108 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
He summarizes his conclusions in the first part of Chapter IIT 
and brings out so clearly the contrast between passive and active 
adaptation that portions may well be given. 
Looking at the history of the world as a whole, the tendency has been, in 
Europe, to subordinate nature to man; out of Europe, to subordinate man 
to nature. . . . It suggests the important consideration, that if we would 
understand, for instance, the history of India, we must make the external 
world our first study, because it has influenced man more than man has 
influenced it. If, on the other hand, we would understand the history of a 
country like France or England we must make man our principal study, 
because nature being comparatively weak, every step in the great progress 
has increased the dominion of the human mind over the agencies of the ex- 
ternal world. Even in those countries where the power of man has reached 
the highest point, the pressure of nature is still immense, but it diminishes 
in each succeeding generation, because our increasing knowledge enables us 
not so much to control nature, as to foretell her movements, and thus obviate 
many of the evils she would otherwise occasion. . . . All around us are the 
traces of this glorious and successful struggle. Indeed it seems as if in 
Europe there was nothing man feared to attempt. The invasions of the sea 
repelled, and whole provinces, as in the case of Holland, rescued from its 
grasp; mountains cut through and turned into level roads; soils of the most 
obstinate sterility becoming exuberant, from the mere advance of chemical 
knowledge; while, in regard to electric phenomena, we see the subtlest, the 
most rapid, and the most mysterious of all forces, made the medium of 
thought and obeying even the most capricious behests of the human mind. 
. . . Formerly the richest countries, were those in which nature was most 
bountiful; now the richest countries are those in which man is most active. 
. . . From these facts it may be fairly inferred that the advance of Euro- 
pean civilization is characterized by a diminishing influence of physical laws, 
and an increasing influence of mental laws. . . . These mental laws, when 
ascertained, will be the ultimate basis of the history of Europe; the physical 
laws will be treated as of minor importance, and as merely giving rise to dis- 
turbances, the force and frequency of which have, during several centuries, 
perceptibly diminished.1 
This conclusion leads Buckle to discuss the current meta- 
physical method of studying mental phenomena, — the intuitional 
method, as we now say, —and to suggest as Comte had done that 
mental phenomena must be studied in their historical manifesta- 
tions as furnishing an objective, “‘ common to all.’ He was 
evidently reaching after the modern method of physiological- 
psychology. 
1 History of Civilization, pp. 138-143. 
