There is here so much looseness and inconsistency of language, that what is most offensive in it may easily bear more than one interpretation: and the shocking dogma that, in a given state of society, the force of circumstances constrains the commission of a certain amount of crime, may possibly admit of being explained away and softened down into the comparatively harmless proposition that, where all the circumstances, conditions or causes required for the commission of a certain amount of crime are present, that amount of crime will certainly be committed. But what is most provoking in Mr. Buckle is the heedlessness or wantonness with which he is constantly insisting that the causes in question are necessarily present and uniformly acting. What he calls the uniform reproduction of crime is likened by him to the uniform recurrence of the tides. According to him, it is a law that a certain number of suicides shall take place annually, just as it is a law that there shall be high and low water twice in every twenty-four hours. Now a law, as the word is here used, means a record of invariable repetitions of phenomena. Has it been observed, then, that suicides bear, we will not say an invariable, but anything like a definite proportion to population? Mr. Buckle thinks it has, and he adduces some facts in support of the opinion; but his facts, properly understood, disprove instead of proving what he asserts; and, even if they proved it, they would yet afford no support to his main theory.