The advent of a Unitary Science and the inauguration of a true Deductive Method in all domains of Thought, will, indeed, completely revolutionize our Scientific bases, and render precision and infallibility possible in domains where now only conjecture and probability exist. It will enable us to establish on a firm and secure foundation the Laws or Principles of every department of the Universe of Matter and of Mind, and to penetrate the Phenomena of all realms to an extent now scarcely imagined. It will furnish us the 'Criterion of Truth' so long sought after—a ground of intellectual agreement in all the concerns of life, so far as this is essential, similar to that which we now have in Mathematics, where difference of opinion is impossible because proof is of a nature to be alike convincing to all.
But, as in Mathematics a limit is reached, beyond which the finite character of our intelligence does not permit us to apply the Laws which we are well assured still prevail, so there is an outlying circle of practical activity which no Science can compass. The various tints of the autumn forest are probably the results of Mathematical arrangements of particles; but to how great an extent we shall be able to discover what precise arrangement produces a given shade of color, is doubtful. Some delicate varieties, at least, will always be beyond our definite apprehension. Whether we shall dine at one hour or another, whether we will wear gray or black, and innumerable other questions of specialty, do not come within the range of Scientific solution, and never can. So that when every domain of human concern is solidly established on a basis of Exact Science, there will still remain a field of indefinite extent, in which the Intuitive application of eternal Principles will furnish an unlimited activity for the Practical, Æsthetic, Imaginative, Idealistic, Artistic, and Religious faculties of Mankind.
The task which Mr. Buckle set himself to accomplish was, in a marked sense, original and peculiar. Although several systematic attempts had been made in Europe, prior to his time, to investigate the history of man according to those exhaustive methods which in other branches of Knowledge have proved successful, and by which alone empirical observations can be raised to scientific truths, the imperfect state of the Physical Sciences necessarily rendered the execution of such an undertaking extremely defective. It was not, indeed, until the vast mass of Facts which make up the body of the various Sciences had been included within appropriate formulæ, and until the elaborate Classification of Auguste Comte had separated that which was properly Knowledge from that which was not, with sufficient exactitude to answer the purposes of broad Generalization, and had established the relations of the different domains of intelligence, that such a work as the 'History of Civilization' was possible.
Previous Historians, with these few exceptions, had contented themselves with the narration of the Facts of national progress, the merely superficial exhibition of the external method of a people's life, and had almost wholly neglected or greatly subordinated the Philosophical or Scientific aspect of the subject, namely, the causes of the given development. Separate domains of History had, indeed, been examined with considerable ability; but hardly any attempt had been made to combine the various parts into a consistent whole, and ascertain in what way they were connected with each other. Still less had there been any notable effort to apply the whole body of our existing knowledge to the elucidation of the problem of human progress. While the necessity of generalization in all the other great realms of investigation had been freely conceded, and strenuous exertions had been made to rise from particular Facts to the discovery of the Laws by which those Facts are governed, Historians continued to pursue the stereotyped course of merely relating events, interspersed with such reflections as seemed interesting or instructive.
Up to the period when Mr. Buckle essayed his 'History of Civilization,' few, if any, of the well-known modern Historians had conceived that an acquaintance with all the departments of human intelligence was a necessary accomplishment in a writer on the past career of the world, and no one of them had undertaken to write history from that basis. 'Hence,' says the author whom we are considering, and who makes, in the first pages of his book, substantially the same statements concerning the condition of Historical literature which are made here—'hence the singular spectacle of one historian being ignorant of political economy; another knowing nothing of law; another, nothing of ecclesiastical affairs, and changes of opinion; another neglecting the philosophy of statistics, and another physical science; although these topics are the most essential of all, inasmuch as they comprise the principal circumstances by which the temper and character of mankind have been affected, and in which they are displayed. These important pursuits being, however, cultivated, some by one man, and some by another, have been isolated rather than united: the aid which might be derived from analogy and from mutual illustration has been lost; and no disposition has been shown to concentrate them upon history, of which they are, properly speaking, the necessary components.'
