Henry Thomas Buckle

“ The two mightiest intellects our country has produced are Shakspeare and Newton; and that Shakspeare should have preceded Newton, was, I believe, no casual or unmeaning event. Shakspeare and the poets sowed the seed, which Newton and the philosophers reaped. Discarding the old scholastic and theological pursuits, they drew attention to nature, and thus became the real founders of all natural science. They did even more than this. They first impregnated the mind of England with bold and lofty conceptions. They taught the men of their generation to crave after the unseen. ”

“ In that school, and surrounded by those habits, the intellect of John Hunter was nurtured during the most impressible period of his life. Then the scene suddenly shifted. Coming to England, he passed forty years in the heart of the most empirical nation in Europe; a nation utterly abhorring all general principles, priding itself on its common sense, boasting, and with good reason too, of its practical sagacity, proclaiming aloud the superiority of facts over ideas, and despising every theory, unless some direct and immediate benefit could be expected to accrue from it. ”

“ If you deny it, you deny what, to my mind at least, is a fundamental truth, and, on these matters, there can be no sympathy between us. But if you admit the Omniscience of God, beware of libelling what you profess to defend. For when you assert what is termed the moral government of the world, you slander Omniscience, inasmuch as you declare that the mechanism of the entire universe, including the actions both of Nature and of Man, planned as it is by Infinite Wisdom, is unequal to its duties, unless that same Wisdom does from time to time interfere with it. ”

“ He was ambitious of fame, but he perceived that the road to fame was not the same in England as in Scotland. In Scotland, a great logician would be deemed a great man; in England, little account would be made of the beauty of his logic, unless he was careful that the premisses from which he argued, were trustworthy, and verified by experience. A new machine, a new experiment, the discovery of a salt, or of a bone, would, in England, receive a wider homage, than the most profound speculation from which no obvious results were apprehended. ”

“ For, such hopes belong to that joyous and sanguine period of life, when [189] alone we are really happy; when the emotions are more active than the judgment; when experience has not yet hardened our nature; when the affections are not yet blighted and nipped to the core; and when the bitterness of disappointment not having yet been felt, difficulties are unheeded, obstacles are unseen, ambition is a pleasure instead of a pang, and the blood coursing swiftly through the veins, the pulse beats high, while the heart throbs at the prospect of the future. ”

“ The love of money, like all our appetites, is liable to abuse; but to declaim against it as evil in itself, and, above all, to represent it as a feeling, the indulgence of which provokes the wrath of God, is to betray an ignorance, natural, perhaps, in former ages, but shameful in our time, particularly when it proceeds from men who give themselves out as public teachers, and profess that it is their mission to enlighten the world.
Injurious, however, as all this is to the best interests of society, it is nothing in comparison with the doctrines formerly advocated by the Scotch divines. ”

“ The storms and the mists, the darkened sky flashed by frequent lightning, the peals of thunder reverberating from mountain to mountain, and echoing on every side, the dangerous hurricanes, the gusts sweeping the innumerable lakes with which the country is studded, the rolling and impetuous torrent flooding the path of the traveller and stopping his progress, are strangely different to those safer and milder phenomena, among which the English people have developed their prosperity, and built up their mighty cities. ”

“ For, every passion excites its opposite. Cruelty to-day, produces sympathy to-morrow. A hatred of injustice contributes more than any other principle to correct the inequalities of life, and to maintain the balance of affairs. It is this loathing at tyranny, which, by stirring to their inmost depth the warmest feelings of the heart, makes it impossible that tyranny should ever finally succeed. ”

“ Every system of religion the world has yet seen, recognizes faith as an indispensable duty; but to every system of science it is a hindrance, instead of a duty, inasmuch as it discourages those inquisitive and innovating habits on which all intellectual progress depends. The theologian, thus turning credulity into an honour, and valuing men in proportion as they are simple-minded and easy of belief, has little need to trouble himself with facts, which, indeed, he sets at open defiance, in his eagerness to narrate portentous, and often miraculous, events. ”

“ In the Wealth of Nations, we hear no more of this conciliatory and sympathetic spirit; such amiable maxims are altogether forgotten, and the affairs of the world are regulated by different principles. It now appears that benevolence and affection have no influence over our actions. Indeed, Adam Smith will [322] hardly admit common humanity into his theory of motives. If a people emancipate their slaves, it is a proof, not that the people are acted on by high moral considerations, nor that their sympathy is excited by the cruelty inflicted on these unhappy creatures. ”

