it faith, and believes in
so confidently as part and parcel of our superiority to all other times,
that the effect upon most of us cannot be otherwise than delectable.

Unhappily, the text-book in which he studied these fine lessons chanced
to be the French edition, and, above all, the particular compilation of
Auguste Comte,--Comte, the one-eyed Polyphemus of modern literature,
enormous in stature and strength, but a devourer of the finer races in
thought, feeding his maw upon the beautiful offspring of the highest
intelligence, whom the Olympians love. Therefore it befell that our
eager and credulous scholar unlearned quite as much as he learned,
acquiring the wisdoms of our time in the crudest and most liberal
commixture with its unwisdoms. And thus, though his house is laboriously
put together, yet it is built upon the sand; and though his bark has
much good timber, and is well modelled for speed, yet its keel is wholly
rotten, so that whosoever puts to sea therein will sail far more swiftly
to bottom than to port.

And precisely this, in lieu of all else, it is my present purpose to
show: that the keel of his craft is unsound,--that his fundamental
notions are fundamental falsities, such as no thinker can fall into
without discredit to his powers of thought. Fortunately, he has begun by
stating and arguing these; so that there can be no question either what
they are, or by what considerations he is able to support them.

The foundation-timber of Mr. Buckle's work consists of three pieces, or
propositions, two of which take the form of denial. First, he denies
that there is in man anything of the nature of Free-Will, and attributes
the belief in it to vulgar and childish ignorance. Secondly, and in
support of the primary negation, he denies that there is any oracle in
man's bosom,--that his spirit had any knowledge of itself or of the
relationships it sustains: in other words, denies the validity of
Consciousness. Thirdly and lastly, he attempts to show that all actions
of individuals originate not in themselves, but result from a law
working in the general and indistinguishable _lump_ of society,--from
laws of like nature with that which preserves the balance of the sexes;
so that no man has more to do with his own deed than the mother in
determining whether her child shall be male or female. By the two
former statements man is stripped of all the grander prerogatives and
characteristics of personality; by the la