is the peculiar prerogative of minds of the highest order; and it is this which gives to the writings of Montesquieu a certain fragmentary and provisional appearance, which was the necessary consequence of a profoundly speculative genius dealing with materials that were intractable, simply because science had not yet reduced them to order by generalizing the laws of their phenomena. Hence it is, that many of the inferences drawn by Montesquieu are untenable; such, for instance, as those regarding the effect of diet in stimulating population by increasing the fecundity of women,[944] and the effect of climate in altering the proportion between the births of the sexes.[945] In other cases, an increased acquaintance with barbarous nations has sufficed to correct his conclusions, particularly those concerning the effect which he supposed climate to produce on individual character; for we have now the most decisive evidence, that he was wrong in asserting[946] that hot climates make people unchaste and cowardly, while cold climates make them virtuous and brave.

These, indeed, are comparatively trifling objections, because, in all the highest branches of knowledge, the main difficulty is, not to discover facts, but to discover the true method according to which the laws of the facts may be ascertained.[947] In this, Montesquieu performed a double service, since he not only enriched history, but also strengthened its foundation. He enriched history by incorporating with it physical inquiries; and he strengthened history by separating it from biography, and thus freeing it from details which are always unimportant, and often unauthentic. And although he committed the error of studying the influence of nature over men considered as individuals,[948] rather than over men considered as an aggregate society, this arose principally from the fact that, in his time, the resources necessary for the more complicated study had not yet been created. Those resources, as I have shown, are political economy and statistics; political economy supplying the means of connecting the laws of physical agents with the laws of the inequality of wealth, and, therefore, with a great variety of social disturbances; while statistics enable us to verify those laws in their widest extent, and to prove how completely the volition of individual men is controlled by their antecedents, and by the circumstances in which they are placed. It was, therefore, not only natural, but inevitable, that Montesquieu should fail in his magnificent attempt to unite the laws of the human mind with the laws of external nature. He failed, partly because the sciences of external nature were too backward, and partly because those other branches of knowledge which connect nature with men were still unformed. For, as to political economy, it had no existence as a science until the publication of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, twenty-one years after the death of Montesquieu. As to statistics, their philosophy is a still more recent creation, since it is only during the last thirty years that they have been systematically applied to social phenomena; the earlier statisticians being merely a body of industrious collectors, groping in the dark, bringing together facts of every kind without selection or method, and whose labours were consequently unavailable for those important purposes to which they have been successfully applied during the present generation.

Only two years after the publication of the Spirit of Laws, Turgot delivered those celebrated lectures, of which it has been said, that in them he created the philosophy of history.[949] This praise is somewhat exaggerated; for in the most important matters relating to the philosophy of his subject, he takes the same view as Montesquieu; and Montesquieu, besides preceding him in point of time, was his superior certainly in learning, perhaps in genius. Still, the merit of Turgot is immense; and he belongs to that extremely small class of men who have looked at history comprehensively, and have recognized the almost boundless knowledge needed for its investigation. In this respect, his method is identical with that of Montesquieu, since both of these great men excluded from their scheme the personal details which ordinary historians accumulate, and concentrated their attention upon those large general causes, by the operation of which the destinies of nations are permanently affected. Turgot clearly perceived, that, notwithstanding the variety of events produced by the play of human passions, there is amid this apparent confusion a principle of order, and a regularity of march, not to be mistaken by those whose grasp is firm enough to seize the history of man as a complete and single whole.[950] It is true that Turgot, subsequently engaged in political life, never possessed sufficient leisure to fill up the splendid outline of what he so successfully sketched: but though in the execution of his plan he fell short of Montesquieu, still the analogy between the two men is obvious, as also is their relation to the age in which they lived. They, as well as Voltaire, were the unconscious advocates of the democratic movement, inasmuch as they discountenanced the homage which historians had formerly paid to individuals, and rescued history from being a mere recital of the deeds of political and ecclesiastical rulers. At the same time, Turgot, by the captivating prospects which he held out of future progress,[951] and by the picture which he drew of the capacity of society to improve itself, increased the impatience which his countrymen were beginning to feel against that despotic government, in whose presence amelioration seemed to be hopeless. These, and similar speculations, which now for the first time appeared in French literature, stimulated the activity of the intellectual classes, cheered them under the persecutions to which they were exposed, and emboldened them to the arduous enterprise of leading on the people to attack the institutions of their native land. Thus it was, that in France every thing tended to the same result. Every thing indicated the approach of some sharp and terrible struggle, in which the spirit of the present should war with the spirit of the past; and in which it should be finally settled, whether the people of France could free themselves from the chains in which they had long been held, or whether, missing their aim, they were doomed to sink still lower in that ignominious vassalage, which makes even the most splendid periods of their political history a warning and a lesson to the civilized world.

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