Buckle, Henry Thomas

Henry Thomas (1821-1862), an English writer. He inherited sufficient property from his father, a wealthy London merchant, to enable him to carry out his own views of life. He was a man of scholarly habits and of feeble health. He conceived the plan of writing a History of Civilization, two volumes of which were completed before his early death. He took issue with the current view that nations rise and fall according to the arbitrary will of Providence. He claimed that climate, soil, food, and the physical nature of a country are the causes that lie at the beginning of civilization; and that, as civilization advances, men become less and less dependent on nature and more and more reliant upon inherited knowledge and mental ability. He also thought that the efforts of any one person are insignificant, compared with the natural trend of national events. Alexander the Great, for instance, was only an instrument in carrying into effect the natural superiority of the Grecian over the Persian civilization. The Greeks would have overrun western Asia sooner or later whether Alexander had lived or not. In like manner he would have said that the American Revolution was a natural conflict of ideas, and that the American ideas were bound to prevail on the American continent whether George Washington and Sam Adams and Patrick Henry had ever lived or not. Other views of almost equal importance have had a profound effect on writers of history ever since his day.