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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOET
"JTOO SWIJET ABBIYJBS TOO TARDY AS TOO SLOW "
— Shakespeare
HISTORY
OF THE
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
BY
ROBERT FLINT
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE;
HONORARY MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF PALERMO;
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, ETC.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1894
[All rights reserved]
"AS THE EARTH BRINGETH FORTH HER BUD, AND AS THE GARDEN
CAUSETH THE THINGS THAT ARE SOWN IN IT TO SPRING FORTH ; SO THE
LORD GOD WILL CAUSE RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PRAISE TO SPRING FORTH
BEFORE ALL THE NATIONS." — Isaiah.
"DIE GESCHICHTE 1ST DAS WISSEN DER MENSCHHEIT VON SICH, IHRE
SELBSTGEWISSHEIT. — SIE 1ST NICHT ' DAS LICHT UND DIE WAHRHEIT,'
ABER EIN SUCHEN DANACH, EINE PREDIGT DARACF, EINE WEIHE DAZU;
DEM JOHANNES GLEIOH : oix tJv t4 <pG>S, dNX* &TI papTVptflTTI ircpl TOW
0wt6s." — Droysen.
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY
IN
FRANCE
AND
FRENCH BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND
BT
ROBERT FLINT
NEW YOKK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1894
[All rights reserved]
A.^713
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
CHARI.ES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
PKEFACE
Almost twenty years ago the Author published a
volume in which he endeavoured to describe and criti-
cise the principal attempts which had been made in
France and Germany philosophically to comprehend
and explain the history of mankind.
Had he not been called soon afterwards to a position
which required for a considerable number of years al-
most exclusive devotion to a different order of studies,
that volume would have been followed by one dealing
in a similar way with the course and succession of
historical philosophies in Italy and England. But be-
fore he could resume the work, he had become so con-
vinced of the necessity of altering and enlarging his
plan, as well as of endeavouring to improve the execu-
tion, that he has allowed the volume which he had
published to remain out of print for nearly a dozen
years, during which it has only been known through
the excellent French translation of the late M. Carrau.
He now believes himself to be able to make his work,
instead of simply a connected series of studies, a real
and comprehensive history ; and, if life and strength
be granted, to carry it on steadily, although not per-
haps rapidly, to completion.
yiii PREFACE
"v
For the reasons stated in the Introduction the Author
deems it impossible to describe the course of historical
philosophy in a detailed, orderly, and useful manner,
otherwise than by tracing it in the first place in its
national channels. He desires so to do this that his
work may be not merely a history of a department of
philosophy, but the history of an interesting and in-
structive phase of the intellectual development of four
great nations — France, Germany, Italy, and England.
Believing that in few, if any, spheres of activity are
national tendencies and characteristics more clearly dis-
cernible than in that of historical thought, he hopes
that the present volume will be found to be to some
extent a contribution to the history of France, as well
as of the philosophy of history ; and will equally en-
deavour to give to subsequent volumes not merely a
gerTeral and philosophical but likewise a special and
national interest and value.
The volumes being so far relatively distinct will be
published separately, although they have a common
subject.
The one now issued has been a considerable time pass-
ing through the press. Hence some writers treated of
in it when alive are now dead. Hence also a consider-
able number of books which would probably have been
referred to if they had appeared earlier are unnoticed.
The best thanks of the Author are due to his learned
friend, the Rev. W. Hastie, B.D., for his assistance in
revising the proofs of the entire volume, and for many
helpful suggestions.
Johnstone Lodge, Craigmillar Park,
Edinbcrsh, 20th November 1893.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I.
PAGE
Aim and scope of the present work ..... 1
The historical aim ....... 1
The critical aim ....... 3
Two different meanings of the word "history" ... 5
Distinction between history and nature .... 7
Some definitions of history examined .... 8
Historiography is an art with a history of its own . . .12
Historical literature tends to become increasingly philosophical . 13
Growth of discussion on the methods of historical inquiry . . 14
The development of human history must be viewed in the light
of all science ....... 16
Refutation of the idea that there is no Science of History . . 17
And that there is no Philosophy of History . . . .18
The relation of science to philosophy ... 19
How history is both a science and a philosophy . . .21
Why the author does not state at the outset his own theory of
history ....... 23
Plan of the work . . . . . ... 24
Consideration of objections to it . . . . .25
Importance of nationality in history ..... 26
II.
The absolute origin of historical philosophy cannot be discovered . 28
How religious belief has influenced historical speculation . . 29
How philosophy includes historical speculation . . .31
How political disquisition leads to historical speculation . . 34
The dependence of historical study upon the general advance of
science ........ 36
X CONTENTS
PAGE
Influence of economic phenomena upon the development of human
society ......•■ 37
Historical philosophy a growth of history itself . . .40
III.
The origins of historical narrative ..... 42
Political conditions in Egypt and Assyria unfavourable to the
development of historiography .
Historiography and historians in China
In Japan ......
And in India ......
The Jewish historical records
The Greeks first raised history to the dignity of an independent art
Herodotus ......
Thucydides ......
Polybius ......
The idea of a universal history was the result of the universal
empire of Rome .....
Csesar as a historian .....
Sallust .......
How the strength of national feeling among the Romans influenced
their historiography ....
Livy .......
Tacitus .......
Christianity introduced the consciousness of a spiritual unity of the
human race, and enormously enriched history .
Eusebius and the early Christian historians .
How Christianity extended the field of history
Wherein the medieval chronicles differed from those of early
classical writers .....
Medieval historiography was predominantly ecclesiastical
Gregory of Tours .....
Bede .......
Adam of Bremen .....
Lambert of Hersfeld and Otto of Freisingen
Matthew Paris ......
Vernacular chronicles .....
The medieval mind had not sufficiently comprehensive acquaint-
ance with historical facts to frame a philosophy of history
It was also credulous of such evidence as it possessed
Inductive use of historical facts began to be made only at a late
period ......
The importance of a knowledge of Mohammedan history
Mohammedan historiography and historians
Tabari . . .
Mas'udi ......
The philosophy of history in Arabia .
CONTENTS XI
IV.
The growth of history towards a scientific stage has been partly
the consequence and partly the cause of the growth of certain
ideas ........ 87
I. The idea of progress in the Oriental world . . . .88
In Greece and Rome the course of human history was conceived
of as a process of deterioration, a progress, and a cycle,
» although in none profoundly or consistently . . 90
Illustrations of this theory ..... 92
Christianity and the idea of progress . . . .96
The Gnostic and Montanist creeds . . . .97
The Christian Fathers . . ... 99
The idea of progress in the Middle Ages . . . 101 "
Roger Bacon ....... 102
The Franciscan conception of human development . . 103
II. The idea of progress implies that of unity . . . . 104
Social consciousness is manifested in the lowest stages of
humanity ....... 105
Comparative isolation of the great Oriental states inimical to
the conception of human unity .... 106
This conception in Egypt, China, India, and Persia . . 107
The services of Greece to the cause of human unity . . 110
Those of Rome ....... 112
The Greco-Roman view was destitute of self-realising power . 114
Christianity and the idea of human unity . . . 115
Gradual realisation of the idea of human unity in the Chris-
tian world ....... 116
III. Freedom results from the full realisation of all the powers of
humanity ....... 125
Bodily slavery among primitive peoples . . . 127
Among the Jews, Egyptians, and Indian peoples . . 128
Gradual disappearance of bodily slavery . . . 129
The treatment of women in relation to the growth of liberty . 131
Growth of liberty in its higher forms .... 133
V.
Political speculation among the Greeks
I. Plato failed to do justice to historical reality
The ideal polity of his ' Republic ' . . .
Mr. Newman's statement on the 8th and 9th books of the
'Republic' ......
Some defects of the Platonic ideal
The ' Laws ' : Plato's theory of the development of society and
government ......
The ' Statesman ' .
137
138
139
143
144
145
146
II. Aristotle clearly recognised the political significance of history 147
CONTENTS
He sometimes abused the historical method
His ideal State . • • • • •
The theory of revolutions his chief contribution to historical
science ...••■
Other services to the philosophy of history
III. Augustine's intellectual character
The purpose and scope of his 'De Civitate Dei'
Summary of his historical theory
In spite of many defects, it was a vast improvement on pre
vious theories of history .
IV. Ibn Khaldun : sketch of his career
His mind was not of a speculative cast .
The value of his ' Universal History ' .
Its aim ....•••
His views on society in general, the physical basis of civilisa-
tion, and prophetism ....
On the civilisation of nomadic and half-savage peoples
On the Arabs ......
On the rise, government, and fall of empires
On public spirit ......
On the law, course, and phases of history
On a settled and concentrated civilisation
The last two sections of the work
PAGE
148
149
150
151
152
152
153
158
158
161
162
163
164
165
166
168
169
170
171
172
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Chapter I. — THE PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND
THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN
FRANCE: BODIN
I.
Medieval historiography was almost exclusively in the hands of
ecclesiastics ......
Rise of lay chroniclers .....
Consideration of the works of Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart,
Monstrelet, and Commines ....
Place to be assigned to Commines ....
The influences which affected French historiography in the six-
teenth century ......
De Thou's ' Historia sui temporis ' .
The political treatises of La Boetie and "Junius Brutus" .
Hotman made the first attempt to found th£ right of liberty upon
an historical basis .....
Pasquier's ' Researches '.....
Thierry's estimate of the work
176
178
179
181
184
186
186
187
188
188
CONTENTS
II.
Bodin was the first French writer who took a philosophical survey
of history ....
Aim of his ' Methodus '
Some previous works on historical method
The place he assigns to human history
His recognition of law in history
His recognition of progress in history
He attempted to explain events chiefly by physical and political
causes ......
He developed the-'Aristotelian theory of revolutions
His theories on the origin of nations, and on epochs in history
Popeliuiere's ' History of Histories ' .
190
192
192
193
195
196
193
199
199
200
Chapter II. — HISTORIOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL REFLEC-
TION IN FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY:
BOSSUET
I.
Growth of absolutism in France
Its influence upon historiography
Historical value of the " Memoirs " of this period
Ecclesiastical historiography .
The histories of Duplets and Mezeray
Writers on historic method .
Bayle's influence upon historiography
Influence of Cartesianism on historical study
The idea of progress in Pascal, Perrault, Fontenelle, &c
The controversy as to the relative merits of the ancients and moderns
202
203
203
204
205
206
209
210
212
213
II.
Bossuet : his character and beliefs ....
The originality of his conception of history discussed
The aim of his ' Discours ' .
His division of history into epochs ....
His uncritical use of the Biblical narrative .
His delineation of the course of religion
His main thesis regarding it not established
Attempted to explain the causes of the rise and fall of empires
Merits and defects ......
The true and the false in his attempt to rest the philosophy of his
tory on the doctrine of Providence
He erred as to the final cause of history
Did justice only to the Christian element in history
Bossuet defended against Mr. Buckle's criticisms
Mr. Huth's defence of Buckle considered
216
217
218
219
220
220
222
222
223
225
227
229
230
233
XIV
CONTENTS
Chapter III. - THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: GENERAL
SURVEY -MONTESQUIEU, TURGOT, AND VOLTAIRE
The state of France under Louis XIV. and his successor .
Public opinion, though long submissive, gradually became a hostile
power . • • • • • •
The French philosophy of the eighteenth century was practically
identical with public opinion .
Characteristics of this philosophy : —
Rationalistic and revolutionary
Empirical and materialistic .
Militant and positive .
Propagated certain great and hitherto unappreciated
truths ....-■
Attempted to discover meaning in history .
Condition of historiography in this century : Montfaucon, &c.
Freret's historical and critical genius
His researches in ancient chronology, geography, philosophy,
mythology, &c. .
The general histories of Daniel and Velly
Rollin and Vertot ......
Fresnoy and Rollin on historic method
Hardouin and historical scepticism ....
Summary of the debate in the Academy of inscriptions on
historical certitude and credibility of early Roman history
Beaufort .......
Niebuhr's estimate of Beaufort's work
PAGE
235
238
240
241
241
242
242
243
244
246
247
249
250
251
253
255
260
261
II.
Montesquieu's ' Lettres Persanes ' . . . . . 262
The value of his ' Considerations ' . . . . . 263
The originality of his work discussed .... 265
The central conception of the ' Esprit des Lois ' . . . 266
Montesquieu's method defective inasmuch as he did not systemati-
cally compare coexistent and consecutive social states . . 267
Often explained historical facts when he failed to reach their
general laws ....... 268
The accusation that he confounded fact with right not proved . 269
He had an inaccurate notion of inductive law . . . 269
In treating of the influences of governments he confounded two
distinct methods . . . . . . .271
Montesquieu on the theory of the three powers ; his eulogy of the
British Constitution ...... 273
His defective method led him to exaggerate the influence of
physical agencies, and to overlook that it is chiefly indirect . 274
CONTENTS XV
PAGE
He proved and applied the principle that the course of human his-
tory is chiefly determined by general causes . . . 277
He introduced the economical element into historical science . 277
The concluding books of his work ..... 278
His services to historical philosophy ..... 279
HI.
Turgot's character ....... 280
His views on the services rendered by Christianity to mankind . 281
He first made the idea of progress the " organic principle of
history" . . . . ... .281
The profundity, comprehensiveness, and consistency of his view of
human progression ...... 283
He saw clearly that progress had not been a uniform process . 285
His sketch of a ' Political Geography ' . . . . 286
He anticipated Comte's law of the three states . . . 286
But gave it no irreligious application .... 288
IV.
Why such different estimates have been formed of Voltaire's char-
acter and influence ...... 289
His intellect, aims, and attainirients . . . • . 290
His ' Charles XII.' and ' Siecle de Louis XIV.' . . .291
How the design of his ' Essai sur les Mceurs ' differed from that of
Bossuet, Montesquieu, or Turgot .... 292
His so-called ' Philosophy of History ' . . . . 294
Summary of it . . . . . . • • 295
Qualities displayed in his ' Essai ' : —
Originality ........ 296
Critical spirit <". . . . .297
Independence of judgment ..... 298
Mean conception of human nature .... 299
Imperfect idea of civilisation .... 300
Hostility to religiou ...... 300
Want of comprehensive vision .... 302
And of philosophical depth ..... 303
The 'Essai' showed the strength and weakness of Voltaire's
intellect . . 304
Chapter IV. — EIGHTEENTH CENTURY— Continued:
ROUSSEAU TO CONDORCET
I.
How peaceable reformation might have been accomplished under a
strong king ....... 305
Influence of the revolutionary spirit upon historical literature . 307
XVI CONTENTS
PAGE
Rousseau's character and influence ..... 307
He contended that the sciences and arts have depraved the morals
and manners of mankind ..... 308
Summary of his ' Discourse on Inequality ' . . . . 309
Its teaching led towards anarchism ..... 311
His ' Social Contract ' was essentially dogmatic and unhistorical . 312
How Rousseau's tenets affected social speculation and practice . 313
Morelly's social theories . .... 314
Mably's character and beliefs . . . . .315
His social and historical writings ..... 316
Rousseau, Morelly, and Mably, founded the socialistic theory of
history . . . . . . . .318
Condillac's 'Universal History' was defective in research and criti-
cism ........ 318
Represented intellectual progress as entirely dependent upon the
use made of language ...... 319
Some attempts to explain history by means of hypotheses sug-
gested by science ... . . 320
Raynal's ' Settlements and Trade of Europeans ' . . . 322
Volney's ' Ruins ' summarised . . 323
II.
Condorcet : the circumstances in which his ' Sketch of the Progress
of the Human Spirit ' was written .... 325
Its fundamental idea ....... 327
The nine great epochs in human development . . . 327
Defects of this division ...... 328
Exaggerated and inconsistent view of human perfectibility . 329
Originality and importance of his chapter on the future of the
human race ....... 330
He maintained the direction of progress to be towards —
(1) the destruction of inequality between nations;
(2) the destruction of inequality between classes ; and
(3) the improvement of individuals.
These tendencies considered .... 331
Discussion of his doctrine of indefinite perfectibility . . 334
Walckenaer's ' Essay on the History of Humanity ' . .339
Chapter V. — THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GENERAL
REMARKS — HISTORIOGRAPHY
I.
The despotism of Napoleon was unfavourable to historical science 340
Some conditions which fostered the growth of historical theories :
Change in philosophical belief .... 341
Revival of religion .... 342
CONTENTS XV11
PAGE
Rise of Romanticism in literature .... 343
Change in political spirit ..... 344
Tendency toward socialism ..... 345
In all these changes France was affected by the general movement
of Europe 346
II.
Works of Daunou, Ginguene, and Michaud . . . 347
Madame de StaeTs influence upon historical literature . 348
Works of Sismondi and Constant .... 350
Chateaubriand's writings and influence . . . 351
Augustin Thierry almost perfected historiography as a literary art ;
his works ........ 353
De Barante's ' Dues de Burgogne ' . . . . . 354
Mignet's works and his historical theory .... 355
Thiers's ' History of the Revolution ' defended against Carlyle's
criticisms ........ 356
His 'History of the Consulate of the Empire' marred by intensity
of patriotism ....... 358
Erench historical workers of the nineteenth century . . 359
Improvement in French historiography .... 360 ■
Historians of the various schools ..... 361
Summary of the contents of Daunou's ' Cours d'Etudes Historiques ' 363
Cros-Mayreville on historical methodology .... 365
Chapter VI. — THE ULTRAMONTANIST AND LIBERAL
CATHOLIC SCHOOLS
I.
The advocates of the ultramontanist school were moved by a par-
tisan purpose ....... 366
Their three best representatives — De Maistre, De Bonald, and De
Lamennais ....... 367
Their conception of the principles of the Revolution . 368
Their antagonism to the philosophy of sensation . . 369
And to modern philosophy ..... 370
Their defence of absolute authority as the basis of society was
founded upon their theory of the origin and nature of language 372
Denial of the doctrine of progress .... 373
Contempt for individual reason and will .... 374
Theory that society is an organic system .... 374
Their defence of the authority of the Church . . . 376
And of the State ....... 378
Professed to find Biblical support for their theorems . . 378
De Bonald's historical formulae ..... 379
Fall and reappearance of ultramontanism . . 380
Xviii CONTENTS
II.
III.
Rise of the Liberal Catholic School .
Why it failed to attain its ends
It produced a number of influential historical works
Characteristics of Gratry's ' Law of History '
Outline of his theory of history
He pointed out the dependence of political and social progress upon
moral progress
PAGE
Ferrand and the theory of revolutions .... 381
Ballanche's character and writings . 382
His theory of historical development . • ■ 383
Recognised in history the combination of liberty and necessity . 385
His eschatology ....••• 386
386
387
387
389
390
392
Other historical philosophers of the Liberal Catholic School . 393
Chapter VII. — THE SOCIALISTIC SCHOOLS
Distinctive principle of Socialism ..... 394
Saint-Simon's character and works ..... 395
His indebtedness to other writers ..... 397
The place he assigns to the science of history . . . 397
His law of two states from which Comte's law of three states must
have been derived ...... 398
His attempt to explain history by physical law . . . 400
He raised his historical philosophy on the foundation laid by
Condorcet . ... . . . .402
Its leading principle is that general intelligence and individual
intelligence are developed according to the same law, and pass
through precisely parallel stages .... 402
His doctrine of the alternation of organic and critical periods in
history ........ 403
He attempted to arrange the facts of history into series according
to the chief phases of human nature .... 404
Saint-Simon also attempted to arrange the various societies of men
into a scale graduated according to their various degrees of
culture ........ 405
He assumed that the lowest stage of culture was representative of
the oldest ........ 406
His views on the social future were optimistic . . . 406
His religion meant simply philanthropy . . . 407
Fourier's works and characteristics ..... 408
His cosmogony and theology in relation to his historical speculations 410
CONTENTS xix
PAGE
His law of passional attraction . . . . .411
Divided history into four great periods . 412
The successive stages of the infancy of the human race 413
The three latter periods . . .419
His eschatology . . . 420
II.
Literary life of M. Buchez ...... 422
The principles and purpose of his ' Introduction to the Science of
History' ........ 422
His definition of the science of history .... 423
The dependence of that science upon the ideas of humanity and
progress ..... . . 424
His views on the methods of the science of history . . 425
His laws of historical variation . . . 427
His division of history into four epochs, each initiated by a reve-
lation . . . 428
General estimate of his work . 430
The career of.Leroux . . . 430
His ' Refutation of Eclecticism ' . 431
The theory of historical development expounded in his 'De
l'Humanite ' rests on his definition of man — " an animal
transformed by reason, and united to humanity " . 433
His view of continuous progress .... 433
His axiom of solidarity and doctrine of transmigration . 435
He represented progress as a continuous advance towards equality,
with three stages corresponding to the three chief forms of
caste ... . . 436
III.
L. Blanc's historical philosophy . 437
Criticism of it . . . . 438
Proudhon's character and influence . . 439
He endeavoured to prove that religion, philosophy, and science are
the three epochs in the education of mankind . . . 441
His views on history ....... 441
Defined progress as "the self-justification of humanity under the
impulsion of the ideal " . . . . . . 443
Held an extreme view of the all-sufficiency of moral law . . 444
Was opposed to the principle of nationality, and advocated the
establishment of small industrial communities . . . 444
His relation to Comte .... 445
Odysse-Barot's letters on war and peace .... 446
Regarded the great European States as factitious nationalities 447
Conceived of a nationality as a purely geographical fact . 447
Criticism of his three so-called laws . ... 448
XX CONTENTS
Chapter VIII. — SPIRITUALISTIC MOVEMENT: SO-CALLED
ECLECTIC AND DOCTRINARIAN HISTORICAL PHILOS-
OPHY
I.
PAGE
Cousin's career and influence . . • 452
The services rendered by him to philosophy . 453
His relation to Hegel ....•• 455
His view of the connection between psychology and the philosophy
of history .....-• 456
He errs in substituting human reason for human nature . . 458
In his division of intelligence into spontaneous and reflective, he
confuses a number of distinctions .... 459
His distribution of history into the three epochs of the infinite,
finite, and their relation, rests on an inaccurate analysis of
reason, and is inconsistent with facts .... 464
His optimism ....... 467
His views regarding the influence of places on history inconsistent
and erroneous . . .... 467
His theory of nations and of war 469
The theory of nations examined' . . • 470
The theory of war examined . . 471
His theory of great men . 473
Examination of it . . 475
II.
Jouffroy's character and writings . . . 479
Summary of his ' Reflections ' . 480
Consideration of two theories contained therein . . 483
Summary of his essay ' On the Present State of Humanity ' . 484
How far it is inconclusive ... . . 486
Dissent from his speculations as to the relation of England, France,
and Germany to the future of humanity . . 487
III.
Connection of doctrinaire politics with eclectic philosophy 490
Guizot's relation to Cousin . ... 490
Guizot's character and career . 491
As historian and historical philosopher . . 492
His explanation of the fall of the Roman empire . . 494
His essay on the ' Representative System in England ' . . 496
The connection between his two ' Histories of Civilisation ' . 496
Holds French civilisation to be the type or model of European
civilisation ... ... 497
This opinion shown to be illusory ... . 499
Statement of his view of civilisation, and criticism of it . . 502
CONTENTS
XXI
How he distinguishes ancient from modern civilisation
His vindication of the idea of political legitimacy .
Its futility ......
Summary of his ' Course of 1829 ' .
The scientific spirit and character of his method
His proof of the existence of historical science
PAGE
504
505
506
508
509
510
IV.
Javary's ' Idea of Progress ' ..... 511
Bouillier affirms the existence of intellectual progress, but denies
that of moral progress ..... 512
Refuses to admit that there can be a law of progress . .513
Fails to draw the true distinction between the progressive and un-
progressive in the species, and does not see that moral gains
are constantly being transmitted .... 514
His reason for denying the existence of a law of progress is in-
sufficient ........ 515
Caro on progress and on historical philosophy . . . 516
Carrau's delineation of the course of progress . . . 517
Guizot's influence upon succeeding French historians . 519
De Tocqueville's aversion to general historical speculation . 519
His ' Democracy in America ' an epoch-making work . . 520
His forecasts of the future . . . . . .521
His fears for the self-arrestment of democracy were exemplified in
French history ....... 522
Need not necessarily be fulfilled ..... 523
His ' Old Regime and the Revolution ' 523
VI.
Barchou's ' Essay on the Philosophy of History '
His Evolutionism ....
The stages of history ....
His historical eschatology
Lavollee .....
524
525
526
527
528
Chapter IX. — THE DEMOCRATIC HISTORICAL SCHOOL
I.
Democracy in France .
Michelet's early writings
How he was influenced by Vico
529
530
531
XX11
CONTENTS
And by Guizot . . . • •
His ' History of France '
His treatment of the French Revolution
The ' Bible of Humanity '
The relation of his historical philosophy to that of Hegel
Represents history as the progressive triumph of liberty
His account of the course of human progress
It wants scientific precision .
PAGE
532
533
534
536
537
538
538
541
II.
Career and early works of Quinet .
How he was influenced by Herder . . . •
Regards history as the manifestation of freewill
Inculcates the fraternity of nations .
Maintains that religion is the generative principle of civilisation
His protest against the optimism of the doctrinarian historical
philosophy ....
Its substantial justice ...
The logical error of the doctrinarian historians
The merits and defects of his ' Revolution ' .
The essential conception of ' The Creation ' .
Its leading ideas and characteristics .
The parallelisms of nature and humanity
Quinet's prophecy of the future of humanity
' The New Spirit ' . . . .
Other historical theorists of the democratic school
542
543
544
546
547
548
551
552
554
556
556
558
561
562
562
III.
How the Revolution of 1848 and the succeeding events influenced
historical thought in France . . . . .
Romieu's doctrine of force ...
Guchan and Troplong on Csesarism ....
Napoleon's ' History of Julius Csesar '
Democratic writers attempt to discredit the dominant Csesarism
De Ferron in his ' Theory of Progress ' combines the principles of
Vico and Saint-Simon, and combats Csesarism .
The aberrations of democracy in France have produced a number
of writers critical of, and hostile to, the democratic spirit
D'Ussel's 'Public Spirit in History' ....
His view of the advantages and dangers of democracy
Benloew's conception of the laws of historical movement .
563
564
565
565
567
567
569
570
571
572
CONTENTS XX111
Chapter X. — HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY OF NATURALISM
AND POSITIVISM
I.
PAGE
Revival of the eighteenth-century sensationalism in the shape of
Naturalism and Positivism .... 575
Aim and method of Charles Comte's ' Treatise on Legislation ' . 576
He exaggerated the influence of physical nature upon human de-
velopment ....... 577
Represented civilisation as having advanced from the equator
northwards ....... 578
Failed to recognise that history is essentially the manifestation of
human nature ...... 578
Auguste Comte's life and system .... 579
He was virtually ignorant of German philosophy . 582
How he was influenced by the empirical philosophy of the
eighteenth century ..... 583
By the social and religious reaction under the First Empire . 583
And by the socialism of Saint-Simon .... 584
His character and temperament . . 587
General aim of his labours . . . 588
The place of historical philosophy in his system . 589
He attempts to combine the truths of order and of progress, and so
to avoid the one-sidedness both of the reactionists and of the
revolutionists ....... 590
In his social statics Comte underestimates the value of individual
independence .... . 591
He never views history from a purely scientific standpoint, but is
always influenced by practical interests . . 592
His theory of social dynamics represents human progress as con-
nected with progress in the physical world . . . 593
and with the development of social order . . . 594
directed towards the gradual triumph of reason over
instinct ....... 594
modified in the rate of its advance by various causes . 595
invariable in its general direction and in the succession of
its stages ... .595
regulated in its course by human intellect . 595
The three chief laws regulative of human evolution . . 596
The laws of active and effective evolution are worthless . 599
The three stages of intellectual evolution .... 599
His survey of universal history is marred by insufficient acquaint-
ance with facts ....... 600
The chief points in this survey : —
1. Leaves out of view all central and eastern Asia . 601
2. Gives an extravagantly laudatory account of fetichism 602
3. The "abstract appreciation" of polytheism is ad-
mirable .... 604
II.
Opposing positivist parties .....
Littre's relation to Comte . . .
He restricts the application of Comte's law to the scientific (i.e
intellectual) development of humanity .
Propounds a theory of four states ....
In his criticism of the " law of three states," Littre contradicts the
central truth of Comte's system
His restrictions would make Comte's law impossible as a funda-
mental law of history .....
Spread of the positivist spirit ....
Its influence upon historical and general writers
Sainte-Beuve's methods of criticism and his historical works
Kenan's relation to the Comtist philosophy .
Recognises the importance of a psychology of humauity to the due
understanding of history ....
His delineation of the general features of the Semitic character
He acknowledges the derivative and modifiable nature of race
In ascribing to the Semitic race a monotheistic instinct, he meant
merely a tendency of mind favourable to monotheism .
The characteristics of his mental organisation
Taine's philosophic position .....
He does not regard history as a physical process
His ' Essay on Livy ' .
His 'French Philosophers' and 'Essays on Criticism and on His
tory' .......
He represents the progress of civilisation as determined by the com
bined action of three primordial causes
Asserts the correlation of the component parts of civilisation
Taine's conception of the value of literature as a source of com-
parative psychology .....
606
xxiv CONTENTS
PAGE
4. Praises the social spirit and institutions of Catholic
monotheism ....•• 605
5. Treats the metaphysical period as predominantly a
period of negation . . . . •
6. Assumes in the positive stage the entire subordination
of the individual to society .... 607
Attempts to prove the unity of Comte's life and doctrine have been
unsuccessful .....•• 608
In his " law of three states " Comte mistakes three coexistent
states for three successive stages of thought . . • 609
Theology, metaphysics, and positive science shown to have always
coexisted, and to have been related to one another . . 611
The partial truth of the " law " . . . ■ • 612
His treatment of facts inconsistent until it involved him in obvious
self-contradiction . . . ■ .614
615
616
617
618
618
619
620
620
621
622
623
624
625
625
626
628
628
629
630
631
632
632
CONTENTS XXV
PAGR
How far his ' History of English Literature ' accomplished its
objects ........ 633
He fails to prove that history is simply a mechanical problem . 633
His three causes are not primordial, but themselves require his-
torical explanation ...... 634
He does not fully realise the difference between individual and
social organisms ..... 635
Exaggerates the psychological value of literature . . . 635
The defect of his treatise ' On Intelligence ' ... 636
The value and influence of his 'Beginnings of Contemporary
France' ...... .637
Veron, Mougeolle, and Bourdeau ..... 639
Chapter XL — HISTORIC AL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CRITICAL
SCHOOL
I.
The doctrine of positive philosophy . . . 641
It is superficial and inadequate . . . 641
The creed of the critical school ..... 643
Cournot's philosophical works .... 644
His conception of the nature of philosophy . . . 644
His historical philosophy is critical, not speculative . 646
He regards history as combining fortuitous and necessary events . 647
His treatment of the medieval period . . 648
The plan of his ' Considerations ' . . . . . 649
Summary of the author's views on the movements of the nineteenth
century : —
the exact sciences . . ... 650
the natural sciences . . . 650
the origin of species . . . . 651
historical work ... . . 651
philosophy ... . . 652
the economic revolution ..... 652
socialism ....... 652
public law and political institutions . . . 653
The value of Cournot's work ... . 654
II.
Renouvier is the chief of French criticists .... 655
He claims to be more Kantian than Kant .... 655
His conception of the true method of historical study . . 656 •
His treatment of questions relating to the physical origin of man . 657
His method of inquiring into moral origins . . . 658
He rejects the error that primitive man may be assimilated to the
modern savage ....... 659
XXVI
CONTENTS
/ PA6B
The primary capacities which Kenouvier attributes to the first men 660
He shows that it is only by the exercise of his liberty that man
becomes either truly good or truly evil . . • 661
Treats the principles of morality as everywhere present and opera-
tive in history ....... 662
His views on primitive religions ..... 663
And on the origin and religions of the Semites . . 664
His conception of the moral effects of the belief in progress . 665
Describes progress as possible, but neither continuous nor necessary 666
How he supports his theories .... 667
His ' Utopia in History ' . 670
His services to historical philosophy . . . 671
His influence ..... . 672
Recent French works on historical method . . . 672
Tardif and Seignobos ...... 672
Tarde, De Coulanges . . . . .673
Chapter XII. — HISTORIC AL PHILOSOPHY IN BELGIUM AND
SWITZERLAND
I.
Political and social conditions in Belgium .
Altmeyer's conception of the course and end of progress .
In his ' Cours ' he adopts the Krausean philosophy of history in its
entirety .......
Tiberghien .......
Laurent's contributions to historical philosophy
How his ' Philosophy of History ' is related to his ' Studies on the
History of Humanity' .....
It deals chiefly with the moral development of humanity .
And surveys history from a religious rather than from a scientific
point of view .....
Its delineation of the working of divine Providence in history is
valuable contribution to natural theology
Professor Meyer's criticism of it considered
Laurent's conclusions on progress in history
Moeller's philosophy of history is in the main a theodicy based on
history .......
Laforet . . • .
Thonissen's views on progress .
Summary of De Colins's socialistic theory of historical development
The statistical investigation of Quetelet . . . .
Brack's attempt to establish a parallelism between magnetical and
historical periods
Father de Smedt's ' Principles of Historical Criticism '
675
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
690
690
691
692
694
CONTENTS XXV11
II.
PAGK
The intellectual position of French-speaking Switzerland . 697
Vinet's views on human progress ..... 698
Secre'tan's historical philosophy claims to be essentially Christian . 700
Trottet endeavours to show that the whole history of humanity
has been a necessary preparation for Christianity . 701
De Rougemont ..... . 702
The critical method of his < Two Cities ' . . 703
His theory of history is unsatisfactory . . . 704
Malan's doctrine of three Divine Economies . , 705
PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY
INTRODUCTION
I
The aim of the present work is twofold — historical and
critical. Its primary purpose is to trace the course of human
thought in its endeavours to explain human history ; or, in
other words, to give an account of the rise and progress of
reflection and speculation on the development of humanity.
The task must be amply worth an effort to accomplish. At
a time when all history is tending to become scientific, and
almost all science is availing itself of the assistance of his-
tory ; at a time also when man and society are felt as never
before to be the nearest and noblest studies of mankind, — it
requires but little perspicacity to foresee that thoughtful
minds will soon be far more generally and earnestly engaged
in seeking to attain a philosophical comprehension of his-
tory than they have ever yet been. It cannot, therefore, be
inopportune to record what has already been attempted and
achieved in this department of intellectual effort.
During the past century and a half a very considerable
amount of thought has been applied to ascertain the course,
significance, and conditions of the development of human
society. There is room for great difference of opinion as
to how far such thought has been wisely or successfully ex-
pended, but there can be no reasonable doubt that the object
sought to be attained by it is a legitimate and important one.
The history of man as obviously demands and deserves scien-
tific study and elucidation as the history of nature. Nothing in
the world is intelligible apart from its history, and man must
be of all things the least so, because he is of all things the most
1
2 INTRODUCTION
complex, variable, and richly endowed. The history of man
is clearly a phenomenon which not only deserves to be accu-
rately described in its external form and features, but which
should be viewed in its relations to coexistent and contiguous
phenomena, which should be analysed into its elements, and
which should have the operation of its various factors and
the laws, stages, and direction of its movement investigated.
In equivalent terms, it is a phenomenon which should be
philosophically and scientifically treated. For a lengthened
period attempts thus to deal with it have been made in unin-
terrupted and rapid succession. Some of them have attracted
great attention and exerted wide influence. They have of
late become increasingly numerous and have gained in inter-
est and worth. They are closely connected and manifoldly
related. Hence they are now themselves proper subjects and
materials for a history. They are fragments, rather than
stages, of a process which is strictly historical even while
essentially philosophical — the process of man's reflection on
his own history. To trace this process must be similarly ser-
viceable to the student of history as giving an account of
what has been already attempted and accomplished in other
disciplines — philosophy or theology, ethics or aesthetics, math-
ematics, mechanics, or biology — is to those who at present
cultivate them. Whenever any department of knowledge or
process of thought has been continuously evolved for some
length of time, an historical survey of it cannot fail to be of
use. It must help us to see where and why there has been
failure or success in the past, and suggest rules and cautions
for work in the future. In the words of Mr. John Morley,
" a survey of this kind shows us in a clear and definite man-
ner the various lines of road along which thinkers have trav-
elled, and the point to which the subject has been brought
in our own time. We are able to contrast methods and to
compare their fruits. People always understand their own
speculative position the better, the more clearly they are
acquainted with the other positions which have been taken
in the same matter." 1
The process to be studied is one of thought and specula-
1 Fortnightly Review, Sept. 1, 1874- Art. "Mr. Flint's 'Philosophy of His-
tory.' "
AIM OF THE PKESEKT WORK o
tion. But this, as has been indicated, does not prevent its
being also as strictly one of history as any external or visible
process whatever. The theories of thinkers are in an obvious
sense as much historical facts and realities as births and deaths,
treaties and battles, the changes of dynasties and the revolu-
tions of peoples. What men have thought about history is
thus itself a section of history ; and, like all that is history,
it should be treated in the first and chief place simply as his-
tory ; that is, should be studied solely with a view to discover
precisely what it is and how it has come to be what it is.
This must be steadily borne in mind throughout the present
work. Our primary and main aim is to describe an historical
process in a truly historical spirit and manner. No apology
would be needed were no more than this attempted. The
historian of ideas is no more bound to constitute himself the
judge of their truth or falsity, than the historian of events is
bound to pronounce on their wisdom or folly, Tightness or
wrongness. The sole duty of the historian, alike of ideas
and events, is to give a complete history of them — such a
history as will of itself imply the true judgment of them.
Such being the case, it may perhaps be thought that it
would be wise not to go beyond the proper sphere of the his-
torian, and to abstain from pronouncing on the truth or falsity,
probability or improbability, of the speculations gradually un-
folded. The space allotted to the criticism of theories and
systems is apt to be taken from that required for their ade-
quate presentation. Obviously, the danger of unfairness is
greatly increased when the historian of opinion ventures to
become its judge. The characters and functions of the his-
torian and the critic are so different that the critic may easily,
and even unduly, discredit the historian. There is much
undeniable truth in this view. The risks involved in attempt-
ing to discharge the two distinct offices specified cannot be
too fully recognised, and should, as a general rule, be avoided.
One who undertakes, for instance, to write a history of phi-
losophy or of theology will do well to refrain from any criti-
cism except such as seems absolutely necessary to make
apparent the course and character of the historical develop-
ment itself. The histories both of philosophy and of theology
4 INTRODUCTION
are so lengthened and comprehensive that to attempt more
than their delineation must he unprofitable and futile. To
imagine that any service will be rendered either to philosophy
or theology by such cursory criticisms as their historians can
append to their expositions, must appear almost ludicrous
when one considers with what keenness, and from how many
points of view, the cardinal problems of philosophy and of
theology have already for ages been discussed. It is other-
wise, however, with a comparatively recent and comparatively
limited department of knowledge, such as the philosophy or
science of history. In this case the limits of the history leave
room for the criticism of the theories. In this case, also, a
judicious criticism of theories may reasonably be hoped to
be of real and immediate service to the new discipline which
is struggling into existence. And therefore, in this case the
advantages attainable may warrant our attempting what is
not generally advisable. But, of course, care must be taken
that the historical exposition and the critical appreciation of
the theories successively submitted to examination be kept
clearly distinct, and that the former be never obscured 6r
perverted in order to give relief and seeming conclusiveness
to the latter.
I mean, then, not merely to pass in historical review the
more famous of the many attempts which have been made
within the last century and a half to discover the laws of
order which regulate human affairs, but also to pronounce
judgment on the truth or falsity of what is essential and
characteristic in them, and to indicate their chief merits and
defects. If I accomplish this twofold purpose with the slight-
est measure of success, the conceptions of the reader as to the
character, scope, and method of the philosophy of history, as
to what it ought to do and how it ought to do it, should be con-
stantly increasing in definiteness and accuracy as the inquiry
itself advances. It may be that even at its close there will
still remain possibilities of misapprehension and reasons for
uncertainty as to the precise sphere and method of the
philosophy of history ; but the proper place to remove these,
it seems to me, is not at the outset, but at the end of our
historical review, when, from the vantage-ground gained by a
NATTJKE OF HISTORY 5
study of the thoughts and labours of the past in this depart-
ment of research, and a knowledge of its failures and suc-
cesses, we may hope to get a clearer view than we could
otherwise have attained of the duties of the future, of the
aims which a philosophy of history may reasonably propose
to itself, and of the processes to be pursued and the errors
to be avoided if it would realise them.
The term ia-ropia meant in early Greek usage inquiry, or
learning by inquiry ; and hence the knowledge so obtained,
information acquired on any subject. Only by later Greek
writers — as, for example, by Polybius and Plutarch — was it
employed to denote a setting forth of the results of inquiry, a
written account of information obtained, a narrative. Among
the Romans, historia, although often used to denote any nar-
rative or account, any tale or story, acquired also the more
definite meaning of a narrative of past events, a record of some
course of human actions. With us the word " history," like its
equivalents in all modern languages, signifies either a form of
literary composition or the appropriate subject or matter of
such composition — either a narrative of events, or events
which may be narrated.1 It is impossible to free the term from
this doubleness and ambiguity of meaning. Nor is it, on the
whole, to be desired. The advantages of having one term
which may, with ordinary caution, be innocuously applied to
two things so related, more than counterbalances the dangers
involved in two things so distinct having the same name. The
history of England which actually happened cannot easily be
confounded with the history of England written by Mr. Green ;
while by the latter being termed history as well as the former,
we are reminded that it is an attempt to reproduce or represent
the course of the former. Occasionally, however, the ambi-
guity of the word gives rise to great confusion of thought and
1 " History in the objective sense is the process by which nature and spirit are
developed. History in the subjective sense is the investigation and statement of
this objective development. The Greek words ioropia and iuropelv, being derived
from eiteVu, signify, not history in the objective sense, but the subjective activity
involved in the investigation of facts. The German word Geschichte involves a
reference to that which has come to pass (das Geschehene), and has therefore
primarily the objective signification." — Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, vol. i.
p. 5. As to the etymology of the term ItrrapU, the learned note of F. Creuzer in
'Deutsche Schriften,' AM. iii. 137, may be consulted.
6 INTRODUCTION
gross inaccuracy of speech. And this occurs most frequently,
if not exclusively, just when men are trying and professing to
think and speak with especial clearness and exactness regard-
ing the signification of history — i.e., when they are labouring
to define it. Since the word history has two very different
meanings, it obviously cannot have merely one definition. To
define an order of facts and a form of literature in the same
terms — to suppose that when either of them is defined the
other is defined — is so absurd that one would probably not
believe it could be seriously done were it not so often done.
But to do so has been the rule rather than the exception. The
majority of so-called definitions of history are definitions only
of the records of history. They relate to history as narrated
and written, not to history as evolved and acted; in other
words, although given as the only definitions of history needed,
they do not apply to history itself, but merely to accounts of
history. They may tell us what constitutes a book of history,
but they cannot tell us what the history is with which all books
of history are occupied. It is, however, with history in this
latter sense that a student of the science or philosophy of his-
tory is mainly concerned. History as a form of literature is a
.subject of primarj'- interest only to a student of belles-lettres.
History as it happened — the real movement of history, with
its events and laws — is that with which the historical scien-
tist or philosopher, as well as the historian himself, has directly
to do ; and to history in this acceptation, every definition which
contains a term like narratio, reeit, Darstellung, record, or any
phrase equivalent to them, is plainly inappropriate.
If by history be meant history in its widest sense, the best
definition of history as a form of literature is, perhaps, either
the very old one, " the narration of events," or W. von Hum-
boldt's, " the exhibition of what has happened " (die Darstel-
lung des Greschehenen). The excellence of these definitions
lies in their clear and explicit indication of what history as
effectuated or transacted is. It consists of events ; it is das
Greschehene. It is the entire course of events in time. It is all
that has happened precisely as it happened. Whatever hap-
pens is history. Eternal and unchanging being has no history.
Things or phenomena considered as existent, connected, and
NATURE OF HISTORY 7
comprehended in space, compose what is called nature as dis-
tinguished from history. And history as distinguished from
nature is process and movement, the coming of things and
phenomena into being or into successive stages and states of
being, the flow of occurrences in time. These two conceptions
— nature and history — are thus extremely wide and compre-
hensive. They represent the universe in its two chief aspects.
Obviously they are far from absolutely separable ; on the con-
trary, they are essentially interconnected. They are only dis-
tinguishable as correlatives. Space and time are themselves
related, and still more are their contents. Nature has a his-
tory, and it is a characteristic of the science of the present
day to seek to explain nature historically. History is the
evolution of nature, and it is also a characteristic of contem-
porary science to endeavour to account for history naturally.
Yet while the mind is unable to regard nature and history as
absolutely separate, or even as not closely and variously con-
joined, it cannot fail to recognise them as relatively distinct.
It is compelled\by its intellectual constitution to contemplate
the universe at one time predominantly in the one aspect,
and at another time in the other aspect. The world, or any
part of it, apprehended mainly as in space is nature, and if
apprehended mainly as in time is history. It is unnecessary
to labour to give more definite expression to the distinction.
Probably Droysen has found a neater and terser formula for it
in German than any which the English language could supply.
Nature he describes as "das Nebeneinander des Seienden," and
history as " das Nacheinander des Gewordenen." 1
By distinguishing history from nature, we get the most
general notion of history which can be formed. If we would
understand what is meant by any kind or species of history,
we must distinguish further, and give precision to our think-
ing by fixing on the appropriate differential characteristic. In
the present work such delimitation or definition is obviously
required. Mediately it may be concerned with the histories
of the heavens and the earth, of plants and animals, but it is
certainly not immediately concerned with them. The only
kind of history with which we have here directly to deal is
1 Grundriss der Historik, p. 7.
8 INTRODUCTION
that kind of it to which the name is generally restricted, his-
tory par excellence, human history, what has happened within
the sphere of human agency and interests, the actions and
creations of men, events which have affected the lives and
destinies of men, or which have been produced by men. This
is the ordinary sense of the word history, and it is the sense
in which it will ordinarily be employed in these pages. No
further restriction on its signification will be imposed or im-
plied. Indeed, all further restrictions must mislead, and all
definitions which involve them are to be rejected. History is
all that man has suffered, thought, and executed — the entire
life of humanity — the whole movement of societies. It is
history thus understood which is the subject of the art, and
the science, and the philosophy of history, — of the art which
recalls and delineates it, of the science which analyses it and
traces its laws, and of the philosophy which exhibits it in its
relations to the general system of the universe. To attempt
further to define it would be worse than useless. It would
be unduly to limit, and to distort and pervert, its meaning.
In proof of this a few brief remarks on certain typical or
■celebrated definitions of history may perhaps be of service.
The definition given in the Dictionary of the French Acad-
emy — " l'histoire est le recit des choses dignes de me"inoire "
— is a specimen of a very numerous species. According to
such definitions history consists of exceptional things, of cele-
brated or notorious events, of the lives and actions of great
and exalted men, of conspicuous achievements in war and
politics, in science and art, in religion and literature. But
this is a narrow and superficial conception of history. His-
tory is made up of what is little as well as of what is great,
of what is common as well as of what is strange, of what is
counted mean as well as of what is counted noble. The ob-
scure agency of the masses is more potent in forming it than
the brilliant achievements of the few. Things of frequent
recurrence are more important than those which are rare. A
history of wages or prices is at least as instructive as a his-
tory of battles and political intrigues. The historian has no
right to despise the smallest incidents, the humblest lives ;
for the great is explained by the little, and the life of human-
DEFINITIONS OF HISTORY 9
ity is unfolded not merely through a few of its members hut
through all.
Dr. Arnold's definition — " history is the biography of a soci-
ety " 1 — has been often praised. Nor altogether undeservedly.
For it directs attention to the fact that all history accords with
biography in supposing in its subject a certain unity of life,
work, and end. Unless individuals truly form a society there
cannot be a history of them as a society, whether family or
tribe, trade or corporation, Church or nation, but only a collec-
tion of biographies of them as individuals. It does not follow,
however, that biography is a more general notion than history,
and history only a species of biography. In fact, it is not only
as true and intelligible to say that biography is the history of
an individual as to say that history is the biography of a society,
but more so. It is the word biography in the latter case which
is used in a secondary and analogical sense, not the word his-
tory in the former case. The two meanings most appropriately
and commonly assigned to the word history are very general
ones, whereas the only meaning of the word biography in cur-
rent use is a very different one. Therefore, although there
may be no harm, or even may be gain, in giving the term history
at times a special meaning for the special purpose of opposing
it to biography, it must be erroneous to represent biography as
the genus and history as the species. On the other hand, it
is perfectly reasonable to regard history, even when meaning
thereby human history, as a genus of which the history of in-
dividuals (biography) is one species and the history of societies
another. When Dr. Arnold proceeds to represent " the life of
that highest and sovereign society which we call a State or
nation " as especially the proper subject of history, he seems to
us, of course, to go still further astray from the truth. There
is no real reason discoverable for such exclusiveness. The
history of the Church is as much history as the history of the
State. The history of philosophy or of art is not less truly
history than the history of England or of France.
According to Mr. Freeman, " history is past politics and poli-
tics are present history." 2 This is not a mode of definition
which any logician will be found to sanction. It is equivalent
1 Lectures on Modern History, p. 3. 2 Methods of Historical Study, p. 44.
10 INTRODUCTION
to saying that politics and history are the same, and may both
be divided into past and present ; but it does not tell us what
either is. To affirm that this was that and that is this is not a
definition of this or that, but only an assertion that something
may be called either this or that. Besides, the identification of
history with politics proceeds, as has been already indicated,
on a view of history which is at once narrow and arbitrary.
Further, it is just as true that mathematical history is past
mathematics and mathematics are present history, as that polit-
ical history is past politics and politics are present history.
The present state of every species of knowledge and of every
form of action is only a moment in the history of that kind
of knowledge and action. The whole of human science, ex-
perience, and production in the present moment becomes his-
tory— past history, as soon as the moment is gone. The
whole of man's past was once present thought, feeling, and
action. There is nothing peculiar to politics in this respect.
Professor Creighton, while pronouncing Mr. Freeman's defi-
nition "narrow, and therefore misleading," refuses to accept
the view that history "includes everything that man has either
thought or wrought," on the ground that it is "so wide as to
become vague, fixing no definite limit to the province of his-
tory as bordering on other fields of learning." He deems it
better, therefore, "to regard history as the record of human
action, and of thought only in its direct influence upon action." 1
This attempt at mediation does not seem to be successful.
Why regard history in the way described rather than contrari-
wise as the record of human thought, and of action only in its
direct influence on thought ? The development of thought is
no more to be understood apart from the development of action
than the development of action apart from the development of
thought. He who would comprehend the movement of phi-
losophy, for example, must view it in relation to the course of
political and social change and to the whole general history of
humanity. Even if States and politics could be shown to be
what Professor Creighton calls them, "the chief part of the
subject of history," that would not prove them to be more
directly or truly its subject than anything else which has a his-
1 English Historical Review, vol. i. pp. 2, 3.
DEFINITIONS OF HISTORY 11
tory. In itself politics is no more history than is theology or
metaphysics. It is only its history which is history, and their
histories are also history, as are all developments of the mind
and will of man in time. It is hence as easy to distinguish
history in its widest sense from science, as in its narrowest.
The measure of comprehensiveness assigned to the word his-
tory is not what affects the power of distinguishing it from
science ; and when history is confounded with science the con-
fusion is not one of degree but of nature, not quantitative but
qualitative.
M. Bourdeau thinks history should be denned " la science des
developpements de la raison." x Of course, history itself is no
more a science than an art. The definition, therefors, is only
the definition of the science, but it implies that history itself
consists of the developments of reason. Is this implication cor-
rect ? Certainly not altogether. There is much else in man
than reason, and not only many things but many develop-
ments in his history which must be referred not to reason but
to the impulses and passions which so often seduce and subdue
reason. At the same time there is more to approve than to
reject in M. Bourdeau's definition. It fixes attention on what
is undoubtedly the main cause of that which is most character-
istic in human history, its marvellous variety and its inexhaust-
ible progressiveness, so unlike the narrowly determined limits
and monotonously recurring phases of animal life. The his-
tory of man is so peculiar and significant as to be entitled" to
be especially called history, just because the reason which is
distinctive of man is essentially a principle of change and
progress. M. Bourdeau has seen and expressed this very
clearly ; not more so, however, than was done by Jouffroy
almost sixty years ago.
Professor Bernheim defines history as " the science of the
development of men in their working as social beings." 2 This
also is only a definition of written history, and will obviously
not even apply to the great majority of written histories. It
cannot apply to mere narration, however accurate and brilliant.
It applies only to what is called genetic or scientific history.
It implies that there is no other form of written history, which
1 L'Histoire et les Historiens, p. 5.
2 Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (1889) , p. 4.
12 INTRODUCTION
is a supposition contrary to fact. Besides, although the actual
history which is the object of written history may be a de-
velopment, development is a word at least as much in need
of definition as history. Historical development is so unlike
logical and biological development, that it must have a dif-
ferentia. Further, scientific history, or the science of history,
should not assume but prove history to be a development. To
prove development in history by exhibiting its precise nature
is the aim, not the presupposition, of historical science. The
last words of the definition, " in their working as social be-
ings," also require explanation. Professor Bernheim gives it.
He wishes "working" (Beihatigung) to be understood as
inclusive of all human states as well as acts, and " social "
to be held to comprehend rational, spiritual, political, &c.
With his desire thus to embrace in his definition humanity in
all its aspects I entirely sympathise ; but I cannot see that
the terms of his definition in themselves do justice to his
thought.
History, understood as has been indicated, may be dealt with
in various ways. Thus, in the first place, attempts may be
made to recall and to transmit the memory of it. As a being
who looks before and after, man is naturally interested both in
the past and in the future, and impelled to seek to relate him-
self with both. Hence he endeavours to communicate the tra-
ditions which he has received, loves to narrate his experiences,
and labours to perpetuate the fame of his achievements. The
minds of men are occupied even in the lowest stages of exist-
ence with reminiscences of their own or others' past. The
speech of all men, and especially of common and uneducated
men, is largely narrative. Indeed, the history which has thus
history for its subject is not unjustly described by Carlyle as
" man's earliest and simplest expression of thought." " As
we do nothing but enact history, so likewise we say little but
recite it." History recorded and recited attained in course of
time a literary form ; and there is no species of literature which
has since been more continuously or widely cultivated, which
has passed through more stages, assumed more shapes, spread
out more branches ; which has responded to more wants and
interests, conveyed a greater wealth of information, reflected
human nature more fully, or presented a broader surface
HISTORIOGRAPHY 13
to the light of truth. History as a species of literature has
therefore, like eloquence, poetry, the drama, or romance,
a history of its own, and one which is most extensive and
instructive. It is not my purpose to attempt to write a his-
tory of history. Others, with more or less success, have
endeavoured to do so, in whole or in part.1 I must, how-
ever, have continuous reference to the course and charac-
ter of historical literature during the period within which
historical philosophy has been developed. Historical literature
tends as it advances to become increasingly philosophical. Per-
fect delineation presupposes perfect knowledge. Excellence in
narration must be in proportion to the accuracy and complete-
ness of acquaintance with the facts narrated. But science or
philosophy is simply the exactest and fullest knowledge, —
knowledge at its highest and best. The more comprehensively,
profoundly, penetratingly, and, in a word, truthfully, histori-
ans deal with their themes, the more entitled are they to rank
as historical philosophers. All great historians have looked at
the events which they narrated from general points of view,
and have formed general conclusions as to the interrelations
and significance of those events. They have had, that is to say,
at least an implicit philosophy of the history which they have
attempted to exhibit. And their philosophy, although it can
claim no right of exemption from criticism, is entitled to be
approached with the respect due to the views of men who
speak on matters with which they are specially familiar. It
may reasonably be expected, therefore, that I should indicate
to some extent what has been the philosophy implied in the
writings.of various eminent historians who have made no claim
to philosophise on history, or who have even professed con-
tempt for historical philosophy in every form. At the same
time, it will be necessary to exercise restraint in this direction.
1 There is no adequate account of the development of historiography as a
whole. G. Rosa's ' Storia della Storia ' (Milano, 1884) is to be commended as a
general sketch. Prof. C. K. Adams's ' Manual of Historical Literature ' (London,
1882) gives good descriptions of the best histories, but does not profess to be
itself a history. Wachler's ' Geschichte der historischen Forschung und Kunst
seit der Wiederherstellung der literarischen Kultur in Europa,' treats only, as
its title indicates, of the modern epoch, and was published so long ago as 1812-
20. There are a considerable number of histories of special periods of histori-
ography, some of which will be mentioned when reference to them is more
appropriate.
14 INTRODUCTION
I must clearly not yield to the temptation to write essays on
the characteristics of eminent historians ; and, indeed, cannot
legitimately do more than attempt to elicit and exhibit the
distinctive and guiding ideas of those among them who have
shown special originality and insight in their interpretations of
historical phenomena. As a rule, the historians who have had
no explicit philosophy of history have had but a very meagre
implicit one ; and the aversion which they have shown to his-
torical generalisation has had its source mainly in their own
want of generalising power. Not a few historians of repute
, owe their fame entirely to their critical and literary talent,
and are as regards scientific and philosophical capacity below
mediocrity.
• Historiography is not only an art which has a history, but
the subject of a process of theorising which has also a history.
How should history be studied ? How should it be presented ?
With what aims should it be written ? What are the sources
of historical knowledge, and how are we to judge of their
genuineness, integrity, and credibility? What are the aids,
instruments, conditions, and processes of historical research ?
In what ways are the materials of history to be collected,
sifted, analysed, compared, and distributed ? How are we to
trace the movement of history as an organic evolution, to
estimate institutions and events according to their real signifi-
cance in relation to one another, and to the whole of which
they are parts, and to attain to a clear and truthful apprehen-
sion of the spirit of history, separated from which all else in
it must be merely shell and husk ? What are the mental re-
quirements of the historian? What are the qualities of good
historical art, and the style appropriate to each variety of his-
torical composition ? To answer these and similar questions
is the office of Historic, as it is now commonly called. Thev
have gradually and naturally presented themselves with the
development of historiography itself. The simplest — those of
least interest to science — those which related to history merely
as a pleasant art or useful instrument — were the first to pre-
sent themselves ; and antiquity did not get beyond them. On
these questions, but on none of the deeper problems as to the
nature and methods of historical inquiry, Polybius and Plu-
HISTORIC 15
tarch, Cicero and Quinctilian, had to some extent reflected ;
and especially Lucian, whose essay on " How to write His-
tory," so witty in its banter and so shrewd in its advice, is
justly celebrated, devoid although it be of philosophical in-
sight. It was only with the Renaissance that treatises on the
study, composition, and uses of history became common, and
that the idea began to spread that the a/ie6oBo<; v\rj of history
might, like that of nature, be elaborated into science. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while there were still
hardly any good modern historians, so many persons had
undertaken to show how history should be written that Fres-
noy aptly applies to the situation the words of the old French
poeii, ,, ka qou1. en conseillers foisonne,
Mais vient-on & 1 'execution,
On ne rencontre plus personne."
There has ever since been a continuous, and at times a
copious, flow of writings on the theory of historiography ; but
only during the present century have the deeper questions
above indicated — those which clearly and directly concern the
science or philosophy of history — been raised and dealt with.
In particular, the essay of W. v. Humboldt, " Uber die Aufgabe
des Geschichtschreibers," initiated a more thorough and fruit-
ful investigation into all the relevant problems. The literature
of Historic must therefore not be wholly ignored by us. Its
course has been, on the whole, one of advance from common-
place reflection on history towards a philosophical comprehen-
sion of the conditions and processes on which the formation of
historical science depends. Practical recognition must be
given to this fact by noting the more important phases which
Historic has assumed. And especially must due attention be
given to those recent writings on Historic which are of a
truly philosophical character, and which expressly treat of the
methods by which historical truth is to be attained and his-
torical science constituted. We have, however, no further
concern with the literature of Historic. And this is fortu-
nate ; for a very large portion of it is so trivial and superficial
that it can hardly ever have been of use even to persons of the
humblest capacity, and may certainly now be safely consigned
to kindly oblivion, while of the not wholly worthless remain-
16 INTRODUCTION
der much more of the interest is literary and practical than
scientific and philosophical.
It is, then, neither the history of Historiography nor of His-
toric which is here intended to be traced. It is that of the
Science or Philosophy of History. Human history may be
treated as the subject of science and philosophy. The reign of
law somehow extends over human affairs. Events are con-
nected by some determinate relationships, and one social state
arises out of another with which it retains some correspond-
ence in character. The world of intelligent and moral agency
has not been abandoned to caprice and chance, is not mere
anarchy and chaos, but is embraced within a system of order,
more or less perfect ; and amidst all its apparent confusion and
incoherence there has been some sort of growth, some sort of
development of the mind and spirit of the human race. Much
that has happened in history has sunk into oblivion, or is im-
perfectly known ; but there is nothing known in history which
is essentially inexplicable, nor is there any reason to suppose
that anything has ever happened in history which was from
its very nature incapable either of being clearly apprehended
or fully comprehended. All the component facts of history
can be accounted for historically, just as those of the physical
world can be accounted for physically ; and the whole of his-
tory is not less a whole of law and order than that of nature.
Besides, just as the world of plants, for example, while a whole
in regard to its own parts, is itself a part in regard to the uni-
verse in which it is placed and by the fundamental laws of
which it is controlled, so the world of history, while similarly
a whole, is also similarly a part; and hence, while its particular
events may be so far satisfactorily explained by the agencies
which operate within itself, its development as a whole can
only be understood when viewed in connection* with all other
spheres of existence, or, in other words, in the light of all
science. This is equivalent to saying that history may be the
subject of science and philosophy in the only sense in which
it is assumed in this work that there is any science or phi-
losophy of history.
There has been a considerable amount of discussion as to
whether history ought to be regarded as the subject of a science
SCIENCE OR PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY ? 17
or of a philosophy ; in other words, as to whether the highest
form of the study of history — its study as an orderly, organic,
intelligible system within, and related to, the system of the
universe — ought to be called the Science or the Philosophy of
History. Some who believe in a philosophy of history deny
that there can be any science of history. Goldwin Smith,
for instance, in his lectures " On the Study of History," lays
down, that " a science of history is one thing and a philos-
ophy another ; a science of history can rest on nothing short
of causation, while a philosophy of history rests upon connec-
tion; such connection as we know, and in every process and
word of life assume, that there is between the action and its
motive, between motives and circumstances, between the con-
duct of men and the effect produced upon their character,
between historic antecedents and their results " ; a and retying
on this distinction, he proceeds to urge a vigorous polemic
against the position that there is a science of history, while
earnestly maintaining that there is a philosophy of history.
This view, and all views of the same class, I reject. The
notion that historical results are connected with their antece-
dents, yet uncaused or only partially caused events, is almost
too unreasonable for discussion. Results or events not fully
caused, are no more conceivable in the moral and social world,
than in the mechanical and physical world. So long as those
who believe that there are uncaused or imperfectly caused
events in history fail to point out any of them, reason is war-
ranted in seeking for causation in history not less than in
nature. Intelligent defenders of free agency do not oppose
it to causation, but represent it as the highest type of causa-
tion. Those physical studies which all admit to be sciences
are by no means only conversant with connections of causa-
tion. Historical connection is often manifestly as strictly
causal as chemical or biological connection.
There are authors who regard mathematical and physical
studies as alone entitled to be called sciences, and who would
call. all other studies philosophical. It seems to them that in
the sphere of mental and social life connection is so vague, and
•causation so different from what it is among measurable and
1 The Study of History, p. 51.
18 INTRODUCTION
sensible objects, that knowledge of such connection and causa-
tion ought not to be termed science at all. Hence, as historical
phenomena are, on the whole, mental phenomena, these authors,
while willing to allow that there is a philosophy of history, will
not admit that there is any science of history. Of all ways,
however, in which it has been proposed to draw a rigid line of
separation between science and philosophy, this of treating all
physical studies as sciences and all mental studies as philos-
ophy, is probably the worst. It rests on a confused view of
the nature and bearing of causation in psychology, ethics, and
history. It shows ignorance of what constitutes science, of the
proper character and office of philosophy, and of how science
and philosophy are related. It does injustice to science by
implicitly denying that it has anything to do with philosophy
or philosophy with it ; and injustice to philosophy by repre-
senting it as an inferior kind of knowledge — as knowledge
which is not scientific because vague and dubious.
Some writers, on the other hand, would only speak of a
Science of History. The name of Philosophy of History has
been so utterly discredited in their ears by the character of
much which has been put forth as such, that they would drop
it altogether, and keep to one which seems to them more
definite and less liable to abuse. It is not difficult to under-
stand this view, or even, in a considerable measure, to sym-
pathise with it. All kinds of baseless and worthless specu-
lations— even the merest dreams and vagaries — have been
confidently presented as philosophy. The most unsubstantial
and fantastic hypotheses which metaphysics or theology, anal-
ogy or imagination, could supply or suggest, have been pre-
tentiously maintained to explain the course and meaning of
human development. Hence a certain aversion to the use of
the term philosophy both in general and in application is,
perhaps, natural and excusable. Wemust not allow it, how-
ever, to carry us too far. And it does so when we admit no
distinction between science and philosophy, or, indeed, virtu-
ally deny that there is any philosophy. If we might thereby
be helped, as Mr. Morley says, to " put from us vague modes
of historical philosophising," we would also be in danger of
getting ensnared in the prejudices generated by scientific
SCIENCE OR PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY '! 19
specialism. A science exclusive of philosophy is to be
shunned, as well as a philosophy exclusive of science.
Science is not to be dissociated from philosophy, any more
than philosophy from science. Science can only prosper
when it strives to become philosophic, as philosophy can only
prosper when it strives to become scientific. I thus no more
believe in a mere science of history than in a mere philosophy
of history. All that I can grant, therefore, to those who, for
the reason mentioned, would speak only of a science of his-
tory, is that any professed philosophy of history which is not
in accordance with and even demanded by the science of his-
tory— which does not receive real confirmation from the facts
of history and tend to the true elucidation of these facts —
must be worthless and delusive.
I cannot see any objection to often employing the terms
science and philosophy interchangeably. Rigidly and continu-
ally to distinguish them is not only what no one does, but what
no one should do, inasmuch as it tends to lead readers to over-
look the intimate connection and community of nature of
science and philosophy. If we are resolved to use the word
philosophy only in its strictly appropriate technical sense, we
must bear in mind that there is but one sense which can either
historically or logically make good its claim as such. And
in this sense philosophy is not contradistinguished from the
sciences but comprehensive of them, — not a branch or branches
of knowledge growing alongside of other branches, but the root
and trunk out of which all the branches grow, and the life by
which, and the crown to which, they grow, — not the rational
appreciation of particular aspects of the intelligible world, but
of that world as a whole. In a word, philosophy in this sense
is the knowledge of knowledge, the science of the sciences, uni-
versal not particular science. But in this sense manifestly no
special science or study can claim to be philosophy as against
any other special science or study. In this sense one has no
more right to speak of moral philosophy than of natural phi-
losophy, or of the philosophy of history than of the philosophy
of botany. In this sense philosophy is one and indivisible,
universal and all-pervading.
It follows from the very nature of philosophy as thus un-
20 INTRODUCTION
derstood that no special science or particular department of
knowledge is philosophy strictly speaking. It follows not less,
however, that no special science is excluded from having the
closest connection with and interest in philosophy, so that each
special science, and even every special subject, may be naturally
said to have its philosophy ; the philosophy of a subject as dis-
tinguished from its science being the view or theory of the
relations of the subject to other subjects and to the known
world in general, as distinguished from the view or theory of
it as isolated or in itself. It is a grievous error when science
renounces and discards philosophy. The mere scientist — the
scientist who gazes exclusively at his subject and refuses to
look at its surroundings and relationships — is not the true
scientist ; the philosophic scientist alone is the true scientist.
Philosophy and science should be combined. Hence we may
often use either word ; and the one word rather than the other
according as the philosophical or scientific mode of contempla- ,
tion and treatment is the more prominent. Thus, when a
department of knowledge is very comprehensive ; when it mani-
festly cannot be properly cultivated otherwise than in relation to
the whole of knowledge ; when it implies, includes, and utilizes
a number of special studies or disciplines, themselves entitled
to be called sciences, — the name of philosophy may well be pre-
ferred to that of science as the generic part of its designation.
The separate physical sciences, far from rendering unnecessary
or impossible, afford a basis for and require as a means of uni-
fying, supplementing, and harmonising themselves, a general
elucidation of the physical world, to which the name philosophy
of nature would be appropriate, and which might be quite free
from the metaphysical nonsense which discredited the Natur-
philosophie of German speculation. There are a large number
of special theological disciplines which treat only of aspects or
departments of religion, and these may certainly be more ap-
propriately called sciences than philosophies; but there is also
an all-comprehensive science of religion — one which treats of
religion in its unity and entirety — one which alone completely
answers to the idea and definition of theology,— and this one
general theological science, which comprehends and dominates
the special theological sciences, so as to be the science of these
SCIENCE OE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY? 21
sciences, may reasonably enough, in accordance with the
true distinction between philosophy and science, be called
philosophy rather than science — the philosophy of religion.
In the same way, when history is studied as a whole and in
all relations, it may be spoken of as rather the subject of
a philosophy than a science, seeing that no subject is vaster
and more complex, or more manifoldly dependent on and
intimately connected with all existence and all science. It
may be true that the full knowledge of any one thing
involves a knowledge of all other things — that the "little
flower in the crannied wall " cannot be completely under-
stood until God, man, and the world are understood ; but this
is only by implication, whereas the knowledge of history is
explicitly encyclopedic and universal, all that man knows
being as much a part of his history as what he suffers or
achieves. In history nature and mind and all the sciences of
both meet, and so meet that all these sciences in their entire
evolution are but elements of history, and the whole state of
science at any moment is but a moment of history, that being
called science to-day which will be called history to-morrow.
If, therefore, the word philosophy is not to be confined exclu-
sively to the universal — if it may be applied to the partic-
ular at all — it may, I think, be most fitly applied to the
thorough and comprehensive study of history in its entirety
and relationships. So far from agreeing with those who
think that the designation " science of history " should be used
to the exclusion of that of "philosophy of history," I confess
that if restricted to one of them it is the latter which I should
prefer. But I can see no reason for making a choice. The
only mode of distinguishing between science of history and
philosophy of history which seems to me at all admissible, is
that which assigns to the science of history the task of ascer-
taining the course, plan, and laws of history itself, and to the
philosophy of history that of tracing the relations of causa-
tion and affinity which connect history with other depart-
ments of existence and knowledge. But such science and
philosophy are so plainly of the same nature, and each is so
manifestly feeble and imperfect without the other, that there
can only be an occasional call to separate them, and ordina-
22 INTRODUCTION
rily they ought to be combined, whether under the name of
science or philosophy it matters little.1
The development we have to trace is that of the two in con-
junction. We have to exhibit the progress of induction and
generalisation from the data of history proper, and also to
indicate how history has had light cast upon it from the most
various regions of experience and thought. In a word, we
must beware of walking in the narrow path of a science
which disowns philosophy, while we regard as false all philos-
ophy which does not accord with the findings or promote the
advance of science.
I shall not inquire further, in the way of introduction, into
the nature of the philosophy of history. Enough has been
said to show what is here meant by it, and what will be aimed
at in this attempt to trace its development.
Any more strictly formal or logical definition of it than has
already been given seems unnecessary. Definitions, indeed,
are in such a case of small account. So far from the defini-
tion of a science being capable of conveying a knowledge of
the science, it is the knowledge of a science which makes the
definition of it intelligible. The definition can merely name
or indicate the object-matter of the science defined; knowledge
of the real nature of that object-matter must come gradually
in the measure that the science itself is acquired. The defi-
nitions of political economy, ethics, theology, and the philos-
ophy of history, can tell us that these disciplines treat respec-
tively of wealth, morality, religion, and history; but what
wealth, morality, religion, and history are, the sciences which
deal with them must themselves be left to reveal. To do so
is their sole and whole business. Real comprehension of the
definition of any science is not a presupposition but a result
and reward of the study of the science.
It has been argued that the author of the present work
should have stated at the outset his own conceptions as to the
1 The author has treated more fully of the relations of science to philosophy in
a paper on "Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarum," published in the 'Princeton
Review,' November 1878. With it may be compared his two articles on "The
Classification of the Sciences," published in the 'Presbyterian Review' (New
York and Edinburgh), July 1885 and July 1886. He purposes expanding and
supplementing these papers so as to form an Introduction to Philosophy.
CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS 23
sphere, method, and conclusions of the philosophy of history.
It has been urged that if he had thus begun by expounding a
theory of his own he could have criticised more effectively
and concisely the various theories which he passed in review ;
and that as some definite knowledge of the philosophy of
history is needed to render its history fully intelligible, such
knowledge should have been the first thing imparted. This
view may be plausible, but it does not seem to me to be correct.
A mere sketch of a theory of history of my own, or, in other
words, an unreasoned and unconfirmed statement of my own
convictions and conclusions as to the philosophy of history,
could serve no good purpose. It could not fail to do injustice
to my own theory. I cannot doubt but that the most concise
and effective mode of stating and recommending that theory
will be to expound and defend it not before but after having
given reasons for rejecting those which are inconsistent with
it. And to condemn the theories of others because they did
not agree with an unproved theory of mine would be a most
unreasonable mode of dealing with them. Indeed, to criticise
the theories of others by any theory of my own, although it
might undoubtedly be a very "concise " process, could not be
a really effective one, owing to its manifest injustice. One
theory of history ought not to be judged of by another, but
by its conformity or nonconformity to the facts of history and
the laws of reason. These are the only criteria by which I
deem myself entitled to judge the theories which may come
before me.
