Intemperate and infatuated generalization, if supported by a certain ability, is an attractive vice.  Yet he who indulges in this will be sure to leave upon his brilliant and exciting pages statements that are simply ludicrous.  Our philosopher furnishes an instance of this in his treatment of the matter of marriage.  If wages be low and food high, marriages are less frequent; if the converse be the case, they are more frequent.  What conclusion would common sense base upon this fact?  Why, of course, that the number of marriages is definitely influenced by the ease with which sustenance is obtained.  But this is a commonplace result; there is nothing in it bold, brilliant, striking; besides, it does not make man the slave of outward influences.  Accordingly, Mr. Buckle generalizes from it as follows:—­“Marriages, instead of having any connection with personal feelings, are completely controlled by the price of food and the rate of wages.”  He does not distinguish between a definite modifying influence and a controlling cause.  His facts prove the former; he asserts the latter.  Let us see how this procedure would work elsewhere.  There is “a definite relation,” in our author’s words, between the force and direction of the winds and the rise or fall of the sea upon our coast:  therefore tidal rise and fall, “instead of having any connection” with the influence of the moon, are “completely controlled” by the direction and force of the wind!  There is “a definite relation” between the straightness or want of straightness in a railroad and the speed of the train:  ergo, the speed of the train, “instead of having any connection” with the locomotive and the force of steam, is “completely controlled” by the line of the road!  It is by no means difficult to philosophize after this fashion; but if we are to have many professors of such philosophy, let the mediaeval cap-and-bells, by all means, be reproduced.

Again, having stated the fact of an approximation to a continuous average of suicides, and having assumed for this a cause operating in the indivisible whole of society, he goes on to say, “And the power of this larger law is so irresistible, that neither the love of life nor the fear of another world can avail anything toward even checking its operation.”  How, pray, does Mr. Buckle know?  What shadow of a fact has he to justify this vaunting of his “larger law”?  Has he ever known the love of life and the awe of another world to be suspended?  Has he afterwards seen their action restored, and ascertained that in their presence and in their absence the ratio of suicides remained the same?  These questions answer themselves.  But when a writer who loudly professes and fully believes himself to proceed purely upon facts adventures statement so groundless, so gratuitous and reckless as this, who can pass to the next paragraph in full confidence of his intellectual rectitude?  If you retain, as in this case I do retain, assurance of his moral rectitude,—­of his intention to be fair,—­to what conclusion can you come more charitable than this, that his partiality to his own notions is so vigorous as not only to overslaugh his sense of logical truth, but to supersede the necessity of other grounds for believing these notions and for urging them?