has long ceased to be connected with religion; as, for instance, the observance of personal cleanliness, which the Brahmins insist on making wholly dependent on theological prescription. For some centuries after Christianity was widely established, a great number of statesmen, and even philosophers, went on lamenting the corruption which must follow the fall of polytheistic superstitions. The greatest service that could be rendered to humankind while this sort of clamour continues to exist, is that a whole nation should manifest a high order of virtue while essentially alienated from theological belief. This service was rendered by the demonstration attending the French Revolution. When, from the leaders to the lowest citizens, there was seen so much courage, military and civic, such patriotic devotedness, so many acts of disinterestedness, obscure as well as conspicuous, and especially throughout the whole course of the republican defence, while the ancient faith was abased or persecuted, it was impossible to hold to the retrograde belief of the moral necessity of religious opinions. It will not be supposed that deism was the animating influence in this case; for not only are its prescriptions confused and precarious, but the people were nearly as indifferent to modern deism as to any other religious system. This view, of religious doctrine having lost its moral prerogatives, concludes the evidence of the revolutionary crisis having completed the decay of the theological régime. From this date Catholicism could be regarded only as external to the society which it once ruled over;majestic ruin, a monument of a genuine spiritual organization, and an evidence of its radical conditions. These purposes are at present very imperfectly fulfilled,―partly because the political organism shares the theological discredit, and partly from the intellectual inferiority of the Catholic clergy, who are of a lower and lower mental average, and less and less aware of the elevation of their old social mission. The social barrenness of this great organization is a sad spectacle: and we can hardly hope that it can be made use of in the work of reconstruction, because the priesthood has a blind antipathy to all positive philosophy, and persists in its resort to hopeless intrigue to obtain a fancied restoration. The obvious probability -as a DECAY OF THE MILITARY SYSTEM. 295 is, that this noble social edifice will follow the fate of polytheism, through the wearing out of its intellectual basis, and be wholly overthrown, leaving only the imperishable remembrance of the vast services of every kind which connect it historically with human progress, and of the essential improvements which it introduced into the theory of social organization. Decay of the Military system. Turning from the religious to the civic system, we find that, notwithstanding a great exceptional warfare, the revolutionary crisis destroyed the military, no less than the theological system. The mode of republican defence, in the first place, discredited the old military caste, which lost its exclusiveness;⚫ its professional practice being rivalled by the citizens in general, after a very short apprenticeship. Popular determination was proved to be worth more than tactics. Again, the last series of systematic wars, those undertaken on behalf of Industry,-were now brought to an end. It was only in England that this old ground remained; and even there it was encroached upon by serious social anxieties. The colonial system was declining everywhere else; and its existence in the British Empire is doubtless a special and temporary exception, which may be left to find its own destiny, unmolested by European interference. The independence of the American Colonies introduced the change;' and it went forward while the countries of Europe were engrossed with the cares of the revolutionary crisis: and thus disappeared the last general occasion of modern warfare. The great exceptional warfare that I referred to as occasioned by an irresistible sway of circumstances must be the last. Wars of principle, which alone are henceforth possible, are restrained by a sufficient extension of the revolutionary action through Western Europe; for all the anxiety and all the military resources of the governments are engrossed by the care of external order. Precarious as is such a safeguard, it is yet one which will probably avail till the time of reorganization arrives, to institute a more direct and permanent security. A third token of military' decline is the practice of forced enlistment, begun in France under the pressure of the revolutionary crisis, perpetuated by the wars of the Empire, and imitated in other countries to strengthen national antagonisms. Having survived the peace, the practice remains a testimony of the anti-military tendencies of modern populations, which furnish a few volunteer officers, but few or no volunteer privates. At the same time it extinguishes military habits and manners, by destroying the special character of the profession, and by making the army consist of a multitude of anti-military citizens, who assume the duty as a temporary burden. The probability is, that the method will be broken up by an explosion of resistance; and meantime it reduces the military system to a subaltern office in the mechanism of modern society. Thus the time is come when we may congratulate ourselves on the final passing away of serious and durable warfare among the most advanced nations. In this case as in others, the dreams and aspirations which have multiplied in recent times are an expression of a real and serious need, a prevision of the heart rather than the head, of a happier state of things approaching. The existing peace, long beyond example, and maintained amidst strong incitements to national quarrels, is an