they were connected with each other. Still less had there been any
notable effort to apply the whole body of our existing knowledge to the
elucidation of the problem of human progress. While the necessity of
generalization in all the other great realms of investigation had been
freely conceded, and strenuous exertions had been made to rise from
particular Facts to the discovery of the Laws by which those Facts are
governed, Historians continued to pursue the stereotyped course of
merely relating events, interspersed with such reflections as seemed
interesting or instructive.

Up to the period when Mr. Buckle essayed his 'History of Civilization,'
few, if any, of the well-known modern Historians had conceived that an
acquaintance with all the departments of human intelligence was a
necessary accomplishment in a writer on the past career of the world,
and no one of them had undertaken to write history from that basis.
'Hence,' says the author whom we are considering, and who makes, in the
first pages of his book, substantially the same statements concerning
the condition of Historical literature which are made here--'hence the
singular spectacle of one historian being ignorant of political economy;
another knowing nothing of law; another, nothing of ecclesiastical
affairs, and changes of opinion; another neglecting the philosophy of
statistics, and another physical science; although these topics are the
most essential of all, inasmuch as they comprise the principal
circumstances by which the temper and character of mankind have been
affected, and in which they are displayed. These important pursuits
being, however, cultivated, some by one man, and some by another, have
been isolated rather than united: the aid which might be derived from
analogy and from mutual illustration has been lost; and no disposition
has been shown to concentrate them upon history, of which they are,
properly speaking, the necessary components.'