tinue to be. Indeed, with Mr. Buckle's diligence, his honesty, his freedom of thought, his bold outspokenness, his hearty admiration for whatever is good and great in man, the tendency of his work could not well be otherwise. All these are qualities which will be remembered when his inaccuracies and errors, however great, shall be forgotten. And whatever may be thought about the correctness or incorrectness of Mr. Buckle's opinions, the world cannot be long in coming to the conclusion that his History of Civilisation in England is a great and noble book, written by a great and noble man.

September 1861.

X

POSTSCRIPT ON MR. BUCKLE.1

By

THE pilgrimage of an "infidel" to Mount Sinai and the tomb of Christ affords a suggestive theme for meditation. It is with no disparaging intent that we use the vague epithet, "infidel" for Mr. Stuart-Glennie is himself most explicit in assuring us that neither with Christianity nor with what he calls "Christianism " does he acknowledge any fellowship or alliance. Christianity he means "that great historical system which culminated in the philosophy of Scholasticism, the religion of Catholicism, and the polity of Feudalism;" and by Christianism he means "that historical theory which represents Jesus of Nazareth as a supernatural being who came on earth for the good

1 Pilgrim Memories; or, Travel and Discussion in the BirthCountries of Christianity with the late Henry Thomas Buckle. By John S. Stuart-Glennie, M. A. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

1875.

of mankind, was put to death, and rose again to sit on the right hand of God." The historical system Mr. Stuart-Glennie perceives to have come to an end, and the historical theory he has learned to regard as antiquated and unsound, and he therefore frankly declares himself an opponent of Christianity, and stigmatises as dishonest all description of the Christian religion as a morality, or sentiment, or ethical impulse. With the same frankness he expresses himself about beliefs which "Christianism" has always held dear, in language, and still more in a tone, calculated to exasperate the Christian world to the last degree, so that a leading orthodox reviewer has been led to recognise in him the "fool" described by the Psalmist who has "said in his heart that there is no God." This is, however, inaccurate, for Mr. Stuart-Glennie is certainly no atheist. It is the very purity and sensitiveness of his theistic instinct that leads him, like Theodore Parker, to condemn as degrading much that still finds a place in popular theology. One might, indeed, even plausibly question the propriety of Mr. Stuart-Glennie classifying himself as an antiChristian, were it not that he is so explicit in defining what he rejects as Christianity. But, in truth, such questions of nomenclature are idle, for "Christian" is a word of such wide and vague connotations that,

however well adapted it may be for various religious uses, it possesses hardly more defining value than such a word as "philosophical;" and whether a given set of opinions can be grouped under such rubric or not has become a point hardly worth arguing.

While mainly a personal narrative, this book of Pilgrim Memories keeps certain ulterior ends in view. The author has projected, and in part executed, an extensive series of works to be entitled The Modern Revolution, in which nothing less is aimed at than the establishment of a new law of history, a new speculative basis for religion, and a new point of departure for dramatic art. The new law of history, and the new speculative basis for religion, we are to seek in the conception of historic development as "a certain Change, and Process of Change, in men's notions of the Causes of Change." One object of the present volume is to show how this conception took shape in the author's mind in the course of his journeyings and discussions with Mr. Buckle. By the Gulf of Ezion-Gebir, "walking or riding along a shell- and coral-covered strand,—on our right the sea, red with the coralline forests of its depths, and with a margin so bright and clear that, as we rode, we saw all its gem-like pavement; on our left sandstone precipices of the most magnificently-varied hues,”—amid this

strangely beautiful scene we enter upon quite a Platonic dialogue, in which the author seeks to expound his new conception of causation, while Mr. Buckle occasionally interposes with "I do not follow you, I confess," or "That seems philosophical enough," quite after the manner of the φαίνεται or οὐκ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ of Sokrates and his interlocutors. This long conversation, or series of conversations, is perhaps the most interesting portion of the book. Yet Mr. Buckle evidently does not get a thorough hold of what Mr. Stuart-Glennie means by defining causation as involving "not merely the conception of Uniformity of Sequence," but also that of "Mutuality of Coexistence, or Mutual Determination;" and we must confess that to us also his meaning seems by no means distinctly set forth or adequately elucidated. It is to be hoped that in future volumes this point will be thoroughly cleared up, for we are told that the "Change in our conceptions of the Causes of Change," which the author has discovered to be the "Ultimate Law of History," is neither more nor less than "an advance from the conception of One-sided Determination to that of Mutual Determination." That this statement is fraught with meaning for Mr. StuartGlennie there can be no doubt; he recurs to it again and again as if it were a sort of talismanic formula