human agencies and appliances, we confess that we see no encouragement to any work of reform. Nay, he even insists that it is wrong to attempt to break up this chain of sequences, and urges that, instead of throwing obstructions in the way, or seeking to check or restrain the natural tendency, everything should be done to favor it. Hence, he opposes the whole idea of legislating against popular vices, and especially of preaching the Gospel to the heathen. It is natural that certain persons should be vicious, and that ignorant heathen should be without the knowledge of God; and therefore nothing should be done to change their condition. Let them alone, he would say, until they shall come right by the natural course of things; and then you can legislate and preach to advantge. Or, he might rather say, preaching and legislation will then be altogether unnecessary.

Let us consider this matter a little. Nothing is better established in Ethics and Mental Philosophy, than the tendency of all vices and virtues to perpetuate themselves; and when once resolved into habit, they become deeply seated in the character, and difficult of extirpation. All moral teachers, Greek, Roman and Christian, have recognized this as a fundamental law, and have laid great stress upon it. We look for inflexible integrity to the man whose virtues have long been matters of settled habit. It may be safely assumed that there is no natural tendency in vice to reform itself. Experience may teach the folly of a course of wrong doing, and thus direct attention to a rule of right which, before, had escaped observation; but experience alone has never taught men the sinfulness of their course, nor suggested an authoritative rule of right. All history forbids the idea of the heathen ever rising of themselves to a purer moral code and a holier religion. It was the Gospel which first sent the thrill of life through the wilderness of Europe, and redeemed it from barbarism; it was the military power of Mohammedanism which extinguished the light of the Gospel in Asia and Africa, and erected a barbaric system on the ruins of the Church. Besides, Love, Truth is aggressive in its very nature; and however Mr. Buckle's theory may appear in contrast, there is no law of nature more potent

than this; the law of aggression, which impels every good man to wage war against sin, to attack it in its strongholds, and seek to supersede it by pure morals and a true religion. The idea of correcting sin by indulgence, or by direct encouragement, astounds common sense, and is an outrage on all human history.

There is another point in Mr. Buckle's philosophy. We might naturally expect him to be very charitable to those "erring mortals" who have violated the law of propriety. But strangely enough, we find him incessantly dealing denunciation especially against Kings and Priests, and all the advocates of conservatism and Religion. He anathematizes Charles I., and Laud, in the most unmeasured terms, and signs their death-warrant anew, with a freedom and gusto which might be refreshing to a cannibal. And all this, let it be observed, while he is strongly maintaining that the "Connection" between their conduct and the age in which they lived, was "Necessary;" and that it would have been most unnatural for them to act in any way differently from what they did.

After all his ado about the law of "Necessary Connection," we cannot avoid the conviction that Mr. Buckle's chief object in writing was to eliminate God and everything Supernatural, and especially Christianity, from the universe. To this point he returns again and again. Religion is with him the synonym of ignorance and superstition; and he earnestly insists that humanity can never take its normal position in the scale of being, nor properly fulfil its destiny, until it is freed from such vulgarity. We cannot determine from his book, whether he believes in God, in any sense. If so, it must be the pantheistic idea of God in Universal Nature. This is the highest notion of Divinity which can be reconciled to the general tenor of his thoughts. And yet all the grandeur of Pantheism is spoiled by another of his ideas, which he presents at the opening of his third Chapter: to wit, that Nature is and should ever be subordinate to Man. In praise of European Civilization, he says, "the tendency has been in Europe to subordinate Nature to Man; and out of Europe, to subordinate Man to Nature." Hence, if Nature is God, he makes the God of the European

inferior to man; and the God of the pagan not superior, only because of man's greater depression. He strongly insists on the importance of elevating man, by intellectual culture, above Nature, and teaching him to despise all the mysteries and grandeur of Nature. He complains that "Even in those countries where the power of man has reached the highest point, the pressure of Nature is still immense;" though he asserts that "it diminishes in each succeeding generation, because our increasing knowledge enables us, not so much to control Nature, as to foretell her movements, and thus obviate many of the evils she would otherwise occasion." Thus, he cherishes no more reverence for Universal Nature, than for a Personal God; seeing that he wages open war on Nature, as the grand enemy of civilization and of man.

