214 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



Not only did Mr. Buckle's impatient and un- 

 critical habit prevent his vast reading from re- 

 sulting in sound scholarship, but his lack of sub- 

 tlety and precision were so marked as to stamp 

 all his thinking with the character of shallowness. 

 He seized readily upon the broader and vaguer 

 distinctions among things, the force of which the 

 ordinary reader feels most strongly and with least 

 mental effort, and of such raw material, without 

 further analysis, and without suspecting the need 

 for further analysis, he constructed his historical 

 theories. To this mode of proceeding, aided by 

 his warmth of temperament and the lavish pro- 

 fusion of his illustrations, he undoubtedly owed 

 the great though ephemeral success which his 

 book attained. The average reader is much sooner 

 stimulated by generalizations that are broad and 

 indistinct than by such as are subtle and precise ; 

 and if we stop to consider why Mr. Buckle's name 

 has been sometimes associated with those of men 

 so far beyond his calibre as Mill and Darwin, we 

 may see the reason in the fact that Mr. Buckle 

 could be entirely grasped by many of those very 

 admirers of the latter writers who least appreciate 

 or fathom their finest and deepest mental quali- 

 ties. But this essentially superficial character of 

 Mr. Buckle's thought is shown not only in his ob- 