“ Nothing could disturb this natural progress of thought, but some obvious and invincible argument, which might immediately lead the mind into the pure principles of theism, and make it overleap, at one bound, the vast interval which is interposed between the human and the Divine nature. But though I allow, that the order and frame of the universe, when accurately examined, affords such an argument, yet I can never think that this consideration could have an influence on mankind, when they formed their first rude notions of religion.’ Natural History of Religion, in Philosophical Works, vol. ”

“ Unconscious, perhaps, of the remote tendency of his own labours, he undermined that doctrine of material heat, which he seemed to support. For, by his advocacy of latent heat, he taught that its movements constantly baffle, not only some of our senses, but all of them; and that, while our feelings make us believe that heat is lost, our intellect makes us believe that it is not lost. Here, we have apparent destructibility, and real indestructibility. To assert that a body received heat without its temperature rising, was to make the understanding correct the touch, and defy its dictates. ”

“ There, cheered, indeed, by the society of his mother, but with no opportunity of observing human nature upon a large scale, and far removed from the hum of great cities, did this mighty thinker, by the force of his own mind, unravel the numerous and complicated phenomena of wealth, detect the motives which regulate the conduct of the most energetic and industrious portion of mankind, and lay bare the schemes and the secrets of that active life from which he was shut out, while he, immured in comparative solitude, was unable to witness the very facts which he succeeded in explaining. ”

“ The difficulties of deductive reasoning are here admirably portrayed. It might have been expected, that Reid would have built up his own philosophy according to the inductive plan, and would have despised that assumption of first principles, with which he taunts his opponents. But it is one of the most curious things in the history of metaphysics, that Reid after impeaching the method of Hume, follows the very same method himself. When he is attacking the philosophy of Hume, he holds deduction to be wrong. When he is raising his own philosophy, he holds it to be right. ”

“ Perchance, the human mind is hardly ready for so vast an enterprise. At all events, he who undertakes it will meet with little sympathy, and will find few to help him. And let him toil as he may, the sun and noontide of his life shall pass by, the evening of his days shall overtake him, and he himself have to quit the scene, leaving that unfinished which he had vainly hoped to complete. He may lay the foundation; it will be for his successors to raise the edifice. Their hands will give the last touch; they will reap the glory ”

“ So far from looking for these things, he should rather be prepared for that obloquy which always awaits those, who, by opening up new veins of thought, disturb the prejudices of their contemporaries. While ignorance, and worse than ignorance, is imputed to him, while his motives are misrepresented, and his integrity impeached, while he is accused of denying the value of moral principles, and of attacking the foundation of all religion, as if he were some public enemy, who made it his business to corrupt society, and whose delight it was to see what evil he could do ”

“ The evil rapidly increasing, and acting with accumulated force, nothing would be able to stop its ravages. It must continue to gain ground, till all other principles are absorbed and conquered. Sweeping on, unhindered, and irresistible, before it, every animal must perish, the whole vegetable world must disappear, the waters must pass into vapour, and the solid parts of the globe be merged and melted, until, at length, the glorious fabric, loosened and dissolved, would fall away, and return to that original chaos out of which it had been evolved. ”

“ But the philosopher has only to discover the truth, and promulgate it; and that is hard work enough for any man, let his ability be as great as it may. This division of labour, between thinkers and actors, secures an economy of force, and prevents either class from wasting its power. It establishes a difference between science, which ascertains principles, and art, which applies them. It also recognizes, that the philosopher and the practical man, having each a separate part to play, each is, in his own field, supreme. ”

“ Every addition to our knowledge, every fresh idea, opens up new difficulties, and gives birth to new combinations. Under this accumulated pressure, we shall assuredly sink, if we imitate the credulity of our forefathers, who allowed their energies to be cramped and weakened by those pernicious notions, which the clergy, partly from ignorance, and partly from interest, have, in every age, palmed on the people, and have, thereby, diminished the national happiness, and retarded the march of national prosperity. ”

