EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



many of them, yet the American Indians in the best 

 parts of North America remained savages and would 

 still be in the same state if they had not been over- 

 whelmed by Europeans. 



Nor does Buckle hesitate to apply his laws to the 

 explanation of the existing national characteristics of 

 the European societies. Where the aspects of nature 

 are the more majestic, there, he finds, man becomes 

 painfully aware of his insignificance and does not 

 struggle; where nature is feeble, man gains confi- 

 dence in his powers. Mountains, earthquakes, and vol- 

 canoes are certainly prevalent in Italy, Spain, and 

 Portugal ; accordingly ignorance and superstition are 

 the characteristics of those people. So we must not 

 look to them for superiority in scientific and rational 

 achievement but, in the imaginative life, they are the 

 leaders as nearly all the greatest sculptors and artists 

 have been produced in those peninsulas. This ex- 

 planation is too simple. Buckle forgot the music of 

 Germany; the art of France; the stubborn resistance 

 to superstitions and ignorance in Switzerland; and 

 worst of all, the Romans, strikingly deficient in art 

 and imagination, created a great empire in Italy 

 although its mountains and volcanoes were presuma- 

 bly as majestic then as they are now. 



Buckle was not more fortunate when he discussed 

 the mental laws of civilization. He divides them into 

 moral feeling and intellectual knowledge. Progress, 

 he says, does not depend on differences or growth of 



C 315 1 