On the other hand, to hold that the author of a history of
the philosophy of history must introduce it with an adequately
developed and established system of the philosophy of history,
seems as utterly unreasonable as to maintain that an historian
of chemistry must begin his history with an exposition of the
science. A man not conversant with chemistry ought cer-
tainly not to attempt to write its history, and must even read
its history with comparatively little profit. Yet the historian
of chemistry may well leave it to other men to publish syste-
matic treatises on chemistry, and to his readers to get from
other teachers than himself the knowledge necessary to peruse
a history of chemistry with intelligence and to advantage. It
24 INTRODUCTION
is not otherwise as regards the philosophy of history. The
man who would write a history of it should make himself
acquainted not only with the various theories of history which
have been propounded, but as far as he can with history itself
and with all that throws light upon it, for it is by history
itself that he must estimate the worth of the theories which
profess to explain it; and the most qualified student and judge
of such a history will be the man whose knowledge of history
is most extensive and profound. There are no lack of philos-
ophies of history already in existence, and adding another to
the number would not greatly help my readers, while it would
probably be unduly attractive to my critics. A knowledge
of history, and reflection on the problems presented by history,
will be found to be the best preparation ; but, of course, the
possession of such preparation must be here presupposed. It
certainly cannot be here supplied.
The development of the philosophy of history has taken
place chiefly in France, Germany, Italy, and Britain. It will
be traced in each of these nations separately. In connection,
indeed, with French historical philosophy the Belgian will be
surveyed, in connection with the German the Dutch, and in
connection with the British the American. But the division
and distribution of the work will be the fourfold one indicated.
i Against this method objections will readily suggest them-
.selves. It will be said that it must destroy the unity of the
Avork and break the flow of the narrative ; that it ascribes too
much to the influence of nationality and too little to the
common and collective development of civilisation ; and that
it necessitates undesirable repetitions, inasmuch as it requires
the same school of historical philosophy if it has spread into
several lands to be described more than once, although one
comprehensive view of it would be in every respect more
satisfactory. It will be concluded that the natural and philo-
sophical method of procedure must be not the national but
the universal method ; one which would begin by tracing a
complete sketch of the intellectual development of an epoch,
and then, without reference to the difference of nationalities,
bring together all that the epoch has done for what one is
accustomed to call the philosophy of history. In this way, it
CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS 25
would seem that the influences which have most powerfully
affected the interpretation of the history of humanity — as,
for example, the progress of the sciences, the spread of new
ideas and theories, general social changes, and political events
of wide-reaching significance — will be best exhibited.1
Now I fully admit that these considerations are not only very
plausible but contain a certain amount of truth. They caused
me to adopt with reluctance the method which I follow, and
only after I had tried and been forced to abandon the alterna-
tive method. I began with the general method, and found it
easy to proceed according to it until the nineteenth century
was reached. Then the objections to it speedily began to make
themselves felt, and gradually I was shut up to the conclusion
that, in my hands at least, it would yield a less satisfactory
result than that to which it had at first sight seemed preferable.
The great bulk of the history lies within a very limited period
— some sixty or seventy years. Yet due regard must be had,
as in all history, to the chronology. But how can this be done
in a narrative whieh has to embrace all the chief peoples of our
civilisation, and which is not to be a mere outline but a detailed
account? Not otherwise than by an incessant and intolerable
leaping from one country to another, which must far more
effectually destroy unity of work and continuity of narrative
than the method alleged specially to produce these effects.
The view even of the course of causation or genetic evolution
of the history will thus be far more broken up and obscured.
Within the national developments all the causes, general and
special, work continuously and organically, so that their action
can only be rightly exhibited in a complete and uninterrupted
narrative. The general development, on the other hand, if it
fail to include and incorporate the national developments,
would prove itself so abstract as to be worthless ; and if it
do justice to them, it must constantly lose itself in them, and
cease to be general except in name.
I readily acknowledge that in tracing the history of philos-
ophy, or of any of its departments, too much may be ascribed
to nationality and too little to a common civilisation. There
is no more fundamental distinction between the ancient ethnic
1 A. Stern, in ' Revue Historique,' Janv.-Fev. 1877.
26 INTRODUCTION
world and the modern Christian world than that in the latter,
nations are not, as they were in the former, so separated and
isolated as to live an exclusively national life, but are in con-
tinuous and conscious communion with each other, members
of a vast intellectual and spiritual system, participant in a
general culture. In the ancient world Egypt and Assyria,
India and China, Israel and Greece, were, as regards thought
and belief, philosophy and religion, national in a sense and
measure in which in modern Europe Italy and France, Ger-
many and England, are not and cannot be. For any of these
latter nations to have a purely national religion, culture, or
philosophy, like the nations of oriental and classical antiquity,
it must renounce its share in the splendid spiritual inheritance
of the great family of peoples to which it belongs. Modern
thought is in character, substance, development, and general
direction, common and identical; the modern spirit has a
unity which reveals the absolute spirit ; and in the modern
world each nation can, consequently, only hope to develop and
perfect its own life through free communion with other nations
and participation in the fulness of the universal life. But it
does not follow that the historian is entitled to treat national-
ity as of only secondary significance in the modern world. It
does not follow that it has become an intermittent agency
which admits of no continuous history, or one so feeble in its
influence that it may often be left out of account. In fact it
is still the most permanent, comprehensive, and potent of
historical factors. It alone so acts on and with the various
general elements of civilisation as to give them real existence
in a concrete and organic unity. It is to a people what indi-
viduality is to a person, and therefore to history what individ-
uality is to biography. Wherever character tells much on the
development of thought, no other power can compare in influ-
ence with it. And its force is not a decreasing one. In spite
of superficial appearances to the contrary, nationalities are not
disappearing but increasingly developing and characterising
themselves. As the individual steadily attains to clearer self-
knowledge and greater freedom and power in the manifesta-
tion of his true self, so each growing nation is seen gradually
to enter more fully on the possession of its genius, and grad-
CONSIDERATION OF OBJECTIONS 27
ually to reveal more distinctly what its character and capacities
are. The advancing unity of civilised humanity is reflected
in and attained through the increasing originality and self-
activity of the nations which are its constituent members.
The relation of nationality to history being what it is, it
seems very desirable to give a continuous and complete account
of the development of historical philosophy in each of the chief
countries in which such philosophy has been cultivated. It
is only thus that justice is likely to be done to the historico-
philosophical work of each country. It is only thus, perhaps,
that there can be a chronologically consecutive narrative at all.
Rocholl, who has chosen the other method, is led by it to treat
of Bossuet before Macchiavelli, of Vico before Bacon, of Adam
Smith before Bodin, of Voltaire before Leibniz, of Mamiani
before Condorcet, &c. Possibly these errors need not have
been committed, but I doubt if numerous smaller errors of a
similar kind could have been avoided, and errors of such a
kind are fatal in any historical narrative- It is possible to
write a consecutive uninterrupted narrative within national
limits. In doing so, it may and ought to be indicated, so far
as is relevant, in what ways and in what measure each nation
has been influenced by others. It is true that in tracing the
development of historical philosophy according to this method
a school or system will in certain cases have to be dealt with
more than once. But will this be unnecessary or undesirable
repetition ? What school or system of historical philosophy
has not, when brought under new national conditions, greatly
changed its nature and character ?
After the national developments of historical philosophy
have been traced, a comprehensive delineation of their rela-
tionships and of the common movement will still be required.
But when a competent knowledge of the particular develop-
ments can be presupposed, the general survey may be com-
paratively brief. The reader will then have been prepared
fully to understand it, and to form an intelligent and inde-
pendent judgment regarding it.
28 INTRODUCTION
II
The origin of the philosophy of history, its absolute origin
or commencement, is not to be dated from the time when it be-
gan to be cultivated as a distinct division of knowledge. It
is at a comparatively late stage that any science definitively
separates itself from contiguous fields of knowledge and as-
sumes an independent form. The man of genius who is called
the founder of a science merely brings together its already
existing elements, its disjecta membra, which lie far and wide
apart embedded in the most diverse studies, organically unites
them through some great thought, some happy discovery, and
breathes into the body thus formed the breath of life. There
is no science, even among those which like geology or politi-
cal economy we in one sense rightly enough call recent, whose
history is all in the daylight ; there is none which has come
at once into the full enjoyment of individual existence like
a Pallas from the brain of Jove ; the origins of science, like
the origins of all things, lie beyond the utmost limits research
has yet attained. In very old poetry, and in the very oldest
mythology, there are rudimentary geological speculations.
The atomic doctrine of Dalton is but a more developed form
of the hypothesis maintained by the Hindu Kanada and the
Greek Democritus. The development theory of Darwin goes
clearly back not only to Maillet and Lamarck, but to Anaxi-
mander and Empedocles. Although political economy estab-
lished its claims to be a separate science only in the eighteenth
century, it may be truly said, seeing that economical laws
have always operated and always forced men to take some
cognisance of them and yield some obedience to them, to have
had an existence under one form or another always and every-
where. The philosophy of history is no exception to the rule
which every other science has obeyed ; on the contrary, it is
perhaps its most striking example. "While men still dispute
as to the reality, and even as to the possibility, of its separate
scientific existence, religion, poetry, speculation of various
kinds, political movements, the cares and trials of common
life, have for countless generations been bringing its problems
in manifold forms before the human mind and into contact with
RELIGION AND HISTORICAL THEORY 29
the human heart. As diffused through these things it is, and
for we know not how long has been, widely present. There
may have been a time during which man felt in no degree the
mystery of his own being, but no direct records remain of
such a time. So far as can be gathered from the mere literary
monuments of our race, a kind of philosophy of history may
have been as old as history itself, and the first question man
proposed to himself may have been that which Milton puts
into the mouth of Adam: "How came I thus, how here? "
Religion has, at least to some extent, its source in the same
quest of causes from which proceed philosophy and science.
The lowest forms of religion are not mere embodiments of the
feelings of fear, or love, or dependence, but consist in part of
rude speculations as to the making and the meaning of nature
and of man. It is still truer of Asiatic than of European
civilisations that they are based on religion, and that the
rationale of their distinctive institutions is to be sought in
their theological creeds. In all the chief religions of the
East we find reflections more or less elevated on the origin
and destiny of the race ; attempts more or less plausible to
tell whence man has come and whither he is going ; how the
present is related to the past and future ; how the lower world
is connected with a higher. Brahmanism and Buddhism
have supplied to Schopenhauer the elements of his historical
pessimism. The dualistic conception of nature and history
which was the kernel of the Mazdaic faith has also been the
germ of various philosophic hypotheses. The Old Testament
representations of God, of His relations to man, and His
actings in history, and its teachings as to human unity, moral
retribution, future redemption, and a Messianic kingdom,
have often been accepted and exhibited as the explanation of
universal history. That Christianity, like all other religions,
contains a theory of history, although only under the form
proper to a religion, has been strikingly stated by the French
philosopher Jouffroy as follows : " There is a little book which
is taught to children, and on which they are examined in the
church. If we read this book, which is the Catechism, we
shall find a solution of all the problems which have been
proposed; all of them without exception. If we ask the
30 INTRODUCTION
Christian, whence comes the human race, he knows; or
whither it goes, he knows; or how it goes, he knows. If
we ask that poor child, who has never reflected on the subject
in his life, why he is here below, and what will become of
him after death, he will give you a sublime answer, which
he will not thoroughly comprehend, but which is none the
less admirable for that. If we ask him, how the world was
created and for what end ; why God has placed in it plants
and animals ; how the earth was peopled ; whether by a single
family or by many ; why men speak different languages ; why
they suffer, why they struggle, and how all this will end, he
knows it all. Origin of the world, origin of the species,
question of races, destiny of man in this life and in the other,
relations of man to God, duties of man to his fellow-men,
rights of man over the creation, — he is ignorant of none of
these points ; and when he shall have grown up, he will as
little hesitate with regard to natural right, political right,
or the right of nations : all this proceeds with clearness, and
as it were of itself, from Christianity." 1 It was most natural
that the philosophy of history should have first clearly pre-
sented itself in Christendom, and in some such form as that
in which it appeared in the ' De Civitate Dei ' of Augustine.
It was most natural also that in medieval Christendom, domi-
nated as it was by Christian theology, no other kind of
philosophy of history should have arisen. The only philoso-
phy of history of which the medieval mind could conceive
was one the principles of which were Christian dogmas. In
modern times the relation between Christianity and this phi-
losophy, as between Christianity and philosophy in general,
has become looser and more indeterminate. Philosophies of
history are now written from all possible religious and anti-
religious points of view. During the present century all
forms of Christianity, all forms of religion, have been sought
both to be proved and disproved, glorified and discredited, by
means of historical philosophy. A still greater change is
that in modern times many endeavours have been made to
explain history without any theological or religious presup-
positions, that is, in a purely scientific or philosophic manner.
1 Jouffroy, ' Premiers melanges phil.,' 3d e'd., pp. 330-371, as abridged and trans-
lated by Ripley in Introductory Notice to Jouffroy's ' Philosophical Essays.'
PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORICAL THEORY 31
This mode of dealing with history will doubtless increasingly
prevail, and the older theological method of procedure grad-
ually disappear, but there can never come a time when a
man's convictions as to religion will be without influence on
his historical theorising. The same views of the infancy of
humanity cannot be entertained by those who accept the first
twelve chapters of Genesis as verbally inspired and by those
who do not, nor of its future by those who regard religion as
essentially true and by those who believe it to be essentially
delusive. The course of historical speculation has been
continuously influenced by the course of religious belief.
Philosophy does not assume form and body till long after
religion, and it does so at first, wherever there is a great
religion, on the basis of religion and not on a foundation of
its own. India, which is the great philosophical land of
Asia, had such a religion, and the philosophy of India never
severed itself from its religion. Its chief systems, the six
darsanas, are classed as orthodox and heterodox ; five of them
rest on the Vedas ; and although it cannot be said that the
Sankhya acknowledges the authority of any sacred book, it
proposes to itself for final end a religious aim, the securing of
salvation to man, and recommends the pursuit of truth only as
a means to its accomplishment. It was otherwise in Greece.
The anthropomorphic polytheism of the Greeks, although
singularly beautiful, being mainly a product of imagination
and the aesthetic sense, with no depth of root either in the
reason or conscience, with feeble philosophical and moral
possibilities, has no claim to be regarded as a great religion,
and indeed would seem to have been in some measure out-
grown by the Greek mind even when Homer wrote. Hence
Greek philosophy from its origin kept itself essentially dis-
tinct from Greek mythology, the influence of which upon it
at the strongest was only secondary; at a very early date it
began not only silently to undermine but openly to assail
it as irrational and immoral. It is its characteristic and glory
that from first to last it was free and independent, acknowl-
edging subjection to no authority save that of reason alone.
This philosophy having fulfilled its mission, expired in a
struggle with Christianity; and the classical world and its
32 INTRODUCTION
wisdom gave place to a new social order and a higher wisdom.
Another world, arose of which Christianity was the central
power, the dominant principle, and again for centuries phi-
losophy was rested on theology, as it had been in ancient
India. Only sloAvly, and with difficulty, and in compara-
tively recent times, has philosophy once more recovered its
independence and ceased to be the handmaid or bondwoman
of theology. The Hindu darsayas and the scholastic phi-
losophies were, then, systems of philosophy based on systems
of theology. One consequence was, that in a sense they were
as comprehensive as the theologies with which they were
connected. Whatever problems the Vedas were supposed to
have shed light on, the Hindu philosophers felt emboldened
to deal with. Whatever the Church received as doctrine,
the scholastic philosophers made it their aim to develop and
apply. In the Indian and medieval philosophies there is,
accordingly, no lack of historical theory of a sort, as there is
no lack of any kind of theory of which the germs may be
discovered in the authoritative sources of Brahmanism and
Christianity.
The Greek philosophies, although not based like Hindu and
medieval philosophies on religion, none the less attempted
to compass the explanation of the entire universe. They did
not, as modern philosophies generally do, presuppose the
positive sciences, but occupied their place. These sciences
did not then exist. There was only one vast vague philoso-
phy, at least until Aristotle broke it up to some extent into
parts and laid the foundations of certain sciences; and that
philosophy, although ever baffled, ever renewed its efforts to
explain nothing less than the mystery of all that is. It has
to be acknowledged that even in its oldest form, its rude
Ionian stage, when assuming water and air and indeterminate
matter to be first principles, it did not overlook that the
origin of man, the existence of intelligence, and the gradation
of intelligence, required to be accounted for no less than the
character and arrangement of the material portions of the
universe. In the course of its development it perhaps gained
few permanent and positive results, but besides educating
the human faculties, it was accompanied by an ever-widening
PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORICAL THEORY 33
view and ever-deepening sense of the difficulty and magni-
tude of the problem it sought to solve. Man and society, in
particular, gradually bulked more prominently before it, and
commanded a constantly increasing share of attention, until
at length Plato from the standpoint of idealism, and Aristotle
from that of realism, elaborated those two memorable theories
of society which at once summed up the past and represented
the great antagonistic movements of political life in the
future.
Philosophy asserted its independence of theology at the
Renaissance, and sought the basis of certitude, not in author-
ity or revelation, but in thought and experience. It was
long, however, before it earnestly applied itself to the in-
terpretation and elucidation of history. Bacon, Descartes,
Locke, Spinoza had no historical philosophy, although they
have exercised more or less influence on its development.
With the eighteenth century history became a favourite
subject of the ratiocination which then generally passed for
philosophy ; but only in the nineteenth century has it been
sought to submit it to a profound and systematic treatment
as the appropriate matter of a constituent department of
philosophy. In this last century every philosophical school
in Germany has laboured at the construction of a philosophy
of history in accordance with its own principles. Not a few
of the systems reared in consequence are already fallen into
ruin, but a great general result has notwithstanding been
attained — a recognition on the part of all thoughtful men
of the necessity under which philosophy lies to explain, if
possible, the course and significance of human development
as a whole. In Britain, until recently, what was called phi-
losophy was little more than psychology, and a psychology
which confined its attention almost exclusively to the analysis
of the phenomena of the individual consciousness ; but now
a broader and worthier conception of philosophy prevails,
and its direct interest in the study of the collective life of
mankind is in consequence generally recognised. Our
Spencerians and Neo-Hegelians are at one in holding that
a philosophy must include a theory of history, and for this
view they have been able to secure an easy triumph.
34 INTRODUCTION
It is obvious that there can scarcely be political disquisi-
tion without historical speculation. As soon as political
thought comes forth into life it is found to oscillate between
two poles — between despotism and anarchy — the extreme
of social authority and the extreme of individual independ-
ence. Before political thought awakens, social authority
predominates. The man as an individual does not exist, but
is merged in the family, clan, city, or nation. But in every
progressive society there comes a time when its stronger
minds feel that they are not merely parts of a social organism,
but have a life and destiny, rights and duties of their own,
and simply as men. There are, then, two principles in the
world — the principle of authority and the principle of liberty,
the principle of society and the principle of individualism.
These two principles coexist at first in a few individuals,
but in process of time they come not only to coexist in some
degree in all, but to manifest themselves apart, and then
there are not only two principles in the individual but two
parties in the State, the one inclining more to the side of
social authority, and the other more towards individual
independence. There thus arises a conservative and a liberal
party ; each party existing in virtue of its assertion of a truth,
but existing only as a party because it does not assert the
whole truth ; each conferring its special services ; each having
its special dangers ; each being certain to ruin any society in
which it succeeds in crushing the other ; but the two securing
both order and progress, partly by counteracting each other,
and partly by co-operating with each other. Now it is not
until these two parties emerge and their respective claims
come into open conflict that there is any active political
thought, any general political theory; and hence political
thought, political speculation at least, is from the very first
forced on historical speculation. The problem which is its
root, out of which it issues, is no other than this,— What is
the relation of the past to the present ? What influence ought
the past to have over the present, and society over the indi-
vidual ? Where between slavish deference to all that is and
a proud and wilful rejection of it, lies the golden mean at
which political wisdom aims ? But this problem involves a
whole philosophy of history.
POLITICAL DISCUSSION AND HISTORICAL THEORY 35
It was, therefore, altogether natural that historical reflec-
tion should have received in Greece a special stimulus from
the Sophists, who effected in philosophy the transition from
cosmological to psychological speculation, and who substi-
tuted in politics the principle of individualism for that of
social authority; whose chief merit was assertion of the
rights of the subject, and whose radical error was denial of
the rights of the object, both in philosophy and politics. It
was natural, also, that the clearest and deepest political
thinker of the classical world, Aristotle, should have been
the man who came nearest being the founder of the philoso-
phy of history. He had, it is true, scarcely a conception of
progress, and still less of laws of progress, but he had studied
closely the constitution of all the Greek States and surround-
ing peoples ; had a ful^ appreciation of the importance of the
analysis and comparison of different forms of government,
and employed with rare skill and success both processes ; and
had a most remarkable insight into the requirements, com-
position, working, and influence of every species of polity
which had until his time been tried. Hence he had singu-
larly correct, profound, and comprehensive conceptions of
that social stability or order which is the prime condition of
social progress.
The historical theories of individual thinkers will always
be found largely explicable by the contemporary political
condition of the communities to which these thinkers belong.
It was the political state of the Italy of his day which led
Macchiavelli to treat of history as he did. It was the civil
strife and distraction in England in the time of Charles I.
which suggested to Hobbes his doctrine of the origin and
development of society. In this volume we shall be contin-
ually required to note how the political changes which have
taken place in France have forced men to reconsider the past
in the light of the present, and how differently, in conse-
quence, the past has appeared to each new generation.
Political ideals and Utopias have, perhaps, had as powerful
an influence as religious ones on the rise and spread of his-
torical hypotheses. Just now, for example, socialism is the
source of a vast amount of historical speculation. Already
36 INTRODUCTION
almost every form of socialism claims to have a philosophy of
history of its own. Political reflection and historical theory
are often so closely connected that it is difficult or impossible
to decide where the one ends and the other begins.
It must further be remarked that the progress of historical
study is largely dependent on the general advance of science.
The study of history cannot be scientific in an unscientific
age. The rise of a science of history must be preceded by
the rise of sciences less difficult of formation. A satisfactory
philosophy of history presupposes not only a science of
history but sciences of all related things. In antiquity only
■the Greeks and Romans reached the stage of culture at which
a successful treatment of history as an art became possible.
[ Only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Chris-
tian era did the modern mind begin to entertain the hope
that history might yield scientific results if a right method
of seeking them could be devised. And it was long after
before much promise appeared of the hope being likely to be
realised. It was impossible that the processes of induction
could be successfully applied to historical materials before
the mind had become accustomed to their use in the various
departments of physical science where their employment is
so much simpler. It is chiefly through the growth of physi-
cal science that the notion of law in human development
has arisen, and chiefly through it also that the path which
leads to the discovery of law has been opened up. Not till
long after induction was familiar to physicists, not till long
after Lord Bacon had traced its general theory, was it, or
could it be, practised to any considerable extent in historical
research.
There is now little danger of the dependence of historical
science on other sciences being entirely ignored. The preva-
lent tendency at present is to consider history as explicable
to a far greater extent than it really is by the laws of some
naturally antecedent or more general science. Thus it has
been represented as a mere dependency of mathematics, for
actual men a moyen homme being substituted, and for histori-
cal criticism and research statistical tables and averages.
According to another view history is " a problem of mechan-
HISTORICAL STUDY AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS 37
ics," one the difficulty of which arises partly from its com-
plexity, and partly from the illusion that there is such a
thing as free will. M. Taine regards it as rather a sort of
chemistry, all so-called virtues and vices being only " natural
products like sugar and vitriol." On the other hand, Dr.
Draper is of opinion that it is a department of physiology,
intellectual development being a physiological process, and
the epochs of history stages of physiological growth. Some,
like Bagehot, would explain history by biological laws, and
others, like Buckle, by geographical conditions. All these
views are one-sided and exaggerated. The comprehension of
history is not to be gained exclusively, or even mainly, by
deduction from the laws of other sciences ; it must be drawn
chiefly by induction from the facts of history itself. Yet the
views referred to rest on a considerable basis of truth. The
various sciences to which appeal is made are really fitted,
each in its place and measure, to contribute to the formation
of the science and philosophy, of history. All the forces and
laws of the universe so combine and co-operate in the consti-
tution and life of man, that all the sciences which instruct
us as to their nature necessarily help us to understand why
the course of history has been what it actually has been.
Some even of the physical sciences are of an essentially
historical nature. Geology is an exposition of the history of
the earth, and Biology of the history of life. Geological and
biological studies have thus for aim to recall and recount an
older and vaster history than that of man, one on which the
history of man rests, and within which it is enclosed. The
method followed in these studies is the same as that which
is employed in human history — the method which elicits a
knowledge of facts, and of the order and mode of their occur-
rence, from such signs or traces or records of them as remain.
They are closely akin to the science of history alike as regards
the matter of which they treat, and the manner in which they
treat it.
They are less so, however, than various psychical sciences,
as, for instance, comparative psychology and comparative
philology, inasmuch as these latter must consist not merely
of a knowledge of facts drawn from records, but of facts
38 INTRODUCTION
which are human, — the products of man's thought and will.
Comparative psychology traces hoAv the minds and characters
of races, peoples, and nations have been formed ; comparative
philology traces the development of their speech through
which their minds and characters, their thoughts and senti-
ments, are so largely disclosed. Both necessarily follow the
historical and comparative method of research, not otherwise
than ecclesiastical and political history. It is from the
advance of comparative psychology that we may expect to
see the most marked progress in the scientific interpretation
of history in the near future. <
There is likewise the most intimate connection between
history and political , economy. Anjr system of political
economy, however ingeniously or logically constructed, which
does not rest on a close and comprehensive study of the his-
torical evolution of economic phenomena, must be unstable
and unsubstantial. And the whole political and moral,
intellectual and spiritual, development of society largely
depends on the economic phenomena and changes which it
is the business of political economy to explain. The general
historical movement of humanity cannot be understood by
men who are insufficiently acquainted with the various phases
of economic history, and with the laws of economic facts.
The growth of science and philosophy, the culture of art and
literature, the development of morality and religion, have
all, indeed, richly contributed to make history what it is ;
but, even collectively, they have only in part determined its
course, and have all been to a far greater extent than is com-
monly supposed dependent on conditions of an economic
character. The science of history and of political economy
are therefore so closely related, that one of them cannot exist
in any well-developed form where the other does not. They
have never been found apart. In the ancient oriental world
neither of them existed. Nor in the classical world, although
there both clear thought on economic facts and the power to
exhibit and explain historical movements conspicuously dis-
played themselves. Thucydides owed his superiority as an
historian in no slight degree to the clearness with which he
saw the bearings of economic circumstances and conditions
POLITICAL ECONOMY AND HISTORY 39
on the course and fortunes of the Peloponnesian war. Chris-
tianity almost spontaneously and inevitably produced a sort
of philosophy of history; but a philosophy excessively one-
sided, owing to the life of society on earth being viewed
so exclusively in relation to. religion and eternity, that the
interests of time, and the significance of industry, commerce,
and wealth, almost faded out of sight. It was not until the
eighteenth century was far advanced that the foundations of
political economy were laid. The rise of the new science
was a fact of the utmost importance for the scientific study
of the general development of human societies. It brought
with it a vast change in the very mode of looking at history.
Montesquieu, Turgot, Adam Smith, and others, made appar-
ent the interconnection of the two sciences, and initiated a
new epoch in the treatment of both. Socialism, although so
far a reaction from the economic system dominant in the
eighteenth century, tended still more to fix the attention of
historical students and historical theorists on the development
of industry and the various stages through which the class
the most numerous and poor has passed. Saint Simon con-
templated the entire history of humanity from the point of
view of the progressive amelioration of the material and moral
condition of the proletariat. And there can be no doubt that
he thus gave a most beneficial impulse to historical investi-
gation and speculation. One of the greatest of Auguste
Comte's services as an historical philosopher was, it seems to
me, the ingenuity and ability with which he made manifest
how the industrial movement in pervading universal history
had acted on, and corresponded to, the scientific, aesthetic,
moral, and religious movements. Had his exposition of
social dynamics possessed even no other merit than this, it
would, I think, have amply entitled him to a very distin-
guished place among those who have laboured to ascertain
the course and laws of social development. The historical
school of political economy arose in Germany in the fourth
decade of the present century; and its principles as set forth
by Roscher, Hildebrand, and Knies, rapidly gained wide
acceptance in the Fatherland. The writers of this school
regarded economics as the theory of the laws of the economic
40 INTRODUCTION
development of nations — the " Philosophic der Wirthschafts-
geschichte." Such a view is an exaggeration ; but, unques-
tionably, we owe to it a multitude of researches which have
vastly increased our knowledge of almost all periods of
economic history, as well as of the history of almost all
economic conceptions and opinions. There is no longer any
danger that the changes which have occurred in the produc-
tion and distribution of wealth at different epochs, and their
social effects, will fail to attract the attention of historians,
or will be left out of account by historical theorists. Indus-
trial evolution during the last hundred years has been so
marvellous in itself, and has so affected the whole course and
transformed the whole character of the world of humanity,
as to have rendered interesting the industrial history of all
peoples and ages.
It is sufficient merely to refer to a large group of studies
or sciences which are obviously and directly auxiliary to
history. Such are geography, chronology, archeeology, lin-
guistics, criticism, and hermeneutics. Without an adequate
mastery of these it is impossible to become a successful
historian. They are partly the materials and partly the tools
of the historian ; and alike as materials and tools, they are
indispensable to him. The study of history cannot be more
advanced than their condition permits. For example, before
the histories of Brahmanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism,
could be ascertained, their original documents had to be read,
and before that could be done, Sanscrit, Pali, and Zend had to
be acquired. The primary sources of a knowledge of Egyp-
tian and Assyrian history are in hieroglyphic and cuneiform
inscriptions, and were unintelligible until these were deci-
phered and translated. In these cases history had to wait until
the work of linguistics was accomplished. But its depend-
ence on criticism has been in recent times not less decisively
shown. The fresh sifting of old materials has been found as
productive as the discovery of new. For instance, the views
of scholars regarding the histories of two of the most important
peoples of antiquity — - the Romans and the Hebrews — have
been, if not completely revolutionised, profoundly altered by
the criticism to which their national records have been sub-
jected by Niebuhr, Ewald. and their successors.
HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY A GROWTH OF HISTORY 41
Of all kinds of knowledge, however, it is history itself
which is in closest contact with the science of history. The
science of history is not a something separate from the facts
of history, but a something contained in them. The more a
man gets into the meaning of them the more he gets into it,
and it into him; for it is simply the meaning, the rational
interpretation, the knowledge of the true nature and essential
relations of the facts. And this is true of whatever species
or order the facts may be. Their science is not something
separate and distinct from — something over and above —
their interpretation, but simply their interpretation. He who
knows about any people, epoch, or special development of
human nature, how it has come to be what it is, and what it
tends to, what causes have given it the character it has, and
what its relation is to the general development of humanity,
has attained to the science or philosophy of the history of
that people, epoch, or development. It is inaccurate to speak,
as is often done, of scientific history as a Jcind of history.
Every kind of history is scientific which is true and thor-
ough; which goes closely and deeply enough to work; which
shows the what, how, and why of events as far as reason and
research can ascertain them.
History always participates in some measure of philosophy :
for events are always connected according to some real or
ideal principle, either of efficient or final causation. The
dullest mind can only describe them on that condition ; the
most confused mind must have some sort of reason of selec-
tion, and any sort of reason followed out will lead to some
sort of philosophy. The more the mind of the historian is
awake and active, the more, of course, it is impelled to go
in search of the connections between causes and effects,
between occurrences and tendencies. The longer any por-
tion of history is studied, the greater the number of minds
attracted to its consideration, the more frequently it is
worked through and thought over, the richer in reason it is
found to be, the more of order and law, of permanent forces,
of general features, of pervading spirit and principles, it
discloses. And this is just equivalent to saying that as
historical research and reflection advance, historical science
naturally and necessarily arises ; that history surely, although
42 INTRODUCTION
slowly, and, as it were, of itself, leads up to the philosophy
of history; that in each new epoch of its own development it
must become more philosophical, more conscious of the prin-
ciples which regulate the succession of human affairs, and at
once more comprehensive and definite in the apprehension of
the character, causation, and significance of all past transac-
tions.
It seems to follow that some indication should here be
given of the stages through which historiography has passed
from its origin to the time when our own narrative begins —
i.e., when the philosophy of history commenced to be culti-
vated as a special department of knowledge in the chief
nations of Europe. The sketch will be very brief, and it
will be delineated entirely with reference to the particular
end in view.
Ill
History, we may be certain, did not begin by describing
events. That was a task to which in infancy her powers were
incompetent, and her resources insufficient. She must long
have been confined to the mere indication of events by simple
helps to memory, or rude symbols. Literature made its first
appearance as verse, and in alliance with music. In the dawn
of literature the man of genius sang what he had to say, and
his words thus winged for far and long flight needed neither
chisel nor pen to give them enduring publicity. Poetry pre-
ceded prose, and among the oldest forms of poetry were the
ballad and the epic. In these, historical elements were often
present, but rarely, if ever, in a pure form. The myth and
legend interest primitive man more than real fact. His vision
is more largely of the imagination than of the sense or judg-
ment. It is an error to regard the rude minstrelsy which has
everywhere long preceded the use of letters as essentially
historical. For the supposition of Buckle that, until cor-
rupted by the discovery of the art of writing, such minstrelsy
is " not only founded on truth, but strictly true," there is no
shadow of evidence. Nothing seems more easy, but few things
are more difficult, than to look naturally at historical fact so
as to see it just as it is. The power to do this is not a gift
of nature, but a result of culture, and no race or nation has
ORIENTAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 43
possessed it until it reached intellectual maturity. The poetry
most akin to historical composition attained a wonderful ex-
cellence among various peoples long before they had histories
even of the meanest order. India can boast of the Ramayana
and Mahabharata, but is without an historical literature.
Greece had Homer long before Herodotus appeared. Italy
had Dante long before Guicciardini and Macchiavelli. In the
dramas of Shakespeare a skill was displayed in the portrayal of
character and situations which has never been equalled before
or since : and yet, at least until the age of Charles II., Eng-
lish historians were almost wholly lacking in art of the kind.
Only slowly could the intellect of antiquity free itself from
the fetters of tradition, myth, and rhyme, so as to be able to
deal with historical materials in a natural, truthful, and living
manner.
The most ancient known nations, notwithstanding the gene-
ral height of civilisation to which they attained, failed to rise
to eminence in the art of historiography, even when they assid-
uously practised it. The Egyptians and Assyrians wrote an J
enormous amount of history of a kind, and among both peo-
ples it was history of much the same kind. Differing in many
respects, these great monarchies yet had — in the dependence
of enormous populations on a central individual will, the exist-
ence of a learned class, the concentration of population in vast
and crowded cities, and other characteristics and wants of the
civil and political life inseparable from every extensive empire
of a despotic type — enough in common to account for the
antiquity and authenticity of such historical records as they
possess : royal genealogies, registers of military expeditions,
and treaties, lists of tribute, accounts of remarkable events and
exploits, court chronicles, and laudations of kings. But the
very circumstances which originated history at an early date
in these empires determined also that it should never rise
above the humblest stage, — the dull, dead form of mere regis-
tration. It has never been found to flourish even in the mod-
ified despotisms of modern times ; and it was impossible that
it should develop itself with any vigour on a soil unfertilised
by any living springs of national feeling, and in the withering
atmosphere of ancient oriental tyranny. History of the kind
found in these countries is, accordingly, both very superficial
44 INTRODUCTION
/ and Very narrow. It is very superficial, because, occupied only
with the outward acts and fortunes of a few ruling men, and
satisfied with the mere statement of certain public events
severed from their causes, it makes no attempt to understand
the character, the conditions, the social development of the
people or nation itself. It is very narrow, because, in addition
to being thus exclusively conversant with a small class or caste
of persons in the nation, and with what affects their interests,
it wholly fails to realise that any other nation can have his-
torical significance. A spirit of intense exclusiveness and
unlimited pride pervades it, and often finds undisguised ex-
pression. The monarchs were in their own eyes and. those of
their subjects veritable gods on earth. As against the one na-
tion held to be favoured of heaven, neighbouring peoples were
not recognised to have any claims to independence, respect, or
benevolence. Alike in Assyria and Egypt hypotheses or spec-
ulations were current as to the origin of the world and of man,
as to the great divisions of time, reigns of gods, demigods,
and human beings, as to the destruction of the present order
of things, and the rise of a new cycle of existence ; but they
were not to any appreciable extent generalisations from the
study of actual history. They were almost entirely deduc-
tions from mythical, philosophical, and astronomical premises.
__ The Chinese have undoubtedly surpassed all other great
oriental peoples in the department of historical literature. To
this result their rare sense for the realities of common life,
their reverence for ancestors and antiquity, their comparative
lack of imagination, their moderation of judgment, political
good sense, and social virtues, and their high appreciation and
diligent pursuit of learning and culture, have all contributed.
No people can boast of so lengthened and strictly continuous
a series of historical writers ; since for upwards, apparently, of
2600 years a tribunal has been established in the capital ex-
pressly for the recording of events supposed to be of national
importance. The mass of Chinese literature is immense. It
includes the histories of particular dynasties, annals or chron-
ological summaries, complete records or general histories,
memoirs of many kinds, biographies innumerable, vast histor-
ical dictionaries and compilations. It exhibits all ages and
aspects of the national life, and much of it is written in a style
ORIENTAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 45
which commends itself to' Chinese taste as admirable. But
even Chinese historiography scarcely rises above the stage of
annals. It diligently collects and carefully arranges notices
of historical fact, but it does not critically test them, and still
less does it penetrate into the inner spirit and follow the essen-
tial development of the history. It lacks the thoroughness of
science and the comprehensiveness of philosophy. It fails to
rise to any truly general point of view. It is cultivated only as
a nationally useful art ; not realised to be the mirror in which
humanity can contemplate the reflection of its own nature.
The two most celebrated historians of China, although sepa- r
rated by twelve centuries, bear the same family name. Szema- /
Thsian (born about B.C. 145) wrote 'Historical Records ' (Sze'
Ke), a kind of encyclopedia of all that appeared historically
noteworthy in the annals of China from the reign of Hwang-te
to that of Wo-te — i.e., from about 2697 before the Christian
era to the age in which the author lived. He distributed his
materials into three divisions, and various subdivisions, yet
presented them as far as possible chronologically. Hence his
work bears, as has been said, no slight analogy to Henry's
'History of Great Britain,' or the 'Pictorial History of Eng-
land.' It has served as a model to many subsequent Chinese
historians, is regarded with admiration by native critics, and
has been highly commended by such eminent European author-
ities as Schott and Remusat. Szema-Kwang, often styled the
"Prince of Literature," flourished in the eleventh century of
our era, and produced the ' Universal Mirror for Rulers '
(Tsze Che Tung Keen). It describes a period of 1362 years,
and flows on, in the main, as a single continuous stream of
narrative. It has been the most popular of Chinese histories.
It has been often added to, and with the additions bringing
the record onwards to the eighteenth century, it was trans-
lated into French by Father Mailla, and published by Grosier
and Le Roux in 12 vols., 1777-83.
The Japanese have been, like the Chinese, liberally en-t
dowed with the historical spirit. The present royal race is :
held by native historians to have reigned since the sixth
century before the commencement of the Christian era, and
is undoubtedly the oldest in existence. Whether Japanese
historiography was of native origin, or wholly evoked under
46 INTRODUCTION
Chinese influence, is a disputed question; as also how far
back its earliest authentic notices go. The European special-
ists, who are presumably more critical than the native scholars,
seem now generally to hold that authentic Japanese history
does not go farther back than the beginning of the sixth cen-
tury, A.D. The oldest Japanese work, the Kojiki (Records
of Ancient Matters), was completed in a.d. 712. This
work, which has been translated by Basil Hall Chamberlain
(' Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Japan,' vol. x.,
Appendix), is of exceptional interest, both as being the most
ancient extant literary monument of what is called the Tura-
nian, or Altaic, or Sc3rthian race, and as the least adulterated
expression of the mythology and legendary story of ancient
Japan ; but I have not been able to see anything in it which
looks like authentic history. The Nihongi (Chronicles of
Japan), completed a.d. 720, is a work of similar character,
but much more affected by Chinese influence. In the eighth
and ninth centuries, what are known as the 'Six National
Records ' were ^composed by a number of writers, of whom
Sigwara Michizane has left the highest reputation. From
the tenth to the thirteenth century there was a marked ad-
vance in the art of historical composition and the power of
historical reflection. Throughout the whole of the Japanese
feudal period, however, as in the European feudal period, al-
though there were numerous chroniclers there were very few
historians in the stricter sense of the term. Near its close
there appeared a vast and celebrated historical work, the Dai
Nihonshi. It was composed by the Prince of Mito (1622-
1700), aided by many Japanese and Chinese scholars. It cov-
ered the whole ground of Japanese history down to 1413. The
aim of the prince was to discredit the Shoguns as unrighteous
usurpers, and to exalt the Mikado as the sole source of legit-
imate and beneficent authority ; and his work was so skilfully
adapted to its end, and produced so powerful an effect, that
he may be regarded, as Mr. Satow has said, "as the real author
of the movement which culminated in the revolution- of 1868."
The first Japanese author who attempted to raise history to
the rank of a science, or to form a philosophy of history, was
Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725). He is regarded by his country-
men as having been unsurpassed by any thinker of their nation
OMENTAL HISTOKlOGltAPHY 47
in originality, comprehensiveness, and profundity ; as an emi-
nent scholar, a statesman of the noblest type, and a creative
genius in the department of political economy. His Tokushi
Yorom is, says Professor Griffis, " a most valuable philosoph-
ical view of the different changes which have taken place at
various times in the distribution of the governing power in
Japan." The greatest Japanese historian, however, would
appear to have been liai Sanjo (1780-1833). He is acknowl-
edged to have been careful and critical in research, and of
penetrating insight in the interpretation of eve'nts. It is
impossible to read even the extracts which have been trans-
lated from his works without being impressed by his power
of graphic and dramatic presentation. He was obviously a
man of rare genius. It is interesting to observe that, although
writing in the present century, he, like Thucydides and Livy,
puts speeches of his own composing into the mouths of the
personages brought before us in his works.
Modern Japan can boast of a truly native school of histori-'
cal criticism. The most remarkable treatises which have pro-
ceeded from it are those of Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801),
and of Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843), relating to the ancient
national chronicles. Of that of Motoori, an account has been
given by Professor Severini ; but notwithstanding its intrinsic
interest, it would be irrelevant to treat here of a work first pub-
lished during the last century. A conspicuous peculiarity of
Japanese literature is the multitude of its historical romances,
many of them dating from the tenth and eleventh centuries.1
India presents us with a far richer and finer literary devel-
opment than any of the nations already mentioned, — its poetry
and philosophy, in particular, being exceedingly remarkable.
But the unparalleled mixture of races contained from a remote
antiquity within it, the utter want of any extensive political
unity, the genius and character of its leading people, and their
1 Any opinion which I have been able to form of Japanese historical writings
rests, of course, on translations, such as we owe to Kosny, Mitford, Satow, Aston,
Chamberlain, Valenziani, Severini, and other experts. The only general printed
view of Japanese historiography with which I am acquainted is that contained in
the very instructive article of Professor Grirfis on Japan (Language and Literature
of) in the ' American Cyclopaedia,' vol. ix. ; but I have had a fuller list of the his-
torians, with notes as to their characteristics, kindly furnished me by a Japanese
friend, Mr. Korehiro Kurahara.
48 INTRODUCTION
external and social conditions, were all unfavourable to the
rise of historical composition ; and the Hindus have no ancient
native histories. They have known how to give true and full
expression to the innermost workings of their minds, and have
faithfully delineated all the features of their character, in the
Vedas, the Code of Manu, the Puranas, the Sutras of their
philosophers, and especially in their two great national epics.
But they have neglected and despised the events of their outer
and social life, and allowed the memory of them to be to all
appearance hopelessly lost. Nothing seems less promising
than the attempt to separate historical fact from poetical fic-
tion, either according to Lassen's ingenious process of symbol-
ism and interpretation, or Wheeler's naively simple process of
selection and reduction. Notwithstanding the extraordinary
clearness and subtilty displayed by the Hindu intellect on
some subjects — e.g., grammar — it scarcely succeeded in distin-
^ guishing history from epic poetry. The oldest Hindu compo-
sitions which can by any possibility be classed as historical,
date only from the eleventh century of our era, and are of a
merely ^wasi-historical character. The best known of them
— the one translated by I. Chunder Dutt, under the title of
' Kings of Kashmfra ' — is more poetical and fabulous than his-
torical. Of greater historical value, perhaps, are some family
chronicles, and especially Bilhana's ' Vikra-mankadevacarita,'
belonging to the eleventh century, and recently discovered and
edited by Biihler. But the native historical literature of India
is sparse and poor in the extreme. It was impossible for a peo-
ple so ignorant of history to have any true philosophy of history.
/ Israel had a unique history which has been recorded in a
juniqiie manner. The historical books of the Old Testament,
and their constituent portions, vary in their characteristics and
qualities, but they form a whole, and as such they are incom-
parably superior to those of any other Asiatic people. Those
of them which relate to the primeval history of man and to the
origins of the Hebrew nation are now generally held by the
scholars, whose opinions are based entirely on critical and
evidential considerations, to have been elaborated into their
present shape after the prophets had taught, so that their
exhibition of the history is also an ideal construction of it, in
ORIENTAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 49
accordance with the principles which the prophets had promul-
gated, but which it was left to the priests and scribes to apply.
This view of their formation — of which Reuss and Kuenen,
Wellhausen and Stade, have been among the most promi-
nent advocates — does not deprive them of any of those rare
merits, either of contents or form, for which they justly claim
our admiration. The unity, consistency, naturalness, moral
elevation, and spiritual instructiveness of the presentation of
histoiy given in the ancient Hebrew literature, are facts which
cannot be denied, however they may have been attained. It
reflected with wonderful faithfulness and completeness the
theocratic life of Israel, of which it was an outcome. It was
pervaded by a profound sense of a supernatural presence, and
of an eternal law making for righteousness. All events were
exhibited in it from the religious point of view, God being
set forth as the supreme factor of history, His will as the
standard of historical judgment, and His kingdom as the goal
of historical development. Yet human nature is also skilfully
and truthfully delineated, in a style almost always simple and
natural, often vivid and strong, and at times pathetic and
sublime. Characters and situations the most varied are strik-
ingly described. Man appears nowhere more man than where
God is represented as miraculously at his side.
History has been denned as the biography of nations, but
the Jewish histories so delineate the various stages and for-/
tunes through which " the peculiar people " passed, from its\
origin onwards, that they read like the successive chapters of
an autobiography. The feeling of their own national signifi-
cance, which the Jews possessed in so singular a degree, and
which they so carefully cherished, was grounded in their view
of history, which had consequently the most vital interest for
them. Probably no people has ever been more thoroughly-
conscious of being rooted in, and of growing out of, a mar-
vellous past. And this historical self-consciousness was ac-
companied with a sense of relationship to other peoples such
as had not been previously displayed. The national exclu-
siveness of the Jews, as compared with European peoples,
either ancient or modern, is an undoubted fact ; but it should
not conceal this other fact, that it is among them that the
50 INTRODUCTION
conviction of the unity of the race, of the filiation of all the
peoples of the world, and of a common and hopeful final
destiny, are first found prevailing ; and that among them, on
the basis of these convictions, history first rises from being
particular to being universal. We have, it is true, the history
of the Jews, as of a nation under a special discipline and with
a special mission, minutely narrated, but it is exhibited as
only an offshoot of the history of humanity ; and if the Jews
thought the twig greater than the tree, or if Christian writers
have spoken as if they also thought so, the original historians
are not to blame.
History as it is in the Bible, however, is not mere history,
but much more than history. It exists not for its own sake,
but for the sake of something higher, of which it is repre-
sented as merely the medium and manifestation. It may thus
be said to be as history, a stage of transition from lower to
higher, which in no degree interrupts the progress or violates
the order of development in this kind of composition. It
contained what was far more precious than anything Greece
possessed ; and yet, looked at from another side, it fell short
of, and only led up to, history as we find it among the Greeks,
who in this, as in so many other provinces of intellectual ac-
tivity, asserted an unmistakable pre-eminence, an unparalleled
originality.
On the classic soil of ancient Hellas history first attained
the dignity of an independent art, first was cultivated for its
own sake. It is what the Lord said, and the Lord did, that the
Scripture history chiefly aims to exhibit, — it is His guidance
of a particular nation in an essentially special way that is its
subject, — whereas the historians of Greece set before them-
selves for end simply the satisfaction of man's curiosity as to
the actions of his fellow-men. " These are the researches of
Herodotus of Halicarnassus which he publishes, in order to
preserve from decay the remembrance of what men have done,
and to prevent the great and marvellous actions of the Greeks
and barbarians losing their due meed of glory, as well as to
state the causes of their hostility." " Thucydides of Athens
wrote the history of the war between the Athenians and
Peloponnesians while it was going on, having begun to write
HISTORY AMONG THE GREEKS 51
from its commencement in the belief that it would turn out
great, and worthier of being recorded than any which had
preceded it." The oriental world had no histories written
from these simple natural motives, which are, however, those
distinctively appropriate to the historical art. That art, there-
fore, as its own true self, as a free and separate form of litera-
ture, and not the mere appendage or offshoot of something
else, first grew out of the soil of Greek culture, and after a
period of barrenness and dryness, blossomed and ripened into
the immortal works of Herodotus and Thucydides. There it
attained a perfection of form which has perhaps never since
been surpassed. Herodotus, with all his credulity and want
of criticism, is, through the wonderful fulness and perennial
freshness of his information, through his transparent candour
and simplicity of spirit, his ease of narration, vividness of
portraiture, pathos and humour, the very type and model of
one great class of historians ; and Thucydides, by his accuracy
of investigation, intense realisation and austerely graphic rep-
resentation of events, and especially by his deep insight into
the working of political causes and social forces, is almost the
ideal and exemplar of another.
The remarkable many-sidedness which characterised the
Greek genius, and showed itself at the very origin of Greek
literature in Homer in a form which could not again be sur-
passed, revealed itself in the historical sphere also, worthily
repeating itself in Herodotus to gratify the curiosity of the
most inquisitive and philosophical of nations. He was without
any abstract notion of humanity, or any term to express it,
but nothing human was alien or uninteresting to him. He
gave due honour and justice to barbarians as well as Greeks,
and described with sympathetic zest and care all the aspects
and manifestations of human life, — the natural surroundings,
the cities, the monuments, the religions, the customs, the laws,
the revolutions of the governments and royal dynasties, the
wars, exploits, and fortunes of men of all varieties of race
and culture. With the genius of a great artist he grouped
round a central idea — the struggle between Asiatics and
Greeks — a vast mass of the most diverse materials, and com-
posed a grand and symmetrical whole. The historical picture
52 INTRODUCTION
we owe to him is large and attractive, crowded, yet not con-
fused, impressive as a whole, and lifelike and interesting in
every part. The comprehensiveness of research, the com-
bined ingenuity and naturalness of arrangement, the merits
and charm of style, and the general originality of conception
and execution, displayed by Herodotus, well entitled him to
be called "the father of history." His chief defects were that
he deemed a great deal to be true, for the truth of which he
had not sufficient evidence ; that his ability to explain events
was small in comparison with his power of describing them ;
and that he lacked insight into the working of general causes,
and especially of political forces. The most general point of
view from which he contemplated history was religious, not
political. His faith in a divine Providence had not been un-
dermined by speculative thought. It was essentially that of
i Pindar, iEschylus, and Sophocles. So he saw in history Deity
as the chief agent, and moral retribution as the chief law.
The god, according to Herodotus, assigns to all things their
order — to empires their duration, to crimes due punishment;
is inexorably severe towards impiety and perjury, and fails
not to disappoint rash haste or to prosper self-restraint; is
just, yea jealous, cutting down all towering things, and suf-
fering none but himself to be proud ; and intervenes even
supernaturally in human affairs through oracles, signs, and
prodigies. Such was, in substance, his historical creed.
-" Tfrucydides was a contemporary of Herodotus, and only a
few years younger. Yet his work when compared with that of
Herodotus seems as if it belonged to an altogether different
and much later age. This was doubtless chiefly due to the fact
that, while Herodotus was a Greek of Asia Minor, Thucydides
was an Athenian, when the growth of intellectual life in
Athens was amazingly rapid. A decade at Athens in the age
of Pericles was equivalent in the history of thought to a veiy
lengthened stretch of ordinary time anywhere else. Thucy-
dides had felt the full power of the critical and sceptical spirit
there and then prevalent. To represent -him as atheistical or
irreligious is unwarranted. But it is plain that he had re-
solved not to allow any religious faith he may have retained,
to colour his historical vision, or influence his historical judg-
HISTORY AMONG THE GREEKS 53
ments. He wished to write only authentic, strictly true his-
tory. Hence he chose a limited and well-defined field of study ,
which could be thoroughly explored, and where truth could ;
be attained with certainty. He took as his subject the Pelo-
ponnesian war, which began in 431 B.C., and he watched and
described it as it went on down to the battle of CynossSma in
411. He rigidly excluded from his narrative whatever did
not bear directly on its theme — the struggle between Athens
and her allies on the one side, and Sparta and her allies on
the other ; unlike Herodotus, who drew into his whatever he
thought would enhance its popular interest. As an impar-
tial, independent, critical investigator, he stands immeasurably
above all preceding historians, and probably beneath no suc-
ceeding one. But it was not merely as a narrator that he ex-
celled. He was equally remarkable for the clearness and depth
of his insight into the grounds of the events he described. He
did not reason about occurrences, but he so exhibited them
as convincingly to disclose their causation and development.
The only immediate agents, of course, to be seen in the Pelo-
ponnesian war, were the States engaged and the men who
composed them. Thucydides confined himself to showing why,
in the circumstances in which they were placed, these States
and men acted as they did. He could be sure of the opera-
tion of these causes — essential human motives and general
political interests ; and he carefully exhibited their operation.
At the same time he saw that they did not explain everything ;
that history was not wholly self -explaining, but that there was
in it more or less of contingency, fortune, fate — of what he
called Tv-ftr). Beyond this he did not think he was entitled as
an historian to go. And so he had nothing to say of the gods,
or of their intervention. Too much may easily be expected
from Thucydides. He sought only to write political history,
and therefore we have no right to look for religious reflections
from him, or even for information as to how the intellectual,
social, and spiritual life of Greece was affected by the Pelo-
ponnesian war. Nor did he undertake to write a history of
the general politics of the period, but only of its external poli-
tics as involved in the war ; and therefore, instead of attempt
ing to give as much information as he could regarding the
54 INTRODUCTION
internal politics of the belligerent States, he gave only as
much as was necessary to explain their conduct in relation to
one another. So of the chief individual actors in the war, he
deemed it no part of his task to characterise them in their pri-
vate capacities, and hence his delineations of them are apt to
seem shadowy and defective, although they are substantial as
far as they go and sufficient for their purpose. He would never
have been the almost perfect historian he was if he had not
shunned as he did the too much alike in matter and style. It
must be allowed that he fell into error, and set a bad example,
when he attributed to persons speeches which were wholly or
largely composed by himself. Yet these speeches are not only
admirable as speeches, but also as means of conveying ideas of
the utmost importance for the understanding of the history.
They hold a place in the work of Thucydides not unlike that
of the songs of the chorus in a tragedy of iEschylus or Soph-
ocles. They gradually disclose the latent significance of the
history, and the views and motives of the various parties en-
gaged in it. They save the author from the necessity and risks
of theorising in his own name on the course of events, while
yet most effectively and artistically setting forth the conclu-
sions at which he had arrived. At the same time they are not
unjust to those to whom they are assigned, but such as might
most appropriately have been spoken by them. Thucydides
was the first scientific historian. But he was also a great his-
torical artist. His judicial impartiality and calm passionless
objectivity of judgment sprang not from insensibility but from
conscientiousness and self-restraint. In reading his pages we
perceive that he felt as strongly as he conceived clearly. The
tone of austere melancholy which pervades his work corre-
sponds perfectly to the tragic nature of the story which is its
subject ; and we are made to realise all the misery and pathos
of that story. His style has nothing of the ease, flow, and
sweetness of that of Herodotus ; but it is of rare strength and
conciseness, moves on rapidly and directly without a useless
word or phrase, varies as the occasion requires, and rises at
times to the loftiest heights. " It has," to use the words of
Professor Jebb, " many faults. It is often involved, abrupt,
obscure. But no writer has grander bursts of rugged elo-
HISTORY AMONG THE GREEKS bit
quence, or more of that greatness which is given by sustained
intensity of noble thought and feeling."
Thucydides left his history unfinished, and Xenophon
attempted to complete it. But his continuation, the ' Hellenica,'
is altogether deficient in the great qualities which character-
ise the work of Thucydides. It is dry, ill arranged, super-
ficial, prejudiced, and even feeble and unattractive in style.
The fame of Xenophon as an historian must rest on his
' Anabasis,' and there it may rest securely. No military inci-
dent has ever been told with more exquisite simplicity and
fascinating art than the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.
It was natural that it should be a Greek who first tried to
realise the idea of a universal history. Nevertheless, it could
not be even the most comprehensive-minded Greek of the age
of Herodotus or Thucydides when there was no visible unity
of any kind in the world, but one who had the spectacle of Rome
before his eyes, and who had studied her steady march towards
universal empire, as far at least as the period when " the affairs
of Italy and Africa conjoined with those of Asia and Greece,
and all moved together towards one fixed and single point,"
Polybius, who spent a portion of his life at Rome, who studied
her history closely, and saw clearly that her success was no-
accident, but the natural results of general causes — her unity,
institutions, and character — who beheld her triumph over
Carthage and Macedonia, and was fully conscious that his own
divided and demoralised land could offer her no resistance —
was a Greek so placed, and he was the first to attempt a
universal history. He did so with the distinctest perception
of its advantages over particular histories, which he tells us
" can no more convey a perfect view and knowledge of the
whole than a survey of the divided members of a body once
endued with life and beauty can yield a just conception of all
the comeliness and vigour which it has received from nature."
A chief object with him, therefore, was to show by what stages
and in what ways each nation had reached its last estate. He
assumed that the real had been the rational, and that Rome
had become the mistress of the world for the world's good.
Being the power best fitted to rule over the nations, Rome had
obtained that rule. She was " the noblest and most beneficent
56 INTRODUCTION
work of Fortune," but of a Fortune neither blind nor unjust.
Polybius was not a servile flatterer of Rome, but his whole
view of history necessarily rendered him an apologist of accom-
plished facts, and of Roman success. He was like Thucydides
in that he endeavoured to exhibit the causes of events ; but
unlike him in that he was not content to do this in a purely
historical manner, but reasoned on them in his own name, and
introduced into the history his personal impressions and reflec-
tions. For Polybius, as for Thucydides, the motive forces of
human nature were the great factors of history. He disbe-
lieved divine interventions in history, and regarded the pop-
ular religion as only a superstition useful to awe and frighten
the multitude. Thucydides wrote in order that by giving an
accurate knowledge of the past he might supply his readers
with a clue to that future which, in all human probability,
will repeat or resemble the past. Polybius himself drew from
the facts he narrated such lessons as he deemed would be of
service to politicians. As his work thus combined practical
political teaching with an exhibition of events as causes and
effects, and so was a course of political instruction conveyed
and exemplified through a record of actions, he called it a
■n-payfiarela ; and he is often described as the originator of
pragmatic historiography. By his reflections on the causes of
the growth of the power of Rome, he opened up a path after-
wards followed by Macchiavelli, Bossuet, and Montesquieu.
He was perfectly aware of the necessity of attending especially
to general causes, and was probably the first to make a serious
study of the spirit and history of the Roman constitution.
That he fell into errors on the subject was inevitable. It may,
however, be doubted if any later writer of the ancient world
treated it with deeper insight, or with more accurate knowl-
edge.
The idea of a universal history was, as we have seen, the
reflection and result of the universal empire of Rome, which
made the known world externally one, a single great political
whole. Rome made the world Roman and became herself
cosmopolitan. The indebtedness of history to Rome as exem-
plifying that unity of a universal government, without which
there could never have arisen any notion of a universal his-
THE ROMAN HISTORIANS 57
tory, is Incalculable. The world came to know external unity
only in and through Rome. The universal empire of pagan
Rome was the condition and foundation of the universal em-
pire of Catholic Rome, and of such unity as Christendom has
retained since the unity of Catholicism was broken. After
the Macedonian wars no extraordinary genius was required to
discern in the history of the world a unity centring in Rome.
How Polybius saw and was impressed by it has already been
indicated. Among Latin writers Cornelius Nepos was the
first to oompose a universal history — omne cevum explicare.
His work is lost, like several later works of the same kind.
None of the general histories written during the empire were
productions of much merit. No Latin author showed himself
able even intelligently to continue what Polybius had begun.
The Roman will made history universal, but the Roman intel-
lect was deficient in the qualities requisite for treating suc-
cessfully of universal history. It was not in this department
that Roman writers acquired fame as historians.
The pride of the early Romans led them both to falsify their
own history and to take some measures to preserve the memory
of it. Their registers, their fasti and annals, were only meagre
and unsatisfactory materials for history. As an art history
was late in appearing at Rome. The rude Roman speech was
fashioned with difficulty into a literary instrument. A Roman
literature was only developed under Greek influences. The
conquest of Greece by the arms of Rome was followed by the
conquest of Rome by the mind of Greece ; and in Roman lit-
erature Grecian and Latin qualities were inseparably blended.
The first Latin work entitled to be called a history would seem
to have been the ' Origines ' of Cato. For a considerable time
Roman historiography was uncritical and inartistic ; and it was
from the first affected by a vice which inhered in it to the end
— namely, a tendency to subordinate truth to what was sup-
posed to be for the interest of the State, or for the edification
of the individual.
Caesar and Sallust were the first Roman writers who pro-
duced works displaying historical genius. The Commentaries
of Csesar on the Gallic and Civil Wars are not only invaluable
for the information which they contain, but are composed in
58 INTRODUCTION
a style perfect in its kind and in its relation to the subject.
They are an admirable reflection of their author's mind, — one
absolutely clear in conception and observation, completely
master of itself and of whatever it undertook to deal with, and
which moved towards the end it aimed at in the most direct,
rapid, and decisive manner. But they are simply military
narratives, and cannot entitle Caesar to a place in the highest
rank of historians. Of historical philosophy of any kind, or
general historical ideas, they show no trace. Caesar was far
too clear-sighted to state what was false, but no one probably
knew better how to make silence serve his purpose, or so to
present his facts as to make them suggest what it would
hardly have become him to have said. Handling speech with
the most masterly ease and naturalness as a practically use-
ful instrument, he wisely dispensed with literary adornment
and elaboration.
Hence Sallust may justly be described as the first artistic
historian or historical artist of Rome. His Catilinarian Con-
spiracy and Jugurthine War are small but choice and care-
fully finished pieces, in which their author's talents alike as
historian and litterateur are seen to full advantage. In the
selection, disposition, and general treatment of his subjects, as
also in his style, he took the work of Thucydides for his model.
As regards the highest historical qualities, he must be admitted
to have fallen much beneath his great exemplar. Yet few who
have imitated Thucydides have so nearly equalled him in so
many respects, while surpassing him in some. He had neither
the originality nor the greatness of Thucydides, neither his con-
scientiousness and thoroughness as an historical investigator,
nor his grasp and penetration as an historical thinker. But he
had remarkable skill in combining and disposing facts into
pictures, in drawing characters by a few striking traits, and in
juxtaposing and contrasting his personages. His moral reflec-
tions may be irrelevant, but his talent for moral portraiture
was indubitable. , He had a power of psychological, and con-
sequently of moral, analysis, almost equal to that of Tacitus,
although exercised on a much smaller scale. His works are
from their own merits worthy of their reputation ; and their
relation to those of Thucydides on the one side, and to those
THE KOMAN HISTORIANS 59
of Tacitus on the other, give them a special interest for a
student of the development of historiography.
But it was neither in the sphere of universal nor of episo-
dical history that the Latin historians performed their most
distinctive work. It was in that of national history. The men
who founded Rome's greatness, who won for her by endurance
and daring the empire of the world, were not men of broad
but of narrow ideas, not of liberal but of exclusive feelings,
men animated by a proud, absorbing, ruthless patriotism. It
was through the strength of their national feeling that the
Romans gained the universal empire in which they lost it ;
and, as a general rule, when the classical scholar thinks of
Roman history it is not as leading to even an imperfect recog-
nition of human brotherhood — to a sense of something ge-
neric in man, of a common nature in virtue of which all men
are entitled to certain legal and moral rights — but as display-
ing the features of a national character of singular strength
and interest. And certainly in that respect the Roman histo-
rians have a very special claim to our attention. The Greeks
were not patriotic in the same sense and degree as the Romans.
And Herodotus and Thucydides are not national historians
in the same sense and degree as Livy and Tacitus. Indeed,
Livy and Tacitus might, with little exaggeration, be described
as the two first national historians on a large and prominent
scale, and who, it may be added, had as such no worthy
successors for sixteen hundred years.
Livy narrated the events of Rome's career of heroic struggle
and achievement with the colouring and in the tone most
adapted to inspire the youth of his own generation with rever-
ence and emulation of their ancestors. He was the greatest
prose writer of his age. He narrated with unfailing vividness,
sensibility, and charm, and could picture or portray with
masterly vigour and skill. His ethical feeling was keen and
pure. Patriotism was his strongest passion. And if the chief
end of history be, as he obviously supposed, to supply examples
and stimuli to virtue and patriotism, he certainly cannot be
accused of having neglected the historian's main function.
His whole work, as has been said, was " a triumphal celebra-
tion of the heroic spirit and military glory of Rome." It was
60 INTRODUCTION
natural that he should have been the most popular of the
Roman historians. But unfortunately his great qualities
were combined with great defects. He was superficial in
research ; easily satisfied in regard to evidence ; prone to take
the version of a story which told best ; uncritical in the choice
and use of authorities. Dazzled by the splendour of the mili-
tary history of Rome, he neglected the study of its constitu-
tional history. He lacked political insight. He lacked still
more philosophical comprehension. Of the general conditions
and causes which determined the course of Roman history,
and of any law or plan in it, he had no glimpse. He was
merely an annalist, although the most attractive and brilliant
of annalists. Seneca (Ep. 100) tells us that Livy wrote " dia-
logos, quos non magis philosophise adnumerare possis quam
historiae, et ex professo philosophiam continentes libros."
Whatever the character of the former may have been, we
may be certain that the subject of them was not, as Rouge-
mont has supposed, the philosophy of history. If he had had
any conception of a philosophy of history he could not have
written a history so devoid of philosophy.
Tacitus was very unlike Livy in almost all respects, but as
an historian he was like him in so far that his aim too was
essentially moral and patriotic. The darkness without was
deeper, however, and the hope within less. With the tragic
pathos of a despairing patriot and the righteous indignation of
an honest man, he delineated the growth of social corruption
from the time of Tiberius onwards, in order to deter those in
whom any sense of moral obligation was left from what had in-
volved a people so strong and virtuous, so glorious and free as
the Roman, in such misery and disgrace, such revolting vice
and abject slavery. No historian has given so large a place to
the moral element in history, yet without ever becoming a mere
moralist or ceasing to be an historian. No one has shown with
the same power and vividness what moral law and retribution,
virtue and vice and their concomitants and consequences, are
in actual historical manifestation and evolution, or traced with
so masterly a hand the connections between individual char-
acter and the character of public rule. His strong moral feel-
ings may have given rise in certain cases to harsh judgments ;
THE ROMAN HISTORIANS 61
but obviously they were, in general, under such firm control,
that this must be deemed only a possibility, and in no par-
ticular instance assumed as a fact, or even as a probability.
From what he knew of the corruption of the governing classes
of Rome he may have drawn inferences as to the corruption of
the whole social body which are not to be accepted without
corroborative evidence, or which can be even proved exagger-
ated ; but it is easy to attribute to Tacitus errors of this kind,
which are really only mistakes of the reader's own, consequent
on his not keeping in view the precise limits and scope of the
two chief works of Tacitus. Notwithstanding his extraordi-
nary intellectual power, Tacitus attained no settled convic-
tions on which any general philosophy of history, or even any
general conceptions of history, could be rested. He had obvi-
ously no confidence either in any metaphysical or religious
theory of things. His moral sense often breaks down his
doubts, and impels him to affirm divine intervention, but his
reason was not of the kind which carries the mind above what
is visible and concrete or positive. He confessed himself un-
decided as to whether human affairs are governed by Provi-
dence, or fate and inevitable necessity, or the wild rotation of
chance. He made no attempt to forecast the future either of
humanity or of the empire. Yet he is justly entitled to be
regarded as a scientific or philosophical historian, inasmuch
as he traced actions back to their motives, events to then-
causes, and penetrated to the secret springs of social change.
In the analysis of character he surpassed all the historians of
antiquity. Full of matter as his narrative is, it never con-
tains anything trivial or superfluous. His style fitly exhibits
the force, originality, and dignity of his mind. His words
are singularly pregnant with meaning, and few of them could
either be omitted or replaced by another without loss. He was
unquestionably far the most eminent of the Roman historians.
The growth of Roman historiography had been slow; its
decay was rapid. After the greatest of Roman historians
there appeared not a single great one. Even writers like
Suetonius and Florus have no claim to a place in this sketch.
We- must pass onwards, therefore, into the Christian world.
The political unity of the Roman empire contributed both
62 INTRODUCTION
by its advantages and defects to prepare the mind for belief
in the spiritual unity of humanity proclaimed by Christianity.
The Gospel of Christ, with its new views of God and of man
and of their relationship to each .other, proved to be the germ
of a new world, vaster and more wonderful than that ruled
by the Cajsars. It did not preserve the Roman empire from
dissolution, or arrest the decay of Roman literature ; it failed
to inspire a strong patriotism or to produce a high civic
virtue ; it added not a single author worthy of mention to the
number of Roman historians. But it leavened society, created
the Church, and caused religion to be felt as one of the most
powerful factors of history. It made men conscious, as they
had never been before, that they were spiritual as well as
political beings, and even more spiritual than political beings ;
that spiritual life was the most important form of life. Sus-
tained by this consciousness the Church grew stronger as the
empire grew weaker, and remained, when the political unity
of Rome was shattered, to represent and uphold religious
unity, — • to remind separate and hostile nations that they
were members of a common humanity and subject to the
laws of a divine kingdom, — and, it must be added, strenu-
ously to endeavour to make the kingdoms of the earth sub-
missive to its own will and subservient to its own interests.
Christianity by creating the Church enormously enlarged
and enriched history. It thereby opened up a central and
exhaustless vein in the mine of human nature, — set in move-
ment a main stream in the flow of human affairs. The rise
of ecclesiastical history was more to historiography than was
the discovery of America to geography. It added immensely
to the contents of history, and radically changed men's con-
ceptions of its' nature. It at once caused political history to
be seen to be only a part of history, and carried even into the
popular mind the conviction — of which hardly a trace is to
be found in the classic historians — that all history must move
towards some general human end, some divine goal.
Ecclesiastical historiography was first cultivated in the
Greek Church. The author of the Acts of the Apostles and
Hegesippus led the way. Eusebius (264-340) gained the title
of Father of Church History. His ' Ecclesiastical History ' be-
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORIANS 63
gan with the incarnation of Christ, and ended with the triumph
of the Church by the help and favour of Constantine. It re-
counted the successions of the apostles, the calamities of the
Jews, the persecutions and martyrdoms of Christians, the ser-
vices of eminent ecclesiastics, the heresies and controversies,
and, in a word, the chief transactions and varying conditions
of the Church during the first 324 years of its existence. The
work was well conceived, judiciously planned, and laboriously
executed. Although largely annalistic and often loosely con-
structed, it forms on the whole a unity. Its materials are of
themselves sufficient to give it a priceless value. They are
drawn almost entirely from Greek sources, and so the work
conveys little information as to the Latin Churches. Euse-
bius was not a great writer, and to call him, as has often been
done, " the Christian Herodotus," is more apt to suggest his
inferiority than likeness to the heathen one. He was as
devoid of the incomparable art of the son of Lgrxes, as of his
simplicity and richness of nature. He lived in a time when
life was artificial and diseased, and although he had many
good qualities, intellectual and moral, he belonged too truly
to his time. He was a courtier bishop, wanting in strength
and reality of character, in singleness of heart, vision, and
speech. He was honest, but not impartial. He loved religion
better than truth, and conceived of religion in a worldly way.
It is easy to explain and even to excuse his faults ; it is a
duty gratefully to acknowledge his services to the cause of
Christian learning ; but it is difficult to respect and impossi-
ble to admire him. The defects of his character have left
deep traces in his historical works. It is unnecessary here to
notice his ' Life of Constantine.' But his ' Chronicle,' based
on a chronological labour of Julius AfricanusV undoubtedly
deserves mention. It consists of an epitome of universal his-
tory, followed by chronological tables which exhibit in parallel
columns the successions of the rulers of different nations,
accompanied with indications of the years of the more remark-
able events. It was thus the expression of the conception of
history implied in the claim of Christianity to be the end of
all past ages of divine revelation, and of human search and
desire. The position accorded by the Christian Church to the
64 INTRODUCTION
historical books of the Old Testament of necessity profoundly
affected the mode of viewing history. It caused what had
been deemed general history by the classical historians to be
considered only a kind of partial or particularist history, and
the history of the human race as a whole to be the only truly
general history. The Christian historian or annalist felt bound
to look back to the creation, to trace the special histories of
the different nations as divisions of one comprehensive history,
and, by the help of a chronology, derived chiefly from Biblical
data, to determine how the special histories synchronised. In
this there was manifest gain to historiography. The underly-
ing thought was the great one that the history of man was a,
divinely ordered system, beginning with Adam, centring in
Christ, and closing in a day of judgment. The result was an
immediate and decisive transcendence of the particularism in
the treatment of history characteristic of the classical authors.
But there was loss as well as gain. The Hebrew historians
were regarded as above criticism. A chronology deduced
from texts deemed inspired and infallible was arbitrarily im-
posed on the histories of the heathen nations. A false per-
suasion of knowledge as to primeval times was engendered. A
view of universal history was formed, specious enough to gain
unquestioning acceptance until a recent period, but unable to
satisfy the demands of strict criticism and inconsistent with the
results which research has at length attained. The Chronol-
ogy of Eusebius was soon translated into Latin and Armenian,
and often both abridged and continued. It was the basis of all
the chronological work undertaken in medieval Christendom.
Eusebius had several " continuators " in the Eastern Church
— e.g., Theodoret, Socrates, and Sozomen in the fifth century,
and Theodorus and Evagrius in the sixth. Those named all
showed care and diligence in the collection of information
and considerable general sobriety and vigour of intellect, but
also a credulous faith in divine interpositions. After the
sixth century the Greek Church ceased to be productive in
historiography, or in any other department of knowledge.