evidence that the change is more than a dream or an aspiration. The only fear for the maintenance of this peace is from any temporary preponderance in France of disastrous systematic movements; and these would be presently put a stop to by the popular antipathy to war, and experience of the terrible effects thus induced. There is nothing inconsistent with this view in the fact that each European nation maintains a vast military apparatus. Armies are now employed in the preservation of public order. This was once a function altogether subordinate to that of foreign warfare; but the functions are reversed, and foreign war is contemplated only as a possible consequence of a certain amount of domestic agitation. While intellectual and moral anarchy render it difficult to preserve material order, the defensive force must equal at all times the insurrectional; and this will be the business of physical force till it is superseded by social reorganization. As for the time when this martial police will cease to be wanted, it is yet, though within view, very distant; for it has only just entered upon its last function, to which old opinions and manners are still so opposed that the RECENT INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS. 297 truth is not recognized, but hidden under pretences of imminent war, which is made the excuse of a great military apparatus provided, in fact, for service at home. That service will be better performed when it is avowed, and all false pretences are put away; and this might surely be done now that the central power itself is reduced to a similar provisional office. The military system and spirit are thus not doomed to the same decay as the sacerdotal, with which they were so long incorporated. The priesthood shows no disposition and no power to fuse itself in the new social organization; whereas there has never been a time since the decline of the military system began, when the soldiery were unable to assume the spirit and manners appropriate to their new social destination. In modern times the military mind has shown itself ready for theological emancipation; its habit of discipline is favourable to incorporation, and its employments to scientific researches and professional studies; all which are propitious to the positive spirit. In recent times, consequently, the spirit of the army has been, in France, at least, strikingly progressive; while that of the priesthood has been so stationary as to place it actually outside of the modern social action. Thus different are now the character and the fate of the two elements of ancient civilization, which were once so closely connected. The one is now left behind in the march of social improvement, and the other is destined to be gradually absorbed. Here I close my review of the negative progress of the last half century; and I proceed to review the positive progression under the four heads into which it was divided in the preceding period. Recent Industrial progress. The Industrial evolution has gone on, as in natural course of prolongation from the preceding period. The revolutionary crisis assisted and confirmed the advance by completing the secular destruction of the ancient hierarchy, and raising to the first social rank, even to a degree of extravagance, the civic influence of wealth. Since the peace this process has gone on without interruption, and the technical progress of industry has kept pace with the social. I assigned the grand impetus of the movement to the time when mechanical forces were largely adopted in the place of human industry; and during the last half century the systematic use of machinery, owing to the application of steam, has caused prodigious improvements in artificial locomotion, by land, river, and sea, to the great profit of industry. This progression has been caused by the union of science and industry, though the mental influence of this union has been unfavourable to the philosophy of science, for reasons which I shall explain. In recent times the industrial class, which is, by its superior generality, , most capable of entertaining political views, has begun to show its capability, and to regulate its relations with the other branches, by means of the system of public credit which has grown out of the inevitable extension of the national expenditure. In this connection we must take note, unhappily, of the growing seriousness of the deficiencies which I pointed out at the end of the last chapter. Agricultural industry has been further isolated through the stimulus given to manufacturing and commercial industry, and their engrossing interest under such circumstances. A worse and wholly unquestionable mischief is the deeper hostility which has arisen between the interests of employers and employed,—a state of things which shows how far we are from that industrial organization which is illustrated by the very use of those mechanical agencies, without which the practical expansion of industry could not have taken place. There is no doubt, that the dissension has been aggravated by the arts of demagogues and sophists, who have alienated the working class from their natural industrial leaders; but I cannot but attribute this severance of the head and the hands much more to the political incapacity, the social indifference, and especially the blind selfishness of the employers than to the unreasonable demands of the employed. The employers have taken no pains to guard the workman from seduction by the organization of a broad popular education, the extension of which, on the contrary, they appear to dread; and they have evidently yielded to the old tendency to take the place of the feudal chiefs, whose fall they longed for without inheriting their antique generosity towards inferiors. Unlike military superiors, who are bound to consider and pro |