Mr.
Wilson states that "each and every writer" who has preceded him has
lacked them all. Mr. Buckle, by implication, excepts one person, as
uniting in himself all the qualifications he demands. Mr. Wilson thinks
_he_ is the exception; but we are quite sure that the exception intended
by the author was--Henry Thomas Buckle.
In the Old World, civilization, as all admit, had its origin in tropical
regions. Across the whole extent of the Eastern Continent, races are
found inhabiting the warmer latitudes, which are now, or formerly were,
in what is popularly called a semi-civilized condition. No one, we
believe, has ever been foolish enough to account for this fact by
supposing that a single people or tribe, having attained some degree of
culture, had diffused the germs of knowledge over so large a portion
of the globe. Chinese civilization differs almost as much from that
of Hindostan as from that of England or of France. The Assyrian
civilization was indigenous on the borders of the Euphrates, and the
Egyptian on the borders of the Nile. What is remarkable in these and
in all the other cases that might be cited is, that in those regions
civilization never reached the high point which it has attained in other
parts of the world, less favored at the outset; that it exhibited a
grotesque union of refined ideas and strangely artificial institutions,
with customs, manners, and creeds that seem to the European mind
abhorrent and ridiculous; and that, the internal impulse with which it
started having been exhausted, it either remained stationary, without
further development, or sank into decay, or fell before the hostile
attacks of races that had never yielded to its influence.
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