Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. 189 



on a long and thorough investigation into the 

 laws of the natural world. Giving up as hope- 

 less all search for the undiscoverable, all striving 

 to know the unknowable, science contents itself 

 with finding out that which lies within our reach. 

 But it was not in the power of man, on first per- 

 ceiving the inadequacy and incongruity of his old 

 belief, to pass at once to the new. No one can 

 reject an old system of opinions, which has shaped 

 his thoughts and guided his actions in the past, 

 and then take up a new system, to shape his 

 thoughts and guide his actions in the future, with- 

 out going through an intermediate state of pain- 

 ful and wearisome doubt. As with the individ- 

 ual, so with the race. The sceptical period could 

 not but intervene. t It was only after countless 

 attempts to explore the dark and dangerous re- 

 gion of the Infinite had all proved futile it was 

 only after successive theories had all been weighed 

 in the balance, and found wanting that man 

 could come at last to repose in the calm spirit and 

 sure methods of scientific inquiry. Before this 

 must necessarily have come that tumultuous sea- 

 son of doubt and denial, of discord and revolu- 

 tion, in which the sceptical spirit reigned su- 

 preme. The rottenness of old institutions, forms 

 and dogmas, had to be exposed before they could 