The work which Mr. Buckle contemplated was designed to supply this desideratum in respect to History. It was an endeavor to discover 'the Principles which govern the character and destiny of nations,' an effort 'to bring up this great department of inquiry to a level with other departments,' 'to accomplish for the history of man something equivalent, or at all events analogous to, what has been effected by other inquirers for the different branches of Natural Science,' and 'to elevate the study of history from its present crude and informal state,' and place 'it in its proper rank, as the head and chief of all the Sciences.'
At the outset of his undertaking, we have ample evidence that the capacious-minded Englishman had fixed upon no less a labor than 'to solve the great problem of affairs; to detect those hidden circumstances which determine the march and destiny of nations; and to find, in the events of the past, a key to the proceedings of the future, which is nothing less than to unite into a single science all the laws of the moral and physical world.' He was thus bent, doubtless with only a vague apprehension of the nature of the problem, on the discovery of that Unitary Law, whose apprehension is so anxiously awaited, which is to cement the various branches of our Knowledge into a Universal Science, and furnish an Exact basis for all our thinking.
The Method which Mr. Buckle employed in the prosecution of his magnificent design was the Inductive. He made 'a collection of historical and scientific facts,' drew from them such conclusions as he thought they suggested and authorized; and then applied the Generalizations thus obtained to the elucidation of the career of various countries. When we consider the nature of the work undertaken and the means by which it was to be achieved, we can hardly deny, that this attempt to create a Science of History was, in a distinguishing sense, the most gigantic intellectual effort which the world has ever been called to witness. The domain of investigation was almost new. The point of Observation entirely so. Vast masses of Facts encumbered it, aggregated in orderless heaps—orderless, at least, so far as his uses were subserved. Comte had, indeed, brought the different departments of inquiry into proximately definite relations in obedience to an abstract and Static Law; but while this labor was, in other respects, an essential preliminary to Mr. Buckle's undertaking, it was of little immediate value in an attempt to secure the direct solution of the most intricate and complex questions of Concrete dynamical Sociology, involving the unstable and shifting contingencies of individual activity. The whole of the intellectual accumulations of the centuries may be said to have been piled about the English Thinker, and he was to discover in and derive from them the unerring Law or Laws which should serve to explain, with at least something approaching precision and clearness, the kaleidoscopic phases of human existence.
Only one generally known effort in the realm of Thought bears any comparison to this, examined in reference to the vigor, breadth, and variety of the mental faculties which it called into requisition. Viewed in connection with the work of the founder of the Positive School, we may say, without any disparagement to the comprehensive abilities of the French Philosopher, that the task undertaken by the English Historian required a tenacity of intellectual grasp, a steadiness of mental vision, a scope of generalizing power, an all-embracing scholarship, a marvellous accumulation of Facts, and a wonderful readiness to handle them, which even the prodigious labors of the Positive Philosophy did not demand. Comte had, indeed, like Buckle, to arrange the Facts of the universe into order. But in his case they were only to be grouped under appropriate headings, and, as it were, quietly labeled.
With the author of 'Civilization in England' it was otherwise. In the actual careers of men and of nations, Facts do not stand related to each other and to human actions in the distinct and distinguishable way in which they appear when correlated, as by Comte, in accordance with general Laws. The domain of the concrete, or of practical life, has always a variable element which does not obtain in the sphere of generalizing Principles, and which immensely complicates the investigation of the problems of real existence. Comte purposely excluded the realm of the concrete from his studies, and therefore simplified, to a great extent, his field of labor. Yet even in his attempt to bring order into this curtailed department of inquiry, he professes, not merely his own inability to accomplish, but his conviction of the inherent impossibility of the accomplishment of that, for the abstract only, which Buckle really undertook for the concrete; namely, the reduction of the Phenomena of the Universe to a single Law; or, what is synonymous, the integration of all the laws of the moral and physical world into a single Science.