“The actions of men are in reality never inconsistent, but however capricious they may appear only form part of one vast system of universal order.”

“The actions of men are caused by their antecedents, which exist either in the human mind or in the external world.”

— Henry Buckle (1957), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. v)

“Rejecting, then, the metaphysical dogma of free will, and the theological dogma of predestined events, we are driven to the conclusion that the actions of men, being determined solely by their antecedents, must have a character of uniformity, that is to say, must, under precisely the same circumstances, always issue in precisely the same results. And as all antecedents are either in the mind or out of it, we clearly see that all the variations in the results—in other words, all the changes of which history is full, all the vicissitudes of the human race, their progress or their decay, their happiness or their misery—must he the fruit of a double action; an action of external phenomena upon the mind, and another action of the mind upon the phenomena.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), The History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 14-15)

The "actions of people", according to Buckle, can be divided between [A] "vituous actions" and [B] "vicious actions", and, according to some opinion, a third class [C] "indifferent actions".

“The actions of men are by an easy and obvious division separated into two classes, the [A] virtuous and the [B] vicious; and as these classes are correlative, and when put together compose the total of our moral conduct, it follows that whatever increases the one, will in a relative point of view diminish the other; so that if we can in any period detect a uniformity and a method in the vices of a people, there must be a corresponding regularity in their virtues; or if we could prove a regularity in their virtues, we should necessarily infer an equal regularity in their vices; the two sets of actions being, according to the terms of the division, merely supplementary to each other. Some moralists have also established a third class of actions, which they call [C] indifferent, as belonging neither to virtue nor to vice; and hence there arose the famous doctrine of probability, set up by several eminent Romish casuists, and hotly attacked by Pascal. But this, if we put aside its worst feature, namely its practical bearings, is merely a question of definition inasmuch as every indifferent act must lean on the side either of evil or of good, and may therefore be referred to the category to which it inclines; and certainly every increase of vice diminishes virtue relatively, though not always absolutely. Or, to express this proposition in another way, it is evident that if it can be demonstrated that the bad actions of men vary in obedience to the changes in the surrounding society, we shall be obliged to infer that their good actions, which are, as it were, the residue of their bad ones, vary in the same manner; and we shall be forced to the further conclusion, that such variations are the result of large and general causes, which, working upon the aggregate of society, must produce certain consequences, without regard to the volition of those particular men of whom the society is composed.”

— Henry Buckle (1957), History of Civilization, Volume One (pgs. 16-17)

A parallelogram of forces model (Ѻ), showing the addition of the force normal, directed perpendicular to the plane plus the gravitational force, directed downward, which yields the "resultant force", directed in a downward parallel to the plane direction, the latter of which being the "go force" of the person, which Buckle says can be used to explain what he calls the "great social law", namely that moral actions of men are the product not of their volition, but of their antecedents, or component forces.

“Those readers who are acquainted with the manner in which in the physical world the operations of the laws of nature are constantly disturbed, will expect to find in the moral world disturbances equally active. Such aberrations proceed, in both instances, from minor laws, which at particular points meet the larger laws, and thus alter their normal action. Of this, the science of mechanics affords a good example in the instance of that beautiful theory called the parallelogram of forces; according to which the forces are to each other in the same proportion as is the diagonal of their respective parallelograms. The diagonal always giving the resultant when each side represents a force, and if we look on the resultant as a compound force, a comparison of diagonals becomes a comparison of compounds.

This is a law pregnant with great results; it is connected with those important mechanical resources, the composition and resolution of forces; and no one acquainted with the evidence on which it stands, ever thought of questioning its truth. But. the moment we avail ourselves of it for practical purposes, we find that in its action it is warped by other laws, such as those concerning the friction of air, and the different density of the bodies on which we operate, arising from their chemical composition, or, as some suppose, from their atomic arrangement. Perturbations being thus let in, the pure and simple action of the mechanical law disappears. Still, and although the results of the law are incessantly disturbed, the law itself remains intact.

