n his
attempt to bring order into this curtailed department of inquiry, he
professes, not merely his own inability to accomplish, but his
conviction of the inherent impossibility of the accomplishment of that,
for the _abstract_ only, which Buckle really undertook for the
_concrete_; namely, the reduction of the Phenomena of the Universe to a
single Law; or, what is synonymous, the integration of all the laws of
the moral and physical world into a single Science.

The character of his undertaking compelled Mr. Buckle, on the contrary,
to stretch his mental antennae into every department of mundane activity,
to hold the Facts there discovered, so far as he might, collectively
within his grasp, and to draw them by an irresistible strain into
gradually decreasing circles of generalization, until they were brought
to a Central Law, which should contain within itself the many-sided
explanation of the intricate ramifications of individual and national
careers. The difference in the work essayed by the two distinguished
Thinkers whose labors we are considering, is somewhat analogous to that
which exists between the profession of the apothecary and that of the
physician. The former must know the range of _Materia Medica_, and the
contents of the _Pharmacopaeia_, so far as is necessary to arrange the
various medicines in order, and deliver them when called for. The latter
must hold the different remedies in his knowledge, not as classified
upon the pharmaceutist's shelves, but as related to the various forms of
constantly changing vital Phenomena, in the midst of which he is to
detect their applicability to different forms of disease. Still more
analogous is Comte to the student of Natural History, whose business it
is, preeminently, to distribute and classify the Animal Kingdom, in
accordance with Generalizations which relate mainly to the form or type
of organization; while Buckle resembles the student of a higher rank,
who endeavors, in the midst of the play of passion and the actual
exhibitions of life itself, to read the nature of the mental and moral
development which exists beneath them and controls their workings.

It is evident that, up to a period subsequent to the publication of his
first volume, the writer of the 'History of Civilization' entertained
the fullest confidence in the ability of the Inductive Method to cope
with the ultimate problems of the Universe, and had high expectations of
being able, through its i