ENVIRONMENTAL SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGISTS 105 



propriety, and legality, their institutions of society and government, their 

 wars and revolutions. 1 



Of the fundamental economic teachings of Marx, not one is 

 accepted today by economists of recognized authority. 2 His pro- 

 phecy concerning the disappearance of the middle class has failed 

 of fulfilment. His emphasis on the conflict between the capitalis- 

 tic and proletariat classes as the very essence of social and indus- 

 trial evolution is now recognized as being too easy a solution of 

 the problem of conflict of interests between classes and between 

 groups, but his teaching that social progress and social institutions 

 are determined largely by economic conditions, has received 

 increasing acceptance with the passing years. 3 



Henry Thomas Buckle (1820-1862) 

 Intellect and Environment 



Frail of body from earliest years with almost no schooling and 

 without the home training which was the making of Spencer, 

 Henry Thomas Buckle, self-educated, if that term is ever appro- 

 priate to use, at his death at the age of forty-one years, left a 

 work which has placed his name high among those who have 

 contributed to the science of social progress. 



Although his role was that of a philosopher of history and his 

 aim " to bring up this great department of inquiry [history] to a 

 level with other departments " by placing it on the sure founda- 

 tion of science, his History of Civilization in England contains 

 much that bears directly on the development of the doctrine of 

 adaptation as a theory of social progress. 



Although well equipped for his task as to information gleaned 

 from the study of many thousand books, as well as by extensive 

 travel, in logic he was exceedingly weak. Here, as nowhere else, 

 was manifested the lack of training which such a person would 

 have received by means of a university education. 



Mr. Buckle's approach to his problem was through statistics 

 and economics, so his point of view, his illustrations and con- 



1 W. J. Ghent, Mass and Class, ch. I. 2 Cf. Kirkup, op. cit., pp. 154 f. 



3 Cf. discussion of Active Material Adaptation, infra, Part IV. 