Just in the same way, the great social law, that the moral actions of men are the product not of their volition, but of their antecedents, is liable to disturbances which trouble its operation without affecting its truth. And this is quite sufficient to explain those slight variations which we find from year to year in the total amount of crime produced by the same country. Indeed, looking at the fact that the moral world is far more abundant in materials than the physical world, the only ground for astonishment is, that these variations should not be greater; and from the circumstance that the discrepancies are so trifling, we may form some idea of the prodigious energy of those vast social laws, which, though constantly interrupted, seem to triumph over every obstacle, and which, when examined by the aid of large numbers, scarcely undergo any sensible perturbation.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), The History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 22-23)

“Between 1758 and 1770, atheistical tenets rapidly gained ground; and in 1770 was published the famous work, called the System of Nature; the success, and, unhappily, the ability of which, make its appearance an important epoch in the history of France. Its popularity was immense; and the views it contains are so clearly and methodically arranged, as to have earned for it the name of the code of atheism. Five years later, the Archbishop of Toulouse, in a formal address to the king on behalf of the clergy, declared that atheism had now become the prevailing opinion.’

— Henry Buckle (1856), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 620)

“Among the inferior class of writers, Damilaville, Deleyre, Marechal, Naigeon, Toussaint, were active supporters of that cold and gloomy dogma, which, in order to extinguish the hope of a future life, blots out from the mind of man the glorious instincts of his own immortality.74 And, strange to say, several even of the higher intellects were unable to escape the contagion. Atheism was openly advocated by Condorcet, by D'Alembert, by Diderot, by Helvetius, by Lalande, by Laplace, by Mirabeau, and by Saint Lambert." Indeed, so thoroughly did all this harmonize with the general temper, that in society men boasted of what, in other countries, and in other days, has been a rare and singular error, an eccentric taint, which those affected by it were willing to conceal.’

— Henry Buckle (1856), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 620-21)

“In 1764 Hume met, at the house of Baron d'Holbach, a party of the most celebrated Frenchmen then residing in Paris. The great Scotchman, who was no doubt aware of the prevailing opinion, took occasion to raise an argument as to the existence of an atheist, properly so called; for his own part, he said, he had never chanced to meet with one. "You have been somewhat unfortunate," replied Holbach; "but at the present moment you are sitting at table with seventeen of them.".’

— Henry Buckle (1856), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 620)

“One night I read 160-pages of Buckle’s History of Civilization—a bumptious book, strong positivism, emancipation from exploding notions and that style of thing, but a great deal of actually original matter, the result of fertile study, and not mere brainspinning.”

— James Maxwell (1857), “Letter to Lewis Campbell” [2]

“Those uniformities which we observe in our experiments which quantities of matter containing millions of molecules are uniformities of the same kind as those … wondered at by Buckle.”

— James Maxwell (1873), Publication [3]

“Molecules are like to many individuals, having the most various states of motion, and the properties of gases only remain unaltered because the number of these molecules which on average have a given state of motion is constant.”

— Ludwig Boltzmann (1872), “Further Studies on the Thermal Equilibrium of Gas Molecules” [2]

A two volumes bound as three set of Buckle’s History of Civilization in England, described as Buckle’s sole major work—still unfinished at his death—popularized, against the “great men” theory posited by Carlyle, “the belief in the possibility of applying scientific treatment to historical problems.” (Ѻ)

“As is well known, Buckle demonstrated statistically that if only a sufficient number of people are taken into account, then not only is the number of natural events like death, illness, etc., perfectly constant, but also the number of so-called voluntary actions—marriages at a given age, crimes, and suicides. It occurs no differently among molecules.”

— Ludwig Boltzmann (1886), “The Second Principle of the Mechanical Theory of Heat” [4]

“Buckle was another of the 19th century's most curious characters. Born near London in 1821, he was a slow learner as a child. When he was 18 his father, a maritime merchant, died, leaving the son sufficient funds to tour Europe and pursue his hobbies of his-tory and chess. Buckle became a formidable chess player and learned several foreign languages, becoming fluent in seven and conversant in a dozen others. He also became a prolific bibliophile, amassing a library exceeding 20,000 books.”

— Tom Siegfried (2006), A Beautiful Math (pg. 137)

“The incoherent compilation of facts is already improperly qualified as history.”

— Auguste Comte (1842), Positive Philosophy, Volume Five (pg. 18); cited by Henry Buckle (c.1861) in History of Civilization in England, Volume One [2nd London Edition] (pg. 4)

“I cordially subscribe to the remark of one of the greatest thinkers of our time [Mill (1848)], who says of the supposed differences of race, ‘of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences’ [Principles of Political Economy, Volume One (pg. 390)].”