“ In this way, each generation, as it arose, was brought under their influence, and made subject to their notions. Taking the mind of Scotland while it was young and flexible, they bent it to their own method. Hence, that method became supreme; it reigned every where; not a voice was lifted up against it; and no one had an idea that there was more than one path by which truth could be reached, or that the human understanding was of any use, except to deal deductively with premisses, which were not to be inductively examined. ”

“ Wealth is a real and substantial thing, which ministers to our pleasures, increases our comfort, multiplies our resources, and not unfrequently alleviates our pains. But birth is a dream and a shadow, which, so far from benefiting either body or mind, only puffs up its possessor with an imaginary excellence, and teaches him to despise those whom nature has made his superiors, and who, whether engaged in adding to our knowledge or to our wealth, are, in either case, ameliorating the condition of society, and rendering to it true and valuable service. ”

“ Putting aside the Wealth of Nations, we shall find that the Scotch literature of the eighteenth century did scarcely any thing for Scotland, considered as a whole. How it has failed in its great aim of weakening superstition, is but too apparent to whoever has travelled in that country, and observed the habits and turn of mind still predominant. Many able and enlightened men who lived there, are so cowed by the general spirit, that, for their own comfort, and for the peace of their families, they make no resistance, but tacitly comply with what they heartily despise. ”

“ We cannot, however, be too often reminded, that the really great men, and those who are the sole permanent benefactors of their species, are not the great experimenters, nor the great observers, nor the great readers, nor the great [447] scholars, but the great thinkers. Thought is the creator and vivifier of all human affairs. Actions, facts, and external manifestations of every kind, often triumph for a while; but it is the progress of ideas which ultimately determines the progress of the world. Unless these are changed, every other change is superficial, and every improvement is precarious. ”

“ It may be right for a government to supply the employment, when the people are so ignorant as to demand it, and when, at the same time, they are so powerful as to plunge the country into anarchy if the demand is refused. Here, the view of the politician takes in all the premisses of which the political economist had only taken in a portion. In the same way, as a matter of economic science, it is wrong for any one to relieve the poor; since nothing is better established, than that to relieve poverty increases it, by encouraging improvidence. ”

“ But I will not be deterred from letting this age see the real character of a system which aimed at destroying all human happiness, exciting slavish and abject fear, and turning this glorious world into one vast theatre of woe. ”

“ It is time that such unworthy notions should come to an end. It is time that what has long been known to philosophers, should also be known to historians, and that the history of mankind should cease to be troubled by what, to those who are imbued with the scientific spirit, must seem little better than arrant trifling. ”

“ The whole scope and tendency of modern thought force upon our minds conceptions of regularity and of law, to which they are diametrically opposed. Even those who cling to them, do so from the influence of tradition, rather than from complete and unswerving belief. That child-like and unhesitating faith, with which the doctrine of interposition was once received, is succeeded by a cold and lifeless assent, very different from the enthusiasm of former times. Soon, too, this will vanish, and men will cease to be terrified by phantoms which their own ignorance has reared. ”

“ Ideas and associations, generated by a long course of events, and deeply seated in the public mind, had given to the aristocracy immense power; and if every noble in Scotland had been put to death, if all their castles had been razed to the ground, and all their estates confiscated, the time would unquestionably have come, when their successors would have been more influential than ever, because the affection of their retainers and dependents would be increased by the injustice that had been perpetrated. ”

“ Facts seem to come home to every one, and are undeniable. Principles are not so obvious, and, being often disputed, they have, to those who do not grasp them, an unreal and illusory appearance, which weakens their influence. Hence it is that inductive science, which always gives the first place to facts, is essentially popular, and has on its side those innumerable persons, who will not listen to the more refined and subtle teachings of deductive science. ”

“ Though the evidence of which he was possessed was far more scanty than what we now have, he, by the reach of his commanding intellect, rather than by the number and accuracy of his facts, became so penetrated with a conviction of the stability of physical affairs, that he not only applied that idea to the subtle phenomena of heat, but, what was much harder to do, he applied it to cases in which heat so entirely escapes the senses, that man has no cognizance of it, except through the medium of the imagination. ”

“ Though they profess to despise theory, they are, in reality, enslaved by it. All that they can do, is to conceal their subjection, by terming their theory a necessary belief. It must, therefore, be deemed a remarkable proof of Cullen's love of deductive reasoning, that he, sagacious and clear-sighted as he was, should have supposed that, in so practical an art as medicine, theory could, with impunity, precede practice. ”