Mr. Buckle was a fatalist in every sense of the word. Marriages, deaths, births, crime--all are regulated by Law. The moral status of a community is illustrated by the number of depredations committed, and their character. Following the suggestions of M. Quetelot, he brings forward an array of figures to prove that not only, in a large community, is there about the same number of crimes committed each year, but their character is similar, and even the instruments employed in committing them are nearly the same. Of course, outside circumstances modify this slightly--such as financial failures, scarcity of bread, etc., but by a comparison of long periods of time, these influences recur with perfect regularity. It is not the individual, in any instance, who is the criminal--but society. The murderer and the suicide are not responsible, but are merely public executioners. Through them the depravity of the _public_ finds vent. Free Will and Predestination--the two dogmas which have, more than any others, agitated the public mind--are discussed at length. Of course he accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to democracy; and the British and Scottish churches are cited as examples of the effect of the two doctrines on ecclesiastical organizations. The former is an aristocracy, the latter a democracy. No feature of Mr. Buckle's work is so prominent as its democratic tendencies. The people, and the means by which they can be elevated, were uppermost in his mind, and he disposes of established usages, and aristocratic institutions, in a manner far more American than English. It is this circumstance which has endeared him to the people of this country, and to the liberals of Germany--the work having been translated into German. For the same reason, he was severely criticised in England. Having devoted the first volume to a discussion of the laws of civilization, it was his intention to publish two additional volumes, illustrating them; taking the three countries in which were found certain prominent characteristics, which he conceived could be fully accounted for by his theories, but by no other, and above all, by none founded upon the doctrine of free will and individual responsibility. These countries were Spain, Scotland, and the United States--nations which grew up under the most diverse physical influences, and which present widely different civilizations.