Thomas Buckle

“ Their intellect must be robust indeed, if it does not wither in the sickly atmosphere of a court. Their attention being concentrated on their master, they insensibly contract those habits of servility which are suited to their position; and, as the range of their sympathies is diminished, the use and action of their genius become impaired. To them submission is a custom, and servitude a pleasure. In their hands, literature soon loses its boldness, tradition is appealed to as the ground of truth, and the spirit of inquiry is extinguished. ”

“ It assumes, that, without the interference, the course of affairs could not run smoothly; that they would be jangled and out of tune; that the play and harmony of the whole would be incomplete. And thus it is, that the very men who, at one moment, proclaim the Divine Omniscience, do, at the next moment, advocate a theory which reduces that Omniscience to nothing, since it imputes to an All-wise Being, that the scheme of human affairs, of which He must, from the beginning, have foreseen every issue and every consequence, is so weakly contrived as to be liable to be frustrated ”

“ But, if we look into history, we shall clearly see that, although the origin of a new opinion may be thus due [257] to a single man, the result which the new opinion produces will depend on the condition of the people among whom it is propagated. If either a religion or a philosophy is too much in advance of a nation, it can do no present service, but must bide its time, until the minds of men are ripe for its reception. Of this innumerable instances will occur to most readers. Every science and every creed has had its martyrs ”

“ Concentrating his energy upon the deductive process, and displaying that dialectic skill which is natural to his countrymen, and of which he himself was one of the most consummate masters the world has ever seen, he constructed a system of philosophy, imperfect indeed, because the premisses were imperfect, but approaching truth as closely as it was possible for any one to do who abstained from giving due consideration to the selfish part of human nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In our time such instances are not uncommon; and we frequently meet with men whose erudition ministers to their ignorance, and who the more they read, the less they know. There have been states of society in which this disposition was so general, that literature has done far more harm than good. Thus, for example, in the whole period from the sixth to the tenth centuries, there were not in all Europe more than three or four men who dared to think for themselves ”

“ To say that the successors of John Hunter are inferior to him, is no disparagement to their abilities, since he was one of those extremely rare characters who only appear at very long intervals, and who, when they do appear, remodel the fabric of knowledge. They revolutionize our modes of thought; they stir up the intellect to insurrection; they are the rebels and demagogues of science. And though the pathologists of the nineteenth century have chosen a humbler path, this must not blind us to their merits, or prevent us from being grateful for what they have done. ”

“ Why, then, need men travel in it? Why need our children learn its language? and why are we to endanger the morals of our ambassadors? who can hardly fail to return from such a land with their principles corrupted, and with a wish to conspire against their own country.’ [893]
This is sad, indeed, from such a man as Burke once was; but what remains, shows still more clearly how the associations and composition of his mind had been altered. ”

“ Berkeley, in a moment of candour, inadvertently confesses what is very damaging to the reputation of his own pursuits: ‘Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves. ”

“ It is impossible for any man to escape the pressure of surrounding opinions; and what is called a new philosophy or a new religion is generally not so much a creation of fresh ideas, but rather a new direction given to ideas already current among contemporary thinkers. [5] Thus, in the case now before us, the doctrine of Chance in the external world corresponds to that of Free Will in the internal: while the other doctrine of Necessary Connexion is equally analogous to that of Predestination ”

“ Men of talents and integrity would not accept of employments where they were neither allowed to exercise their judgment nor display the rectitude of their hearts.’ In 1780, when the evil had become still more obvious, the same great observer denounced it in his celebrated address to his Bristol constituents. ‘At present,’ he says, ‘it is the plan of the court to make its servants insignificant.’ Burke's Works, vol. ”

“ If it can be ascertained, that as society has improved, historical literature has constantly tended in one given direction, there arises a very strong probability in favour of the truth of those views towards which it is manifestly approaching. Indeed, it is a probability of this sort which makes it so important for the student of any particular science to be acquainted with its history ”

“ From the language too many of them are in the habit of employing, we might be led to believe that there is some magical power in the smiles of a king which stimulates the intellect of the fortunate individual whose heart they are permitted to gladden. Nor must this be despised as one of those harmless prejudices that still linger round the person of the sovereign. It is not only founded on a misconception of the nature of things, but it is in its practical consequences very injurious. It is injurious to the independent spirit which literature should always possess ”

“ These, like many other of the speculations of this great thinker, will find small favour with those purely inductive philosophers, who not only suppose, perhaps rightly, that all our knowledge is in its beginning built upon facts, but who countenance, what seems to me, the very dangerous opinion, that every increase of knowledge must be preceded by an increase of facts. To such men it will appear, that Black had far better have occupied himself in making new observations, or devising new experiments, than in thus indulging his imagination in wild and unprofitable dreams. ”

