ment to aid them by regular active encouragement, proceeding not from personal generosity, but from public solicitude. At the same time, the growing taste for the fine arts was rendering the life of poets and artists more and more independent, by releasing them from the necessity of that patronage which was still needed by the less popular pursuits of science. The institution of journalism was then becoming practically important, to literature at first, and then indirectly, by its popularizing influence, to all the other arts. While the æsthetic element was thus obtaining independence and power, its special expansion underwent a remarkable change. The imitation of the ancients must come to an end, and some new form be assumed, yielding impressions more complete and more general. After a season of æsthetic anarchy the discussion arose, about the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns, which may be truly regarded as an event in the history of human progress, as it discredited for ever the old régime of Art, which henceforth made only abortive attempts, and proved its incapacity to produce any more masterpieces. But, at the same time, the other system, regarded as peculiar to England and Spain, underwent a similar change, and sank into decline and sterility, through the decay of medieval associations. The progress that was made was therefore necessarily in those productions that exhibit the interests of private life. On the stage, it is true, there was no surpassing Molière, who remains without a rival; but in the epic delineation of private manners, which is the most original and extensive kind of literary creation proper to modern society, we have, among many others, the masterpieces of Fielding and Lesage, which are a standing testimony against the decline of the poetic faculties of Man. Another character of this phase is the decisive progress of dramatic music; especially in Italy and Germany: and its influence must be powerful in incorporating Art with social life in general. The demolition of the ancient system by the negative philosophy was extremely unfavourable to Art, in as far as it permitted it to have none but fleeting inspirations, incompatible with all fundamental truth of poetic conception: but, at the same time, the decrepitude of the old régime gave a force to the artistic influence, through its connection with the social polity, which is sufficient to support it till the period of reorganization arrives. Thus it is that poets and artists, who were scarcely emancipated from patronage at the beginning of this phase, rapidly rose to be, in some sort, the spiritual leaders of modern peoples against the system of retrograde resistance, which was now to be irrevocably destroyed; the movement being before so prepared for by the metaphysicians that it suited æsthetic better than philosophical intellects, and afforded them a means of activity not then yielded by Art, properly so called. The consequences of so unnatural a state of things could not but be fatal both to society and to Art, if it were too long protracted: and the evil effects are seen in the rule of the men of letters, who are the offspring of the transition, and the leaders of the social revolution. We here find the necessary close of the preparatory season of the aesthetic element; for its incorporation with the sociality of a modern age has thus been urged to excess; and the time for reorganization has evidently arrived. We have now to take a similar review of the scientific evolution, and after that, of the philosophical, the separation of the two being provisional, as I explained before. When we have completed the process, we shall obtain from their common issue the true immediate principle of the spiritual organization, and therefore of the temporal, which can have no other sufficient basis. The scientific development. Though the scientific and philosophical faculties are, as I have so often said, the least powerful of any, the scientific and philosophical spirit obtains the rule over human progress, by means of its relation to the great general conceptions which support the whole system of our ideas about the external universe and Man. The slowness of the great changes wrought by this spirit may disguise the reality of its power; but it confirms the eminent difficulty and importance of those changes. We have seen how the primitive speculative exercises of mankind originated a theological philosophy which was modified more and more, and at length destroyed, without any possibility of its being replaced. We have now to explain how, starting from the Middle Ages (the cradle of all great subsequent changes), the human mind, having worn out all the social applications that the old philosophy admitted of, began to turn, though with a very confused instinct of its course, towards the final supremacy of a radically different, and even opposite philosophy, which must be the basis of a new organization. This great philosophical evolution has continued to depend more and more on the scientific development which first undermined the theological system, and transmuted its spirit into the metaphysical, in preparation for a further progress. The close connection of the two evolutions, the scientific and the philosophical,— need not prevent our treating of them separately; and in that separate treatment we must take the scientific first, as the philosophical movement would remain unintelligible without it. Our survey may be very brief, as my first volume exhibits the historical filiation of the chief scientific conceptions, as well as their gradual influence, at once positive and negative, upon the philosophical education of society. This leaves me nothing to do but to co-ordinate in a general way