Henry Thomas Buckle (24 November 1821 – 29 May 1862) was an English historian, the author of an unfinished ''History of Civilization'', and a strong amateur chess player. He is sometimes called "the Father of Scientific History".

Early life and education

Buckle, the son of Thomas Henry Buckle (1779–1840), a wealthy London merchant and shipowner, and his wife, Jane Middleton (d. 1859) of Yorkshire was born at Lee in London (Kent County) on 24 November 1821. He had two sisters. His father died in January 1840.

Education

As a boy, Buckle's "delicate health" rendered him unsuited for the usual formal education or games of middle-class youth. However, he loved reading. This made him suitable to be "educated at home by his mother, to whom he was devoted until her death in 1859. She taught him to read the Bible, the ''

Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

'', ''

The Pilgrim's Progress ''The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come'' is a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a progenitor of t ...

'', and Shakespeare. His father read theology and literature and occasionally recited Shakespeare to the family in the evenings." Buckle's one year of formal education was in Gordon House School at age fourteen. When his father offered him a reward for winning a prize in mathematics, Buckle asked "to be taken away from school". From then on he was self-taught. As such, Buckle said later, "I was never much tormented with what is called education, but allowed to pursue my own way undisturbed.... Whatever I may now be supposed to know I taught myself." At age nineteen, Buckle first gained distinction as a chess player. He was known as one of the best in the world. In matchplay he defeated Kieseritsky and Loewenthal.

Father's death

Buckle's father died in 1840. Buckle inherited £20,000. This inheritance allowed Buckle to live the rest of his life in reading, writing, and travel.

Writing ''History of Civilization in England''

In July 1840 Buckle, his mother, and his sister Mary spent almost a year in Europe, with "extended stays in Germany, Italy, and France. Buckle studied the language, literature, and history of each place they visited." Buckle taught himself to read eighteen foreign languages. By 1840, Buckle had decided "to direct all his reading and to devote all his energies to the preparation of some great historical work". During the next seventeen years he worked ten hours a day toward that purpose. By 1851 Buckle had decided that his "great historical work" would be "a history of civilization". During the next six years, he was engaged "in writing and rewriting, altering and revising the first volume". It was titled the ''History of Civilization in England'' and was published in June 1857.

Private life

Because he was uneasy about his health, Buckle "rose, worked, walked, dined, and retired with remarkable regularity". His inheritance "enabled him to live comfortably", but he spent money prudently with two exceptions: fine cigars and his collection of 22,000 books. Buckle and his mother enjoyed giving dinners for friends and dining out. Buckle was mostly deemed to be "a good conversationalist" because of his "deep knowledge of a wide range of subjects". On the other hand, some thought him "tedious or egotistical" with a tendency "to dominate conversations". He won the first British chess tournament in 1849.

False accusation

The pornographic publisher

John Camden Hotten John Camden Hotten (12 September 1832, Clerkenwell – 14 June 1873, Hampstead) was an English bibliophile and publisher. He is best known for his clandestine publishing of numerous erotic and pornographic titles. Life Hotten was born John Will ...

claimed that his series of

flagellation Flagellation (Latin , 'whip'), flogging or whipping is the act of beating the human body with special implements such as whips, rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails, the sjambok, the knout, etc. Typically, flogging has been imposed on ...

reprints ''

The Library Illustrative of Social Progress ''The Library Illustrative of Social Progress'' was a series of pornographic books published by John Camden Hotten around 1872 (falsely dated 1777). They were mainly reprints of eighteenth-century pornographic works on flagellation. Hotten claimed ...

'' had been taken from Buckle's collection, but this was untrue, as reported by

Henry Spencer Ashbee Henry Spencer Ashbee (21 April 1834 – 29 July 1900)(Walter) was a book collector, writer, and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Frax ...

Death of his mother (1859)

On 1 April 1859, Buckle's mother died. Shortly after, under the influence of this "crushing and desolating affliction", he added an argument for immortality to a review he was writing of J. S. Mill's ''Essay on Liberty''. Buckle's argument was not based on theologians "with their books, their dogmas, their traditions, their rituals, their records, and their other perishable contrivances". Rather he based his argument on "the universality of the affections; the yearning of every mind to care for something out of itself". Buckle asserted "it is in the need of loving and of being loved, that the highest instincts of our nature are first revealed." As if reflecting on his mother's death, Buckle continued that "as long as we are with those whom we love ..., we rejoice. But when "the enemy eath approaches, "when the very signs of life are mute ... and there lies before us nought save the shell and husk of what we loved too well, then truly, if we believed the separation were final ... the best of us would succumb, but for the deep conviction that all is not really over." We have "a forecast of another and a higher state". Thus, Buckle concludes, "it is, then, to that sense of immortality with which the affections inspire us, that I would appeal for the best proof of the reality of a future life". He also said, "If immortality be untrue it matters little if anything else be true or not."