— Henry Buckle (1857), History of Civilizations, Volume One (pg. 29)

“If you want to read an interesting and most masterly book get the first volume of Buckle’s History of Civilization in England? Although he may not be correct in all points, it is most clever — and the book of the age — holding science and scientific method so high, and applying them to the study of history. There will soon be a revolution in public opinion regarding science — it will — I hope in our time too — come to be considered as the true basis of knowledge, and looked upon in a very different light from what it has been or still is. There is certainly that one comfort about being of a scientific turn, that one feels that one is ahead of the crowd, helping, however feebly, the coach forward; and this will soon be acknowledged on all hands. This book of Buckle’s is a symptom of the coming time. Everyone interested in the welfare of science should read it.”

— H.E. Roscoe (1858), “Letter to Stanley Jevons” (Ѻ)

“Both Buckle and Henry Adams were convinced that to develop the laws of historical movement, it would be necessary to study its phenomena in comparative freedom from extraneous influences.”

— Morris Zucker (1945), The Philosophy of American History: Periods in American History [10]

“Buckle has been referred to as the ‘Hari Seldon’ of the 19th century.”

— Tom Siegfried (2006), A Beautiful Math (pg. 137)

“English historian Henry Buckle (1821-62) was born into the family of a wealthy London merchant. A child of delicate health, and tutored privately at home, he never attended university. Nevertheless, it was clear that he was meant for intellectual pursuits and by the age of twenty he was a formidable chess player. With his love of books and reading, he set out on an ambitious plan to write a fourteen-volume history of civilization, and at the same time to put historical research on a more scientific basis. The work would have included a greater number of countries, but due to his early death, only two volumes exist.”

— Anon (2011), “Book Abstract” (Ѻ), Cambridge University Press, Dec 8

“Human actions have regularity and these actions are governed by mental and physical laws; therefore, both sets of laws must be studied, and there can be no history without natural sciences.”

— Henry Buckle (1861), The History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. v)

“The unfortunate peculiarity of the ‘history of man’ is, that although its separate parts have been examined with considerable ability, hardly anyone has attempted to combine them into a whole [compare: Faustian], and ascertain the way in which they are connected with each other. In all the other great fields of inquiry, the necessity of generalization is universally admitted, and noble efforts are being made to rise from particular facts in order to discover the laws by which those facts are governed. So far, however, is this from being the usual course of historians, that among them a strange idea prevails, that their business is merely to relate events, which they may occasionally enliven by such moral and political reflections as seem likely to be useful. According to this scheme, any author who from indolence of thought, or from natural incapacity, is unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, has only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he is qualified to be an historian; he is able to write the history of a great people, and his work becomes an authority on the subject which it professes to treat. The establishment of this narrow standard has led to results very prejudicial to the progress of our knowledge. Owing to it, historians, taken as a body, have never recognized the necessity of such a wide and preliminary study as would enable them to grasp their subject in the whole of its natural relations. Hence the singular spectacle of one historian being ignorant of political economy; another knowing nothing of law; another nothing of ecclesiastical affairs and changes of opinion; another neglecting the philosophy of statistics, and another physical science; although these topics are the most essential of all, inasmuch as they comprise the principal circumstances by which the temper and character of mankind have been affected, and in which they are displayed. These important pursuits being, however, cultivated, some by one man, and some by another, have been isolated rather than united: the aid which might be derived from analogy and from mutual illustration has been lost; and no disposition has been shown to concentrate them upon history, of which they are, properly speaking, the necessary components.”

— Henry Buckle (1657), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 3)

“In the whole literature of Europe there are not more than three or four really original works which contain a ‘systematic attempt’ [compare: Adams creed] to investigate the history of man according to those exhaustive methods which in other branches of knowledge have proved successful, and by which alone empirical observations can be raised to scientific truths. Scarcely any thing has been done, accordingly, towards discovering the principles which govern the character and destiny of nations.”

— Henry Buckle (1657), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 4); Volume One [3-vol set] (pg. 5)

A video still (Ѻ) of Buckle’s collected works in seven volumes, comprising: England (2 volumes), Life (2-volumes), and Miscellaneous (3-volumes).

