281 
In a similar manner lie traces the peculiar aspects of 
European civilization to the absence of these conditions. Its 
colder climate and uncongenial soil have created the individual 
character which distinguishes the European from the Asiatic 
races, effected the dispersion of wealth, and generated the 
feeling of personal freedom. 
But there is another power to which Mr. Buckle ascribes 
a potent influence in the creation of the ideas of religion and 
morality — the aspects of external nature. He divides them 
into two divisions : those which excite the imagination, and 
those which affect the intellect. To the former, which he con- 
siders the potent influence, he ascribes the creation of the 
great national religions. On this subject Mr. Buckle has a 
very striking passage, which I cannot forbear quoting : — 
“ Man (says lie), contrasting himself with the force and dignity of nature, 
becomes painfully sensible of his own insignificance. A sense of inferiority 
steals over him. From every quarter innumerable obstacles hem him in and 
limit his individual will. His mind, appalled by the indefinite and the un- 
definable, hardly cares to scrutinize the details of which such imposing 
grandeur consists. On the other hand, where the works of nature are small 
and feeble, man regains his confidence,” &c. &c. (p. 109). 
Mr. Buckle is here theorizing, instead of making careful in- 
ductions of facts, and erecting on them only such theories as 
the facts will bear. He wants to account for the existence of 
the peculiar form of Asiatic, and, above all, Hindoo idealiza- 
tion. I do not wish to dispute with him that some of the 
things to which he attributes it have exerted a powerful influ- 
ence, but to say that they are an account of the whole of the 
matter is to assume what he ought to prove. There is one 
country of which he conveniently omits all mention — Judsea, 
and the peculiar aspects of its civilization. 
I ask, does not nature exist on a scale of extraordinary 
grandeur in other regions besides those whose peculiar civili- 
zation he is labouring to account for ? Is she not vast in 
Alpine regions ? Where does she exhibit herself with equal 
grandeur as in America ? Is she not grand in Egypt, Assyria, 
or Babylonia ? Yet she has not swallowed up man nor his 
individuality. 
In such causes, according to Mr. Buckle's theories, the 
great national idealizations in religion and morality have origi- 
nated. The distinctions between the religious aspects of Greece 
and India are enormous, and it was necessary that the 
difference between their physical aspects should be repre- 
sented as equally wide to enable him to account for them. He 
therefore paints in very graphic language the terrific aspect 
