CH. xix.] ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS. 231 



the environment, causing fresh disturbance of equilibrium 

 and renewed doubt resulting in further adaptation. And so 

 the process continues until, if the person in question be 

 sufficiently earnest and sufficiently fortunate, the environ 

 ment enlarges so far as to comprehend the most advanced 

 science of the day, and the process of adaptation goes on 

 until an approximate equilibrium is attained between the 

 order of conceptions and the order of phenomena, and 

 scepticism, having discharged its function, exists no longer, 

 save in so far as it may be said to survive in the engrained 

 habit of weighing evidence and testing one s hypotheses. 



Now to say that scepticism is one of the causes of 

 progress is to make a historical induction which is valuable 

 as far as it goes ; but it is at best an empirical generalization. 

 To make it a scientific law, we need to express the function 

 of scepticism in terms of some formula which covers all the 

 phenomena of progress. And who does not see that in so 

 expressing it we are obtaining a far more definite and ac 

 curate and serviceable notion than when we merely state 

 vaguely that scepticism is a cause of progress ? 



Just so with the statement that the protective spirit is a 

 hindrance to progress. By the colloquial phrase &quot; protective 

 spirit,&quot; Mr. Buckle means the control, or at least the undue 

 control, of the community over its individual members. 

 Now in estimating the effect of this circumstance upon pro 

 gress, everything depends upon the precise amount of such 

 control which we are to regard as excessive. But this varies 

 with each epoch of civilization. What would now be in 

 tolerable despotism was once needful restraint. You cannot 

 have a constitutional democracy of Vandals or Moguls. So 

 long as men s altruistic feelings are not powerful enough to 

 make them spontaneously respect the claims of their fellows, 

 the only force which can make society hold together is that 

 hero-worship which enjoins implicit obedience to the head 

 of the tribe or state. But, as we have already seen, the 



