IX.] Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. 137 



cause of progress, while good intentions are not — he 

 gets at once into compHcated difficulties ; and his 

 argument, when stripped of its dazzling rhetoric, is 

 so vague, confused, and unsatisfactory, that we cannot 

 help suspecting that the author has but an imperfect 

 comprehension of what he is arguing for. At the 

 outset, he makes an assertion directly contradictory 

 to the proposition which he is to prove. He says, 

 " There can be no doubt that a people are not really 

 advancing, if, on the one hand, their increasing ability 

 is accompanied by increasing vice, or if, on the other 

 hand, while they are becoming more virtuous they 

 likewise become more ignorant. This double move- 

 ment, moral and intellectual, is essential to the very 

 idea of civilisation, and includes the entire theory of 

 mental progress." * Having thus unequivocally ex- 

 pressed what we shall presently perceive to be in all 

 probability the true state of the case, he proceeds to 

 contradict himself, by setting to work to show that a 

 people advance in civilisation according as they 

 advance in knowledge, leaving the moral element 

 entirely out of the question. As this is one of the 

 most important points in his whole work, and one 

 which has excited hot discussion, we shall proceed to 



1 Vol. i. p. 159. 