the historical views which were before isolated, being careful, moreover, to discard all that might degenerate into a concrete or special history of science or philosophy. New birth of science. The scientific progression was necessarily connected with the beginnings of natural philosophy in ancient Greece; but it is habitually treated of as directly issuing from the medieval period, both because of its revival after a long retardation, and on account of the more and more decisive characteristics that it presented. Those differences must not, however, make us forget the connection between the discoveries of the Keplers and Newtons, and those of Hipparchus, Archimedes, and their ancient fellowship. I have shown before that the sharp division between natural and moral philosophy permitted the simpler of the two to be so far independent of the more complex, as that it must be freely rising in the metaphysical scale while the other lingered in the last phase of the theological. Accordingly, natural philosophy remained external to the final organization of Catholic monotheism, which, when RELATION OF SCIENCE TO MONOTHEISM. 247 Relation to compelled to take it in and incorporate it, at once became liable to perversion through that compromise which, under the name of scholasticism, made theology dependent on metaphysics, as we shall see presently. This last modification of the theological spirit was highly favourable to science, which remained thenceforward under the general protection of the dominant doctrines, till its anti-theological character was fully developed. But even before the distinct formation of scholasticism, Catholicism was favourable to natural philosophy by beginning to incorporate it. with social life, its doctrine doing for science in this way what its organization did for art. We have seen that the passage from polytheism to monotheism was favourable to the scientific spirit, and to its influence on human opinion in general. So transient was the monotheistic philosophy, that, far from interdicting the special study of nature, like polytheism, it rather encouraged its contemplation, that providential. arrangements might be admired in detail. Polytheism had connected every leading phenomenon with such particular and precise explanations, that every act of physical analysis stirred up a corresponding religious difficulty;. and even when this incompatibility drove inquirers to a more or less explicit monotheism, the spirit of investigation remained shackled by reasonable fears of popular opposition, aggravated by the confusion between religion and polity: so that scientific progress had always been external to ancient society, notwithstanding occasional social encouragements. Monotheism, on the contrary, reducing the whole case to that of vague and uniform divine intervention, was willing that explorers should study the details of phenomena, and even disclose their -secondary laws, which were at first regarded as so many manifestations of supreme wisdom. This was a point of extreme importance, as a connection was thus established between all the parts of nascent science. Thus it was that monotheism, which owed its existence to the first stirrings of the scientific spirit, was itself indispensable to its further progress, both in regard to its improvement and its propagation. We find the same action in the Arabian form of monotheism, though less marked; but the early promise of scientific cultivation in Mohammedanism was soon surpassed by Catholicism, which was better furnished for the work by its superior organization, and which aided the progress of knowledge, especially by restricting immediate supernatural intervention to the utmost, and substituting rational explanations for miracles, prophecies, visions, etc., which had come down from polytheism, and were too readily entertained by Islamism. Scientific activity was encouraged also by the institution of a speculative life under Catholicism, by its encouraging certain popular habits of rational discussion, by its adoption of the · principle of capacity for office in the place of the hereditary principle, and by the facilities it afforded to the intellectual life. Thus, from the second phase of the medieval period, Charlemagne, and afterwards Alfred, were earnest in stimulating and propagating the study of science; and before the termination of that phase, the learned Gerbert, become Pope, used his power for the general establishment of the new mode of arithmetical notation, which had been ripening for three centuries, but did not come into common use till it was called for by the needs of industrial life. The system of education, ecclesiastical and lay, of that time bears witness to the estimation in which scientific culture was held, the best minds being carried beyond the literature and metaphysics of the multitude of pupils into mathematical and astronomical studies. It was only during the last of the three phases, however, that Catholicism was the best promoter of science. The Byzantine monotheism performed the service during the first phase, when the great western invasions were going forward; and the Arabian during the second, when the Christian world was absorbed by political cares, spiritual and temporal. Then, for three centuries, Arabian students improved upon ancient mathematical and astronomical knowledge, gave us algebra, extended trigonometry, and thus met the growing needs of celestial geometry. When Catholicism had wrought out its polity, and scholasticism ensued, the metaphysical spirit had finally gained the ascendancy over the theological, and prepared the way for the positive by permitting the study of the external world to supersede that of isolated Man. The solemn sanction attached to the |