ye. Mr. Buckle is undoubtedly honest. How, then, could
he, in strict philosophical discussion, employ the cardinal word in
a sense flagrantly and even ludicrously false, in order to carry his
point? It is partly to be attributed to his controversial ardor, which
is not only a heat, but a blaze, and frequently dazzles the eye of his
understanding; but partly it is attributable also to an infirmity in
the understanding itself. He shows, indeed, a singular combination of
intellectual qualities. He has great external precision, and great
inward looseness and slipperiness of mind: so that, if you follow his
words, no man's thought can be clearer, no man's logic more firm and
rapid in its march; but if you follow strictly the _conceptions_, the
clearness vanishes, and the logic limps, nay, sprawls. It is not merely
that he writes better than he thinks, though this is true of him; but
the more characteristic fact is that he is a master in the forms of
thought and an apprentice in the substance. Read his pages, and you will
find much to admire; read under his pages, and you will find much not to
admire.

It appears from the foregoing what Mr. Buckle aims to accomplish at the
outset. His purpose is to effect a thorough degradation of Personality.
Till this is done, he finds no clear field for the action of social
law. To discrown and degrade Personality by taking away its two grand
prerogatives,--this is his preliminary labor, this is his way of
procuring a site for that edifice of scientific history which he
proposes to build.

But what an enormous price to pay for the purchase! If there is no
kingdom for social law, if there is no place for a science of history,
till man is made unroyal, till the glory is taken from his brow, the
sceptre from his right hand, and the regal hopes from his heart, till
he is made a mere serf and an appanage of that ground and territory
of circumstance whereon he lives and labors,--why, then a science of
history means much the same with an extinction of history, an extinction
of all that in history which makes it inspiring. The history of rats and
mice is interesting, but not to themselves,--interesting only to man,
and this because he is man; but if men are nothing but rats and mice,
pray let them look for cheese, and look out for the cat, and let
goose-quills and history alone.

But the truth is that Person and Society are mutually supporting facts,
each weakened by any impoverishment of its r