“I hope to accomplish for the history of man something equivalent, or at all events analogous, to what has been effected by other inquirers for the different branches of natural science. In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been explained, and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal laws. This has been done because men of ability, and, above all, men of patient, untiring thought, have studied natural events with the view of discovering their regularity: and if human events were subjected to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results.”

— Henry Buckle (1657), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 5)

“This expectation of discovering regularity in the midst of confusion is so familiar to scientific men, that among the most eminent of them it becomes an article of faith; and if the same expectation is not generally found among historians, it must be ascribed partly to their being of inferior ability to the investigators of nature, and partly to the greater complexity of those social phenomena with which their studies are concerned.”

— Henry Buckle (1657), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 5)

“And as to the greater complexity of the phenomena, the philosophic historian is opposed by difficulties far more formidable than is the student of nature; since, while on the one hand, his observations are more liable to those causes of error which arise from prejudice and passion, he, on the other hand, is unable to employ the great physical resource of experiment, by which we can often simplify even the most intricate problems in the external world. It is not, therefore, surprising that the study of the movements of man should be still in its infancy, as compared with the advanced state of the study of the movements of nature. Indeed, the difference between the progress of the two pursuits is so great, that while in physics the regularity of events, and the power of predicting them, are often taken for granted even in cases still unproved, a similar regularity is in history not only not taken for granted, but is actually denied.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), History of Civilization in England, Volume One (pg. 6); Volume One [3-vol set] (pg. 7)

“We shall thus be led to one vast question, which indeed lies at the root of the whole subject, and is simply this: are the actions of men, and therefore societies, governed by fixed laws, or are they the result of either chance or of supernatural interference? For, in reference to this matter, there are two doctrines, which appear to represent different stages of civilization. According to the first doctrine, every event is single and isolated, and is merely considered as the result of a blind chance. This opinion, which is most natural to a perfectly ignorant people, would soon be weakened by that extension of experience which supplies a knowledge of those uniformities of succession and of co-existence that nature constantly presents.”

— Henry Buckle (1857). History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 6)

“It is impossible for any man to escape the ‘pressure’ of surrounding opinions.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), History of Civilization in England, Volume One (pg. 8)

“The believer in the possibility of a ‘science of history’ is not called upon to hold either the doctrine of predestined events, or that of freedom of the will; and the only positions which, in this stage of the inquiry, I shall expect him to concede are the following: That when we perform an action, we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the results of some antecedents; and that, therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the antecedents, and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results [compare: Holbach’s geometrician ]. This, unless I am greatly mistaken, is the view which must be held by every man whose mind is unbiased by system, and who forms his opinions according to the evidence actually before him.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), The History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 13-14)

“To those who have a steady conception of the regularity of events, and have firmly seized the great truth that the actions of men, being guided by their antecedents, are in reality never inconsistent, but, however capricious they may appear, only form part of one vast scheme of universal order, of which we in the present state of knowledge can barely see the outline,—to those who understand this, which is at once the key and the basis of history, the facts just adduced, so far from being strange, will be precisely what would have been expected, and ought long since to have been known. Indeed, the progress of inquiry is becoming so rapid and so earnest, that I entertain little doubt that before another century has elapsed, the chain of evidence will be complete, and it will be as rare to find an historian who denies the undeviating regularity of the moral world, as it now is to find a philosopher who denies the regularity of the material world.”

— Henry Buckle (1857) in History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 24)

“Nor should we infer that because the physical sciences have not yet been applied to history, they are therefore inapplicable to it. Indeed, when we consider the incessant contact between man and the external world, it is certain that there must be an intimate connection between human actions and physical laws; so that if physical science has not hitherto been brought to bear upon history, the reason is, either that historians have not perceived the connection, or else that, having perceived it, they have been destitute of the knowledge by which its workings can be traced. Hence there has arisen an unnatural separation [see: unbridgeable gap] of the two great departments of inquiry, the study of the internal, and that of the external: and although, in the present state of European literature, there are some unmistakable symptoms of a desire to break down this artificial barrier, still it must be admitted that as yet nothing has been actually accomplished towards effecting so great an end.”

