History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

True it was, that, to the contemporaries of Helvétius, his views, notwithstanding their immense popularity, bore the appearance of a secret; because the connexion between them and the general march of events was, as yet, but dimly perceived. To us, however, who, after this interval of time, can examine the question with the resources of a larger experience, it is obvious how such a system met the wants of an age of which it was the exponent and the mouthpiece. That Helvétius must have carried with him the sympathies of his countrymen, is clear, not only from the evidence we have of his success, but also from a more comprehensive view of the general complexion of those times. Even while he was still pursuing his labours, and only four years before he published them, a work appeared in France, which, though displaying greater ability, and possessing a higher influence than that of Helvétius, did, nevertheless, point in exactly the same direction. I allude to the great metaphysical treatise by Condillac, in many respects one of the most remarkable productions of the eighteenth century; and the authority of which, during two generations, was so irresistible, that, without some acquaintance with it, we cannot possibly understand the nature of those complicated movements by which the French Revolution was brought about.

In 1754,[1045] Condillac put forth his celebrated work on the mind; the very title of which was a proof of the bias with which it was written. Although this profound thinker aimed at nothing less than an exhaustive analysis of the human faculties, and although he is pronounced by a very able, but hostile critic, to be the only metaphysician France produced during the eighteenth century,[1046] still he found it utterly impossible to escape from those tendencies towards the external which governed his own age. The consequence was, that he called his work a ‘Treatise on Sensations;’[1047] and in it he peremptorily asserts, that every thing we know is the result of sensation; by which he means the effect produced on us by the action of the external world. Whatever may be thought of the accuracy of this opinion, there can be no doubt that it is enforced with a closeness and severity of reasoning which deserves the highest praise. To examine, however, the arguments by which his view is supported, would lead to a discussion foreign to my present object, which is, merely to point out the relation between his philosophy and the general temper of his contemporaries. Without, therefore, pretending to anything like a critical examination of this celebrated book, I will simply bring together the essential positions on which it is based, in order to illustrate the harmony between it and the intellectual habits of the age in which it appeared.[1048]

The materials from which the philosophy of Condillac was originally drawn, were contained in the great work published by Locke about sixty years before this time. But though much of what was most essential was borrowed from the English philosopher, there was one very important point in which the disciple differed from his master. And this difference is strikingly characteristic of the direction which the French intellect was now taking. Locke, with some looseness of expression, and possibly with some looseness of thought, had asserted the separate existence of a power of reflection, and had maintained that by means of that power the products of sensation became available.[1049] Condillac, moved by the prevailing temper of his own time, would not hear of such a distinction. He, like most of his contemporaries, was jealous of any claim which increased the authority of the internal, and weakened that of the external. He, therefore, altogether rejects the faculty of reflection as a source of our ideas; and this partly because it is but the channel through which ideas run from the senses, and partly because in its origin it is itself a sensation.[1050] Therefore, according to him, the only question is as to the way in which our contact with nature supplies us with ideas. For in this scheme, the faculties of man are solely caused by the operation of his senses. The judgments which we form are, says Condillac, often ascribed to the hand of the Deity; a convenient mode of reasoning, which has only arisen from the difficulty of analyzing them.[1051] By considering how our judgments actually arise, we can alone remove these obscurities. The fact is, that the attention we give to an object is nothing but the sensation which that object excites;[1052] and what we call abstract ideas are merely different ways of being attentive.[1053] Ideas being thus generated, the subsequent process is very simple. To attend to two ideas at the same time, is to compare them; so that comparison is not a result of attention, but is rather the attention itself.[1054] This at once gives us the faculty of judging, because directly we institute a comparison, we do of necessity form a judgment.[1055] Thus, too, memory is a transformed sensation;[1056] while the imagination is nothing but memory, which, being carried to its highest possible vivacity, makes what is absent appear to be present.[1057] The impressions we receive from the external world being, therefore, not the cause of our faculties, but being the faculties themselves, the conclusion to which we are driven is inevitable. It follows, says Condillac, that in man nature is the beginning of all; that to nature we owe the whole of our knowledge; that we only instruct ourselves according to her lessons; and that the entire art of reasoning consists in continuing the work which she has appointed us to perform.[1058]