# Rufinus and Jerome made the historical works of Eusebius
known to the Latin Church. Augustine, in his ' De Civitate
Dei,' attempted, with all the energy and resources of his mag-
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORIANS 65
nificent genius, to explain the facts and secrets of history by
the principles of Christian theology, and expounded a theory
of the destinies of the human race which served many gen-
erations as their only philosophy of history. What may be
called in a lax and general way the Augustinian philosophy
of history was substantially the only one known in medieval
Europe ; and it has reappeared in modern times with more
or less important modifications under the hands of Bossuet,
Schlegel, and many others. As it will be specially treated
of in the last section of our Introduction, this mere reference
to it must here suffice.
The Spanish presbyter, Paulus Orosius, wrote his ' Histori-
arum libri vii. adversus paganos,' at the suggestion of Augus-
tine, and in reply to the same charges against Christianity
and Christians which are combated in the ' De Civitate Dei.'
The chief merit of the work is its endeavour after comprehen-
siveness. It gives a history of the world from the creation
to the year a.d. 410. Its central thought is that God has
raised up and cast down kingdoms, distributed happiness and
misery, and disposed all human affairs, with a view to the
spread and triumph of Christianity. This gives it what-
ever elevation of tone and unity of plan it possesses. The
polemical and practical purpose to which it owed its origin
is never lost sight of, and so it abounds in denunciations of
ambition, conquest, and idolatry, and in moral advice and
spiritual consolation. It adds nothing to the historical theory
of Augustine. Ozanam finds in it " un veritable talent, quel-
quefois ce souffle inspire' du g£nie Espagnol," which I am
unable to discover. Doergens (' Aristoteles,' p. 12) desig-
nates its author — "der erste Philosoph der Geschichte."
This is altogether unwarranted. No one has a right to distrib-
ute blue ribbons in such a way. Great titles ought to be con-
ferred only on great men and for great services. Orosius was
no historical philosopher at all, — no philosopher of any kind.
Amidst the confusion and destruction caused by the barba-
rian invasions and the downfall of the Western empire, histo-
riography like all other literature, nearly disappeared. Men
had not the heart to describe events which filled them with
despair. All culture decayed until only the bare rudiments
66 INTRODUCTION
of knowledge remained. The historical art of medieval Eu-
rope began, as that of Greece and Rome had begun, with the
rude and simple chronicle. Yet there was a most important
difference between the cases. When history began to be
recorded in Greece and Rome, the Greeks and Romans had
become unconscious of their connection with the past of the
human race, — with a history preceding and underlying their
own. It was not so with medieval Europe. Its continuity
with the past, and the sense thereof, were unsundered ; both
the classical and the Christian traditions were retained in its
memory. The new cycle was thus, even at the commence-
ment, unlike as well as like the old one ; and hence, however
analogous to it it might prove to be, it could never possibly
be a repetition of it. Besides, the materials of history were
in the medieval period immensely increased by\the new
peoples destined to become new nations, and by the new
institutions and forms of life destined, after absorption or
commingling with the old, to be evolved into a political and
social system profoundly different from the Roman, inasmuch
as it was far more extensive and complex, far more spiritually
rich, highly developed, and manifoldly productive.
The fierce minds of the barbarians were softened and sub-
dued by the persuasions and terrors of the Church. The
Christian clergy became the teachers and rulers of the nations
which arose on the ruins of the fallen empire. Art or culture
had been the dominant fact in Greek life, and positive law or
policy in Roman life ; religion or piety as understood by the
Church was made the dominant fact in medieval life. Lit-
erature in all its branches became predominantly religious,
and religious in its specially medieval, that is, ecclesiastical
form. Ecclesiastical histories outnumbered all other his-
tories. Biographies of saints, bishops, and popes, histories
of single convents and monastic orders, &c, abounded; and
even general or political histories were, with few exceptions,
written by ecclesiastics and on ecclesiastical principles. In-
deed, no sharp or marked distinction was drawn between
ecclesiastical and general or political history, for the Church
in these times intervened directly and powerfully in all
affairs. The distinction deemed fundamental in the medieval
MEDIEVAL HISTORIANS 67
period was not that between Church and State, but that be-
tween the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world —
the civitas Dei and civitas diaboli of Augustine ; and as men
obeyed or disobeyed the Church, as affairs were favourable or
adverse to the Church, they were regarded, at least by almost
all Churchmen, as belonging to the one kingdom or the other.
The mass of historical writing in Latin left by the ecclesi-
astics of the middle age is enormous. The best portion of it
is contained in the vast collections of Greevius, Muratori,
Bouquet, Migne, Guizot, Pertz, and the Master of the Rolls.
Much more of it has seen the light in the publications of
local learned societies. Much of it is still unpublished. To
those who would make a special study of it, Potthast1 and
Chevallier 2 may serve as general guides. Surveys have been
made of special sections of it, as by Wattenbach 3 and Lorenz.4
There is still wanting, however, a comprehensive account of
medieval historiography. My purpose requires me only to
refer to a very few of the most representative writers and
productions.
Gregory of Tours, who died in 594, may fitly come first. As
his ' Historia Francorum ' is the chief original source of infor-
mation for the Merovingian period, he is often called the father
of French history ; but, of course, the title is ambiguous, and by
the unlearned apt to be misunderstood. In a small and feeble
body he bore a large and strong soul, and played his part
bravely and skilfully in fearful and difficult times. His 'His-
toria Francorum' is in ten books. The first, beginning with
the creation of Adam and Eve, and ending with the death of
St. Martin of Tours, is of no special worth. The second treats
of the Frankish conquest, and is drawn to a considerable extent
from works now lost. The third and fourth deal with events
down to 574, two years after Gregory had become bishop, and are
also comparatively meagre. The later books are much fuller;
indeed, the last four are occupied with a period of only seven
1 Potthast (A) — Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi. Berlin, 1862.
2 Chevallier (U) — Repertoire des sources historiques du moyen age. Paris,
1877-84.
8 Wattenbach (W) — Deutschland's Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur
Mitte des xiii. Jahrhunderts. 4° Aufl. Berlin, 1877-78.
4 Lorenz (O) — Deutschland's Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter seit der Mitte
des xiii. Jahrhunderts. 3° Aufl. Berlin, 1886.
68 INTRODUCTION
years. Gregory was not in the least a literary artist. He was
quite conscious of a defective acquaintance with grammar.
" Veniam precor," he says, " si aut in litteris, aut in syllabis
grammaticam artem excessero, de qua adplene non sum ini-
butus " (' Hist. Fr.' iv. 1). His style was rude, unformed, dis-
jointed, without force, precision, or elegance, but at times not
devoid of a certain realistic vividness. Of aptness in arrange-
ment, skill in proportioning parts to one another and the whole,
or judicious subordination of local to general, and insignificant
to important details, his work shows no traces. He was far
from unprejudiced in judgment, or critical in his appreciation
of evidence. He was a credulous believer in miracles, and
thought very leniently of monstrous crimes if committed by
orthodox princes, very severely of heresy or hostility to the
Church ; but he was honest and earnest according to his light,
and showed himself so by the ingenuousness, candour,- and ful-
ness of his statements of fact. He made no attempt to analyse
characters and actions, to trace the causes of events, to explain
the course, tendencies, and issues of human affairs. His hori-
zon was very limited, and all within it was drifting and con-
fused, seething and storm-tossed. The historical world around
him was not one in which he could truly see order, and there-
fore, the best thing he could do, probably, was to describe it in
all the disorder in which he saw it, instead of vainly trying to
find order in, or force order upon, it. He was devoid both of
historical philosophy and of historical art, but he has preserved
a rich store of materials for the historical philosophy and art
of later times.
Bede (Baeda) was born about one hundred and thirty years
after Gregory of Tours. Both his character and surroundings
were very different from those of the first historian of the
Franks. He spent a studious, pious, peaceful life in the monas-
teries of Wearmouth and Jarrow. It closed with a beautiful
death in 735. He acquired mastery over all the scholarship
and science of his age, and composed treatises and tracts on a
wonderful variety of subjects. Burke has aptly called him " the
father of English learning." Much the most important of his
works is the one which here concerns us, the ' Historia Ecclesi-
astica Gentis Anglorum.' Its five books embrace the period
MEDIEVAL HISTORIANS 69
from Csesar's invasion to 731. It begins to be of value with
the arrival of Augustine in 597, and still more with that of
Paulinus in 630. It gives a deeply interesting and most trust-
worthy account of the way in which the Saxons in England were
Christianised, and also a large amount of precious information
as to events which would now be called secular. For a con-
siderable portion of the time to which it relates, it is contempo-
rary history. It shows a diligence in the collection of materials,
and a conscientiousness in the use of them, worthy of all praise.
Bede was so judicious in the selection of his informants that
much of what he tells us on the authority of others is not less
to be credited than what he tells us on his own. His careful-
ness to let his readers -know who the authorities for his state-
ments are, makes his honesty obvious even when he is most
manifestly in error. Thus, although he never seems to have
thought of doubting the occurrence of a miracle vouched for by
a man whose character he esteemed, as he seldom or never fails
to mention on whose testimony he relies, no ground is left for
suspicion in regard to his own veracity even when under the
influence of superstition. Most of what is known of the cen-
tury and a half of English history after the arrival of Augustine
is wholly derived from Bede. Later annalists and historians
treating of the same period have only repeated or amplified and
altered his statements. The superiority of his work to that of
Gregory of Tours as regards literary qualities is very marked.
It is a true whole, although occasionally the connection of its
parts is loose and the arrangement is determined by external
suggestions. Its style is clear, flowing, attractive, suitable to
the subject, and a natural reflection of the writer's mind. Par-
ticular incidents are often admirably presented. Bede was cer-
tainly not an historical philosopher, but he was as certainly an
historical artist of very considerable merit. It may be added,
that in his ' De ratione temporum ' he at least set a good exam-
ple, in occupying himself with chronology; and that, although
no originality can be ascribed to his ' De sex setatibus seculi,'
it greatly helped to transmit and spread that general view of
the development and stages of the history of the world which
Augustine, Isidore of Seville, and others, had propounded.
We require to pass into another land and onwards into the
70 INTRODUCTION
eleventh century before we come to a writer who added to his-
torical knowledge in anything like the same measure as Bede.
Accordingly, I mention next the author of the ' Gesta Hamena-
burgensis ecclesise pontificum,' generally known as Adam of
Bremen. His work was written between 1072 and 1076. The
archbishopric of Lund was not then founded, and all the Bal-
tic regions — German, Scandinavian, and Russian — lay within
the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. Adam's history of
this ecclesiastical province is the chief source of knowledge
of the oldest history, both religious and secular, of the north
of Europe. The information in it was drawn from books and
documents now lost, as well as from personal research dur-
ing its author's journeys for missionary purposes. It bears
all the general marks of trustworthiness and truthfulness,
although in parts much fable is mixed up with^fact. Its
style is natural and vigorous. Lappenberg says that if the
author had only written in his own tongue he would have been
" the Herodotus of the North."
In South Germany there lived a contemporary of the Canon
of Bremen who was still more eminent as a writer, — Lambert
of Hersfeld. Mr. Freeman speaks of him thus : " He begins
with annals ; he gradually enlarges and warms, till his tale
grows into that precious and admirable narrative of the great
struggle between Pope and Caesar, that narrative so clear, so
full, so wisely treading the narrow path between partisan
writers on either side, that it has won for a monk of the eleventh
century his full right to a place alongside the foremost of the
so-called ancients." 1 Perhaps these words convey too high an
estimate of Lambert's impartiality. He was, indeed, impartial
as compared with most of his contemporaries, but that his im-
partiality was more than thus relative, may fairly be doubted,
and has been denied after special examination by critical
historians like Ranke, Flotto, Geisebrecht, and Wattenbach.
Probably the Pope received considerably more, and Csesar
considerably less, than justice from him, notwithstanding the
natural independence, moderation, and liberality of judgment
which cause him to contrast so favourably with the partisan
writers of his day. No one will deny to him rare literary
1 Methods of Historical Study, pp. 164, 165.
MEDIEVAL HISTORIANS 71
talent. His general style is a fine combination of native force
and cultured elegance. He portrays character and pictures
incident with a masterly hand. Many of his pages once read
can never be forgotten.
The most philosophical of the medieval chroniclers was Otto
of E'reisingen, — the grandson of the Emperor Henry IV., half-
brother of Conrad III., and uncle, confidant, and chosen biog-
rapher of Frederick I., the famous Barbarossa. He was an
earnestly pious man, a theologian, a monk, an ecclesiastical
dignitary, but also a man of clear and sound judgment, con-
versant with political affairs, and deeply interested in the for-
tunes of the empire. He died in 1158. His ' Chronicon ' was
written between 1143 and 1146. It consists of eight books,
the first six of which were largely a reproduction of the
Universal Chronicle of Ekkehard of Auraeh. The seventh
book is original work of great merit and value. The two
books 'De gestis Frederici I.,' which may be viewed as con-
tinuing it, are of equal quality, and of even higher interest.
It is from these books that the author's rank among historians
must chiefly be determined. They entitle him to a high posi-
tion. They are characterised by comprehensiveness of treat-
ment, accuracy of statement, clearness of insight. They
display a greater impartiality than the 'Annales ' of Lambert.
They are excellent in style and arrangement. They are lack-
ing in no essential historical quality. The eighth book of the
' Chronicle ' treats of the coming and dominion of Antichrist,
of the end of the world, of the resurrection of the just and
unjust, of the twofold judgment, of the condition of the lost,
and of the life of the blessed in heaven. In the plan of Otto,
it was a most essential portion of the work. To that work he
himself gave a title which at once expressed its leading thought
and indicated whence the thought was drawn, — " De rerum
mundanarum mutatione, sive de duabus civitatibus." All
in it turns on the Augustinian dualism of the earthly and
heavenly cities, the antagonism of the kingdoms of man to the
kingdom of Christ. From beginning to end its aim is to make
apparent the mutability, the vanity, and miseries of mundane
life, and that heaven is* the only true refuge and home of
humanity. The contentions of the time, and especially the
72 INTRODUCTION
conflict between pope and emperor, while perplexing his mind
and grieving his heart, served to confirm him in a belief which
he shared with many of his contemporaries, that the consum-
mation of things was at hand; that soon Antichrist would
appear, and that then Christ would come to judgment and
take to Himself all power and dominion. He wrote, accord-
ingly, " ex amaritudine animse," and " non curiositatis causa
sed ad ostendendas caducarum rerum calamitates." His
steady contemplation of the course of history from a religious
point of view has caused his work to be described as " the first
and only attempt at a philosophy of history made in the middle
age." But it was rather an attempt to establish by history a
thesis in theology. Certainly if a philosophy of history at
all it was a poor one. Instead of seeking to exhibit the in-
trinsic significance of history, it sought to show that history
had no intrinsic significance. A pessimistic view of life in
time is not made satisfactory by being conjoined with an
optimistic conception of life in eternity.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there flourished in
England a school of writers who, if less than historians proper,
were more than annalists or chroniclers. They took the classi-
cal historians as their models ; sought to trace the relations
of cause and effect, instead of servilely following the mere
sequences of time ; treated the course of events in England
as not unconnected with the movement of affairs abroad ; and,
in a word, attempted to interpret as well as narrate, while also
aiming at artistic excellence. This school was inaugurated
by William of Malmesbury, and found its greatest represents
tive in Matthew Paris. " In Matthew the breadth and pre-
cision of the narrative, the copiousness of his information on
topics whether national or European, the general fairness and
justice of his comments, are only surpassed by the patriotic
fire and enthusiasm of the whole. . . . With all the fulness
of the school of court historians, such as Benedict or Hoveden,
he combines an independence and patriotism which is strange
to their pages. He denounces with the same unsparing energy
the oppression of the Papacy and the king. His point of view
is neither that of a courtier nor of * Churchman, but of an
Englishman, and the new national tone of his chronicle is but
VERNACULAR CHRONICLES 73
an echo of the national sentiment which at last bound nobles
and yeomen and Churchmen together into an English people." 1
It is unnecessary to trace further the course of Latin histo-
riography. There is little to tempt us to linger on the Latin
chronicles or histories composed in the later centuries of the
middle age. I know of none of them not inferior to some of
those which have been already noticed: The bonds of medi-
eval Christendom had to be broken before there could be any
marked advance. The next revival of Latin historical liter-
ature came only when it was on the eve of being generally
abandoned. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Poly-
dore Vergil, Sleidan, De Thou, and others, reflected honour
on its old age. Since the classic world passed away, Latin
historiography never, perhaps, reached so near classic excel-
lence as in the writings of these men. But they and their
works do not fall to be considered here ; they lie beyond the
limits of the time to which this Introduction refers.
History can only be written adequately in the speech of
the peoples who make history. Modern history required to be
recorded in the languages of the modern nations. Away from
contact with Latin and the remains and traditions of Roman
civilisation, the Norse people grew up heroic and adventurous,
and the Norse tongue developed itself in freedom. Nowhere
in Latinised Christendom did men write as well as the Scandi-
navian scalds spoke and sang. Hence lonely Iceland can
boast of its Heimskringla, that immortal story of the Kings
of Norway, by Snorro Sturleson, murdered in 1241, compared
with the pages of which those even of a Matthew Paris are
pale and tedious. There the wild Viking life, as it moved on
through gloom and light, calm and storm, by land and on sea,
in domestic scenes, strange adventures, fierce battles, and
cruel tragedies, for more than three hundred years, is por-
trayed with the truth and power of a master akin in genius
to Homer, and Scott, and Carlyle.
England can claim the honour of having had the earliest
vernacular chronicle ; Russia of having had the earliest ver-
nacular history; France of having had the earliest series of
popular chroniclers; and Italy of having had the earliest
1 Green's Short Hist, of the Eng. People, pp. 142, 143.
74. INTRODUCTION
historians eminent for political knowledge and philosophical
insight. The general and intense interest excited through-
out Europe by the Crusades was what gave the chief direct
impulse to the writing of history in the speech of the un-
learned. Once begun various causes favoured its perpetua-
tion, and such causes continually increased in number and
power as feudalism fell and modern nations became consti-
tuted and consolidated. The rise and growth, however, of
historiography in the French, German, Italian, and English
languages, must not be treated of at this point, but in con-
nection with the development of historical philosophy in the
French, German, Italian, and English nations.
Medieval Europe produced nothing worthy to be called a
philosophy of history. And this was natural, for medieval
Europe was extremely ignorant alike of the facts and the
methods which an adequate philosophy of history presupposes.
First, there was in the middle ages a want of the necessary
facts, and a want of knowledge of what facts there were.
Sciences differ greatly from one another as to the number of
facts which they require for a foundation, as to the number of
observations they must have from which to start. In some,
the phenomena are comparatively simple and obviously bound
together by laws productive of order and harmony ; in others,
the phenomena are comparatively complex, and the connec-
tions among them exceedingly latent, abstruse, difficult to
trace. Astronomy is a science of the former kind ; geology of
the latter : and that is one reason, and not the least powerful
reason, why the one is so ancient and the other so recent. But
as no science has facts so complex, so diverse, so mobile, so in-
termingled, to deal with as that of human history, manifestly
none needs the same multiplicity of observations, so extensive
and varied a range of experience. Confine the mind within
any narrow sphere, and in vain will it try to discern the prin-
ciples which pervade it and connect it with others ; lay before
it only the events of a few generations or nations, and in vain
will it strive to reduce them under law. " It must," to use
the words of M. Cousin, "see many empires, many religions,
many systems, appear and disappear before it can ascend to the
general laws which regulate the rise and fall of human things;
MEDIEVAL HISTORICAL THOUGHT 75
it must survive many revolutions and must go through much
disorder before it can comprehend that above and around all
there is a beautiful and beneficent order." But how narrow
was the range of experience and real information accessible to
the medieval historian ! Till the East and West came into
contact through invasions and crusades, commerce and pil-
grimages, little was known in Europe of the oriental world
beyond what was stated in the Bible. The knowledge even of
Roman history was for a long time in danger of being lost, and
was preserved mainly through the growth of those *practical
interests which necessitated the study of Roman law. The
knowledge of Greek history was virtually lost till the great rev-
olution known as the Revival of Letters took place. Although
almost all possible elements and forms of social life lay around
the men who lived in that age of anarchy which was the imme-
diate consequence of the victory of the barbarians over the
Romans, they were so intermingled and undeveloped that any
adequate insight into their real natures and issues was impossi-
ble. The sphere of historical knowledge thus narrow was only
capable of being enlarged by a long series of events in history
itself, — by the rise and progress of arts, sciences, forms of
government, and nations, by changes of creed and habits, by
manifold inquiries and discoveries, suggesting or succeeding
one another in an order determined by nature and reason.
The medieval mind was, further, most incapable of dealing
rightly with the historical facts which were accessible to it.
The primary requisite of history is, of course, that it be a
true record of events, the statement only of what happened,
the accurate statement of what happened. But that supposes
the existence and exercise of qualities in which the medieval
historian was specially and signally deficient, the power of
truthful observation, the habit of weighing and sifting evi-
dence, the ability to throw off prejudice, and lay the mind
open to receive the real stamp and impression of the actual
occurrences. He was, on the contrary, in the highest degree
credulous, uncritical, and prejudiced. Ignorant of his igno-
rance, ignorant of what knowledge was, he readily accepted
fictions as facts, and believed as unquestionable a crowd of
legends regarding Greece and Rome, and even the States that
76 INTRODUCTION
had risen on the ruins of Rome, which made everything like
a correct notion of the course of human development impos-
sible. Imbued with the spirit of his age, he looked at all
events through an ecclesiastical and dogmatic medium which
effectually precluded him from fairly estimating secular, and,
still more, heathen life. As^r-egards stories of miracles, men
of such general soundness^f mind as Gregory of Tours and
~T3ede were utferlyunable to distinguish truth from error.
Thousands on thousands of miracles were vouched for by the
medieval chroniclers, and yet there is no warrant for suppos-
ing that a single true miracle was wrought during the whole
medieval period. Certain writers have argued that some of
the alleged miracles must have been true, otherwise so many
false ones would not have been credited. But they have not
ventured to point out which were true ; and the supposition
that God, by performing a few real miracles, provided a
support for faith in a multitude of false ones, is far from a
probable or pleasant hypothesis. It should be frankly ac-
knowledged that in the middle age faith was to a large ex-
tent as blind as it was sincere. It is not necessary, however,
to dwell on this point. Buckle has collected, in the sixth
chapter of the first volume of his ' History of Civilisation in
England,' numerous instructive examples of the credulity of
medieval chroniclers, and has proved in its thirteenth chapter
that the free and impartial criticism of testimony failed to
penetrate even into French historiography before the seven-
teenth century. Lecky in his ' History of the Rise and Influ-
ence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,' Draper in his
' Intellectual Development of Europe,' and Mazzarella in his
' Storia della Critica,' while furnishing confirmatory evidence,
have shown how, through the concurrent action of many
causes, the spirit of inquiry grew up and spread, how the
fetters of theological dogmatism were gradually broken, and
how the prejudices which had riveted them on were gradu-
ally rooted out. The art and theory of historical criticism
were alike unknown to the medieval historians.
But the correct ascertainment of the facts is merely the
first and simplest function of method ; the inductiyejjse «f
the facts is a more difficult one,-and is necessarily later in
MEDIEVAL HISTORICAL THOUGHT 77
appearing. It was impossible that the processes of induction
could be successfully applied to historical materials before
the mind had become accustomed to deal truthfully and inde-
pendently with these materials as individual phenomena, and
to employ these processes in the various departments of the
physical sciences where their employment is so much simpler.
In fact, only since the eighteenth century can historians be
found occupying themselves with the remote causes of events,
with general social tendencies, with the principles of intel-
lectual and political development which circumscribe and
dominate individual wills. The historians of antiquity aimed
at describing events in a truthful, agreeable, and morally and
politically profitable manner ; their highest ambition was the
composition of works beautiful in form and practically edify-
ing in contents, and they succeeded to admiration; but even
the profoundest among them made no attempt to go farther
back along the lines of causation than to the motives of the
actors engaged, or the direct influences of certain social insti-
tutions. The middle ages were giving place to the modern
era before the search for causes was carried even thus fa'r by
later historians. Mr. Hallam is, I believe, correct in saying
that Philippe de Gommines " is the first modern writer who
in any degree has displayed sagacity in reasoning on the
characters of men and the consequences of their actions, or
who has been able to generalise his observations by comparison
and reflection." He was certainly surpassed, however, both
in power of analysis and generalisation by his Italian con-
temporary, Macchiavelli, and yet even this great writer, al-
though he shows in his ' Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T.
Livio ' a singular clearness and keenness of insight into the
proximate causes, both political and psychological, of events,
and a singular power of reasoning from particulars to partic-
ulars, from ancient to modern actions and institutions, neg-
lects remote causes, and rests content with analogies instead
of laws, — analogies which he has often exaggerated and
overstrained in order to convert them into practical lessons
for immediate application. Vico and Montesquieu were the
morning stars of a brighter and broader day, the light of
which is now reflected from the pages of almost all historians
78 INTRODUCTION
of recognised ability, not excluding even those who speak
most despairingly of everything of the nature of historical
science or philosophy. It is now generally acknowledged
that the historian must not merely give correct information
as to particular actions and agents, hut must exhibit them in
connection withvthe spirit, tendencies, and interests of the
age to which they belonged, with a collective life, the phases
of which are determined by forces which manifest themselves
more or less in individual events and persons, but extend far
beyond, behind, and beneath them. Thus a Grote or Curtius,
a Niebuhr or Mommsen, casts over the events even of Greek
and Roman history a kind of light1 not to be found in Herodo-
tus and Thucydides, Livy and Polybius, and which is essen-
tially scientific in character, because due to the knowledge of
laws and causes discoverable neither by the mere observation
of events nor insight into the motives of individuals, but
only by an elaborate use of the processes and resources of the
inductive method. In the sphere of history, analysis and
comparison have received new applications, classification and
generalisation increased light and power, with the result that
entire new departments of history have been constituted.
We are no longer content with records of external transac-
tions, but seek also to know the growth of reason and culture
themselves, — the development of humanity in all its aspects
and activities, industrial, aesthetic, political, moral, religious,
and scientific. But all this is modern. The men of medieval
times were so ignorant of scientific law and method as to
have no conception of any of the forms of history in which a
knowledge of them is implied.
It must not be forgotten, however, that during the middle
age there existed a Mohammedan as well as a Christian civili-
sation, and a Mohammedan as well as a Christian historiog-
raphy. In the seventh century Mohammed founded a new-
religion, which first united into a single people the scattered
tribes of Arabia, and then spread with unparalleled rapidity
over the eastern provinces of Rome, Persia, Scinde, Egypt,
North Africa, and Spain. It everywhere roused and quick-
ened the minds of its believers; and for several centuries
Moslim civilisation in most respects equalled, and in some
surpassed, the Christian civilisation which it confronted.
ARABIC HISTORIANS 79
There were no historical compositions ( in Arabic before
the time of Mohammed. The Prophet himself was the first
subject of historical interest and treatment ; the next was the
exploits of those who fought in his cause. For about a cen-
tury after his death history was communicated almost exclu-
sively by spoken, not written words. Oral tradition, however,
increasingly disclosed its inadequacy ; and as great events
rapidly succeeded one another, a luxuriant growth of histori-
cal literature naturally followed. That literature became not
only of vast magnitude but of great value. The Christian
medieval world was only a part of the medieval world, and
a part imperfectly intelligible without acquaintance with its
Mohammedan counterpart and complement. It may be safely
affirmed that all our universal histories, histories of civilisation,
and philosophies of history, suffer from their authors' defective
knowledge of the history of Mohammedanism. Probably no
class of scholars have it in their power to increase more the
stock of generally useful historical knowledge than those who
are qualified to appreciate and utilise the Arabic historians.
The histories of Mohammedan countries in the middle age
have been as fully recorded by Mohammedan annalists as
those of the various regions of Christendom during the same
period by the monkish chroniclers ; and consequently, a
knowledge of the former as exact and ample as of the latter
is recoverable, and may equally be made to enter into the
common inheritance of educated mankind.
In the early period of Mohammedan historiography a promi-
nent place was occupied, as has been said, by accounts of
Mohammed, and of 1;he wars in which his immediate followers
were engaged. The genealogies of Arab tribes and families
received much attention. The collection of the traditions
relating to the Prophet and to religious beliefs and practices
was a work in which great interest was felt and by which repu-
tation was most easily gained. The mode in which the written
history arose out of oral testimony had a decisive influence on
its whole form and character, as is well indicated in the follow-
ing remarks of De Slane : " The documents relative to Muham-
madan history were transmitted during the first centuries by
oral tradition from one hdfiz to another, and these persons made
80 INTRODUCTION
it an object of their particular care not to alter, in the least
degree, the narrations which they had received. The pieces
thus preserved were generally furnished by eyewitnesses of the
facts which are related in them, and are therefore of the highest
importance, not only for the history of the Moslim people, but
for that of the Arabic language. The hdfiz who communicated
a narration of this kind to his scholar never neglected indi-
cating beforehand the series of persons through whom it had
successively passed before it came down to him, and this in-
troduction, or support — isndd, as the Arabs call it — is the
surest proof that what follows is authentic. The increasing
number of these narrations became at length a burden to the
best memory, and it was found necessary to write down the
more ancient of them lest they should be forgotten. One of
the first and most important of these collections was Ibn
Ishak's History of the Moslim Wars, a work of which we
possess but a small portion, containing the life of Muhammad,
with notes and additions by a later editor, Ibn Hish&m ; this
is a book of the highest authority, and deservedly so, but it
is unfortunately of great rareness. The history of Islamisrn,
by At-Tabari, was formed also in a similar manner; being
merely a collection of individual narrations preceded by their
isndds; many of them relate to the same event, and from
their mutual comparison a very complete idea can be acquired
of the history of that early period. These collections of
original documents were consulted by later historians, such
as Ibn Al-Ianzi, Ibn Al-Athir, and others, and it was from
these sources that they drew the facts set forth in their
respective works. It may be laid down ks a general principle
that Islamic history assumed at first the form of a collection
of statements, each of them authenticated by an isndd; then
came a writer who combined these accounts, but suppressed
the isndds and the repetitions ; he was followed by the maker
of abridgments, who condensed the work of his predecessor
and furnished a less expensive book on the same subject." J
The method followed by Mohammedan historians in the
composition of their works compelled them from the first to
exercise a certain kind and measure of historical criticism.
1 Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary : Introduction, pp. xxi, xxii.
ARABIC HISTORIANS 81
Proceeding on a recognition of the supreme importance of the
testimony of the primary witnesses, it required an examination
of the claims of those who passed for such. The Mohammedan
historian could not fail to perceive that he was bound to satisfy
himself as to the credibility of the persons whose reports he
collected and recorded. But he was content to discharge this
duty in a very perfunctory manner. He deemed it enough to
know on merely general and external grounds that they were
men of good reputation, without any careful comparison and
sifting examination of their reports themselves. We cannot
credit the Arabic historians with the knowledge or practice
of historical criticism in its modern sense. Wakidi, Tabari,
Coteiba, Mas'udi, were unacquainted with it. Ibn Khaldun
stood almost alone in clearly apprehending its nature and
realising its importance. There was no lack of need for its
exercise. An enormous number of false traditions were early
in circulation ; genealogies were at an early date largely fabri-
cated ; the early chroniclers readily accepted fictions as facts
whenever they tended to glorify the Prophet and his followers.
At a later period, works deliberately falsifying history were
written to serve some immediate purpose, and ascribed to early
annalists of good repute. A number of writings on which
European authors have founded as genuine productions of the
older Mohammedan historians are spurious or mendaciously
corrupted. For example, the Account of the Conquest of
Syria, attributed to Wakidi, on which the first part of Ock-
ley's well-known book is chiefly based, must have been writ-
ten in the time of the Crusades ; and so also the Historical
Notices on the Spiritual and Temporal Powers attributed to
Coteiba, and unfortunately relied on as his by Gayangos,
Weil, and Amari.
In the second century of the Mohammedan era Hisham was
the most renowned of the genealogists. Until recent research
cast suspicion on the whole assumption of the soundness of
the Arabic genealogical system, he was credited with having
laid a solid foundation for the labours of his successors.
Ma'mar (ben el-Muthana), who died in 209 a.h. (821 a.d.),
published about 200 works, the most important of which
treated of historical subjects. He wrote a history of Mecca
82 INTRODUCTION
and of Medina, but showed, like so many Arabic historiogra-
phers, a marked preference for themes relating to war. In one
of his writings he commemorated 1200 of the days on which
the Arabs had been engaged in battle. He was himself of
Jewish-Persian descent, and although he had in various writ-
ings glorified the achievements of the Arabs, he gave free ex-
pression to his hatred of themselves, and thereby caused great
offence. His contemporary, Wakidi (d. 207 A.H.), enjoyed
immense popularity in his lifetime, and his fame as an his-
torian has in the East never waned. He was a man of inde-
fatigable diligence. He is said to have kept two slaves con-
stantly employed in copying and transcribing for him, and to
have left books filling 600 chests, each of which required two
men to carry it. A History of Mohammedan Conquests is
his most important work, and it is an excellent, almost typi-
cal, example of the Arabic historiography of the time.
Literature in many forms was cultivated with great zeal
and success in Mohammedan lands during the third century
after the Flight (815-912 a.d.). Among the historians of the
period it may suffice to mention only Bochari, Coteiba, and
Tabari. Bochari acquired high fame as a commentator on the
Koran, and became the most eminent authority on the subject
of tradition. He wrote a work known as the Great History,
on the trustworthy and untrustworthy traditionists ; and drew
up the Kit&b as-Sahih, a collection of 7275 traditions which
he regarded as genuine. The latter is said to have cost him
sixteen years' labour, and its contents to have been selected
from a mass of 600,000 traditions. The traditions accepted
by Bochari are generally received by Mohammedans without
question, his discrimination and fairness of judgment being
deemed by them to have been as extraordinary as his memory
and erudition. Coteiba was a man of varied literary gifts, and
particularly distinguished as a philologist and exegete. His
'Book of Facts,' or, as Wustenfeld its editor calls it, 'Hand-
book of History,' and his ' Exquisite Histories,' are allowed to
be characterised by exceptional keenness and comprehensive-
ness of research and accuracy and elegance of statement. He
showed great good sense in avoiding diffuseness, refraining
from useless repetitions, and silently rejecting uncertified tra-
ARABIC HISTORIANS 83
ditions. Tabari was born in 224 and died in 310 of the
Hegira. His Commentary on the Koran is deemed by some
judges an even greater work than his Annals ; but, however
this may be, the latter work has made his name one of the
most renowned and esteemed in Arabic historiography. It
may be reckoned the first General History written from the
Mohammedan point of view. It began with the creation and
ended with 302 a.h. (914 a.d.). It was planned on the
largest scale, and executed with great skill and ability, with
unsparing toil, with vast information, wifh independence of
judgment, with attractiveness of style. It was a collection
of historical traditions and documents so ample yet judicious,
and so aptly combined, that it was at once recognised as a
substitute for many, and a supplement to all, previous histori-
cal works. The study of general history had been not only
neglected by the early Moslims, but purposely shunned as
unlawful and dangerous. This prejudice was in course of
time overcome ; and after the appearance of Tabari's Annals,
general surveys of history became common. Of course, the
authors of such surveys all assumed that the triumph of Islam
was the goal of history. Their guiding thread through the
ancient world was the succession of generations, and espe-
cially the succession of prophets, from Adam to Mohammed,
as represented in the Hebrew records and Arabic or Persian
traditions. The Mohammedan view of ancient history had
all the defects of the medieval Christian view, with others
peculiarly its own. Tabari's work had the fault of being far
too long. The Arabic mode of writing history necessarily
tended to excessive bulk, and its accompaniment excessive
cost. Hence there was a demand for abridgments, and these
often practically displaced the works which they summarised.
With all its reputation and merits, the Chronicle of Tabari
fell almost into oblivion after it had been abridged and con-
tinued by El-Makin (Elmacin). Considerable portions of it
have been translated into Latin by Kosegarten, into French
by Dubeux,'and into German by Noldeke.
Another historical writer of great celebrity was Mas'udi,
whose life fell mostly within the tenth century of our era, as
he died in 345 or 346 a.h. He has been likened to Herodotus ;
84 INTRODUCTION
and he cannot be denied to have had a curiosity as active and
universal, and to have acquired an even larger stock of knowl-
edge of all kinds. He spent a large portion of his life in
travelling, and yet left an enormous mass of writing. He
visited India, Ceylon, China, Madagascar, South Arabia,
Persia, the regions about the Caspian Sea, Russia, Syria,
Egypt, Morocco, and Spain ; and wherever he went, geography,
manners, politics, religion, and history, were alike the objects
of his eager investigation. He embodied the results in a
' History of the Times,' the wonder and delight of the East,
yet so vast that it has never been printed. He, however,
abridged it under the title of ' Meadows of Gold and Mines
of Gems,' and on this abridgment his fame chiefly rests.1 He
showed little skill in methodising the enormous stores of in-
formation which he had accumulated. His transitions from
one subject to another are often most arbitrary. He was devoid
of the artistic sense which enabled Herodotus to combine his
varied materials into an admirable, almost dramatic, whole.
He lacked also his simple grace and exquisite naturalness of
style. As he was even less critical and more credulous than
Herodotus, he received on hearsay as facts a host of fables.
Yet his work was highly valuable, greatly increasing the sum
of historical knowledge, and even displaying more genuine
historical interest and ability than any work produced in
Europe in the same century. The mere indication, however,
of the variety and distribution of its contents may be more
instructive than further description. The first six chapters
give an account, drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Koran,
and oriental traditions, of the period between the creation of
the world and the birth of Mohammed, which, ludicrous and
legendary as it in great part is, is of the same character as
what still passes in Mohammedan lands for true history. The
seventh chapter treats of the Hindus, their scientific knowl-
edge, their religious opinions, and their various governments,
but shows complete ignorance of their early history. It is
followed by seven chapters (8-14) mainly relating'to physical
and historical geography, but including not a few digressions
and marvellous stories. The fifteenth chapter is on China,
l Macondi, Les prairies d'or. Texte et traduction par C. Barbier de Maynard
et Pavet de Courteille. T. i.-ix. Paris, 1861-77.
ARABIC HISTORIANS 85
and admirably appreciative of the character, religion, and
polity of its people, although the views which it gives of early
Chinese history are quite mythical. The next chapter is a
strange medley on seas and islands, Spain and other countries,
and perfumes. It is followed by one which contains much
valuable information regarding the Caucasian regions and their
inhabitants, and a good deal which is merely curious about
apes and falcons. Then come seven chapters (18-24) weighted
with matter imperfectly sifted, on the Assyrian and Persian
kings. They are succeeded by three chapters, respectively
on the Greeks and their history, Alexander in India, and the
Greek kings after Alexander. And these are followed up by
three relating to the Roman Empire — the first treating of the
period before Christianity was acknowledged as the State
religion, the second of the Byzantine emperors prior to the
rise of Islam, and the third of the emperors who reigned from
that date to the time when Mas'udi wrote. Egypt and Alex-
andria are dealt with in two chapters (31-32) ; the Sudanese,
Slavonians, Franks, and Lombards, in one each (33-36). The
•chapters on the Adites (37), on the Themudites (38), and on
Mecca and the Ka'aba (39), may be regarded as forming an-
other group. They are followed by a general discourse on the
various countries of the earth, and on love to the native soil
(40). The next five chapters relate to Yemen and its history.
The succeeding six form a treasury of information on the
manners, customs, superstitions, and folk-lore of the Arabs.
After giving an account of Seil el 'Arem (53), Mas'udi intro-
duces an erudite and elaborate dissertation on the months of
the Arabs, Kopts, Syrians, and Parsis, on the revolutions of
the sun and moon, and on opinions as to the influence of the
heavenly bodies (54-62). With equal fulness he treats of the
sacred houses of the Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Slavonians,
Sabaeans, and Magians (63-68). The sixty -ninth chapter is
a conspectus of chronology from the beginning of history to
the birth of Mohammed. Five chapters are occupied with
Mohammed — his descent, his deeds, his mission, and his
doctrines. The last sixty-seven chapters are a history of the
Khalifats to the end of the ninth century.
During five centuries after the death of Mas'udi, Arabic
86 INTRODUCTION
historiography continued to be diligently cultivated. It was,
perhaps, the last branch of Mohammedan literature to wither
and decay. In all these centuries there were writers who
attempted to compose universal histories on the model of that
of Tabari, and to combine geography and physical science
generally with history after the manner of Mas'udi. There
were others who rendered eminent services by working within
narrower and more definite limits, as, e.g., Biruni (f 1038
a.d.) 1 by his researches into the history of India, and Abdal-
latif (f 1231 a.d.), whose well-known description of Egypt is
very remarkable for the naturalness and simplicity of its
style, and the fulness and accuracy of its information. Local
history received much attention, and such towns as Damascus,
Bagdad, Ispaham, &c, were the subjects of most voluminous
works. Biography was especially popular. Even biographi-
cal dictionaries were numerous. Most of them were special,
some treating of the companions of Mohammed, or of the per-
sons mentioned in the collections of traditions ; others, of the
princes of a particular dynasty, or of the famous men of a
particular city, or of classes of celebrated persons — as, e.g., of
theologians, jurists, philosophers, physicians, or poets. Others
were general. Of these the most successful was the Bio-
graphical Dictionary of Ibn Khallikan (f 1282 A.D.), whom
Sir William Jones has pronounced to be perhaps the best
writer of lives, "et certe" copiosior Nepote, elegantior Plu-
tarcho, Laertio juncundior." Shahrastani (f 1153 a.d.) de-
serves to be gratefully remembered for his ' Book of Religious
and Philosophical Sects.' 2
While Arabic historiography was not devoid of obvious
merits, it never reached the scientific or philosophical stage.
Among the many who cultivated it, none got much beyond
mere description and annalistic narration. Athir (1160-1232
a.d.), the author of a Universal History or Chronicle, edited
in ,14 vols, and partially translated (into Swedish) by Torn-
berg, probably comes nearest being an exception to this state-
ment. He was not content merely to relate events in the
1 His ' Chronology of Ancient Nations ' has been translated into English by
C. E. Sachau. Loudon, 1878.
2 Edited by Cureton, London, 1846, and translated into German by Haar-
briicker, Halle, 1850-51.
HISTORICAL IDEAS 87
order of their occurrence, but sought also to discover and
exhibit their natural antecedents and consequences. Farther
than this, however, he did not go ; he made no endeavour to
obtain an insight into the evolution of the general ideas which
pervade history, and of the operations of those deeper causes
of social change by which its immediate and visible causes
are called into existence or conditioned in their action.
As regards the science or philosophy of history, Arabic
literature was adorned by one most brilliant name. Neither
the classical nor the medieval Christian world can show one
of nearly the same brightness. Ibn Khaldun (a.d. 1332-
1406), considered simply as an historian had superiors even
among Arabic authors, but as a theorist on history he had
no equal in any age or country until Vico appeared, more
than three hundred years later. Plato, Aristotle, and Au-
gustine were not his peers, and all others were unworthy of
being even mentioned along with him. He was admirable
alike by his originality and sagacity, his profundity and his
comprehensiveness. He was, however, a man apart, as soli-
tary and unique among his co-religionists and contemporaries
in the department of historical philosophy as was Dante in
poetry or Roger Bacon in science among theirs. Arabic his-
torians had, indeed, collected the materials which he could
use, but he alone used them. Of this remarkable man, how-
ever, and of his views on history, I shall treat at some length
in the last section of this Introduction.
IV
The growth of history towards a scientific stage has been
partly the consequence and partly the cause of the growth of
certain ideas, without a firm and comprehensive grasp of which
no philosophical study or conception of history is possible. It
seems necessary to indicate what has been the history of some
of the more important of these ideas, to the period when our
account of the development of the philosophy of history begins.
Farther, there is no need at present to go, as their later history
is included in that of the philosophy of history itself.
By ideas is not here meant anything mysterious or meta-
88 INTKODUCTION
physical, but only general thoughts which connect and render
intelligible a certain number of facts. There must be general
thoughts, there must be appropriate ideas, before facts are in-
telligible. This is in no real contradiction to the obvious truth
that thoughts are only general in virtue of being thoughts of
so many facts ; that ideas are only appropriate in virtue of
being appropriate to the facts. Professor Roscher of Leipsic
points out, in his work on Thucydides, how that great historian's
usual explanation of things amounts to this — A is the cause
of B, and B is the cause of A. And it is more or less so with
all great historians. It is only narrow and meagre pragmati-
cal historians, or rather historical logicians, who affirm rigidly
and invariably That A is the cause of B, B of C, and C of D,
&c. Wherever there is an organism like a living body, the
mind of man, or even a society, — wherever there is correlation
•of parts and functions — wherever there is action and reaction,
— the single linear series of causes and effects is not found.
A is the cause of B and B of A, inconsistent as it may seem
to be, is then often a truer formula than A is the cause of B
and B of C, consistent as it may seem to be. The case in
hand is an instance. Without facts, no ideas. Without ideas,
virtually no facts ; nothing that is a fact for thought ; nothing
that the mind can make any use of.
I. One of the most important of the ideas referred to is that
of progress. The philosophy of history deals not exclusively
but to a great extent with laws of progress, with laws of evo-
lution ; and until the idea of progress was firmly and clearly
apprehended, little could be done in it. Now the history of
that idea, within the period which at present concerns us, is
nearly as follows.
In the oriental world it was unknown, or denied, or appre-
hended only in an exceedingly limited degree. The common
assertion that the diametrically opposite idea of deterioration
— the belief that the course of human affairs is from good to
bad and from bad to worse — pervaded all Asiatic thought,
whether religious or political, is undoubtedly an exaggeration.
The safe affirmation is that a definite general view of history
was seldom formed, and, where formed, was very rarely indeed,
if ever, that of a progressive development.
IDEA OF PKOGRESS 89
It was not to be expected that such an idea should originate
and prevail in China. No one, it is true, who has felt interest
enough in that singular nation to study the researches and
translations of Remusat, Panthier, Julien, Legge, Plath, Faber,
Eitel, and others, will hesitate to dismiss as erroneous the
commonplace that it has been an unprogressive nation. The
development and filiation of thought is scarcely less traceable •
in the history and literature of China than of Greece ; and
genuine Chinese historiography, unperverted and uncorrupted
by the mythological fictions of Buddhism, makes no extrava-
gant pretensions either as to the antiquity or dignity of the
national origin, but, with rare honesty and sobriety of judg-
ment goes back to the small and barbarous horde in the forests
and mountains of Shensee, which Footsoushe began to reduce
to settled order rather more than three thousand years before
the Christian era. Development has been, however, for very
long slower in China than anywhere else, periods of decadence
have been more numerous, reverence for the past has been
stronger and more confirmed, while the power of generalisa-
tion, the ability to take comprehensive views, is just the qual-
ity in which the Chinese mind, in many respects admirably
endowed, is most deficient. Among the Chinese, as among
the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Hindus, the theory of cosmi-
cal and human cycles has appeared in various forms. As the
observation of history, however, seems to have had almost
nothing to do with its formation, I content myself with refer-
ring any one who feels an interest in it to the articles of
Remusat in the - Journal des Savants ' (Oct., Nov., Dec,
1831), and to the learned and curious dissertation of P.
Leroux in his ' De rHumanite" ' (t. ii. ch. viii.).
In India, where human existence was regarded as a mere
stage in the course of transmigration, where the sense of the
evil and transitoriness of life has for ages had an intensity and
depth the European mind can perhaps hardly realise, — in
India, the home of pantheism, fatalism, and caste, — the
•thought of social progress and its inspiring hopes could never
possess the heart. Instead, there was the mythical dream of
vast chronological cycles, each divisible into four epochs,
which are the stages through which the universe and its in-
90 INTRODUCTION
habitants must pass from perfection to destruction, from
strength and innocence to weakness and depravity, until a
new mahd-yuga or great cycle begins.
The old Ormazd religion gave expression to the hope that
evil would not last for ever, — that the Power of Darkness
would cease on some predestined day to struggle with his
righteous adversary, and bow to his authority, and neither
will nor work wickedness any more ; but it did so only fitfully
and feebly, sometimes suggesting the opposite, and never
connecting with the hope of the final victory of goodness any
doctrine of gradual progress.
The religion of Israel was of its very nature a religion of
the future, a religion of hope. Expectation was throughout
its attitude ; it in all its parts pointed forward beyond itself ;
from generation to generation its voice was that of one cry-
ing, Prepare. Still there is no evidence of the ancient Jews
having attained to a conscious apprehension of the idea of
progress, noxus-there-any distinct-enunciation of that idea-ia-
the Old Testament;.
It is often said, and even by those who ought to know much
better, that the Greeks and Romans conceived of the course
of history only as a downward movement, whereas, in fact,
they conceived of it in all ways — i.e., as a process of deterio-
ration, a progress, and a cycle, although in none profoundly or
consistently. The natural illusion of the individual that the
days of his boyhood were brighter and better than those of his
maturity, is also an illusion natural to the race, natural to
nations, one which many circumstances seem to confirm, one
which can only be adequately corrected by such a survey of
bygone generations as antiquity had not the power to make ;
and the thought of a deterioration of human life from age to
age certainly often meets us in the literatures of Greece and
Rome, as was to be expected. But the obtrusively manifest
fact that the origins of all things, so far as they could be
traced, were small and feeble — the knowledge of the exist-
ence of various rude and savage peoples, the abundant evi-
dences which a Greek of the age of Pericles, or a Roman of
the age of Augustus, possessed, of the civilisation he enjoyed
having been evolved out of a comparatively barbarous social
IDEA OF PROGRESS 91
state, suggested also to many thoughtful minds of the classical
world the notion of progress. And the circular movements
of the stars, the cycles of changes through which the lives of
all plants and animals pass from birth to death, and fatalistic
and pantheistic principles, led to the inference that the events
of human history fall into circuits, which resemble or repeat
one another. It is necessary to establish this by indicating
the most interesting and decisive proof -passages.
Through the ' Works and Days ' of Hesiod there breathes
the feeling that the youth and glory of the world has passed
away ; that man has fallen ; that the race is not what it was ;
that existence, once easy, innocent, joyous, has become diffi-
cult, pervaded by evil, full of woes. And this change for
the worse, this " fall," is explained by two myths, which seem
inconsistent with each other: the one, perhaps of Semitic
origin, introduced into Greece through Phoenicia, tracing the
toils and miseries of life to the box of Pandora and Prome-
theus's theft of fire from heaven ; 1 while the other, which is
widely diffused among the Aryan peoples, refers them to the
gradual degeneration of the human species through a series
of ages.2 As to the latter myth, it is to be remarked that
the ages are, according to Hesiod, the golden, the silver, the
brazen, the heroic, and the iron, so that the process of dete-
rioration is represented as not quite continuous, there being
an age, named after no metal, better than that which preceded
it, and thus an exception to what is otherwise the rule. The
most obvious, and probably the true, explanation of the
exception is, that the heroic age could not, consistently with
the traditions which represented the heroes as the founders
of Greek families and cities, be fitted harmoniously into the
series represented'by metals, because it could not be placed
elsewhere than immediately before the age of ordinary mor-
tals. Goettling would so interpret the text of Hesiod as to
make it an expression of belief in the theory of cycles, but
his interpretation seems to have nothing to recommend it
except ingenuity in error.
Anaximander, one of the earliest of Greek philosophers,
working out his idea of the Infinite or Unconditioned being
1 'Epya «<" 'Hfxepai, 42-105. * Ibid., 109-201.
92 INTRODUCTION
the first principle of the universe, arrived both at a sort of
rude nebular hypothesis and a sort of rude development hy-
pothesis. From the aTreipov, or primitive indeterminate mat-
ter, through an inherent and eternal energy and movement
the two original contraries of heat and cold separate ; what is
cold settles down to the centre and so forms the earth, what is
hot ascends to the circumference and so originates the bright,
shining, fiery bodies of heaven, which are but the fragments of
what once existed as a complete shell or sphere, but in time
burst and broke up and so gave rise to the stars. The action
of the sun's heat on the watery earth next generated films or
bladders, out of which came different kinds of imperfectly
organised beings, which were gradually developed into the
animals which now live. Man's ancestors were fishlike crea-
tures which dwelt in muddy waters, and only, as the sun
slowly dried up the earth, became gradually fitted for life
on dry land.1 A similar view was held by the poet, priest,
prophet, and philosopher Empedocles. He taught that out of
the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, and under the
moving power of Love resisting Hate, plants, animals, and
man were in succession, and after many an effort and many a
futile conjunction of organs, generated and elaborated into
their present shapes.2 This kind and measure of belief in
progress did not, however, prevent Anaximander from hold-
ing also that generation must be followed by destruction in a
necessary cycle, that "things must all return whence they
came according to destiny;" nor did it keep Empedocles from
teaching that the souls of men were spirits fallen from a state
of bliss in heaven and doomed to wander for " thirty thousand
seasons," tossed from element to element, through all the
changes of transmigration, plant, bird, fish, beast or human
being, in this " over-vaulted cave," this " gloomy meadow of
discord," the earth.
With the theories of these two philosophers may be con-
nected what ^Eschylus makes Prometheus say about the prim-
itive state of men, — how they had eyes and saw not, ears and
1 Plutarchus de Plac. Phil., ii. 25, iii. 16, v. 19, ap. Buseb. Prasp. Evang., i.
8, &c.
2 Mullach's Empedodlis Carmina, 314^316, in Frag. Phil. Gr. or Mlian H. A.,
xvi. 29, and Arist. Phys., ii. 8.
IDEA OF PROGRESS 93
heard not, — how they dwelt in the sunless depths of caves,
were ignorant of the signs of the seasons and the simplest
rudiments of art, pursued all their occupations without dis-
cernment, and left their entire life to chance and confusion,
till he taught them to number, to write, to mark the risings
and the settings of the stars, to build houses, to tame and
train animals, to cure diseases, to navigate the sea, and prac-
tise the various modes of divination.1 Euripides puts similar
language into the mouth of Theseus in the Suppliants.2
The oriental doctrine of vast chronological cycles or world-
years reappeared in Greece, perhaps as an Orphic legend,8 and
certainly as a tenet of Stoic philosophy ; for the advocates of
that system, reasoning from their pantheistic conviction that
God is the creative soul of the world, the eternal force which
forms and permeates it, the spirit of ever-acting and living-
fire, which manifests itself outwardly as matter when its heat
declines, and burns up matter when its heat is intense, con-
cluded that in a necessary and endless succession world after
world was created and destroyed, each new world being ex-
actly like its predecessor, and all things in it without excep-
tion running round in the same order from beginning to end.
In the words of Nemesius : " The Stoics taught that in fixed
periods of time a burning and destruction of all things take
place, and the world returns again from the beginning into
the very same shape as it had before, and that the restoration
of them all happens not once but often, or rather that the
same things are restored an infinite number of times." i
It is likewise certain that no one conception of the course
of the world's histoiy exclusively possessed the Roman mind.
No more graphic picture of man's primitive condition as a
savage state is to be found in any literature, and no more in-
genious or consistent conjectural account of the origination of
language, laws, customs, institutions, arts, and sciences, than
those presented in the last five hundred and thirty lines of
the fifth book of Lucretius.5 Yet, although that great poet
there develops in its entirety the theory which Sir John Lub-
1 -Esch. Pr., 451-515. 2 Eur. Supp., 201-218.
3 Creuzer's Symbolik, pt. iii. pp. 315-318.
* Nem. de. Nat. Horn., c. 38; Cicero, Nat. Deor., ii. 46; Origen, Con. Cels., iv.
5 De Rer. Nat., y. 925-1457.
94 INTRODUCTION
bock and so many others are now urging on our acceptance,
he elsewhere teaches us that the world like all things mortal
will perish, — that already it is past its full growth — can no
longer produce what it once did — is wasting away, worn out
by age, — that the day draws near which shall give over to
destruction seas, lands, and heaven : —
" Multosque per annos
Sustentata ruet moles et machina mundi." x
Ovid gives expression with great beauty to the popular faith
in four ages of continuous deterioration,2 and represents Jove
as remembering " that it is recorded in the book of fate, that
the time will come when the sea, and the earth, and the palaces
of heaven will be kindled into flame and glow with fervent
heat, and the laboured structure of the world will perish." 3
Virgil sings of a golden age, a Saturnian time, when suffering
and sin were unknown, when men had all things in common,
and Nature poured forth her bounties abundantly and sponta-
neously; but he believes that a beneficent purpose underlay
man's fall from this condition, that Jove did away with this easy
state of existence in order that man might be forced to evolve
the resources in his own mind and in outer nature, and that
experience by dint of thought should hammer out the various
arts in a course of gradual discovery and improvement.4 The
poet thus combined belief in a fall with belief in progress ;
perhaps he combined belief in both with a belief in world-cycles,
and he has certainly given marvellous expression to the hope
that the simplicity, peace, and happiness of the golden age
would be restored.5 The well-known lines of Horace —
"Damnosa quid non imminuit dies?
JEtas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progenium vitiosiorem," — 6
have been often quoted as embodying the single and entire
feeling of classical antiquity regarding the course of humanity.
But they cannot fairly be understood as conveying even their
author's own opinion of human development in itself, or as
1 De Rer. Nat., ii. 1148-1174; v. 93-95. 2 Met., i. 89-150. 8 Ibid., i. 256-258.
* Georg., i. 120-149. 5 Eel., iv. « Odes, book iii. ode 6.
IDEA OF PROGRESS 95
expressing any general " Weltanschauung " ; they are merely
the utterance of complaint against the religious and moral
corruption of his time ; and he has elsewhere described the
first men as mere animals, a filthy and speechless herd, fighting
with their nails and fists for acorns and lairs, — a race of beings
who gradually found out words, and gradually learned to
refrain from theft, adultery, and murder, to build and fortify
towns, and establish laws.1
Passing from poets to prose authors we find that Cicero,
without expressing an opinion as to general progress, has
declared that philosophy is progressive ; that study and appli-
cation are rewarded by new discoveries ; that the most recent
things are generally the most precise and certain.2 Seneca
has declaimed against a philosophy which would aim at being
useful, against mechanical inventions, wealth, and comfort, in
a way that has become celebrated ; 3 and yet he has not only
insisted on the past progress of astronomical science, and
avowed his belief that its progress would continue,4 but has
declared of Nature in general that she has always new secrets
to disclose to those who seek them, that she unveils her mys-
teries only gradually in the long succession of generations —
and of truth in general, that although we fancy ourselves ini-
tiated we are only on the threshold of her temple.6 The elder
Pliny has exhorted us " firmly to trust that the ages go on
incessantly improving." 6 And still more remarkable in some
respects than any of these recognitions of progress is that
contained in the preface to the ' Epitome of Roman History '
by Florus. It is not so comprehensive as many of the passages
which have been cited, being explicitly confined to a single
nation; but it is obviously drawn more from history itself,
and it is the first clear enunciation of a theorem which has
1 Satires, book i. sat. 8. 2 Academics, i. i ; ii. 5 ; De Legibus, i. 9.
3 Ep., 90. 4 Nat. Quaest., vii. 25.
5 Nat. QuEest., vii. 31. The following lines of a tragedy— probably Seneca's
— have often been referred to as an unconscious prophecy of the discovery of
America :
" Venient aonis Bsecula sens
Quibus Oceanua vincula rerum
Laxet, et iagens pateat telluB,
Tethysque novos detegat orbeB;
Nee Bit terris ultima Thule." —Medea, act ii. chorus.
6 Hist. Nat., xix. 1-4.
96 INTRODUCTION
since been presented and illustrated in numberless ways, —
viz., that nations pass through a succession of ages similar to
those of the individual. " If any one," he says, " will consider
the Roman people as if it were a man, and observe its entire
course, how it began, how it grew up, how it reached a certain
youthful bloom, and how it has since, as it were, been growing
old, he will find it to have four degrees and stages (quatuor
gradus processusque). Its first age was under the kings, and
lasted nearly 250 years, during which it struggled round its
mother against its neighbours; this was its infancy. The
next extended from the consulship of Brutus and Collatinus
to that of Appius Claudius and Quintus Fulvius, a period of
250 years, during which it subdued Italy; this was a time
entirely given up to war, and may be called its youth. Thence
to the time of Caesar Augustus was a period of 200 years, in
which it reduced to subjection the whole world; this may
accordingly be called the manhood", and, as it were, the robust
maturity, of the empire. From Caesar Augustus to our own
age is a period of little less than 200 years, in which through
the inactivity of the Caesars the nation has, as it were, grown
old and feeble, except that now under the sway of Trajan it
raises its arms, and, contrary to the expectation of all, the
old age of the empire, as if youth were restored to it, flourishes
with new vigour."
Enough has now been said to prove that the notion of
progress in history was far from unknown to the thinkers of
Greece and Rome, but was one of various notions of human
development, all not unfrequently entertained ; and to show
at the same time that it was only apprehended in a vague, gen-
eral way — never denned, never analysed, and especially never
satisfactorily derived from a sufficiency of appropriate facts.
Often as we meet with it in classical antiquity, we never find
it in a form which shows that it had been comprehended with
scientific precision and thoroughness. It is not otherwise as
regards early Christian and medieval writers, among whom
the notion was never wholly lost, yet never so apprehended
as the philosophy of history presupposes and requires. A few
sentences will suffice to show this.
It was no part of the mission of Christ or of His apostles to
IDEA OF PROGRESS 97
teach the full truth on such a subject as historical progress ;
but it came within their purpose to indicate the general rela-
tion of the Gospel to the past state, actual wants, and future
destiny of man. And the antithesis of the Sermon on the
Mount, the general reasoning of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
the principles involved in several of St. Paul's arguments, and
some of his explicit statements, affirm or imply that the Gospel,
although a power descended from heaven, had been prepared
for on earth from the beginning of history, and had appeared
only when the fulness of the time was come ; and that there had
been certain stages of progress in revelation, a certain wisely
graduated divine education of at least a portion of mankind,
conditioned by their capacities, adapted to their necessities,
and completed and crowned by absolute truth and a perfect
life in Christ. Again, another class of passages, and especially
the parables of the kingdom, declared that the manifestation of
God in His Son was to be as a seed, which, although it might
appear to human eye feeble and insignificant, had an imperish-
able and inexhaustible life in it, which would not fail to survive
any treatment, to overcome all obstacles, and gradually grow
and progress till the result marvellously surpassed even hope
and imagination, and was to operate in humanity like leaven
in meal till the whole mass was transformed.
This teaching applied directly only to man in his moral and
religious relations, and did not contain even in germ a doctrine
of his industrial, scientific, aesthetic, or political development,
although not only consistent with but calculated to lead on to
the true doctrine thereof. Its being thus limited was fitted
to secure its being understood, but failed to attain that end,
as, unfortunately, from the first what had been spoken of the
kingdom of God was misinterpreted as referring to the Church,
or rather the kingdom of God was identified with the Church ;
and thus the glorious and comprehensive truth set forth in
the parables of the kingdom was for centuries either ignored
or sadly narrowed and perverted, and is, in fact, very defec-
tively apprehended even at the present day.
The Gnostics, while accepting Christianity as a divine and
redemptive work, sought to rise above it by explaining it on
the principles of oriental speculation, and by furnishing the
98 INTRODUCTION
complete solution of all the deepest problems of religious
thought, — -such as, how the material is related to the spirit-
ual universe ; how the former exists, and how the latter has
been developed; how evil is to be accounted for; whither
all things tend; what man's place, purpose, and destiny are;
and what the religions which preceded Christianity meant
and effected. They touched, in consequence, upon many of
the most serious themes of historical as well as of religious
philosophy. But it was in a false, arbitrary, fantastic way,
so perversive of historical facts and so incompatible with
genuine historical generalisation, that all their daring con-
ceptions of evolution, emanations, aeons, dualism, &c, can
scarcely be said to have even helped towards a clearer and
truer apprehension of the notion of human progress.
The Montanists deemed Christianity incomplete even as a
revelation, and proclaimed a special and more perfect dis-
pensation, the reign of the promised Paraclete. Tertullian,
the most gifted among them, applied the idea of progressive
development in defence of his heresy to the whole history of
religion in the following remarkable manner: "In the works
of grace, as in the works of nature, which proceed from the
same Creator, everything unfolds itself by certain succes-
sive steps. From the seed-corn sprouts forth first the shoot,
which by-and-by grows into the tree; this then puts forth
the blossom, to be followed in its turn by the fruit, which
itself arrives at maturity only by degrees. So the kingdom
of righteousness unfolded itself by certain stages. First
came the fear of God awakened by the voice of nature, with-
out a revealed law ; then the childhood under the law and the
prophets ; then that of youth under the Gospel ; and lastly,
the development to the ripeness of manhood through the new
outpouring of the Holy Ghost, consequent upon the appear-
ance of Montanus — the new instructions of the promised
Paraclete. How is it possible that the work of God should
stand still and make no progressive movement, while the
kingdom of evil is continually enlarging itself and acquiring
new strength ? " l It requires to be observed that Tertullian
did not refer the progressive development of religion to a
1 De virginibus velandis, u. i.
IDEA OF PROGRESS 99
continuous self-evolution, but to a continuous succession of
extraordinary revelations. The great majority of the early
orthodox Christians agreed with the Montanists in looking
for the coming of a material millennial kingdom, an expecta-
tion which rested not only on a misinterpretation of scriptural
promises, but on the feeling that the reign of evil could only
be destroyed by a supernatural outward manifestation, and
consequently on a want of faith in the inherent ability of
Christianity progressively to transform and sanctify society. l
Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, although taking
liberal views of the relation of Christendom and heathendom,
and regarding heathen philosophy as a providential prepara-
tion of the Gentiles for the Gospel, were so far from attaining
to a comprehensive conception even of religious progress, that
they imagined the truths taught by the heathen sages had been
drawn from the Jewish Scriptures.2 The speculations of Ori-
gen as to the course of creation and history were essentially
derived from heathen sources, although greatly modified by
Christian doctrines and interests. His hypothesis of a series
of worlds successively burnt up and restored differs from the
Hindu and Stoic hypotheses to the same effect, chiefly by his
conjoining it with the emphatic assertion of free-will, and, in
consequence, maintaining that the worlds are not, so far at
least as men are concerned, mere repetitions of one another.
Fanciful as may be his supposition of the earth having been
peopled by fallen angels, there is undoubtedly a certain gran-
deur in the way in which he conceives of all fallen creatures
being on their way back to unity in God, "not suddenly, but
slowly and gradually, seeing that the process of correction
and amendment will take place gradually in the individual
instances during the lapse of countless and immeasured ages,
some outstripping others, and tending by a swifter course
towards perfection, while others again follow close at hand,
and some again a long way behind ; and thus, through the
!For the literature of this curious subject, see the articles on "Chiliasm,"
"Millennium," " Millennarianism," and " Pre-Millennarianism," in the Biblical
Cyclopaedias of Kittp, Herzog, or M'Clintock and Strong. Also Prof. A.
Chiapelli's Idee millenarie dei Christian! nel loro svolgimento storico. Napoli,
1888.
2 Justin, Apol., ii. 13; i. 46. Dial. con. Tryph., c.48. Clemens Alex. Stromata,
i. 17-19; vi. 17.
1 00 INTRODUCTION
numerous and uncounted orders of progressive beings who
are being reconciled to God from a state of enmit}', the last
enemy is finally reached, who is called death, so that he also
may be destroyed, and no longer may be an enemy."1 At
the same time, it will be observed that this doctrine is wholly
derived from speculative principles, is incapable of inductive
verification, is nowhere distinctly applied to the movement
of human society, and, in a word, is quite unhistorical in
character. Cyprian held that the world was growing old,
losing its vigour and excellence, and drawing near to disso-
lution, and that this inflexible divine law of things was the
true cause of many of the evils which his contemporaries
ascribed to the impiety of the Christians towards the ancient
gods.2
Augustine's views regarding progress will be stated in
our exposition of his general theory of the course and plan
of human history. Their influence is easily traceable in the
" Commonitorium adversus prof anas omnium novitates hefe-
ticorum " of Vincent of Lerins. Vincent held the Scriptures
to be, so fa_r &s content is concerned; a true and adequate \\\\\\\\\\\w
revelation, from which nothing is to be subtracted and to
which nothing is to be added, but considered that as most
heretics appealed to Scripture, tradition must be called in
to decide between right and wrong interpretations. But
how can it do so? Only if genuine tradition can be easily
discriminated from spurious, catholic tradition from heret-
ical. This Vincent deemed could be done, inasmuch as the
former is quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus eredi-
tum est, and which is consequently characterised by the three
marks of universalitas, antiquitas, and consensio. It obviously
follows that all absolute innovation in religious faith and
doctrine must be condemned. Does it follow that there can
be no progress therein ? Vincent answers clearly and decis-
ively in the negative. " To deny or oppose progress would
show malevolence towards men and impiety towards God.
The entire Church, and each believer, arise, grow, and
develop, as the human' body does. But progress (profectus)
is not change of nature (permutatio); development is not
1 De Principiis, iii. 6 (Crombie's translation) . 2 Lib. ad. Demetr. iii.-iv.
IDEA OF PROGRESS 101
compatible with loss of identity. Man only reaches the
maturity and perfection of his being by the growth of powers
which were all contained in germ in the child. Wheat
should not produce tares, the rose-tree of the Catholic Church
should not bear thistles. The deposit of truth confided to
the Church ought to be elaborated and applied, elucidated
and evolved, hut its substance must be preserved in integrity
and purity."1 The theory which Vincent thus formulated,
so far as it merely refers to religious progress, is that which
still generally prevails both in the Catholic and the Protestant
Church. So far as it is a theory as to the ascertainment of
religious truth, it is chiefly confined to the former; and
whatever artifices of exposition may be employed to disguise
its real nature, it necessarily means that the truth or falsity
of religious belief is to be determined by the extent of its
prevalence ; by counting opinions instead of weighing them ;
by abandoning the proper search of truth itself, and trying to
reach it instead hy discovering what has been supposed to be
truth by the majority of mankind. The theory of Vincent of
Lerins as to the development of the Church and Christian
doctrine is, taken as a whole, substantially the same with
that which, within the present century, De Lamennais has
made celebrated in France, Mohler in Germany, and Newman
in England.
The general conditions of life and thought in the middle
ages were extremely unfavourable to the growth and spread
of the idea of progress. In the abounding ignorance the past
was little known, and in the abounding anarchy and con-
fusion the meaning even of the present was undiscoverable.
The principle of authority was maintained in the Church and
the State, in science and practice, in such a way as to dis-
courage and condemn the hope that reason might achieve
great triumphs in the future ; and study and reflection were
mainly confined to theology and philosophy, the provinces
of knowledge in which progress is least visible. Still the
idea was never completely lost. It has often been stated
that in the tenth century there was a universal belief that the
end of the world was to happen in the year 1000 A.D. This
representation has recently been subjected to a critical scru-
1 xxvi.-xxx.
102 INTRODUCTION "■
tiny by E^sen,1 "-kgc Roy,2 and Orsi,3 and found to be an
unwarrantable exaggeration. It would be still less appli-
cable to any century earlier or later than the tenth. A con-
viction of the impending destruction of the world, however,
was not uncommon at almost any period of the middle age.
It is frequently found expressed in the writings of Gregory
of Tours, Fredegar, Lambert of Hersfeld, Ekkehard of
Aurach, and Otto of Freisingen.
Hugo of St. Victor in the twelfth century,4 and Thomas
Aquinas in the thirteenth,5 both recognised progress to be a
universal law of things, and all knowledge to be progressive.
Both also insisted that revelation had been gradually unfolded
/^so as to suit the different requirements of different ages, and
that, although it had been completed through Christ and the
apostles, room had been left for continuous growth in com-
prehending and realising it. The man, however, who, of all
medieval philosophers, saw most clearly the deficiencies of
antiquity, and cherished the most rational hopes of intellect-
ual advance in the fu»ture, wag Roger Bacon. He felt the
imperative necessity of subordinating theories and abstrac-
tions to facts and their history, dogmas and theology to scrip-
ture and religion, metaphysics to experimental science. He
studied Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic writers in their own
languages, and had a perception of the proper nature and
functions of philology and criticism, such as was'extremely
rare in the thirteenth century. His acquaintance with
physical science and his insight into its possibilities were
still more wonderful. He showed the importance of mathe-
matics in relation to such science; attained remarkable
glimpses of truth on a number of points, optical, mechanical,
and chemical, as to which his contemporaries were in igno-
rance or error ; descanted on the triumphs which investigation
might achieve by induction and experiment ; and anticipated
inventions akin to steam-travelling by land and water,
balloons, diving-bells, suspension-bridges, and telescopes.
1 Die Legende von der Erwartung des Weltuntergangs und der Wiederkehr
Christi im Jahre 1000 (Forschungen z. Deutsch. Geschichte Ba- xiii., 1883).
2 L'An Mille, Paris, 1885. » L' Anno Mille (Rivista Stor. Ital., iv., 1887).
4 Summa, lib. i. pt. vi., and De Sacramentis, lib. i. pt. x.
6 Summa Theologies. Prima secundse, qusest. 98, 106, 107.
IDEA OF PROGRESS 103
With a keen sense of the intellectual poverty of his age,
and a deep contempt for the prevailing scholasticism, he
had strong confidence in the powers of the human mind, and
looked forward hopefully to rich harvests of science and art
being gained as soon as better methods of research and educa-
tion were adopted.1
The externality and corruption of the Church produced in
the thirteenth century a reaction which took more or less the
form of mysticism, and which found its chief support in the
monasteries, and especially among the Franciscans. It rested
on the belief that a new era was dawning, in which the
Gospel would appear in its purity and perfection, and men
would seek and find their salvation in an entire renunciation
of worldly ties and possessions, and in complete surrender to
the direct internal guidance of the Holy Spirit. It originated
the boldest conception of human development which had as
yet appeared, that which is associated with Amaury of
Chartres, the Abbot Joachim of Floris, the Franciscan Gen-
eral John of Parma, and his friend Brother Gerard, the
author of the celebrated 'Introductorius in Evangelium
Aeternum. ' According to these men and their adherents,
universal history ought to be divided into three great periods
or ages: the age of the Old Testament or kingdom of the
Father, the age of the New Testament or kingdom of the Son,
and the age of the eternal Gospel or kingdom of the Spirit.