What is the ground of his quarrel with Nature? Is it that she is deficient in beauty, in regularity or in grandeur? All these he praises. He leads us through the magnificent scenery of the Alps, the Himalayas and the Cordilleras, and calls upon us to admire their cloudy heights, their roaring torrents, and the monotone of their glacier groanings, coming up like the wail of expiring demons from the bottomless pit. ie invites us to explore the wilds of Africa and the jungles of India, and the exuberance of vegetation on the banks of the Amazon. He bids us mark the heavy cadences of sullen wrath in the fitful volcano; and how the valleys roll to the surge of the earthquake; and how the sea foams as the tornado passes by. In short, he docs ample justice to the grandeur and the power of Nature; but he claims that her power is exerted for a wrong purpose. In what way has her power been abused? been abused? His answer is, that she awes man into reverence, and teaches him to own there is a God, and to bow down before the Most High! This is no deduction of our own. It is frankly given by our author, as a reason why Nature should be "subordinated to man." All the superstition, (religion,) of the world is matter of imagination; and as Nature teaches men to be religious, by stimulating the imagination, her voice should be silenced. He admits that a good Religion may be favorable to Civilization; but in nearly all cases, the good Religion of a people is a mere

symptom," serving to indicate their intellectual condition; and instead of being a cause of progress, is but an effect, and an indication of what they were before receiving it.

Another noticeable feature in Mr. Buckle's theory is, that it throws Man entirely out of the system of Nature. With him Nature is one thing, and Man is another. He then divides all the laws of the universe into two classes, which he calls physical and mental, and asserts that the physical laws of Nature are of secondary importance, while the laws of Mind, triumphing over the forces of Nature, are alone concerned in the advancement of Civilization. But who shall say which is the more important? We grant that without the operation of mind, all the physical forces of Nature could never produce Civilization. Were the whole system of Nature just as it is, with no intellectual agent operating in it or upon it, it would be like a vast laboratory in the absence of the lecturer and operator; but it does not follow that the value of the laboratory shall be under-estimated, in order that science may be successfully taught.

Mr. Buckle insists that "European civilization is characterized by a diminishing influence of physical laws, and an increasing influence of mental laws." Perhaps he meant to say, that, by the strengthening of the one, the other becomes weaker by comparison. But even this would not be true; for it is not true that savage life is more natural than civilized. If by natural, we understand normal, according to rule, or fundamental law, the object of all civilization is, or should be, to bring man into a natural state; while savage life holds him in an abnormal condition. Will any one say that, with the capacity of man for intellectual enlargement, it is more natural, or more consonant with the laws of his being, that he should remain in savage ignorance, than that he should be enlightened? If savage life were more natural than civilized, then man should flourish better under it. But all history shows, as Mr. Buckle admits, that in no sense is man so healthful and vigorous, either physically or mentally, or his condition so favorable to happiness, in the savage, as in the civilized state. Can any man, looking on savage life, in its nakedness and loathsome

ness, and ignorance, and stolidity, and utter insensibility to all beauty and excellence, say that this is the most natural condition of humanity, and that such is what man was designed to be? Yet Mr. Buckle must answer this in the affirmative; and hence, his low estimate of Nature, and his incessant crusade against her.

Our author next divides mental laws into two classes ;-Intellectual and Moral. Here, he raises the question, "Which of these two parts or elements of mental progress is the more important?" after admitting the importance of good morals, and insisting, in a side argument, that every thing good in the Ethics of the Gospel was known and taught by Pagan Philosphers, long before the Christian era, he concludes that,

Although moral excellence is more amiable, and to most persons, more attractive, than intellectual excellence, still, it must be confessed, that, looking at ulterior results, it is far less active, less permanent, and, as I shall presently prove, less productive of real good."

Moral influences and moral enterprises, he pronounces short lived, at best, and capable of affecting but a small proportion of the individuals with whom they come in contact,

He boldly asserts that,

"There is no instance on record of an ignorant man, who, having good intentions, and supreme power to enforce them, has not done far more evil than good. And whenever the intentions have been very eager, and the power very extensive, the evil has been enormous. But if you can diminish the sincerity of that man, if you can mix some alloy with his motives, you will likewise diminish the evil that he works. If he is selfish, as well as ignorant, it will often happen that you may play off his vice against his ignorance, and by exciting his fears, restrain his mischief. If, however, he has no fear, if he is entirely unselfish, if his sole object is the good of others, if he pursues that object with enthusiasm, upon a large scale and with disinterested zeal, then it is that you have no check upon him; you have no means of preventing the calamities which, in an ignorant age, an ignorant man will be sure to inflict."*

We were not prepared for such a stand as this, even in this nineteenth century, so characterized by boldness of speech, and reckless assertion. Compared even with the heathen philoso

* Vol. I., p. 132.