IX. 



MR. buckle's fallacies.^ 



It has always been a favourite illusion, that social 

 changes do not, like physical changes, conform to 

 fixed and ascertainable laws. Not only is it that 

 philosophers of a certain class have, from the earliest 

 times, explained historical events as instances of the 

 continued interposition of an arbitrary power, ex- 

 terior to and independent of the material universe ; 

 not only is it that thinkers of an opposite school have 

 referred the actions of men to a no less arbitrary 

 power, operative in each individual as an ultimate 

 inexplicable agent ; but it is that the mass of men 



^ As this review of Mr. Buckle's History of Civilisation was written 

 and published when I was only nineteen years old, I must not now be 

 held responsible for all the opinions expressed in it. From the favour- 

 able estimate of Positivism which runs through it, I now of course 

 thoroughly dissent. I have reproduced the article without altering 

 a single word ; and have appended to it a " Postscript," written 

 fifteen years later, as an illustration of the change which Mr. Buckle's 

 reputation has undery;one. 



