e fact that his book appeared at the right
moment: for the time was really come to make history something more than
a chronicle of detached facts and anecdotes. The scientific spirit was
awake, and demanded that human action, like the processes of nature, be
made the subject of general law. The mind of Buckle proved fruitful soil
for those germs of thought floating in the air, and he gave them visible
form in his history. If he was not a leader, he was a brilliant
formulator of thought, and he was the first to put before the reading
world, then ready to receive them, ideas and speculations till now
belonging to the student. For he wrote with the determination to be
intelligible to the general reader. It detracts nothing from the
permanent value of his work thus to state its genesis, for this is
merely to apply to it his own methods.

Moreover, a perpetual charm lies in his clear, limpid English, a medium
perfectly adapted to calm exposition or to impassioned rhetoric.
Whatever the defects of Buckle's system: whatever the inaccuracies that
the advance of thirty years of patient scientific labors can easily
point out; however sweeping his generalization; or however dogmatic his
assertions, the book must be allowed high rank among the works that set
men thinking, and must thus be conceded to possess enduring value.

MORAL VERSUS INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLES IN HUMAN PROGRESS

From the 'History of Civilization in England'

There is unquestionably nothing to be found in the world which has
undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems
are composed. To do good to others; to sacrifice for their benefit your
own wishes; to love your neighbor as yourself; to forgive your enemies;
to restrain your passions; to honor your parents; to respect those who
are set over you,--these and a few others are the sole essentials of
morals: but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot
or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies, and
text-books which moralists and theologians have been able to produce.
But if we contrast this stationary aspect of moral truths with the
progressive aspect of intellectual truths, the difference is indeed
startling. All the great moral systems which have exercised much
influence have been fundamentally the same; all the great intellectual
systems have been fundamentally different. In reference to our moral
conduct, there is not a single principle now