X.] Postscript on Mr. Buckle. 199 



cision were so marked as to stamp all his thinking 

 with the character of shallowness. He seized readily 

 upon the broader and vaguer distinctions among 

 things, the force of which the ordinary reader feels 

 most strongly and with least mental effort, and of 

 such raw material, without further analysis, and with- 

 out suspecting the need for further analysis, he con- 

 structed his historical theories. To this mode of 

 proceeding, aided by his warmth of temperament 

 and the lavish profusion of his illustrations, he un- 

 doubtedly owed the great though ephemeral success 

 which his book attained. The average reader is 

 much sooner stimulated by generalisations that are 

 broad and indistinct than by such as are subtle and 

 precise ; and if we stop to consider why Mr. Buckle's 

 name has been sometimes associated with those of 

 men so far beyond his calibre as Mill and Darwin, we 

 may see the reason in the fact that Mr. Buckle could 

 be entirely grasped by many of those very admirers of 

 the latter writers who least appreciate or fathom their 

 finest and deepest mental qualities. But this essen- 

 tially superficial character of Mr. Buckle's thought 

 is shown not only in his obtuseness to subtle distinc- 

 tions, but even more conspicuously in his utter failure 

 to seize upon any deeply-significant but previously 

 hidden relations among facts, in the work which 



