EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



turned from the discussion of the civilization of the 

 world to the limited field of England. And even in 

 this narrower field he staggered about in such a way as 

 to give point to the anecdote which Spencer tells in 

 his Autobiography. He and Huxley met and walked 

 with Buckle, and Huxley, struck by the historian's 

 feeble, undecided gait, remarked : "Ah, I see the kind 

 of man. He is top-heavy." Spencer notes: "I have 

 never done more than dip in the History of Civiliza- 

 tion in England; but I suspect that the analogy sug- 

 gested was not without truth. Buckle had taken in a 

 much larger quantity of matter than he could organ- 

 ize; and he staggered under the mass of it."^ One may 

 add that the reader also staggers under the burden 

 and, if his comprehensive method were followed, his- 

 tory would be less written and still less read. 



As a science, history asks the question whether the 

 actions of men and of societies are governed by fixed 

 laws. Buckle, of course, answers that they are gov- 

 erned by the laws of nature: "Thus the whole world 

 forms a necessary chain, in which indeed each man 

 may play his part, but can by no means determine 

 what that part shall be."° Or as a later and more in- 

 doctrinated scientific historian, Fiske, defines history: 

 "Civilization runs in a definite path, that the sum 

 total of ideas and feelings dominant in the next gen- 

 eration will be the offspring of the sum total of ideas 



'^Autobiography, vol. II, p. 4. 



^History of Civilization, Appleton, 1891, vol. I, p. 7. 



