Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/331

Rh great, to enable the superior laws to come into uncontrolled operation."

Now this very contradiction should have taught Mr. Buckle that he was involved in a fallacy. In nature totals are made up of parts similar to the whole. A block of stone is made up of stony molecules ; a kidney of several little kidneys ; a wave is an accumulation of little waves. Every chip of wood has the same construction as the block. Yet Mr. Buckle pretends to show us a long period and a great number made up of a quantity of short periods and small numbers, which are ruled by principles contradictory in their action to the principle which rules the total. In other words, the repetition of an individual law destroys that law ! Individual moral principle manifests itself so often that it is never seen ! A thing, by being multiplied, is annihilated ! Addition, instead of increasing, diminishes the sum !

Mr. Buckle's fallacy consists mainly in this : that whereas his whole conception of the object of his work required him to abstract his consideration entirely from all persons, and to consider man only in the mass, as so much productive machinery, oiled indeed, and kept in working order by a due amount of virtue, but intended only to produce intellectual truths capable of teaching how more and more to subdue nature, — he has chosen to apply the rules, applicable exclusively to man under this aspect, to man as a person, as an individual ; though he knows and confesses that they are not so applicable. We are sorry that we are thus reduced to defend either Mr. Buckle's understanding at the expense of his honesty, or his honesty at the expense of his understanding. In fact, man, as person, cannot be added to man ; soul cannot be mixed with soul ; each individual stands apart, or loses his individuality by addition.

History, therefore, on Mr. Buckle's plan, is impossible. For as soon as we seek simply statistics and averages, we have lost sight of man, and are contemplating only his works, his products. The true historian takes the individual for his centre ; he describes the typical man, whom