IV. _Mr. Buckle's View of the small Influence of Religion on Civilization._--Mr. Buckle thinks it is erroneous to suppose that religion is one of the prime movers of human affairs. (Vol. I. p. 183.) Religion, according to him, has little to do with human progress. In this opinion, he differs from nearly all other great historians and philosophical thinkers. In modern times, Hegel, Niebuhr, Guizot, Arnold, and Macaulay, among others, have discussed the part taken by religious ideas in the development of man, laying the greatest stress on this element. But Mr. Buckle denies that religion is one of the prime movers in human affairs. The Crusades have been thought to have exercised some influence on European civilization. But religion was certainly the prime mover of the Crusades. Mohammedanism exercised some influence on the development of European life. But Mohammedanism was an embodiment of religious ideas. The Protestant Reformation shook every institution, every nation, every part of social life, in Christendom, and Europe rocked to its foundations under the influence of this great movement. But religion was the prime mover of it all. The English Revolution turned on religious ideas. The rise of the Dutch Republic was determined by them. In one form they colonized South America and Mexico; in another form, they planted New England. Such great constructive minds as those of Alfred and Charlemagne have been benevolently inspired by rational religion; such dark, destructive natures as those of Philip II. of Spain, Catharine de Medicis of France, and Mary Tudor of England have been malevolently inspired by fanatical religion.