the imagination. The
first fantastic conception of things gave way before the moral; the
moral in turn gave way before the natural; and at last there was left
but one small tract of jungle where the theory of law had failed to
penetrate--the doings and characters of human creatures themselves.

There, and only there, amidst the conflicts of reason and emotion,
conscience and desire, spiritual forces were still conceived to exist.
Cause and effect were not traceable when there was a free volition to
disturb the connection. In all other things, from a given set of
conditions, the consequences necessarily followed. With man, the word
law changed its meaning; and instead of a fixed order, which he could
not choose but follow, it became a moral precept, which he might disobey
if he dared.

This it was which Mr. Buckle disbelieved. The economy which prevailed
throughout nature, he thought it very unlikely should admit of this
exception. He considered that human beings acted necessarily from the
impulse of outward circumstances upon their mental and bodily condition
at any given moment. Every man, he said, acted from a motive; and his
conduct was determined by the motive which affected him most powerfully.
Every man naturally desires what he supposes to be good for him; but to
do well, he must know well. He will eat poison, so long as he does not
know that it is poison. Let him see that it will kill him, and he will
not touch it. The question was not of moral right and wrong. Once let
him be thoroughly made to feel that the thing is destructive, and he
will leave it alone by the law of his nature. His virtues are the result
of knowledge; his faults, the necessary consequence of the want of it. A
boy desires to draw. He knows nothing about it: he draws men like trees
or houses, with their centre of gravity anywhere. He makes mistakes,
because he knows no better. We do not blame him. Till he is better
taught he cannot help it. But his instruction begins. He arrives at
straight lines; then at solids; then at curves. He learns perspective,
and light and shade. He observes more accurately the forms which he
wishes to represent. He perceives effects, and he perceives the means by
which they are produced. He has learned what to do; and, in part, he
has learned how to do it. His after-progress will depend on the amount
of force which his nature possesses; but all this is as natural as the
growth of an acorn. You do not preach to the