Nineteenth Century Questions

by James Freeman Clarke

*****

The second volume, the recent publication of which has suggested this second review of Mr. Buckle's work, contains much of interest and value, but suffers from the imperfect method of which we complained at the beginning of this article. It is chiefly devoted to a description of the evils resulting from priestcraft in the two countries of Spain and Scotland. It contains six chapters. The first is on the History of the Spanish Intellect from the fifth to the middle of the nineteenth century. The other five chapters relate to Scotland.

In the chapter on Spain Buckle attempts to show how loyalty and superstition began in this nation, and what has been the result. Of course, according to his theory, he is obliged to trace their origin to external circumstances, and he finds the cause of the superstition in the climate, which produced drought and famine, and in the earthquakes which alarmed the people. And here Mr. Buckle, following the philosophy of Lucretius, confounds religion and fear, and puts the occasion for the cause. But, beside earthquakes, the Arian heresy helped to create this superstition, by identifying the wars for national independence with those for religion, and so giving a great ascendency to the priests. Hence the Church in Spain early acquired great power, and, naturally allying itself with the government, gave rise to the sentiment of loyalty, which was increased by the Moorish invasion and the long wars which followed. Loyalty and superstition thus became so deeply rooted in the Spanish mind, that they could not be eradicated by the efforts of the government. Nothing but knowledge can cure this blind and servile loyalty and this abject superstition, and while Spain continues sunk in ignorance it must always remain superstitious and submissive.

Some difficulties, however, suggest themselves in the way of this very simple explanation. If superstitious loyalty to Church and king comes from earthquakes, why are not the earthquake regions of the West Indies and of South America more loyal, instead of being in a state of chronic revolution? And how came Scotland to be so diseased with loyalty and superstition, when she is so free from earthquakes? And if knowledge is such a certain cure for superstition, why was not Spain cured by the flood of light which she, alone of all European countries, enjoyed in the Middle Ages? Spain was for a long time the source of science and art to all Europe, whose Christian sons resorted to her universities and libraries for instruction. There was taught to English, French, and German students the philosophy of Aristotle, the Græco-Arabic literature, mathematics, and natural history. The numerals, gunpowder, paper, and other inventions of the Arabs, passed into Europe from Spain. She possessed, therefore, that knowledge of physical laws which Mr. Buckle declares to be the only cure for superstition. Yet she was not cured. The nation which, according to his theory, ought to have been soonest delivered from superstition, according to his statements has retained its yoke longer than any other.

From Spain Mr. Buckle passes to Scotland, where he finds a still more complicated problem. Superstition and loyalty ought to go together, he thinks,—and usually do; but in Scotland they are divorced. The Scotch have always been superstitious, but disloyal. To the explanation of this fact Mr. Buckle bends his energies of thought, and of course is able to find a theory to account for it. This theory we shall not stop to detail; it is too complex, and at the same time too superficial, to dwell upon. Its chief point is that the Protestant noblemen and Protestant clergy quarreled about the wealth of the Catholic Church, and so there was in Scotland a complete rupture between the two classes elsewhere in alliance. Thus "the clergy, finding themselves despised by the governing class, united themselves heartily with the people, and advocated democratic principles." Such is the explanation given to the course of history in a great nation. A quarrel between its noblemen and its ministers (who are of course represented as mercenary self-seekers) determines its permanent character!

Mr. Buckle, to whom the love of plunder appears as the cause of what other men regard as loyalty or religion, explains by the same fact the loyalty of the Highlanders to King Charles. They thought that, if he conquered, he would allow them to plunder the Lowlanders once more. This is Buckle's explanation. An ethnologist would have remembered the fact that the Gaels are pure-blooded Kelts, and that the Kelts pur sang are everywhere distinguished for loyalty to their chiefs.

Mr. Buckle encounters another difficulty in Scottish history in this, that though a new and splendid literature arose in Scotland at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was unable to diminish national superstition. It was thoroughly skeptical, and yet did not produce the appropriate effect of skepticism. So that at this point one of Mr. Buckle's four great laws of history seems to break down. For a moment he appears discouraged, and laments, with real pathos, the limitations of the human intellect. But in the next chapter he addresses himself again to the solution of his two-fold problem, viz.: "1st, that the same people should be liberal in their politics and illiberal in their religion; and, 2d, that their free and skeptical literature in the eighteenth century should have been unable to lessen their religious illiberality."

In approaching this part of his task, in the fifth chapter, our author gives a very elaborate and highly colored picture of the religion of Scotland. It is too well done. Like some of Macaulay's descriptions, it is so very striking as to impress us almost inevitably as a caricature. Every statement in which the horrors and cruelties of Calvinism are described is indeed reinforced by ample citations or plentiful references in the footnotes. But some of these seem capable of a different inference from that drawn in the text. For instance, he charges the Scottish clergy with teaching, that, though the arrangements originally made by the Deity to punish his creatures were ample, "they were insufficient; and hell, not being big enough to contain the countless victims incessantly poured into it, had in these latter days been enlarged. There was now sufficient room." He supports the charge by this reference to Abernethy,—"Hell has enlarged itself,"—apparently not being aware that Abernethy was merely quoting from Isaiah. He says that to write poetry was considered by the Scotch clergy to be a grievous offence, and worthy of special condemnation. He supports his statement by this reference: "A mastership in a grammar school was offered in 1767 to John Wilson, the author of 'Clyde'" (a poet, by the by, not found among the twenty John Wilsons commemorated by Watt). "But, says his biographer, the magistrates and ministers of Greenock thought fit, before they would admit Mr. Wilson to the superintendence of the grammar school, to stipulate that he should abandon 'the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making.'" This fact, however, by no means proves that poetry was considered, theologically, a sin, for perhaps it was regarded practically as only a disqualification. It is to be feared that many of our school committees now—country shopkeepers, perhaps, or city aldermen—would, apart from Calvinism, think that a poet must be necessarily a dreamer and an unpractical man.

A few exaggerations of this kind there may be. But, on the whole, the account seems to be correctly given; and it is one which will do good.

In the remaining portion of the second volume Mr. Buckle gives a very vigorous description of the intellectual progress of the Scotch during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His account of Adam Smith as a writer is peculiarly brilliant. His views of Hume and Reid are ably drawn. Thence he proceeds to discuss the discoveries of Black and Leslie in natural philosophy, of Smith and Hutton in geology, of Cavendish in chemistry, of Cullen and Hunter in physiology and pathology. These discussions are interesting, and show a great range of knowledge and power of study in the writer. Yet they are episodes, and have little bearing on the main course of his thought.