Some difficulties, however, suggest themselves in the way of this very simple explanation. If superstitious loyalty to Church and king comes from earthquakes, why are not the earthquake regions of the West Indies and of South America more loyal, instead of being in a state of chronic revolution? And how came Scotland to be so diseased with loyalty and superstition, when she is so free from earthquakes? And if knowledge is such a certain cure for superstition, why was not Spain cured by the flood of light which she, alone of all European countries, enjoyed in the Middle Ages? Spain was for a long time the source of science and art to all Europe, whose Christian sons resorted to her universities and libraries for instruction. There was taught to English, French, and German students the philosophy of Aristotle, the Græco-Arabic literature, mathematics, and natural history. The numerals, gunpowder, paper, and other inventions of the Arabs, passed into Europe from Spain. She possessed, therefore, that knowledge of physical laws which Mr. Buckle declares to be the only cure for superstition. Yet she was not cured. The nation which, according to his theory, ought to have been soonest delivered from superstition, according to his statements has retained its yoke longer than any other. From Spain Mr. Buckle passes to Scotland, where he finds a still more complicated problem. Superstition and loyalty ought to go together, he thinks,--and usually do; but in Scotland they are divorced. The Scotch have always been superstitious, but disloyal. To the explanation of this fact Mr. Buckle bends his energies of thought, and of course is able to find a theory to account for it. This theory we shall not stop to detail; it is too complex, and at the same time too superficial, to dwell upon. Its chief point is that the Protestant noblemen and Protestant clergy quarreled about the wealth of the Catholic Church, and so there was in Scotland a complete rupture between the two classes elsewhere in alliance. Thus "the clergy, finding themselves despised by the governing class, united themselves heartily with the people, and advocated democratic principles." Such is the explanation given to the course of history in a great nation. A quarrel between its noblemen and its ministers (who are of course represented as mercenary self-seekers) determines its permanent character! Mr. Buckle, to whom the love of plunder appears as the cause of what other men regard as loyalty or religion, explains by the same fact the loyalty of the Highlanders to King Charles. They thought that, if he conquered, he would allow them to plunder the Lowlanders once more. This is Buckle's explanation. An ethnologist would have remembered the fact that the Gaels are pure-blooded Kelts, and that the Kelts _pur sang_ are everywhere distinguished for loyalty to their chiefs.