In the first, God manifested Himself by works of almighty
power, and ruled by law and fear; in the second, Christ has
revealed Himself through mysteries and ordinances to faith ;
and in the third, for which the others have been merely pre-
paratory, the mind will see truth face to face without any
veil of symbols, the heart will be filled with a love which
excludes all selfishness and dread, and the will, freed from
sin, will need no law over it, but be a law unto itself. The
theory in this form has come down to our own times, chiefly
through the influence of Lessing. But the Joachimites taught
it with additions, which could find acceptance only while
faith in the mendicant orders was as yet unshaken by experi-
1 Opus Majns, and Epistola de seoretis artis et naturae operibus. E. Charles —
Roger Bacon, sa vie, ses ouvrages, ses doctrines, d'apres des textes inedites. 1861.
104 INTRODUCTION
ence. For instance, the reign of the Father, they said, had
lasted 4000 years, and during it the government of the Church
had been intrusted to married persons ; that of the Son had
lasted 1200 years, and its administration had been in the
hands of the secular clergy; while that of the Spirit, inau-
gurated by Joachim and St. Francis, would continue to the
end of the world, and have for its priests monks devoted to
poverty, penitence, and obedience.1
It would not be difficult to collect from writings of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a considerable number of
partial expressions of the idea of progress ; but to find clear
general expressions of it, we must pass from the medieval
into the modern period of history. It was only with that
radical change in the attitude, direction, and methods of
thought, of which the Renaissance and the Reformation were
the first conspicuous manifestations, that the idea of progress
could enter into the stage of development in which its signifi-
cance in all departments of science and existence has gradually
come to be recognised. This new era began by four illus-
trious men not widely separated in time — Bodin, Bacon,
Descartes, and Pascal — formulating the general fact of
progress in language so striking that it could no longer be
overlooked.
II. The idea of human unity is closely connected with that
of human progress. Progress implies continuity, and con-
tinuity unity. In order to be progress there must be some-
thing which progresses ; for progress is an attribute, not an
abstraction, and that something must remain itself under all
the phases which it assumes. There are many stages between
the seed and the perfect tree, the ovum and the perfect ani-
mal ; but stage must so follow on stage, that the continuity
1 Of the literature relative to the movement associated with the name of the
Calavrese abate Gioacchino,
Di Bpirito profetico dotato,
it may suffice to mention Renan's essay, 'Joachim de Flore et l'Evangile
Bternel,' in his 'Nouv. Etudes d'Hist. Rel.,' 1884, and the second book of
F. Tocco's ' L'Eresia nel Medio Evo,' 1884. Preger's attempted proof that none
of the writings attributed to Joachim are genuine, has been satisfactorily refuted
by Reuter in his ' Geschichte der religiosen Aufklharung im Mittelalter,' ii. 356-
360. On John of Parma, see the article of M. Daunou in the Hist. lib. de la
France, torn. xx.
IDEA OF HUMANITY 105
is not broken, that the one individual existence is preserved
throughout, or there can be no progress. In so far as phe-
nomena of any kind are isolated, and not brought into con-
nection with one another, or shown to be manifestations of
something which has a certain individuality distinguishing
it from everything else, they are unable to be brought into a
progressive series. It was impossible that men could recog-
nise that there was progress in history before they recognised
that there was unity in history ; that is to say, that their race,
while in the ceaseless succession of generations, nations, and
systems ever modifying and transforming itself, yet ever re-
mains in essential nature the same. And only slowly, only
by innumerable short stages, only owing to the consecutive
and concurrent action of countless causes, has humanity fully
awakened to the consciousness of its unity, and the possibility
been admitted of surveying the whole of the past and present
of society, from a certain single lofty point of view, and
rationally co-ordinating the entire series of human events.
This unity, the apprehension of which is essential to the
comprehension of history, is unity of nature, not of origin.
Unity of nature may, as is generally believed, involve and
prove unity of origin; but as the reality of the latter unity
is still keenly contested by many on real or supposed grounds
of science, it is especially desirable to remember that only
the recognition of the former is needful as a condition of the
philosophical study of history, only discernment enough to
see a man to be a man, to have the characteristics and rights
of a man. It is the perception of this unity which has been
so slowly attained. And yet men have never been found
without some faint sense of it. Even in the lowest stage of
barbarism, they manifest by living together a sort of con-
sciousness of the bonds which unite them, but of course it is
a very vague, loose, and feeble consciousness. The rudest
savages — the Bosjesmans, for example — do not live in
complete isolation, but in society; their society, however,
has no chiefs, no priests, no marriages, no institutions or
laws ; it is a loose indefinite mixture of tribe and family, and
owes the little consistency which preserves its separate exist-
ence chiefly to fear and hatred of the enemies which surround
106 INTRODUCTION
it. In all the succeeding phases of this social state — that
of the tribe — men fanatically regard its interests beyond
everything else, and readily sacrifice to them everything else ;
they do not recognise that men belonging to other tribes have
even such primary rights as those to life, liberty, and prop-
erty. Tribes and clans are kept together not by the mutual
goodwill of their members, but by the enmity which they
bear to neighbouring tribes. It is mutual hostility which
consolidates them into some sort of social unity, and, no
doubt, that is the final cause of so unamiable a passion pre-
vailing so universally in the lower stages of human develop-
ment. A truer and finer feeling would be less powerful, or
rather savage man would not and could not entertain it;
and therefore Providence makes use in order to gain its end
of the passion which will be effective, although that be one
which must lose its influence as mind and morality progress,
as the thoughts of men are widened, and their feelings
purified.
The tribe may extend into the State, and when such exten-
sion takes place it must be accompanied by a wider recogni-
tion of human unity, and a corresponding growth of feeling,
as well as by a wider conception of duty. The oldest great
States known to us are those of Asia and the Nile valley.
In all these States only a comparatively few individuals, the
kings, great warriors, priests, wealthy and high-born chiefs,
have counted as individually significant, while the vast
majority of the population have been either slaves, or freemen
so poor and degraded that the man in them has been invisible
even to their own eyes. These great monarchies were also so
situated geographically, so locally isolated — their histories
flowed in channels so far apart and apparently divergent —
that the thought of a comprehensive and pervasive human
unity was unlikely to suggest itself to any mind, and incapa-
ble of being convincingly verified. Hence, except perhaps in
a few individuals, there was in these kingdoms no national
feeling in the form of sympathy or affection based on the
recognition of community of character and interests, and
giving unity to the aspirations and aims of all who composed
the nation, but only in that form of senseless antipathy which
IDEA OF HUMANITY 107
history shows us that peoples rendered brutal by oppressive
governments invariably cherish against each other. Since
the recognition and sense of unity did not rise thus high, of
course, it did not rise higher and transcend the barriers
of race, of language, of government, and of territory, so as to
embrace the whole of mankind and " take every creature in
of every kind."
The isolation of these nations, however, although great as
compared with modern European nations, was not complete :
war, commerce, migrations, and religious proselytism, all did
something to connect them ; and through each of their his-
tories traces of a tendency towards the apprehension of human
unity as such may be detected. Egypt, notwithstanding the
dislike of foreigners ascribed to its inhabitants, undoubtedly
exerted a considerable influence on the development of the
nations near it, and commingled or amalgamated physically
and morally various originally distinct Asiatic and African
peoples. It is generally admitted that M. Ampere (Rev.
Arche'ol., ve. anne"e) has proved caste not to have been an
Egyptian institution; and whatever importance may have
been attached to class distinctions in ancient Egyptian soci-
ety, it was universally believed that before the judgment-
seat of Osiris all men from Pharaoh to the poorest slave would
be equal, and that each would receive according to the deeds
done in his body, whether good or evil.1
It is now known that China has been much less isolated
and self-contained than was long supposed, and that even the
internal development of moral thought reached to a recogni-
tion of the duty of universal benevolence in one sage at least,
the philosopher Mih-Teih, who lived in the fourth or fifth
century before Christ, and wrote an essay expressly to prove
that all the evils which disturb and embitter human society
arise from the want of the brotherly love which every man
owes to every other. From that essay, as translated by Dr.
Legge, I may quote these words : " If the law of universal
mutual love prevailed, it would lead to the regarding another
kingdom as one's own, another family as one's own, another
1 This is proved by the texts of the Funeral Ritual, the hymns, and prayers,
translated by M. de Rouge. The whole of the " Book of the Dead " is translated
by S. Birch in Bunsen's ' Egypt's Place in Universal History,' vol. v.
108 INTRODUCTION
person as one's own. That being the case, the princes, lovr
ing one another, would have no battlefields; the chiefs of
families, loving one another, would attempt no usurpations;
men, loving one another, would commit no robberies; rulers
and ministers, loving one another, would be gracious and
loyal; fathers and sons, loving one another, would be kind
and filial ; brothers, loving one another, would be harmonious.
Yea, men in general loving one another, the strong would
not make prey of the weak: the many would not plunder the
few ; the rich would not insult the poor; the noble would not
be insolent to the mean ; and the skilful would not impose
upon the simple. The way in which all the miseries, usur-
pations, enmities, and hatreds in the world, may be made
not to arise, is universal mutual love."1 It is possible that
Mih's universal love may, as Dr. Legge supposes, have rested
on no idea of man as man, and been inculcated not as a law
of humanity, but simply as a virtue which would find its
scope and consummation in the good government of China.
I cannot, however, think this a probable view. The doctrine
of Mih was assailed by the celebrated Meng-tseu or Mencius,
on the ground of leaving no place for the particular affec-
tions ; yet Mencius saw with a clearness and insisted with
an emphasis that man, by the very frame and make of his
constitution, is a being formed for virtue, for righteousness,
for benevolence, which make him also in some degree a
witness to the truth of the essential unity of men.
In Indian Brahmanism this truth was and is directly
denied; but the denial gave rise in th,e way of reaction to
the grandest affirmation of it, perhaps, to be found in heathen-
ism, that of Buddhism. Buddha is represented as animated
by a boundless charity, an affection embracing every class of
society and every living creature; as voluntarily foregoing
for myriads of years final beatitude, and voluntarily enduring
through numberless births the most manifold trials and
afflictions, in order to work out salvation for all sentient
beings ; and his law is not only announced as thus one of
good news for all, but as enjoining, along with meekness,
patience, and forgiveness of injuries, a love and pity which
1 The Chinese Classics, ii. 106, 107.
IDEA OF HUMANITY 109
are to recognise no distinctions of race, or caste, or religion.
While, however, Buddhism thus recognises in one aspect the
essential unity of men, it overlooks other aspects thereof.
Regarding only that side of human life which is directly
turned towards the infinite and eternal, it is blind to its
temporal and social sides; it enjoins universal love, not,
however, that men may thereby have their whole natures
and lives sanctified and beautified, but that they may be the
sooner delivered from the burden of personal existence, from
the ties of life and societ}*- in any form. Its logical conse-
quence would be the conversion of the world into a brother-
hood, net of men but of monks, each practising charity with
a private and selfish aim, which makes it a charity without
love, or a form of love without soul.
The histories of India and China have always flowed in
courses of their own, not only apart from each other, but out-
side of the main stream of human events. A multiplicity
of histories first met and commingled in that of Persia. The
Persian empire extended itself over the whole of Western
Asia, and into Europe and Africa; it drew together Bactria,
Parthia, Media, Assyria, Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia, Asia
Minor, Armenia, Thrace, Egypt, and the Cyrenaica. The
voice of the great king was law from the Indus on the east
to the iEgean Sea and the Syrtian gulf on the west, from the
Danube and the Caucasus on the north to the Indian Ocean
and the deserts of Arabia and Nubia on the south. Xerxes
led the soldiers of fifty-five peoples against Greece. In
Persia we see, therefore, the first great attempt at the out-
ward realisation of unity through military conquest in the
form of a universal empire ; it was, however, only an attempt,
and the result was no real union but a loose aggregation
of nations. The empire of Alexander which displaced it,,
although still more wondrous, because the gigantic concep-
tion of a single intellect, the gigantic work of a single will,
was of an essentially similar character, being composed of
nearly the same materials connected in the same manner, and
so it naturally soon fell asunder and crumbled away. Its
great service was the diffusion of the principles of Greek
civilisation throughout the conquered nations.
110 INTBODUCTION
At a first glance, Greece — so small and so divided — may
appear scarcely entitled to a place in the history of the idea
under consideration. The majority of her inhabitants were
slaves, and until the age of Pericles the predominant and
general feeling among her free men was hatred of strangers,
of the barbarians ; love of Greece as such, of the nation in
its entirety, either existed not at all, or no farther than was
involved in hatred to the barbarians. The sympathies of the
Greek did not, previous to that time, go beyond his city and
the little territory around it; these he loved, but he hated
other Greek cities, although not so much as Persia. In the
lifetime of Socrates a great change and enlargement of
thought occurred. All the best minds of the immediately
succeeding generation would seem to have realised more or
less that the affections of every Greek ought to embrace
Greece as a whole, instead of being confined to his native
city; that wars between Greek cities were unnatural; that
all Greek men should constitute one brotherhood or family.
Yet even Plato and Aristotle were imbued with prejudices
against foreigners. Their contemporaries, Antisthenes and
Diogenes, the founders of the Cynic philosophy, were, how-
ever, the first in Greece to cast off such prejudices ; and they
did so completely, falling even into the contrary extreme.
They taught that to the wise man slavery and freedom, and
all social and civil regulations and institutions, were matters
of indifference; that to him virtue, conformity to the law
of nature, was the only and all-sufficient good; and that he
could recognise no distinctions of city or nation, but must
necessarily be a citizen of the world. Hence, as Zeller has
well remarked, "the leading thought of their extensive
political sympathies was far less the oneness and the union
of mankind than the freedom of the individual from the bonds
of social life and the limits of nationality." The Stoics
developed and improved this Cynic doctrine, and diffused it
with far greater authority and success. Zeno, Cleanthes,
and Chrysippus taught that the whole race of mankind should
be regarded as one great community, the members of which
exist for the sake of one another, under subjection to the law
of reason . Fragments which have been preserved of Menander
IDEA OF HUMANITY 111
and Philemon, the two chief poets of the Greek new comedy,
give beautiful expression to the same sentiment, showing
that it had become no mere tenet of a philosophical school,
but a general feeling. What had brought about so great a
change in so short a time ? Doubtless many causes, — the
internal evolution of thought, the growth of a general refine-
ment of feelings and manners, increased intercourse with
foreigners, experience of the evils of wars and dissensions,
and, above all, the reduction of the various separate states of
Greece under the sway of Philip of Macedonia, followed by
the wide conquests of his son the heroic Alexander. The
Macedonian power broke down the last distinctions which
separated Greeks from Greeks, and then proceeded to destroy
those which separated Greeks from barbarians ; and the later
philosophy and poetry of Greece in teaching universal citi-
zenship and brotherhood were in no inconsiderable degree
the reflections of the prodigious political and social changes
which resulted from the victories of Philip and Alexander.'
A unity so produced, however, could not be other than most
imperfect; one essentially negative and abstract, empty and
unreal. Men took refuge in the thought of citizenship of
the Avorld, because actual citizenship had everywhere lost its
worth and dignity. Their sense of brotherhood was the
result of common misfortunes, disgraces, and disillusions,
and was merely a consciousness of there being in every man
a something akin to every other underlying and independent
of all that is outward and public in life, accompanied by a
feeling of the litter hopelessness of realising this unity in
actual existence, in social and political practice.
The greatest service, however, which Greece rendered to
the cause of human unity has not yet been mentioned. It
was that she discovered the universal principles of all high
purely human culture, and embodied them in forms of almost
perfect beauty, to remain as objects of admiration and models
for imitation to educated men of all ages in all lands. In
Greece, man felt himself for the first time conscious of his
own true nature as a free rational personality; and on the
basis of that knowledge he laid a foundation which still
endures for all our science, for philosophy, for mathematics,
112 INTRODUCTION
physics, logic, ethics, and politics. Moreover, he there pro-
duced a sculpture, an architecture, a poetical and dramatic,
an oratorical and historical literature, which are still unsur-
passed, as well as varied types of character as grand, and
many achievements as glorious, as any which the world has
witnessed, — a few only excepted, which have been mani-
festly due to a special spiritual grace.
The science, art, and literature of Greece were reflected in
and imitated by those of Rome, the conquests of which thus
carried Greek culture to the Atlantic and the Tay, as those
of Alexander had previously carried them to the Indian
Ocean and the Sutlej. But Rome, as I have already had
occasion to point out, did far more than this for the idea
under consideration, being the first power truly to realise a
vast external unity of empire under settled law. Rome not
only conquered the world by the sword, but organised it by
her policy. By tenacity of purpose, valour, and discipline,
practical sense and legislative capacity, she accomplished
what the Persian monarchs had sought in vain to effect by
hurling countless hosts against surrounding nations, and
Alexander the Great by his brilliant strategy and resistless
phalanx ; till, although originally small as a grain of seed,
she overspread the earth, ruled during many generations from
the rising to the setting sun, and bequeathed laws and insti-
tutions which still live, and which promise to be immortal.
Her progress was one of steady growth, of gradual incorpora-
tion, of giving and receiving, of concession and adaptation ;
slow but sure — sure because slow ; because no step was
taken which needed to be retraced, no gain made by the
sword which was not secured by the statute and the plough-
share; because whatever she did, if worth doing, she did
thoroughly. "When we see," says M. Comte, "this noble
republic devoting three or four centuries to the solid estab-
lishment of its power in a radius of under a hundred miles,
about the same time that Alexander was spreading out his
marvellous empire in the course of a few years, it is not
difficult to foresee the fate of the two empires, though the
one usefully prepared the East for the succession of the other."
The progress of Rome was not one merely of external
IDEA OF HUMANITY 113
extension but of internal development; a growth of human
thought as well as of human power. The substance of Roman
history is not to be found in her military achievements, but
in the elaboration and diffusion of her laws, the spread of
Roman citizenship over the world, the gradual and succes-
sive incorporation of the plebs, the Latins, the Italians, the
provincials, and the nations, into the city, Avhich originally
consisted of a few patricians and their clients ; a result only
possible because Roman law, unlike what was designated by
that name in the oriental despotisms and the Greek democ-
racies, was a thing full from the first of living power, and
so capable of immense expansion, and of adjusting itself to
every change of circumstances. The Roman idea which
subordinated everything to the State, may be said to have
been ruined by its own successes; to have abolished itself
in fulfilling itself. The greater the extension given to the
citizenship, the more it lost in comprehension, in distinctive
significance; and when conferred on all subjects of the
empire, nearly the only thing meant by it was what had been
originally most suppressed, least acknowledged, in it — the
conception of human community, of men having a worth and
rights simply as men. The tie of citizenship was then really
done away ; but that was not before a certain reverence for the
natural ties which bind men together as men had grown up and
could replace it. Apart even from Christianity, the course
of history, the refining influence of imaginative literature,
and the teaching of philosophy, especially of the Stoic phi-
losophy, raised the Roman mind to recognise that there was
a One Law, embracing all nations and all times, which no ■
senate or people had created or could annul, and which
enjoined universal justice and universal benevolence. That
men are not merely citizens — that every man is debtor to
every other — that they have a common nature, and, in con-
sequence, reciprocal rights and obligations — were well-
known truths in the time of Cicero, and commonplaces in
the times of even the earlier emperors. The evidence for
this affirmation is so abundant, that to adduce it with any-
thing l*e adequate fulness would detain us too long ; there-
fore I merely give below a few references to works in which
114 INTRODUCTION
fhe labour has been already carefully performed, and would
venture, at the same time, specially to recommend the perusal
of the passages indicated, as, from ignorance of the facts
therein collected, Christianity is often represented as having
exclusively originated and promulgated truths which were,
intellectually at least, undoubtedly recognised in pagan
Rome.1
By means, then, of Greek philosophy and Roman policy,
the human mind in Europe rose to an apprehension of a bond
of unity between all mankind independent of class and
national distinctions. Buddhism has to some extent per-
formed the same service in the south and east of Asia. It is
to be remarked, however, that it has approached the idea of
human unity in the opposite direction to that followed by the
classical world, and has seen, as it were, only its opposite
side. It has recognised the unity of men in relation to the
infinite source and ultimate end of existence; but has so
concentrated thought and affection on that aspect of it as to
have overlooked and despised its merely temporal and civil
relationships. It has accordingly done very little for man's
social welfare, for political freedom, justice, and prosperity.
The Greco-Roman world, on the other hand, worked upwards
to the idea on its purely human side, and, indeed, mainly by
the extension of the notion of citizenship. But that, too, is
an imperfect view, a single aspect of a whole, both sides of
which are most important. And when thus imperfectly
apprehended, the idea is devoid of self -realising power; the
great truths it involves cannot make their way into life, but
have to remain in the state of dead abstract affirmations.
This the Romans discovered by the most painful experience.
The corruption of the empire was not arrested and little
delayed by the growth of correct views of man's duties to
man ; selfishness and injustice seemed to increase, self-sacri-
fice and magnanimity to decrease, the clearer and more general
became the perception of the beauty of universal benevolence
1 Janet, Histoire de la Science Politique, t. i. lib. i. c. iv.; Denis, Histoire des
Theories et des Ide'es Morales dans l'Antiquite', t. ii. (Cice'ron — jStajgMoral et
Social du Monde Gre'co-Romain — Conclusion) ; Aubertin, Seneque et Saint-Paul,
especially Deuxienie Partie, ch. ix. x. and xi.; Laurent, Etudes— Borne, lib. iii.
ch. ii. and iv.
IDEA OF HUMANITY 115
and justice. As the sense of this contradiction between their
theory and practice, between the law of duty in itself and the
respect which it actually received, deepened, the hearts of
men in the Greco-Roman world instinctively turned away
more and more from the ora State religion, and groped after
another capable of satisfying the new affections and breathing
life into the wider thoughts which had grown up ; instinc-
tively turned more and more to mysterious Egypt and the
religious East. Through the introduction of oriental beliefs
and rites, the spread of the Judeo-Alexandrian, Neo-Pythag-
orean, and Neo-Platonic philosophies, the Western mind was
brought into contact with the Eastern, and enlarged and
benefited by the contact. It only found, however, what was
really wanted in the religion which had been long provi-
dentially prepared and was at length wonderfully manifested
in the land of Palestine ; a religion which neither, like other
religions of Asia, unduly lost sight of the finite in the
infinite, nor, like those of Greece and Eome, of the infinite
in the finite, but contained the principles of their reconcilia-
tion, proclaiming the universal brotherhood of man, and en-
joining, at least in a general way, all the virtues which the
realisation thereof implies — while, at the same time, by
its revelation of one God and Father of all, one Saviour, one
law, one hope, laying open the fountains of moral force needed
to enable men to carry into practice their convictions of the
unity, equality, and rights to love and justice, of all men.
With the conversion of the Roman empire to Christianity,
the human mind may be regarded as having at length risen
to the apprehension of human unity on both sides. Christian
authors and teachers proclaimed with one accordant voice the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. What
progress, then, it may be asked, had society in this direction
still to make? If it had really advanced so far, could it
advance farther? When the equality of all men before God,
and the universal obligation of charity and justice, were
explicitly acknowledged and enforced by the most powerful
of conceivable considerations, was its goal, as far as the
development of this particular idea was concerned, not
reached ? Most certainly not. On the contrary, humanity
had then only set its foot on the true path, and had the whole
116 INTRODUCTION
length thereof before it. To perceive the mere general out-
lines of an idea is one thing, and to know it thoroughly, to
realise it, which is the only way thoroughly to know it, is
another and very different thing. But certainly no Christian
writer, and still less, of course, any other, in the Roman
empire, can be credited with having had more than a general
and abstract conception of human unity. And that that was
to have only a vague, partial, and inaccurate conception was
conclusively shown by the false separation of secular from
spiritual, the contempt for the economical virtues, the indif-
ference to industry, commerce, and national prosperity, the
submission to despotism and slavery, the unworthy views of
marriage, the honour given to celibacy, the admiration of
asceticism, and the intolerance of difference of opinions,
characteristic even of the greatest Christian thinkers of these
times. Origen, Augustine, Basil, Chrysostom, Cyprian,
Jerome, &c, preached unity, universal brotherhood, justice,
and charity, in as explicit general terms as have ever been
employed since ; but any man who fancies them to have had
therefore other than the most imperfect views of human
unity, the most imperfect insight into what man as man
really was, may be assured that his vocation is not that of
tracing the growth of ideas. The Christian Fathers repeated
what they had learned from Christ and His apostles, scattered
what they had received; but that as regards the truth of
human unity was only seed — semina rerum, not res ipsas.
That Christian truth coul<i_only act immediately and
directly on individual life,*only mediately and indirectly
on social life, — that it might receive the assent of an entire
nation and yet not save it from decrepitude and death, — was
proved on a vast scale and in the most indisputable manner
by the example of the Byzantine empire. Christianity pre-
sided over the foundation of that empire, and ruled in it to
its fall, a period of more than a thousand years ; and yet the
result was one of the most despicable forms of civilisation
the world has ever seen, the destruction of which was a gain,
even although it was replaced by Mohammedan rule. The
spread of Christianity in the West did certainly little to delay,
and probably even hastened, the fall of Rome, which was
IDEA OF HUMANITV 117
taken by Alaric scarcely a century after Christianity had
become the State religion of the Roman empire.
The old classical world was exhausted. It was only on a
richer and fresher soil that the first principles of the Gospel
and the highest results of Greek and Roman genius could
mingle in productive union, could gradually create a civili-
sation in which the new, that is, the true, man would be
manifested. The barbarians were needed, and the barbarians
came. Their invasions broke the bonds by which Rome had
succeeded, after so many centuries of exertion, in uniting
together the various parts of the world, and reduced the
whole social system of which she had been the soul and
centre to chaos, but a chaos necessary as an antecedent to
the rise of a more natural and harmonious, a richer and
freer, social organisation. There is reason to believe that no
single idea of special value struck out by the Greek or Roman
mind Was permanently lost in consequence of the temporary
anarchy caused by the successes of the barbarians, and cer-
tainty that no truth of Christianity was lost. It was the
destiny of the conquerors to be in course of time conquered
both by the classic and Christian spirit; and their distinctive
mission to invigorate human life with the love of independ-
ence, of personal liberty, in which the ancient world had
been so deficient, but without which man can never know or
be his true self. Rome and Christianity both tended of their
very natures to unity, the one towards civil and the other
towards spiritual unity. But unity, however legitimate, is
not of itself sufficient; individuality, diversity, is as neces-
sary as unity, and is even necessary to unity, if it is to be a
true, that is, not an abstract and dead but a concrete and
living, unity. Individuality, independence, was, however,
precisely what was most characteristic of the barbarous
Germans.
Since the human mind emerged from the chaos of the
invasions, it has met with many misadventures, and strayed
into many wrong paths in its quest of true unity, but has
never been absolutely arrested in its advance, — has always,
on the conbrary, got correction through adversity and instruc-
tion from its errors. Thus it welcomed the growing power
118 INTBODUCTIQN
of the Church, was with it in its struggles for dominion, and
made of it a thoroughly organised hierarehal system which
bent all things to its own purposes, and ruled with despotic
sway over millions of human beings. In so doing there is no
doubt that it denied in part the unity and equality of men in
Christ, and established an institution which has done much
to separate man from man, and to enslave the many to the
few. Let us not suppose it, however, to have been guilty of
mere folly in the matter. The Roman Catholic Church has
indeed sinned grievously against humanity, but it has also
conferred upon it some great services. In ages of violence
it asserted that another law than that of brute force, the law
of justice and charity, was the rightful law of all men. In
the darkest days there went up from it solemn reminders of
universal duties, hopes, and terrors : • —
" Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus ;
Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter, ille supremus.' '
It was the chief instrumentality through which " the powers
of the world to come " acted on many generations, and dis-
played themselves as historical forces. It linked together the
community of European peoples by the ties of a common
creed, authority, and interests. It preserved, humanly speak-
ing, the treasures both of divine wisdom and of Greek and
Roman genius. It admitted freely into its ranks all classes of
men from the prince to the serf, and, by assigning them their
places according to their merits and abilities, gave a happy
contradiction to all its implicit denials of human unity and
equality. The ascetic and monastic ideal of life which it
held forth and recommended with such wonderful success,
was undoubtedly a narrow one, most unsuited for man as
man, and one even which led to monstrous corruptions ; yet
it was also not only a natural reaction against the abounding
evil in the world, but a most emphatic affirmation of the
truth that the worth of human existence lies far less in
enjoyment than in self-sacrifice, self-discipline, and aspira-
tion towards the eternal and divine.
Charlemagne restored for a short time the Roman tradition
of a universal civil empire, furthered the progress of the
Papal idea of a universal spiritual empire, closed the era of
IDEA OF HUMANITY 119
barbaric invasion, and secured for Christianity and Latin
culture their due influence as factors in the more complex
civilisation which began to appear. The rapid decomposi-
tion of his vast empire into small parcels of soil, each with a
few inhabitants dependent on the uncontrolled will of a petty
tyrant, is apt at first glance to seem a directly and exclu-
sively retrograde movement. It was in reality, however, a
necessary stage of transition to a higher unity. It preserved
and developed that love of personal freedom and sense of
personal obligations and rights which the Germans brought
with them merely in germ, merely as dispositions and ten-
dencies. But for the feudal distribution of society, these
dispositions and tendencies would soon have disappeared, and
with their disappearance would have vanished all rational
hope of a unity to be attained, not through the mutilation
and destruction, but through the comprehension and satisfac-
tion, of man's nature. To consider the love of personal
independence, the fidelity of man to man, the sense of indi-
vidual honour, and respect for women, as the peculiar and
persistent characteristics of the German race, is to fall into
one of the grossest delusions which have been generated by
Teutonic self-conceit. Greco-Roman and Christian influ-
ences required to be brought to bear on Germanic disposi-
tions, and the circumstances of society needed to be long-
favourable, in order that civilisation might possess these
excellences. There is a wide interval between any quality
of barbarism and a virtue of civilisation. Now feudalism,
although a most deplorable system, incompatible with the
legitimate claims alike of authority and of liberty, and
directly opposed to the impartial justice and universal charity
of the Gospel, was specially calculated to foster the virtues
referred to, and thereby to advance humanity in the way of
self-knowledge. It rooted out and made impossible the
return of the feeling so predominant in the classical world,
that the individual man had no rights as against the State.
It substituted for the Greco-Roman view of the relation of
public to private life one just the reverse, and which, although
quite as one-sided as that which it temporarily replaced, had
the great merit of widening thought by bringing to light the
side previously unseen. If it filled the heart of the castle
120 INTRODUCTION
lord with pride and insolence, it also trained him to self-
reliance, decision of character, and prowess. It made him
far more dependent for his happiness on his wife and children
than ever the oriental, Greek, or Roman man had been, and
thus contributed to the moral elevation of the family.
Besides, the isolated and scattered castles of the feudal
chiefs were not wholly inaccessible to priest and lawyer,
merchant and minstrel, to Christian truth, Roman traditions,
or even Saracenic science. Life within them was not wholly
uninfluenced by the neighbouring monastery or town, by the
policy of pope and emperor, and the general movement of
history. Under the action of these powers, feudalism in a
measure civilised itself and flowered into chivalry. Out of
what had been originally but a robber's den, the court of
the castle, came forth courtship and courtesy, a new ideal of
conduct inspired partly by piety towards God, and partly by
gallantry towards woman, sentiments of love and honour of
a delicacy previously unknown, and a poetry and romance
which have grown into the national literatures of almost
every country of Europe.
Throughout the whole existence of feudalism, two powers
— the monarchy and the Church — steadily resisted with
such strength as they possessed its anarchical and anti-
social tendencies. Self-interest constrained them to strive
for order, for unity, and so to counteract the self-will of the
nobility. In each land the struggle took a different form;
but in all it left deep and ineffaceable impressions. The
kings of France, confining their energies within or immedi-
ately around their own kingdom, wrought steadily on until
they had concentrated all power in their own hands, and
produced that extreme unity of administration which accounts
for so much both of good and evil, of achievement and failure,
in the history of France. The kings of England had, from
the Norman Conquest, a preponderance of power which not
only sufficed to hold the whole nation firmly bound together,
but compelled the nobility to ally themselves with the com-
mons, and this laid the foundation for that union of order
and liberty which has been realised in a-more perfect measure
in England than anywhere else in the world. The emperors
of Germany cherished the idea that the Roman empire still
IDEA OF HUMANITY' 121
subsisted both in law and fact; and that they, as the suc-
cessors of the Caesars, were the rightful heads of Christendom,
and entitled even to choose popes and invest them with their
temporal sovereignty, although spiritually their subjects.
The dispute between the Emperor and the Pope was the axis
on which for more than two centuries European history
revolved ; it was productive of many and great evils to Ger-
many and Italy, but productive also of great blessings to
Europe in general. "If it had been possible," says Ger-
vinus, "for the Empire and the Papacy to have united
peaceably; if that which had already occurred in the Byzan-
tine kingdom of the East could also have occurred in the
Teutonic Roman kingdom of the West, and could the com-
bined secular and spiritual power have rested on one head,
— the idea of unity would have gained the preponderance
over that of national developments ; and in the centre of this
quarter of the world, in Germany or Italy, a monarchical
power and single form of government would have been con-
structed, which would have thrown the utmost difficulties in
the way of the national and human progression of the whole
of Europe." Fortunately a union of the two powers did not
take place. The one saved, the European world from entire
slavery to the other. Their long struggle favoured the rise
and growth of independent thought, and, by preventing the
realisation of a one-sided and external unity, furthered the
cause of a full and. free unity.
The Crusades contributed directly and indirectly in many
ways to generate and diffuse the feeling of a common Chris-
tendom, and even of a common humanity. They united in
a common sentiment, Norman and Saxon and Celt, French-
man and Austrian, Norwegian and Italian. They were the
first events of universal European significance which rested
on a European public opinion. They softened in some meas-
ure the antipathies of the races and peoples which gathered
themselves together to combat for a common cause. They
made the baron feel more dependent on his vassals, and raised
the serf in his own estimation and in that of others ; while,
at the same time, they strengthened the power of the Crown,
and favoured the growth of the communes and free towns.
They widened the range of men's ideas and tastes and desires;
122 INTRODUCTION
and they gave an impulse to science and art, and a still
greater impulse to commerce. Thus, although they had their
origin in fanaticism, and were accompanied with unspeakable
horrors, and followed by numerous most serious evils which
do not require here to be mentioned, they also undoubtedly
helped in no slight degree to emancipate the human mind
and educate the human heart. Intermediate between the
Germanic invasions and the Renaissance, they are one of the
three great medieval incidents by which the more thoughtful
minds in Europe were brought to see that the unity of
humanity underlies even the differences of Christianity,
Mohammedanism, and heathendom ; and that the love of man
to man enjoined by Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan
and elsewhere, must not be limited to the communion of
believers.
To trace, however, in its whole length, breadth, and depth,
the process by which, from this point to that where the pres-
ent history commences, the human mind advanced in self-
knowledge, and consequent recognition of the unity in
variety of humanity, would be to write the entire history of
Europe throughout the intervening time. It would be to
follow the development of industry in country and town,
explaining how the labouring population had been affected
by changes in the forms of tenure of property and by changes
in the general government of society, by trade corporations
and their regulations, by the Crusades, the communes, the
free towns, by the advance of the industrial and fine arts, and
the extension of geographical knowledge, the discovery of
America, the influx into Europe of the precious metals, &c. ;
and, in a word, to show how the fetters on industry and
commerce began to be broken one after another, honest labour
to be acknowledged as honourable human work, the labouring
classes to gain their human rights and recognition on the
page of human history, and a Tiers Mat to arise to which kings
and nobles were at length to become servants. It would be
to trace the development of the arts of architecture, music,
sculpture, painting, poetry, and romance, alike under the
protection of the Church and in their growth to independ-
ence, and to show in doing so how the imagination of man
had been educated, the sphere of his activity widened, and
IDEA OF HUMANITY 123
his history enriched with new elements. It would be to
describe the toilsome progress of science, the preservation
and revival of ancient learning, as well as the means and
institutions devised to diffuse science and learning ; and to
estimate what the cultivation given to speculation and formal
thought, as applied by the theologians and philosophers of
the middle ages to the highest subjects, had done for the
modern intellect. It would also be to delineate the long
series of attempts to deliver revealed truth from the false
glosses, and to emancipate the religious nature of man from
the degrading thraldom, imposed by the Roman Church, — a
series of attempts which issued in that great and successful
movement which in the sixteenth century secured for a half
of Europe the right of private judgment in religion, a right
which is the condition and guarantee of all other rights and
of all liberty. It would be — ■ very specially — to trace the
formation within the European unity of national individu-
alities, since the formation of nations has unquestionably
contributed in the highest degree to a profound and exhaus-
tive development of the human soul; while the further
progress of the race in science, in art, in literature, in
philosophy, and in religion, is dependent upon the preserva-
tion and the quickening collision of the resultant variety in
unity. It would be necessary to do all this and more ; for it
is only through having exerted its forces persistently, method-
ically, and heroically, in all these directions and various
others, that the human spirit has, to use the words of Mr.
Goldwin Smith, "slowly and painfully transcended the
barriers interposed by dividing mountains and estranging
seas, by diversities of custom and language, creed and polity,
by prejudices of race and class, in its progressive realisation
of the glorious truth of the universal brotherhood of man."
It is only through an immense and multiform activity, long-
continued and strenuous toil, protracted and countless sacri-
fices, that man has learned to recognise what a vast variety
of manifestations, what an infinity of differences, have their
ground in the essential human unity, without prejudice to
aught distinctive of manhood, or to any of its fundamental
rights.
As late as the sixteenth century — that in which this his-
124 INTRODUCTION
tory commences — even the European mind had advanced
but a little way along most of these routes, and had only the
most defective apprehension of the general truth towards
which they converge. There was, for example, nothing
approaching to an adequate recognition of the true place of
industry and science in human life, and of the industrial
and scientific classes in human society, until the latter half
of the eighteenth century. It was, we may safely say, some-
what late in modern times before humanity had displayed
the variety of resources, discarded the prejudices, overthrown
or surmounted the barriers, and gained the triumphs, indis-
pensable to a perception of its own unity in multiplicity,
sufficiently accurate and comprehensive to support a philoso-
phy of history. Throughout the whole of the middle age,
and even long after its close, man's knowledge of himself,
man's idea of humanity, was far too vague and general, far
too narrow, external, and superficial to be available and
effective in so difficult a scientific enterprise.
Probably Vico was the first to recognise how fundamental
must be the idea of humanity in historical philosophy, — the /
first to view history with clearness, comprehensiveness, and
profundity, as a whole, of which all the phases in space and
time are explicable by the constitutional activities of the
common nature of mankind. While not denying that the
order of the civil world was providential, he was not content,
like Augustine and Bossuet, simply to trace that order to the
divine will, but strove to account for it as truly the work of
man, and intelligible only when its changes and laws were
properly referred to the powers and motives of the mind of
man. Hence his 'Scienza Nuova d'intorno alia comune
natura delle nazioni, ' is a science of history based on the
knowledge of humanity, a sociology derived from a compara-
tive psychology. Unfortunately, even as regards central
conception, it was marred by the serious errors which Cento-
fanti, Emerico Amari, and others, have laboured to expel
from it. In 1750, twenty-five years after the appearance of
Vico's treatise, Turgot made an admirable application of the
idea of humanity to history in his 'Discourses ' at the Sor-
bonne. The same idea is implied throughout, yet merely
implied, in Lessing's essay on 'The Education of the Human
IDEA OF HUMANITY 125
Race. ' Herder's genial and eloquent ' Ideen zur Philoso-
phic der Geschich£>fler Menscheit' made its significance
popularly appreciated, and definitely secured it its rightful
position in historical science, although as regards even the
mere idea, leaving much to be done in the way of definition
and development. Herder has had many successors, of whom
Lotze may perhaps be justly held to have been at once truest
to the spirit of his teaching and the wisest amender of the
defects in its letter.
The accounts of the growth of the conception of human unity
given in the 'Rede ' of Dr. ^K. H. Hundeshagen, 'Ueber die
Natur und die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Humanitatsi-
dee ' (1852), and the ' Vortrag ' of Professor W. Preger on 'Die
Entfaltung der Idee des Menschen durch die Weltgeschichte '
(1870), are eloquent, but too brief and slight to be of real use.
III. There is another idea — that of freedom — equally
involved in history, and equally implied in the formation of
a philosophy of history. It is inseparable from the idea of
humanity, and its history from the history of that idea.
Man is a spirit, and therefore is not merely what he is made
to be, but mainly what he makes himself to be; humanity
is spiritual, and therefore not merely the passive subject of
change and variation, but mainly self-formed and self-devel-
oped. The exertion by which man makes himself to be —
the self-determination and self-realisation of humanity — is
freedom. It is not merely negative — the absence of re-
straint ; on the contrary, it is primarily positive — the human
spirit itself possessing, revealing, and evolving itself as
spirit. The freedom in which the historical student is
interested is not to be confounded with the so-called " free-
dom of the will," concerning which there has been so much
controversy among psychologists and metaphysicians. It is
not a purely internal and personal fact, complete in itself
apart from any external, social, or historical manifestation;
but is just the freedom which is exhibited in history, and of
which all history shows either the repression or expansion.
Man is not born free, but he becomes free in the measure
in which he becomes man, as he becomes man in the measure
in which he becomes free. And only as he becomes himself
126 INTRODUCTION
can he learn to know himself. According to the apparently-
paradoxical but really profound and suggestive doctrine of
Vico, truth is known by us just in so far as made by us ; and
obviously man can only know the truth as to himself when
he is himself. Humanity can only be the object of its own
intelligence in the measure that it has realised itself, and
revealed itself to itself, by its exertions and achievements.
Self-knowledge and self-comprehension must follow on, and
can merely be commensurate with, the self-production and
self-development which are due to freedom.
A knowledge of the history of freedom must include a
knowledge of all the ways and forms in which freedom has
been restricted and repressed in the various nations and ages
of the world, and of how it has gradually affirmed itself
against negations, broken through restraints, and advanced
towards its appropriate goal. That goal can only be a state
in which humanity fully realises all its powers, or, in other
words, a state in which there are no other limits to the exer-
cise of its powers than the very conditions of their complete
and proper exercise, — the laws of nature, rationality, and
morality. An individual, a nation, the race, can only be
wholly free when in full possession of a true and entire self,
confined by no unnatural limits, determined by no alien
forces, ruled by no external master. Whatever diminishes,
restrains, or injures human power — human self-control and
self -sovereignty — lessens and impairs human freedom. No
laws or institutions can make a diseased body, an ignorant
mind, a vicious heart, free. Every increase of corporeal
vigour, of command over nature, of insight into truth, of
virtue, necessarily brings with it an increase of freedom.
The history of freedom is a vast history. Hegel, in his
'Philosophy of History,' Michelet, in his 'Introduction to
Universal History, ' and others, have treated it as the whole
of history, freedom being regarded by them as " the substance
and subject of universal history, and the guiding principle of
its development, so that historic events are to be viewed as
products of it, and as deriving only from it their meaning
and character." And whether this be precisely true or not,
certainly the struggle to repress or acquire freedom is per-
vasive of the entire history of humanity ; is universal history
IDEA OF FREEDOM 127
itself — the whole bodily, intellectual, moral, political, and
religious movement of humanity itself — in a special aspect.
Its history to the time when historical philosophy began to
appear in a distinct form, cannot be sketched here even in
brief outline, as in the case of the ideas of progress and of
humanity. To keep this Introduction within due limits, I
must attempt merely to give some indications to sources
whence a conception of its history may be drawn.
On the idea, conditions, and forms of liberty, on the right
to it and what is implied therein, and related themes, a num-
ber of works have been written. Those of Charles Du-
noyer,1 John Stuart Mill,2 Jules Simon,3 and Emile Beaus-
sire,4are perhaps the most important and interesting — Some
of thejn-eontain a considerable amount-erf information, even
aslio the growth of the idea of-lrberty.
One of the opposites of freedom is bodily slavery, — the
condition in which a man is not the master of his own physi-
cal members and powers, but forced to exert them at the
commands and for the ends of another. Such slavery, in
one form or another, has occupied a large place in history.
In the savage state both licence and slavery prevail, but of
liberty there is little. The savage is too destitute of the
higher kinds of life to be capable of the higher kinds of lib-
erty. As to bodily independence, different uncivilised races
display very different dispositions, and are found in very
different conditions ; but even when savages are resentful of
encroachments on their own freedom, they show little respect
for the freedom of others. Ambition, pride, hatred, and other
passions, lead them to war ; and selfishness and avarice induce
the conquerors to retain or sell as slaves numbers of the con-
quered whom they would otherwise have slain. In this way
slavery has undoubtedly tended and served to save life, but
it has also increased the sacrifice of it by supplying a power-
ful and persistent motive for undertaking wars, and especially
small wars. Then, in the majority even of savage communi-
ties there are rich and poor, and the dependence of the poor
1 L'Industrie et la Morale considered dans lenr Rapports avec la Liberte
(1825), and De la Liberte du travail, &c, 3 vols. (1845).
4 On Liberty. s La Liberte', 2 vols.
4 La Libert^ dans l'ordre intellectuel et moral.
128 INTRODUCTION
on the rich in these communities often issues in slavery.
There is, so far as I know, no good general account of slavery
among uncivilised peoples. One of the best of the older
accounts is perhaps Bastholm's.1 Waitz and Gerland's
'Anthropologic der Naturvolker, ' and Letourneau's 'Evo-
lution de la Propri^te" ' (1889), contain much material, and
indicate whence it has been derived.
In societies of a nomadic or simple agricultural type, what-
ever be the race to which those who compose them may belong,
slavery is not prevalent, and is, as a rule, of a comparatively
mild character. The Aryans of India, the Romans, and the
Teutons, as they first appeared in history, may be referred
to in proof. Peoples in this stage may have the love of
bodily independence, and the qualities required to defend
and preserve it, and even to vanquish and subdue great
and cultured nations, in the highest degree. Freedom, after
having been driven from courts and cities, senates and schools,
has found a refuge in deserts and forests, and reconquered
the world by the arms of the rude men who dwelt therein.
From the writings of the Old Testament a fairly distinct
conception can be formed of slavery among the Hebrews.
Many modern critics hold the picture presented in the Book
of Genesis, of the patriarchal age, its slavery included, to be
not a transcript of reality, but an idealisation of the past.
Whether this is so or not, can only be properly decided by
the historico-critieal investigations of specialists. Although
the Hebrews are described as having shown extreme ferocity
in the conquest of Canaan, their legislation as to slavery was,
on the whole, considerate and humane. Slaves were not
numerous among them, at least after the exile. Hebrew
slavery has naturally been the subject of much research and
controversy. The best treatise regarding it is still that of
Mielziner.2
Slavery in the great military empires, which arose in
ancient times in anterior Asia, was doubtless of the most
cruel character; but we have no good account of slavery in
1 Historische Nachriehten z. Kentniss des Menschen, Bd. i. k. 16 (1818).
2 Die Verhaltnisse der Sklaven bei den alten Hebraern, Kopenhagen, 185!).
See also the art. in Herzog's R.-E., Bd. xiv., and Stade, Geseh. d. Volkes Israel,
1 Th., Bd. vii. 377-381.
IDEA OF FREEDOM 129
these countries. The histories of Rawlinson, Duncker,
Ranke, Ed. Meyer, and Maspero, tell us almost nothing
about Chaldean, Assyrian, and Medo-Persian slavery. Much
more is known as to slavery, and the condition of the labour-
ing classes, in ancient Egypt, although of even this section
of the history there is much need for an account in which the
sources of information, unsealed by modern science, will be
fully utilised. While in Egypt there were not castes, in the
strict sense of the term, classes were very rigidly defined.
There were troops of slaves, and as population was super-
abundant, labour was so cheap as to be employed to an enor-
mous extent uselessly. It may suffice to refer to Wilkinson,1
Rawlinson,2 and Buckle.8
It does not seem certain that the Vedic Aryans had slaves
before the conquest of India. Those whom they conquered
became the Sudras, and a caste system grew up, and came to
be represented as of divine appointment. The two lower
castes of the Code of Manu have now given place to a great
many. There was not a slave caste, but individuals of any
caste might become slaves in exceptional circumstances.
Even before the rise of Buddhism there were ascetics who
rejected the distinction of castes. Buddhism proclaimed the
religious equality of Brahmans and Sudras, but not the eman-
cipation of the Sudras. Its attitude towards the tyranny of
Hindu caste was similar to that of Christianity towards Roman
slavery and medieval serfdom.4
The various phases of slavery in Greece and Rome have
been admirably described in M. Wallon's 'Histoire de l'Es-
clavage dans l'Antiquite- ' (3 vols.). The growth and influ-
ences of slavery can be traced throughout the whole history
of both Greece and Rome; and in both its injustice and
cruelty came in course of time to be recognised by the best
minds.6 Aristotle declared it natural and legitimate; but
Zeno, Antisthenes, the poets Menander and Philemon, Sen-
eca, Epictetus, Dion Chrysostom, and others, pronounced
against it. The Stoics were its most vigorous assailants.
1 Ancient Egyptians. 2 Ancient Egypt. 3 Hist, of Civ., vol. i. eh. ii.
4 Dubois, Descrip. of the People of India, ch. vi. (Madras, 1862) ; Elphinstone,
Hist, of India, i. 23-34, 103-109; Buckle, i. ch. ii.; Oldenberg, Buddha, 152-158.
5 Denis, Hist. d. Theories et des Idees Morales dans 1' Antiquity, t. ii. pp. 62-96,
•&c. ; Onken, Die Staateslehre des Aristoteles, ii. Hfte., 29-36.
130 INTRODUCTION
Seneca, in particular, condemned it with a directness, clears
ness, and fulness which we look for in vain in the New
Testament. The first Christian teachers proclaimed merely
spiritual liberty and equality, the oneness in Christ of the
bond and the free; they did not, like the Stoics, maintain
slavery to be wrong, or emancipation a duty. It does not
follow that Christianity was not by the new views which it
gave of God and man, and by the new affections and virtues
which it generated, a very powerful agency, or even the most
powerful of all agencies, in abolishing slavery and effecting
emancipation. To me it seems that in this connection the
influence of Stoicism has been overestimated by Havet in his
'Origines du Christianisme' ; and that of Christianity by
Troplong in 'De l'lnfluence du Christianisme,' by Allard
in 'Les Esclaves Chretiens depuis les premiers temps de
l'Eglise jusqu'a la fin de la domination romaine en Occident '
(1876), and by juridical writers and Christian apologists
generally.
In the middle ages the conviction that freedom was man's
natural state found frequent expression, yet the legitimacy
of slavery in the actual state of the world was generally
admitted by the clergy and theologians, although they opposed
in some measure its abuses. The slaves connected with the
monasteries were probably among the best treated, but they
were also among the last to be emancipated. In the gradual
doing away with slavery, or transforming it into serfdom, the
growth of the spirit of Christianity co-operated with the work-
ing of economic causes : the power of the former was great,
but has more frequently been exaggerated than fairly stated ;
while that of the latter, which was not less, has been commonly
overlooked or inadequately appreciated. By the fourteenth
century absolute slavery had almost entirely passed away.
Medieval slavery has found a learned historian in Muratori.1
Slavery of the most cruel and immoral kind was revived in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in America and the
European colonies ; was defended as a Christian institution
and a means of propagating the Christian faith ; and has only
recently been extirpated. This later slavery does not fall
i Antich. Ital., xiv.-xv. See also Yanoski, De l'abolition de l'esclavage ancien
au raoyen age, et de sa transformation en servitude de la glebe. 1860.
IDEA OP EKEEDOM 131
within the period with which we are here concerned, but I
may refer to the able and comprehensive view of it given by
Ch. Comte in his "Traite" de Legislation,' t. iv. pp. 106-536.
The merciless oppression of the labouring classes, the
imposition of most arbitrary restrictions on industry, and the
most unequal treatment of the different classes of society,
continued in Europe long after the cessation of slavery
strictly so called. Even serfdom was not completely swept
away in England until the reign of Charles II., and in Scot-
land not till the middle of the eighteenth century. At the
latter date more than half of the German people was in a state
of serfdom. The exactions and burdens laid upon labour had
a powerful influence in producing the great French Revolu-
tion. In the middle age, and early centuries of the modern
period, however, literature and history show that the labour-
ing classes were far more conscious of their rights to liberty,
had much more organisation with a view to obtain them, and
resisted the violence of the powerful and the vices of state-
craft much more steadily and wisely than is generally known
or supposed. On this section of the history of the develop-
ment of liberty, such sources of information as the following
may be referred to: Sugenheim's 'Aufhebung der Leibeigen-
schaft,' Zimmerman's 'Der Bauernkrieg, ' Rogers's 'Six
Centuries of Work and Wages,' Bonnemere's 'Histoire des
Paysans,' &c, Dareste's 'Hist, des Classes Agricoles,'
Perrens's 'La Democratic en France au Moyen Age,' &c.
A second form of slavery is the domestic, — the slavery of
women and children to the male head of a family. It also
has been world-wide, long-enduring, and many-formed. It
has appeared in savage, in civilised, and practically, although
not confessedly, even in Christian lands. It has been said
that woman was first treated as a domestic animal, next as
a slave, afterwards as a servant, and then as a minor. The
generalisation is too absolute to be exact, yet there is a great
amount of truth in it. Domestic slavery has naturally fol-
lowed much the same course of development as personal
slavery, and they have acted and reacted powerfully on each
other. The well-known researches of Bachofen, Tylor, Lub-
bock, M'Lennan, Morgan, and others, have thrown light on
the state and treatment of women among primitive and savage
132 INTRODUCTION
peoples. The light has been collected and.focussed in such
works as 'La Sociologie, ' by Letourneau, and 'Die Mens-
chliche Familie, ' by Von Hellwald. The treatise of L. A.
Martin — ' Histoire de la Femme ' — gives, perhaps, the best
account of the condition and subjection of women among the
ancient Chinese, Hindus, Egyptians, Hebrews, Arabians, &c.
That of Legouve" — ' Hist. Mor. des Femmes ' — may be
consulted along with it. The history of woman in Greece
has great interest, yet much less than her history in Rome,
where it began with a state of entire subjection, and ended
with one of greater freedom than has existed even in Chris-
tendom until lately, — ■ the disappearance of tutory and manus,
the guaranteeing of dowry, and the full concession of rights
over personal property. For a view of this portion of the
history of the family in relation to liberty, may be read Maine
on patria potestas in his 'Ancient Law,' pp. 133-146, and
Muirhead's 'Roman Law,' 24-36, 43-49, 64-69, 115-121,
345-349, 414-419; and, for the earlier period, the relevant
chapters and sections in Carle's ' Origini del Diritto
Romano. ' 1
The nature and extent of the influence of primitive Chris-
tian teaching, of the ascetic and monastic ideals of life, of
Teutonic sentiment, of feudalism, chivalry, and the worship
of the Virgin, on the freedom and elevation of woman, are
subjects which have been discussed more or less carefully by
many writers, and on which a great variety of views may be
plausibly entertained. Medieval sentiment and practice in
regard to woman were so full of contrasts and contradictions
that the most opposite conceptions of her position and treat-
ment in the middle ages may easily be formed, and utterly
irreconcilable representations of them given. The Beatrice
of Dante and the Madonna di San Sisto of Raphael are prob-
ably the highest and purest ideals of woman ever conceived
by the human heart, and expressed by human art; yet the
general* tone of thought and feeling as to woman, as mani-
fested, for example, even in the writings of the clergy and
theologians of the times of Dante and Raphael, was coarse
1 The position of women in ancient Greece and Rome is the subject of four
articles by Principal Donaldson in the ' Contemporary Review ' (vols, xxxii.,
xxxiv., liii., liv.).
IDEA OP FREEDOM 133
and base. The institutions of the middle ages which con-
tributed most to the cause of female emancipation and
improvement, affected chiefly women of wealth and rank,
and did comparatively little for the poor and humbly born.
The age of chivalry, as described in this reference by many
historians, is scarcely less mythical than the age of gold. It
can neither be dated nor located ; in every country and cen-
tury in which we are toid it existed, the general state of
womankind can be shown to have been one of enslavement
■ and endurance of wrong, and one which knights and trouba-
dours did much more to aggravate than to alleviate.1
The laws of modern states regulating the relations between
man and woman in marriage have, in general, been extremely
unjust to the latter. English law on the subject, for ex-
ample, down to late in the eighteenth century, proceeded
avowedly on the amazing theory that man and woman so
became one in marriage that she lost herself in him, and he
remained the sole person and the sole proprietor. Thus slow
has been the movement towards that equality of rights in
man and woman which is implied in the true liberty of both,
while clearly distinguishable from the equality of conditions
inconsistent with nature and duty demanded by certain an-
tinomian and socialistic agitators.2
There are higher forms of liberty than those directly
assailed by physical and domestic slavery; there is spiritual
liberty- — intellectual, moral, and religious- — -involving the
rejection of superstition and authorities founded on super-
stition, the independent exercise of reason and conscience,
untrammelled research, and freedom of speech, publication,
worship and proselytism, association and action, so far as the
like freedom and rights of others are not thereby interfered
with. Liberty of this nature, and the rights which it
includes, are what are most essential to man as man, and yet
they are what he has found it most difficult to attain and
preserve.
1 Michelet, La Sorciere, 61-69 ; Bruce, Gesta Dei, ch. xii.
2 E. Laboulaye wrote ' Recherches sur la condition civile et politique des
femmes depuis les Romains jusqu'a nos jours.' 1843. J. S. Mill's ' Subjection of
Women ' (1869) and A. Bebei's ' Die Frau ' (1883) may be referred to as typical ex-
pressions, the one of the advanced liberal and the other of the advanced socialis-
tic view as to woman's rightful position in society.
134 INTRODUCTION
Almost all the ancient civilisations were of the theocratic
type. The oriental nations knew hardly any other govern-
ment than that of rulers who pretended to be delegated or
inspired by the gods, and who as such dictated to their
subjects what they should believe and how they were to act.
That government of this kind rendered important services to
humanity must be admitted, but that it naturally ended in
the ruin of every people which failed to rise above it is also
undeniable. Regarding it, Flotard,1 Nicolas,2 and Lippert,3
may be consulted.
Greece owed her glory chiefly to her intellectual independ-
ence, the freedom with which her citizens examined all the
problems of life and exercised all their faculties of mind.
Yet even in Greece an Anaxagoras was banished and a
Socrates put to death. The Romans acted in general on the
principle that it should be left to the gods themselves to
avenge the wrongs done to them; they were led, however,
to violate it in various instances, owing to their subordina-
tion of religion to policy. The persecution of the Christians
in the Roman empire is a subject which has been often and
fully discussed.4
When the Christian Church ceased to be persecuted and
acquired the power to persecute, it began to strive to crush
free thought in regard to matters of religion by physical
force. False views of God and man, of the efficacy of faith
and the nature and conditions of spiritual life, zeal for eccle-
siastical unity, priestly pride and ambition, and other causes,
rendered the history of religious tyranny and intolerance a
lengthened and deplorable one. The Reformers proclaimed
the principle of religious freedom — the right of private
judgment • — so far as they themselves required it to justify
their resistance to Rome, but not in its purity and univer-
sality. To hold that the magistrate ought not to employ the
sword in matters of religion and conscience, seemed to them
a doctrine incompatible with good government, and equiva-
lent to an assertion that all religious opinions are morally
1 Etudes sur la The'oeratie, &c, 1861.
2 De la The'oeratie in Essais de Philosophie, &c, 1863.
3 Allgemeine Geschichte des Priestenthums, 2 B.
4 Lecky's Hist, of European Morals, chap. iii.
IDEA OP FREEDOM 135
indifferent and socially insignificant. It was, in reality,
owing to the wars between Catholics and Protestants, and
the contentions between the various sects of Protestants, that
men were gradually forced to recognise religious freedom to
be a right, and religious toleration to be a duty. Liberal
thinkers and wise statesmen — men like L'Hcipital, Pasquier,
Bodin, De Thou, Henry IV. — had their eyes first opened,
and so at length had even most zealous religionists. To
Roger Williams belongs the honour of having first made
religious liberty a fundamental principle of a political com-
munity. " The conscience belongs to the individual, not to
the State." Bossuet was not far from the truth when he
said that, with the exception of Socinians and Anabaptists,
all Protestants agreed with him in believing that the civil
magistrate was bound to punish the enemies of sound doc-
trine. It is chiefly since his time that men's thoughts have
so widened that now every unbiassed thinker holds that no
religious opinion may be dealt with by secular force, and
that the fullest freedom, far from being dangerous to truth
itself, or to the general interests of society, is most favour-
able to them.1
Religious superstition and bigotry have originated numer-
ous attempts to crush intellectual activity and independence.
Of these attempts against the liberty which is the very
breath of life to philosophy and science, a general account,
written with vigour and animation, but unfortunately not
with impartiality, will be found in the well-known work of
Dr. Draper, misleadingly entitled a 'History of the Conflict
between Religion and Science.'
Political history has been mainly the history of the struggle
for political liberty, — the liberty of all the members of a
civil community to take part in its government, to elect or
be elected its rulers, to have a voice in regard to the making
of its laws and the transaction of its affairs, while, at the
same time, legally and adequately guaranteed and protected
against all invasions on their individual rights and private
concerns. All so-called general histories are, for the most
1 Bluntschli, Geschichte der religiosen Bekentnissfreiheit, 1867. The article
on " Religious Liberty " in Schaff's ' Encyclopedia ' gives a good general view of
the history of the subject, and references to sources of information.
136 INTKODTJCTION
part, political histories ; and of all the kinds of special his-
tory the political is by far the most numerous. It is need-
less, therefore, to give particular references to sources of
information on the history of political liberty. In treating
of various philosophies of history, I shall have occasion to
consider the views which they give of the course of the de-
velopment of such liberty, both in practice and theory. It
may therefore at present be sufficient merely to mention, as
specially relevant, Sir Thomas Erskine May's ' Democracy in
Europe ' (2 vols. 1877), and Lord Acton's two ' Lectures on
the History of Liberty in Antiquity and Christendom ' (1877).
The movement towards liberty has been wide as history
itself. Its arrest and repression have been attempted by
force, fraud, and seduction of all kinds and in all ways, but
without avail. Man's nature has developed on the whole,
and it has only developed in so far as his freedom has been
extended and confirmed. The growth alike of reason and
morality has been a growth in liberty. Religious progress
also essentially means progress towards full spiritual free-
dom. Christianity has been a mighty force in favour of
freedom, although Christian Churches have often been hostile
and hurtful to it. Christianity did not explicitly condemn
bodily, domestic, or political slavery, but it proclaimed and
conferred spiritual liberty. It was of the very substance of
its teaching that freeman and slave were one in Christ, —
that every slave was Christ's freeman, and every freeman
Christ's slave, — that all men were so bound to one master
that they could be bound to no other. Hence the triumph of
the Christian spirit necessarily implies the victory of human
freedom. The freedom which humanity now enjoys is the
outcome of its entire struggling and straining through the
ages, with whatever of life and strength it has received,
against the matiifold powers which have opposed it, and
tended to degrade and destroy it. The words of Bryant are
as truthful as they are spirited and inspiring : —
" O Freedom! thou art not as poets dream,
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap
With which the Roman master crowned his slave
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Armed to the teeth art thou ; one mailed hand
IDEA OP FREEDOM 137
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword ; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred
With tokens of old wars ; thy massive limbs
Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee ;
They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven.
Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep,
And his swart armourers, by a thousand fires,
Have forged thy chain ; yet, while he deems thee bound,
Thy links are shivered, and the prison walls
Fall outward ; terribly thou springest forth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile,
And shoutest to the nations, who return
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies."
The history of the idea of liberty is inseparable from the
history of liberty itself. The collective experience and the
collective intelligence of peoples have contributed much more
to it than the insight and speculation of a few exceptional
individuals. The reflections of philosophers and others on
liberty have been to a much greater extent consequences
than causes, presupposing and corresponding to a general
condition of experience and attainment, desire and opinion.
In the sixteenth century, theory and practice as to liberty
were in all respects and relations most imperfect. The idea
of its nature was as vague as the actual realisation of its
nature was meagre. So far as the philosophy of history,
therefore, depends on insight into the nature of liberty, a
condition of its existence was still at that date wanting.
Nor was it supplied until a considerable time after. The
lack of it goes far to explain how, even in the age of Louis
XIV., the nearest approximation to historical philosophy
was the absolutist and theological view of universal history
expounded by Bossuet.
V
Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and l~bn Khaldun are the four
writers who have the best claims to special notice in this
Introduction. Yet those of Plato and Aristotle are not very
strong. Neither of them had any conception of a science or
philosophy of history. No thinker of the Greco-Roman clas-
sical world had ; not one regarded history as the subject of a
science or of a distinct department of philosophy; not one
had a properly scientific or philosophical interest in history.
But Greece was the cradle and early home of political science.
138 INTRODUCTION
Within very narrow limits of time and space, it presented
a "wonderfully rich and varied field of political experience
capable of being easily surveyed, and afforded the most abun-
dant and stimulating opportunities for political reflection. A
citizen of Athens, Sparta, or Thebes, was as inevitably forced
into political inquiries and discussions as a French deputy
or an English member of Parliament; and the multitude of
remarkable events, the number of revolutions, and the variety
of forms of government which he had within his range of
vision, afforded a copious store of materials for political
instruction and political speculation. In all probability, no
people has ever been more generally and intensely interested
in endeavouring to estimate, for example, the relative advan-
tages and disadvantages of various kinds of government than
the Greek, in the age of their full intellectual development.
As political thinkers Plato and Aristotle had, consequently,
many predecessors. But they surpassed all who preceded
them ; and are the most eminent political writers not only of
Greece but of the whole ancient world, — so eminent as still
to afford help and guidance in political science and practice,
— -as "still to rule our spirits from their urns." It was
only in subordination to politics that they in some measure
theorised on history. In the prosecution of their political
inquiries and reflections, they were led to certain generalisa-
tions as to the succession and changes of forms of government,
as to the causes of the strength and weakness of States, as to
the conditions of social order and welfare, which may be
regarded as contributions or approximations to historical
philosophy. Of these I may here be not unreasonably ex-
pected to give some brief account.
I. The philosophy of Plato undoubtedly failed to do justice
to historical reality. It even tended to depreciate and dis-
courage historical study, inasmuch as it relegated percep-
tions, particulars, phenomena, to the limbo of mere opinion.
It taught that truth was to be found, not in the changing
and individual, but in the unchanging and universal; that
there is no science of phenomena, but that to reach science
the mind must get above phenomena, through and beyond
them as it were, into a region of types, exemplars, ideas.
PLATO 139
Were this the case, there could be no science of history; and
that it is the case is the general tenor, the main burden, of
Plato's teaching. Hence the Platonic theory of ideas has
been on this very account assailed by Schopenhauer with
characteristic vehemence. Hence it has been pronounced by
E. Mayr "im Grunde eine geschichtsfeindliche Doctrin."
And the charge is substantially true. But it must not be
overlooked that the theory had another aspect. The ideas
were also, however inconsistently, represented as the sources
and reasons of phenomena. The worlds of sense and history
were supposed to be in some measure participant in the
ideas, and, in consequence, so far intelligible. Plato, it must
be granted, unduly depreciated phenomena; but neither is
it to be denied that he was very much alive and awake to the
importance of observing them, with a view to deriving from
them suggestions in the dialectic search after truth. He had
not the same reverence as Aristotle for past or present facts
— he did not attach to them nearly the same value — but he
was by no means without eye for them or interest in them.
There are many indications that he had closely studied the
political history of Greece.
Three political writings are commonly ascribed to Plato
■■ — 'the 'Republic,' the 'Laws,' and the 'Statesman.' The
first is undoubtedly, and the second is in all probability, his.
That he was the author of the third seems to me unlikely.
The 'Republic' is grandly original in conception, and beau-
tiful in execution. The matter of the 'Laws ' is abundant
and rich, but imperfectly arranged and crudely presented.
The 'Statesman' is of little merit or value in any respect.
In the 'Republic ' Plato exhibited his ideal of the State,
his scheme of a perfect polity. It was most natural that he
— the great idealistic philosopher — should have an ideal
scheme of political and social organisation. He would have
been untrue to himself and his philosophy had he accepted
a.ny particular existent form of government as the normal
one, or had he not sought to ascertain the ideal of society,
the absolute truth in politics. He was under no temptation
to such inconsistency, being entirely out of sympathy with
the politics and politicians of his age. He was sensible of
the narrowness and harshness of the Lacedemonian State,
140 INTBODUCTION
and was decidedly opposed to the Athenian democracy.
Every extant form of government in Greece seemed to him
to be degenerate and corrupt, — to be tyranny, oligarchy,
and mob-rule, almost at their worst. All of them appeared
to him to be unjust, and consequently incapable of satisfying
human nature, to which justice is essential. It was to illus-
trate and exemplify what justice was, that he sketched an
ideal State, seeing that no actual State is just, while yet
justice in the individual is unintelligible apart from its
reflection in the justice of the State.
According to Plato, the State originates in want — the
insufficiency of individuals to provide for themselves. Yet
it is not something foreign or accidental to human nature.
The true end of the State is the true end of human nature —
the realisation of the good. The constitution of the perfect
State is just the magnified likeness of the constitution of the
normal man. The State is an organic whole like the indi-
vidual, composed of analogous parts which ought to aid one
another, converge to a common centre, and co-operate to a
common end. It is a unity which springs from, and is exactly
similar to, the unity of the soul itself.
In the State there ought to be three orders of men. The
first is the order of operatives, which comprises the two
classes of artisans and labourers. Its function is to'minister
to the wants of the community, and its motive is self-interest
or gain. It is not, properly speaking, a body of slaves.
Plato did not wish slaves in his commonwealth; he held
that Greeks ought not to enslave Greeks; and although he
allowed that there should be a few barbarian slaves, this was
permission, not injunction. It is only to the operatives that
he concedes the possession of private property. He saw that
they needed the stimulus of self-interest in order to perform
the labours expected of them, and therefore confined convnu-
nism to the two higher orders. Of these the one immediately
above the operatives, is that of the guardians or warriors.
Their function is to repress internal revolt and to repel for-
eign aggression, and their motive is the love of glory. They
must be not only spirited, swift, and strong, but thoughtful,
temperate, and despisers of wealth ; are to be carefully trained
in body and mind with a view to the formation of these
PLATO 141
qualities; and are to be guarded against the temptations
of their station by holding property, women, and children in
common. The third or highest order in the State is that
of the rulers or magistrates. It is selected from the second
order, and prepared for its duties with special care. It con-
sists not of priests, as did the ruling class in the oriental
theocracies, but of sages, with clear insight into the wants
of human nature and society and how they were to be sup-
plied, somewhat like those who composed the Pythagorean
brotherhood which ruled in Croton and other cities of South
Italy. Each of the orders of the State has a characteristic
quality or virtue : the operatives — temperance ; the guardians
— courage ; the magistrates — ■ wisdom. Without any of these
a State cannot exist; without their prevalence it cannot
nourish. But there must also be a principle or power which
belongs not primarily or peculiarly to any one order, but
must of its very nature pervade the whole so as to harmonise
and unify all its parts and properties, orders and qualities;
and this is none other than justice, the virtue which deter-
mines the true relation of all things and persons to one
another. Precisely so is it in the soul. In each individual
mind there are three distinct elements — reason, will, and
appetite — corresponding to the three constituent classes of
the civic community — -the rulers, guardians, and operatives.
And as the wisdom of the city dwells in its rulers, that of
the individual dwells in his reason; as the courage of the
city is in its guardians, that of the individual is in his will ;
as "the temperance of the city lies in the self-restraint and
submission of its operatives, that of the individual lies in the
control and subjection of his appetites ; while justice in the
individual, as in the city, resides in all the parts equally,
existing only in so far as each part performs its own func-
tion without encroaching on the functions of other parts.
Plato perceived with the utmost clearness that the char-
acter of a State must depend on the characters of the indi-
viduals who compose it; that a city can be no better than
are its citizens ; that a perfect republic supposes thoroughly
virtuous men. No charge against his scheme can be less
applicable than the common one that he hoped to make men
good and happy by laws apart from morals. In his eyes the
142 INTRODUCTION
problem of government was. mainly a moral, and therefore
mainly also an educational problem. He acknowledged that
the new social order which he desired to introduce, required
a new generation of persons formed by a new system of
education implying a radical change in Greek art, morality,
and religion. The plan of education which he sketched
assumed throughout the political revolution contemplated to
be inseparable from a theological, ethical, and even literary
or aesthetic revolution. It was of a most comprehensive
character, and is still instructive and suggestive. It subor-
dinated all that influences human life and all social activities
to the supreme art — that of the true statesman.
Plato's love of unity led him to sacrifice individuality, his
sense of the evils arising from self-interest to recommend
the abolition of private property and the family, his dislike
of the excesses of liberty to advocate an unnatural equality.
He required that at least the upper classes of the State, the
full citizens, should live wholly for it, — should see and hear,
feel and act, as it were, only in common, — should have no
separate or selfish interests. Perceiving that this end could
not be attained except through communism, as regards both
goods and women, he laid down rules for establishing and
maintaining a communistic system, for guarding it against
abuses and deriving from it all the advantages which it can
yield. Women he would emancipate and equalise with men,
by giving them the same education as their male companions,
relieving them from domestic labours, and assigning to them
public duties. Although the Platonic communism is in vari-
ous particulars offensive to the moral sense, its general moral
spirit is earnest, elevated, and even severe. It contemplated
not the indulgence but the subjection of sense and passion,
not the pleasure of the individual but the good of the society.
Of special interest to the historical philosopher are the
eighth and ninth books of the 'Republic' The exposition
there given by Plato of the variety of forms of government,
of their distinctive principles, of the excesses and defects
peculiar to each, of the general order of political change in
each and from one to another, and of its causes, laid the
foundation for all subsequent theorising on these points.
Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, the author of the 'De regimine
PLATO 143
principum,' Macchiavelli, Bodin, Vico, Montesquieu, and all
their followers, have built upon it.
