Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. 145 



society, are to be deemed rather presentiments of 

 the truth than the results of deliberate investiga- 

 tion. Machiavelli was one of the first to subject 

 social phenomena to a careful study ; but he ar- 

 rived at no broad generalizations, and " he suf- 

 fered, moreover, from the serious deficiency of 

 being too much occupied with the practical utility 

 of his subject." * The " Scienza Nuova " of Vico 

 contained many new and startling views of his- 

 tory, and the writings of Montesquieu presented 

 a daring attempt to constitute a social science; 

 but both these great thinkers were crippled by a 

 lack of materials, owing to the imperfect condi- 

 tion of physical knowledge at the time when they 

 wrote. Condorcet, proceeding from the sugges- 

 tions of his friend Turgot, arrived at the law 

 that the whole human race is in a course of evo- 

 lution, from the less perfect to the more perfect ; 

 but his writings are encumbered with metaphysi- 

 cal notions, and he had no idea of the true nature 

 of human development. For above all his pre- 

 decessors stands Voltaire, whose " Essai sur les 

 Moeurs " was an immortal attempt to apply the 

 principles of scientific investigation to the entire 

 history of our race. Nothing more was done in 

 this direction until the unprecedented develop- 



1 Buckle, vol. i. p. 751, note 131. 

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