It is so impossible to mistake the tendency of these views, that I need not attempt to estimate their result otherwise than by measuring the extent to which they were adopted. Indeed, the zeal with which they were now carried into every department of knowledge, can only surprise those who, being led by their habits of mind to study history in its separate fragments, have not accustomed themselves to consider it as an united whole, and who, therefore, do not perceive that in every great epoch there is some one idea at work, which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issue. In France, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, this idea was, the inferiority of the internal to the external. It was this dangerous but plausible principle which drew the attention of men from the church to the state; which was seen in Helvétius the most celebrated of the French moralists, and in Condillac the most celebrated of the French metaphysicians. It was this same principle which, by increasing, if I may so say, the reputation of Nature, induced the ablest thinkers to devote themselves to a study of her laws, and to abandon those other pursuits which had been popular in the preceding age. In consequence of this movement, such wonderful additions were made to every branch of physical science, that more new truths concerning the external world were discovered in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all the previous periods put together. The details of these discoveries, so far as they have been subservient to the general purposes of civilization, will be related in another place; at present I will indicate only the most prominent, in order that the reader may understand the course of the subsequent argument, and may see the connexion between them and the French Revolution.

Taking a general view of the external world, we may say, that the three most important forces by which the operations of nature are effected, are heat, light, and electricity; including under this last magnetic and galvanic phenomena. On all these subjects, the French, for the first time, now exerted themselves with signal success. In regard to heat, not only were the materials for subsequent induction collected with indefatigable industry, but before that generation passed away, the induction was actually made; for while the laws of its radiation were worked out by Prevost,[1059] those of its conduction were established by Fourier, who, just before the Revolution, employed himself in raising thermotics to a science by the deductive application of that celebrated mathematical theory which he contrived, and which still bears his name.[1060] In regard to electricity, it is enough to notice, during the same period, the important experiments of D'Alibard, followed by those vast labours of Coulomb, which brought electrical phenomena under the jurisdiction of the mathematics, and thus completed what Œpinus had already prepared.[1061] As to the laws of light, those ideas were now accumulating which rendered possible the great steps that, at the close of the century, were taken by Malus, and still later by Fresnel.[1062] Both of these eminent Frenchmen not only made important additions to our knowledge of double refraction, but Malus discovered the polarization of light, undoubtedly the most splendid contribution received by optical science since the analysis of the solar rays.[1063] It was also in consequence of this, that Fresnel began those profound researches which placed on a solid basis that great undulatory theory of which Hooke, Huygens, and above all Young, are to be deemed the founders, and by which the corpuscular theory of Newton was finally overthrown.[1064]

Thus much as to the progress of French knowledge respecting those parts of nature which are in themselves invisible, and of which we cannot tell whether they have a material existence, or whether they are mere conditions and properties of other bodies.[1065] The immense value of these discoveries, as increasing the number of known truths, is incontestable: but, at the same time, another class of discoveries was made, which, dealing more palpably with the visible world, and being also more easily understood, produced more immediate results, and, as I shall presently show, exercised a remarkable influence in strengthening that democratic tendency which accompanied the French Revolution. It is impossible, within the limits I have assigned to myself, to give anything like an adequate notion of the marvellous activity with which the French now pushed their researches into every department of the organic and inorganic world; still it is, I think, practicable to compress into a few pages such a summary of the more salient points as will afford the reader some idea of what was done by that generation of great thinkers which flourished in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century.

If we confine our view to the globe we inhabit, it must be allowed that chemistry and geology are the two sciences which not only offer the fairest promise, but already contain the largest generalizations. The reason of this will become clear, if we attend to the ideas on which these two great subjects are based. The idea of chemistry, is the study of composition;[1066] the idea of geology, is the study of position. The object of the first is, to learn the laws which govern the properties of matter; the object of the second is, to learn the laws which govern its locality. In chemistry, we experiment; in geology, we observe. In chemistry, we deal with the molecular arrangement of the smallest atoms;[1067] in geology, with the cosmological arrangement of the largest masses. Hence it is that the chemist by his minuteness, and the geologist by his grandeur, touch the two extremes of the material universe; and, starting from these opposite points, have, as I could easily prove, a constantly increasing tendency to bring under their own authority sciences which have at present an independent existence, and which, for the sake of a division of labour, it is still convenient to study separately; though it must be the business of philosophy, properly so called, to integrate them into a complete and effective whole. Indeed it is obvious, that if we knew all the laws of the composition of matter, and likewise all the laws of its position, we should likewise know all the changes of which matter is capable spontaneously, that is, when uninterrupted by the mind of man. Every phenomenon which any given substance presents must be caused either by something taking place in the substance, or else by something taking place out of it, but acting upon it; while what occurs within must be explicable by its own composition, and what occurs without must be due to its position in relation to the objects by which it is affected. This is an exhaustive statement of every possible contingency, and to one of these two classes of laws every thing must be referrible; even those mysterious forces which, whether they be emanations from matter, or whether they be merely properties of matter, must in an ultimate analysis depend either on the internal arrangement, or else on the external locality of their physical antecedents. However convenient, therefore, it may be, in the present state of our knowledge, to speak of vital principles, imponderable fluids, and elastic æthers, such terms can only be provisional, and are to be considered as mere names for that residue of unexplained facts, which it will be the business of future ages to bring under generalizations wide enough to cover and include the whole.

