The character of his undertaking compelled Mr. Buckle, on the contrary, to stretch his mental antennæ into every department of mundane activity, to hold the Facts there discovered, so far as he might, collectively within his grasp, and to draw them by an irresistible strain into gradually decreasing circles of generalization, until they were brought to a Central Law, which should contain within itself the many-sided explanation of the intricate ramifications of individual and national careers. The difference in the work essayed by the two distinguished Thinkers whose labors we are considering, is somewhat analogous to that which exists between the profession of the apothecary and that of the physician. The former must know the range of Materia Medica, and the contents of the Pharmacopæia, so far as is necessary to arrange the various medicines in order, and deliver them when called for. The latter must hold the different remedies in his knowledge, not as classified upon the pharmaceutist's shelves, but as related to the various forms of constantly changing vital Phenomena, in the midst of which he is to detect their applicability to different forms of disease. Still more analogous is Comte to the student of Natural History, whose business it is, preëminently, to distribute and classify the Animal Kingdom, in accordance with Generalizations which relate mainly to the form or type of organization; while Buckle resembles the student of a higher rank, who endeavors, in the midst of the play of passion and the actual exhibitions of life itself, to read the nature of the mental and moral development which exists beneath them and controls their workings.
It is evident that, up to a period subsequent to the publication of his first volume, the writer of the 'History of Civilization' entertained the fullest confidence in the ability of the Inductive Method to cope with the ultimate problems of the Universe, and had high expectations of being able, through its instrumentality, to reduce the whole body of our Knowledge to a systematic whole, and to establish a Science of Sciences which should be a Criterion of Truth, and the crowning intellectual achievement of the ages. Whether Mr. Buckle fully comprehended the real nature of the Science toward which he was aiming; whether he entirely appreciated the radical and important change which its discovery would necessarily introduce into our Methods of Investigation;—whether he saw that it would be the inauguration of a true Deductive Mode of reasoning, which would enable us to advance with incredible rapidity and certainty into the arcana of those departments which he was then obliged to explore with the most tedious research, the most plodding patience, and the most destructive intellectual tension, in order to accumulate a limited array of Facts, is somewhat doubtful.
The significant sentence which occurs in the second volume of his work, closely following the announcement of his disappointment at being unable to achieve all that he had expected and promised, and which states that 'in a complete scheme of our knowledge, and when all our resources are fully developed and marshalled into order, as they must eventually be, the two methods [the Inductive and the Deductive] will be, not hostile, but supplementary, and will be combined into a single system,' seems to indicate that at some period prior to the publication of the second volume, and subsequent to the issue of the first, the insufficient nature of the Inductive Method as a Scientific guide broke upon him, and some conception of the nature of a Mode of Reasoning which should combine the two Processes in just relations, began to dawn into his mind. That he obtained anything more than a faint glimpse of the true Method, is not likely. Had he done so, he would certainly have made some statement of the great results which would follow its inauguration, even if he could have refrained from bestowing one of his glowing and enraptured paragraphs upon the fairest and most entrancing vision of future achievement which the devotee of intellectual investigation will ever witness.
It is probable, that in carrying on his investigations after the publication of the first volume of his work, finding it impossible to handle the accumulations of Facts necessary to his purpose, and discovering the inexactitude and insufficiency of his Generalizations in the ratio that the bounds of his field of inquiry enlarged, he was led to perceive the essential weakness and inadequacy of the Inductive Method, and the probable certainty that, at some future period, the progress of our Knowledge would lead to the establishment of positive bases for all departments of investigation, and thus furnish an opportunity for the harmonious and reciprocal activity of the two hitherto antagonistic Methods. That he had any definite idea of the precise nature of the bases on which this union would take place, that he perceived the exact character of the Science of Universology which it would create, or contemplated the subordination of the Inductive Process to the Deductive, there is no indication.
But whatever may have been Mr. Buckle's understanding or expectation in reference to the future, it is certain that between the publication of the first and second volumes of his History, the hope which he had formed and announced of being able to create a Science of History had vanished, and his efforts were confined to a less extensive programme. The pages in which this change of purpose is made known display, in touching outlines, tinged with a noble sadness, that the soul of the great Englishman was, in all the attributes of magnanimity, at least, a fitting mate for his intellect.
A storm of obloquy had assailed him at the outset of his labor. Beginning with the time when the first instalment of 'Civilization in England' was given to the public, passion, prejudice, and pride had strained their powers to vilify his character and heap abuse upon his name. The Press, the Pulpit, and the Lyceum, with rare and brave exceptions, met the formidable array of Facts with which the work bristled, by sciolistic criticisms, bigoted denunciations, or timid, faint praise. Conservatives in Politics and Religion exhibited him as a dangerous innovator, a social iconoclast, the would-be destroyer of all that was sacred in Institutions and in Religion. Theologians branded him as immoral and atheistic, and poured upon him a torrent of vituperation and hatred.
The only public reply which the English writer condescended to make, is contained in the closing pages of the fourth chapter of the last volume which he published. Every line of this answer, which is transcribed below, breathes the spirit of Him who, when he was reviled, reviled not again—the spirit of forbearance, of generous forgiveness, of magnanimity, of unruffled dignity. Buckle had learned, indeed, from his own investigations, that he who would elevate mankind must expect, not only its indifference to his labors, but its positive abuse. He knew, that the individual who, like Jesus, attempts to promulgate new truth, either moral or intellectual, must expect to array against himself the greatest portion of the human family, incrusted in their prejudices, their ignorance, their interests, or their feelings, and must be content with the appreciation and sympathy of the few who are wise enough to understand him, truthful enough to accept his doctrine, however unwholesome to their tastes, and brave enough to avow it. Perhaps he had also learned the fact, that, in the present state of humanity's development, few, very few, even of the best of mankind, love truth, chiefly because it is truth, and are hence eager to know their own shortcomings; but that those truths only are, for the most part, capable of being acceptably presented to individuals, which it is more satisfactory to their personal feelings, more comfortable to their own inherent peculiarities of disposition, to conform to than to reject. Be this as it may, the reply which he makes to the outrages showered upon him is evidently the language of a man whose thoughts are far removed from the arena of petty spite or private resentment, the expression of one who knew the grandeur and usefulness of his labors, who expected, in their prosecution, to be misunderstood and calumniated, and who, yet, was incapable of other than the most generous impulses of a noble philanthropy toward his maligners and traducers.