The picture which Plato had drawn of an ideal State
was that of a true aristocracy, and this is presented in the
'Republic ' as the only normal polity. The distinct forms
of government deviating from it are four: timocracy (ex-
emplified in Sparta and Crete), oligarchy, democracy, and
tyranny. They are so many stages of departure and "degen-
eration from the ideal, and are produced by so many cor-
ruptions of the minds and manners of the citizens. Mr.
Newman's statement, however, regarding this portion of
Plato's work is so excellent, that I may, to the advantage of
my readers, content myself by quoting it.
" The review of actual constitutions given in these books is designed
to show that all States other than that in which justice reigns are un-
happy, and increasingly unhappy the further they are removed from the
ideal model, and it naturally places them before us in a sombre light.
The Lacedemonian State still retains a few features of the ideal commu-
nity; the distinction of social functions (or justice) so far survives there
that the soldier is marked off from the cultivator and trader; the old
respect for magistrates, the old military habits of life, the old interest in
yv/wao-TiKiq also survive. But the third class has been enslaved, separate
households and property have been introduced, the class of 'wise men'
has been corrupted and has lost its hold of power. The State is in the
hands of men in whom the spirited element rules, contentious and ambi-
tious men (<j>i,\6v£ikoi kcu (juXorifwi) . The regime is one of perpetual war,
and love of money has come in with the decline of communism. In the
oligarchy the money-getting spirit has won complete mastery. Rich men
rule over spendthrifts whose purses they have drained : all but the rulers
are poor. Functions are no longer distinguished ; the soldier is also a
cultivator or a trader. The oligarchical State is weak for war, for it is
really two States, — a State of the rich and a State of the poor — and it
does not arm its poor. It is in the oligarchy that the drone, stinged or
stingless, or in other words, the idle spendthrift, is first engendered.
Democracy is rather the rule of the stinged drones than of the many.
There are three classes in a democracy : the drones, stinged and sting-
less; rich money-making orderly men; and a large body of poor labouring
men, who seldom assemble together, but are all-powerful when they do.
The drones of a democracy are far more formidable than those of an
oligarchy, being now admitted to office, and they plunder the rich for the
benefit of the poor. This is one feature of a democracy ; another is its
excess of liberty. A democracy is organised anarchy. We do not learn
why the supremacy of the third class (the ^p^aTicrTtKoi) should be
accompanied by this excessive impatience of control. Anarchy leads by
144 INTRODUCTION
a natural reaction to tyranny. The people loves to have a champion ;
democracy commonly means the supremacy of an individual ; and the
champion easily passes into a tyrant. Many of the touches in Aristotle's
well-known picture of tyranny will be found to have been drawn from
Plato's sketch of the tyrant, if the two are compared. Plato speaks
throughout of oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny, as if there were only
one form of each, and that the most extreme form. He is naturally led
by the aim he has in view to make the worst of each of these constitu-
tions. We must not look for scientific exactness in these vigorous
sketches, which have a perennial truth and value ; Plato's aim is rather
to show the misery of misrule than to trace with accuracy the path of
constitutional change, or to reproduce every nuance of the various consti-
tutions. When Aristotle, at the close of his book on political change,
brings his unrivalled knowledge of the facts of constitutional change in
Greek States to bear on Plato's brilliant series of dissolving views, we
feel that his matter-of-fact criticisms, however cogent they may be, are
rather thrown away."
In one passage of the 'Republic ' (iv. 12) Plato makes a
very remarkable extension of the psychological analogy and
historical generalisation on which his political ideai is so
largely based. He indicates that what he has said of the
orders of classes of men in a city also applies to the nations
of the world ; that if the various races be viewed in relation
to each other, intelligence will be found to prevail among
the Greeks, courage among the Thracians and the Scythians
(the Northern peoples), and the love of gain among the
Phoenicians and Egyptians (the Southern peoples). This
was an approximation to regarding the world of nations as
one naturally fitted to be a vast organic whole, a city of
humanity. It was, however, only a transitory and excep-
tional glimpse of a far-off truth, and passed away unimproved.
In the delineation of the ideal State Plato had merely in view
a Greek city, or at most the aggregation of Greek cities, but
not a confederation of them, still less a Greek nation, and
least of all a rightly inter-related system of nations, a har-
monious realm of humanity.
The ideal exhibited in the 'Republic ' had obvious and
great defects. The consideration given to the order of
labourers, for instance, was manifestly insufficient. Those
who composed this order were assumed to be so possessed by
self-interest as to be fit only for industry or trade; and when
it had been laid down that they ought not to be allowed to
PLATO 145
take part in public functions, but should be kept in obedi-
ence to their betters, all that was essential to be said regard-
ing them was supposed to have been said. This method of
dealing with a most important portion of the complex problem
which Plato had before him, deprived his solution of it to
all title to completeness. Then, as regards the citizens in
the proper and full sense of the term, his proposals to abolish
private property and the family are liable to objections which
far outweigh any reasons that can be urged in their support.
Further, the distinction of the orders in the State was drawn
much too sharply and deeply. These orders, as described
by Plato, are not indeed castes ; they are not based on heredi-
tary differences ; the lowest is not composed of slaves, and the
highest is drawn from that below it; but the individual is so
merged in his order as to be stripped of much of his man-
hood. The truth that a man is not to be treated merely as
a trader, a soldier, or a ruler, but also as a man, with all the
powers and rights of a man, is ignored and virtually denied.
Perhaps the chief defect of all is the one which it was most
difficult for a Greek thinker in the age of Plato to escape —
a great and cruel sacrifice of the individual to the State.
But on this, as on the other defects of the Platonic ideal, I
have no need to dwell.
Plato was fully aware that his ideal of a best State was
very unlikely to be realised so long as Greek thought and
morality continued to be what they were. There was no
inconsistency, therefore, in his drawing up a scheme of a
second-best State. This he did in the 'Laws.'
Here he acknowledges it useless to demand in existing
circumstances community either of women or property, and
insists merely on the State regulation of marriage and the
equality of wealth. He also lays far more stress on religion
and far less on philosophy than in the 'Republic' But all
that we require to note in the 'Laws ' is the view given of
the development of society and government. The earth is
supposed to be of immense age, and its rational inhabitants,
with their arts and sciences, to have been repeatedly destroyed
by physical catastrophes. Human history is represented as
having since the last deluge passed through these stages,—
(1) single families of shepherds and hunters, with pure and
146 INTRODUCTION
simple manners, and without written laws; (2) primitive
societies under patriarchal rule; (3) early city life, based on
agriculture, in which a common legislation harmonises oppo-
site customs, and royalty or aristocracy takes the place of the
patriarchate ; (4) the rise of maritime cities, with commerce,
war, and sedition as consequence ; and (5) the establishment
of States, like the Lacedemonian and Cretan, with consti-
tutions of a mixed and tempered nature. In the 'Laws'
democracy and monarchy are represented as the two primary
or "mother" forms of government, and the best form as one
in which the distinctive principles of both, authority and
liberty, are so combined that what is true is preserved, and
the special dangers and excesses of both prevented. In it
all parts of the State are regulated by reason, and there is
no injustice or oppression. It is a unity in which all true
principles are conciliated and co-ordinated. Compared with
it royalty, aristocracy, democracy, and tyranny are not " con-
stitutions " but "factitious coteries " (crTao-LWTeTaX).
The ' Statesman,' although probably not Plato's composi-
tion, is Platonic in its general tenor. Its aim is to ascertain
the nature of the true ruler. The result arrived at is to the
following effect. The true ruler is the same man whether
called master, economist, politician, or king, — the man who
governs with the consent of the governed, but according to
his own knowledge and insight, — the wise man whose policy
rests not on sophistry but on genuine philosophy. Regal gov-
ernment is a science — a judicial and presiding science —
which no mob of persons can acquire or apply. The philos-
opher-king will reform his subjects by a most careful and com-
prehensive system of education, and deal with the diseases of
society as the physician does with those of the body, not
sparing the patient pain when it is needed. Only such a king
can restore society to the healthy and happy condition in which,
according to the ancient myth, mankind lived, when under the
immediate guidance of the gods, in the cycle of Chronos. The
myth of world cycles set forth in the ' Statesman ' may be of
theological and philosophical interest; but it is of no value as
an historical hypothesis. It only requires to be added that in
the 'Statesman' governments are divided into monarchy, of
which the perversion is tyranny; aristocracy, of which the per-
PLATO 147
version is oligarchy; and democracy, which is good or bad.
To the corrupt form of democracy Polybius perhaps first
applied the term " ochlocracy." The distribution of govern-
ments given in the ' Statesman ' is a merely formal classifica-
tion. No attempt is made to trace the historical relationships
of the kinds of government enumerated to one another.1
II. Aristotle was as far as Plato from perceiving history to
be the subject of science or philosophy. Had he conceived of
the possibility of a philosophy of history he would not have
maintained that "poetry" (epic poetry) "is more philosoph-
ical and earnest than history." His argument for this conclu-
sion rests wholly on the assumption that history treats only
of the particular, multiple, and isolated, — that it is devoid of
unity and unconcerned with the universal. But this is as es-
sentially an untrue and unworthy view of history as that im-
plied in the Platonic doctrine of ideas. In reality, philosophy
can never exhaust the truth and significance, or art fully dis-
close the earnestness and pathos, of history. Epic poetry is
only the artistic expression of the same kind of unity, and the
suggestion of the same kind of universality, as are to be found
in history itself. It is philosophical only in so far as it is a
revelation of the spirit which pervades human life in suffering,
struggle, and achievement.
Aristotle saw, however, with singular clearness, the import-
ance of history to political science and practice. He regarded
politics as having two sources, ethics and history, the latter
supplying it with the matter of experience needed for correct
theorising. He sought as a political teacher to master and
utilise all past political experience. He made a close and de-
tailed study of the history of Greek governments. He even
compiled a " Collection of the constitutions of Greek cities,"
which summed up the results of his investigations into a hun-
dred and fifty-eight nroXiTeiat. After this work had for many
centuries been supposed to have been irrecoverably lost, the
1 Among the host of Greek scholars who have treated of the political, social, and
historical theories of Plato, it may he sufficient to name Hermann, Stuhr, Zeller,
Hildenbrand, Oncken, Janet, Fouille'e, Grote, Jowett, L. Campbell, Newman, &c.
On the ' Statesman ' see the IStudes sur le Politique attribute a Platon, par M.
Huit (C. R. des Se'ances et Travaux de l'Acad. des Sc. Mor. et Pol., Oct.-Nov. 1877
et Janv.-Fev. 1888).
148 INTRODUCTION
portion of it which related to Athens came to light, although
not unmutilated, in 1890, and is now before the public as ed-
ited by Mr. Kenyon. It consists of two sections. The first of
these (ch. 1-41) is a sketch of the constitutional history of
Athens, and the second (ch. 42-63) is an account of the means
and processes of government. The former is of great histori-
cal interest. It seems almost to entitle us to call Aristotle the
father of constitutional history. It traces the constitution of
Athens from its first beginning through ten stages of develop-
ment into its eleventh and last phase of existence, the re-estab-
lishment of democracy after the expulsion of the Thirty and
their successors. The vision, the spirit, and the method of a
truly scientific historian are conspicuous in the brief but pro-
found and dispassionate account which Aristotle has therein
given of the rise and fall of the most interesting democracy
which has ever run its course on earth.
For a knowledge of his historical generalisations and deduc-
tions, however, we must still have recourse to his ' Politics.'
It contains ample evidence of the comprehensiveness and
thoroughness of his investigations. From the solidity and
massiveness of the political system which it delineates we
can discern with what care and labour and mastery of method
the foundations had been laid and the materials extracted and
tested. It was not merely the constitutions of Greek cities
which had been studied ; inquiries had been instituted even
into the customs of barbarous tribes. The whole social life
of mankind, so far as credible knowledge of it was accessible
to him, seems to have been closely scanned by the immortal
Stagyrite. It is not too much, in fact, to claim for him the
honour of having studied politics according to the historical
method, and anticipated " comparative politics."
The historical method may be abused. Probably most of
those who profess to follow it suppose that it will take them
farther than it can. It is necessarily inadequate to the proof
of natural law or scientific truth. It can only reach histori-
cal truth — only show that such and such events have taken
place in such and such an order ; it can never establish the
naturalness or justice of the order. Aristotle sometimes over-
looked this. History showed him that slavery had been uni-
versal in the ancient world, as much so as the family or the
ARISTOTLE 149
State, and he inferred that slavery was a law of nature, —
that it was natural in the sense of normal and right. Every
inference of the kind must he erroneous. No amount of
history is sufficient to prove any institution to be a law of
nature, normal, right. All that history can show regarding
any institution is how long and how widely it has existed.
Aristotle, however, being no mere empiricist, did not trust
to the historical method alone in politics, but combined it with
the teleological. He traced the course of things in order to
determine the nature of things ; but he was guided in his
manner of doing so by a general conception of their ends,
holding that the nature of things is the realisation of their
ends. To trace the development of things was regarded by
him as a means to their knowledge, yet as only possible in
the light of a certain knowledge of their natures and ends.
Hence he, too, like Plato, elaborately endeavoured to deline-
ate the ideal, of a best State. Three books of the ' Politics '
(iii., vii., viii.) are devoted to the task. But the ideal deline-
ated is not claimed to be that of the absolutely best. There
is no government which is the best for all races in all circum-
stances. Every actually best government must conform to
actual conditions and relations ; and the actually best, the
best practicable in definite circumstances, is that which the
practical politician must always aim at realising. The ideally
best State is, therefore, only a generally best, and can only be
described in a general manner. It is the State so organised
as to enable the citizens to live in the best and happiest way.
To this end it must be a city of limited size, salubriously situ-
ated, near enough the sea to have a harbour, but not so near
as to attract numerous strangers. It must have slaves to till
its soil and man its navy. All engaged in trade and com-
merce should be excluded from a share in its government.
Each citizen ought to be a landowner, but not very rich, and
entitled to take part in public affairs when of ripe age. The
youths are to be subjected from the seventh to the twenty-
first year to a course of instruction fitted to make them
efficient soldiers, capable citizens, and virtuous, cultured,
thoughtful men. Religious worship is to be endowed and
regulated with a view to the promotion of the general good.
Aristotle made no attempt to draw any general plan, or to
150 INTRODUCTION
form any general picture of human history. He did not
enunciate any general law of historical development. But
he was keenly interested in the political history of Greece,
and that he saw to be a natural process, every stage and change
of which could be explained by their social antecedents. Man
is represented as by nature a social being, a political animal.
Society is not a mere outgrowth of egoism, or a mere inven-
tion of individuals. Individuals can no more exist without
society than society without individuals. The first form of
society is the family ; out of it arises the village community ;
then from that grows up the State. Hence the earliest form
of political government is the patriarchal or regal ; the sort
of rule which is characteristic of the family is continued into
the village, and thence passes into the State.
The State itself has various forms, which are all unstable,
and consequently society is subject to many revolutions.
Aristotle's chief contribution to historical science is to have
so successfully worked out the theory of these revolutions.
Plato had indeed already presented it ingeniously and
grandly ; but Aristotle, with larger knowledge and a more
critical judgment, tested Plato's conclusions by comparison
with the relevant facts, reaffirmed or rejected them, added
others of his own, and in all respects strengthened and
improved the doctrine. His classification of governments
rests on the two principles — that government may be in the
hands of one, or of a few, or of the many, and that it may be
exercised. either for the common good or for the advantage of
the rulers. Hence each form of government may be good or
bad, and good or bad government may have three forms.
Thus the States or forms of government are these six —
monarchy, aristocracy, and polity (the constitutional repub-
lic), and tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Each has its
peculiar advantages and disadvantages, facilities and difficul-
ties, &c, which are described. Monarchy might be the
best could the perfect king be secured, but that is very
improbable. Aristocracy, if pure, will also be excellent, but
it is seldom found uncorrupted. The polity is the best gen-
erally attainable government. Tyranny is the worst form of
government. Democracy is never good, but it may be the
ARISTOTLE 151
least bad, and will become a necessity whenever wealth
abounds and the trading classes acquire influence. A gov-
ernment which would endure must avoid one-sidedness, the
excessive assertion of its own particular principle or charac-
ter ; a democracy must not be too equalitarian, an oligarchy
too exclusive, or a tyranny too despotic. Political stability
requires moderation ; the more wisely mixed a political con-
stitution is, the more durable it will be. Aristotle exhibits
the general and special, internal and external, causes of politi-
cal revolutions ; dwells on the kinds of revolution peculiar to
each form of government ; and indicates the various means
by which political stability may best be secured. He has
neglected to trace the influence both of war and religion in
effecting political change. It may be noted that by his theory
of the three powers or functions of government — the legis-
lative, executive, and judicial — he anticipated Montesquieu,
and by his reflections on tyranny the system of Macchiavelli.
Aristotle's vindication of the principle of self-love or ele-
ment of individuality, of the family, and of property, against
the attacks of Plato, may justly be regarded as a service
rendered to historical as well as to political truth.
Like Plato, he had no conception of a nation in the higher
sense, and consequently no anticipation of the part which
nationality was to play in the history of the world. Like
Plato, he supposed the arts and institutions of civilisation to
have been many times invented and lost. He modified the
generalisation of Plato as to the characteristics of the races
of mankind, ascribing to the northern peoples courage, to the
eastern peoples intelligence, and to the Greeks the combina-
tion of courage and intellect.
What Aristotle did for the history of philosophy should
also be here called to mind. The history of philosophy and
the philosophy of history are so intimately connected, that a
direct service to the former must be at least an indirect ser-
vice to the latter. But Aristotle was the first to survey the
history of philosophy with a philosophical eye. By the way
in which he traced in his ' Metaphysics ' the development of
Greek speculation through the systems of his predecessors,
he established a right to be regarded as the originator of the
152 INTRODUCTION
philosophical method of studying and presenting the history
of philosophy. 1
III. Christianity assumed and involved a theory of history.
In the writings of St. Paul and various of the Christian fathers,
the theory attained to partial expression ; in the ' De Civitate
Dei ' of St. Augustine it found its first general statement.
Augustine was one of the greatest and most influential
personalities who have appeared in the whole history of the
Church. He was splendidly endowed both intellectually and
spiritually. His rich and powerful mind contained qualities
which are seldom united, — fertility of imagination and keen-
ness of judgment, speculative subtilty and rhetorical fervour,
introspectiveness and practical energy, vehemence and tender-
ness. He passed through the most varied phases of experi-
ence ; had been Aristotelian, Manichean, Sceptic, Platonist,
and Neo-Platonist, before he surrendered himself to the
guidance of Christ and Paul; and when converted, gave him-
self to the service of his new faith with passionate devotion.
He was saint, philosopher, orator, man of letters, man of
counsel, man of action. More, perhaps, than any of the
fathers, of the schoolmen, or of the reformers, he has influ-
enced the doctrinal development of Christendom.
The ' De Civitate Dei ' is his most elaborate and probably his
most valuable work, — the one which cost him most toil, and
gives the most complete conception of his abilities. It was
begun about 413, and not finished before 426. The resolution
to write it was occasioned by the accusations brought against
Christianity, after Rome had been captured by Alaric and the
Goths. That event led many to think and say that the old
religion of their fathers under which Rome had flourished and
become the mistress of the world, was better than the new one,
under which she had declined and become the prey and scorn
of barbarians. Augustine sought to repel the reproach. He
traced the causes of Rome's fall to the vices of paganism, and
ascribed what remained to her of good to the saving virtue of
1 On the political, social, and historical views of Aristotle it may he sufficient
to refer merely to the works of Oncken (Die Staatslehre ties A.) and Newman
(Politics of A.) . My remark relative to the Metaphysics, B. xiii. xiv., is not meant
to imply that Aristotle gave an accurate account of the early Greek philosophies.
It refers simply to his mode of interpreting and exhibiting them.
AUGUSTINK 153
the Gospel ; and over against the earthly ideal which she rep-
resented he set the divine ideal represented by the Church of
Christ. The great work in which he did so is not, as Ozanam
and others have said, a philosophy of history, nor even an
attempt at a philosophy of history ; it is properly neither phil-
osophical nor historical, but theological — a polemic against
paganism, and an apology for Christianity of remarkable
breadth and elevation of design, of remarkable vigour and
skill of execution. It contains, however, a nearer approxi-
mation to a philosophy of history than will be found in anv
other patristic or scholastic treatise ; and a statement of the
characteristic principles of the historical theory set forth in it
may here be reasonably demanded.
They may, perhaps, be thus concisely reproduced. (1.) The
human race was created less than six thousand years before the
capture of Rome by the Goths. All documents which assign
to it a greater antiquity than the Biblical records (as inter-
preted on this point by the Eusebian chronology) are men-
dacious ; and all the theories which, like that of Apuleius,
represent men as having always been, or which, like that of
some of the Stoics, affirm the perpetual revolution of all things
in cycles which bring men with the rest of the world round
again to the same order and form as at first, are foolish. Wiry
men were not created sooner is an inconsiderate question,
which might be put with the same relevancy and force no
matter when they were created (lib. xii. cap. 10-20).
(2.) The human race is a single species; all its members
are descended from one man, and therefore bound together,
not only by similarity of nature, but by ties of kinship. In
that one first man the whole race was comprehended, and in
him God foresaw what portion of it was to live according to
the Spirit, and obtain eternal life, and what to live according
to the flesh, and incur eternal condemnation (xii. 21 et 27).
(3.) God who has everywhere impressed on nature regu-
larity, beauty, and order — who has done everything in the
physical world according to number, weight, and measure —
who has left not even the entrails of the smallest and meanest
living creature, the feather of a bird, the little flower of a
plant, or the leaf of a tree, without its exquisite harmony
of parts, — cannot have left the course of human affairs, the
154 INTRODUCTION
growth and decay of nations, their victories and defeats, un-
regulated by the laws of His providence.1 The vicissitudes
of empire can have their reason neither in chance — i.e., the
absence of a cause, or the action of causes which operate in
no intelligible order — nor in fate, if by fate be meant what
happens of necessity independently of the will of God; but
only in that will itself, in a divinely foreordained plan em-
bracing all things and times, yet not inconsistent with men
doing freely whatever they feel to be done by them simply
because they will it (v. 1, 8-11).
(4.) The human race, naturally one, had its unity broken
by the fall or sin of Adam, from whom have issued in conse-
quence two kinds of men, two societies, two great cities ; the
one ruled by self-will and self-love, the other by the love
of God and man, — the one subject to condemnation and
destined to eternal misery, the other UDder grace and certain
of eternal felicity. Outwardly, visibly, bodily, these two
societies or cities of men may be confounded ; but inwardly,
really, and spiritually, they are essentially and eternally dis-
tinct and hostile. No other division of men can compare in
importance with this ; and to it all other divisions, whether
based on distinctions of speech, race, or government, must be
subordinated (xiv. 1, 28, xv. 1).
(5.) Man has been endowed with a marvellous capacity of
progress, and his genius, partly under the stimulus of neces-
sity, partly from its own inherent inventiveness, has devised
and elaborated countless arts ; has made amazing advances
in weaving and building, agriculture and navigation, in pot-
tery, painting, and sculpture, in the means of destruction and
the appliances of healing, in exciting and satisfying appetite,
in the communication of thoughts and feelings, in music and
musical instruments, in measuring and numbering, in the
knowledge of the stars and of the rest of nature, and in
philosophical subtlety (xxii. 24, sec. 3).
(6.) Like the education of an individual, that of the race,
as represented by the people of God, has advanced through
certain epochs or ages, in order that the human mind might
1 The beautiful passage (v. 11) partially translated in the above sentence
must, I think, have suggested another equally beautiful in Herder's Preface to
his ' Ideen. '
AUGUSTINE 155
gradually rise from temporal to eternal, from visible to in-
visible things (x. 14). Augustine has made great use of this
idea, that the development of humanity is analogous to that
of the individual, while at the same time aware that the com-
parison or parallelism was not absolutely exact. Indeed he
has ill several of his works distinctly pointed out one im-
portant respect in which it fails — viz., that while age in the
individual is weakness, in humanity it is perfection. He less
distinctly felt, although not quite unconscious of it, that differ-
ent periods may coexist in the development of the race, while
they must necessarily be successive in that of the individual.
(7.) The epochs of history are sometimes regarded by
Augustine as two, sometimes as three, and sometimes as six.
The twofold division is that into history before, and history
after Christ ; the time of preparation for the Gospel, and the
time of its diffusion and triumph. The threefold division
is into the youth, manhood, and old age of humanity, or the
reigns of nature, law, and grace. And the sixfold division is
essentially a further application of the principle which under-
lies the threefold division, although also referred to a fanciful
analogy between the epochs of history and the days of crea-
tion, which has often been reproduced since by writers who
have allowed imagination to master reason. The epoch of
youth is characterised by the absence of law, and compre-
hends the two periods of infancy and boyhood. In the first,
which extends from Adam to Noah, man is absorbed in the
satisfaction of his physical wants, and soon forgets whatever
happens to him ; in the second, which extends from Noah to
Abraham, the division of languages takes place, and memory
begins to be exercised in recalling and retaining the past.
The manhood of the race, or reign of law, extends from
Abraham to Christ. It is marked by the growth of reason
and of the sense of sin. The spirit struggles with the evil
in the world, and through defeat is made conscious of its
weakness and depravity. This epoch may be regarded as em-
bracing three periods : the first reaching from Abraham to
David ; the second from David to the Babylonian captivity ;
and the third coming down to the birth of Christ. In the
course of it flourished the two great heathen empires of As-
syria and Rome, of which all other heathen kingdoms may be
156 INTRODUCTION
viewed as appendages. The old age of humanity, or reign of
grace, is the whole Christian era. It is the time in which the
Church is enabled through the power of the Spirit to conquer
the world ; and it will last until the victory is complete, and
the saints inherit the earth in eternal blessedness. No fewer
than five books of the 'De Civitate Dei' (xv.-xix.) are de-
voted to trace through these various epochs of time, the
growth and progress of humanity in its two great divisions,
or, in other words, the fortunes of the heavenly and earthly
cities : but, although full of theological interest, there will be
found no signs in them of the presence of either the spirit or
the method of historical science ; indeed, they consist mainly
of comments and conjectures on the Biblical narrative. The
earthly city and its history get little attention and still less
justice. The history of the heavenly city itself, although dis-
coursed of in these books at great length, is not divided into
an orderly series of periods, or stages of development. The
division which I have just described can, at the most, be only
said to be implied in the exposition given in the ' De Civitate
Dei.' Its explicit statement, the definite limiting and char-
acterising of the periods, I have had to take from a much
earlier work, the ' De Genesi contra Manichaeos ' (i. 23).
(8.) Another theorem of St. Augustine is, that although
out of the city of God, or apart from true religion, there can
be no true virtue, although all that is not of faith is sin, and
the natural virtues of heathen peoples must, in consequence,
be only apparent virtues, still such virtues may merit and re-
ceive increase of dominion and other temporal rewards, as well
a§ serve as examples and incentives to Christians. Of this
the grand proof in his eyes was Rome ; and he has insisted
with singular eloquence that the ancient Romans deserved for
their industry, moderation, freedom from luxury and licen-
tiousness, skill in government, and even desire of glory —
since that, although a vice in itself, restrained many greater
vices — to be raised to the height of power which they
reached ; and that the heroic deeds of Brutus and Torquatus,
of Camillus, Mucius, and Cincinnatus, the Decii, Pulvillus,
and Regulus, might well humble even the most devoted of
the followers of Jesus (vi. 12-20).
(9.) The city of God, which has from the first grown up
AUGUSTINE 157
alongside of the kingdoms of this world, will outlast them all ;
and although they have often despised and oppressed it, will
appear invested with immortal beauty and honour when their
glories have been extinguished for ever. Immutable and
invincible amidst all the instability, agitation, and strife of
human things, it is continually drawing into itself its pre-
destined number of inhabitants out of all nations, tribes, and
peoples. When the unknown hour arrives which sees their
number completed, the last of the elect passed from the city of
the world into that of God, then cometh Christ to judge the
quick and the dead, and finally to separate the good from
the evil ; and at His word, above the ruins of those cities of the
world that have passed away into the darkness of their eternal
doom; there rises in the light of God's love, on a new and
purified earth, a new, peaceful, and perfectly happy city,
which is imperishable, and which contains all the truly good
men who have ever lived.
These are the leading propositions of what we may call in a
lax and general way the Augustinian philosophy of history,
which was substantially the only one known in medieval
Europe, and which has reappeared in modern times in many
forms and with more or less important modifications. There
are still those who accept it as the only philosophy of history
possible or desirable ; but the vast majority of thoughtful minds
are now probably in greater danger of overlooking than of
overestimating its worth in any other than a religious refer-
ence. Its defects are numerous and obvious. It subordinates
all things to the Church in a false and misleading way,
depreciates and degrades secular life, takes no account at all
of many an important people, and of the very greatest of those
which it condescends to notice gives most superficial and
partial views. Its assertion of the existence, power, and
wisdom of,the First Providential Cause, however admirable
it may be in itself, is unsupported by adequate proof, that
being only attainable by the investigation of secondary causes,
which are neglected. It virtually identifies the history of a
special people, the Jewish, as recorded for a special purpose
in the canonical books of Scripture, with the history of human-
ity, so far as recoverable from any kind of genuine monument
or memorial by any kind of sound research. It ignores, or
158 INTRODUCTION
fails worthily to appreciate, art, literature, science, philosophy,
natural and ethnic religion, law, politics, and, in a word, almost
every phase of ordinary human life and culture. Instead of
attempting truly and impartially to explain history, it seeks
to convert it into an illustration and verification of a theo-
logical system. It so emphasises the distinction between elect
and non-elect as virtually to deny the unity of humanity. It
represents the kingdom of the devil as not less enduring and
more populous than that of God, so that the ultimate goal of
history is for the majority of human souls one of eternal sin
and suffering.
With all its defects, however, it was a vast improvement on
previous theories of history, or rather on the previous want of
a theory. It explicitly affirmed the historical unity and'prog-
ress which to some extent it implicitly denied. It recognised
the importance of the moral and spiritual in the life and move-
ment of humanity. It represented history as one great whole
guided by principles and proceeding to solemn issues through
an orderly series of stages. It made apparent that the knowl-
edge of history bears closely on the highest problems of specu-
lation. The ultimate and greatest triumph of historical philos-
ophy may not unreasonably be expected to be the full proof
of Providence, the discovery by the processes of scientific
method of the divine plan which unites and harmonises the
apparent chaos of human actions contained in history into a
cosmos. The historical theory of Augustine was the first sus-
tained and comprehensive attempt to trace such a plan, and
although far from scientific in its character, it well deserves,
in the main, the admiration which it has received.
IV. The first writer to treat history as the proper object
of a special science was Mohammed Ibn Khaldun. Whether
on this account he is to be regarded or not as the founder of
the science of history is a question as to which there may
well be difference of opinion ; but no candid reader of his
' Prolegomena ' (Mocaddemaf) can fail to admit that his claim
to the honour is more valid than that of any other author
previous to Vico.
Our knowledge of his life is drawn chiefly from an auto-
biography which stops short at the year 1394 (a.h. 797),
LBN KHALDUK 159
twelve years before his death. It seems obviously accurate
and honest, and is sufficiently full and detailed, yet reveals
little of the writer's inner self, and portrays but indistinctly
his outer life and its surroundings. It has no remarkable
merits.
Ibn Khaldun was born at Tunis in 1332. He descended
from an ancient Arab tribe of Hadramaut, and from a family
which for some centuries exercised great influence in Spain.
On the fall of the Ommayades his ancestors settled in North
Africa. He received a careful education, showed great apti-
tude for learning, and was at an early age licensed to teach a
variety of subjects. Among his acquirements were knowl-
edge of the Koran, of ancient Arabic poetry, of the religious
traditions, and of grammar, logic, mathematics, jurisprudence,
dogmatic theology, and philosophy. It did not fall to his lot
in life to have much learned leisure, but his thirst for knowl-
edge and his love of literature remained always keen and
strong. At the age of twenty he began his political career
by entering the service of the Sultan of Tunis, Ibn Ishac II. ;
two years later he passed into that of the Sultan of Fez, Abu
Einan. The favour at first shown him by the latter sover-
eign gave rise to jealousy and intrigues which led to his
disgrace and imprisonment. In 1359, on the death of Abu
Ei'nan, he was released by Abu Salem and appointed secre-
tary of state. He was still, however, the object of envy and
calumny, and after the death of Abu Salem, his intercourse
with the powerful Vizir Omar became so unpleasant that he
left the Court, and soon after passed into Spain, where he
was received with great favour by Ibn El-Ahmer, to whom
he had rendered important services in Africa. In the follow-
ing year he was at Seville as the ambassador of El-Ahmer to
Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, by whom he was graciously
treated.
He returned to Africa in 1365 as prime minister of a
former friend, Ibn Abdallah, who had made himself master
of Begeyi. After this prince was slain in a battle against
Abdul-Abbas, Sultan of Constantine, Khaldun led for some
years a very unsettled and unsafe life, amidst warring kings,
and dependent on the friendship of the chiefs of certain pow-
erful and independent tribes. From 1370 to 1374 he was
160 INTRODUCTION
in the service of the sovereign of Morocco, and especially
engaged in negotiations and expeditions with the Arab tribes.
In the latter year he passed a second time into Spain, but was
soon forced to return. Thereupon he withdrew from public
life for four years, and applied himself exclusively to study
in a large solitary castle, of which the ruins are said still to
be remaining, on an affluent of the Mina, in the province of
Oran. In this retreat he composed his 'Prolegomena,' and
began his ' History of the Arabs and Berbers.' To continue
the latter he required to have access to large libraries, and
this was one of the reasons which induced him in 1378 to
revisit Tunis.
He was received with distinction by the Sultan Abdul-
Abbas and the general body of the citizens, and with enthu-
siasm by the students, who constrained him to give them
instruction; but also with suspicion and aversion by a formid-
able party of courtiers, headed by the chief mufti, Ibn Arfa.
The machinations of his enemies caused him, after he had
composed his ' History of the Berbers,' to resolve on making
the pilgrimage to Mecca. Having obtained permission to de-
part, he sailed in October 1382 for Egypt, landed in Novem-
ber at Alexandria, and after a month's stay there, proceeded
to Cairo. His fame had preceded him, and as no caravans
left for Mecca that year, he yielded to the persuasions of the
Sultan Barkuk to accept a professorship and postpone his
pilgrimage. He was afterwards raised to the chief Malekite
cadiship. In this office his rigid justice and his zeal against
abuses made him many enemies among the official class. At
the same time a terrible calamity befell him. The vessel bear-
ing his family from Morocco to Egypt was wrecked, and by
one stroke he lost, as he says, his wealth, his children, and his
happiness. He was overwhelmed with affliction, and could
only find consolation in prayer. In 1387 he made the jour-
ney to Mecca, and thence returned to Cairo. For a time he
gave himself up entirely to study and teaching. His auto-
biography was composed in, and ends with, 1394. In 1400 he
followed Ferruj, Sultan of Egypt, in his expedition into Syria
against the famous Timur (Tamerlane), and was among those
who were besieged in Damascus. On his surrender of him-
self to the conqueror he was treated with great respect and
IBN KHALDUN 161
generosity. Timur showed the utmost appreciation of Khal-
dun's gifts and knowledge, and Khaldun showed himself a
courtier of consummate skill. The Tartar monarch would
fain have taken the historian to Turkistan, but the seductive
tongue of the Arab politician dissuaded him from carrying
the desire into effect. Khaldun returned to Cairo, and re-
entered public life as chief cadi. He died in 1406, at the
age of seventy-four.
Even from the foregoing brief summary of the chief inci-
dents in his career, it will be apparent that Ibn Khaldun must
have been an altogether remarkable man. Living amidst cir-
cumstances the most complicated, combinations shifting from
day to day, plots and intrigues, despotic arbitrariness and mean
jealousies, he played an active and prominent part in many sit-
uations. Although often cast down, he as often rose speedily
up again; and, he remained from youth to age, through all the
vicissitudes of a difficult and eventful career, distinguished
and influential, courted or persecuted, dreaded or admired.
He was a skilful politician, an accomplished courtier, a bril-
liant member of society, a man subtle in counsel, persuasive in
speech, pliant in adapting himself to circumstances, qualified
for themost diverse offices, a proficient in almost every liberal
art and every department of science cultivated by his Moham-
medan contemporaries. He was, perhaps, not wholly devoid
of the spirit of intrigue, somewhat too conscious of his own
superiority, and inclined to exercise power with rather high a
hand. Obviously he was ambitious of eminence and fame
both in politics and literature; but he cannot be charged with
disregard of moral principles or indulgence in vicious habits.
He was a devout and strict Mussulman.
He adhered to no metaphysical or speculative system of
philosophy. Previous to the fourteenth century, philosophy,
in all Mohammedan lands, had fallen into utter disrepute;
theological orthodoxy had, wherever the Koran was acknowl-
edged as the supreme religious authority, completely crushed
out of existence independent thought on fundamental prob-
lems. In this reference Ibn Khaldun did not rise above the
spirit of his age. In all questions relating to the supra-sensu-
ous world he placed little faith in reason and full confidence
in revelation. He has devoted a chapter of his ' Prolegomena '
162 INTRODUCTION
to prove that philosophy is science falsely so called, and not
only incapable of fulfilling its promises, but, as hostile to re-
ligion, naturally hurtful. He grants merely that a knowledge
of its history is of some value, and that the study of it helps
to sharpen the logical understanding. He affirms, however,
that it should not be cultivated except by those who have been
well grounded in Koranic exegesis and Islamic jurisprudence.
He highly esteemed the positive sciences, and he accepted the
teaching of Mohammed and the dogmatic theology based on
it as deserving of implicit trust, but he regarded the free exer-
cise of reason in the spheres of religion and metaphysics as
delusive and pernicious. Believing in no philosophy, he was,
of course, under no temptation to attempt the explanation of
history by philosophy. The Koran contained few germs of
historical doctrine. Hence Khaldun could only form histori-
.cal theories by drawing them directly from historical facts.
His knowledge of historical facts, at least so far as attainable
from oriental sources, was, however, vast and profound, prac-
tical and living, — the product both of learned research and
personal experience. He had, further, a rare power of seeing
into the nature and significance of social phenomena, and a
remarkable facility in detecting their conditions and tracing
their connections. He was an excellent generaliser. It is
entirely to these qualities that we must ascribe his success as
an historical thinker, — not at all to his speculative capacity
or the excellence of his philosophical principles.
Ibn Khaldun wrote on various subjects. His minor trea-
tises had a temporary popularity, but have been long forgot-
ten. His fame rests securely, however, on his magnum opus,
the ' Universal History,' and especially on the first part of it,
the ' Prolegomena.' The second part comprises the history
of the Arabs, Nabatseans, Syrians, Persians, Israelites, Copts,
Greeks, Romans, Turks, and Franks. The third or last part
is occupied with the Berbers and neighbouring peoples. On
these two latter parts — the strictly historical divisions of the
work — only a very few specialists can be entitled to pro-
nounce a judgment. Their author's own estimate of their
originality, conformity to the requirements of science and
criticism, and value, was very high. There can be little
doubt that it was too high. The most competent modern
IBN K.HALDUN 163
critics who have occupied themselves with Ibn Khaldun's
' Universal History ' — Dozy, De Slane, and Amari — agree
in recognising that as an historical work it has certain seri-
ous defects. They find the style often obscure and careless ;
the narrative at times diffuse and impeded in its motion by
superfluous reasonings; the distribution of the matter or
contents such as leads to frequent repetitions ; and the tes-
timony of the original authorities relied on not always cor-
rectly reported. All this may very probably be true. Had
Ibn Khaldun written what would in the present day be
deemed a truly scientific history, he would have performed a
far more extraordinary feat than that which he accomplished
as an historical theorist. It is scarcely conceivable, indeed,
that such a history could be written in a Semitic language.
The ' Prolegomena ' must now receive our exclusive atten-
tion. They may fairly be regarded as forming a distinct
and complete work. Of this work I proceed to give a brief
account.1
It consists of a preface, an introduction, and six sections or
divisions.
In the preface the general subject of the work is said to be
"history, a species of knowledge universally esteemed, largely
cultivated, and manifoldly useful." History is described as
being in external form the display or delineation of the events
which occur throughout the course of ages in the experience
of peoples and dynasties, and in its internal characteristics
the examination and verification of facts, the attentive inves-
tigation of their causes, and a profound and comprehensive
insight into the way in which social phenomena have been
produced. When it corresponds to this its true nature, his-
tory " deserves to be counted among the sciences." The aim
of Ibn Khaldun's work is to raise history to the rank of a
science. This aim, he considered, no previous writer had
made a deliberate and sustained endeavour to accomplish.
The introduction dwells chiefly on the uncriticalness of his-
torians and its causes. Various instances are given of their
credulity in the acceptance of testimony, and of the fallacious-
1 Prolegomenes d'Ebn-Khaldoun, texte Arabe public par M. Quatremere, in
Notices et Extr. des MSS., t. xvi.-xviii. Paris, 1858. — Traduction par M. De
Slane, in Not. et Extr., t. xix.-xxi. Paris, 1862.
164 INTRODUCTION"
ness and insufficiency of their attempted explanations of the
events which they describe. Masudi's account, drawn from
the Pentateuch, of the number of armed Israelites under Moses
in the wilderness, is among those subjected to criticism in this
connection, and the grounds on which it is pronounced in-
credible are nearly the same as those with which Colenso has
made us in the present day so familiar. As causes of histo-
rians erring as they have done, there are mentioned the over-
looking of the differences of times and epochs, the judging
too hastily from analogies and resemblances, opinionativeness,
excessive trust in one's self or in others, servility, and a want
of knowledge of the nature and influence of civilisation. The
consideration of the last of these causes leads Ibn Khaldun to
represent the inquiry which he purposes to institute, and the
results which he hopes thereby to attain, as a science of civili-
sation which will supply a criterion of truth and error in his-
tory. It will form, he says, " a new science as remarkable for
its originality as for its extent and utility." It will be at once
the richest result and the surest guide of history.
The First Section of the ' Prolegomena ' treats of society in
general, and of the varieties of the human race, and of the
regions of the earth which they inhabit, as related thereto.
It starts from the position that man is by nature a social
being. His body and mind, wants and affections, for their
exercise, satisfaction, and development, all imply and demand
co-operation and communion with his fellows , — participation
in a collective and common life. This collective or common
life passes through stages of what is called culture or civili-
sation; and just as quantity is the object of geometry, the
heavenly bodies of astronomy, and the human frame of medi-
cal science, so is civilisation or culture the object of the new
science, the Science of History.
There follows a lengthened description of the physical basis
and conditions of history and civilisation. The chief features
of the inhabited portion of the earth, its regions, principal seas,
great rivers, climates, &c, are made the subjects of exposition.
The seven climatic zones, and the ten sections of each, are
delineated, and their inhabitants specified. The three climatic
zones of moderate temperature are described in detail, and the
distinctive features of the social condition and civilisation of
IBM KHALDUN 165
their inhabitants dwelt upon. The influence of the atmosphere,
heat, &c, on the physical and even mental and moral pecu-
liarities of peoples is maintained to be great. Not only the
darkness of skin of the negroes, but their characteristics of
disposition and of mode of life, are traced to the influence of
climate. A careful attempt is also made to show how differ-
ences of fertility of soil — how dearth and abundance — mod-
ify the bodily constitution and affect the minds of men, and so
operate on society. His estimate of the advantageousness of
abstemiousness and simplicity as regards food will perhaps
appear to most persons too high. It has to be kept in mind
that his ideal of healthy physical life for man was one drawn
from the actual life of the Arabs of the desert.
The section closes with a chapter on prophetism, — on the
apprehension of the things of the invisible world vouchsafed
to certain specially favoured persons for the instruction of
ordinary mankind. The chapter is full of interesting and
instructive matter, but will not improbably seem to occidental
readers very irrelevantly placed. It must not be forgotten,
however, that to the Semitic mind prophetism generally pre-
sents itself as the chief or even sole source of religious knowl-
edge and authority, and therefore as a subject the discussion
of which cannot be evaded if religion is to be maintained to
be one of the conditions of civilisation.
The Second Section of the 'Prolegomena' treats of the
civilisation of nomadic and half-savage peoples.
In it Ibn Khaldun appears at his best, writing, as he does,
from direct and full knowledge. He begins by indicating how
the different usages and institutions of peoples depend to a
large extent on the ways in which they provide for their sub-
sistence. He describes how peoples have at first contented
themselves with simple necessities, and then gradually risen
to refinement and luxury through a series of states or stages
all of which are alike conformed to nature, in the sense of
being adapted to its circumstances or environment. He shows
how the condition of the Arab race is thus natural.
He traces the connections between life in the country and
life in towns. The former precedes the latter, it is the cradle
of civilisation. It originates towns, supports them, and sup-
plies them with population. He insists on the moral superior-
166 INTRODUCTION
ity, notwithstanding their greater rudeness of manners, of the
inhabitants of the country to those of cities. They are, in
particular, more courageous. This is largely to be ascribed to
their greater independence of action, — their exemption from
an external authoritative regulation of human conduct which
deprives men of self-reliance and energy.
The conditions of social life in the desert are dwelt upon at
length. The desert tribe requires to be, above all, animated
with the feeling of the community. Such feeling is only to be
found in sufficient strength among persons connected by blood-
relationship or an equivalent tie ; and purity of blood is only
to be found in the desert and among half -savage tribes. In
such tribes the right of government must be in one family,
and that the most powerful of the tribe. It would be ruinous
to allow it to pass to an alien. Only among families united
and animated by a strong common feeling so as to form a
powerful and distinguished confraternity is nobility a reality.
The so-called nobility of other families is a mere semblance of
nobility, a something metaphorical or conventional. Among
the inhabitants of towns there are no families noble in the
primary and proper sense, although there are virtuous, influ-
ential, and respected families. A family is not noble because
descended from noble ancestors, but because possessed of the
spirit of nobility. The Jews are de'scended from the noblest
family on earth, and may boast of glorious ancestors, but
there is now no family nobility among the Jews. The no-
bility of a family seldom lasts longer than four generations.
Scarcely any family has retained nobility throughout six gen-
erations. The only men truly capable of ruling are those
who seek to distinguish themselves by noble qualities and
achievements.
Our author next proceeds to argue that semi-barbarous
nomadic tribes are the best fitted for making extensive con-
quests, provided that tribal feeling be strong in them; that
they are moved by a common spirit and motive ; and that they
have not been corrupted by sensuous indulgence or debased
by servitude. He naturally finds the chief proof of this thesis
in the rapid Spread of Arab domination under Mohammed
and his successors. At the same time, he points out that the
Arabs have only succeeded in establishing their sway over
IBN KHALDTJN 167
the inhabitants of the plains, but have failed to subdue the
Berbers and other mountaineers.
He shows himself clearly aware of the defects and faults of
the Arabs. This strikingly appears in the remarkable chap-
ter in which he maintains that the Arabs have rapidly ruined
every country which they have conquered. It may be of
interest, perhaps, and serve to give some conception of his
mode of thought and style of expression, if I translate a con-
siderable portion of this chapter.
" The habits and practices of nomadic life have made the Arabs »
rude and savage people. Their roughness of manners has become to
them a second nature, and one in which they find satisfaction, seeing
that it ensures them freedom and independence. Such a disposition
is an obstacle to the progress of civilisation. To move from place to
place, to traverse the desert, has been from the remotest times their
chief occupation. The nomadic life, however, is as contrary to the prog-
ress of . civilisation as the sedentary life is favourable to it. Let the
Arabs require stones to place under their cooking-vessels, and they \\ ill
not hesitate to spoil a house in order to procure them; let them want
wood for the stakes or poles of their tents, and in order to get it they
will strip from an edifice its roof. Their very mode of life renders them
hostile to anything like building, yet to build is a first step in civilisation.
Further, they are, from natural disposition, always ready to seize property
by violence, to seek wealth with armed hand, to rob without moderation
or restriction. Whenever they cast their eyes on a fine flock, or an article
of furniture, or a useful instrument, they carry it off by force if they can.
When, having conquered a province or founded a, dynasty, they are in a
condition to satisfy their rapacity, they treat with contempt all laws
designed to protect property and wealth. Under their rule everything
goes to ruin. They impose on tradesmen and artisans intolerable bur-
dens, without thought of conferring on them any compensating advan-
tages. And yet the exercise of arts and trades is the real source of
wealth. If the handicrafts are fettered and burdened, they cease to be
profitable ; the hope of gain is extinguished, and labour is abandoned ;
then social order is deranged, and civilisation recedes. Further, the
Arabs neglect all the functions of government ; they are not anxious to
prevent crime or watchful in preserving the public safety. Their sole
care is to draw money from their subjects, either by exaction or violence ;
if they can succeed in attaining this end they have no other anxiety.
They spend not a thought on putting order into the administration of the
State, in providing for the welfare of their subjects, and in restraining
malefactors. In accordance with a custom which has always existed
among them, they substitute fines for bodily punishments, in order
thereby to increase their income. But mere fines are not sufficient to
repress crime aud deter malefactors ; on the contrary, they encourage
168 INTRODUCTION
wicked-minded men, who care little for pecuniary forfeits, if they can
accomplish. their nefarious projects. The subjects of an Arab tribe, in
fact, are left almost without government, — a condition of things alike
destructive to the population and prosperity of a country. . . . Look at
all lands which the Arabs have conquered from the remotest times.
Civilisation and population have disappeared from them, and their very
soil seems to have changed its nature. In Yemen all the centres of popu-
lation are deserted, with the exception of a few large towns ; in Irac it is
the same, and the richly cultivated fields which adorned it, when under
Persian rule, have become waste. Syria is now ruined ; and the countries
of North Africa are all still suffering from the devastations of the Arabs."
In the next chapter, the Arabs are depicted as the most
insubordinate, jealous, and contentious of peoples ; and as,
consequently, the one in which there is least cohesiveness,
and least natural capacity for the founding of a solid and
extensive empire. But they are also described in it as char-
acterised by a simplicity of life, an energy of will, a spirit
of clanship, and a reverence for divine authority, which
make them of all peoples the one most likely to accept the
doctrine and follow the guidance of a prophet or saint of
their own race, with readiness and enthusiasm. It is only
"when animated by religious zeal that the Arabs have shown
themselves powerful to pull down and set up empires. But
we are told in the chapter which follows the one just referred
to, that in no circumstances have they shown themselves
capable of permanently maintaining them. Even when they
have succeeded in founding an empire, their native pride and
insubordinateness soon reassert themselves, while their re-
ligious fervour decreases, or becomes extinct. The result is,
that allegiance to the central authority is thrown off by chief
after chief, tribe after tribe, and that the original semi-savage
state of the race returns.
The Third Section of Ibn Khaldun's ' Prolegomena ' treats
of the rise, the government, and the fall of empires. It
is a long section, and a considerable portion of it directly
concerns, not historical, but political science. This portion,
occupying the middle of the section, may be regarded as a^
treatise on the constitution and administration, the functions
and methods, and the offices and departments, of a Moham-
medan government. As such, it is full of instruction and
interest ; but it does not properly concern us here. I shall,
IBN KHALDTJN 169
therefore, merely indicate the general tenor of what is said
in this third section as to how empires are established and
destroyed, — how dynasties acquire and lose power.
The force which public spirit imparts is represented as the
prime condition of acquiring dominion. When the individ-
uals of a tribe, or army, or people, are so united and animated
by common feeling and aim as readily and rejoicingly to meet
all dangers and make all sacrifices, their leaders can easily
found an empire. They must not trust, however, exclusively
to the sympathy and enthusiasm of their followers, and must
even be careful to keep in due restraint arid obedience those
through whose zeal and devotedness they rise to sovereignty.
Only through establishing a good administration, preserving
order and justice, enacting wise laws, maintaining a regular
army, and attracting to themselves and their families the
affections of their subjects, can they build up a dynasty which
will endure. It is again earnestly argued that as the power
of a religion, revealed through a prophet, can alone cause
jealousies, dissensions, and rivalries in a State to give place
to unity, mutual aid, and generous zeal, there can be no other
basis of authority over a great empire. But religious enthu-
siasm is admitted to be insufficient unless it pervades a
large and strong party. God never gives a commission of
reformation except to those who are able to carry it into
execution. Those who are not widely believed are not His
prophets. General assent and practical success are evidences
of divine truth. These positions are all attempted to be
illustrated and confirmed by historical facts related in oriental
records.
A considerable number of chapters treat of the duration of
empires. It is indicated how they may fall through being
too large, and that there are insuperable obstacles to the
establishment of a universal empire. It is argued that the
Arab conquests were made too rapidly to be lasting, and
that Arab kingdoms had been dismembered and overthrown,
owing, in a considerable measure, to their extent. The
magnitude and duration of empires founded on conquest
must, it is held, be in proportion to the number and force of
those through whom the conquest is effected. The course of
conquest must be slow in countries inhabited by numerous
170 INTRODUCTION
tribes. Irac and Syria were easily and completely subdued ;
Morocco only with difficulty and in part. The tendencies of
sovereignties to despotism and to luxury, and, through these,
to corruption and ruin, are well described. For generalisa-
tion on this subject oriental history supplied data in abundance.
Ibn Khaldun does not forget to search for a law of the
course of empires. The guiding principle of his inquiry is
analogy. An empire, he holds, has a life of its own like an
individual. As a rule, its life does not last longer than that
of three generations of men — three times the mean life of a
man; in a word, net longer than one hundred and twenty
years. This alleged law or fact is thus explained : In each
empire, the first generation of its people possesses in full
vigour the tribal spirit, the hardy and warlike character of
nomads ; the second generation, under the influence of power
and wealth, generally acquires the self-indulgent and depend-
ent habits of sedentary life, and loses force and courage ; and
in the third generation the distinctive qualities of the desert
man disappear, and the dynasty becomes incapable of resist-
ing the attacks of a formidable enemy. The generalisation
and the explanation, it will be observed, are alike drawn from
the data most accessible and patent to an oriental. They are
clearly inapplicable to the peoples and dynasties of Europe.
In the section of the work at present under consideration,
Ibn Khaldun also exhibits history as a process of continuous
movement and change with remarkable clearness. Each em-
pire, he maintains, passes through several phases and becomes
subject to divers general modifications, which affect all the
elements of society and influence the sentiments and modes of
thought and action of all the members of a generation. The
general character of a people, he shows himself fully aware,
always corresponds to its epoch, position, and relationships in
history. In this respect his superiority to the Christian me-
dieval chroniclers is most conspicuous. They, almost without
exception, were manifestly, as G. Monod has observed, " un-
conscious of the successive modifications which time brings
with it." Ibn Khaldun was not so. He expresses repeatedly
and in various forms the general truth that history is a con-
tinuous collective movement, an incessant and inevitable
IBN KHALDUN 171
development. He also shows the thoroughness of his reali-
sation of it by the delineations which he gives, from time to
time, of the ways in which one stage of civilisation generally
passes into another. These sketches remind us much more
of the pages of a class of historico-philosophical writers of the
eighteenth century than of any to be found in the medieval
historians of Europe.
Let us pass to the Fourth Section of our author's works, — a
section which need not detain us long. It relates to towns,
the sedentary mode of life, a settled and concentrated civili-
sation.
At the outset, the relation of the foundation and dissolu-
tion of towns to the rise and fall of kingdoms is discussed.
Kingdoms, it is argued, are the first established, and these
originate towns, but towns may either perish with the king-
doms to which they belong or survive them. The causes
which lead the peoples that establish kingdoms to found
towns are exhibited, and the circumstances to be taken into
account in the choice of towns are indicated. Much curious
lore is here accumulated regarding famous towns, mosques,
temples, and large constructions.
In this section also, Ibn Khaldun shows that he at least did
not overestimate the genius and achievements of his own peo-
ple. Their edifices he pronounces unworthy of a race which
had possessed such power and wealth, and greatly inferior to
those of the nations which had preceded them. He holds that
the Arabs are lacking in talent for architecture and the arts.
They are, he affirms, by native character averse to magnificent
building, and indifferent to elegance. Their constructions are
generally without solidity. He recognises, however, the high
perfection to which the arts had attained among the Moslems
in Spain, and attributes it to the fact that Mohammedan
civilisation had there continued unbroken and uninterrupted
throughout the duration of an exceptional number of dy-
nasties.
In subsequent chapters the effects of towns on the districts
which surround them, the connection between their fortunes
and those of particular dynasties, their relations to popula-
tion, wealth, and morality, their influences on culture and
172 INTRODUCTION
the arts, the social and political changes which take place
within them, and the causes of their decay and ruin, are
attempted to be traced.
The Fifth Section of the ' Historical Prolegomena ' treats of
the means of procuring national subsistence and of promot-
ing national prosperity, and of the various arts subservient
thereto, industrial, economic, medical, recreative, and the like.
The Sixth Section treats of the sciences in an almost encyclo-
pedic manner. These, the last two sections of the work, are
not less instructive and interesting than those which precede
them. It would take us, however, altogether out of our way
to analyse or summarise them. Yet it has to be observed
that, in the view of their author, they were by no means
irrelevant to the main theme of his book, and could not have
been consistently omitted. His subject was the science of
history ; and the science of history he identified with the
science of civilisation, — a vast and imperial science, in which
all particular arts and sciences may be included, or to which
they are, at least, all subordinate.
A criticism of the work of Ibn Khaldun is unnecessary.
The chief source of such defects and errors as it contains was
its author's very imperfect acquaintance with the history and
civilisation of Europe. Had he known the classical and
Christian worlds as well as he knew the Mohammedan world,
and generalised and reasoned on them also with the same
independence and insight, the treatise which he might have
produced would have been one of the greatest and most valu-
able in literature. The one which he has left is, however,
sufficiently great and valuable to preserve his name and fame
to latest generations.
THE
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOET IN FEANCE
CHAPTER I
THE PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND THE BEGINNINGS
OF HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE: BODIN
Only when French nationality, civilisation, and literature
had reached a certain stage of development could reflection
on history make its appearance in France. And when it did
appear, the form in which it presented itself and the course
which it followed were largely determined by the historical
processes which it presupposed. What these were need not
be here described. How French nationality was founded —
how French civilisation gradually acquired the character
which it exhibited in the sixteenth century — from what be-
ginnings and through what stages French literature grew
onwards to the same time — must be learned from such his-
tories of France as those of Michelet and Martin, such histo-
ries of French civilisation as those of Guizot and Rambaud,
and such histories of French literature as those of Ampere,
Villemain, Nisard, and Demogeot. All that can here be
attempted is very briefly to indicate the course of historical
literature in France from its origin to the dawn of French
historical speculation.1
1 The documents which relate to the early history of France are presented in
the following collections : 1. Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France.
(Commence par les Bene'dictins de la congregation de Saint-Maur, et continue'
par 1' Academic des inscriptions et belles-lettres.) 22 vols., 1737-1865. — 2. Collec-
tion des Memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France, depuis la fondation de la monar-
chic francaise jusqu'au xiii" siecle. Avec une introduction, des supplemens, des
notices et des notes, par M. F. Guizot. 31 toIs., 1824-1835* — 3. Collection des
Chroniques Nationales Francaises ecrites en langue vulgaire, du xiiie au xvi' siecle.
Avec notes et eelaircissements par J. A. Bouchon. 47 vols., 1824-1829. — i. Collec-
tion complete des Me'moires relatifs a l'histoire de France, depuis le regne de
Philippe-Augnste, jusqu'a la Paix de Paris conclue en 1763. Avec des notices sur
chaque auteur et des observations sur chaque ouvrage, par M. Petitot et M. Mon-
merque". 131 vols., 1819-1829. — 5. Nouvelle Collection des Memoires pour servir a
175
176 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Until somewhat far on in the middle ages the composition
of history in France, as elsewhere, was almost exclusively in
the hands of priests and monks. This accounts for many of
the defects and faults of medieval histories ; but is also a fact
which manifestly requires to be itself accounted for. The ex-
planation of it can only be found in the ignorance of the laity
and the predominance of ecclesiastical views and interests in
those ages. The clergy almost alone wrote history, because
very few others could write it or wished to write it, and
because the history of the time was very largely Church his-
tory. The secular history of the early middle ages, crowded
as it was with picturesque and tragic incidents, with events
fateful for the whole future of the world, and with the most
striking displays of human character, force, and passion, has
strong attractions for the educated man of the present day,
but it was too tumultuous and chaotic, too dark and woful,
for the most reflective and best informed contemporaries to
take pleasure in contemplating and describing it for its own
sake. The Church of Christ struggling like a ship amidst
the waves of a stormy sea, the monastery shining like a lamp
through surrounding darkness, lives conspicuously devoted to
the service of God, these alone carried a perceptible signifi-
cance in them even to the few who possessed such scanty
culture as was then attainable. Secular society required to
develop a culture of its own, and to make for itself an intelli-
gible history of its own, before it could obtain historians of its
own.
l'histoire de France depuis le xiii" siecle jusqu'a la fin du xviii". Precedes de notices
pour caracteriser chaque auteur des memoires et son epoque ; suivis de l'analyse des
documents historiques qui s'y rapportent. Par MM. Michaud et Poujoulat. 32
vols., 1836-1839. —6. Socie'te' de l'Histoire de France. 130 vols., 1833-1875. There
are also two important collections which may be regarded as complimentary and
supplementary to those mentioned, viz. : 1. C. Leber, Collection des meilleurs
Dissertations, Notices et Traites Particuliers relatifs a l'histoire de France, com-
posee en grande partie de pieces rares, ou qui n'ont jamais ete' publiees se'pare'ment,
pour servir a completer toutes les collections de memoires sur cette matiere. 20
vols., 1838. — 2. Bibliotheque de l'Ecole de Chartes, revue d'erudition, consacree
specialement a l'etude du moyen age : 1839-1888. Indispensable as a guide to
the contents of these collections and to the original authorities on the history ol
France is the bibliographical work of M. Alfred Franklin, Les Sources de l'Histoire
de France, 1877. Also valuable is G. Monod, Bibliographie de l'Histoire de
France, catalogue methodique et chronologique des sources et des ouvrages
relatifs a l'histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu'en 1789 : 1888.
PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 177
The monasteries were the appropriate cradles of medieval
historiography. They could not dispense with written memo-
rials, and they afforded leisure and means of knowledge. It
was almost a necessity, and it soon became the rule, for each
monastery to have a scribe or recorder to commemorate what-
ever happened affecting the interests and obligations of the
monastic community; and with these events there gradually
came to be associated others of greater moment and wider
influence. These records were added to, interpolated, cor-
rected, and even recast, until they satisfied the heads of the
institutions. Thus grew up the monastic chronicles. In close
connection with them appeared another and more popular sort
of ecclesiastical chronicles, namely, the biographies of distin-
guished churchmen and lives of the saints. These naturally
led to the biographies of great laymen — of men who were
recognised to have done things worthy of being recorded even
by the hands of ecclesiastics, although they were never likely
to be ecclesiastically canonised. Einhard's Life of Charle-
magne is one of the earliest and best of these biographies.
The famous abbey of St. Denis — at the instigation, it is
thought, of Abbot Suger, one of the most remarkable men in
French medieval history1 — took the important step of making
a collection of the best and most esteemed chronicles. To
it new ones were added as they were composed. Thus the
deeds of the kings of France were preserved in the archives
of the same sacred building in the vaults of which their bodies
reposed. And thus were formed what were called " the Great
Chronicles of France," which came down to the reign of
Louis XL Long before the collection was completed, trans-
lations of these Latin chronicles into the vernacular began to
be made for the laity. As was to be expected, the earliest
translated was the most fabulous of all, that of the pseudo-
Turpin concerning Charlemagne — a work which is the French
1 Suger (1082-1152) himself wrote a Vita Ludovici Grossi Regis which will be
found in the CEuvres Completes de Suger, recueillies, annotees et publiees d'apres
les manusorits, par A. Legoy de la Marche, 1867. . The best biographies of him
are those of F. Combes, L'Abbe Suger, Histoire de son ministere et de sa re'gence,
1853; and of A. Vetauld, Vie de Suger, Tours, 1871. Also may be mentioned A.
Huguenin, Etude sur l'Abbe' Suger, 1855 ; the sketch in M. Louis de Carne's Fon-
dateurs de l'unite francaise, 2 vols., 1856; and Baudrillart's Histoire du Luxe,
torn. iii. ch. 5 : Suger et son role dans le luxe.
178 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
counterpart of our Geoffrey of Monmouth's History, and the
chief source of the romantic materials so skilfully employed
by writers like Boccaccio and Ariosto. What are now called
the Chronicles of France, or the Chronicles of St. Denis, are
not the Latin originals collected or composed by the monks of
St. Denis, but the French translations of these works, executed
by the monks of St. Denis or under their supervision.1
While the monks of St. Denis — much to their credit —
were composing chronicles in Latin or translating them into
French, lay chroniclers began to appear who wrote of secular
things in a secular spirit, and in the vernacular speech. The
earliest was Villehardouin, and he was followed by Joinville,
Froissart, Monstrelet, and Commines, with whom the series
closed. Villehardouin died in 1213 and Commines in 1509,
so that about three hundred years separated them. During
the whole period England had no lay vernacular histories ;
and even Italy had none before the fourteenth century. The
vernacular chronicle — variously called Saxon, Anglo-Saxon,
and English — of which Britain is justly proud, and that of
Nestor, the father of Russian historiography, long preceded,
indeed, the French works referred to, but they also essentially
differed from them in character. Aimers History of Norman
warfare in Southern Italy2 is likewise earlier, but it can only
be regarded as belonging to the same series if looked at merely
from the linguistic point of view. It was in France that
secular society first found truly representative historians.
Yet not secular society as a whole ; not the bourgeoisie, and
still less the common people. Italy produced the earliest
historians of civic communities. Historians just and sympa-
thetic towards the humblest classes have only appeared in
recent times. The early French vernacular chroniclers spoken
1 On the Chronicles of France, both in the older and later use of the term, see
the prefaces of M. P. Paris to his edition of Les Grandes Chroniques de France,
6 vols., 1836-1838, and M. de la Curne's Memoire sur les Principalis: Monuments
de France in the Acadeinie des Inscriptions, torn. xxii.
2 L'Istoire de li Normant et la Chronique de Robert Viscart, par Aime, moine
du Mont-Cassin. Publiees pour la premiere fois, d'apres un manuscrit francois
inedit du xiii* siecle, appartenant a la Bibliotheque royale, par Champollion-Figeac,
1835. As to the authorship of the second work, see R. Wilmans, 1st Amatus von
Monte Cassino der Verfasser der Chronica Roberti Biscardi? in Pertz, Archiv.
(1849), x.
SCEPTICISM AND HISTORY 209
The philosophy of the seventeenth century did not aim at
interpreting and comprehending history ; at tracing the move-
ment of reason through the complications and aberrations of
human affairs. It showed scarcely any interest in the explana-
tion of social phenomena. A thorough and fruitful blending
of philosophy and history was as yet in the far future; a
general recognition of its possibility and desirableness will
be sought for in vain in any century but the present.
The French philosophy of the seventeenth century assumed
two forms, a negative orijceptical and a positive or rational.
The scepticism which was represented in the sixteenth cen-
tury by Rabelais, Montaigne, and Charron, was propagated
in the seventeenth by Le Vayer, Huet, and Bayle. But
Bishop Huet, although a sceptic and an historian, showed no
scepticism as an historian. It was otherwise with Le Vayer,
as has already been indicated, and especially with Peter
Bayle, the famed author of the 'Dictionnaire Critique.'
The latter is, perhaps, the best example which the history of
literature supplies of what has been called " erudite scepti-
cism,"— the scepticism which finds in historical learning an
arsenal of weapons both for defence and attack, — the scepti-
cism which Bayle himself designated "historical Pyrrhon-
ism." He had an insatiable and undiscriminating curiosity
regarding facts and opinions, wonderful logical dexterity,
extreme ingenuity in inventing and great fondness for main-
taining paradoxes. With but feeble cravings either for fixed
principles or for unity and harmony in his speculations, a
want of moral delicacy, and no profound religious emotions,
he was animated by a sincere love of independence of thought,
and a cordial hatred of intolerance and persecution. The
whole constitution of his nature, his personal experience
of life, and his special acquirements, rendered him a most
powerful assailant of dogmatism; and he was unsurpassed in
the art of so suggesting and accumulating doubts regarding
particular questions and opinions of every kind as to produce
universal doubt, a feeling of the uncertainty of all that pro-
fesses to be knowledge. Under cover of the assumption of
the opposition of reason and faith, he skilfully laboured to
humiliate both, by convicting the former of inability to dis-
cover truth with certainty, and the latter of teaching absurd-
180 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 1ST FRANCE
few general reflections, and of historical or other speculation
there are no traces in his pages.1
Joinville was of a finer and richer nature than his prede-
cessor and possessed of true literary genius. In his ' Histoire
de St. Louis,' written in 1309, the style is no longer, as in
Villehardouin, rough and unpliant, but easy, flowing, and
flexible, and capable of expressing reflections and feelings
as well as merely conveying events ; and the superiority as
regards mastery over the materials, the co-ordination of the
facts, the disposition of the narrative, is no less decided. He
does not proceed simply narrating what he witnessed ; he
also judges and compares, meditates and moralises, finds
expression for the varying moods of his own gay, generous,
vivacious spirit, and gradually and skilfully produces an
imperishable portraiture of the most conscientious and pious
man who ever sat upon the throne of France, or, perhaps,
of any nation.2
Villehardouin is little more than a chronicler; Joinville,
as an excellent artist, is much more. But Froissart, who
labourea for nearly forty years in the latter half of the four-
teenth century on the brilliant work which has immortalised
his name, daily (to use his own words) " rentrant dedans sa
forge, pour ouvrer et forger en la haute et noble mature du
temps passeY' openly claims to be an historian as distinguished
from a chronicler. " If I were merely to say such and such
things happened at such times, without entering fully into
the matter, which was grandly horrible and disastrous, this
would be a chronicle, but no history." The work of Froissart
describes in detail the great enterprises and deeds of arms
done not only in France, but in England, Scotland, and
1 The best editions of Villehardouin are those of M. Paulin Paris and M.
Natalis de Wailly. For a general estimate of his character as a writer, see
Daunou, Hist. litt. de France, 1852, xvii. 150-171, and Sainte-Beuve, Causeries
du Lundi, ix. 305-330. Recently the trustworthiness of his narrative has been
seriously assailed by Count Riant in t. xvii., xviii., and xxiii. of the Rev. d.
quest, hist. ; by L. Streit and J. Tessier in special brochures ; and by E. Pears,
The Fall of Constantinople, 1885. There is a sketch of his character taken from
the new point of view by M. Ed. Sayons in vol. xxv., 1886, of the Cpte. Rend. d.
Sean, et Trav. de l'Acad. d. Sc. Mor. et Pol.
2 On Joinville see Vitet, Rev. d. Deux Mondes, lxxv., 132-163 (1868) ; N. de
Wailly in Comptes Rendus d. Acad. Inscr. et Bel.-Let., 1865; and Champollion-
Figeac, Mel. Hist., i. 615-645.
PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 181
Ireland, Spain and Portugal, Germany and Italy, and even in
Poland and Turkey and Africa, from 1326 to 1400, with a live-
liness, garrulity, and natural grace, which recall Herodotus,
and with a spiritedness of movement and a splendour and
variety of incidents which remind us of Walter Scott.
Never had been seen before historical painting on so broad a
canvas, so crowded, and so richly coloured. All feudalism is
there, and in all its magnificence. Yet Froissart, notwith-
standing his inexhaustible curiosity, his vast memory, his
keen interest in the things he described, his rare power of
graphic portraiture, and his skill as a narrator, was not a
historian in any strict or high sense. He lacked insight and
seriousness; cared little to distinguish between reality and
appearance, between the vero and the ben trovato ; looked with
indifference on oppression and cruelty; and sought as an
author only to give pleasure and to gain fame.1
Monstrelet began his Chronicle with the year 1400, — i.e.,
where that of Froissart had ended. He had none of the
brilliant qualities of his predecessor. His prolixity makes
him tiresome, notwithstanding the inherent interest of many
of the events which he narrates. His general truthfulness
is unquestionable, although he favoured the house of Bur-
gundy to the extent of omitting or passing lightly over certain
things which were not to its credit. His work contains much
valuable historical information, but is not the production of
an historical artist, and contains little historical reflection and
no historical generalisations.
Leaving unnoticed Christina de Pisa and Alain Chartier, we
pass to Philip de Commines, the chamberlain and councillor of
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and afterwards the con-
fident and adviser of the politic and unscrupulous Louis XI.
The latter prince, who played the same part in France which
his contemporaries Henry VII. and Ferdinand the Catholic did
in England and Spain in destroying the power of the nobles
and raising on its ruins the absolute rule of the monarch, is the
hero of Commines' Memoirs. It is not the impetuous Charles
1 On Froissart see Sainte-Beuve, C. d. L., ix. 63-96; Curne in Mem. Acad.
Inscr. et Bel.-Let., x., xiii., xiv. ; and K. de Lettenhove, Froissart, Etude litte-
raire sur le xive siecle, Bruxelles, 1857.
182 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
but this astute Louis that the historian admires, not courage
but policy, not brilliant feats of arms but successful intrigues.
With him, as I have already had to remark, history first
became political and reflective. Unlike the older chroniclers,
he was not content to narrate merely in order to narrate and
please, but sought even more to explain and instruct. He
described incidents briefly, but was careful to indicate why
things happened as they did, and what effects they produced.