These ideas of composition and of position being thus the basis of all natural science, it is not surprising that chemistry and geology, which are their best, but still their insufficient representatives, should in modern times have made more progress than any other of the great branches of human knowledge. Although the chemists and geologists have not yet risen to the full height of their respective subjects,[1068] there are few things more curious than to note the way in which, during the last two generations, they have been rapidly expanding their views—encroaching on topics with which, at first sight, they appeared to have no concern—making other branches of inquiry tributary to their own—and collecting from every quarter that intellectual wealth which, long hidden in obscure corners, had been wasted in the cultivation of special and inferior pursuits. This, as being one of the great intellectual characteristics of the present age, I shall hereafter examine at considerable length; but what I have now to show is, that in these two vast sciences, which, though still very imperfect, must eventually be superior to all others, the first important steps were made by Frenchmen during the latter half of the eighteenth century.

That we owe to France the existence of chemistry as a science, will be admitted by everyone who uses the word science in the sense in which alone it ought to be understood, namely, as a body of generalizations so irrefragably true, that, though they may be subsequently covered by higher generalizations, they cannot be overthrown by them; in other words, generalizations which may be absorbed, but not refuted. In this point of view, there are in the history of chemistry only three great stages. The first stage was the destruction of the phlogistic theory, and the establishment, upon its ruins, of the doctrines of oxidation, combustion, and respiration. The second stage was the establishment of the principle of definite proportions, and the application to it of the atomic hypothesis. The third stage, above which we have not yet risen, consists in the union of chemical and electrical laws, and in the progress we are making towards fusing into one generalization their separate phenomena. Which of these three stages was in its own age the most valuable, is not now the question; but it is certain that the first of them was the work of Lavoisier, by far the greatest of the French chemists. Before him several important points had been cleared up by the English chemists, whose experiments ascertained the existence of bodies formerly unknown. The links, however, to connect the facts, were still wanting; and until Lavoisier entered the field, there were no generalizations wide enough to entitle chemistry to be called a science; or, to speak more properly, the only large generalization commonly received was that by Stahl, which the great Frenchman proved to be not only imperfect, but altogether inaccurate. A notice of the vast discoveries of Lavoisier will be found in many well-known books:[1069] it is enough to say, that he not only worked out the laws of the oxidation of bodies and of their combustion, but that he is the author of the true theory of respiration, the purely chemical character of which he first demonstrated; thus laying the foundation of those views respecting the functions of food, which the German chemists subsequently developed, and which, as I have proved in the second chapter of this Introduction, may be applied to solve some great problems in the history of Man. The merit of this was so obviously due to France, that though the system now established was quickly adopted in other countries,[1070] it received the name of the French chemistry.[1071] At the same time, the old nomenclature being full of old errors, a new one was required, and here again France took the initiative; since this great reformation was begun by four of her most eminent chemists, who flourished only a few years before the Revolution.[1072]

While one division of the French thinkers was reducing to order the apparent irregularities of chemical phenomena, another division of them was performing precisely the same service for geology. The first step towards popularizing this noble study was taken by Buffon, who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, broached a geological theory, which, though not quite original, excited attention by its eloquence, and by the lofty speculations with which he connected it.[1073] This was followed by the more special but still important labours of Rouelle, Desmarest, Dolomieu, and Montlosier, who, in less than forty years, effected a complete revolution in the ideas of Frenchmen, by familiarizing them with the strange conception, that the surface of our planet, even where it appears perfectly stable, is constantly undergoing most extensive changes. It began to be understood, that this perpetual flux takes place not only in those parts of nature which are obviously feeble and evanescent, but also in those which seem to possess every element of strength and permanence, such as the mountains of granite which wall the globe, and are the shell and encasement in which it is held. As soon as the mind became habituated to this notion of universal change, the time was ripe for the appearance of some great thinker, who should generalize the scattered observations, and form them into a science, by connecting them with some other department of knowledge, of which the laws, or, at all events, the empirical uniformities, had been already ascertained.