Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/754

736 which they are forced to follow, and the habits of thought which they display, that he undertook to tell the end of a nation from the beginning. Spain was no mystery to him when he remembered that it had originally been a country of volcanoes; that the people had consequently been filled with a dread of the unseen and inscrutable power which reveals itself in convulsions of the earth; that their diseased fear of shadowy influences made them resent the teachings of science, and hence left them an easy prey to the Holy Office and Ignatius Loyola when Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle, drew away from sacerdotalism all the Christianity of Northern Europe. There can be no doubt that Buckle's theory did rest on a basis of truth, and that it erred simply by trying to account for every thing. In fact, it is not specially his doctrine, but simply the rigid and systematized application of a principle which is as old as speculative curiosity. We apply it every day of our lives. If a family go into a badly-drained house, we say the chances are that they will have typhus, diarrhœa, or cholera. If a rich and foolish young man bets largely on the turf, the probability is that he will be ruined. And the statistician comes to help us with a set of tables which throw uncomfortable light on the mechanical character of those mental and moral processes which might seem to be determined by the unprompted bidding of our own wills. Mr. Buckle was no doubt beguiled by a mere dream when he fancied that we could account for every turn and winding in the history of a country if we had only a large knowledge of its general conditions, such as the temperature of the land, the qualities of the soil, the food of the people, and their relations to their neighbors. He paid too little heed to subtle qualities of race, and he did not make sufficient allowance for the disturbing force of men gifted with extraordinary power of brain and will. Still it is a mere truism that the more correctly and fully we know the general condition of a country, the more does mystery vanish from its history, and the successive events tend to take their place in orderly sequence.

It is impossible, however, to prophesy by rule, and such system-mongers as Mr. Buckle would be the most treacherous of all oracles. Their hard and fast canons will not bend into the subtle crevices of human life. Men who are so ostentatiously logical that they cannot do a bit of thinking without the aid of a huge apparatus of sharply-cut principles always lack a keen scent for truth. They blunder by rule when less showy people find their way by mother-wit. Hence they are the worst of all prophets. It was not by counting up how many things tell in one way, and how many tell in another, that Heine and De Tocqueville were able to guess correctly what was coming, but by watching the chief currents of the age, or, as more homely folk would say, by finding out which way the wind was blowing. They had to deeide which among many social, religious, or political forces were the strongest, and which would be the most lasting. They had