Hence his style was comparatively abstract, and he reasoned as
well as recorded. From having been the first to endeavour of
set purpose and with conspicuous success to detect and disclose
the motive principles of historical personages and the causal
connections of historical transactions, he has some righj. to the
title, which has been so often given to him, of father of modern
history. He made a distinct step beyond simple chronicling,
and towards the mode of writing history in which his younger
contemporaries, Guicciardini and Machiavelli, were the first
greatly to excel. He was not, however, the intellectual equal
of either of these celebrated Italians, and cannot properly be
placed on the same level with either as an historian. He wrote
only an historical memoir, whereas Guicciardini gave a complete
account of one of the most complicated and agitated periods of
Italian history. The practical shrewdness and judiciousness
of his estimates of persons and actions deserve due apprecia-
tion, but they are not to be compared with the genius of a
truly scientific kind displayed by Machiavelli in his treatment
of Roman and Florentine history. His vision was clear and
keen within the narrow range of personal experience, but he
had neither conception nor feeling of the working of a general
spirit, laws, and tendencies in human affairs. Hence the
peculiarity by which Dr. Arnold was much impressed, his
perfect unconsciousness that the state of things which he
described was on the point of passing away. In one respect
he strikingly resembled Guicciardini and Machiavelli. In his
! eyes as in theirs, the political wisdom which it was the chief
use of history to teach was to know how to attain political
success. He was, like his master the king, a Machiavellian
before Machiavelli. Dr. Arnold has said, "Philip de Confines
praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the best of
PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 183
princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of his life,
but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and
has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect Philip de
Comines is in no respect superior to Proissart, with whom
the crimes committed by his knights and great lords never
interfere with his general eulogies of them." 1 Along with
a correct statement of fact, these words contain a misleading
rapprochement of names. The conscience of Froissart was
perverted by prejudices inherent in the chivalry which he
admired ; that of Commines by an estimate of statesmanship
which naturally gained acceptance in an age in which great
and even beneficial social results appeared to have been at-
tained by most immoral means. Commines was not, like
Froissart, indifferent to the sufferings and the rights of the com-
mon people ; he vigorously and feelingly condemned despotic
government and arbitrary taxation. Nor was he insensible
that the ruler who violates morality, although he may be
approved at the bar of history, must be condemned at a higher
tribunal. He distinguished between the politician and the
man, and admitted that one might be wise as a politician yet
foolish as a man. The masterly account which he gave of the
last illness and death of King Louis goes far to compensate for
the moral laxity which he had shown in the description of
some of his actions. His not unfrequent references to God
and Providence have been regarded as indications that he had
formed a general and so far philosophical conception of his-
tory. In reality, they are of that naive and simple kind
which show that he had not. He made such references only
when he felt experience and reason fail him in his attempts at
historical interpretation.2
The Hundred Years' War between the French and the
English on the Continent ended about the middle of the
fifteenth century with the English being driven out of France
and the French being united into a large and powerful nation.
1 Lectures on Modern History, p. 119.
2 On Commines may be consulted Sainte-Beuve, Caus.d.Lun.,i. 241-257; Baron
de Lettenhove, Lettres et Negoc. de Ph. de C, Brux. 1867; and W. Arnold, Die
ethisch-politisehen Grundanschauungen des Philipp von Comynes, Dresd. 1873.
Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Monstrelet, and Commines have all been trans-
lated into English.
184 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
So long as France was engaged in the struggle for existence
on her own soil she was necessarily but little affected by the
intellectual and spiritual movements which took place in
other countries. When she came forth from her isolation,
Europe was in process of rapid transformation. Geographi-
cal discovery, mechanical invention, new modes of thought
and research, new conditions of existence, new convictions
and aspirations, had begun to show the workings of a new
life and were in course of forming a new world. Industry,
commerce, war, the fine arts, literature, government, religion,
science, and philosophy, were all influenced by the change.
" Novus . . . rerum nascitur ordo."
The sixteenth century brought to France the Renaissance
with its passionate study of the ancient classics and the
Roman jurists, and the Reformation with its violent civil and
religious strife and its agitation of the gravest social prob-
lems. The Renaissance spread from Italy ; the Reformation
from Germany and Switzerland ; and in France their influ-
ences and results were inextricably blended. They pro-
foundly affected the whole history of France in the sixteenth
century, and, consequently, also the character of its historical
literature.
Italy was the nation first quickened by the modern spirit, and
France received it through contact with her. The early light
of Italian culture, however, was speedily and disastrously
eclipsed by the spread of priestly obscurantism. Hence
already in the sixteenth century France had outstripped her
instructress, and could boast of having in Budaeus, Turnebus,
Lambinus, Stephanus, Scaliger, and Casaubon, the foremost
scholars of their age. These men aimed not merely at master-
ing the languages of the ancient world, but at comprehending
its entire contents. They were at once prodigies of philologi-
cal and historical erudition and the founders of philological and
historical criticism. Joseph Scaliger, in particular, rendered
an immense service to historians by his ' De emendatione tem-
porum ' (1583) — the first scientific treatment of chronology.
The flourishing condition of jurisprudence in France dur-
ing the sixteenth century must also be noted as having been
highly favourable to historical study. The French jurists of
PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 185
that age would appear to have been the most honourable and
meritorious class in French society, if we may judge of them
from those of their number whose lives have been recorded.
They were not more remarkable for their learning and ability
than for their independence of character and enlightened
patriotism. They formed the chief barrier to the arbitrary
power of the kings, and were often the best exponents of the
genuine and legitimate aspirations of the nation. Men like
L'HSpital, the brothers Pithou, Hotman, Bodin, Pasquier,
and De Thou, were drawn to historical research even less by
their love of knowledge than by their zeal for the honour
and welfare of their country and for the claims of justice and
humanity.
The doctrines of the Reformation, and still more the con-
flicts to which they gave rise, exercised a great influence on
the thought of France. They led to keen discussion of the
principles on which government and society rest. They
caused the competing claims of State and Church, of civil
authority and individual conscience, and the comparative
merits and demerits of different forms of religion and polity,
to be debated with intense interest and from the most diverse
points of view. They originated a multitude of pamphlets
and memoirs, few of which were wholly lacking in living
force, and some of which had considerable literary merit.
Through them the opinions and passions of the various con-
tending parties found direct and energetic expression. In
the pamphlets the theories advocated were of the most varied
and discordant kinds : all opinions, the most far-sighted and
the most short-sighted, the most slavish and the most auda-
cious, finding defenders. The memoir was the form in which
history was chiefly written in France in the sixteenth century ;
and the memoirs of the loyal serviteur, the brothers Du Bellay,
Gaspard and William de Tavannes, Margaret of Valois, Mont-
luc, D'Aubigne, BrantSme, and others, give us living pictures
of their authors and of the scenes through which they passed.
They contain rich stores of material for the knowledge of an
age of inexhaustible interest.
As regards general history Guicciardini and Machiavelli
had set examples very difficult to imitate with success, but
186 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN" FRANCE
which were not without effect. Bernard Girard, Seigneur du
Haillan, born at Bordeaux in 1537, was the first to attempt
to write a general history of France, and he took the Italian
writers mentioned as his models in regard to style and method.
That he fell far below them was due not to want of will but
of ability. Concerning Fauchet, Du Tillet, Vignier, De Serres,
and others, who attempted to write French history in the
French language, it must suffice to refer to the interesting
notices of them given by Augustin Thierry in his ' Dix Ans
d'Etudes Historiques.'
The only really eminent French historian, if the term be
taken in its strictest sense, belonging to the sixteenth century,
was De Thou; and he unfortunately wrote in Latin. His
nobility of character, his experience in practical affairs, his
singular impartiality of judgment, his immense capacity of
labour, his unswerving love of truth, rational freedom, and
the public good, his vast knowledge of all kinds, and his
natural and dignified eloquence, are everywhere displayed in
his ' Historia sui temporis,' and amply account for the admira-
tion with which it has been regarded. Its defects are those
inseparable from the attempt to describe modern things in an
ancient language : lack of pictorial power and of vision for
proportion and perspective ; and the prolixity due to exces-
sive fulness and minuteness of detail. The author's strength
certainly did not lie in aptitude for generalisation or philo-
sophical insight. Only the few can now be expected to read
a work of such magnitude as this, which he devoted to a
period of only sixty-three years ; but so long as history con-
tinues to be studied, a few will always be drawn to its perusal
either by inclination or duty, and these will not fail to render
it the praise which it merits.1
Two political treatises published in France in the sixteenth
century have sometimes been referred to, but erroneously, as
of an historico-philosophical character — namely, ' Traite- de
la Servitude Volontaire ou Contre un ' of La Boetie, and the
'Vindicise contra tyrannos, Stephano Junio Bruto auctore.'
1 On De Thou, see Collinson's Life of Thuanus ; Hallam, Lit. of Europe, vol. ii. ;
and the prize discourses of MM. Patin et Ph. Chasles, Sur la Vie et les CEuvres
de J. A. de Thou, 1824.
PROGRESS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY 187
The former, written about 1548, but not published until 1578,
is little more than a vague ardent declamation in praise of
human equality and republican liberty, forced from a generous
youthful heart by contemplation of the misrule and oppres-
sion in France under Henry II. It is not in the least learned
or profound, but it has lived and will continue to live because
of its sincerity, and because its author has been immortalised
by the affection of Montaigne.1 The " Junius Brutus " who
wrote " against tyrants " in 1579, is commonly supposed to
have been Hubert Languet, although some still contend that
he was Duplessis-Mornay. His theory of the right of resist-
ance to monarchs who make wrong enactments is professedly
based on Jewish history as recorded in the Old Testament.
The book is, however, almost entirely an exposition of polit-
ical doctrine. There is little history in it, and that little is
treated in an unhistorical manner and spirit.2
Two other works have to be noticed which concern us some-
what more, although it is exaggeration to speak even of them
as specimens of historical philosophy. The 'Franco-Gallia' of
the famous Protestant jurist, Francis Hotman, was published
in 1573 — the year after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It
was composed hastily and in the most adverse circumstances,
but is a product of true genius, of great learning, and of a
singularly manly nature. It at once made an immense im-
pression, and can never be forgotten in the history either of
political theory or of constitutional freedom. It was the first
attempt, and a most vigorous attempt, to show that freedom
had history as well as reason on its side ; that the sovereignty
of the people as displayed in the choice of its rulers and the
limitation of their powers, could be traced through all epochs
of French history ; and that the despotic claims and practices
of the house of Valois were not time-honoured traditions, but
1 Leon Feugere, liitude sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de la Boe'tie, 1845 ; and M.
Payen, Notice sur la Boe'tie, suivie de la Servitude Volontaire, 1853. M. Feugere
edited the CEuvres Completes de la Boe'tie in 1846.
2 Lossen, in a disquisition in the Sitzungsberiehte der K. Akad. d. Wissen-
schaften zu Miinchen, 1887, 2, maintains that Duplessis-Mornay was the author
of the 'Vindioiae.' It seems certain that the edition of 1579 was not printed at
Edinburgh, as alleged on the title-page. The translation into English, published
in 1648, is said to have been the work of Walker, reputed to have been executioner
of Charles I.
188 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FKAMCE
usurpations similar to those against which Gauls and Franks,
Carlovingians and Capetians, had equally protested. In a
word, the thesis which Hotman sought to establish by a sur-
vey of the history of France was the same which has gener-
ally been assumed in England as the justification of popular
liberties — that of a right to self-government, which was not
merely an abstract dictate of reason, but a something so real
and essential that it had always been contended for and more
or less possessed. He did not prove all that he believed him-
self to have proved — he unquestionably erred in details, and
made insufficient allowance for the differences of the various
periods — but he made good what was of most importance in
his contention, and brought into the light the class of histori-
cal facts which absolute authority had the strongest interest
in seeing left in obscurity. -His little book, containing less
than two hundred pages, and with three-fourths of it quota-
tions from historians and chroniclers, was, on the whole, a
triumphant exhibition of the grounds on which his country-
men were entitled to deem themselves free-born, not merely
as men, but also as Frenchmen. If it failed to show that the
French monarchy had been elective, it at least succeeded in
proving that that monarchy had begun with Louis XI. to
enter on a new path fatal to ancient liberties.1
Etienne Pasquier (1529-1615) published the first book of
his ' Recherches de la France ' in 1560, and the second in
1565 ; five others were added during his lifetime, and three
more in 1643. The ' (Euvres d'Etienne Pasquier,' published
at Amsterdam in 1723, consists of the ' Recherches ' and
' Lettres.' Of the former Augustin Thierry has thus written :
" This work is the first in which we meet with what has since
been called the philosophy of history. The author, a disciple
of the historical school founded by the Italians, and a great
admirer of Paulus Emilius, does not confine himself, like Du
Haillan, to investigating the plot of political intrigues, or to
analysing events according to the method of Machiavelli ; he
1 On Hotman see the two articles of M. Dareste in Rev. Hist. t. ii., several
articles of M. Vigue in Renouvier's Crit. Rel. 1879, 1S80, and Etudes Litte'raires
sur les FiCrivains Francais de la Reformation, par A. Sayous, t. ii. 1-57. The polit-
ical views oi Hotman, as well as of La Boe'tie and the author of the ' Vindiciae,'
will be found stated in M. Janet's Hist. d. 1. Science Politique.
PROGRESS OP HISTORIOGRAPHY 189
seeks to draw from history moral results, and, above all, to
interpret the facts in a new manner — giving them a signifi-
cation more general and more favourable to the freedom of
the human mind. It is with this aim that, in rather a dis-
orderly fashion, he reviews all parts of the history of France,
events, persons, institutions, manners, customs, language ; he
reviews them all, and all under his pen assume a fresh ap-
pearance of life. Etienne Pasquier is more remarkable for
the abundance than for the precision of his ideas ; his criti-
cism is sometimes subtle instead of just ; but his book was
calculated strongly to stir the minds of his contemporaries.
It is the only erudite work written in the sixteenth century
which one can read through without weariness, and it was
reprinted even in the last century."
Such is the opinion expressed regarding Pasquier's 'Re-
searches ' by an eminently competent judge. In one respect,
however, I must entirely dissent from it. There is no phi-
losophy of history in Pasquier's work. His ratiocinations on
historical facts sometimes bear a superficial resemblance to
those of Machiavelli in his 'Discorsi,' but, instead of being
more, they are much less philosophical in character and
scope ; they are much more about particulars, and show
much less insight into the general causes and tendencies of
history. The real and distinctive merit of Pasquier is, that
he was the first to make a serious and sustained attempt to
trace the growth of the institutions of France. This was a
very important departure, — the inauguration of a movement
which has never since been arrested and which has produced
numerous valuable contributions to historical knowledge.
Pasquier himself must be admitted to have collected much
useful material on various ancient French institutions. Few,
I am inclined to believe, will read through his work without
weariness, or read through it at all ; but those who are in
quest of information on the special subjects of which it treats
may consult it with profit.
* What its subjects are a brief summary will indicate. The
first book treats of the character and culture of the Gauls,
and the causes which led to their subjugation by the Romans ;
of the Frankish, Gothic, Burgundian, and Norman invasions ;
of the origin of the Bretons and Gascons ; and of the story of
190 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
the descent of the Franks from the Trojans, and the differ-
ence of opinions as to the nature of their earliest govern-
ment. The second book is a dissertation on the old French
parliaments and provincial assemblies, the functions of the
great officers of state, the feudal nobility, and the general
distribution of society into classes, prefaced by a brief dis-
cussion as to whether chance or policy, fortune or prudence,
had contributed most to the building up of the kingdom of
France. The third book traces the growth of the episcopate,
the gradual assumption of supremacy by the bishop of Eome,
the various conflicts between the Papal See and the Galli-
can Church, the introduction of ecclesiastical abuses into the
realm, the progress of the sect of the Jesuits, and the course
of their war on the University. In chapter 44 there is in-
serted the famous "pladoyer" which the author had deliv-
ered in defence of the University and against the Jesuits in
the suit before the Parliament of Paris in 1564. The greater
portion of the fourth book treats of laws and judicial cus-
toms ; the rest of it is of a very miscellaneous character.
The fifth book relates to Clovis and his descendants of the
first dynasty. The sixth book is occupied with the Capetian
kings, the good knight Bayard, the fortunes of the house of
Anjou, and sundry marvellous stories which Pasquier had
the credulity to believe. The seventh book treats of French
poetry. The eighth book, after discussing the origin of the
French language, attempts, often very unsuccessfully, to ac-
count for many peculiar words, idioms, and proverbs. The
ninth book contains much information on the history of the
University of Paris, on " the Faculties," and on the spread of
Roman law and its prevalence over the "droit coutumier."
The last book examines the accusations made against Queen
Brunehaut by Fredegar, Aimoin, and other chroniclers, and
argues that they are to be deemed calumnies. The foregoing
summary, short and general although it be, may, by showing
what Pasquier's work was, also show what it was not.
t
II
The first French writer who took a philosophical view of
history was John Bodin. The years between his birth in
1530 and death in 1596 were among the most agitated and
BODIN 191
eventful in the history of France, — years of social, politi-
cal, and religious transition and strife, which naturally led
thoughtful men to political theorising. And of all who in
that age made government and society the subject of reflec-
tion, none can be put on an equality with Bodin as regards
comprehensiveness, depth, and truthfulness of insight. The
noble moral nature of L'Hcipital enabled him to apprehend
as clearly some of the great practical principles of social
order, and especially that of religious toleration ; but neither
L'HSpital nor any other had such enlarged views of society
as an object of science. As a political philosopher, indeed,
Bodin had no rival among his contemporaries, and none, at
least in his own country, till Montesquieu appeared. He
had great native force of intellect, great learning, especially
in languages, law, and history, and large legal and political
experience, having taught jurisprudence at Toulouse, prac-
tised as an advocate in Paris, shared both in Court favour and
disgrace under Henri III., performed admirable service as a
deputy of the Tiers Etat in the Assembly of Blois, and filled
various important offices of state. It is a striking evidence
that even the greatest men may not be exempt from the most
irrational prejudices of their age that this broad and saga-
cious thinker, although sceptical as to all positive religions,
should have been an extremely credulous believer in sorcery,
the virtues of numbers, and the power of the stars. In the
sixteenth century it was still most difficult for the mind to
emancipate itself from these delusions.1
The ' Republic,' first published in 1576, is undoubtedly by
far the greatest of Bodin's works. In the history of the phi-
losophy of government and legislation there are, indeed, few
greater works ; perhaps, as Sir Wm. Hamilton has affirmed,
none in the whole interval between the appearance of the
' Politics ' of Aristotle and that of the ' Spirit of Laws ' of
Montesquieu, although it is certainly inferior to both these
treatises.2 The ' Historic Method ' (Methodus ad facilem
1 The superstitious credulity of Bodin is most completely seen in his Demono-
manie des Sorciers, 1581 ; and his religious freethinking in his Colloquium Hepta-
plomeres, which remained in manuscript until Guhrauer published extracts of it
in 1841, and Noack the whole work in 18S7.
2 Summaries of the ' Republic ' sufficient to give a good general view of its
character are to be found in Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. ii. (1st ed.), Lerminier's
192 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
historiarum cognitionem), published in 1566, has more interest
and importance, however, for the student of the philosophy of
history than the ' Republic.' Yet it is not a philosophy of
history, nor does it even, although the honor is one which
M. Baudrillart has claimed for it, lay the foundation of the
philosophy of history. It makes itself no pretension of the
kind, and is, what it professes to be, not a philosophy of
history, but a method of studying and appreciating history.
One sign of the general awakening of interest in the study
of history which took place throughout Europe in the six-
teenth century, was the appearance of publications on the art
of writing, reading, and judging of history. A few works of
the kind preceded the treatise of Bodin. One of the earliest
of these was the ' Theatrum scribendse historise universae ' of
Mylaeus, published at Florence in 1548 ; the most popular and
interesting was Patrizi's ' Delia Storia dialoghi x.,' published
at Venice in 1560. There was a continuous flow of such
works throughout the rest of the sixteenth and almost the
whole of the seventeenth century. The 'Penus Artis
Historicse,' a collection of eighteen pieces on the composition
and study of history, all with two or three exceptions belong-
ing to the sixteenth century, was published at Basle as early
as 1574. The treatise of Bodin differs from the other " historic
methods " of the age, not in essence nor as to design, but in
involving among its practical directions considerations of
scientific value. Its aim is simply to teach how history may
be read in an orderly, independent, and profitable manner ;
not to found, and still less to elaborate a science : a great and
arduous task, however, to which even genius is only competent
when, circumstances favouring, it strenuously exerts itself
with conscious and definite purpose, and an exclusive devotion
to its fulfilment.
In the following account of Bodin's treatise I shall only
seek to indicate those ideas in it which may be supposed to
have some interest for a student of the science of history.
Introduction a, l'Histoire du Droit, Heron's History of Jurisprudence, Bluntschli's
Geschichte des Staatsrechts, and Janet's Hist. d. 1. Sc. Pol.; while that in
Baudrillart's J. Bodin et son Temps is so exceedingly careiul and excellent that
scarcely a thought of any value in the original has escaped heing indicated.
BODIN 193
The ' Methodus ' begins with a preface in which Bodin dis-
courses on the easiness, pleasantness, and profitableness of
historical study — " de facilitate, oblectatione, et utilitate his-
torise." Such eulogies of history were coming into fashion
when he wrote, and they continued to be much in fashion for
at least a hundred and fifty years afterwards. Perhaps the
one now best remembered is Casaubon's preface to Polybius
(1609), and it owes the honour chiefly to the merits of its
Latinity. The only real present value of any of them is as
" signs of the times " in which they appeared ; they show us
from what motives, or with what expectations and interests,
the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries turned so
eagerly to the writing and reading of history. Bodin and
his contemporaries turned eagerly to history, not in order to
explain its movement or ascertain its laws, but to find in it
intellectual entertainment and practical guidance, materials
for their literary and learned pursuits, and especially help in
moral and political life. They conceived, in other words, of
historical knowledge not as possibly constitutive of, or reduc-
ible to, science, but as instrumental and subservient to some
end beyond itself. That Bodin should have believed historical
study easy, although a very erroneous opinion, will not surprise
us, as it is still a prevalent delusion both among the writers
and readers of history. As soon as men began adequately to
realise the supreme claims of truth in history they ceased to
write eulogies on the uses of history ; and at the same time
they became aware that truth in history is very difficult to
reach. This stage had not been attained in Bodin's day.
His ' Methodus ' contains ten chapters, the titles of which
will be found below.1 The first thing in it to be noted by us
— keeping our special aim in view — is the account given of
the nature and place of human history. History in itself is
represented as equivalent to true narration or description.
This allows of its being divided into human, natural, and
1 The titles referred to are : 1. Quid historia sit, et quotuplex. 2. De ordine
historiarum. 3. De locis historiarum recte instituendis. 4. De historicorum
delectu. 5. De recto historiarum judicio. 6. De statu rerumpublicarum.
7. Confutatio eorum qui quatuor monarchias aureaque secula statuunt. 8. De
temporis universi ratione. 9. Qua ratione populorum origines haberi possint.
10. De historicorum ordine et collectioue.
194 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FKANCE
divine. Human history has man for its subject, as natural
history has the physical world, and divine history God ; or,
more definitely, its materials are the free actions of men in
the widest sense of the term action — all human "consilia,
dicta, facta." The distinctive feature of human history is
that its subject is constantly changing, whereas God and na-
ture change not ; they remain ever the same, it remains no
instant the same. This its essential characteristic, incessant
mutability, has given rise to the belief that no principles per-
vade it ; that no order is to be traced in it, as in the rest of
the universe and in other kinds of knowledge. But that
belief, although old and prevalent, is erroneous, for man is a
soul in union with a body, an immortal spirit immersed in
matter; and so, although through the influence of matter
there is much which is confused and contradictory in his
actions, yet is there in them also eternal principles which
reveal a spirit participant of the divine nature, and these
principles are capable of being apprehended. It may be
thought that there can be no need for going to human history
for them, — that they will be most readily apprehended directly
in divine history ; but no : to reason from the divine down to
the human, instead of rising from the human to the divine, is
to reverse the true order of study and begin at the end. Man
ought to commence his inquiries with himself, and ascend
gradually to the supreme and ultimate cause. And as he is a
compound being — soul and body, spiritual and material —
his history is connected with that both of nature and of God;
through geography with nature, through religion with God.
The historian of man must take careful account of the complex
constitution and relationships of man, and trace how his his-
tory is influenced both by God and nature, both through spirit-
ual and physical forces. Hence two sciences are requisite to
the attainment of a satisfactory universal history of man : cos-
mography, and a general or comparative science of religions.
Bodin argues that history should be studied in an order pro-
ceeding from general to particular — from a compendious view
of universal history to the detailed and thorough investigation
of its several portions — in such a manner that the relations of
the parts to one another and the whole may be correctly per-
BODIN 195
ceived. He has much to say on collecting and recording
under appropriate headings the utterances and incidents fitted
to be morally or politically helpful. He devotes considerable,
space to observations and reflections on such themes as the
qualities to be desired in the historian, the rules to'be attended
to in ascertaining historical facts and judging of historical
evidence, the sources of the prejudices often displayed by
historical writers, the merits and defects of various ancient
and modern historians, and the like. These are seldom very
original or profound, but they are generally judicious. They
show that Bodin disliked all rhetorical representations of his-
tory ; was distrustful of those writers who delighted in passing
judgment on the persons and transactions they described ;
and regarded as the true ideal of history a plain and exact
exhibiti6n of what had happened as it happened. " Historia
nihil aliud esse debeat quam veritatis et rerum gestarum
veluti tabula."
Sound as the observations just referred to generally are, we
seek in vain among them for traces of scientific insight into
the nature of historical method. Yet Bodin consciously real-
ised the existence of historical law. He felt that history was
pervaded by law. He owed this conviction to his legal studies.
These carried his inquisitive and thoughtful mind at every
instant to history, and soon satisfied him that law and history
were inseparably bound together all through from beginning
to end, — that no part of either was fully intelligible if disso-
ciated from the whole of the other. He sets himself at the
very outset — in the very dedication of his 'Historic Method'
— in direct and declared antagonism to those who claimed to
be philosophical jurists, and yet confined their whole attention
to the law of Rome. A philosophical jurist, and not, like
Cujas, a mere interpreter of Latin texts, it was his own am-
bition to be ; and he attacked the narrowness of his renowned
contemporary not so much, as Hotman did, in the interest of
practical utility, as of scientific truth. No study of Roman
law, he argues, however complete or accurate, can give more
than a partial notion of law. It is absurd to make Roman
law identical with or the measure of universal law. There is
a universal law, in which all codes of law have their root and
196 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
rationale, and of which they are but the multiple and partial
expressions ; but to reach that law the historians must be con-
sulted as well as the jurists, in order that Persians, Greeks,
Egyptians, Hebrews, Spaniards, English, Germans, may all
find their due place by the side of the Romans. The idea of
universal law, the knowledge of which can only be reached
through the methodical study of history as a whole, is central
with Bodin, and it is one which still requires to be urged,
even in its most general form, on the thoughtful consideration
of our lawyers. It is only in its most general form that Bodin
has enunciated it; no clear distinction, for instance, being
anywhere drawn by him in this connection between natural
and positive law. He clearly saw that the course of human
things was an orderly process or development naturally and
morally conditioned and regulated, but he had only the
vaguest conception of historical law, or of law in any definite
sense of the term.
Again, Bodin, as I have already had occasion to mention,
clearly apprehended and stated the fact that history has been
on the whole a course of progress. The seventh chapter of
his " Method " is on this account of special and permanent
interest. The first part of it is an argument to the effect that
whatever may be meant by the four monarchies of the prophet
Daniel — and Bodin professes himself dissatisfied with all the
interpretations — it is not meant that history is only a long
course of intellectual and moral deterioration. Whatever
these monarchies may signify, they are not, as some suggested,
the four ages of heathen antiquity. The rest of the chapter
is a refutation of the view of historical development which
underlies the myth of the four ages, the view that mankind
has been in a constant movement of degradation, from an age
of gold to an age of iron, becoming ever harder, more barren
of good, more audacious in evil. Our author argues that this
view is in contradiction to the Biblical history, which tells us
so early of the Flood, the tower of Babel, &c. ; that, from all
that has been reported to us by heathen poets and mythologers
of the gods and heroes of the so-called golden age, it would
seem to have been the true age of iron ; that many cruel and
unjust customs which prevailed in the palmiest days of Greece
BODIN 197
and Rome had come to be seen in their true moral light ; that
Christianity had brought with it some new virtues which were
leavening the world ; that even the barbarian invasions could
be seen to have fulfilled a providential purpose ; and that
modern times could claim such inventions as the compass and
printing, had discovered a new world, and greatly improved
astronomy, natural history, medicine, and industry. He com-
pares the advocates of the continuous deterioration of the race
— those who fear that learning, humanity, and justice are on
the point of disappearing from the earth to return to their
native skies — to old men, sick, sad, and feeble, the burden of
whose own infirmities leads them to believe that the world
has lost all its virtue, beauty, and goodness, since the days
when they were young ; and to sailors who should fancy, when
launching out from harbour into the open sea, that it was the
capes and mountains, the houses and cities, which were with-
drawing. It will seem strange to those who are ignorant how
slow has been the growth of great ideas, that with so clear a
perception of the progress which had pervaded the past, he
should have nowhere affirmed that there would be progress in
the future. His whole course of reasoning seems to a modern
reader to involve, to necessitate, this affirmation ; yet nowhere
is it made. Nay, instead of it we .find phrases (only few, it is
true, and these vague and undecided) indicating a belief, or
rather suspicion, that human affairs might return to where
they had started from, might revolve in a cycle. It was left
to a still greater man, born thirty years later, Lord Bacon, to
give prominence to the aspect of progress which Bodin over-
looked ; and it is curious to observe how entirely as to this
matter the one was the complement of the other, each seeing
only the half-truth. Bodin was singularly just to the past,
and loved to dwell on it; he appreciated even the middle
ages, which were so misunderstood and calumniated by almost
all the reformers, both of religion and of philosophy. Bacon
was most unjust to the past, being quite engrossed with the
aspirations, the hopes, the ambitions of the future ; like his
great contemporary and rival in renown, Descartes, he despised
the olden world too much to comprehend it — his eye being
riveted on prophetic visions of the new world which shone
before him, " fresh as a banner bright unfurled."
198 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FEANCE
Bodin, it must be further observed, does not stop short
in merely general ideas, but aims at the real explanation of
events ; he does not rest in the abstract, but tries to account
for the concrete. He seeks causes and endeavours to trace
their operations in the complex phases of history. He en-
deavours especially to make apparent the influence of two
classes of causes, — physical and political causes. He treats
of physical causes with considerable fulness in the fifth chap-
ter of the ' Method,' and in a still more detailed and developed
form in the first chapter of the fifth book of the ' Republic'
That climate has an influence on the character of a people,
and that there is a certain correspondence between the geog-
raphy and the history of a nation, are facts so obvious that
they could not fail to be noticed very early, and Hippocrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Galen stated them explicitly
and definitely ; but it is altogether unfair to put their general
enunciations of the principle that physical circumstances
originate and modify national characteristics, on a level with
Bodin's serious, sustained, and elaborate attempt to apply it
over a wide area and to a vast number of cases. Dividing
nations into northern, middle, and southern, he investigates
with wonderful fulness of knowledge how climatic and geo-
graphical conditions have affected the bodily strength, the
.courage, the intelligence, the humanity, the chastity, and, in
short, the mind, morals, and manners of their inhabitants;
what influence mountains, winds, diversities of soil, &c, have
exerted on individuals and societies ; and he elicits a vast
number of general views, many of which indeed are false, but
many of which also are true. It is less than fair to Bodin to
say merely, as Hallam has done, that "there is certainly a
considerable resemblance to Montesquieu in the chapter on
Climates in the ' Republic' " It would even probably be
under the truth to say that one half of the propositions main-
tained in books xiv.-xviii. of ' The Spirit of Laws ' are dis-
tinctly laid down in that chapter. Ibn Khaldun excepted,
with whose work he was unacquainted, Bodin added much
more to what his predecessors had done than Montesquieu to
what he had accomplished; and when the interval of time
between them, and their consequently different opportunities
BODIN 199
of amassing appropriate knowledge, are remembered, his
treatment of the subject must be deemed the more remark-
able of the two. Indeed, if less ingenious than Montesquieu,
he is as comprehensive, and, at the same time, not chargeable
with obscuring the great truth that man is free, and, through
his freedom, fortified by virtue and education, can resist and
master external agencies.
For his knowledge of the working of political causes Bodin
was greatly indebted to Aristotle. But he made use of what
that profound thinker and keen observer taught him in no
servile way, and added to it extensively from his own reflec-
tions, his large acquaintance with history, and his varied per-
sonal experience. He divides governments into democracies,
aristocracies, and monarchies ; and tries to detect and deline-
ate the characteristics and conditions of each, and to show
how they originate and grow, how' they strengthen and con-
solidate themselves, and how they decline, fall, and perish.
He distinguishes revolution from anarchy, the former being
a change from one kind of government to another, while the
latter is the extinction of government; and he accordingly
finds, since the distinct forms of polity are three, that the
kinds of revolution are six, each polity being capable of change
into two others. All the kinds of revolution may take place
from different causes, and may be prevented, or at least
delayed, in different ways ; and he investigates the manifold
causes and counteractives of revolution with care and pene-
tration, and, wherever his astrological superstitions do not
lead him astray, with elevation and soundness of judgment.
For his views on the operation of physical causes the sixth
chapter of the 'Method' ought to be compared with the
second, third, and fourth books of the ' Republic,' of which it
seems almost like a risumi.
Another respect in which the ' Methodus ' of Bodin may
interest the student of historical science is that in the eighth
and ninth chapters there is a specimen of what Dugald
Stewart has called conjectural or theoretical history. The
eighth chapter is an inquiry into the origin of the world and
the epochs of time, and the ninth into the origins of nations.
Bodin exaggerates the importance, or at least is mistaken as
200 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
to the proper position, of this sort of research. He even goes
so far as to say that a true idea of the origin of history is the
thread which can alone guide us through the labyrinth of
history, whereas it is precisely what is most obscure and must
remain longest unelucidated. As to the mode in which he
conducts the research, there is at least as much to praise as
to censure. He tries to show by the use of reason alone the
truth of the Mosaic account of the origin of the world as a
free creation by God in time. I am sorry to add that he also
concludes that the world must have been created in Septem-
ber, and that in that month the greatest events of history have
taken place. He likewise maintains that there will be an end
of the world, and refers in proof to the reasons given by " the
noble mathematicians" Copernicus, Reinhold, and Stadius
for believing that the earth will in course of time fall into
'the sun. In an independent spirit he criticises and rejects the
divisions of history into epochs which were prevalent in his
time. He fails, however, to make a satisfactory distribution
of his own. The one which he favours is based on an ethno-
logical generalisation set forth in his fifth chapter, referring
the achievements and fates of nations to their racial charac-
teristics of body and mind. To the southern peoples he
attributes special aptitudes for the acquisition of knowledge
and wisdom, to those of the middle or temperate regions
political ability and commercial activity, and to those of the
north industrial skill and military enterprise ; and accordingly,
he assigns to universal history three corresponding epochs, the
supremacy of southern nations ending with the birth of Christ,
and that of the middle nations with the Teutonic invasions.
He shows how little the statements of historians as to the
origins of nations are in general to be relied on. It cannot
be said, however, that he gives much evidence of insight into
the principles or method of historical criticism. He insists,
at considerable length, on the value of the study of etymolo-
gies as a means of throwing light on facts relative to which
there is either no written testimony or only such as is false.
In the last year of the sixteenth century Lancelot Voisin de
i> la Popeliniere, a zealous Huguenot, published ' L'Histoire des
POPELINIEEE 201
Histoires, avec l'id^e de l'histoire accomplie, plus le dessein de
l'histoire nouvelle des Francois.' The work consists of three
parts, • — (1) a series of general and critical remarks on previ-
ous historians ; (2) a delineation of the character and duty of
a true historian ; and (3) a statement of objections to certain
fables and hypotheses current as to the origins of French his-
tory. It shows its author to have been a man of most inde-
pendent judgment. The classical historians are boldly denied
to be entitled to pass as standards or models for modern his-
torians, whose advantages and resources are described as far
superior to theirs ; and, at the same time, modern historians
are freely censured for their credulity and incompetence.
This remarkable independence of mind was, however, not
supported by remarkable talent, or extraordinary research, or
literary skill. The influence of Popelini^re's work was, so
far as I can trace it, neither wide nor deep. He had also
published in 1581 a work which may be regarded as a pre-
cursor of the Universal Histories of De Thou and D'Aubigne",
his ' Histoire de France, enrichie des plus notables occurrences
survenues en provinces de l'Europe et pays voisins, soit en
paix, soit en guerre, tant pour le fait s^culier qu'eccle"sias-
tique, depuis l'an 1550 jusqu'a ces temps ' — i.e., to the year
1577. De Thou consulted it with profit; D'Aubigne" has
spoken of it in terms of high praise.1
1 M. Auguste Poirson, who has given in the fourth volume of his 'Histoire du
Kegne de Henri IV. ' a full account of the historiography of the period of which
he treats (pp. 272-341, 2d ed.), describes Popeliniere as " ce Polybe du temps, ce
createur de l'histoire generale, aujourd'hui a peu pres ignore' chez nous, a notre
honte."
CHAPTER II
HISTORIOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL, REFLECTION IN FRANCE
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: BOSSUET
I
Henry IV., notwithstanding serious faults and deep in-
consistencies of character, was the greatest and best French
monarch of modern times. By his military skill, his politi-
cal foresight, his enlightened patriotism, his enforcement of
religious toleration, and the wisdom of his administration,
he secured to his country internal peace, and laid the founda-
tion of that external policy which saved Europe from the
despotism of the house of Austria, and made France for long
the leading nation in the world. Richelieu, under Louis
XIII., proceeded on the same lines, with a clearness of view,
a persistency of purpose, a fertility of resource, and a subtiltv
in the employment of means for the attainment of his ends,
probably never surpassed. Unfortunately he also crushed
internal liberties in a way which Henry IV. would not have
done, and which proved not less productive of disasters in
the distant future than of immediate advantages. Mazarin
adroitly carried out the plans of his predecessor, baffled
personal enemies, and suppressed all efforts and possibilities
of resistance to royal authority. On Mazarin's decease in
1661, Louis XIV. took all power into his own hands, and
thenceforth until his death in 1715 ruled entirely according
to the pleasure of his own will. During his reign France
had all the glory which absolute monarchy could confer upon
her, but she had no personality apart from the individuality
of her sovereign. His will was her law ; and he might well
say, "L'Etat, c'est moi." The throne was regarded with a
servile and idolatrous reverence which it is difficult now to
realise. The king was feared and obeyed as if he were a god.
202
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 203
The daily atmosphere in which he lived was one filled with
the incense of semi-divine honours. Under the shadow of
the throne, and in close alliance with it, there flourished the
tyranny of the Church. By the mass of the nation no oppo-
sition was offered, or so much as thought of, to either ; the
most abject submission was demanded and unmurmuringly
rendered. Disbelief and discontent were not, indeed, extinct,
but they dared not avow themselves; they kept silence or
expressed themselves in guarded whispers.
The history of France in the seventeenth century was sub-
stantially the history of the growth and triumph of absolu-
tism, — an absolutism guided by statesmen of genius, served
by great administrators and famed generals, and glorified by
orators, authors, and artists of classic excellence and world-
wide renown. This fact profoundly influenced the develop-
ment of historiography in France during the century. The
Muse of history was gradually enticed and constrained to
become a lady of the Court. She was taught to attach
supreme value to dignity of deportment and elegance of
speech, to feel more ashamed of rusticity than of mortal sin,
and to be more afraid of unpoliteness than of untruthfulness.
But, it must be added, she never felt fully at home at Court,
and prospered there much less than most of her sisters. The
historical literature of the age of Louis XIV. could not, for
example, compare in brilliance with its oratorical or dramatic
literature ; indeed, royal patronage, even when most potent
and munificent, called into existence singularly few historical
works entitled to be ranked as literature. But, under the
constraint and tuition of monarchs and ministers, French
historiography gradually lost the originality and audacity,
and the sporadic and fragmentary, passionate and polemic,
character which it had in the sixteenth century. It gradu-
ally grew tame, methodical, laboriously erudite, respectful
and even servile towards authority.
The sixteenth century was predominantly an age of pam-
phlets and occasional writings meant for defence or attack.
The seventeenth century was predominantly an age of collec-
tions and compilations, and, in a lesser degree, of works
designed to gain favour as literature. The "Memoir" was
204 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FEANCE
common to both centuries, but only reached its full maturity
of development in the latter. This form of historical compo-
sition has, in fact, never in any land or age been cultivated
with so much success as in France during the seventeenth
century. Many of the men who contributed most effectively
to the making of the history of France in the seventeenth
century also applied themselves to describe it so far as it
affected their experience or was affected by their activity;
and, in so doing, they wrote with the naturalness of men
who were not seeking literary fame, and with the freedom of
men who had in view only posthumous publication. The
Memoirs of Sully, Bassompierre, Rohan, Richelieu, Retz,
Rochefoucauld, Saint-Simon, and of many others who might
be named, are inexhaustible sources of psychological, politi-
cal, and historical instruction. They require, indeed, to be,
for the most part, used with caution and even suspicion, and
strictly tested and checked ; but, rightly employed, they lead
us far more deeply into the real life of the times to which
they relate than the works of the professional or official
historians. The most important memoirs written in the
seventeenth century were, of course, not published until
the arrival of times of greater liberty.
During the seventeenth century the Jansenists, still more
the Jesuits and Oratorians, and most of all the Benedictines,
distinguished themselves by their industry and zeal in his-
torical research. Their services, which are hardly to be
overestimated, cannot, however, be here described or even
enumerated. It was only in the seventeenth century that
the study of medieval history, and of the history of the
Christian Church, began to be prosecuted with comprehen-
siveness and thoroughness. The best historical work done
in France during the period was the work of erudite prepara-
tion for history, — that of such men as Duchesne, Ducange,
Petau, D'Achery, Beluze, Labbe, Sismond, Mabillon, and
their many worthy associates. Powerful as was the will
of the Government, it could not prevent independence of
judgment and the exercise of criticism in regard to matters
of erudition. It was unable to suppress even such extreme
scepticism as the Abbe" Hardouin expressed regarding classi-
cal and medieval history, or such critical boldness as Richard
THE HISTORIANS 205
Simon displayed in his treatment of Biblical history. Both
Gallicanism and Jansenism exerted a good effect on ecclesi-
astical historiography; and the ecclesiastical historians of the
period were at least equal to its civil historians. Le Nain de
Tillemont showed excellent historical qualifications, although
his works are rather compilations drawn with the most accu-
rate and conscientious diligence from the best sources, sup-
plemented by learned and exact investigation of questions of
difficulty, than finished histories. His most extensive com-
position, indeed, professes no more, as its very title indicates :
'Mdmoires pour servir a l'histoire ecclesiastique des six
premiers siecles ' ; and his ' Histoire des Empereurs ' is of
the same character.
Scipion Dupleix and Francois-Eudes de Mezeray acquired
reputation in the department of civil history. The popular-
ity of the former soon passed away. He wrote 'L'Histoire
ge"nerale de la France avec l'e"tat de l'Eglise et de l'Empire '
3 vols., (1621-43). He was not lacking in learning, but he
was credulous and bigoted. He accepted a large amount of
fabulous material as genuine history; did not even hesitate
to represent as real incidents mere inventions of his own
imagination; and judged of persons and events under the
influence of strong religious and political passions. He had
little artistic skill.
The popularity of Mezeray as an historian lasted for about
a century. He presented his work to the public in two forms,
— a larger, 'Histoire de France depuis Faramond jusqu'au
R£gne de Louis le Juste ' (1621-1643, 3 vols, fob), and a
smaller, 'Abr£g<3 Chronologique de l'Histoire de France '
(1668, 3 vols.). The latter was the more esteemed, and it
passed through many editions. Mezeray's was the first
really well- written general history of France; and it was
extremely well written, — always clear and natural in style,
and not infrequently animated and eloquent. It was, fur-
ther, a truly national history, describing not merely the
growth of the French monarchy, but of the French people.
It portrayed the characters and conduct of kings and their
ministers with rare honesty; it neither ignored nor glossed
over administrative abuses, and the wrongs and sufferings
inflicted on the peasantry and traders; it dwelt, as no pre-
206 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
vious historical work had done, on the general economic and
social condition of the community, and on the state of the
towns and provinces. It showed its author to be a man of
honest, humane, and sympathetic heart; and it displayed an
independence of mind which cost him his pension as royal
historiographer, but did him the highest honour. It had,
however, one serious defect which greatly detracted from its
value and necessarily shortened the duration of its reputation.
Its statements cannot be relied on ; they have not been drawn
from primary and trustworthy sources ; tbey are unsupported
by evidence sufficiently tested ; and, in fact, they are almost
as often false as true. With not a few excellent qualities,
therefore, the work cannot be pronounced a good history ; it
wholly fails to meet th§ first and most essential of historical
requirements.
Historical art, unlike historical research, made no progress
in France during the last forty years of the seventeenth cen-
tury. The works of writers like Maimbourg and Varillas
were, indeed, widely read, but they deserved little of the
approbation which for a season they obtained. They are to
be numbered among the signs of that moral and intellectual
decay which Mr. Buckle has so conclusively shown to have
resulted in all departments of literature from the system of
government in operation under Louis XIV.
No work of much importance on historic art or method
appeared in France during the seventeenth century. The
subject was touched on by many, but treated with depth of
insight or investigated with care by none. La Mothe le
Vayer, courtier, academician, and perceptor of the brother of
Louis XV., endeavoured to find in history confirmation and
illustrations of scepticism. He sought to show that opinions
and practices were so inconsistent, and that reason in all
directions led to such uncertain results, that a wise man will
doubt of all things except divinely revealed, truths. He
based his scepticism on history, and was at the same time
sceptical in regard to history. This is seen most clearly in
his 'Discours du peu de certitude en l'Histoire ' (1668).
His earlier 'Discours de l'Histoire ' (1636) is, in the main,
a criticism of the Spanish historian Sandoval from a French
point of view; but it also ridicules effectively the way in
^RITERS ON HISTORIC METHOD 207
which historians were accustomed to trace the descent of
noble families from famous personages of remote antiquity,
and indicates forcibly how the judgments of historians are
perverted by national prejudices and personal interests. He
was a great admirer of the classic authors, and urged his
contemporaries to take the Greek and Roman historians as
their models in historiography. He was the immediate pred-
ecessor, the direct precursor, of Bayle, by whom his writings
are often quoted.1
The 'Discours des conditions de l'Histoire ' (1632) of De
Silhon calls for no special notice. The anonymous- 'La
Science de l'Histoire ' (1665) has an attractive title, but is a
poor book. It contains nothing of a scientific character. It
consists of twenty-two short chapters, which, with the excep-
tion only of the first and last, refer to the histories of par-
ticular nations and provinces. It has been attributed to
Charles Sorel, but erroneously, as I infer from the way in
which Sorel wrote in his 'Science Universelle ' (torn, iv.y
pp. 90, 91), published in 1668.
Father Le Moyne's 'De l'Histoire,' 1670, translated into
English in 1694, is a rhetorical and affected composition,
without any solid merits. The judgments pronounced by it
on historians like Thucydides and Sallust are unwarranted
and presumptuous. One of the seven dissertations of which
it consists is a defence of the introduction of feigned speeches
into history, but it is entirely destitute even of ingenuity in
error.
The Abbe" De Saint-Real published in 1671 a treatise
'De l'usage de l'Histoire.' It proceeds on the supposition
that history is unprofitable if treated merely as a record of
events, and only of value in so far as it enables us to know
men ; and that to know men is to know their motives, pas-
sions, follies, and illusions. The assumption is applied in
an attempt to prove that brilliant actions have often originated
in extravagance and stupidity ; that human sentiments and
deeds have been largely influenced by malignity ; that almost
all that men do has been prompted and pervaded by vanity ;
1 The last or Dresden edition of La Mothe le Vayer's works consists of fourteen
vols. 8vo, 1756-59. There is a good monograph — ' Essai sur la Mothe le Vayer ' —
by L. Etienne, published at Rennes, 1849.
208 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and that universally and irresistibly the senses of men have
been perverted, their reasons deluded, and their convictions
determined, by the force of prevalent opinion. In a word,
according to Saint-Real, the proper study of mankind is man,
and the great advantage to be derived from the study is a
knowledge of the meanness and contemptibleness of man.
In 1677 Father Rapin published his 'Instructions sur
l'Histoire.' Having carefully read the various compositions
which had appeared during the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies on the wajr in which history should be written, he
adopted what was valuable in them, and largely supple-
mented it by his own reflections. The result was a treatise
much superior as regards both comprehensiveness and ju-
diciousness to any of its predecessors; the first fairly ade-
quate treatment of history as a species of literature, or of
what has been called the rhetoric of history.
It is in the latter half of the sixteenth century that we first
meet with comparative studies in literature. Father Rapin's
'Comparaison de Thucydide et de Live ' (1681) is an instance
of the kind in the department of historical literature ; but
one of higher merit is Saint-Evremond's 'Considerations sur
Salluste et Tacite.' This witty, epicurean habituS of the
Court of our Charles II. has shown, at least at times, a keen-
ness and originality of observation and insight, in regard both
to history and the art of history, very exceptional in his age.
These qualities are displayed in a high degree both in his
'Considerations sur le Genie du peuple Romain ' (1695) and
in his ' Characterisations of Classical and French Historians.'
In the last decade of the century the Oratorian priest,
Father Thomassin, published a 'Melhode d'dtudier et d'en-
seigner chre'tienment et solidement les historiens profanes.'
It is divided into three books. The first is a sketch of the
history of man, of the succession of empires, from the crea-
tion of the world to the establishment of Christianity; the
second is an attempt to show that the ancient historians
supply confirmation of the chief truths of religion; and the
third endeavours to prove that they equally bear witness to
the validity and prevalence of the principles of morality.
The work gives evidence of diligent reading, but its worth
lies almost entirely in its quotations.
SCEPTICISM AND HISTOKY 209
The philosophy of the seventeenth century did not aim at
interpreting and comprehending history ; at tracing the move-
ment of reason through the complications and aberrations of
human affairs. It showed scarcely any interest in the explana-
tion of social phenomena. A thorough and fruitful blending
of philosophy and history was as yet in the far future; a
general recognition of its possibility and desirableness will
be sought for in vain in any century but the present.
The French philosophy of the seventeenth century assumed
two forms, a negative or||ceptical and a positive or rational.
The scepticism which was represented in the sixteenth cen-
tury by Rabelais, Montaigne, and Charron, was propagated
in the seventeenth by Le Vayer, Huet, and Bayle. But
Bishop Huet, although a sceptic and an historian, showed no
scepticism as an historian. It was otherwise with Le Vayer,
as has already been indicated, and especially with Peter
Bayle, the famed author of the 'Dictionnaire Critique.'
The latter is, perhaps, the best example which the history of
literature supplies of what has been called " erudite scepti-
cism,"^— the scepticism which finds in historical learning an
arsenal of weapons both for defence and attack, — the scepti-
cism which Bayle himself designated "historical Pyrrhon-
ism." He had an insatiable and undiscriminating curiosity
regarding facts and opinions, wonderful logical dexterity,
extreme ingenuity in inventing and great fondness for main-
taining paradoxes. With but feeble cravings either for fixed
principles or for unity and harmony in his speculations, a
want of moral delicacy, and no profound religious emotions,
he was animated by a sincere love of independence of thought,
and a cordial hatred of intolerance and persecution. The
whole constitution of his nature, his personal experience
of life, and his special acquirements, rendered him a most
powerful assailant of dogmatism; and he was unsurpassed in
the art of so suggesting and accumulating doubts regarding
particular questions and opinions of every kind as to produce
universal doubt, a feeling of the uncertainty of all that pro-
fesses to be knowledge. Under cover of the assumption of
the opposition of reason and faith, he skilfully laboured to
humiliate both, by convicting the former of inability to dis-
cover truth with certainty, and the latter of teaching absurd-
210 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IN PRANCE
ities with a claim to impunity. "My talent," he said, "is
to form doubts, which for me remain merely doubts ; " and
he unquestionably put out his talent to usury, suggesting
and spreading doubts with a success unattained by any man
before him in Christendom. In the seventeenth century the
talent was on the whole a valuable one, and the diligent ex-
ercise of it highly beneficial. It was so, at least, as regards
historiography, which suffered greatly from credulity and
submissiveness to traditional and dogmatic authorities. No
man of the seventeenth century contributed so much to the
historical scepticism and historical criticism of the eighteenth
century as Bayle. His influence was felt most in France,
but it told powerfully also in England and Germany; its
range was European.1
The dominant philosophy in France in the seventeenth
century was the Cartesian. In 1637 — that is, eighty years
after the appearance of Bodin's 'Historic Method' — Des-
cartes published his 'Discours de la Mdthode.' It had for
avowed aim to effect a general revolution in human thought,
to determine once for all the method of rightly conducting
the reason in the search for scientific truth, and to prove
convincingly that it was the right method by showing the
number and value of the results to which it led. It so far
accomplished its end that the name of Rend Descartes stands
by universal consent, along with that of our own Francis
Bacon, at the head of the modern epoch of philosophy. With
them the world shook itself finally loose from the grasp of
scholasticism, and definitively entered on the path which it
is still pursuing. They had many predecessors, among whom
were not a few martyrs, but it was given only to them decis-
ively to succeed, partly owing to the labours of others and
the ripeness of the times, and partly owing to the greatness
of their own abilities and the merits of their own works.
Vast, however, as was the influence of Descartes, it cannot
be said to have done much, directly and explicitly at least,
for the study of history. He was early satisfied that he had
read histories enough ; he had no notion of a science of his-
1 A. Deschamps, 'La Genese du Scepticisme erudit chez Bayle,' Liege, 1878;
L. Feuerbacb, 'Pierre Bayle: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Pliilosophie und
Menschheit' (Sammtliche Werke, Bd. vi.).
CAETESIANISM AND HISTORY 211
tory ; and he so little perceived an indwelling reason in soci-
ety pervading and determining its movements and changes
that he could expressly declare it as his belief that " laws
which have grown up gradually as required by national wants,
as suggested by experience of the evil effects of particular
crimes and disputes, must necessarily be inferior to those
which have been invented and imposed by individual wisdom
and authority, just as buildings which different persons have
tried to improve by making use of old walls for other than
their original purposes must be inferior to buildings designed
and executed by a single architect, and just as ancient cities
which, from being at first only villages, have grown up in
the course of time into large towns, cannot compare in
regularity and symmetry with towns which have been
built on a uniform plan devised by one person."1 In fact,
Descartes conceived of philosophy in a way which scarcely
allowed of there being any philosophy of history, and which
led naturally to the neglect and depreciation of all historical
study. In historical research the mind is conversant with
contingent phenomena, and must content itself with proba-
ble evidence. But Descartes placed the criterion of truth in
the clearness and distinctness of the convictions of the indi-
vidual mind, and insisted that reason ought to be satisfied
only with necessary truth and with the conclusions which
can be deduced therefrom with mathematical strictness.
These views, with his contempt for antiquity, and confi-
dence in his own powers and method, not only prevented his
recognising the interest and importance of historical study,
but caused him to regard with aversion every kind of erudi-
tion which historical study requires. His followers in gen-
eral entertained the same feeling. Malebranche reproached
D'Aguesseau for wasting his time in reading Thucydides.
It was only with the decay of Cartesianism that historical
science began to flourish in France. And in Italy, early in
the eighteenth century, the illustrious Vico is found com-
plaining bitterly that the spread of this philosophy has been
ruinous to the cause of learning. Undoubtedly Cartesianism
was not essentially favourable to historical study.
It was, however, not altogether unfavourable. On the
1 Discours de la Methode (ed. Simon), p. 8.
212 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
contrary, it demanded and fostered an independence of mind
which is nowhere more needed than in historical inquiry and
speculation ; it spread among all thoughtful men the convic-
tion that the infinite variety of phenomena in the universe
might be reduced to a very few simple laws; and it gave
general currency to the idea of progress. Descartes shows
incidentally in many passages of his writings that he had
looked on social facts with a clear keen eye. And so does
Malebranche. Faith in progress, confidence in the powers of
the human mind and in the grandeur of the future destinies
of the human race, associated, as in Lord Bacon, with con-
tempt for antiquity, pervade the entire philosophy of Des-
cartes, and frequently find expression in his writings. In
Malebranche, both the confidence and the contempt perhaps
reached their height; but they may be traced in some meas-
ure through most works belonging to the Cartesian school.
The conception which Bacon expressed in the adage, Anti-
quitas sceculi juventus mundi, is to be found also both in
Descartes1 and Malebranche.2 Pascal, however, has sur-
passed all others in his felicitous statement of it: "The
whole succession of human beings throughout the whole
course of ages must be regarded as a single individual man,
continually living and continually learning; and this shows
how unwarranted is the deference we yield to the philoso-
phers of antiquity; for, as old age is most distant from
infancy, it must be manifest to all that old age in the uni-
versal man should not be sought in the times near his birth,
but in the times most distant from it. Those whom we call
the ancients are really those who lived in the youth of the
world, and the true infancy of man; and as we have added
the experience of the ages between us and them to what they
knew, it is only in ourselves that is to be found that antiquity
which we venerate in others."3
The historian of the idea of progress will find ample
materials for a chapter, both amusing and instructive, in a
controversy which gave rise to much heat and noise, during
i Baillet, Vie de Descartes, vii. 10; Discours de la Methode (ed. Cousin), pp.
125, 126, 192-194, 219, &c.
2 Recherche de la Verite, 11" partie, u. v. and vi., &c.
* Pense'es, i. 91-101 (ed. Faugere).
MEEJTS OF THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 213
the seventeenth century, in France as well as in Italy and
England, concerning the relative merits of the ancients and
moderns. Some knowledge of its character and course is
well worth acquiring, from its being so eminently character-
istic of an age almost equally influenced by reformatory
philosophic tendencies and by scholastic and classic tradi-
tions. In no former age had men ever dreamt of contesting
the superiority of ancient to modern literature. That a large
body of authors of moderate abilities and of no extraordinary
courage should now have ventured to attack classical authority
in the rudest and crudest manner, proved that an enormous
change had taken place in human thoughts and habits. A
very slight acquaintance with the dispute suffices to show
that most of those who exalted the writers of antiquity, and
of those who depreciated them, alike did so on false grounds ;
the former admiring them for excellences which did not
exist, and the latter censuring as defects what were really
excellences. It would be out of place, however, to treat here
of the merits and demerits of the two parties. It is enough
to direct attention to the very obvious circumstance that
the controversy turned on the idea of progress, and tended to
give prominence to that idea, to promote its circulation, and
to make it the subject of reflection and criticism. Neces-
sarily, it found frequent expression, and not seldom exagger-
ated expression, from those who, like Boisrobert, Perrault,
Lamotte, and Terrason, took the part of the moderns. The
question which they discussed was not merely the vague and
futile one as to the comparative merits of ancient and modern
authors, but, in the main, the question as to whether the
movement of civilisation was towards improvement or deteri-
oration. One regrets to find that a man of the knowledge
and talent of Macaulay could have shown himself, in his
essay on Sir William Temple, capable only of perceiving in
the controversy a "battle of the books," and, indeed, only
the ridiculous aspects of it as such. He had simply to glance
through the most celebrated book published in the contro-
versy, Perrault's'Paralleleentreles anciens et les modernes '
(1690), and he must have seen that what was substantial and
vital in it was the attempt to prove by a survey of archi-
tecture, sculpture, painting, eloquence, history, and poetry,
214 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
science, philosophy, and religion, that men ought not to look
back to the age even of Pericles or Augustus for models
of absolute perfection and perpetual imitation, but should
proceed on the conviction that inexhaustible possibilities of
achievement still lay before them in all directions. This
conclusion cannot be set aside by pointing out that Perrault
was unacquainted with Greek, and had the bad taste, or,
rather, ignorant audacity, to pronounce Homer inferior to
Scude'ri and Chapelain. Perrault accepted all that Bacon
and Pascal had affirmed of progress, and dwelt much more
distinctly and emphatically on the indefinite perfectibility
of human nature, which he strikingly contrasted with the
immobility of the merely animal nature. He refused to
admit that the progressive movement of civilisation had ever
met with any real interruption. To the objection that ages
of barbarism had been seen to succeed ages of culture, he
replied by the comparison of the arts and sciences to those
rivers which, after precipitating themselves suddenly into an
abyss, flow for a while under ground, but emerge again into
the light with undiminished fulness and force : " Cette inter-
ruption n'est qu'apparente ; on peut comparer les sciences et
les arts a ces fleuves qui viennent a rencontrer un gouffre oii
ils s'abiment tout-a-coup, mais qui, apres avoir coule' sous
terre, trouvent enfin une ouverture par ou on les voit ressortir
avec la meme abondance qu'ils y e'tait entries." He added,
that humanity has had its different ages, each of which has
passed through a natural series of phases ; and further, that
" the human race must be considered as an eternal man, so
that the life of humanity has had, like the life of a man, its
infancy and youth, is at present in its maturity, and will
know no decline."
Fontenelle, whose life of one hundred years' duration con-
nected the great age of French literature under Louis XIV.
with that which preceded the Revolution, took part in the
discussion, and displayed his characteristic ingenuity. He
granted that the lapse of ages makes no considerable differ-
ence on the constitution and faculties of human nature, yet
ascribed to the moderns a superiority over the ancients, inas-
much as the generations which arrive late on the stage of
existence must inherit the intellectual advantages acquired
FONTENELLE AND SAINT-PIERRE 215
by the toils of the generations which preceded them. Draw-
ing a sharp distinction between the sciences and the arts, he
argued that the former, being dependent on experience, can
only be slowly matured, while the latter, being dependent
chiefly on liveliness and force of imagination, may attain
easily and rapidly a very high perfection. He likewise threw
out a conception which has a certain interest from having
been substantially reproduced by Saint-Simon and Littre',
both believing it to be an important original discovery. The
conception as stated by Fontenelle is that the life of each
nation has ages corresponding to the ages of the life of an
individual. In infancy individuals and nations are absorbed
in the satisfaction of their physical wants ; in youth they are
chiefly occupied with poetry and art ; and in manhood with
science and philosophy. Like Perrault, he supposes that
humanity will escape decay and extinction. "This man,
who has lived from the beginning of the world to the present
time, will have no old age ; he will be always as capable as
ever of doing the things for which he was fitted in youth,
and he will be more and more able to accomplish those which
are appropriate to his manhood; in other words, and to drop
allegory, men will never degenerate."1
The Abbe" de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743) was another con-
necting link between the seventeenth and the eighteenth
century. He was a still more enthusiastic believer in human
perfectibility and in historical progress than Fontenelle.
His ardent faith in them led him to devise a multitude of
schemes for individual and social improvement which seemed
to most of his contemporaries mere dreams, but which were
rarely altogether dreams, and which even when dreams were of
the kind that precede and cause awakening. He was a precur-
sor of Turgot and Condorcet. Those who wish to make them-
selves adequately acquainted with the views of this remark-
able man, — "this dreamer who," as Madame Sand says, "saw
more clearly than all his contemporaries," — may be referred
to the works of Molinari ('L'Abbe" de Saint-Pierre, savie et
ses oeuvres ') and of Goumy ('Etude sur la vie et les ecrits
de l'Abbe' de Saint-Pierre'). The so-called "querelle des,
anciens et des modernes " was not merely the foolish and
1 CEuvros (ed. 1764), torn. iv. p. 126. See also pp. 110-126, and pp. 88-113.
216 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FF.ANCE
unprofitable controversy which it is widely believed to have
been. In the course of it the idea of progress was greatly
developed, and men's views as to what were and were not
legitimate inferences from it became much more correct and
definite.1
II
The only work published in France during the seventeenth
century which has any claim to a separate and special consid-
eration from us is the 'Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle '
of Bishop Bossuet. It appeared in 1681, having been Written
for the use of the Dauphin of France to whom Bossuet was
preceptor. Its author was a man of lofty and comprehensive
mind, of rare practical clearness of judgment, of a strong and
disinterested character; the brightest glory of the Gallican
Church; the most skilful expositor and champion of the
Catholic faith in modern times ; and a sacred orator of over-
powering eloquence. No one represented more perfectly what
was attractive and imposing in the age of Louis XIV.,
realised more fully its ideal of intellectual power and gran-
deur, or embodied better the qualities it admired most. But
he did not rise above his age; his was not a prophetic or
creative mind ; his spirit was not of the kind which antici-
pates and dominates the future. He was an admirable
believer, much inferior as a seeker of truth, incapable of
doubting, and without sympathy for independence of opinion.
He estimated authority too highly, and liberty too lightly ;
he was too much of the courtier and the bishop, too little of
the man and the citizen. He felt certain of whatever the
Church taught; he considered the exercise of force and
severity against heretics as conduct agreeable to God; he
was an advocate of absolutism, royal and sacerdotal ; he had
for the monarchy an idolatrous veneration, which, although
common in his age, was unworthy of any man, and most
unworthy of such a man.2
1 There is a very learned ' Histoire de la querelle des anoiens et des modernes '
(1856), by Hippolyte Rigault, and good chapters relating to it in A. Michiel's
' Histoire des idees litteraires en France au xix" siecle.' There is much ingenious
theorising on the main question of the controversy in the work of M. Veron, ' Du
progres intellectuel dans l'humanite.'
2 Bossuet has, of course, a prominent place in all histories of French literature.
The most important of the biographical works regarding him are Bausset's ' His-
BOSSUET 217
The ' Discourse ' is, unquestionably, characterised by
great genius. The simplest sentences place before us the
sublimest pictures. Every word is what it ought to be;
every line has a majestic grace ; and the effect of the whole
is singularly impressive. But the genius displayed is not
scientific or philosophical but oratorical genius. The pro-
fundity, the penetration, the originality which have been
ascribed to the book, are not in it. What one really finds in
it are elevation of thought, admirable arrangement, and a
magnificent style.
While it is an error to ascribe great originality to the
conception or plan formed and carried out by Bossuet, it is
equally an error to deny to it any. True, centuries before
him the writers of Scripture had plainly taught that God
rules over nations, raises up and casts down kings and
peoples according to His sovereign pleasure, and purposes to
establish on earth a kingdom of holiness; but the clearest
and most emphatic affirmations to this effect fall far short of
an attempt to exhibit the series of the ages and the world of
empires as a system of law and order regulated and pervaded
by the wisdom and will of Deity. All that the prophets and
apostles declared as to Divine Providence could be assented
to by those who had no proper conception of a universal his-
tory, or of the place and significance of nations in a scheme
of human development, just as the first chapter of Genesis
could be accepted ages before the origination of geology.
Bossuet's historical doctrine is much more closely connected
with that of Augustine than with the simple germs of his-
torical doctrine contained in Scripture; but it is no mere
restatement even of Augustine's theory. The central con-
ception of the Augustinian historical doctrine — the conflict
of the two cities — holds a very subordinate place in Bossuet's
work, and is only present at all in a greatly modified char-
acter. The harsh predestinarian dualism so fundamental and
toire de Bossuet,' 4 vols., 1819; Tabaraud's ' Supplement aux histoires de Bossuet
et de Fenelon,' 1822; Floquet's 'Etudes sur la vie de Bossuet,' 3 vols.; and
Re'aume's 'Histoire de J. B. Bossuet et de ses CEuvres,' 3 vols., 1869-70. His
historical philosophy has been touched on by Sisraondi, Cousin, Jouffroy, Caro,
and others, and treated of at greater length by Buckle (Hist, of Civ. in England,
vol. i.), Laurent (Phil, de l'Histoire), Rougemont (Les Deux Cite"s, vol. ii.), and
Mayr (Geschichtsauffassung der Neuzeit) .
218 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
so conspicuous in the 'De Civitate Dei' has almost disap-
peared from the 'Discours.' Further, while the historical
constituents of the former work are inextricably commingled
with apologetic, polemic, mj'thological, theological, and
moral disquisitions, in the latter the survey of history stands
out with comparative purity and clearness. The history is
viewed in a religious light, but in that light it is presented
as a rationally connected and orderly developed whole. There
is nothing in Augustine's work which corresponds to the
Third Part of Bossuet's, which is, however, to the historical
philosopher by far its most interesting and valuable portion.
Bossuet was not endowed with the originality which makes
discoveries and produces new views, but only with such
originality as apprehends with perfect clearness the highest
thoughts in general circulation, separates them with extraor-
dinary judgment from antiquated and inferior notions, and
expresses them with surpassing skill. He had not the
originality which would have placed him in advance of his
age, and at a distance from it, but simply that which placed
him in the front rank of the men of his age.
The primary purpose of his work was, he informs us, to
be to the histories of particular peoples and epochs what a
general map is to maps of particular countries ; its aim was
to show how nation is bound to nation, generation to gen-
eration. It only, however, accomplishes this purpose very
imperfectly, since scarcely any relations are exhibited in it
except theological ones. It consists of three parts, — a
chronological distribution of the events of history from the
creation of the world to the reign of Charlemagne, a sketch
of the course of true religion, and a survey of the rise and
fall of empires. This division has been criticised as inar-
tistic, and involving repetitions, seeing that the sacred and
secular events treated of together in the first part are in the
two following parts again dealt with separately. But it has
to be remembered, that although Bossuet was a great artist,
his chief design in writing the 'Discourse on Universal His-
tory ' was not to produce a work of art, any more than of
science or philosophy, but to attain a practical and educa-
tional end. His aim was to exhibit history in such a light as
would convey to his pupil and his readers the religious and
BOSSUET 219
political impressions which he believed history to be espe-
cially meant to impart. His work could not be better
planned with a view to the attainment of his end.
In the First Part history is divided into twelve epochs.
Of these, the first is said to have begun with the creation of
Adam, B.C. 4004; the second with the flood of Noah, B.C.
2348; the third with the calling of Abraham, B.C. 1921; the
fourth with the giving of the law to Moses, B.C. 1491; the
fifth with the capture of Troy, B.C. 1124; the sixth with
the dedication of Solomon's temple, B.C. 1004; the seventh
with the foundation of Rome, B.C. 784; the eighth with the
restoration of the Jews by the edict of Cyrus, B.C. 536; the
ninth with the taking of Carthage by Scipio, B.C. 200;
the tenth with the birth of Christ; the eleventh with Con-
stantine's public adoption of Christianity (A.D. 312); and
the twelfth with the coronation by Pope Leo of Charlemagne
as Emperor of the Romans, a.d. 800. These twelve periods
are regarded as reducible to seven ages, which are said to have
begun respectively with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
Solomon, Cyrus, and Christ. Further, both epochs and ages
are regarded as included in three great periods: namely,
that of the law of nature, which was prior to Moses ; that of
the written law, which extended from Moses to Christ; and
that of grace. When it is observed that seven out of the
twelve epochs, all the ages and all the periods, are dated
according to Biblical indications and with reference to the
fortunes of the people of Israel, it will be understood that
the 'Discourse ' of Bossuet is very far from answering fully
to its title, or from really dealing with universal history.
The First Part of Bossuet's treatise is thus to a large
extent a summary of Biblical history as recorded in the
Biblical books. As such it is truly admirable, and probably
even to this day unsurpassed. It is marvellous how much
Bossuet manages to say in a few words, and how apt, pic-
turesque, and impressive these are. The order is perfect;
every statement is in its place ; every fact is so set as to be
seen in the light of its relationships. There is no over-
crowding of the narrative with details, or compressing together
of things different in nature and unequal in significance.
220 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Masterly ease, thorough naturalness, just proportions, a
beautiful harmony are everywhere apparent.
On the other hand, Bossuet accepted the Biblical books as
historical authorities in an uncritical manner. He did not
suppose that any inquiry into the sources and character of
the Biblical histories was necessary, or even permissible.
He supposed that their authors wrote with infallible knowl-
edge, and that there could be no error in their statements.
In this respect he fully shared the general belief of his age,
which is still the belief of the Catholic Church, and a preva-
lent belief in most Protestant Churches. His uncritical
procedure was therefore a natural and venial fault. Still it
was a fault; and it has to be remembered in this connection,
that Bossuet took a prominent and deplorable part in the
attempt to suppress a work far superior in scientific merit
to anything which he was himself capable of producing — ■
namely, the first history of the Old Testament as a literary
product, the ' Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament ' (1678)
of Richard Simon. Bossuet had not that complete intellec-
tual truthfulness which is the first and main characteristic
of the scientific spirit, and therefore he could not bear with-
out pain and aversion the light of scientific criticism.
The chronology of his historical sketch has been much
praised by some writers. In reality, it was simply taken,
without acknowledgment, from Usher.
The Second Part of the 'Discourse ' delineates the course of
religion — la suite de la religion. Religion is regarded as con-
fined to Jews and Christians. In heathendom nothing is seen
save idolatry. And idolatry is viewed as utter extravagance,
the strength of which lies in what its foolishness attests, the
weakness of reason. To this cause, aided by sense, interest,
ignorance, a false reverence for antiquity, policy, philosophy,
and heresy, the extent of its sway and the difficulty of dislodg-
ing it, are traced. The history of religion is for Bossuet, as for
Augustine, the history of the people of God, or of the oivitas
Dei; but he does not, like Augustine, identify the people of
God with a certain number of persons specially predestinated
to eternal life. He understands the civitas Dei to be a really
historical community and kingdom, the people of Israel under
the old dispensation and the Christian Church under the new.
BOSSUET 221
At the same time, he does not contradict, but, on the contrary,
he accepts the Pauline and Augustinian view of an Israel
within Israel, of a narrower and a wider election.
In the Second Part of his work, then, Bossuet seeks to
describe " the different states of the people of God under the
law of nature and under the patriarchs; under Moses and
under the written law ; under David and under the prophets ;
during the time between the return from the captivity and
Jesus Christ; and finally, under Jesus Christ Himself —
that is to say, under the law of grace and under the Gospel ;
in the ages which looked forward to Messiah and in those to
which he has appeared; in those in which the worship of
God is confined to a single people and in those in which, as
foretold in the ancient prophecies, it has been diffused over
the whole earth; in those, in fine, when men, still weak and
rude, require to be sustained by temporal rewards and punish-
ments, and in those when the faithful, more fully instructed,
must live only by faith, attached to the blessings of eternity,
and suffering, in the hope of obtaining them, all the evils
which can exercise their patience." Religion is, according
to Bossuet, not unprogressive, but passes through an orderly
suggestion of states, and from feebleness to strength, from
infancy to maturity. The reality of progress is clearly and
practically recognised by him throughout his whole work, not
excepting even the portion of it devoted to tracing the course
of religion. He represents religion, however, as having been
always uniform, or rather always the same, the same God
having been always accepted as the Author, and the same
Christ as the Saviour, of the human race. The history of the
Jewish people, and the history of the Christian Church, are
viewed as one through their union in Jesus Christ, the
former finding in Him its consummation and the latter its
commencement; so that, either as expected or as possessed,
He has been in all ages the hope and the consolation of His
children. Bossuet's delineation of the course of religion is,
in fact, mainly an exposition of Biblical history and a defence
and application of Biblical prophecy, which is regarded as
the key to the interpretation of history. Its general aim is
to prove that religion is of all things the oldest, the least
changeable, the noblest, and that the Church over which
222 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Innocent XI. presided was the heir of all the ages, the
guardian and possessor of all spiritual truth ; in other words,
it is apologetic, and not philosophical.