— Henry Buckle (1957), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 25)

“It is the business of the historian to mediate between these two parties [the ‘moralists, theologians, and metaphysicians’ and the ‘scientific men’] and reconcile their hostile pretensions by showing the point at which their respective studies ought to coalesce. To settle the terms of this coalition, will be to fix the basis of all history. For since history deals with the actions of men, and since their actions are merely the product of a collision between internal and external phenomena, it becomes necessary to examine the relative importance of those phenomena; to inquire into the extent to which their laws are known; and to ascertain the resources for future discovery possessed by these two great classes, the students of the mind and the students of nature. This task I shall endeavor to accomplish in the next two chapters; and if I do so with any thing approaching to success, the present work will at least have the merit of contributing something towards filling up that wide and dreary chasm, which, to the hindrance of our knowledge, separates subjects that are intimately related, and should never be disunited.”

— Henry Buckle (1957), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 26)

“The three most philosophical writers on ‘climate’, in respect to physical influence on humans, are Montesquieu, Hume, and Comte.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), History of Civilizations, Volume One (pg. 32)

“The gigantic crimes of Alexander or Napoleon become after a time void of effect, and the affairs of the world return to their former level. This is the ebb and flow of history, the perpetual flux to which by the laws of our nature we are subject. Above all this, there is a far higher movement; and as the tide rolls on, now advancing, now receding, there is, amid its endless fluctuations, one thing, and one alone, which endures for ever. The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions. All these have their different measures and their different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another. They pass away like a dream; they are as the fabric of a vision, which leaves not a rack behind. The discoveries of genius alone remain: it is to them we owe all that we now have, they are for all ages and all times; never young, and never old, they bear the seeds of their own life ; they flow on in a perennial and undying stream ; they are essentially cumulative, and giving birth to the additions which they subsequently receive, they thus influence the most distant posterity, and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect than they were able to do even at the moment of their promulgation.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), History of Civilizations, Volume One (pg. 163)

“The acquisition of knowledge, which by far is the noblest of all occupations, is an occupation which of all others raises the dignity of man.”

— Henry Buckle (1856), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 496)

“In France, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, this idea was, the inferiority of the internal [see: internal force] to the external [see: external force]. It was this dangerous but plausible principle which drew the attention of men from the church to the state; which was seen in Helvetius the most celebrated of the French moralists, and in Condillac the most celebrated of the French metaphysicians. It was this same principle which, by increasing, if I may so say, the reputation of nature, induced the ablest thinkers to devote themselves to a study of her laws, and to abandon those other pursuits which had been popular in the preceding age.”

— Henry Buckle (1856), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 627)

“This is, that the first application of the principles of comparative anatomy to the study of fossil bones, was also the work of a Frenchman, the celebrated Daubenton [1716-1800] (Ѻ). Hitherto these bones had been the object of stupid wonder; some saying that they were rained from heaven, others saying that they were the gigantic limbs of the ancient patriarchs, men who were believed to be tall because they were known to be old.”

— Henry Buckle (1856), History of Civilization, Volume One (pg. 634)

“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.”

— Henry Buckle (c.1858), Source (Ѻ)

“And, notwithstanding a few exceptions, we do undoubtedly find that the most truly eminent men have had not only their affections, but also their intellect, greatly influenced by women. I will go even farther; and I will venture to say that those who have not undergone that influence betray a something incomplete and mutilated. We detect, even in their genius, a certain frigidity of tone; and we look in vain for that burning fire, that gushing and spontaneous nature with which our ideas of genius are indissolubly associated. Therefore, it is, that those who are most anxious that the boundaries of knowledge should be enlarged, ought to be most eager that the influence of women should be increased, in order that every resource of the human mind may be at once and quickly brought into play.”

— Henry Buckle (1858), “The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge” (Ѻ), Lecture, Royal Institution, Mar 19

“The great enemy of civilization is the notion that society cannot prosper, unless the affairs of life are watched over and protected at nearly every turn by the state and the church; the state teaching men what they are to do, and the church teaching them what they are to believe.”

— Henry Buckle (1861), History of Civilization, Volume Two (pg. 1); cited by Morris Zucker (1945) in The Historical Field Theory (pg. 83) [7]

“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.”

— Henry Buckle (c.1860), attributed (Ѻ)(Ѻ) by Charles Steward