Other women in Buckle's life

Although love for his mother dominated his life, there were other instances of his love for women. At seventeen, he fell in love with a cousin and "challenged a man to whom she was engaged". He fell for another cousin, but his parents objected. In 1861, when Buckle went to Egypt, he invited "one Elizabeth Faunch, the widow of a carpenter, to join him.... Mrs. Faunch refused his invitation, but there is some evidence that the two had been engaged in a liaison for some time." Last travels and death
The death of his mother in 1859 combined with the exhausting work on the second volume of the ''History of Civilization in England'' and its publication in 1861 invoked a decision by Buckle to go to Egypt to recover from exhaustion. He toured Egypt. Then, feeling better, Buckle traveled to Palestine and Syria. He died of typhoid fever in Damascus, Syria, on 29 May 1862 and was buried there. A sister provided a gravestone with the epitaph "I know that he shall rise again". The sister of the British consul in Damascus added: "The written word remains long after the writer; The writer is resting under the earth, but his works endure".

''History of Civilization in England''

The description of ''History of Civilization in England'' is taken from ''The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature, Volume 4'' (1890). Buckle's fame rests mainly on his ''History of Civilization in England''. It is a gigantic unfinished introduction, of which the plan was, first to state the general principles of the author's method and the general laws that govern the course of human progress—and secondly, to exemplify these principles and laws through the histories of certain nations characterized by prominent and peculiar features—Spain and Scotland, the United States and Germany. The completed work was to have extended to 14 volumes; its chief ideas are: # That, owing partly to the want of ability in historians, and partly to the complexity of social phenomena, extremely little had as yet been done towards discovering the principles that govern the character and destiny of nations, or, in other words, towards establishing a science of history; # That, while the theological dogma of predestination is a barren hypothesis beyond the province of knowledge, and the metaphysical dogma of free will rests on an erroneous belief in the infallibility of consciousness, it is proved by science, and especially by statistics, that human actions are governed by laws as fixed and regular as those that rule in the physical world; # That climate, soil, food, and the aspects of nature are the primary causes of intellectual progress: the first three indirectly, through determining the accumulation and distribution of wealth, and the last by directly influencing the accumulation and distribution of thought, the imagination being stimulated and the understanding subdued when the phenomena of the external world are sublime and terrible, the understanding being emboldened and the imagination curbed when they are small and feeble; # That the great division between European and non-European civilization turns on the fact that in Europe man is stronger than nature, and that elsewhere nature is stronger than man, the consequence of which is that in Europe alone has man subdued nature to his service; # That the advance of European civilization is characterized by a continually diminishing influence of physical laws, and a continually increasing influence of mental laws; # That the mental laws that regulate the progress of society cannot be discovered by the metaphysical method, that is, by the introspective study of the individual mind, but only by such a comprehensive survey of facts as enable us to eliminate disturbances, that is, by the method of averages; # That human progress has been due, not to moral agencies, which are stationary, and which balance one another in such a manner that their influence is unfelt over any long period, but to intellectual activity, which has been constantly varying and advancing: "The actions of individuals are greatly affected by their moral feelings and passions; but these being antagonistic to the passions and feelings of other individuals, are balanced by them, so that their effect is, in the great average of human affairs, nowhere to be seen, and the total actions of mankind, considered as a whole, are left to be regulated by the total knowledge of which mankind is possessed"; # That individual efforts are insignificant in the great mass of human affairs, and that great men, although they exist, and must "at present" be looked upon as disturbing forces, are merely the creatures of the age to which they belong; # That religion, literature and government are, at the best, the products and not the causes of civilization; # That the progress of civilization varies directly as "scepticism", the disposition to doubt and to investigate, and inversely as "credulity" or "the protective spirit", a disposition to maintain, without examination, established beliefs and practices.

Assessments

''The North American Review'' (1861)

The North American Review The ''North American Review'' (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which it was inactive until revived at ...

'' characterized Buckle as a "self-styled historian of civilization". He "ransacks all history, history, literature, and science for proofs and illustrations of his preconceived opinion". Furthermore, "the absurdity of the conclusions to which he is led furnishes, perhaps, the best proof of the erroneousness of his method and the falsity of his premises." In conclusion, "under the guise of a history, he book'sonly aim is to teach the preconceived conclusions of a false and debasing philosophy."

