basis of Exact Science, there will still remain a field of indefinite
extent, in which the Intuitive application of eternal Principles will
furnish an unlimited activity for the Practical, Æsthetic, Imaginative,
Idealistic, Artistic, and Religious faculties of Mankind.


The task which Mr. Buckle set himself to accomplish was, in a marked
sense, original and peculiar. Although several systematic attempts had
been made in Europe, prior to his time, to investigate the history of
man according to those exhaustive methods which in other branches of
Knowledge have proved successful, and by which alone empirical
observations can be raised to scientific truths, the imperfect state of
the Physical Sciences necessarily rendered the execution of such an
undertaking extremely defective. It was not, indeed, until the vast mass
of Facts which make up the body of the various Sciences had been
included within appropriate formulæ, and until the elaborate
Classification of Auguste Comte had separated that which was properly
Knowledge from that which was not, with sufficient exactitude to answer
the purposes of broad Generalization, and had established the relations
of the different domains of intelligence, that such a work as the
'History of Civilization' was possible.

Previous Historians, with these few exceptions, had contented themselves
with the narration of the _Facts_ of national progress, the merely
superficial exhibition of the external method of a people's life, and
had almost wholly neglected or greatly subordinated the Philosophical or
Scientific aspect of the subject, namely, the causes of the given
development. Separate domains of History had, indeed, been examined with
considerable ability; but hardly any attempt had been made to combine
the various parts into a consistent whole, and ascertain in what way