Munro—Some Tendencies in History. 699 
In the second half of the nineteenth century new tenden¬ 
cies became prominent and older ones took on a new form. 
For various reasons history became popular; consequently 
many attempted to write history who had no qualifications 
for their task except their own ignorance. But these we can 
neglect, in order to consider some of the new tendencies 
which were to transform the concept of history and to some 
extent to denature it. One of the influential factors in Eng¬ 
land and America was the work of Henry Thomas Buckle, 
who published, in 1857, the first volume of his History of 
Civilization in England. Almost immediately he became 
famous. “His first volume went through three editions in a 
little over three years.” “His works have been translated 
into French, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Russian.” He 
was hailed as a prophet and guide, because he attempted to 
place history on a scientific basis. His thesis outlined very 
briefly, is that: It is the historians’ task to discover the 
laws of history, The supreme principle is the law of prog¬ 
ress. Progress rests upon knowledge. Intellectual progress 
is greater than moral progress; but intellectual progress is 
possible only through accumulation of riches, and these de¬ 
pend upon soil and climate. Therefore, the physical agents 
are the first conditions of all progress. Much of this was not 
new, but it was new to English readers. After ‘Buckle’s 
death in 1862 his fame began to wane and historians showed 
his inconsistencies and his indiscriminate choice of material. 
Lord Acton wrote.: “Mr. Buckle, if he had been able to 
distinguish a good book from a bad one, would have been a 
tolerable imitation of M. Laurent.” 
Possibly Lord Acton’s judgment is too severe, and re¬ 
cently many have consciously or unconsciously imitated 
Buckle. His disciple and biographer has claimed that he 
was the first to show that history could be interpreted only 
through political economy and statistics, and economists 
have often followed in his footsteps. But the economic in¬ 
terpretation of history really goes back to Adam Smith and 
his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. In this work Adam 
Smith attempted to trace the “rise and fall of nations to 
their economic and commercial equipment and policy.” 
This idea was restated as early as 1845 by Karl Marx who 
“maintained that the only sound and ever valid explanation 
