THE CAUSES OF PERSECUTION 



ment of individual persecutors, whatever general 

 statements the supposed exigencies of his theory 

 may have led him to make. When he comes 

 to treat of the bigoted Scotch divines of the 

 seventeenth century, he is only too ready to 

 charge them with moral perversity as well 

 as with intellectual ignorance and obtuseness. 

 This is very inconsistent ; but inconsistency can 

 hardly be avoided when one starts with such a 

 singularly half-true theory as that which Mr. 

 Buckle propounded. 



Mr. Buckle's fundamental error lay in the 

 attempt to assign distinct parts to elements of 

 human nature that in reality cannot be sepa- 

 rated. For didactic or school-room purposes it 

 is well enough to consider separately the intel- 

 lectual and moral faculties of man. But when 

 we come to examine concretely any actual group 

 of human phenomena, it is hopelessly futile to 

 try to consider intelligence and moral disposition 

 as working separately, or to assign to each its 

 kind and amount of effects. In point of fact 

 they never do work separately, but their com- 

 binations are so manifold and intricate that the 

 disentangling of effects becomes impossible. 

 When we look at things rather than words, we 

 see that every complex question of morals is 

 largely also a question of intelligence, and con- 

 versely. For example, let us consider what polit- 

 ical economists call the " effective desire of ac- 

 197 



