The character of his undertaking compelled Mr. Buckle, on the contrary, to stretch his mental antennae into every department of mundane activity, to hold the Facts there discovered, so far as he might, collectively within his grasp, and to draw them by an irresistible strain into gradually decreasing circles of generalization, until they were brought to a Central Law, which should contain within itself the many-sided explanation of the intricate ramifications of individual and national careers. The difference in the work essayed by the two distinguished Thinkers whose labors we are considering, is somewhat analogous to that which exists between the profession of the apothecary and that of the physician. The former must know the range of _Materia Medica_, and the contents of the _Pharmacopaeia_, so far as is necessary to arrange the various medicines in order, and deliver them when called for. The latter must hold the different remedies in his knowledge, not as classified upon the pharmaceutist's shelves, but as related to the various forms of constantly changing vital Phenomena, in the midst of which he is to detect their applicability to different forms of disease. Still more analogous is Comte to the student of Natural History, whose business it is, preeminently, to distribute and classify the Animal Kingdom, in accordance with Generalizations which relate mainly to the form or type of organization; while Buckle resembles the student of a higher rank, who endeavors, in the midst of the play of passion and the actual exhibitions of life itself, to read the nature of the mental and moral development which exists beneath them and controls their workings. It is evident that, up to a period subsequent to the publication of his first volume, the writer of the 'History of Civilization' entertained the fullest confidence in the ability of the Inductive Method to cope with the ultimate problems of the Universe, and had high expectations of being able, through its instrumentality, to reduce the whole body of our Knowledge to a systematic whole, and to establish a Science of Sciences which should be a Criterion of Truth, and the crowning intellectual achievement of the ages. Whether Mr. Buckle fully comprehended the real nature of the Science toward which he was aiming; whether he entirely appreciated the radical and important change which its discovery would necessarily introduce into our Methods of Investigation;--whether he saw that it would be the inauguration of a true Deductive Mode of reasoning, which would enable us to advance with incredible rapidity and certainty into the arcana of those departments which he was then obliged to explore with the most tedious research, the most plodding patience, and the most destructive intellectual tension, in order to accumulate a limited array of Facts, is somewhat doubtful.