第136章 Chapter V(21)

30.Buckle,I may notice,thinks Brown's essay upon Causation one of the greatest works of the century and a statement of the principles,derived ultimately from Hume,upon which the 'best inquirers into these matters take their stand.'(Civilisation,ii.460n).This,I take it,explains his tendency to take a simple statement of fact for a 'law'.The most curious instance of the confusion is the remark (Civilisation,i.155)that physiologists have never been able to discover the cause of the equality of the number of male and female births.Statisticians have now answered the question by showing that the proportion is 20to 21.Obviously they have not answered the question at all.the have only ascertained the facts.Buckle partly admits this;and yet he seems to think that the statement somehow indicates a new method of historical inquiry.

31.Civilisation,i.236.

32.Civilisation,i.342n.

33.Ibid.i.112.

34.Natural History of Religion,sec.vi.Mr Robertson attacks me for my criticisms of Buckle's assertion of the deductive character of Scottish philosophers.I cannot go into the question,but I make one remark.He quotes the first sentence of Hume's Natural History to prove that Hume was a deist when he wrote it,and says that this is implied through the whole essay.

Now Hume's most serious attack upon theology,the Dialogues,was written by 1751,though posthumously published.The Natural History appeared in 1757.The deistic phrases obviated the necessity for leaving it also for posthumous publication.

35.A curious illustration is given by Mr Robertson (p.140).The Japanese it has been said,are less superstitious than their neighbours,and yet more exposed to earthquakes.If Buckle's theory means that superstition necessarily follows earthquakes,the fact seems to contradict the theory.So Mr Robertson seems to take it,for he gives an explanation.The Japanese do not suffer from earthquakes because they build slighter house.If so,earthquakes,it surely might be urged,do not produce superstition,but rational precaution.If,on the other hand,the Spaniards have not modifies their architecture,that would surely prove that they have not been much impressed by earthquakes.The case seems to me to prove simply the rashness of any such hasty guesses.Buckle's early critics were misguided enough to deny the facts alleged,and so gave him a triumph.

36.Civilisation,i.161.

37.Civilisation,i.37n.

38.Mr Robertson reproves me for not giving the passage in which Buckle says that the question of hereditary influence is still unsettled.Probably I should have recognised this more clearly.Idid,however,say that Buckle held that the superiority of the civilised to the barbarian infant was 'not proved'.I said also that I thought that Buckle was justified for his purpose in neglecting the possibility of a superiority.He says,in the passage quoted above,that we have no right to assume such a change as an increase of brain capacity.I took it that for any historical period we may assume equality.The brain of a modern Englishman is not presumably superior to the brain of an Athenian.Evolution of that kind may be neglected by the historian of civilisation.The evolution,which I did take him to neglect,was the moral or social evolution,which is compatible with approximate identity of the brain or the innate faculties.

Buckle,I said,shared the error of the Utilitarians who assumed moral progress to consist,not in a changed estimate of happiness,but simply in a better knowledge of the means of attaining it.Buckle's identification of progress with increase of knowledge involved,I said,the same error.The change is regarded as superficial or 'external'.Meanwhile my argument,which Mr Robertson attacks,about the fallacy of arguing from the fixed environment to the varying organism applied to such cases as the inference from earthquakes to superstition or from climate to aesthetic tendencies.Such a generalisation,taken as an explanation of superstition,generally implies,as I held,an inadequate appreciation of the social or moral evolution.Perhaps I did not put the point clearly or accurately,and,if so,Iregret it.

39.Philosophie Positive,1852,i,44,and cp.Ibid.iv.648,etc.

40.Mr Herbert Spencer raises this question in a criticism of Comte,contained in a pamphlet upon the 'Classification of the Sciences.'See Mill's remarks upon this in his Auguste Comte and Positivism,pp.34,43,102,114.The controversy between Mr Spencer and Comte lies beyond my province.

41.Civilisation,p.152.

42.Ibid.pp.160-63.

43.Civilisation,p.206.

44.Civilisation,p.209.

45.Ibid.p.354.

46.Essays (1889),ii,422.(Essay on Buckle,reprinted from Westminster Review of 1857.)47.Civilisation,i.197.

48.Civilisation,ii.9.

49.On this point Mr Robertson virtually agrees with me,though he attaches less importance to it.

50.Civilisation,i.185.

51.Civilisation,p.235.

52.Civilisation,pp.248,283,289,306.He occasionally admits that the church protected the poor and was useful in its time.ibid,pp.462,559.

53.Civilisation,i.213.

54.Ibid.i.257.

55.Civilisation,i.264.

56.Ibid.ii.274.

57.Ibid.ii.145,146.

58.Ibid.i.729.

59.Civilisation,i.563.