So far as the second division of Bossuet's treatise is merely
a plea for prophecy and miracle, for the Bible or Christianity
or the Church, I do not require to pass any judgment upon
it. Its main thesis, however, is historical; and I must
express my conviction that Bossuet has failed to establish
it, and that history is not favourable to it. Religion is
found, when comprehensively and impartially studied, to
have been as changeable as any other historical phenomenon.
It has varied from age to age, from land to land, just as
industry, art, and philosophy have done. It has a certain
unity amidst all its changes as they have, but not the crude
external unity which Bossuet fancied it to possess. The
virtual identification of religion with Jewish and Christian
monotheism rests on a narrow and unworthy conception of
religion, so far excusable in Bossuet's day, yet even then
seen to be false by minds otherwise inferior to his own. It
is a mere illusion to regard the Church as having been more
stable or less continuously in motion than the State. The
Roman Catholic Church is not an institution of any extraor-
dinary age, and was already in decay when Bossuet wrote.
Its claim to be in exclusive possession of any truth is inca-
pable of historical proof.
The Third Part of Bossuet's 'Discourse ' treats of the rise
and fall of empires — la suite des empires. In it, as in the
entire work, the central thought is that a Divine hand trains
and guides collective humanity for the religion of Christ,
which is incorporated in the Church ; and that all historical
changes may be co-ordinated with reference to a single end,
the good of the Church. " God has made use of the Assyrians
and Babylonians to chastise His people ; of the Persians to
restore it ; of Alexander and his immediate successors to pro-
tect it ; of Antiochus the Great and his successors to exercise
it; and of the Romans to maintain its liberty against the
kings of Syria bent only on destroying it, to avenge its
rejection and crucifixion of Christ, and to secure the spread
and triumph of the Christian faith." The world of nations is
thus like the world of nature, a connected and orderly system
BOSSTJBT 223
ruled by the will and revealing the wisdom of the Author of
the universe.
But, further, in this portion of his treatise, Bossuet indi-
cates the special secondary causes which under the hand of
Providence determined the revolutions of Scythia, Ethiopia,
Egypt, Assyria, Media, Persia, Greece, and Rome. He
represents the various nations as having had qualities
assigned to them suitable to the missions which they were
to fulfil. " And as in all affairs there is that which prepares
them, which determines the undertaking of them, and which
causes them to succeed, the true science of history is to
observe in each period of time those secret dispositions which
have prepared great changes, and the important conjunctures
which have brought them to pass." It is not enough to look
at remarkable events and decisive revolutions merely as they
outwardly appear ; it is necessary to penetrate to the inclina-
tions, the manners, the characters of the peoples and persons
that have effected them. There is no such thing as chance
in history, and fortune is a word devoid of meaning. God
alone rules, but He rules through second causes, through men
and nations being what they are, and related as they are,
unless in certain exceptional cases where He wills that His
own hand should be seen in direct intervention, in immediate
action. But the second causes of historical events are only
superficially investigated by Bossuet. He is too content to
explain conquests as brought about by God inspiring certain
men and their followers with invincible courage, and causes
terror to march before them; useful laws by His giving to
legislators the spirit of wisdom and foresight; peace and
order by His restraint of human passions; and strife and
revolution by His letting these passions loose. He con-
stantly spares himself the labour of explaining historical
changes by historical agencies, and refers them instead to
those eternal counsels of God with which he so confidently
felt himself to be thoroughly acquainted.
There can be no difference of opinion as to the literary
genius and artistic skill displayed by Bossuet in delineating
the features and tracing the succession of the great empires
of the ancient world. The panorama exhibited is magnifi-
cent; the portraits drawn of the several nations are marvels
224 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
of beauty and power. It is difficult to suppose that this
portion of Bossuet's work will ever be deprived of its value
or attractiveness by the increase of historical knowledge. As
regards it he cannot, I think, be said to have had any prede-
cessor, and he has as yet, perhaps, had no successful rival.
Its chief fault hardly affects its character as a work of art,
and if rather inconsistent with its author's general historical
theory, is on that account all the more creditable to his human
sympathies. The defect to which I refer is that his portraits
of the heathen nations are more or less nattering, the nobler
traits of each people being made prominent, while their baser
features are left indistinct or unindicated.
On whatever subject Bossuet touches in tracing the course
of empires, the singular appropriateness of his language
bears witness to his careful study of the matter dealt with.
Says Nisard, " Conde" could not have better characterised the
impetuous valour of the Persians, or the masterly tactics of
the Greeks, or the rigidity of the Macedonian phalanx, or the
shock of the Roman legion ; he could not have painted better
his own models, Alexander, Hannibal, Scipio, and Caesar.
Colbert could not have appreciated in terms more appropriate
and exact, or viewed from a higher point of vantage the wise
administration of the Egyptians, the practical grandeur of
their arts, the economy of their public works. A statesman
like Richelieu could not have penetrated more keenly into
the profound policy of the Roman senate. Machiavelli could
not have seen more clearly into the rivalries of Greece, even
aided by the spectacle which Italy, agitated by similar
rivalries, presented to him. Neither Cujas nor Pothier could
have shown better the import of the Roman laws. For the
understanding of general relations and for technical propriety
of expression, Bossuet is unequalled in our language. This
great writer is the only one whom I know, in whom one can
never detect, whatever be the matter of which he treats,
either any indecision or effort."1
Bossuet had a profound admiration for the character and
genius of the Roman people. His own nature was of a grandly
Roman type, and he had entered thoroughly into the spirit of
Roman institutions and of the great Roman writers. Hence
1 Hist, de la literature fran<;aise, t. iv. pp. 266, 267 (ed. 1850).
BOSSUET 225
the two chapters on Rome with which his work closes are
not only of remarkable merit for ease and power of descrip-
tion, but for judicious appreciation of the causes of Roman
grandeur and decline. They show that if he had not had
other aims in his treatise, he might have done much for the
philosophy of history ; and they make us regret that he did
not, as he purposed to do, compose a ' Discours ' on the
development of France and the successes and decline of
Mohammedanism.
As we have seen, Bossuet regards all history from the
religious point of view. His entire teaching concerning it is
based on the thought of a Divine plan determining and per-
vading it ; on the belief that God rules the whole course of
human things for the fulfilment of His own purposes. This
thought in itself, or when not unwarrantably narrowed and
specialised, is just the idea of Divine Providence, and it will
be rejected only by those who refuse to recognise Divine
agency in the universe ; this belief is just the conviction
that the Lord reigneth, and that the destiny of man is being
accomplished under the guidance of the Eternal, and it will
be shared by all who acknowledge a purpose and plan in the
structure of the evolution of the world. Those who see evi-
dences of Supreme "Will and wisdom in physical nature will
not fail to see its traces also in the development of humanity.
The human race has had a history. Generations after genera-
tions have come and gone like the leaves of the forest ; but
that history has proceeded onwards without break, without
stoppage, in obedience to laws the knowledge of which we
are only yet groping after. There has been progress, order?
plan, from the first day of man's creation down to the present
hour, yet man himself has been ignorant of it, and heedless
of it. The very conception is a modern one, and is vague,
inadequate, and in manifold ways positively erroneous, even
in the highest minds of our time. Few have had the slightest
glimpse of the order which yet embraced their every action ;
fewer still have sought to conform to it. From first to last,
from the beginning of human history until now, the immense
majority of our race have set before them ends of their own,
narrow and mean schemes merely for personal good; and yet,
although it has been so, and in the midst of confusion, tumult,
226 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and war, the order, progress, plan, referred to, has been slowly
and silently but surely built up. The men who have accom-
plished it have not meant to do so ; nay, they have been as
ignorant of the laws of the vast scheme which they were
realising as the bees are of the mathematical principles on
which they construct the cells of their honeycombs ; their
reason has been as blind as any brute's instinct. If, when we
look up at the heavens and ponder on what science tells us
of the systems of worlds above us, all proceeding in their
courses with perfect regularity, we feel humbled in adoration
before a present reigning God, we shall not be less impressed
with a sense of the Divine agency when we observe how
order and the common good are brought out of the confusion
and conflict of millions of human wills which seek merely
their own pleasure and interest. The denial of the Divine
presence and purpose in the movements of human society is
an inference from atheism, not an induction of science, and
least of all a special result of the science of history. On the
contrary, we may rather say with Niebuhr, that " history is,
of all kinds of knowledge, the one which tends most decidedly
to produce belief in Providence."
But it does not follow that because an idea is true there can
be no application of it which is illegitimate. And to lay this
idea of a Divine Providence, or any other theological idea, as
the foundation of a philosophy of history, is an illegitimate
application of it. It is to reverse the true relation of science
and theology. Religious truths are inferences from scientific
laws, not these laws themselves, nor the rationale of them.
It is only where science ends that religious philosophy begins.
The results of science serve as data to religious philosophy.
Science shows that certain laws and relations hold among
phenomena, and whether the phenomena be inorganic, organic,
animate, mental, moral, or social, this is all which science
does ; it rests in the laws, the ultimate general relations of
phenomena, and seeks neither by intuition nor any form of
inference to transcend them. It leaves to religious philoso-
phy to go farther and higher if it can, to avail itself of the
broadest and latest scientific generalisations, and to consecrate
them, to invest them with a halo of celestial glory, by showing
that the laws and relations discovered by science — the adjust-
BOSSDET 227
ments and harmonies which prevail throughout creation —
are expressions of the thoughts of an Infinite Intelligence into
communion with which it is permitted us in some feeble
degree to enter — are revelations of the character of the
Creator. These truths Bossuet has overlooked or disbelieved.
He accordingly makes what is an inference from the philoso-
phy of history its fundamental premiss. He explains by the
doctrine of a Providence the very conditions from which we
conclude the existence of a Providence. He does not make
an independent application of induction to the facts of his-
tory, but he attempts to account for these facts by an article
of his theological creed. This is an obviously unscientific
process. It is to make what ought to be the apex of an
edifice its basis. It is to try to build by beginning at the top.
And this radical error is the radical and generative principle
of Bossuet's system.
Besides, many who believe in Providence will refuse to ac-
cept Bossuet's representation of it. His whole mode of con-
ceiving of the Divine Being and government, will seem to
them crudely and irreverently anthropomorphic. He does
not, indeed, ascribe to God bodily parts, but he ascribes to
Him human passions, petty designs, and questionable motives.
Worse than his idolising of Louis XIV. as a kind of god on
earth, is his imagining God to be a kind of Louis XIV. in
heaven. If it be said that he only spoke as the Hebrew
prophets had taught him, the answer will be that he had no
right to employ their figurative and metaphorical language to
express essential reality ; no right to confound the language
of religious emotion with that of philosophical thought. The
idea of Providence is as central in the historical theory of
Vico as it is in that of Bossuet, but it is wholly different in
the two theories, and that simply because Vico's idea of God
was profound and reverent, Bossuet's comparatively shallow
and irreverent.
Further, Bossuet not only descends from Providence to
history instead of rising from history to Providence, but he
attributes to Providence a single and very definite design or
thought. He represents the sole aim of Providence in history
to be the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, and the
kingdom of Christ he identifies with the Roman Catholic
228 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Church. Now, even if he had not thus taken a narrow and
erroneous view of the Christian religion — even if he had not
thus confounded it with Romanism — his reading of the riddle
of Providence might be seriously questioned. There is no
room, indeed, for reasonable doubt that Egypt, Assyria, Persia,
Greece, and Rome, as well as Judea, contributed to prepare
the way for Christ, for the reception and spread of the Gos-
pel, for the formation and diffusion of a Christian civilisation.
This is a fact which not only admits of convincing historical
proof, but which has been admirably proved in many recent
works : for instance, in the introductions to the Church His-
tories of Neander, Schaff, and Pressense", and Dollinger's
' Court of the Gentiles.' But Bossuet, like so many before
and since, was not content to abide within the safe limits of
a statement of facts ; or rather, while believing that he was
doing so, he maintained instead, as identical with such a
statement, an assertion which is in reality very different, far
broader, and far more hazardous, — the assertion that the
world exists only for one true and perfect religion, that the
rise and spread of that religion is the single end or ultimate
final cause of all history, the sole ground for the existence of
any age or nation. It may be so, but what is our evidence for
it? Can we really penetrate so far into the depths of the
Divine counsels as to know the full purpose of God in the
lives of all nations, in the events of all time ? That Egypt,
Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome were all meant to prepare
the way for Christianity we may well maintain, for history
proves that they did so ; but that these nations, and still more
that nations like India and China, so ancient, so populous, so
remarkable and peculiar in civilisation, and on which the
beams of the Gospel shine so feebly even at the present hour,
have existed solely or mainly for Christianity, is an entirely
different proposition, and one which we may reasonably ques-
tion. And while it may be disputed whether the final end of
Providence is what even in this general form it is said to be,
when the general form is withdrawn for a special, and the
Roman Catholic Church is regarded as equivalent to the
Christian religion, room even for doubt ceases, and the ques-
tionable gives place to the certainly false. Whether history
can or cannot prove that humanity exists for Christianity may
BOSSUET 229
be a theme for controversy ; but nothing in history is surer
than that it does not exist for the Church. For some centuries
now the whole course of history has been proving that conclu-
sively to all who are willing to be taught by it. The successive
stages of progress accomplished during these centuries have
been marked by the successive and growing deliverance of the
State, of art, of literature and science, of the individual reason
and conscience, and the various social activities, from the grasp
and authority of the Church. Into her bosom they will never
more return. She will never more, like the Church of the
middle ages, have their power to yield. It has cost humanity
too much to separate each one of them from her sway, and
humanity has gained too much by the separation for it to
allow of anything of the kind. The Church has lost domin-
ion over all these things for ever, and her loss has been the
gain of the world and the gain of religion.
The conception entertained by Bossuet of the final cause of
history could not fail to render him unjust towards many
nations, could not fail to make him overlook their significance
in the world. This injustice has been exposed by Sismondi,
Cousin, Buckle, and others, who have seen only vaguely the
root-principles of it. They have remarked that he says little
of Persia, less of Egypt, and nothing of India and China, and
has taken no account of art, science, and industry as elements
of social life, which is quite enough to show that he was far
from realising the comprehensiveness and wealth of history.
If he did not see in it only religion, religion was certainly the
one element of which he had a clear enough apprehension
to be able to trace the development. Nor could he do that
otherwise than most imperfectly. For, first, the very notion
of development in theology was then scarcely entertained by
Protestant, and altogether alien to Catholic divines. And
next, he had not, and no man in his time had, sympathy
enough with the heathen religions of the world to discern
the truths which were in them, their affinities to the human
spirit, and their relations to the Christian faith. Classical
mythology was then only a mass of discordant and inde-
cent absurdities ; the spiritual life of the Eastern world was
shrouded in darkness; and the history of Christianity itself
had not yet been written with much of critical discrimination,
230 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IX PRANCE
or philosophic insight, or that imaginative sympathy which
reanimates and re-embodies the past. It was thus inevitable
that Bossuet's attempt to sketch the history even of religion
should be defective; and it is simplest justice to him to re-
member that many things in that history, familiar now even to
the unlearned, were then undreamt of even by scholars.
It is also to be remembered that Bossuet in attending chiefly
to the religious element in history, and taking little account of
other elements, was exercising a right of choice to which he was
entitled. Some of his critics have judged his ' Discours ' as if
he had undertaken to treat history only as a philosopher, as if
he had engaged to write a systematic treatise on the science of
history. In that case we should have been warranted to de-
mand that every historical element should be enumerated and
estimated at its proper value. But Bossuet made no such pro-
fession, entered into no such engagement. He sought primarily
not the advancement of science, but practical utility, Christian
edification ; and in order to secure this, it was as integral a part
of his plan to show the perpetuity and enforce the claims of
Christianity as to trace the rise and fall of empires. It is con-
sequently unfair to judge him as if he had professed to be only
either an historical philosopher or a philosophical historian.
When speaking of justice in connection with the criticism of
Bossuet's ' Discourse,' it is impossible for me to refrain from
saying that Mr. Buckle's criticism of it appears to me indefen-
sible. It is true that Bossuet has sacrificed other nations to the
Jews ; but serious as that error is, it is not more fatal to a truth-
ful estimate of universal history, does not show greater inability
to rise to a philosophical view of history, than to see in them
only, as Mr. Buckle does, " an obstinate and ignorant race,
which owed to other peoples any scanty knowledge they ever
attained." Bossuet's error lay not so much in exaggerating
the importance of the Jewish nation in history, as in overlook-
ing the importance of other nations. Even if, rejecting mira-
cle and special revelation, we consent to regard everything
in its history, legislation, literature, and religion as merely nat-
ural, the Jewish nation will still appear to the intelligent and
unbiassed student as the most remarkable in oriental antiquary.
Only an eye incapable of distinguishing between outer appear-
BOSSUET 231
ance and inner reality, between material and spiritual greatness,
will rank it as lower than even Egypt, Assyria, China, or India.
Certainly none of these kingdoms has had a tithe of its influence
on the civilisation of Europe. The legislation of Rome, it must
be admitted, has affected that of modern states more powerfully
than even that of Judea, but the legislation of Rome alone. It
would be difficult to decide whether the political spirit of clas-
sical or of Jewish antiquity has worked most infiuentially in
Christendom. As mere literature, the Old Testament is one of
the wonders of the world, and, in particular, there is nothing in
Greece or Rome, nothing in all the East or West, like its sacred
poetry. There was a sense of moral claims and moral wants de-
veloped in Israel from very early times such as existed nowhere
else before the diffusion of Christianity, which avowedly based
itself on Judaism. As a religion, many will refuse to regard it as
a supernatural revelation ; but they must surely admit that we
are entitled to adapt to it the language in which Aristotle speaks
of Anaxagoras, " that the man who first announced that Reason
was the cause of the world and of all orderly arrangement in
nature, no less than in living bodies, appeared like a man in
his sober senses in comparison with those who heretofore had
been speaking at random and in the dark ; " and to say that the
nation which had a pure and elevating moral and monotheistic
creed for many centuries before any other had risen above a
degrading and fantastic idolatry, pantheism, or polytheism,
appears among them as a sober and sane man, awake and in
the daylight, in comparison with those who are dreaming, or
drunk, or stumbling in the dark. In Judaism both Christianity
and Mohammedanism have their roots.
The way in which Bossuet treated Mohammedanism is
severely censured by Mr. Buckle. He says (vol. i. pp. 725,
726, first ed.), " Every one acquainted with the progress of
civilisation will allow that no small share of it is due to those
gleams of light which, in the midst of surrounding darkness,
shot from the great centres of Cordova and Bagdad. These,
however, were the work of Mohammedanism ; and as Bos-
suet had been taught that Mohammedanism is a pestilential
heresy, he could not bring himself to believe that Christian
nations had derived anything from so corrupt a source. The
232 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
consequence is that he says nothing of that great religion,
the noise of which has filled the world ; and having occasion
to mention its founder, he treats him with scorn, as an impu-
dent impostor, whose pretensions it is hardly fitting to notice.
The great apostle, who diffused among millions of idolaters
the sublime verity of one God, is spoken of by Bossuet with
supreme contempt; because Bossuet, with the true spirit of
his profession, could see nothing to admire in those whose
opinions differed from his own. But when he has occasion
to mention some obscure member of that class to which he
himself belonged, then it is that he scatters his praises with
boundless profusion. In his scheme of universal history,
Mohammed is not worthy to play a part. He is passed by ;
but the truly great man, the man to whom the human race
is really indebted is — Martin, Bishop of Tours. He it is,
says Bossuet, whose unrivalled actions filled the universe
with his fame, both during his lifetime and after his death.
It is true that not one educated man in fifty has ever heard
the name of Martin, Bishop of Tours. But Martin performed
miracles, and the Church had made him a saint ; his claims,
therefore, to the attention of historians, must be far superior
to the claims of one who, like Mohammed, was without these
advantages. Thus it is that, in the opinion of the only emi-
nent writer on history during the power of Louis XIV., the
greatest man Asia has ever produced, and one of the greatest
the world has ever seen, is considered in every way inferior
to a mean and ignorant monk, whose most important achieve-
ment was the erection of a monastery, and who spent the
best part of his life in useless solitude, trembling before the
superstitious fancies of his weak and ignoble nature."
In order to enable the reader to estimate this criticism at
its worth, it is not necessary that I should show that although
the Mohammedan was a powerful and in many respects ad-
mirable movement, it yet involved no great original idea, the
religious truth which it contained and diffused being drawn
from Jewish, and the scientific truth from Greek sources ;
that even if Bossuet had tried and failed to appreciate that
movement, his failure ought to be ascribed more to the spirit
of his age than to the spirit of his profession ; that the mean-
BOSSUET 233
ing of the language actually employed by him is misrepre-
sented and caricatured ; or that wrong is done to the memory
of Martin of Tours, whose youth and manhood were spent
not in useless solitude hut in the Roman camp, who, although
sharing in the superstitions of his contemporaries, certainly
carried into his later life of monk and bishop no weakness or
ignobleness of nature, but a heroic courage which enabled
him to face death often in his struggle with Celtic and Latin
paganism, and a Christian dignity conspicuously displayed
before an emperor surrounded with episcopal adulations, and
who is known not only as the founder of a monastery but as
the advocate of religious toleration, as a man who protested
by word and deed against the intervention of secular power
in religious matters, and branded with his solemn reprobation
the bishops who took part in the persecution of the heretic
Priscillian and his disciples. It is not necessary for me to
prove any of these facts, which it would be easy to do, as
there are two still more conclusive as to the rashness and
unfairness of Mr. Buckle's accusation — viz., first, that all
that Bossuet has written in his ' Discours ' about Martin of
Tours is just the two lines which Mr. Buckle quotes ; and next,
that at the end of that discourse he informs us he meant to
write another in order to explain the history of France and
the rise and decline of Mohammedanism, — " Ce meme dis-
cours vous d^couvrira les causes des prodigieux succ&s de
Mahomet et de ses successeurs : cet empire, qui a commence
deux cents ans avant Charlemange, pouvait trouver sa place
dans ce discours ; mais j'ai cru qu'il valait mieux vous faire
voir dans une meTne suite ses commencements et sa decadence."
It would almost seem as if it might be as difficult for a nine-
teenth-century positivist to be completely just to a seven-
teenth-century Catholic bishop, as for the latter to appreciate
truthfully the great qualities of an Arabian " faux prophete." l
1 Mr. Hath, in his 'Life and Writings of Henry Thomas Buckle,' vol. i. pp.
237-239, has replied to my criticism of Buckle's censure of Bossuet. He begins
with the words : " I have hardly found in Professor Flint's ' Philosophy of
History,' or in his account in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' a single word in
Buckle's praise; and not only does he practically adopt many of Buckle's views
without a reference to him (e.gr., Phil, of Hist., pp. 7, 27, 94, 101, 104, 128, 129),
but actually goes out of his way to accuse him of unfairness and dishonesty in
234 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IK FRANCE
his account of Bossuet. Mr. Flint's accusation is this: that it is untrue that
Bossuet neglected the Mohammedans, or overrated Martin of Tours; and he
maintains that the Jewish nation is the most remarkable in antiquity." I am
glad to have the opportunity thus afforded me of stating that Mr. Huth's excellent
biography gave me a much higher opinion of Mr. Buckle as a man than I enter-
tained before I became acquainted with it. I had been led in a way which it is
unnecessary to state to form an estimate of the character of Mr. Buckle which Mr.
Huth's book at once convinced me must be erroneous. Hence, although I am not
aware of having written any word which is unjust towards Mr. Buckle, I can
readily suppose that I might well have found more to say in his praise than I
have done. On the other hand, I cannot see any ground for my referring to Mr.
Buckle in any of the pages which Mr. Huth has indicated. There is no view in
these pages, so far as I am aware, peculiar to Buckle, or specially derived from
Buckle. Then, if testing the accuracy of Buckle's criticism of Bossuet's his-
torical philosophy was going out of my way when that philosophy was precisely
the subject which I had under consideration, I confess I do not know what
keeping in my way would have been. Mr. Huth should have seen that I had not
accused Mr. Buckle of " dishonesty in his account of Bossuet," or of any other kind
of unfairness than that which Buckle himself charges on Bossuet. Further, my
accusation was not " that it is untrue that Bossuet neglected the Mohammedans,
or overestimated Martin of Tours." As to the Mohammedans, it was, that Buckle
ought to have taken due account of Bossuet's declared intention to treat specially
of the progress and decay of Mohammedanism. That showed that Bossuet was
quite aware that Mohammed was a much more important historical personage
than Martin of Tours. "But," says Mr. Huth, "I doubt that even if he had
written the continuation he proposed, from the time of Charlemagne to Louis
XIV., which ' vous decouvrira les causes des prodigieux succes de Mahomet et de
ses successeurs,' he would have done more than give some account of the
Crusades." Indeed! Would that have been fulfilling his promise ? Would that
have been disclosing the causes of the marvellous successes of Mohammed and his
successors ? As to Martin of Tours, what I charge on Buckle is that he under-
estimated him as much as he believed Bossuet to have overestimated him. As
I suppose that Bossuet credited Martin with having performed some at least of
the miracles ascribed to him, I suppose also that he overestimated him, my own
capacity of believing in miracles being small. But what he says of his fame is
not so very exaggerated. What Mr. Buckle says, that " not one educated man in
fifty has ever heard the name of Martin, Bishop of Tours," maybe true of the
present age, but in the latter part of the fourth century, and for ages afterwards,
all Western Christendom knew it well. So far as popular fame was concerned,
probably no pope, bishop, or saint of those times equalled him. Dilating on this
point, Martin's friend and biographer, Sulpicius Severus, uses words which I
imagine Bossuet must have had in mind when he wrote the words on which
Buckle has so severely commented : " Hoc iEgyptus fatetur, hoc Syria, hoc
JEthiops comperit, hoc Indus audivit, hoc Parthus et Persa noverunt : nee igno-
rat Armenia. Bosporus enclusa cognovit et postremo si quis aut Fortunatas
Insulas, aut Glacialem frequentat Oceanum " (De Virtutibus Monachorum
Orientalium, 1. xix.) . I agree with Mr. Huth in thinking that the position and
influence of the Jewish nation in history is too large a subject to be discussed in
a note.
CHAPTER III
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : GENERAL SURVEY MONTES-
QUIEU, TURGOT, AND VOLTAIRE
The age of Louis XIV. occupies in the history of France
a place analogous to that of the age of Pericles in the history
of Greece, and of Augustus in the history of Rome. France
was then indubitably the first nation of Europe ; the Grand
Monarque was the most powerful king on earth ; and the
Court of Versailles was the most brilliant in the world. A
Colbert strove to develop the internal resources of the king-
dom ; a Louvois, served by masterly diplomatists, directed its
external policy; and a Conde", a Turenne, a Luxembourg, a
Catinat, a Vendome, led her armies to victory. The French
language attained its utmost refinement ; and French litera-
ture acquired a perfection of form which rendered it, espe-
cially in the departments of oratory and the drama, an object
of admiration and of envy to all the nations of Europe. The
arts of painting, engraving, and architecture flourished. In
spite of the most serious impediments, even industry pro-
gressed and commerce expanded. Religion and its ministers
were treated with universal and almost unlimited deference.
Looked at partially and superficially, it might well seem that
1 For the general history of France in the eighteenth centnry the reader may
be referred to Michelet's 'Hist, de France,' torn, xv.-xvii. ; Martin's 'Hist, de
France,' torn. xv. xvi.; Blanc's ' Hist, de la Re'v. Franc.,' torn. i. ii. ; and M. Taine's
' Les Origines de la France contemporaine.' The chief work on the history of
French philosophy during the eighteenth century is Damiron's ' Me'moires pour
servir a l'Histoire de la Philosphie au xviiie siecle.' The two histories of general
literature for the same period which have, perhaps, the highest reputation, are
Hettner's ' Litteraturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts,' 2° Theil, and Nisard's
' Hist, de la Litterature Francaise,' t. iv. But, of course, there are whole libraries
of books, good, bad, and indifferent, on the philosophy, literature, and history of
the eighteenth century.
235
236 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
the policy of Richelieu, of Mazarin, and of Louis XIV. had
amply justified itself, and that absolutism was a glorious
success.
But there is another side to the picture ; and one which
shows us that if the policy initiated by Richelieu may be
credited with leading to the triumphs of the age of Louis
XIV., it must equally be held to have contributed to bring
about the disasters of the Revolution. The omnipotence of
the monarch rested on the powerlessness of his subjects ; the
splendour of the court was due to the impoverishment of the
nation. The cultivators of the soil were loaded with burdens
to support non-resident proprietors, and to pay for costly
palaces, extravagant pensions, needless and destructive wars.
The nobles, deprived of their independence, but allowed to
retain unjust and offensive privileges, acquired frivolous and
corrupt habits. The ordinary priests were as poor as the
peasants, and without hope of preferment, while the higher
offices of the Church were filled by noblemen and courtiers,
too often worldly and immoral in their lives. The king ruled
as the absolute master of the nation, and used its resources
according to the pleasure of his will. All local liberties were
withdrawn ; the local organs of self-government were super-
seded by the administration of agents of the Crown. The
provinces languished, and the capital was stimulated into un-
healthy activity.
The system of absolutism reached its full development
under Louis XIV., and the natural effects of it came ever
more clearly to light as his reign was prolonged. Long before
his death the demonstration of its viciousness as a species of
government, and of its incompatibility with the healthy growth
of a nation, was complete. Continuous foreign wars ended
in exhaustion and disgrace. Ceremonial display and outward
magnificence merely veiled moral meanness and inward de-
pravity. Punctilious attention to the rites of the Church,
and a blind or feigned zeal for orthodoxy, only favoured the
spread of hypocrisy and of a secret and cynical scepticism.
The unnatural and arbitrary compression practised by the
Government was sorely felt by all classes of society. The
misery of the great mass of the people foreboded a terrible
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 237
reckoning. When the old king died in 1715, a general sense
of relief was felt throughout France, and even in some places
a joy which expressed itself, as Saint-Simon says, "with a
scandalous 6cla.tr
But the monarchy itself was unshaken ; its principles had
not even been assailed. The temper of the French people
was still the reverse of revolutionary or disloyal. Religious
incredulity was almost confined to the younger generation of
courtiers, and a small class of Parisians. If Louis XIV. had
been succeeded by reforming rulers of ability, courage, and
virtue, there might well have been no French Revolution, to
the great advantage both of France and of humanity. But
with such successors as he actually had, the wonder is that a
revolution did not occur sooner.
Louis XV., the great-grandson of Louis XIV., was in 1715
only five years of age. From 1715 to 1723, the Duke of
Orleans was as regent the head of the Government. He
began by making some urgently needed reforms, but soon
disappointed any hopes he had thus raised. He made a fatal i
mistake when he sided with the hierarchy in favouring the
usurpations of the Papacy on the rights of conscience and
the independence of the nation. His life was one of open
and shameless profligacy. The Duke of Bourbon, who was
minister from 1723 to 1726, followed in the same path ; and
as he .added to vice ignorance and stupidity, he made himself
even more despised. Then Fleury succeeded to power, and
it lasted until his death in 1743, when he was ninety-three
years of age. He was not devoid of personal virtues, and had
intellect enough to govern the king; but he was mean, un-
amiable, bigoted, and without sympathy with the aspirations,
or comprehension of the wants, of the nation. He so ruled
as most effectively to promote the cause of scepticism and of
hatred of the Church.
With the death of Cardinal Fleury the personal govern-
ment of Louis XV. began, and it lasted until 1774. There
have been few more hateful and shameful Governments in all
history. The Court sank into ever lower depths of infamy.
The country was ruined with taxes. The clergy and the par-
liaments were engaged in keen strife ; both contested the
238 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOEY IN FKANCE
royal authority. All was corruption and intrigue, anarchy
and contention. The reign ended amidst universal execra-
tion. The ancient monarchy was also near its end. It was
still vigorous in 1715 ; it was decayed to the core in 1774.
What had been the general course of opinion in France
during the period to which I have been referring ? It was at
first submissive and deferential both to ecclesiastical and civil
authority. There was in it no thought of resistance to either.
Absolute power, it was hoped, would cure the evils which it
had caused. This feeling, as well as the discontent with
which it was associated, found their earliest and clearest
expression in the political romances or Utopias which were
written in France during the latter part of the seventeenth
and the earlier part of the eighteenth century. The ' Re"pub-
lique des Se've'rrambes ' of Vairasse, the ' Testament ' of Mez-
lier, the ' Voyage en Salente ' in the ' Te"hJmaque of Fe'ne'lon,'
and the 'Voyages de Cyrus' of Ramsay, are examples. These
works were very significant. Hope springing immortal in
the human breast, a suffering people is naturally prophetic.
It is in their times of sorest depression that nations usually
indulge most in dreams of a better future, and that their
imaginations produce most freely social ideals and Utopias.
But all the ideals or Utopias which appeared in France at this
period had a common character. They were only so many
forms of the prophecy of a perfect commonwealth centring
in, and depending on, a perfectly wise and irresistibly power-
ful paternal ruler.
The State came at first into direct and open conflict with
public opinion during the regency, owing to the part it took
in the conflict occasioned by the publication of the bull Uni-
genitus. This conflict had the most serious consequences.
By it the French Church was divided into two parties, the
tranquillity of the kingdom disturbed, violent disputes raised
between the clergy and the parliaments, and the latter, con-
scious of the approval of the majority of the nation, led to set
at defiance the royal ordinances commanding submission to
the Papal decisions. At an early stage in the course of it the
ecclesiastical authorities had become thoroughly discredited
in popular estimation ; and gradually the feelings of contempt
and aversion with which the Church and its ministers were
PUBLIC OPINION 239
regarded extended to Christianity and its doctrines. " Free-
thinking " passed from England into France, there to find a
still more congenial soil and a more luxuriant development.
The State was soon assailed, however, on other grounds than
its action in relation to the Church. Exemplifying all vices,
and committing all varieties of folly and crime, it provoked
attack at every point. Its weakness and its arbitrariness, its
carelessness and its selfishness, its financial prodigality, the
want of dignity, decency, or shame which characterised its
Court, the incompetence and injustice shown in every depart-
ment of its internal administration, and the want of patriotism
manifest in its dealings with foreign Powers, all naturally
drew down on it criticism and censure. Without ceasing to
be a tyranny, it ceased to be feared ; retaining all the appa-
ratus and methods of despotism, it became irresolute and
uncertain in the application of them. And while it was
rapidly growing weaker and more timid, the popular mind
was rapidly growing stronger and more daring ; while the ex-
tant institutions were rapidly crumbling, ideas hitherto latent
were vigorously forcing themselves into power ; while old
methods were falling into discredit, new principles were rising
into honour. Before the century was far advanced the Govern-
ment stood face to face with a hostile authority which former
ages had scarcely known, and with which it was most difficult
to cope. This was that public opinion, the advent of which j
was, perhaps, the most distinctive and important fact in the !
history of France in the eighteenth century. There had not
been previously in France a public opinion strictly so called.
Before the reign of Louis XIV. there had been only the pas-
sions and interests of factions and classes ; under his reign
there had been an opinion dominated by the influence of the
monarch ; but in the eighteenth century a public opinion
which was truly the reflection and expression of the general
mind working freely became the most potent factor in the
national life, the chief source of reputation and success, or of
disgrace and failure. It disturbed the judgment, arrested the
will, unnerved the arm of the ruler ; made the salon and the
caf6 the rivals of the Court ; rendered every speaker or writer
formidable, and the collective influence of the intelligent and
literary portion of society enormous. Its rewards were more
240 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
to be desired and its punishments more to be feared than
those which either sovereign or pope could confer. Under
Louis XIV. the displeasure of the king involved ruin ; under
Louis XV., to criticise and ridicule the constituted authorities
with dexterity and effect was the shortest and easiest route to
fame.1
Out of this public opinion arose the French philosophy or
philosophism of the eighteenth century. Hence the secret of
its rapid spread, its amazing force, its prodigious results. It
was no mere importation from England, or even essentially
English. If it had, it would have been comparatively feeble
and sterile. Its matrix. and medium, its roots and life, were
French, although it found in the precepts of Bacon, the physics
of /ftfewton, the empiricism of Locke, the free-thinking of the
Deists, and the political tenets of the Whigs, a nutriment
which the Cartesianism so long dominant in France could
-'not supply to it. fia,rtesia.nisTnJ_hguig out of accord with the
general state of sentiment and the prevailing spirit of the time
which had now arrived, iiaLiiTSny]decayed_.aniaisapj).eared_;
and thenelTTu^oiie'oTthought rapidly took its place. Probably
the connection between philosophy and public opinion was
never closer than in France during the eighteenth century.
In fact, what was then and there called philosophy was, for
the most part, just public opinion in its clearest form. Philos-
ophy stooped so much to public opinion as almost to cease to
be philosophy, but with the result that public opinion went
wholly over to its side, and the public believed itself to have
become philosophical. It has to be observed, however, that
it was not until nearly the middle of the eighteenth century
that what is designated the French philosophy of the eigh-
teenth century became a power in France. It is altogether
erroneous to suppose that the French philosophers produced
the spirit which caused the French Revolution ; they were,
in the main, its products. But certainly they did a vast deal
to direct and diffuse it ; for they were numerous, talented,
1 See on this subject Aubertin's ' L'Esprit public au dix-huitieme siecle,' and
Roquain's 'L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution.' The latter work is
especially important for the understanding of the mental development of France
during the period from 1715 to 1789, and for the explanation of the Revolution.
PHILOSOPHY OP THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 241
passionately in earnest, and indefatigable in the work of
propagandism.
I must briefly indicate the characteristics of the French
philosophy of the eighteenth century, in so far as they throw
light on the progress of French historiography or affected the
nature and favoured the diffusion of French historical philos-
ophy in that age.
It was a much more radical, aggressive, and revolutionary
philosophy than the species of English philosophy to which it
was most allied, and of which it was in a sense the develop-
ment. It was, in particular, more decided and sweeping in its
rejection of authority, recognising none save that of reason,
and exempting nothing from the criticism of reason. Ancient
tradition, common consent, faith of the Church, Scripture,
were held to be worthless except in so far as conformed to,
and vouched for, by reason. Specifically Christian doctrines
were treated by all the adherents of the new philosophy as
absurd and pernicious superstitions ; and although the prin-
ciples of theism were accepted by a class of them as rationally
warranted, a class not less numerous assailed all religious
beliefs as delusions. The new philosophy was eminently ra-
tionalistic. It was not, however, calmly and temperately, but
keenly and passionately, so. Few of its representatives dis-
played moderation in their discussions, or contended in the
cause of reason only with fair reasoning ; the majority of them
had large recourse to ridicule, invective, and misrepresenta-
tion, and thereby produced an incalculable amount of mischief,
for which they cannot be held to have been irresponsible,
although they may not have foreseen it.
The philosophy in question was empirical as well as ration-
alistic, and largely also materialistic. Starting from the posi- {
tion of Locke, that all knowledge is derived from experience,
it traced experience wholly to external sense, and explained \
all mental states and processes as combinations and modifica- \
tions of sensation. It despised and rejected metaphysics. It/
honoured physical science, and interested itself zealously in[
its diffusion. Its eyes were not turned intently inwards or
upwards, but they were keenly observant of surrounding
physical and social phenomena. In France during the eigh-
teenth century remarkable progress was made in mathematics,
242 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
astronomy, physics, chemistry, natural history, geography, and
medicine ; and the causes of their progress were to a consid-
erable extent the same to which were due the prevalence of
the philosophy of the epoch. The rise of modern atheistic
materialism dates from this period, and from its first appear-
ance gained ready acceptance. It is true that a systematic
and entirely unreserved exposition of the system was not pub-
lished until 1770 ; and even then it created a sensation, and
drew forth from Voltaire a cry of alarm and from Frederick
the Great a refutation ; but there were many who found in
Holbach's conclusions only their own opinions, and firmly
believed that science showed there could be no God, soul,
freedom, or immortality.
The philosophy under consideration was, further, one eager
for action, bent on proselytism and conquest, ambitious to
reform and govern society. Unlike Cartesianism, it was mili-
tant and aggressive, ethically, politically, and religiously. It
aimed not only at displacing, but replacing, the powers which
had hitherto ruled the world. It intervened in everything,
anxious to make all things new, and with little distrust of its
own ability to do so. The common representation of it as a
merely negative philosophy is quite inadequate. It was neg-
ative, much too negative ; but it was also essentially positive,
honourably and nobly positive. Its chief strength was drawn
from its positive ethical and political convictions ; from its
faith in justice, toleration, liberty, fraternity, the sovereignty
of the people, the rights of man. Its perception of the mean-
ing of these principles was not always perfect ; its application
of them was often most imperfect; but it believed in them
with a sincerity and intensity unknown for centuries, if not
from the beginning of historic time. It so believed in them
as the prerogatives of all men, irrespective of religion, or
country, or condition.
Former generations had received these principles very coldly
and partially, and only in so far as they seemed to be contained
and sanctioned by Christianity ; now they were accepted en-
thusiastically and fully, as anterior to and higher than Chris-
tianity, as laAvs by reference to which all religions and professed
revelations, all institutions and authorities, must be judged.
The adherents even of doctrines which appear to tend directly
PHILOSOPHY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 243
and inevitably to denial of morality and to contempt for man —
the atheists, materialists, and sensationalists of philosophism
— zealously advocated certain grand ethical and political
truths, which the ecclesiastical writers and orators of the
seventeenth century had ignored or assailed; and they at
least taught men to think not less highly of themselves than
they ought to think. The same authors who are notorious
for the crudeness and vehemence with which they rejected
belief in God and the soul, denied the absoluteness of moral
distinctions, scoffed at hopes of a spiritual and future life,
and represented man as a merely material organisation, pro-
duced and determined by a blind necessity, primarily endowed
only with sensuous impressibility, and destined- soon to lose
for ever the consciousness which he has for a time enjoyed,
— are also found, with a remarkable although not inexplica-
ble inconsequentiality, dilating on the un worthiness of exist-
ing ambitions and interests ; pouring contempt on mundane
glory; defying the powers and ridiculing the idols of the
world; summoning men to sincerity, naturalness, justice, and
beneficence; and demanding for the humblest of the human
race the recognition of his dignity, the security of his per-
son, the inviolability of his conscience, and the freedom of
his thought. In many ways the French philosophers of the
eighteenth century grievously erred, but they are fully en-
titled to the credit of having been signally successful propa-
gators of truths of the utmost practical moment.
Another characteristic of these philosophers was their keen
interest in the study of history. They distrusted speculation
and abstraction, but had great confidence in experience and
induction ; they were indifferent or averse to the theories of
metaphysics and the dogmas of theology, but keenly desirous
of knowing the laws and particulars of nature. Hence they
turned eagerly for entertainment and instruction to the pages
of travellers, physicists, delineators of human character,
passions, and manners, and historians. History had strong
attractions for them. They fully shared in the conviction
generally diffused among their contemporaries, that "the
proper study of mankind is man." It was history which
seemed to them to enlarge most the limits, and increase most
the contents, of experience. It was history which ministered
244 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
most directly and abundantly to the satisfaction of the feel-
ing of humanity, that sympathy of man with his fellow-men
simply as such, the prevalence of which so strikingly dis-
tinguishes the eighteenth century from the theological and
scholastic ages. It was history likewise which supplied the
philosophers with evidences of the misrule of the powers
which they combated; which showed them how the peoples
had been deluded, wronged, and oppressed; and which fur-
nished them with the most effective arguments for the tenets
which they were most anxious to propagate. They therefore
betook themselves eagerly to the study of history. Into its
study, however, they carried their passions and prejudices.
Few of them examined it in a strictly historical or truly
scientific spirit. Where they should have been content to
narrate or explain it, they often strove chiefly to make it
subservient to their polemical and proselytising zeal, and, in
consequence, frequently misrepresented and misinterpreted
it. They regarded the past as so given over to tyranny and
superstition, so overestimated their own enlightenment, and
were so credulously hopeful as to the future, that their con-
ceptions of the plan of history were necessarily narrow, un-
just, and inconsistent. Their unbelief as to the eternal and
invisible, and their hostility to religion, rendered them insen-
sible to the agency of the ultimate cause of the movement
of history, and satisfied with superficial explanations. Yet
although their interest in history was generally far from
pure, and their treatment of it far from always appropriate,
there can be no doubt that, on the whole, they greatly fur-
thered the progress of historical science. Previously only a
very few exceptional and isolated thinkers had attempted
to discover law and meaning in history; now it became the
favourite subject of theorising. Almost all the chief intel-
lects of the age were attracted to it, with the result that in
less than half a century far more historico-philosophical writ-
ings appeared than in all previous time.
I shall proceed to a consideration of the most important of
these, as soon as I have indicated what was the general condi-
tion of French historiography in the eighteenth century.
The view has often been expressed that historical litera-
ture was at a low ebb in France in the eighteenth century,
LEARNED HISTORY 245
or at least that it was greatly below the point at which it
had stood in the previous century. This is a view which it
will be found difficult or impossible to prove. The study of
Greek, the most useful and necessary of languages to the
historian of ancient times and peoples, was, indeed, less
generally and carefully cultivated than it had formerly been,
although strangely enough it was just the period when Greek
ideas had most influence, and when the great ambition of
earnest Frenchmen was to resemble the sages of Athens or
the heroes of Sparta. Nor is it to be denied that many of the
popular French historians of the eighteenth century were
very deficient in knowledge and research. But we have no
right to contrast such authors with the erudite French his-
torical scholars of the seventeenth century, and to ignore the
fact that there were in France during the eighteenth century
also many most laborious and most learned workers in almost
every department of history. The Benedictine Order still
supplied erudite historical investigators of the most indefati-
gable and exemplary type. Montfaucon, Martene, Denis of
Saint-Marthe, Bouquet, and their associates, performed as
students of history services of the highest value. They had
worthy rivals among the members of the Academy of Inscrip-
tions in such men as D' Anville, Breguigny, Fr6ret, La Curne
de Saint-Palaye, and others, perhaps, not less entitled to be
mentioned.
Montfaucon in his ' Palseographia Grasca' (1708) made an
original and important departure in the field of classical re-
search, and in ' L' Antiquite" explique"e et representee en figures '
(10 vols., 1719-1724) he gave to the world a still more epoch-
making work, which showed not only the abounding interest of
the history of ancient art in itself, but to how great an extent
the remains of such art throw light on all the developments of
ancient history. The former of these publications is a worthy
counterpart and admirable complement to the ' Diplomatica '
of Mabillon ; the latter is an almost inexhaustible treasury of
valuable materials, from which a host of scholars have drawn
instruction, — a vast and noble monument of its author's ex-
traordinary knowledge, of his singular clearness of design and
arrangement, and of his untiring and methodical and wisely
directed industry. Dom Bouquet in his ' Recueil des historiens
246 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IN PKANCE
des Gaules et de la France ' (8 vols., 1738-1754), and Dom
Rivet by his 'Histoire litte"raire de la France' (1733), laid the
foundations on which the histories of the French people and
of French literature could alone be satisfactorily built up. I
must refrain from referring to the services rendered to the
study of oriental history by Fourmont and his disciples, of
ecclesiastical history by Martene and Durand, of secular
medieval history by La Curiae, and of the sources of French
history by Breguigny, or to the labours of sundry meritorious
local and special historians, and of those who distinguished
themselves in geography, chronology, numismatics, and other
disciplines auxiliary to history; but I cannot leave quite
unnoticed the merits of Nicholas Fr6ret, perhaps the most
remarkably endowed of all the French scholars of the cen-
tury with the genius of historical criticism and research.
He was born in 1688 and died in 1749. His life was entirely
that of a student. His writings first appeared in the form of
contributions to the Academy of Inscriptions, of which learned
society he was for a considerable time secretary. The collected
edition of them — 'CEuvres completes de Fre'ret' (20 torn.
12mo) — was published in 1798, prefaced by the excellent
' Eloge de Fre'ret ' of M. de Bougainville, a scholar of kindred
spirit, brother of the celebrated navigator De Bougainville.
Fre'ret seems to have taken the knowledge of all antiquity
for his province, and his investigations extend into all parts of
this vast domain. He everywhere displays the most thorough
and varied erudition, great ingenuity in research and inde-
pendence of judgment, and a comprehensive, vigorous, and
philosophical intelligence. The results of his investigations
were only published in detached and fragmentary communi-
cations ; but the identity of the method always pursued takes
from them all appearance or inconsistency or heterogeneous-
ness. The method is just that of the severe and scientific
criticism of the present day, already in Fre"ret's hands as clear,
self-conscious, and unhesitating in regard to means, processes,
and end, as in those of the foremost living historians. His
criticism is of a kind which had entirely thrown off the fetters
of traditionalism and yet kept itself free from the excesses
of historical Pyrrhonism ; it is also strictly impartial and dis-
interested, seeking only to ascertain the truth. I shall briefly
FRERET 247
indicate the range and scope of his scientific activity. Pie
gave a great amount of attention to the study of the chro-
nology of the ancient world ; and the results of his researches
in this department are embodied in eight volumes of his col-
lected writings (vii.-xiv.). He worked with a full knowledge
of the labours of Scaliger, Petau, Masham, and Newton, but
also with the conviction that their methods had been neither
sufficiently exact nor sufficiently comprehensive. There can
be little doubt that he detected not a few errors into which
they had fallen, and that his criticisms of their processes and
conclusions were of the most relevant, objective, and useful
kind. It is admitted by competent specialists that his disser-
tations on the general questions of which chronology treats are
admirable from a methodological point of view ; that the special
dissertations on the chronology of the Assyrians, Chaldeans,
Lydians, Egyptians, Hindus, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans,
were important contributions to the histories of these peoples ;
that his reduction of Chinese chronology to approximately true
dimensions was a brilliant as well as solid achievement ; and
that his investigations as to the time when Pythagoras lived,
and as to the dates of the battles of Marathon and of Platea,
of the taking of Athens by Sylla, of the death of Herod the
Great, &c, deserve careful consideration. The ' Observations
on the Two Deluges or Inundations of Ogyges and Deucalion,'
and the ' Reflections on an ancient celestial Phenomenon ob-
served in the time of Ogyges ' (see torn. xvi. of the ' CEuvres '),
are good specimens of his ingenuity and skill in combining
scattered data, and educing from them a significant result.
He likewise applied himself with ardour to the study of ancient
geography, collecting, sifting, comparing, and combining an
enormous number of data of all kinds bearing on the points
discussed, and leaving among his manuscripts no fewer than
1375 maps embodying the results of his inquiries regarding
the geography of Gaul, of Greece and the islands of the
Archipelago, of Asia Minor, of Persia, and of Armenia. In
this department he dealt not merely with particular points and
problems, but also with general questions, the method of in-
vestigation, the growth of geographical knowledge among the
ancients, the separation of truth from error in their geographi-
cal notions and statements, the various measures in use among
248 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
the peoples of antiquity, &c. His fame as a geographer, like
that of his friend Delisle, has been too much eclipsed by
D' Anville's, whose boast of having " found a geography made
of bricks, and left one of gold," considerably overshot the
mark. Fre"ret engaged likewise in inquiries into the rise and
progress of the arts and sciences, a branch of history which
only began to flourish in the eighteenth century. His ' Gen-
eral Observations on the study of Ancient Philosophy ' (torn,
xvi.) deserve to be specially noted in this connection, owing
to the clearness with which they show that the traces of posi-
tive scientific knowledge may be discovered among the debris
of early cosmogonical and speculative systems. He at least
pointed out and entered on the path which Tannery, Natorp,
and others are in the present day attempting to follow up.
The history of religion was also the subject of his earnest and
prolonged inquiries (torn, xvii.-xviii.). His views on Greek
mythology were far in advance of those prevalent in the
eighteenth century. He saw clearly that it was a system of
a very composite character, formed of numerous and hetero-
geneous elements derived from diverse sources, and that it
could not be explained by any single principle or hypothesis,
such as the euhemeristic, the corruption of a primitive revela-
tion, allegorising, the personification of physical phenomena
or metaphysical ideas, &c. He was among the first to obtain
a fairly distinct and truthful view of the stages through which
mythology had passed in Greece before there were any his-
torians to record them ; and this was because he was among
the first to follow exclusively and consistently that compara-
tive method which can alone enable us to discover in mythol-
ogy its own history, and in the fables of the gods the fates of
their worship and worshippers. He was, however, so aware
of the difficulties and dangers of investigation in this sphere
that he confined himself to research into particular points re-
garding which the truth seemed not unattainable. Judged
of with reference to the requirements of method, his special
inquiries contrast most favourably with those of Banier,
Gosselin, and other mythologists of the eighteenth century.
When they fail to lead to a satisfactory result, the cause is
not that they have been unskilfully or unscientifically con-
ducted, but that essential data were wanting, and could only
GENERAL HISTORIANS 249
be found in the Vedas and Avesta. The development of lan-
guage was another subject which Freret studied in a thor-
oughly philosophical spirit. He had a general knowledge of
many languages and a thorough acquaintance with several.
He sought to classify them naturally, and to distribute them
according to their affiliation into families. He exposed the pre-
vailing practices of haphazard etymological conjecturing, and
insisted that etymological processes should be tested by histor-
ical criticism. He made a serious study of Chinese, and is
admitted to have been the first to demonstrate the true nature
of the Chinese written language and of Chinese versification.
There remain to be mentioned his dissertations on the origins
and commingling^ of ancient nations, on the history of the
earliest inhabitants of Greece, on the different primitive peo-
ples of Italy, on the populations of Northern Europe, on the
prodigies reported by ancient writers, and on the study of
ancient histories and the degrees of certitude in their proofs.
He had, moreover, closely studied the sources of French his-
tory ; and in 1714 he read before the Academy, of which he
Avas to be afterwards so active a member, an essay on ' The
Origin of the Franks,' sufficient to make it apparent that
the royal historiographer, Father Daniel, was by no means so
truly critical as he got the credit of being. It was a purely
academic piece of work, but on account of it Freret was thrown
for a short time into the Bastille. The consequence was that
his first contribution to French history was also his last.
The two general histories of France which attained the
highest place in popular estimation during the period under
consideration were those of Father Gabriel Daniel and of Paul
Francis Velly. The former was published in three volumes in
1713 ; the latter was begun in 1755, and after the death of the
author in 1759, by which time eight volumes had been written,
it was continued by various hands. Neither Daniel nor Velly,
however, showed remarkable historical talent. It is doubtless
true that Daniel surpassed his predecessor Mezeray in accuracy,
and made some meritorious special investigations ; but he was
really inferior to Mezeray on the whole. He distinguished
very imperfectly between the essential and the incidental or
even superfluous, between the important and the trivial ; he
failed to follow the good example which Mezeray had set in
250 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
trying to write a history of the French people, and not merely
of their rulers ; and he indulged far too largely in religious
polemics of an unenlightened and intolerant kind. He real-
ised the obligations of the historian in relation to the study
and criticism of sources much better than Mezeray, against
whom he wrote a special work on account of his disregard of
them, but he fulfilled them only a little better himself, and
often entirely neglected them. Velly showed himself to be a
man of more modern mind and speech. He wrote under the
influence of the philosophical and political ideas prevailing in
the society of his time, and sought in particular to utilise in
his work the views of Montesquieu. He drew still less than
Daniel from the original sources ; and gave his readers no
correct and distinct, not to say vivid or animated, conception
of the various epochs of which he treated.
There were no French historians of the eighteenth century
more widely popular than Charles Rollin and Rene' Aubert de
Vertot. There are still many elderly Frenchmen and even
Englishmen who have pleasant and grateful recollections of
Rollin's 'Ancient History 7 (1730) and ' Roman History ' (1739).
Their author was one of the most pious, virtuous, and amiable .
of men ; singularly ingenuous and unselfish ; filled with a sense
of the divine presence and purpose in the movement of human
affairs ; anxious not only to instruct the minds, but to improve
the lives, of his readers. The charm of his writings flowed
directly from the beauty of his character. Such simple good-
ness as was his is of the kind which elicits affection, disarms
criticism, and makes the heart its partisan. But Rollin's
Histories have lost their power to please ; they belong to a
dead past, and the dead has buried its dead. The young men
of the present day are little tolerant of naivete or credulity ;
and probably few of those who fifty years ago read Rollin's
writings with delight would care to venture on doing so again
lest their old impressions should be too violently disturbed.
Rollin was the last French historian of his century who wrote
secular history with a view to tracing in it the all-pervading
agency of Providence, the continuous manifestation of the
wisdom, justice, and goodness of God.
Vertot owed his reputation to other qualities. He was
richly dowered with the gifts which make an historical artist.
HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY 251
He excelled in the distribution and arrangement of his
materials, connected events in a natural manner, gave free
indulgence to an easily moved sensibility, and so touched the
emotions of his readers. He possessed a lively imagination,
considerable power of pictorial and dramatic representation,
and a remarkable mastery over the language in which he
wrote. Such an author, careful as he was to select for the
exercise of his talents the historical subjects best fitted to
display them to advantage, — the "revolutions " of Portugal,
of Sweden, of the Roman Government, &c, — easily succeeded
in gaining immense popularity. But, unfortunately, he was
superficial in research and reflection, inaccurate and unreliable
in his statements, apt in his desire to present facts attractively,
to present them untruly. Hence his works have fallen into,
perhaps, a deeper oblivion than those of Rollin.
We may fairly, I believe, rank three ecclesiastical historians
— the Catholic Fleury and the Protestants Beausobre and
Basnage — higher in the scale of historical merit than Daniel
or Velly, Rollin or Vertot. They worked, however, in a field
of more limited interest ; and as their writings, although valu-
able, were in no respects of an original nature or epoch-making
significance, it is not necessary that I should indicate their
characteristics.
The book in most repute in the eighteenth century on the
subject of historical methodology was Lenglet du Fresnoy's
' Me'thode pour etudier l'Histoire.' The first edition of it was
published in 1713 ; a second and much enlarged edition ap-
peared in 1729 ; and it was translated into Italian, German,
and English. The author was a worthy, loyal, and religious
man, yet he was five times imprisoned in the Bastille. He
was a very industrious but far from brilliant writer. The
' Historical Methodology ' was much the most successful of his
productions ; it supplied, in a manner which was generally
deemed to be satisfactory, a want which had come to be widely
felt early in the eighteenth century. It will be searched in
vain, however, for anything like a philosophical view of the
course of history, or of any epoch thereof, or for any glimpses
of original insight into the nature of historical investigation or
the functions of historical art ; it never takes us much below
the surface or away from the commonplace. Its chief merit
252 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
lies in its being a survey of the whole subject of historical
method ; if not the first systematic Historic, at least one much
more systematic than any which had previously appeared. It
treats of the end or office of history ; points out how geography,
chronology, the knowledge of customs, &c, are preparatory
for, and auxiliary to, history ; and lays down precepts for the
guidance of those who would so read history as intellectually
and morally to profit by it to the full. There follow many
pages filled with remarks on the histories of the various peo-
ples, but showing no special knowledge of any history except
that of France. The various kinds of history form the next
subject of discourse. The aids to the study of them, and the
sources whence they are drawn, are afterwards touched upon.
The method of teaching history — the reasons for caution in
dealing with it — the characteristics of good and bad historians
— are discussed. Rules are laid down and enforced with a view
to guide us in judging of historical facts, and to enable us to
determine whether works are genuine or spurious. Finally, an
attempt is made to show in what way and to what extent even
false reports, spurious and doubtful works, and prejudiced
historians, may be dealt with so as to yield instruction. There
are appended lists of historical books classified according to
their subject-matter, the countries, provinces, &c, of which
they treat. These were doubtless felt to be very serviceable
at the time when the work appeared.
Rollin has treated of the study of history at considerable
length in the "third part " of his once famous work, ' De la
maniere d'enseigner et d'e'tudier les Belles Lettres ' (1726-28).
He begins by showing the vast importance of history as a
means of enlarging human knowledge, which without its aid
would be confined within extremely narrow limits. He repre-
sents it as the common school of mankind for religious and
moral instruction and discipline, — one abounding in lessons of
warning and encouragement, of correction and improvement.
He lays stress on its function as a judge, before whose tribunal
the great ones of the earth continually stand, and hear the
truth which could not elsewhere be spoken to them. He dis-
courses on the principles according to which actions are to be
judged, and how true greatness and goodness in actions are to
be discerned. He points out how history warns nations against
HISTORICAL SCEPTICISM 253
vanity and boastfulness, the too eager pursuit of wealth and of
external advantages, ambition and war. Sacred history he
describes as a picture of the divine government of the world
and of the course of the education of the human race ; and
profane history as also essentially religious and moral in its
tendency and teaching. He insists with due emphasis that
absolute truthfulness is the prime requisite of history. He
indicates the importance of the search for causes, and what
care is needed to distinguish real from apparent causes ; as also
the special claims which the characters of great men, and all
that relates to laws, manners, and religion, have on the atten-
tion of the historical student. He attempts to apply his .prin-
ciples to, and illustrate his precepts by, select chapters of
sacred and profane history ; but in this part of his task he is
not very successful. As to Rollin, then, we may sum up thus :
he recommends the study of history with a warm and earnest
eloquence ; his reflections on history are morally impressive
and religiously edifying; but they throw no light on the
methodology of history.
Historical scepticism appeared in a very extravagant form
in the publications of John Hardouin (1646-1729). This
Jesuit Father was a man of great learning, and especially
eminent as a numismatist ; but he was of a very singular
character of mind and maintained very extraordinary opinions.
He is well described in his epitaph written by his friend
De Boze : " In expectatione judicii hie jacet hominum para-
doxotatos, natione Gallus, religione Romanus, orbis literati
portentum : venerandse antiquitatis cultor et destructor, docte
febricitans, somnia et inaudita commenta vigilans edidit.
Scepticum pie egit, credulitate puer, audacia juvenis, deliriis
senex." Pere Hardouin had enormous vanity and ambition,
and the utmost contempt for the abilities and views of other
scholars. He placed little faith in books or documents, but
immense trust in his medals. It was very largely from medals
that he sought to construct the chronology and history of
ancient and medieval times. The ordinary or traditional his-
tory he regarded as almost entirely the invention of monks
of the thirteenth century who wished to substitute for Chris-
tianity a belief in fate. These monks, he held, had either
entirely or virtually fabricated the works attributed to Thu-
254 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
cydides, Livy, Terence, Ovid; and, indeed, all the so-called
classical writings of antiquity, except those of Homer and
Herodotus, Cicero and the elder Pliny, the Georgics of Virgil
and the Satires and Epistles of Horace. The chronicles and
documents relating to the Franks he likewise pronounced to
be forgeries. These and suchlike conclusions confidently
maintained by a man who through his edition of the ' Natural
History' of Pliny had early acquired the highest reputation
for learning, whose industry and ingenuity were amazing,
and whose publications succeeded one another in an incessant
and rapid flow, naturally excited agitation and controversy.
His ecclesiastical superiors feeling the faith of the Church in
the genuineness and antiquity of the Scriptures undermined
by his scepticism, compelled him in 1708 to publish a retrac-
tation, but he neither changed his obnoxious views nor ceased
to repeat them. All through the first quarter of the eigh-
teenth century Hardouin's hypotheses were under dispute.
They were generally and often violently condemned, but the
controversies to which they gave rise also made manifest the
extent to which scepticism had invaded the province of
history. They showed that not a few people were disposed
to regard the bon mot ascribed to Fe"nelon, "L'histoire n'est
qu'une fable convenue," as an arrow which nearly hit the
mark. They helped to bring into due prominence questions
as to historical certitude which lie at the basis of historical
methodology : How far is historical testimony to be trusted
at all ? what is genuine and what false in history, and how
are we to distinguish between them ? It was during this
period that these questions for the first time clearly presented
themselves in the consciousness of historians. Later on in
the century they became familiar even to the common mind.
Of much greater significance and influence than the para-
doxical arguments of Hardouin was the discussion carried on
during a series of years in the Academy of Inscriptions. It
was conducted throughout in a truly scientific spirit, and may
not unreasonably be held to mark an epoch in the develop-
ment of historical criticism.
The two papers of Father Anselm, 'Sur les monuments qui
ont servi de Me"moires aux premiers historiens,' read in 1720,
DISCUSSION IN ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS 255
may be regarded as opening the discussion. In these essays
the Abbd endeavoured to establish that antiquity had not
been so devoid of literary and other means of recording
events as had been represented, and that the most ancient
historians had based their narratives on memorials of various
kinds. The only merit, however, which can fairly be ascribed
to him, is that of having seen that there was a great question
as to historical certitude which demanded an answer. He
did not examine the question closely, or perceive clearly the
conditions to be fulfilled by any one who would answer it.
His own answer to it is loose and inconclusive.
Much more important was the ' Dissertation sur l'incerti-
tude de l'histoire des quatre premiers si£cles de Rome,' read
by M. de Pouilly before the Acadamy on the 15th December
1722. By limiting the question as to historic certitude to
the consideration of a wisely selected special period of his-
tory, he at once rendered it more precise, and made more
apparent how vital it was. As a general question the time
had not yet come for its profitable discussion. Controversy
regarding the truth or falsity of the story of the first four
centuries of Rome as told by her own historians, could not
fail to be suggestive and useful. Pouilly was not the first
to entertain doubts regarding that story. Almost with the
first awakening of the modern critical spirit came suspicion
as to the credibility of the traditional story of early Rome.
Lorenzo Valla gave expression to it in the fifteenth century,
and Glareanus in the sixteenth. In the seventeenth century
Holland possessed a school of learned criticism which had its
chief seat at Ley den, and of that school one member, Bochart,
showed that the traditions as to iEneas were unhistorical ;
another, Gronovius, argued that the story of Romulus was
a legend ; and a third, Perizonius, brought to light the fre-
quent contradictions of the Roman historians, and declared
that the earlier books of Livy contained traces of the popular
songs of primitive Rome. Just in the year previous to that
in which Pouilly's dissertation was read, the profound and
ingenious Neapolitan philosopher, Vico, had begun in his
' De Constantia Jurisprudentis ' to propound the hypothesis
as to early Roman history which he afterwards stated in a
256 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
more developed form in the first edition of the 'Seienza
Nuova ' (1725), and which so remarkably anticipated the
conclusions reached by Niebuhr, Mommsen, and others in
the present century. But Pouilly knew nothing about Vico ;
and further, his criticism is merely negative, whereas that
of Vico was but a clearing of the ground for the work of
construction. He begins his dissertation by laying down the
general proposition that ancient history is so filled with fic-
tions that all the annals of the ancient peoples should be the
subject of a strict criticism ; and then he undertakes to prove
that Roman history ought to be regarded as uncertain until
the time of the wars of Pyrrhus. In doing so he anticipates,
but expressly denies, the applicability of the charge of " Pyr-
rhonism," or scepticism in an unfavourable sense; he merely
refuses, he says, to assent to what is not adequately authenti-
cated. The earliest writers who profess to give an account
of the history of Rome during the first four centuries had not,
he contends, the means of knowing what that history was.
They allow it to appear that they did not themselves regard
what they recounted, to be certain. They only worked up
the traditions and legends which were afloat into a plausible
continuous narrative. Their accounts do not agree. Stories
drawn from foreign sources have been incorporated into what
is described as native history ; such events as the birth,
exposure, and death of Romulus, the deeds of the Horatii
and Curiatii, of Curtms, &c, never happened, the accounts
of them being merely fictions transplanted from Greece.
The Abbe" Sallier replied in two discourses, the first of which,
' Suv les premiers Monuments historiques des Romains,' was
read on the 10th of April 1723 ; and the second, ' Sur la Cer-
titude de l'Histoire des quatre premiers siecles de Rome,' on
the 11th of February 1724. In the former he maintained that
historical records, the 'Annales Pontificum,' ' Libri Lintei,'
&c, had been kept at Rome from its foundation ; that they
had survived the burning of the city by the Gauls ; and that
they had been consulted and closely followed by Fabius and
Cincius, Livy and Dionysius, so that the extant narratives of
the two last-named historians are entitled to be received with
respect and confidence. In other words, he answered Pouilly
DISCUSSION IN ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS 257
in substantially the same manner as Wachsmuth answered
Niebuhr. In the latter discourse he argued that the con-
formity between certain features of Roman and Grecian
history, which had been made prominent in the treatise ' Of
Greek and Roman Parallels,' ascribed to Plutarch, afforded
no legitimate presumption against the credibility of the
Roman annals.
M. Fr^ret intervened in the debate on the 17th March 1724,
by ' Reflexions sur l'e'tude des anciennes histoires, et sur le
degre" de certitude de leurs preuves.' Acknowledging that
the great scholars of the past century had done much to dispel
the darkness over ancient history, he affirmed that much still
remained to be done, and that it would be accomplished if
inquirers would lay aside their preconceptions, be on their
guard against the love of system, start only from well-ascer-
tained particulars, and proceed to general views in a strictly
inductive manner. He has some admirable pages on the per-
verting influence of the spirit of system, and on the difference
between this spirit and the spirit of method, the philosophical
spirit. " True criticism," he says, " is nothing else than the
philosophical spirit applied to the discussion of facts." It is
equally opposed to credulity and scepticism. Credulity has
been the fault of previous ages ; scepticism had now become
the danger. To avoid both it is necessary to have correct
views of historical certitude in general, and of degrees of
certitude. This is the subject, accordingly, of which Freret
treats. Historical proofs, he says, may be reduced to two
classes — contemporary testimonies and traditions. The for-
mer are of various kinds, but if they are sufficiently proved
to be genuine, and their authors to have been honest, and so
circumstanced as to be able to know the truth, they are ac-
cepted by all reasonable people. Their superiority to tradi-
tions, those popular beliefs which rest only on their own
persistence and prevalence, and cannot be traced back to any
contemporary testimony, is denied by no one. It is only tra-
dition which is assailed. And, argues Fre"ret, tradition is not
to be indiscriminately or wholly rejected. If it be, we shall
have little left us to believe as to the course and events of his-
tory. For except the evidence of eyewitnesses all is tradition
258 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
in history; and even the authority of contemporary witnesses
is largely dependent on tradition. The false can be separated
from the true, the incredible from the credible, the more from
the less probable, in tradition ; as, indeed, requires to be done
also in contemporary written history. The distinction between
the two classes of historical proofs is not absolute. Testimony
and tradition support and supplement each other. Freret, it
seems to me, does not in this part of his memoir show his
usual clearness and independence of mind, but allows his judg-
ment to be unduly influenced by fear of the consequences which
would result from a strict application of the rules of historical
criticism to ancient history. He concludes by endeavouring
to confirm the argumentation of the Abbe" Sallier in his first
discourse ; to prove that the Romans, like other ancient peo-
ples, had contemporary records, in the form of inscriptions,
acts, treaties, and written registers, from very early times.
M. de Pouilly returned to the subject in his ' Nouveaux Es-
sais de Critique sur la fidelite" de l'Histoire,' read Dec. 22, 1724.
The general tenor of his reasoning may be indicated as follows:
We must neither grant to fables the credit which they do not
deserve, nor deny to facts the credit which they merit ; we
must avoid alike credulity and scepticism. Truth and error
are closely intermingled in history, but there are marks by
which they may be distinguished and separated. The love of
the marvellous, interest, vanity, party-spirit, and other causes,
are constantly leading to the falsification of history. Neither
testimony nor tradition is to be received when they contradict
experience. The intrinsic probability or improbability of the
things reported has always to be taken into account. Au-
thentic history rests on the testimony of contemporaries, proved
to be such by the testimony of later writers ; and a chain of
witnesses of this kind is intrinsically different from, and im-
mensely more reliable than, a series of depositories or trans-
mitters of tradition. In judging of the credibility of historians
we have to take into account their circumstances, characters,
the estimates formed of their fidelity by those best qualified to
criticise them, and how far they agree with or contradict what
other historians of the same events have recorded. " Tradition
is a popular rumour of which the origin is unknown ; an ac-
DISCUSSION IN ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS 259
count of alleged fact transmitted to us by a succession of men
of which the first are beyond our ken ; a chain of which we
hold one end but of which the other is lost in the abyss of the
past. It is, therefore, essentially different from history. We
can judge of an historical account by the character of its
author: we can only judge of a tradition by its age, its ex-
tension, and the nature of its content." A late origin and a
limited diffusion testify to the falsity of a tradition ; but re-
moteness of origin and wide prevalence are no evidences of its
truth. By increasing its volume it does not increase its weight.
As to the nature of its content there are so many causes of be-
lieving traditions other than their truth, and so many motives
and influences which alter and pervert them, that it speedily
becomes almost impossible to ascertain whether there is any
historical truth in them, or what it is. Traditions are not,
indeed, mere fictions ; it is even sometimes possible to perceive
in a vague manner, in dim outline, the historical facts out of
which they originated. " As regards, for example, the early
history of Rome, there are several traditions, which, if reduced
to simple and general propositions, cannot reasonably be called
in question. Those which relate to the shameful defeat of
the Romans near the Caudine Forks, the seditious retreats
of the populace because of the cruelty exercised by the rich
towards the poor, and various others, are instances." But
such instances are exceptions. It is seldom that we can suc-
ceed thus far ; and we can never be certain of the particulars
of traditional story. The Greek, Jewish, Mohammedan, Abys-
sinian, Irish, Scottish, and other fabulous histories are referred
to in proof. The early history of Rome is, then, again main-
tained to be as a whole untrustworthy ; and the arguments
which had been employed by Sallier and Fre"ret to show that
it was, on the contrary, credible history resting on contempo-
rary testimonies, are examined and rejected.
To this part of the communication Sallier replied in his
' Troisidme Discours sur la certitude de l'Histoire des quatre
premiers siecles de Rome,' read on the 10th April 1725. It
closed the discussion, so far as the Academy was concerned.
