128 DARWINIANISM. 



regard of which the contents/ the egg itself, had long 

 disappeared. 



Mr. Darwin's " instinct " was not far from the truth, 

 when he doubted whether " his (Buckle's) generalisations 

 are worth anything," and when in the same context the 

 word "sophistry" occurred to him. But, surely, when 

 he credits Buckle whose knowledge consisted only of 

 the most superficial propos of Hume, Voltaire, and 

 Gibbon, whose knowledge then, really, and in simple and 

 good truth, was only the ignorance of a flushed and 

 conceited boy surely when he credits Buckle with 

 " astounding knowledge," and so names him, " to his 

 taste," " the very best writer of the English language 

 that ever lived " surely he places that " taste " un- 

 deniably before us. That taste is a stage, judicially, in 

 regard to literature, and books, and intelligence there- 

 appertinent generally the theme that is immediately 

 present to us. No doubt Mr. Buckle's waters run very 

 triumphantly, and with a swell over the usual printing- 

 press shallows ; but what do they carry and what are 

 they ? The enlightenment of Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon 

 indignantly infused into the current commonplace of 

 figures and phrases traditional to the pen, but big and 

 tumid withal from the heated conviction of a school- 

 boy ! 



There is no theme to take an instance on which 

 Mr. Buckle swells bigger than on Political Economy. 

 And there is no theme on which his emphatic audacity 

 of assurance is more emphatically an assurance, not of 

 knowledge as he means it, but of ignorance as it is. 

 The proof is undeniable even with appeal to no standard 

 but his own. He is sure that " the practical value of 

 this noble study (political economy, namely) is perhaps 

 only fully known to the more advanced thinkers ; " and 

 he is equally sure of what is " the corner-stone of political 