''The New York Times'' (1861)

There was a review of Buckle's ''History of Civilization in England. Vol II'' in ''The New York Times''. The review concluded, "notwithstanding these imperfections, we still regard the ''History of Civilization'' as perhaps the most important contribution to modern historical science.... It is easy for one to make a great many very superficial objections to Mr. Buckle's mode of treating history ..., but the more one comes up with the grandeur of his method, the less disposition there will be to make such objections.... His influence on the thought of the present age cannot but be enormous; and if he gives us no more than we already have in the two volumes of the magnum opus, he will still be classed among the fathers and founders of the Science of History."

''The Portland Daily Press'' (1862)

A review of Buckle's newly published ''Essays'' appeared in this direct predecessor of the Portland Press Herald, on Saturday, 27 December 1862. The editors wrote of Buckle: " a solitary unremitting student, with no encouragement save from the home circle, and no opportunity of measuring himself with rivals, he naturally, with all his wealth of learning, command of language, and vigor of thinking, fell into those pitfalls of rashness and inaccuracy which lie in wait for the recluse."

Dostoevsky's ''Notes From Underground'' (1864)

The paranoid narrator of

Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...

's ''

Notes From Underground ''Notes from Underground'' ( pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform Russian: ; also translated as ''Notes from the Underground'' or ''Letters from the Underworld'') is a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal ''Epoch'' in 1864. ...

'' discusses Buckle's theories: ''"Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of mankind by means of the pursuit of his own is to my mind almost the same thing . . . as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through civilisation mankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to follow from his arguments. But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest way, as though it were

champagne Champagne (, ) is a sparkling wine originated and produced in the Champagne wine region of France under the rules of the appellation, that demand specific vineyard practices, sourcing of grapes exclusively from designated places within it, ...

. Take the whole of the nineteenth century in which Buckle lived. Take Napoleon—

the Great This is a list of people known as the Great, or the equivalent, in their own language. Other languages have their own suffixes, such as Persian ''e Bozorg'' and Urdu ''e Azam''. In Persia, the title "the Great" at first seems to have been a co ...

and also the present one. Take

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

—the eternal union '' n_ironic_reference_to_the_ongoing_ n_ironic_reference_to_the_ongoing_American_Civil_War">American_Civil_War.html"_;"title="n_ironic_reference_to_the_ongoing_American_Civil_War">n_ironic_reference_to_the_ongoing_American_Civil_War/nowiki>''._Take_Schleswig–Holstein_question.html" ;"title="American_Civil_War.html" ;"title="American_Civil_War.html" ;"title="n ironic reference to the ongoing American Civil War">n ironic reference to the ongoing American Civil War">American_Civil_War.html" ;"title="n ironic reference to the ongoing American Civil War">n ironic reference to the ongoing American Civil War/nowiki>''. Take Schleswig–Holstein question">the farce of Schleswig-Holstein. . . . And what is it that civilisation softens in us? The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations—and absolutely nothing more."''

The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (1910)

Buckle did not define the general conceptions with which he worked, e.g., "civilization", "history", "science", "law". Therefore, "his arguments are often fallacies". Furthermore, "he sometimes altered and contorted the facts" and "he very often unduly simplified his problems." Nevertheless, "many of his ideas ... have been more precisely elaborated by later writers on sociology and history" and his work was immensely valuable in provoking further research and speculation.

John William Cousin (1910)

Buckle is remembered for treating history as an exact science, which is why many of his ideas have passed into the common literary stock, and have been more precisely elaborated by later writers on sociology and history because of his careful scientific analyses. Nevertheless, his work is not free from one-sided views and generalisations resting on insufficient data.

Robert Bierstedt (1981)

In his ''History of Civilization in England'', "Buckle criticized historians on the ground that they were too much interested in biography and in military and political history and failed to seek universal principle or laws." In contrast, "Buckle was confident that it was possible to construct a science of society on the basic of inductions from history." His difficulty was the "sheer quantity of materials that would have to be mastered." Herbert Spencer said that Buckle "'took in' more than he was able to organize".

'Buckle's Trichotomy'

One a handful of quotes attributed to Buckle which has stood the test of time. Attested by Charles Stewart (of Achara, Appin, Argyllshire), a Scottish nobleman, in his 1901 autobiography, Buckle said: "''Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence ; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons ; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest, by their preference for the discussion of ideas.''"

Works

References

Bibliography

* See hi
''Life''
by A. H. Huth (1880). * See also Ian Hesketh
''The Science of History in Victorian Britain''
esp. Ch. 1 on "The Enlarging Horizon: Henry Thomas Buckle's Science of History". * *

External links

* * *
Works by Henry Thomas Buckle
at

Hathi Trust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...

Biography and quotes on Perceptions.com

George H. Smith, "Among My Favorites: ''History of Civilization in England'', by H. T. Buckle" in four parts.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Buckle, Henry Thomas 1821 births 1862 deaths British chess players English male non-fiction writers 19th-century British historians 19th-century English male writers 19th-century chess players