IX.] Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. 183 



ment,^ — and that scepticism, the only thing that could 

 have weakened it, did not exist, we may suspect that 

 the protective spirit could not have been so detri- 

 mental to the interests of civilisation as Mr. Buckle 

 supposes. 



On looking at the matter deductively, it will even 

 appear that without the protective spirit there could 

 have been no civilisation. For what but the most abso- 

 lute despotism and the profoundest awe of the ruling 

 power could ever have kept together the communi- 

 ties of the primitive men, with their cannibalism, 

 their bloodthirstiness, their dishonesty and treachery ? 

 As long as men could not live together peaceably — as 

 long as they neither knew nor practised the first 

 principles of morality — there must have been some 

 power sufficient to keep society from falling to pieces, 

 or there could have been no progress at all ; and the 

 only such power conceivable was that total subjection 

 of the many to the few which constitutes the protec- 

 tive system of government. As long as Persians 

 mutilated each other, and Carthaginians burned their 

 children, and Chinamen beat to death their wives — as 

 long as Hindus practised thuggee, and Spartans 

 practised stealing, and lonians practised piracy — 

 there must have been " Drakonian statutes written in 



^ Buckle, vol. i. chap. 2. 