“ If we now continue to trace the progress of opinions in England, we shall see the full force of these remarks. A general spirit of inquiry, of doubt, and even of insubordination, began to occupy the minds of men. In physics, it enabled them, almost at a blow, to throw off the shackles of antiquity, and give birth to sciences founded not on notions of old, but on individual observations and individual experiments. [561] In politics, it stimulated them to rise against the government, and eventually bring their king to the scaffold. ”

“ For, the feelings of vanity and of veneration have evidently this in common, that they induce each man to measure his actions by a standard external to himself; while the opposite feelings of pride and of independence would make him prefer that internal standard which his own mind alone can supply. The result of all this was, that when, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the intellectual movement stimulated the French to rebellion, its effect was neutralized by that social tendency which, even in the midst of the struggle, kept alive the habits of their old subservience. ”

“ Indeed, it may be broadly stated, that while, at the end of the seventeenth century, it would have been difficult to find, even among the most educated Frenchmen, a single person acquainted with English, it would, in the eighteenth [220] century, have been nearly as difficult to find in the same class one who was ignorant of it. Men of all tastes, and of the most opposite pursuits, were on this point united as by a common bond. Poets, geometricians, historians, naturalists, all seemed to agree as to the necessity of studying a literature on which no one before had wasted a thought. ”

“ Like all great enterprises, it is full of danger, and, if undertaken by an ordinary mind, would certainly fail. But there are two circumstances which make it less dangerous in our time, than in any earlier period. The first circumstance is, that the supremacy of the human understanding, and its right to judge all theories for itself, is now more generally admitted than ever; so that there can be little fear of our leaning to the opposite side, and allowing poetry to encroach on science. ”

“ After the death of Bacon, one of the most distinguished Englishmen was certainly Boyle, who, if compared with his contemporaries, may be said to rank immediately below Newton, though, of course, very inferior to him as an original thinker. ”

“ That this is the true policy, and that to protect literature is to injure it, are propositions for the proof of which I must refer to chap. xi. of this volume—on the system of Louis XIV. In the mean time, I will quote the following words from a learned and, what is much better, a thoughtful writer: ‘Nor must he who will understand the English institutions leave out of view the character of the enduring works which had sprung from the salient energy of the English mind. Literature had been left to develop itself. William of Orange was foreign to it; Anne cared not for it ”

“ But in the reign of George III. claims of this sort were little heeded; and we are assured by Burke, whose authority on such a subject no one will dispute, that there never had been a time in which so few persons connected with commerce were raised to the peerage. [826]
It would be endless to collect all the symptoms which mark the political degeneracy of England during this period; a degeneracy the more striking, because it was opposed to the spirit of the time, and because it took place in spite of a great progress, both social and intellectual. ”

“ But this was merely an hypothesis, which was bequeathed to him, and with which the existing state of thought forced him to encumber his theory. He inherited the hypothesis, and could not get rid of his troublesome possession. The real service which he rendered is, that, in spite of that hypothesis, which clung to him to the last, he, far more than any of his contemporaries, contributed towards the great conception of idealizing heat, and thus enabled his successors [369] to admit it into the class of immaterial and supersensual forces. ”

“ On this account it is, that although the acquisition of fresh knowledge is the necessary precursor of every step in social progress, such acquisition must itself be preceded by a love of inquiry, and therefore by a spirit of doubt; because without doubt there will be no inquiry, and without inquiry there will be no knowledge. For knowledge is not an inert and passive principle, [335] which comes to us whether we will or no; but it must be sought before it can be won; it is the product of great labour and therefore of great sacrifice. ”

“ Our country, indeed, is still full of those vulgar politicians, against whom Burke raised his voice; feeble and shallow men, who, having spent their little force in resisting the progress of reform, [461] find themselves at length, compelled to yield; and then, so soon as they have exhausted the artifices of their petty schemes, and, by their tardy and ungraceful concessions, have sown the seed of future disaffection, they turn upon the age by which they have been baffled; they mourn over the degeneracy of mankind ”

“ If, in any civilized nation, two men, equally gifted, were to propound some new and startling conclusion, and one of these men were to defend his conclusion by reasoning from ideas or general principles, while the other man were to defend his by reasoning from particular and visible facts, there can be no doubt that, supposing all other things the same, the latter man would gain most adherents. ”

“ But in the study of the history of Man, the important facts have been neglected, and the unimportant ones preserved. The consequence is, that whoever now attempts to generalize historical phenomena must collect the facts, as well as conduct the generalization. He finds nothing ready to his hand. He must be the mason as well as the architect; he must not only scheme the edifice, but likewise excavate the quarry. The necessity of performing this double labour entails upon the philosopher such enormous drudgery, that the limits of an entire life are unequal to the task ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the results were, on the whole, beneficial, I entertain no doubt; but they were unquestionably injurious to the progress of science, because they tended to divert it from all new truths, except those likely to produce obvious and practical benefit. The consequence was, that though the English made several great discoveries, they did not possess, during seventy years, a single man who took a really comprehensive view of the phenomena of nature; not one who could be compared with those illustrious thinkers who in France reformed every branch of physical knowledge. ”