In the announcement of his inability to fulfil the great promises made in the former volume, we find, likewise, the indications of a nature full of lofty grandeur. He who has known the scholar's hopes, the student's struggles, and the author's ambition, may form some faint conception of what must have been the feelings of the great Historian when the conviction came to him, first faintly foreshadowed and then deepening to a reality, that the prize for which he had contended—and such a prize! which had seemed, too, at times, almost within his grasp—was destined forever to elude him. Frankly to acknowledge failure in such a struggle, was in itself great; to acknowledge it when the cries of his assailants were still ringing in his ears, and when it might have been measurably concealed, was still greater; to acknowledge it in words which betray no trace of disappointed personal ambition, but only a regret that the final avenue to truth should not have been opened, was heroic even to sublimity. The pages of Buckle's 'History of Civilization' which record the answer to his traducers and the acknowledgment of his disappointment in relation to what he should be able to achieve, will stand in the annals of literary history as a memorable instance in which is significantly exhibited one factor of that highest religious spirit so much needed in our day—devotion to the intellectual discovery of all truth for truth's sake.
The following is the passage in question:
'In the moral world, as in the physical world, nothing is anomalous; nothing is unnatural; nothing is strange. All is order, symmetry, and law. There are opposites, but there are no contradictions. In the character of a nation, inconsistency is impossible. Such, however, is still the backward condition of the human mind, and with so evil and jaundiced an eye do we approach the greatest problems, that not only common writers, but even men from whom better things might be hoped, are on this point involved in constant confusion. Perplexing themselves and their readers by speaking of inconsistency, as if it were a quality belonging to the subject which they investigate, instead of being, as it really is, a measure of their own ignorance. It is the business of the historian to remove this ignorance by showing that the movements of nations are perfectly regular, and that, like all other movements, they are solely determined by their antecedents. If he cannot do this, he is no historian. He may be an annalist, or a biographer, or a chronicler, but higher than that he cannot rise, unless he is imbued with that spirit of science which teaches, as an article of faith, the doctrine of uniform sequence; in other words, the doctrine that certain events having already happened, certain other events corresponding to them will also happen. To seize this idea with firmness, and to apply it on all occasions, without listening to any exceptions, is extremely difficult, but it must be done by whoever wishes to elevate the study of history from its present crude and informal state, and do what he may toward placing it in its proper rank, as the head and chief of all the sciences. Even then, he cannot perform his task unless his materials are ample, and derived from sources of unquestioned credibility. But if his facts are sufficiently numerous; if they are very diversified; if they have been collected from such various quarters that they can check and confront each other, so as to do away with all suspicion of their testimony being garbled; and if he who uses them possesses that faculty of generalization, without which nothing great can be achieved, he will hardly fail in bringing some part of his labors to a prosperous issue, provided he devotes all his strength to that one enterprise, postponing to it every other object of ambition, and sacrificing to it many interests which men hold dear. Some of the most pleasurable incentives to action, he must disregard. Not for him are those rewards which in other pursuits the same energy would have earned; not for him, the sweets of popular applause; not for him, the luxury of power; not for him, a share in the councils of his country; not for him a conspicuous and honored place before the public eye. Albeit, conscious of what he could do, he may not compete in the great contest; he cannot hope to win the prize; he cannot even enjoy the excitement of the struggle. To him the arena is closed. His recompense lies within himself, and he must learn to care little for the sympathy of his fellow creatures, or for such honors as they are able to bestow. So far from looking for these things, he should rather be prepared for that obloquy which always awaits those, who, by opening up new veins of thought, disturb the prejudices of their contemporaries. While ignorance, and worse than ignorance, is imputed to him, while his motives are misrepresented and his integrity impeached, while he is accused of denying the value of moral principles, and of attacking the foundation of all religion, as if he were some public enemy, who made it his business to corrupt society, and whose delight it was to see what evil he could do; while these charges are brought forward, and repeated from mouth to mouth, he must be capable of pursuing in silence the even tenor of his way, without swerving, without pausing, and without stepping from his path to notice the angry outcries which he cannot but hear, and which he is more than human if he does not long to rebuke. These are the qualities, and these the high resolves, indispensable to him who, on the most important of all subjects, believing that the old road is worn out and useless, seeks to strike out a new one for himself, and, in the effort, not only perhaps exhausts his strength, but is sure to incur the enmity of those who are bent on maintaining the ancient scheme unimpaired. 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, is nothing less than to unite into a single science all the laws of the moral and physical world. Whoever does this, will build up afresh the fabric of our knowledge, rearrange its various parts, and harmonize its apparent discrepancies. Perchance, the human mind is hardly ready for so vast an enterprise. At all events, he who undertakes it will meet with little sympathy, and will find few to help him. And let him toil as he may, the sun and noontide of his life shall pass by, the evening of his days shall overtake him, and he himself have to quit the scene, leaving that unfinished which he had vainly hoped to complete. He may lay the foundation; it will be for his successors to raise the edifice. Their hands will give the last touch; they will reap the glory; their names will be remembered when his is forgotten.