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Biography and Characterization: Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862). David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays - AI智能索引
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Biography and Characterization: Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862). David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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Biography and Characterization: Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862). David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. Biography and Characterization:
Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862)
By William Vincent Byars (1857–1938) ONE of the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century, Henry Thomas Buckle, easily attained immediate eminence, and failed of enduring greatness only because of the same physical infirmities which brought him premature death. The theory which shaped his “History of Civilization in England” explains human life and history as far as life can be explained at all by our knowledge of the laws governing the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen which are the determining elements in the constitution of the physical man. It is true and of the utmost importance that an atomic value of oxygen, more or less, added to or subtracted from the atmosphere which environs us, might change the course of human history. With a preponderance of nitrogen, the race might become dull and stupid, gravitating through inert sensuality towards final extinction. With an excess of oxygen, history might become at all times such a wild debauch of fire and sword as it was in the Napoleonic wars, until at last the race, consumed by its own passions and corroded by a fierce atmosphere, might disappear in such a Ragnarok of self-destruction as that to which, from Judea to Iceland, its prophets have looked forward. An increasing knowledge of science makes this possible effect of environment self-evident. It becomes not less self-evident on investigation that soil, climate, food, and all the aspects of nature, influence human life and help to make human history. As far as he forced a more truly scientific study of history as it is made by the action and reaction on each other of men as individuals and in mass, Buckle did a great service to science and to literature. As far as he was one-sided in failing to consider the possibilities of individual reaction against environment, of the strength of individual will in its relations to the supersensual, and of the determinate individual purpose which, as in his own case, masters circumstance or else disorganizes the physical body in the attempt, he failed of the permanent influence on the intellect of civilization which was possible for him. His influence has been great, however, for the publication of his “History of Civilization in England” raised him from obscurity to a fame which soon became as extensive as civilization itself. The scheme of the work as it shaped the first volume was too great for his physical powers of accomplishment, and he died without realizing it. He left nothing else which compares with the first volume of his “History of Civilization,” except such occasional essays as that in which he reviews Mill on “Liberty.” There he shows the quality of his intellect in sentences which the intensity of his conviction makes piercing with a power of penetration beyond that possible for mere logic. “Liberty,” he says, “is the one thing most essential to the right development of individuals and to the real grandeur of nations. It is a product of knowledge when knowledge advances in a healthy and regular manner; but if under certain unhappy circumstances it is opposed by what seems to be knowledge, then, in God’s name, let knowledge perish and liberty be preserved.”

1   Buckle was born in Kent, England, November 24th, 1821. His family was wealthy, but, as his constitution was delicate, he escaped the formal English academic training which might have stereotyped his intellect. Educated at home, and having an ample fortune, he lived surrounded by books which he used under the inspiration of his desire to produce a great historical work adequate for the explanation of human history from the standpoint of nineteenth-century science. “The History of Civilization in England,” the first volume of which appeared in 1857, was the result. A second volume followed it, but Buckle’s death, May 29th, 1862, left unachieved the history of civilization as a whole, which, had he lived, he might have attempted.

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