The debate which I have thus summarised did honour to
all who took part in it. Its special problem was of the great-
260 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
est interest and importance, and it was dealt with in a truly-
critical and historical spirit alike by De Pouilly and his an-
tagonists. The former justly repelled the charge of historical
Pyrrhonism which the latter brought against him. It Avas
entirely without foundation. His "views were reached on
purely critical and historical grounds. There is no historical
scepticism in demanding that real and adequate evidence be
produced for professedly historical statements ; and this was
all that De Pouilly did. But perhaps the interest and impor-
tance of the debate lay as much in the general question which
it brought to light as in the special question with which it
directly dealt. It led to asking for the first time in a clear
and general form, How authentic history is to be distin-
guished from merely traditional history? What are the
conditions of historical credibility, and the principles of
historical evidence and certitude ? It directed attention to
the fact that there must be a logic of historical investigation
to which historians are bound to conform, and which they
require to discover in order that they may be able to conform
to it in the prosecution of difficult inquiries. It is on this
account that I have spoken of the debate as marking an
epoch in the progress of Historic.
Louis de Beaufort followed in the footsteps of De Pouilly.
In his ' Dissertation sur l'incertitude des cinq premiers siecles
de l'Histoire Romaine,' which was published at Utrecht in
1738, he maintained substantially the same views as the
French Academician. He expounded and defended them,
however, more elaborately, and was more successful in giving
them currency. In the preface to his treatise he acknowl-
edges that the composition of his work was suggested by the
debate between De Pouilly and Sallier. The treatise itself
consists of two parts : the first being " an inquiry concerning
the original records, memorials, treaties, and other monuments
from which proper materials could be drawn for compiling
the history of the first ages of Rome, and of the historians,
who compiled it ; " and the second being " an examination of
some of the principal events that are said to have happened
during that period, wherein the inconsistencies of the his-
tories with one another, and with the few original pieces
BEAUFORT 261
which were saved when Rome was burned by the Gauls, is
proved."
Mebuhr, who has made no mention of De Pouilly, has thus
written regarding Beaufort and his book : " Beaufort was in-
genious, and had read much, though he was not a philologer.
One or two sections in his treatise are very able and satisfac-
tory ; others, on the contrary, feeble and superficial. Bayle
is the master whom he implicitly follows throughout ; the
soul of his book is scepticism ; he does nothing but deny or
upset ; or, if he ever tries to build, the edifice is frail and un-
tenable. Yet the influence and reputation of his book spread
extraordinarily. For Roman history had almost entirely
escaped the attention and care of philologers ; those who
chiefly interested themselves about it, though not more than
about that of other nations, were intelligent men of the
world; and for their use it was at that time handled by
several authors, without pretensions or view to learning or
research. Such of these as did not wholly overlook the
earlier centuries, under the notion that they were of no im-
portance, were so well satisfied with Beaufort's inquiry as to
give them up altogether." 1 In all respects but one Niebuhr
has in these words very justly appreciated his precursor ; but
in that one respect he is entirely wrong. There is no evi-
dence for thinking that Beaufort implicitly followed Bayle,
or even followed him at all. There is not a trace of Bayle's
influence, so far as I can see, in his book. Nor is there any
warrant for saying that " the soul of his book is scepticism."
There is nothing which can properly be called " scepticism "
in it. It is simply a critical investigation which arrives at a
result that is on the whole negative, — the conclusion that
the Roman tradition is for the most part merely a legend, not
authentic history.
The philosophical spirit of the eighteenth century first
manifested itself conspicuously in the treatment of history in
three works which appeared at no great distance in time from
one another: Montesquieu's 'Spirit of Laws,' published in
1748, Turgot's 'Discourses at the Sorbonne,' published in
1750, and Voltaire's 'Essay on the Manners and Spirit of
Nations,' published in 1756. Montesquieu, Turgot, and Vol-
1 History of Rome, preface, p. 7 (Eng. tr.).
262 PHILOSOPHY' OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
taire were the chief initiators of the reflective or philosophical
study of history which now prevails. It is therefore incum-
bent on me to consider what these three remarkable men
accomplished in this connection.
II
Charles Louis de Seeondat, Baron de Montesquieu, was
born at La Br&de, near Bordeaux, on the 18th of January
1689. 1 In the twenty-fifth year of his age he became a
councillor in the parliament of Bordeaux, and two years later
chief-justice (president d mortier). After holding the latter
office for two years he resigned, in order to devote himself
entirely to study and literature. The law of France was at
that time so irrational, and even brutal, that a wise and
humane man like Montesquieu must have often felt the
administration of it hateful; yet his practical experience as
a legislator and judge was doubtless admirable preparation
for the literary work which he was to accomplish. He at
first occupied himself chiefly with subjects belonging to
physics and natural science, and by 1719 he had sketched 'A
History of the Earth. ' It was well that he abandoned this
too ambitious scheme; but the conception of it did him
honour, and the labour spent on it must have been advan-
tageous to the 'Spirit of Laws.'
At the age of thirty-two he published the 'Lettres Per-
sanes ' : "ce livre si frivole et si aise" a faire," as Voltaire
1 As to the biography of Montesquieu and the bibliography of his writings and
of writings regarding him, Vian's (L.) ' Histoire de Montesquieu ' (1878) is indis-
pensable. M. Brunetiere's severe criticism of the work, however, is not essentially
unjust (Rev. d. Deux Mondes, 1879). Compare Caro, 'La Fin du dix-huitieme
siecle,' torn. i. ch. 2. Bersot and Damiron have treated of Montesquieu's general
philosophy. Lerminier, Heron, Bluntschli, and Janet have expounded his legal
and political philosophy. Auguste Comte and Sir O. C. Lewis have made some
most valuable remarks on his historical views, by which I have endeavoured
to profit. Villemain, Sainte-Beuve, Nisard, and many others, have sought to
delineate his personal and literary character. The best edition of his works is
Laboulaye's in 7 vols., 1873-79. M. Albert Sorel's 'Montesquieu' (1887) is an
excellent general monograph. Of the ' Deux Opuscules de Montesquieu, publics
par M. le Baron de Montesquieu ' (1891) , the first, ' Reflections sur la monarchie
universelle en Europe,' which was printed in 1725, but withheld from publication,
contains in germ a considerable number of the ideas which attained maturity in
' L'Esprit des Lois.' Baron de Montesquieu has since published ' Melanges inedits
de Montesquieu,' 1892.
MONTESQUIEU 263
has unjustly said; "ce livre, si fort, le"ger en apparence,
d'une gaietd habile et profonde'ment calcul^e," as Michelet
has truthfully characterised it. It at once placed its author
in the first rank of the French writers of the age, and made
him famous throughout Europe. It had the appearance of
an ornamental plaything meant merely to sparkle and please,
but it was in reality a terrible weapon skilfully contrived to
give deep and incurable wounds to foes who could not other-
wise be attacked, or only ineffectually. It satirised with
consummate art both the Orient and France, their civil and
spiritual governments, their authorities and traditions, their
follies and vices. At the same time, it was a book essentially
sound and true in spirit, ethical and constructive in purpose.
It gave evidence of a singular faculty for the description and
analysis of social life, habits, and motives. Many of the
views afterwards developed in the 'Esprit des Lois ' already
found expression in the 'Lettres Persanes.'
Montesquieu sketched the plan of the former of these
works as early as 1724 ; and after admission into the Academy
in 1728, he went abroad for several years, and visited Ger-
many, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and England,
in order to become acquainted with their manners and insti-
tutions. His residence in England lasted from October
1729 to August 1731. In 1734 he published his 'Considera-
tions sur la grandeur et la decadence des Romains.' This
work may perhaps be regarded as a section of the 'Esprit des
Lois, ' detached from it on account of its length ; but it forms
of itself so perfect a whole, and has such speciality of char-
acter, that its separate publication was certainly appropriate.
It is the only strictly historical work of Montesquieu which
we possess, seeing that the 'Histoire de Louis XL,' if ever
completed, or not burned, has at least not yet been found.
And it was also the first work in which a sustained and com-
prehensive attempt was made to show how the events and 1
course of history have been determined by general physical
and moral causes. It is even at the present day one of the
most remarkable of the numerous studies to which the sur-
passing interest of Roman history has given rise. Its origi-
nality as regards all that had been previously written on the
264 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FRANCE
same subject must be obvious to every competently informed
person. One may well contrast, but one cannot reasonably
compare, it with what Machiavelli and Vico taught as to
the story of Rome. Saint-Evremond and Saint-Re'al may
have suggested a few of the views which it contains, but
they just as likely did not, and they had at the most only
few to give. Bossuet's grand sketch may be even more
admirable in its kind than that of Montesquieu, but it is of
an essentially different kind, being taken from a point of
view not within but above history. Of course, in the pres-
ent state of our knowledge neither all the statements as to
fact, nor all the explanations, in the 'Considerations' can be
accepted; but were the particular faults of the work much
more numerous and serious than they are, it would still have
to be accounted a production of rare historical merit and
value.
Sixteen years elapsed, and the 'Esprit des Lois' appeared.
It bore on its front a claim to originality in the epigraph:
"Prolem sine matre creatam." The secret of its formation
was disclosed in these words of its preface: "I have many
times begun, and as often abandoned this work. I have a
thousand times cast to the winds the leaves which I had
written; I have often felt my paternal hands fall. I have
followed my object without forming a plan ; I have known
neither rules nor exceptions ; I have found the truth only to
lose it again. But when I once discovered my principles,
everything I sought for came to me; and in the course of
twenty years, I have seen my work begun, growing up,
advancing towards completion, and finished." His twenty
years of labours were justified and rewarded by the result.
The 'Spirit of Laws ' not only enjoyed an immediate popu-
larity which carried it through twenty-one editions in eigh-
teen months, not only exerted a vast and beneficial practical
influence, but will always retain, owing to the comprehen-
siveness, penetration, and ingenuity of the treatment of its
great theme, a distinguished place among the few works
which have advanced most the most difficult of sciences.
It did not, however, escape unjust criticism and bigoted
hostility, which called forth from Montesquieu the brilliant
MONTESQUIEU 265
and ironical 'Defense de 1' Esprit des Lois,' published in
1750. He wrote little of importance after this. His death
occurred at Paris on the 10th of February 1755.
He was a man of shrewd practical sense, of social tact, and
of well-regulated life, although not of untainted imagination ;
neither vain nor anxious for glory, but not without aristo-
cratic pride, a keen eye to his own interest, and the full
consciousness of his own worth and ability; honourable,
considerate of the feelings of others, and charitable. His
love of liberty and justice was at once ardent and enlightened.
His intellect was alike vigorous and alert, comprehensive
and intense, indefatigable in seeking the satisfaction of a
boundless curiosity, and tenacious in the prosecution of a
distant aim. He was not less eminent as a literary artist
than as a scientist.
There has been much discussion as to his originality. I
believe him to have been highly endowed with that most val-
uable sort of originality which enables a man to draw with
independence from the most varied sources, and to use what
he obtains according to a plan and principles and for a purpose
of his own, — the originality of Aristotle and Adam Smith.
He has been suspected to have owed much to Vico, and to
have concealed his obligations. The suspicion only proves
that those who entertained it had little knowledge of either
author. Montesquieu may possibly have read Vico's work.
Although a conjecture unsupported by any positive evidence,
it is not an improbable conjecture, that the 'Scienza Nuova'
came into his hands when he was in Italy, or that he learned
to know it at a later date through his friend the Abbe' de
Guasco. But if he ever read it, the impression which it
produced on him must have been almost confined to one point.
His most serious defects are just those which a careful study
of Vico might have removed. The thoughts which give
Vico a place of special and signal honour in the history of
science, if ever known to Montesquieu, were not appreciated
by him, and have produced no effect on his writings. Sub-
stantially the whole argument for his indebtedness to the
great Neapolitan rests on the circumstance that he was pre-
ceded by him in distinguishing from the form of government
266 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOEY IN FftANCE
the fact which gives it birth and the principle which gives it
force. This anticipation of the theory of the one thinker by
the other is indubitable and remarkable, and Vico is entitled
to whatever honour may be involved in it, but it is no proof
of dependence or plagiarism on the part of Montesquieu.
The range of his obligations was, however, very wide,
including the classical writers, the Protestant pamphleteers
of the sixteenth century, such as Hotman, Languet, &c,
Bodin, Charron, Machiavelli and Gravina, Descartes and
several of his school, Locke and other English writers par-
ticularly on politics, physicists, travellers, &c.
The title of Montesquieu's magnum opus expresses well its
central and pervading conception. The work is an attempt
to discover the spirit of laws; to explain them; to trace how
they are related to manners, climates, creeds, and forms of
government. It is an attempt to view them in all lights in
which they can be viewed, so as to show how they arise;
how tbey are modified; how they act on private character,
on domestic life, on social forms and institutions ; and, in a
word, so as to elicit their full meaning. This conception, it
will be observed, is entirely different from that of Bossuet.
He took a theological doctrine to begin with, and tried to
show how all history had been the exemplification of it. He
started, that is to say, with a doctrine which he had not
derived from history; and that doctrine he introduced into
history as a principle of explanation. It is quite otherwise
with Montesquieu. He assumes no doctrine extraneous to
history, but begins with the facts of history themselves, with
the positive laws which either are or have been on the earth.
He seeks merely to account for these laws as so many histori-
cal facts. The difference between these two conceptions is
very great ; and obviously, so far as science is concerned, that
of Montesquieu is far in advance of that of Bossuet. Scien-
tifically, the method of Bossuet is radically wrong; that of
Montesquieu is good so far as it goes.
But how has Montesquieu elaborated and applied his con-
ception? He has done so in various respects, with great
success and ability. He had a genuine love of history for
its own sake, and a singularly keen historic insight; he had
MONTESQUIEU 267
a calm, unprejudiced, fair mind; he was distinguished by a
liberality and moderation of feeling and judgment, which,
while it did not exclude a true though tempered zeal for
human good, gave him the breadth, and steadiness, and dis-
passionate clearness of view which his subject demanded.
No one is less chargeable than Montesquieu with what was
a common fault among his contemporaries, one-sidedness,
philosophical sectarianism, perversion of social facts from
contempt of them or to serve a party purpose. He has
accordingly arrived at least at approximate explanations of a
host of social phenomena.
There lay, however, a danger before Montesquieu which
he has not safely escaped, a difficulty which he has not over-
come. It was that of looking on laws too much as isolated
facts, as independent phenomena, as stationary and complete |
existences. It was that of ignoring the relation not only of
one law to another, but of one stage of law to another, and of
the relation of each stage and system of law to coexistent
and contemporaneous stages and systems of religion, art,
science, and industry. Social phenomena such as laws are,
cannot be explained like the merely physical phenomena of
natural philosophy and chemistry. The most distinctive
characteristics which they possess lie in their capacities of
continuous evolution or development ; and it is only by the
study of their evolution, by the comparison of their consecu-
tive states, and of each state with the coexisting general
conditions of society, that we can rationally hope to reach
an adequate knowledge of their laws. It is here that we find
the chief weakness of Montesquieu.
He was most industrious in the collection of facts, and he
had a quite marvellous quickness and keenness of intuition
into the meaning of them, but he had no appropriate scien-
tific method, no definite notion of the modifications of the
inductive process which the peculiarities of historical phe-
nomena render necessary. He made little use, no systematic
use, of what is, however, far excellence, the expedient of his-
torical philosophy, the comparison of coexistent and consecu-
tive social states. He paid always little attention, generally
none, to the chronology of his facts, which is, however, the
268 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FKANCB
indispensable condition of their comparison. The reason
was that he did not perceive the importance of comparing
them, of following them through the whole course of their
evolution; but this is only saying in other words that he
attempted to construct a science without availing himself of
the only method by which it could be done. It would be
unjust, however, to censure severely this error of Montes-
quieu, although it is fatal to his system as a complete
explanation of the class of social phenomena with which it
deals; for while true that Bodin had on this fundamental
point more comprehensive and philosophic views, we may
well excuse any man of the eighteenth century for ignorance
the most entire of the science of comparative legislations,
which, like the comparative study of religions, is a creation
of the nineteenth century.
Devoid of a true method of investigation, Montesquieu
could not, except by chance, discover the general laws which
[connect social facts. The laws of history are laws of devel-
opment, and if we ignore the development of any fact, we
Jean never discover the law according to which it has come to
be what it is. What then has Montesquieu discovered?
Not the general laws of the facts, but certain special reasons
of them. That was to a considerable degree possible to him,
notwithstanding the neglect of the distinctive characteristics
of social phenomena. Where a general law could not be
reached, an intellect so keen in its intuitions might still
detect a force or forces in which some given law or custom
had its origin ; and this was what Montesquieu had a rare
degree of success in doing. His quickness of perception, his
suggestiveness of thought, his intimate acquaintance with
the working of human motives, and the extent of his reading
in history, travels, and natural science, gave him a quite
marvellous power of conjecture, and enabled him to arrive at
approximate explanations of social usages and laws in a vast
number of cases where another man would have been help-
less. Still no faculty of guessing, however extraordinary
and felicitous, can supply the place of scientific method, or
elicit much historical philosophy not of the humblest kind.
And although it may happen to be, as it was in Montesquieu,
MONTESQUIEU 269
fertile in a kind of truths, it can hardly fail to be fertile also
in illusions. If it often seize a verity, it will often likewise
impose on itself a fancy. It is only a sound method which
is competent to the uniform and consistent discrimination of
truth from error. This is fully exemplified in the case of
Montesquieu, no serious student of whose work will deny
that it abounds in false as well as in correct generalisations.
It is rich in truths, yet crowded with errors. It is scarcely
more exuberant in the one respect than in the other.
The want of a scientific method of investigation is also
the source of the confused arrangement, the structural dis-
order, of the book. There are, it is true, those who have not
recognised this defect, who have even denied that it exists,
and praised the plan as simple and grand; but this only
proves that they have studied it superficially. There is an
outward order of a loose kind, and an imposing appearance
of order; but all the order there is, is of the outward and
surface kind, while the confusion is internal, and so all-per-
vading that examination finds no end to it. Thoughts are
juxtaposited not organically connected, because they have been
amassed merely by industrious collection and fertility of sug-
gestion, and not elicited and collected by scientific method.
The same want, and the consequent dealing with laws and
customs as isolated and fragmentary phenomena, and refer-
ence of them to particular causes not to general laws, have
exposed Montesquieu to the commonest charge brought
against him, — that of confounding fact with right, the
explanation of a thing with its justification. This charge
has been often expressed in an exaggerated way. Perhaps it
should even, on the whole, be held unproved, and Montes-
quieu absolved. It is certainly not applicable to him in the
same degree as to Aristotle, or, to take a modern name, Mr.
Buckle. The frequently recurring phrase "ought to be " is
ambiguous and objectionable ; it is, however, almost certainly
meant to express not a moral or rational necessity, but only
that sort of actual necessity which there always is between a
cause and its consequence. His mode of investigation, how-
ever, tended towards the serious confusion imputed to him,
and he has undoubtedly on several occasions been far from
270 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
sufficiently careful to guard himself from the suspicion of
having fallen into it.
The subject of Montesquieu's book being laws, he very
properly begins with two chapters of general considerations
on the nature of laws. But, unfortunately, these two chap-
ters, although they have been repeatedly eulogised beyond
measure, are by no means satisfactory. The language of
them is so vague as to apply, when it does apply, not only to
all kinds of laws, physical and moral, natural and positive,
proper and metaphorical, but to many things which never go
even by that name. There is no attempt to disentangle the
perplexing ambiguities of the term law;, no attempt to dis-
tinguish and define the different kinds of laws. And under-
lying this confusion there is, in particular, the vaguest and
even an erroneous conception of the nature of an inductive
law. These two chapters show, what the whole treatise
confirms, that Montesquieu had no clear or correct conception
of what such a law is.
To those who have never tried to trace the history of
ideas this may seem incredible ; to those who have, it will be
in no wise strange. A distinct, consciously realised notion
of law in its present scientific acceptation was unknown to
Greece, Rome, or the middle ages. Of the seven meanings
which Aristotle attributes to the word principle, not one
answers to the modern scientific signification of law ; and of
the thirty terms defined in the fourth book of his 'Meta-
physics, ' which is a sort of philosophical glossary, law does
not occur. Law was thought of by the ancients as a type
or idea with something external corresponding to it. And
Montesquieu's thought was no closer, no more definite, than
that laws were " the necessary relations which arise out of
the nature of things." A metaphysician or theologian may
be satisfied with that, but certainly no student of inductive
science, physical, psychical, or social.
Notwithstanding the defects indicated, it must be admitted
that these two chapters have the great merit of insisting that
social institutions and regulations are properly no mere arbi-
trary inventions, but ought to rest on reason, on the nature of
things', that there are relations of equity which human legis-
lation does not create but presuppose ; that, varied as are the
MONTESQUIEU 271
forms which society assumes, they all originate in and are
pervaded by the principles of a human nature common to all
men. They have the farther merit that along with this
recognition of fundamental unity there is the clearest recog-
nition likewise of superstructural variety, and of the neces-
sity of laws being adapted to the distinctive peculiarities of
each nation and age, these peculiarities being, in the opinion
of Montesquieu, of such decisive importance that the laws
which are good for one people will rarely suit another. He
thus separates himself on the one hand from the empty
abstract theorist, and on the other from the rude literal
empiricist, and seeks the golden mean of political wisdom.
By the spirit of a law, Montesquieu means the whole of
the relations in which that law originates and exists. A
most important order of these relations comprises those in
which laws stand to the various kinds of governments ; and
this order of relations is the general subject of not fewer than
nine books, besides being frequently returned to in others.
Montesquieu divides governments into monarchies, in which
a single person governs by fixed laws ; despotisms, in which
a single person governs according to his own will; and
republics, in which the sovereign power is in several hands,
being a democracy when the nation as a whole possesses it,
and an aristocracy when only a part thereof shares in it. He
endeavours to characterise these various governments, to dis-
cover their principles or motive forces, and to show what
laws flow from their respective natures, what are the sources
of their strength and weakness, the systems of education
most suitable to them, and the causes of corruption most
powerful in them ; and how with the variations of their re-
spective genius, the civil and criminal codes, sumptuary laws
and laws relative to women, and the military arrangements
both for offensive and defensive Avar, must likewise vary. In
doing so he arrives at a large number of consequences, often
very remote and heterogeneous consequences, which he ex-
presses mostly in the form of general and absolute proposi-
tions. Probably as many of these propositions are false as true.
But there is in this part of the work a still greater defect
than the commingling of true and false conclusions : that, in
fact, which is its source, — the blending and consequent
272 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
confusing of two methods. If we wish to ascertain the
character and consequences of monarchy, for example, we
may proceed in our search either by induction or deduction.
In the former case we endeavour from an examination of all
monarchies to generalise what is common to them in virtue
exclusively of being monarchies. In the latter case we start
from a definition which embodies what we suppose to be the
distinctive nature of monarchy, and logically evolve what it
implies. If in the former case the induction be sufficiently
extensive and careful, and if in the latter the presupposition
involved in the definition be warranted and the deduction
rigorous, the results of the two methods should so coincide as
to afford mutual verification; but in order to this the two
processes must be kept separate and distinct — inductions
must not be passed off as deductions, nor vice versd ; the ideal
and the empirical must not be allowed to coalesce until they
meet at the definitive point of union, — in essential reality.
If Montesquieu had either done so, or adhered strictly to
either method, he would certainly never have arrived at so
many general theorems. With every extension of his in-
ductive basis, and every effort at rigid verification, he would
have found many of them drop away, and learned that it was
an extremely difficult task to detect the characteristics which
are the pure results of the form of government. With a
clear consciousness that the greater part of his reasoning was
deduction from hypothetical premisses ; and that consequently
his inferences, however correctly drawn, had only logical and
not actual validity, except in so far as the hypotheses assumed
were in accordance with fact, he would have felt bound
strictly to inquire whether they were so or not, and would
probably have speedily perceived that monarchies, despotisms,
and republics, as defined by him, had merely an ideal exist-
ence— that his definitions, and the classification on which
they rested, had nothing either in the history of the past or
present corresponding to them otherwise than most remotely.
It was because he kept neither to induction nor deduction,
but passed from the one process to the other, or mixed up the
one with the other in an illegitimate way, that conclusions
came to him so easily. It was thus that he was able, on the
one hand, to believe himself to be extracting and concentrat-
MONTESQUIEU 273
ing the legislative experience of mankind in his descriptions,
when he was merely making affirmations about abstractions ;
and, on the other hand, to raise narrow empirical generalisa-
tions almost to the level of necessary truths, so that the
peculiarities of the French monarchy are transformed into
essential attributes of monarchy, the peculiarities of the
oriental despotisms into universal attributes of despotism,
and the peculiarities of the Greek republics into universal
attributes of republicanism.
While Montesquieu treated of governments in their own
natures and in their relations to one another, he did not, like
Aristotle and Bodin, endeavour to trace their revolutions and
transformations. He propounded no theory of the general .
movement of humanity, nor attempted any survey of the \
course of universal history.
The relation of laws to liberty as regards the political
constitution, the security of the citizen, and taxation, is the
subject of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books. They
are all celebrated, and especially the eleventh, owing to its
application of the theory of the three powers — legislative,
executive, and judiciary — to the explanation of the constitu-
tion of England, and owing to its eulogy of that constitution.
The general theory of the three powers was derived by both
Locke and Montesquieu from Aristotle. The application of
it made by Montesquieu may have been suggested by Locke's
'Second Treatise concerning Government,' and the party
pamphlets of the Whigs and Tories under George II. ; but
it had not been explicitly made by Locke, nor has it been
shown to have been so made by any of the English Whig or
Tory pamphleteers. The view of H. Jansen (Montesquieu's
'Theory von der Dreitheilung der Gewalten im Staate, ' p.
26), that its source was Swift's 'Discourse of the Contests
and Dissensions between the Nobles and the Commons in
Athens and Rome ' (Swift's Works, vol. iii., ed. 1814), is
altogether erroneous. Montesquieu never claimed originality
for his ideas as to the British constitution, but it was attrib-
uted to them, without denial or discussion, both by Conti-
nental and British writers. Blackstone in his ' Commentaries '
(1765), and still more De Lolme in his 'Constitution of
England' (1775), developed them into what continued to be
274 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOBY IN FRANCE
until recently the accepted theory of English constitution-
alism.
Montesquieu's eulogy of the British constitution has often
i; been misunderstood and misrepresented. It referred only to
its relation to political liberty; to the provision made by it
['for security under the law. Montesquieu had a very unfa-
I vourable opinion of British political virtue, honour, and re-
. gard to equality. There is no warrant for supposing that he
imagined that even political liberty could be gained by simply
manipulating the political constitution. He would have been
most inconsistent if he had taught, either expressly or implic-
itly, that the transference of the constitution of England to
France would be an adequate remedy for the evils of the latter
country. It was of the very essence of his juridical and
political doctrine that positive institutions and laws are far
more the effects of a nation's character than its causes, and
that it is vain to expect any good from transplanting the laws
and institutions of one nation to another differing from it in
race, mental and moral qualities, historical antecedents, and
physical conditions.
The five books which follow treat of the effect of physical
agencies on social institutions and changes. What ^ire the
influences of which the presence would be most easily cfetected
in laws and customs by a thinker with no better method of
investigation than that which Montesquieu had ? There can
be only the one answer: physical influences. Of the forces
which act on man and shape his destiny, none are so conspic-
uous, and, we may almost say, so palpable. Hence it was
principally by them that Montesquieu sought to explain his-
tory. How has civilisation been modified by the action of
the external world? How are the laws of a people and the
other products of its social and moral life connected with
temperature, soil, and food ? That is the fundamental prob-
lem for Montesquieu, to the solution of which he devotes all
his strength.
It would be absurd to say that he has solved it. We know
only very imperfectly, even at present, the influence of
physical agencies on man's development. The meteorologist,
chemist, physiologist, ethnologist, and political economist,
have all much to discover before the historical philosopher
MONTESQUIEU 275
will be able to pronounce an adequate decision on this large
and important question. The errors into which Montesquieu
has fallen appear to be chiefly two. And, first, he has drawn
no decided distinction between the direct and the indirect
influence of physical causes, which is a quite fundamental
distinction. The direct or immediate action of climate, soil,
and food is probably feeble, and its working is certainly very
obscure. Our knowledge of it is both little and dubious.
Perhaps, indeed, not a single general proposition regarding
it has yet been conclusively established. The indirect influ-
ence, on the other hand, or that which physical agencies exert
through the medium of the social wants and activities which
they excite, is very great; and since the time of Montesquieu
not a little has been accomplished in the way of tracing it.
The advance of geographical knowledge, for instance, on one
side, and of the science of political economy on another, now
permits us to survey, with a comprehensiveness and clearness
impossible in the time of Montesquieu, the whole range of
relationships between geographical and economical facts ; and
no one will deny that all the higher orders of social phenomena
are intimately associated with the latter of these.
The error just indicated is closely connected with another.
The direct action of physical agencies must obviously be a
necessary mode of action, — one which is independent of
volition, — one in which the man is passive. The indirect
action, on the contrary, presupposes a reaction on man's part,
and a development of his nature under the stimulus of the
wants, and in virtue of the activities, proper to it. The
confusion of the two forms of action must therefore tend to
obscure the great fact of human freedom. It has undoubtedly
done so in the case of Montesquieu. For although it be true
that he has explicitly affirmed his belief in free agency, and
repudiated fatalism, he cannot be exonerated from having at
times forgotten this profession in his practice; from having
if not directly stated, at least frequently suggested, the
inference that laws are the creatures of climate ; from having
exhibited the nature of man as far more plastic and passive
under external influences than it is. Thus he represents
the peoples of tropical regions as having been doomed by the
overmastering power of physical forces to inevitable slavery
276 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
and misery. Now there is no doubt that physical conditions
have had much to do with the slavery and misery of tropical
countries. Where outward nature is exuberant, gigantic,
and terrible, she is apt to depress, paralyse, and overpower
man, and to give rise to an unequal distribution of wealth, an
excess of imagination, and a prevalence of superstition socially
pernicious. But while this is true it is only half the truth,
and it will be practically a falsehood if separated from its
correlative truth that the influence of physical forces on
human life is not absolute but relative ; that they are advan-
tageous or the reverse, beneficial or pernicious, according to
the wealth and knowledge, and still more according to the
energy and virtue, of those on whom they act ; that it is not,
in strict propriety of speech, nature which is ever at fault,
but always man. "It is not nature," says a thoughtful
writer, " which is in India too grand — not nature which is
in excess, but man who is too little, man who is in defect.
Man there is not what he ought to be, not what he was meant
to be, not properly man; he wants the intellect and the
energy, the love, of truth, the sense of personal dignity, the
moral and religious convictions which enter into the consti-
tution of true manhood, and therefore it is that nature acts as
his enemy : but let him have these, give him these, and nature
will come round to his side at once. Nature is no man's
enemy except in so far as he is an enemy to himself." J
If a tendency to fatalism, however, makes itself felt
throughout these books, the corrective and remedial truth
is not far to seek ; it is established and applied in the very
next book, which treats expressly of laws in relation to the
principles which form the general spirit, the morals, and
manners of a nation. Savages are either wholly devoid or
very slightly participant of a general spirit, and in conse-
quence are swayed and determined irresistibly by physical
forces ; but every civilised people is pervaded by a common
spirit, which is in fact but another word for the whole of its
civilisation. This spirit is the substance of the people's life,
the chief source of their actions, carrying along with it those
who are unconscious of it, and those even who wish to resist it;
it is incapable of being changed otherwise than slowly and by
1 M'Combie's Modern Civilisation in relation to Christianity, pp. 50, 51.
MONTESQUIEU 277
the concurrence of many agencies, and is feebly modifiable by
laws, while so powerfully operative on them as to be able to
make them either honoured or despised. In this book there
is the enunciation, proof, and varied application of the great
principle which Montesquieu had already exemplified in so
masterly a manner in the 'Grandeur et Decadence des
Romani^ ' : the epoch-making principle that the course of.
Instoiy is nn t^p wVinlp rlptprrpingd ^hy.-ggJPJ'8^ Causes, by
widespread and persistent tendencies, by broad and deep
undercurrents, and only influenced in a feeble, secondary^
and subordinate degree by single events, by definite argu- ,
ments, by particular enactments, by anything accidental,
isolated, or individual. The recognition of this principle is
an essential condition of the possibility of a science of history.
To deny it, is to pronounce every notion of such a -science
absurd ; to affirm it, is to express the conviction that with the
requisite exertion the science will not fail to arise ; to act on
and apply it, is to labour in its construction. It was a high
service, therefore, to historical science, that Montesquieu
apprehended this principle with a clearness and comprehen-
siveness of view, and illustrated it with an ingenuity and
truthfulness, which have perhaps not been surpassed since.
The next four books deal with commerce, with money, and
with population in their relation to laws and social changes.
They may be regarded as composing a group, and may be read
in connection with the thirteenth book, which treats of the
relations which the revenues and taxation of a nation have
with its liberties. These books introduced the economical
element into historical science, — an immense service, what-
ever be their errors of economical theory. It is incorrect to
ascribe the honour of this service, as has been done, to Tur-
got, or Condorcet, or Saint-Simon, or Comte. It is mainly
due to Montesquieu. Of course, in order not to give him
more than his due, we must remember that economical science
had when he wrote come to be actively cultivated in France ;
that Vauban, Boisguilbert, Dutot, and Melon had published
important works on it; and that Quesnay and the other
founders of the famous physiocratic school were his contem-
poraries. The science of political economy, in fact, was then
passing through one of the most interesting periods of its
278 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
history, one which reflected a change in the history of society
itself, which corresponded to a great national movement, the
throwing off by France of her feudal and theocratic bonds,
and her eager leap towards a secular and industrial polity.
It was only natural that Montesquieu in treating of economi-
cal subjects should have fallen into a considerable number of
errors which were shortly afterwards convincingly exposed,
and failed to observe a considerable number of truths which
were shortly afterwards conclusively established, by Quesnay,
Adam Smith, and their disciples. He occupies a very impor-
tant place in the history of political science ; but it is just
where two orders of economical ideas, two systems, met and
crossed each other, the old not yet dead and the new only
struggling into life. This is the explanation of most of the
inconsistencies and errors which have been discovered in his
views on such subjects as trade, taxation, money, and popu-
lation. The old principles and the new — those of mercan-
tilism and those of pbysiocracy — both ruled in his mind, and
he was unable to make a decisive choice between them. Yet
his intellectual superiority was clearly displayed also in the
department of economics. His great and distinctive merit
in connection with it, however, was that he first brought
economical and historical science together in such a way as
to constrain them to co-operate in the explanation of social
phenomena;. He thus showed that a new path of inexhausti-
ble research lay before both; and, as Roscher expresses it,
"einen grossartigen, ebenso nationalen wie universalen
Forts chritt anbahnte . ' '
The two books which trace the influence of religious
beliefs and institutions on laws and government, although
far from an adequate treatment of their theme, are eminently
judicious so far as they go. They recognise the necessity
and importance of religion, and with a warmth and reverence
markedly in contrast to the tone of the 'Lettres Persanes.'
Reflection and experience had convinced Montesquieu that
his earlier opinions and feelings on this subject had been
lacking in fairness and moderation ; and had opened his eyes
to the merits of Christianity, and especially to the number
and magnitude of its services to society. Perhaps the chief
errors in these two books, as in the preceding book — that on
MONTESQUIEU 279
population — regard matters of fact. As it is simply not the
case that in warm climates the proportion of male to female
births is materially different from what it is in cold climates,
and polygamy can consequently be accounted for in no such
way, so neither is it the case that orientals are indifferent
about religion except in so far as religious change may involve
political change ; and hence reasoning to and reasoning from
that supposition are alike in vain.
The twenty-sixth and twenty-ninth books concern the
jurist much more than the historical philosopher. The
twenty-seventh book, which is on the Roman laws of suc-
cession, is historical, but probably not very important.
The twenty-eighth book, which is on the origin and revo-
lutions of the civil laws among the French, and the two
books on the feudal system with which the work closes, are
at once intrinsically valuable and not less interesting to the
student of the philosophy of history than of law. Although
numerous errors of fact and theory have been detected in
them, they display a kind of learning which was very rare
and difficult to acquire in the age of Montesquieu, and an
originality and power of historical combination rare in any
age. They have undoubtedly had great influence in evoking
and directing later research into the origin, formation, and con-
sitution of the feudal system and of French medieval society.
Montesquieu had no intention of founding the philosophy
of history ; and to pronounce him its founder, as Alison has
done, is extravagant laudation. It appears to me to be even
eulogy in excess of the truth to represent him, as Comte,
Maine, and Leslie Stephen have done, as the founder of the
historical method. But he did more than any one else to
facilitate and ensure its foundation. He showed on a grand
scale and in the most effective way, that laws, customs, and
institutions can only be judged of intelligently when studied
as what they really are, historical phenomena ; and that, like
all things properly historical, they must be estimated not
according to an abstract or absolute standard, but as concrete
realities related to given times and places, to their determin-
ing causes and condition, and to the whole social organism to
which they belong, and the whole social medium in which
they subsist. Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli and Bodin,
280 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
had already, indeed, inculcated this historical and •political
relativism; but it was Montesquieu who gained educated
Europe over to the acceptance of it. His success was, no
doubt, largely due to the ripeness of the time, but it was also
in a measure due to his own genius and skill. And once his-
torical relativism was acknowledged, the rise of the historical
school, the development of the historical method, and the
rapid advance of historical science, naturally followed.
Ill
The ' Spirit of Laws ' was only completed when its author
was nearly sixty years of age, and after he had spent on it
twenty years of toil. The work next to be noticed consists
simply of two Academic discourses delivered at the Sorbonne
in 1750 by a young man of twenty-three, and some sketches
or conspectuses written by him, either when a student of
shortly after. That young man was, however, Anne Robert
James Turgot, one of the wisest and best men of the eigh-
teenth century.1 He was pure and noble in his private life,
a zealous philanthropist, an enlightened philosopher, a hu-
mane and able governor, a sagacious statesman. He was the
friend of all true progress, but he avoided and reproved the
excesses which were advocated in its name. He saw and
abhorred the sins of the Church, but they did not hide from
him the beauty of religion. He discriminated, as perhaps no
other of his contemporaries did, not even Montesquieu, be-
tween the good and evil in social institutions, and between
the essential and accidental in all things.
1 The following are among the best works on Turgot: (1) Mastier (A.), 'Tur-
got, sa vie et sa doctrine ' ; (2) Batbie (A.) , ' Turgot : philosophe, economiste, et
administrateur ' (1861) ; (3) Foncin (P.) , ' Essai sur le ministere de Turgot '
(1877); and (4) Neymark (A.), 'Turgot et ses doctrines,' 2 vols. (1885). The
' Eloge de Turgot ' of Baudrillart; the two lectures on ' Turgot: his Life, Times,
and Opinions,' by Hodgson; the essay on Turgot by Morley in his 'Critical Mis-
cellanies ' ; and the monograph on Turgot by L. Say, — deserve to be specially
mentioned. The ' Correspondance Ine'dite de Condorcet et de Turgot ' (1770-1779),
published in 1883, under the supervision of M. Henry, is of some interest to a stu-
dent of their theories of history. Eenouvier has made a careful study of Turgot's
theory of progress in the ' Critique Philosophique,' annee ix., torn. ii. 385-396, 400-
407, annee x., torn. i. 17-27.
TURGOT 281
The theme of the first of his discourses at the Sorbonne
was "The Benefits which the establishment of Christianity
has procured to mankind." Briefly but eloquently he con-
trasts Christian and heathen civilisation, so as to indicate
the superiority of the former over the latter, and the unrea-
sonableness of the exaggerated admiration of antiquity, and
the contemptuous estimate of Christianity which had begun
to prevail. By means of a rapid survey of the general and
outstanding facts of history, he seeks to show that the Chris-
tian religion had diffused truth, destroyed errors, promoted
intellectual progress, evoked and enlarged human sympathies,
improved morals, strengthened what was good, and weakened
what was evil in personal and social, private and public life,
and, in particular, afforded the needed counterpoise to the
universal selfishness from which proceeds universal injustice.
The chief reason why Turgot's view of the course of history
was so much more comprehensive, and so much more con-
sistent both with facts and in itself, than that of Condorcet
and other atheists of the eighteenth century, was that he was
able, and they were not, to appreciate in a fair and sympa-
thetic spirit the services which Christianity had rendered to
mankind. It would be easy to overestimate, however, the
intrinsic worth of the first discourse. For while it is high-
toned in thought and eloquent in expression, it has no claim
to originality, ingenuity, or thoroughness. Its purpose and
limits did not allow, indeed, of the display of these qualities.
The second discourse, which had for its subject " The suc-
cessive Advances of the human mind," was much more im-
portant. Here, for the first time, the idea of progress was ,
made, as M. Caro has said, " the organic principle of history." '
In contrast to the movement of the physical phenomena of
nature, and of the vegetable and animal species, through con-
stantly recurring cycles of change, history is represented as
the life of humanity, ever progressing towards perfection,
from generation to generation, from stage to stage, from
nation to nation, and by alternations of rest and agitation,
success and failure, decay and revival. None before Turgot,
and few after him, have described so well how age is bound
to age, how generation transmits to generation what it has
inherited from the past and won by its own exertions. The
282 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PKANCE
notion of progress is apprehended by him with a fulness as
well as clearness which will be sought in vain in Bodin,
Bacon, Pascal, or any other predecessor. In him what we
find is no longer a simple affirmation or general view, the
identification of progress with the advance of knowledge, or
with anything which can be predicated merely of specially
favoured nations or privileged classes, but it is a something
which embraces all space and time, which includes all the
elements of life, and in which the race as such is meant to
participate. The progress of humanity means, according to
Turgot, the gradual evolution and elevation of man's nature
as a whole, the enlightenment of his intelligence, the expan-
sion and purification of his feelings, the amelioration of his
worldly lot, and, in a word, the spread of truth, virtue,
liberty, and comfort, more and more among all classes of
men. He seeks to prove from the whole history of the past,
that there has been such progress ; and he professes his
belief that there will be such progress in the future, on the
ground that mankind seems to him like an immense arnvy
directed in all its movements by a vast genius, who alone
sees the end towards which these movements advance and
converge. As a picture of universal history taken from this
high and hopeful point of view, his second discourse is so
admirable that it is not likely to be surpassed by any compo-
sition on the same scale.
Turgot formed the design of giving full expression to his
thought by writing an elaborate work on universal history,
or, if time should be wanting for that, on the progress and
vicissitudes of the arts and sciences. His duties, first, as
administrator of a province, and afterwards as finance minis-
ter of the nation, prevented the realisation of this intention ;
but the sketches and notes committed by him to paper in
1750, are sufficient to show us how he meant to carry it out.
There can be no reasonable doubt that, even if the smaller,
but especially if the larger scheme had been accomplished,
the result would have been one of the grandest literary and
philosophical productions of the eighteenth century, — a work
nobly planned and richly stored with facts and truths. If
the philosophy of history be merely a scientific representation
of universal history as a process of progressive development,
WG3.G&TI
283
Turgot has probably a better claim than any one else to be
called its founder. Perhaps this was all that Cousin meant
when he so designated him.
This, then, was the great service of Turgot to the philoso-
phy of history, that he definitively showed history to be no
mere aggregate of names, dates, and deeds, brought together
and determined either accidentally or externally, but an
organic whole with an internal plan progressively realised by
internal forces. He so apprehended and proved this truth that
it may fairly be called, so far at least as French authors are
concerned, his conquest, his contribution to historical science.
The mere conception of progress was, when Turgot wrote,
no longer novel. Yet it had become dim and inoperative
in the minds even of the leading teachers of France ; had
been extruded by the inrush of the new ideas of liberty,
fraternity, justice, and equality, and the expulsive power of
the new affections to which these ideas gave rise. Hence in
the writings of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot, it was
conspicuous only by its absence, and in those of Rousseau
was vehemently assailed. Turgot, however, not only restored
it to honour, but so deepened, enlarged, and developed it,
that it acquired with him a profundity, a comprehensiveness,
and a consistency quite novel.
His view of social progress, I say, was profound. It was a
deep glance into its nature as a process of self -development ;
as a process the successive phases of which were what they
were, because man was so and so made and situated. He
not merely saw the fact of progress, that physical and polit-
ical causes greatly affected it, and that like every other
process it might be referred to the will of the great First
Cause ; but he saw likewise how it was connected with the
essential faculties of man, and the constitutive principles of
society. No one before him had perceived with anything
like the same clearness how the mental or spiritual movement
in history underlies, originates, and pervades the outwardly
visible movement. M. Martin, whose account of Turgot is
in general excellent, errs greatly when he blames him " for
regarding progress too much as the result of external phenom-
ena, and not sufficiently as the manifestation of the internal
energies of man." This charge is altogether inapplicable, as
284 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
any one may easily convince himself by reading, for instance,
the first portion of the ' Ebauche du Second Discours.'
As regards comprehensiveness, Turgot's view embraced
all the elements of social life. Science, art, government,
manners, morality, religion, were all held by him to be the
subjects of historical progress, and consequently of historical
philosophy. At the same time he was quite aware that none
of these things are developed isolatedly, but that, on the
contrary, the position of any one of them at any given time
is closely related to that of all the others, and that there is
a perpetual reciprocity of influence between all the forces in
the social organism, a constant action and reaction of social
facts on one another. The entire 'Plan du Premier Dis-
cours ' shows that he grasped as firmly and completely the
truth of the consensus as of the sequence of social changes,
and many of its paragraphs — as, e.g., those descriptive of the
hunting and pastoral states — are excellent delineations of
what constitutes such a consensus.
His view is not more distinguished for comprehensiveness
than for consistency. This can be in no way better brought
out than by comparing it with that of Condorcet, to whom so
much of the honour properly due to Turgot has been often
awarded. Condorcet believed in progress and perfectibility
as firmly and more enthusiastically than Turgot, but his
inferiority as regards consistency is immense. Indeed his
retrospect of the history of the race, and the prospect he
deduces from it, are in manifest contradiction. For, while
extolling the vast superiority of his own age over all those
which had preceded it, and picturing a glorious future as at
hand, he yet, under the influence of his philosophical and
religious prejudices, sees only the evil side of the greatest
ancient and medieval institutions, the Church, feudalism,
and monarchy, for instance; and by attributing to them
essentially obstructive and pernicious influences, renders the
progress which he glorifies unintelligible, or, as Comte says,,
a perpetual miracle, an effect without a cause. No such
charge can be brought against Turgot. With him, whatever
superiority is ascribed to the present is exhibited as the
result of a growth which has slowly and intermittingly but
surely pervaded the institutions and ages of the past, and
TURGOT 285
which has incorporated into its each succeeding stage what
was true and good in the preceding, so as never to be in con-
tradiction to itself.
Turgot did not represent history as a process either of
uniform or uninterrupted progress. He fully acknowledged
that there were periods of intellectual and moral dgggrirence,
and that the study of these periods, with a view to ascertain
the causes of retrogression, was highly instructive. He did
not regard such progress as he ascribed to history to imply
that men are born with more genius or virtue in later than in
earlier ages, or necessarily surpass their predecessors in every
particular form of excellence. " The primitive dispositions
act equally in barbarous and cultured peoples ; they are
probably the same in all places and times. Genius is scattered
among the human race much like gold in a mine. The more
mineral you take up, the more metal you may collect. The
more men there are, the more great men, or men capable of
becoming great, there will be. The hazards of education and
of events develop them or leave them buried in obscurity, or
immolate them before their season like fruits beaten down
by the winds. We must admit that if Corneille had been
brought up in a village and had guided the plough all his
life, or Racine had been born in Canada among the Hurons
or in Europe during the eleventh century, neither of them
would have displayed their genius. If Columbus and New-
ton had died at the age of fifteen, America would have been
discovered perhaps only two centuries later, and we should
have been still ignorant of the true system of the world.
And if Virgil had perished in infancy we should have had
no Virgil, for there are not two of them. Advances, although
necessary, are intermingled with frequent decadences, owing
to the events and revolutions which interrupt them. They
are consequently different among different peoples." They
are also, according to Turgot, different in different periods.
He not merely saw in a general way that progress had not
been a uniform process, but quite clearly that it was one
which had varied in rate from age to age greatly, and yet not
arbitrarily or inexplicably. Hence he made a distinct effort
to account for variations of rate of movement in history.
And it was, on the whole, a very successful effort. On no
286 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOBY IN TRANCE
point relating to the course of history, indeed, has he given
expression to more ingenious and suggestive observations.
The larger portion of the ' Plan du second discours ' might
be quoted in proof.
While Turgot recognised that human nature was in all its
elements the subject of progress, he also virtually assumed
that the intellect was the dominant and directing principle in
its development, and that, therefore, intellectual enlighten-
ment is the ultimate and general criterion of progress. He
did not discuss any of the objections which may be urged
against the assumption. Yet he gave indications of not
being wholly unconscious that there were facts at least appar-
ently in some measure inconsistent with it. He saw that
enlightenment and virtue did not perfectly correspond ; and
that the development of art could not be exactly co-ordinated
with the development of science. He did not submit, how-
ever, the question as to how progress is to be appreciated and
measured to any distinct investigation. It was, doubtless,
only vaguely present to his mind.
Among the fragmentary papers of Turgot connected with
the philosophy of history is the sketch of a ' Political Geog-
raphy,' which shows that he had attained to a broader view
of the relationship of human development to the features of
the earth and to physical agencies in general than even Mon-
tesquieu. And he saw with perfect clearness not only that
many of Montesquieu's inductions were premature and inade-
quate, but that there was a defect in the method by which he
arrived at them. Hence he lays down as a principle to be
followed in this order of researches that physical causes being
indirect and secondary, or, in other words, causes which act
in and through mental qualities, natural or acquired, ought
not to be had recourse to until mental causes have been fully
taken into account. The excellent criticism of Comte, in the
fifth volume of the ' Philosophic Positive,' and in the fourth
volume of the ' Politique Positive,' on this portion of Mon-
tesquieu's speculations, is only a more elaborate reproduction
of that of Turgot, and is expressed in terms which show
that it was directly suggested by that of Turgot.
There is among the many pregnant thoughts of Turgot
one which was destined to have so singularly famous a history
TURGOT 287
that it is necessary to state it in his own words. He says :
" Before knowing the connection of physical facts with one
another, nothing was more natural than to suppose that they
were produced by beings, intelligent, invisible, and like to
ourselves. Everything which happened without man's own
intervention had its god, to which fear or hope caused a wor-
ship to be paid conformed to the respect accorded to powerful
men — the gods being only men more or less powerful and
perfect in proportion as the age which originated them was
more or less enlightened as to what constitutes the true per-
fections of humanity. But when philosophers pferceived the
absurdity of these fables, without having attained to a real
acquaintance with the history of nature, they fancifully
accounted for phenomena by abstract expressions, by essences
and faculties, which indeed explained nothing, but were
reasoned from as if they were real existences. It was only
very late that from observing the mechanical action of bodies
on one another, other hypotheses were inferred, which mathe-
matics could develop and experience verify." This is as
explicit a statement as can well be imagined of what the
world has heard so much about as Comte's law of the three
states — viz., that each of our leading conceptions, each
branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three
different theoretical conditions, the theological, the meta-
physical, and the positive ; the mind, in the first, regarding
phenomena as governed not by invariable laws of sequence,
but by single and direct volitions of a superior being or
beings ; in the second, referring them not to such volitions
but to realised abstractions, to occult qualities and essences ;
while in the final stage it ceases to interpose either supernat-
ural agents or metaphysical entities between phenomena and
their production, but, attending solely to the phenomena
themselves, seeks simply to discover their relations of simil-
tude and succession. There cannot be a doubt that as to
the general conception of this fundamental principle of his
system Comte has been anticipated by Turgot. It is possible
that it may have occurred to his mind independently, but it
is much more likely that it was suggested by the passage
in Turgot. There is a good deal of internal evidence that
Comte had not only read but carefully studied what Turgot
288 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
had written on history. But be this as it may, certain it is
that Comte did not originate the general conception of the
three states. What he distinctively did was to lay it down
as the fundamental law of historical development, to make
it the basis of a most elaborate survey of the whole course
of that development, and so to apply it to the explanation of
a vast number of social facts. Those who believe it to be a
true law will probably say that even thus stated the service
rendered by Comte must be regarded as incomparably more
important than that of Turgot, and that his claim to be a
discoverer really remains intact, since he only discovers who
proves. Nor against this have I any objection to make. It
is necessary to be just to Turgot, but that is not incompatible
with justice nor even with generosity to Comte, whose able
and laborious endeavour to verify the idea first conceived by
Turgot must, by those who are most convinced of its failure,
be admitted to have been at least singularly provocative of
fruitful inquiry and discussion.
The notion of three successive stages of thought in the in-
terpretation of nature originated, it will be observed, with a
man to whomi the true interests of religion were sacred, and
to whom any irreligious application of it would have been
abhorrent ; and if Comte has given it an irreligious bearing,
that is one no less certainly illegitimate than irreligious.
Grant Comte's alleged law, Turgot's general conception, and
grant to it even a rigid and absolute truthfulness to which it
has probably no just pretensions, and even then, if it be con-
fined not only to the five sciences which are all that Comte
admits to be sciences, but allowed to hold true of all the
psychological sciences as well, it must be perfectly innocuous,
if it can be shown that metaphysics and theology are not co-
ordinate, are not at all on a level with these positive or induc-
tive sciences. It is not Comte's alleged law that is dangerous,
but the dogmatic, arbitrary, unreasoned assertion which he
has appended to it that five positive sciences comprehend all
knowledge. Theology and metaphysics are not merely par-
ticular and passing stages of the positive sciences, whether
these be physical or psychological sciences, but themselves
sciences, each with an appropriate sphere of its own, the one
underlying, and the other overlying, the positive sciences.
VOLTAIRE 289
To emancipate physical and psychological science from a
theological and metaphysical condition is no less a service
to theology and metaphysics than to physics and psychology.
Every science must gain by being kept in its own place. It
is wrong to mix up either theological beliefs or metaphysical
principles among the laws of the positive sciences. But we
by no means do so when we hold that both physics and psy-
chology presuppose metaphysics, and yield conclusions of
which theology may avail itself, and that we can still look
on the whole earth as made beautiful by the artist hand of
the Creator, on science as the unveiling of His wisdom, and
on history as the manifestation of His providence.
IV
There were in both Montesquieu and Turgot a comprehen-
siveness of judgment, a candour of disposition, and a calmness
of temperament which made them more than mere typical
representatives of the age in which they lived. It was in a
man who, although richly endowed with mental gifts, had cer-
tainly no more than his share of these qualities — in Francjois-
Marie Arouet, so celebrated under the name of Voltaire —
that all its distinctive characteristics and tendencies found
their completest embodiment and clearest expression.1 With
as much truth as Louis XIV. had said " L'Etat, c'est moi,"
might Voltaire have said, " Le Si£cle, c'est moi." His influ-
ence during the fifty years of his literary activity was as great
in France and throughout Europe as that of the monarch
1 The literature relative to Voltaire is enormous. He has been written about
from all possible points of view. The best biography of him is that by Des-
noiresterres, 'Voltaire et la Society francaise au XVIII8 siecle,' 7 vols., Paris,
1867-75. Extensive as it is, it is not too much so considering the place occupied
and the influence exerted by the subject of it ; and it is never tedious or filled up
with irrelevant matter. Bungener's 'Voltaire et son Temps,' Arsene Houssaye's
' Le Roi Voltaire,' Pierson's ' Voltaire et ses Maitres,' Strauss' ' Voltaire,' Morley's
'Voltaire,' and Hamley's 'Voltaire,' deserve to be specially mentioned. The
views given of Voltaire's character and work in Hettner's Litteraturgeschichte,
2. Th., and in the histories of France or the French Revolution by H. Martin,
J. Michelet, and L. Blanc, are interesting. The general philosophy of Voltaire has
been treated of by E. Bersot, ' La Philosophie de Voltaire,' and A. Gerard, ' La
Philosophie de Voltaire d'apres la critique Allemande ' ; his knowledge of physical
science by Du Bois-Reymond, ' Voltaire in seiner Beziehung zur Naturwissen-
schaft ' ; and his historical philosophy by Schlosser, Buckle, and Laurent. There
is a ' Bibliographie des CEuvres de Voltaire,' in 4 vols., by G. Bengesco.
290 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PKANCE
during his lengthened personal reign. He was as much the
central and ruling personage in the movement destructive of
absolutism, as the king had been in that of its development.
The estimate formed of Voltaire will accordingly always
correspond to that formed of the eighteenth century itself.
The extravagantly unjust way in which he was generally
spoken of during the first thirty years of the present century
was chiefly due to a fanatical hatred of all the ideas which
were supposed to have led to the French Revolution, and has
been disappearing since in proportion to the prevalence of a
more correct appreciation of them. He is still underesti-
mated by those who believe these ideas to have been mere
negations, of use only at the most for the destruction of evil.
On the other hand, he was not only overestimated by the vast
majority of his contemporaries, but is so even now by those
who do not perceive that although the truths for which he
contended were positive principles of belief and morality,
which overthrew the old order of things only because they
deserved to do so, and which have survived the Revolution,
and entered deeply and permanently into the spirits of all
the leading European nations, yet that they were also princi-
ples which required to be supplemented by, and subordi-
nated to, others, and constituted by themselves an extremely
one-sided standard of judgment and conduct.
The intellect of Voltaire was not original, profound, or
impartial, but it was extraordinarily energetic, versatile, and
dexterous. He had neither philosophical nor poetical genius,
but he had incomparable talent, and easily excelled in all
varieties of literature. His activity was prodigious. He cap-
tivated courtly and refined society by the wit and brilliancy
of his conversation. He was an indefatigable correspondent,
and in no capacity appeared to more advantage or exercised
more influence. His publications appeared in rapid succes-
sion, were of the most manifold kinds, and yet rarely failed
to produce the impression which their author desired. He
was at once formidable in argument and terrible in raillery,
and was often in passionate and deadly earnest when simu-
lating indifference or mirth. With light weapons he could
inflict serious or fatal wounds. He was intensely practical.
To judge, of him simply as a literary man is as erroneous as it
VOLTAIRE 291
would be so to judge of Luther. He was primarily a reformer,
a revolutionist, a man at war with the established order of
things, and determined to bring about radical changes in the
principles and conduct of society. The chief aim of his life
was to free human thought from what he regarded as slavery,
superstition, and folly ; to spread what he believed to be free-
dom, enlightenment, and reason ; to assail dogmatism and
persecution, injustice and inhumanity, and to make them by
all effective means the objects of hatred and contempt ; and, in
particular, to crush the great enemy of mankind, the Church,
" l'lnf&me." To accomplish his purpose he not only schemed
and struggled himself, but he also, and with consummate au-
dacity and skill, directed the operations of a league of con-
spirators and an army of combatants of like mind and spirit.
His success was vast. He made Europe largely Voltairian,
and such it remains in no slight measure even to this day.
He is entitled to have the highest place assigned him among
those historians of his age and country who wrote for the
instruction of the general public. In his best efforts he sur-
passed them all, alike as regards style, research, and insight.
He narrated with ease, alertness, and force. He had a vast
and intelligent curiosity, and could submit to severe labour in
order to gratify it. He had a clear vision to a certain depth,
a naturally truthful judgment within a certain range. No
one could dispose and present his matter so attractively.
Some of his historical compositions, indeed, were hasty and
unsatisfactory compositions, meant merely to serve some tem-
porary purpose, and then to pass into kindly oblivion. These
were, however, no measure of his talent, and need not be
taken into account in our estimate of him.
His ' Charles XII.' (1731) was a brilliant instance of
descriptive history. It necessarily involved a very consider-
able amount of original investigation, as it required to be
drawn almost wholly from unpublished sources. The view
which it gave of the character and career of the Swedish
monarch is extremely vivid, and has not, it seems, been shown
to be inaccurate in any essential respects. The narrative
style of Voltaire is seen at its best in such pictures as those of
the retreat of Schulembourg and of the battle of Pultawa.
The 'Si&cle de Louis XIV.' (1752) is a work of much
292 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FRANCE
greater intrinsic value. Its subject is not a man but an age,
not a heroic fool but a great and eventful epoch. Its plan
has often been censured as lacking unity, and as not answer-
ing to the strict requirements of historical composition. But
if Voltaire erred at all in not confining himself to a single
comprehensive and uninterrupted narration, it was because
he believed that by such limitation he would have ruined his
work. To give a series of pictures of the various phases of
the civilisation which characterised the age of Louis XIV.
was an essential part of the plan which he conceived to be
the most appropriate. The civilisation of that epoch was
what chiefly interested himself, and to exhibit it in all its
general aspects was his chief concern. Could he have so
exhibited it as well as he did, if he had followed another
method than the one which he actually pursued ? It is far
from obvious that he could. He gave at least full justice to
the king, while he did not conceal the more serious of his
political faults. He described the military exploits of the
age with spirit, and yet did not assign to them too large a
place or undue importance. He dwelt with sympathetic
appreciation and patriotic pride on the advances made during
the period in literature, art, science, and social refinement.
His ' Essai sur les Mceurs et l'Esprit des Nations ' has, how-
ever, far stronger claims on our attention. This great work
was planned and written for Madame de CMtelet about 1740,
although only published in 1756. It had for object to trace
the growth of national manners, the progress of society, the
development of the human mind, from Charlemagne to Louis
XIII. The merits of its general conception or organising
thought are amply sufficient to atone for not a few failures in
execution ; and that thought being to a considerable extent
original as well as true, its merits must in justice be ascribed
to Voltaire himself.
Bossuet had preceded him in looking on the succession of
events and ages as rationally connected, but he sought the
principle of connection in the purposes of the Divine Will,
and so passed at once from the domain of history into that of
^theology, whereas Voltaire, on the contrary, concentrated his
"attention on man, not on Providence — on the secondary, not
VOLTAIRE 293
the primary cause — striving to find the explanations of
events in the opinions and feelings of men themselves, in the
forces discoverable by analysis and induction, without rising
above, or in any way going beyond, history proper. So far
from being essentially contradictory, these two aspects of
history are mutually complemental, — both being true in
themselves, and false only when exaggerated into antagonism
to each other; still they are different, and that on which
Voltaire insists is undoubtedly that to which the science of
history must confine itself in the rigid and exclusive exercise
of its peculiar and distinctive function.
The design of Voltaire is no less distinct from that of Mon-
tesquieu both in the ' Grandeur et Decadence des Romains '
and in the ' Esprit des Lois.' In the former of these works
Montesquieu seeks merely to establish, if we may so speak,
two definite historical theses, or at least to solve two definite
historical problems by exhibiting first the causes which ac-
counted for the marvellous success of Rome, and then those
which undermined and destroyed her strength and life. In
the latter he examines merely a particular class of historical
phenomena — viz., the various kinds of laws — in all lights,
with a view to compass if possible a complete explanation of
them. Both of these aims are essentially different from the
task which Voltaire proposed to himself, that of writing the
history of the human mind and of human society during
almost nine centuries.
The work of Voltaire is also very different in character
from that of Turgot. The latter, as we have seen, is merely
a sketch; the former is a completed production. The dis-
tinction between them is the important one between plan and
realisation, between discourse on history and history, between
the abstract and the concrete. Besides, what Voltaire accom-
plished was not precisely that which Turgot planned. It was
something less and lower, but also something more his own.
Turgot sketched a scheme of universal history regarded as a
progressive development of human nature, as the gradual
advancement of mankind in knowledge and virtue, in happi-
ness and power. The plan he traced proceeded from and
was pervaded by a single all-inclusive and all-dominant philo-
294 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FRANCE
Efcophical idea, that of a continuous movement towards per-
fection in accordance with internal natural law. Voltaire
wrote a general history mainly in order to trace the course of
civilisation, the origins and manifestations of culture, the
"ways in which peoples had passed from ignorance and rustic-
ity to enlightenment and refinement; but he did so without
reference to any philosophical idea, and without representing
history as subject to any law, internal or external, natural or
providential. While he treated of what he deemed progress
largely and with all the enthusiasm of which he was capable,
he regarded it as merely an accident, a happy but wholly
contingent incident, in history. He has repeatedly expressed
himself as if there were no law in human affairs, as if history
were the domain of " Sa Majeste" le Hasard."
While Voltaire gave to the greatest of his historical works
the modest title of ' Essai,' to one of slight character and little
merit he assigned the magnificent designation of ' La Philo-
sophic de l'Histoire.' It was first published by him in 1765 as
the production of " the late Abbe" Bazin," and afterwards pre-
fixed to the ' Essai ' as an introduction, so that it may now be
regarded as a part of it. Apparently Voltaire was the first to
employ the expression "philosophy of history," but he so used
it as to show that he had no worthy conception of what
has a claim to the designation. He has not explained or
defined what he meant by "philosophy of history," and conse-
quently, we are left to gather his meaning from an exami-
nation of his so-called 'Philosophy of History.' A glance
through the series of brief and loosely connected chapters of
which the work consists, speedily shows us at least what he
did not mean by it. It immediately discloses that he had no
conception of the philosophy of history as an essential and
organic part of a philosophical system, or as a study of the
laws and course of development of the human spirit, or as an
exhibition of the rationality of history ; and, in a word, that
he used the designation in a quite different way from that in
which it has come to be employed in the nineteenth century.
It is not, perhaps, quite so easy to determine precisely what
he did mean by it. Yet I think we may with confidence hold
that it was simply the study of history " en philosophe," as a
VOLTAIRE 295
philosopher should study it, the term philosopher being under-
stood in its popular eighteenth-century sense, — the sense in
which Voltaire and all the freethinkers of his age claimed to
be philosophers. In fact, the philosophy of history, according
to Voltaire, is neither more nor less than the treatment of
history in the spirit and by the light of the Aufklarung. It
presupposes no positive system of thought, and may lead to
none. It is only a mode of viewing history, and one ever!
which is mainly negative. It consists in avoiding credulous!
ness, exposing superstition, rejecting the myths and legends
with which the histories of all peoples are disfigured, refus-
ing credence to all accounts of miracles and all pretensions tc
inspiration, and sifting testimony in a strictly critical manner
It is a part of the polemic against positive religion, and of the
apologetic for enlightenment.
Understood as now indicated, the title ' Philosophy of His-
tory ' is not inappropriate to the work to which it is assigned.
Voltaire begins this work by indicating some of the great
changes which have taken place on the earth's surface, and
then proceeds to remark on the different races of mankind,
and on the antiquity of nations. He holds races to have been
entirely distinct, the primitive condition of men to have been
brutal, and the formation of societies and languages to have
been slow. At the same time, he affirms the natural rational-
ity, sociability, and perfectibility of our species. Man lived
for a long time without speech, but he has never lived in isola-
tion, nor has he ever been devoid of pity and justice, which
are the foundations of society. " God has given us a principle
of universal reason, as He has given feathers to birds and fur
to bears." Voltaire proceeds to dwell on the difficulty with
which primitive men have formed spiritual and metaphysical
conceptions. His views as to the origin and causes of re-
ligion are much the same as those which are now prevalent
among anthropologists. He assigns great importance in this
connection to dreams. He describes how small peoples had
each at first its own particular gods, its local tutelary deities ;
how they afterwards came to borrow and naturalise each
other's gods ; how at a still later period the apotheosis of
great men was' introduced; how at length sages rose to the
296 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FKANCE
belief in One God; and how priests have corrupted religion
by the invention of theologies. He tries to indicate the dis-
tinctive features of civilisation in those ancient nations in
whose records and remains it can first be distinctly studied.
In delineating the characters and creeds of these nations he
warmly eulogises the Chinese, and is fair toward the Hindus,
Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians, but shows neither jus-
tice nor mercy towards the Jews. He enumerates the massa-
cres and other enormities which they committed ; portrays
them as " execrable brigands, always superstitious, always
barbarous, abject in misfortune, and insolent in prosperity ; "
and sneers at the notion that they have been " the sacred
instruments of divine vengeance and of the future salvation
of the human race." He pours out all the vials of his wrath
on Moses and the prophets, the Bible and miracles. The
Jews may be entitled, he thinks, to a place in theology, but
they are entitled to none in history. And history ought to
be separated from theology, and treated as a something
entirely natural and self-explanatory.
What Voltaire sought to accomplish in his ' Essai sur les
Moeurs ' has been already indicated. His design cannot be
justly denied the merit of originality. It was essentially dif-
ferent from what Bossuet, Vico, or Montesquieu had aimed
at. If more like the plan of Turgot, it was yet considerably
different from it. And it has to be remembered that although
Voltaire's work appeared after those of Montesquieu and
Turgot, it had been not only conceived but largely composed
long before. He had it for twenty years under his hands, as
it was in great part written for Madame du CMtelet in 1740,
i.e., seventeen years previous to its publication, eight years
previous to the appearance of Montesquieu's ' Esprit des
Lois,' and ten years before the delivery of Turgot's 'Dis-
cours ' at the Sorbonne. To understand the attraction and
influence which it exercised on its first readers, it is necessary
to bear in mind its novelty of plan and freshness of treatment.
It owes to them also in a great measure its place and signifi-
cance in the history of thought and literature. Voltaire was
the first to write a general history in which the esprit and
mceurs of nations were throughout regarded asof more impor-
VOLTAIRE 297
tance than their outward fortunes and actions. A host of
writers, — French, Italian, English, and German, — have
followed his example, and some of them may have gone much
farther than he did along the path which he opened up ; still
he was the initiator and they have only been the continuators.
In the working out of his design Voltaire must, I think, be
admitted to have rendered most important services both to the
art and science of history. The greatest undoubtedly was
that he applied his judgment freely and independently to an
order of facts which had previously been left almost untouched
by critical thought; that, devoid of learned credulity, and
unawed by traditional authority, he dared to demand of all
that passed for historical both what evidence there was that
it had ever taken place, and what was the worth of it sup-
posing it had ; and that he was not deterred by the mere
circumstance of its having been accepted by an unbroken
succession of historians from expressing his conviction that it
had never occurred, or that although it had occurred, it was
not worth recording in the history of a nation, and still less
in the history of humanity. He brought such light as there
was in the so-called philosophy of his time directly to bear on
the past ; and although that was neither a full nor a pure
light, it sufficed to break through, and in great measure to
dispel, the brooding and chaotic night of credulity, dogma-
tism, and absurdity in which history lay shrouded.
Voltaire has not the slightest claim, indeed, to be regarded
as the first to subject the materials of history to a free criticism.
Vico, Perizonius, Simon, Bayle, Freret, De Pouilly, Beaufort,
and others, had preceded him. Owing, however, either to some-
thing in the matter or method of their researches, or in the form
and style in which they presented the results of their investi-
gations, their influence in diffusing a critical spirit into the
study of general history was small in comparison with that
which he exercised. That his criticism was often not sup-
ported by what the best historians of the present day would
consider an adequate scholarship must be admitted. The
standard of requirement has in that respect greatly risen since
he wrote. But it has risen through the spread of the spirit
which he did so much to introduce into historical research ;
298 ' PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FKANCE
and every candid and competent student of his writings will
admit that as to the whole period of time embraced in his
' Essai,' and, indeed, as to all periods which could be studied
without a knowledge of Greek and the oriental languages, his
learning was for the age not only great, but rested to an ex-
ceptional extent on original authorities, and not on second-
hand statements.
Notwithstanding all that had been done by his predecessors,
it was left to Voltaire to apply the critical spirit to history
on a scale and in a form universally interesting, to diffuse it
through the popular mind, and to discredit effectually and
finally the blind credulity with which historical writers had
been accustomed to receive whatever had been recorded. This,
— the necessary preparation of all the deeper and more en-
larged views of the historian's work and duties which now
prevail, — he most successfully accomplished, partly by his
unrivalled wit and worldly wisdom, and partly by independent
research, by really going back to the primary witnesses, and
freely testing the special and general reasons for the accept-
ance or rejection of their evidence.
The historian has to decide on the worth and significance
of facts no less than on the evidence for the reality and cir-
cumstances of their occurrence, and Voltaire showed his inde-
pendence of judgment in the former no less than in the latter
respect. He did more than any one else to rescue history
from the purblind pedants who confounded it with an unre-
flective and chaotic compilation of facts, and more than any
one else to show that it had better work than to dwell in courts
and camps, and to describe chiefly intrigues and battles. Per-
fect in the use both of ridicule and argument, he jeered and
reasoned the dull story-telling race as nearly out of existence
as indulgent nature would permit. He insisted on the duty
of the judicious choice of facts, and exemplified the advantages
of attention to it. He showed, both by precept and practice,
that the aim of the historian's labours was to trace the growth
of national life and character, and that the end should deter-
mine the relative importance assigned to events ; and he suc-
ceeded in impressing the lesson on the European mind better
than any other man could have done. The value of this ser-
VOLTAIRE 299
vice should not be denied or depreciated because his judgment
was not always just, or because he did not always estimate the
importance and bearing of events without bias. The indepen-
dence of his judgment was a merit even where unaccompanied
by the still higher merit of truth.
He is not to be ranked among historical sceptics. He neither
advocated any general theory of historical scepticism, nor even
any of the distinctive principles of such a theory. Indeed, he
has nowhere discussed questions as to the rules of historical
research, or as to the validity or limits of historical knowledge.
His essay, entitled 'Pyrrhonisme de l'histoire,' is occupied
with special not general questions, with questions of fact, not
of theory. It is simply an attempt to show that historians
have displayed an excessive credulity on a variety of points
of ancient and modern history, and have decided without or
contrary to evidence.
Michelet considers what he calls le sens humain, manifested
in the ' Essai sur les Moeurs ' to be its most marked character-
istic. He means that while Voltaire treats external agencies,
social customs, and positive institutions as only of secondary
and subordinate importance in history, he recognises the uni-
versal properties of human nature itself, and especially jus-
tice and pity, to be primary and fundamental. It must be
admitted that this is true ; but it must also be acknowledged
that his conception of human nature was mean, and that if
he had more humanitarian feeling than was common among
the writers of the age of Louis XIV., he had less of it than
was generally to be found among those of the latter part of
the eighteenth century, and than has become almost univer-
sally diffused in the present day. While he had a heart ready
to revolt and protest against injustice and cruelty when they
came before him in distinct forms and special instances, he
was only moderately endowed with the love of man as man,
or with love of the class the most numerous and poor. HeJ
believed neither in the unity of origin of the human species I
nor in the equality of human raees. He was full of aristo-M
cratic contempt for ordinary mankind. The vast majority ofA
men he held had been in all ages weak and credulous fools, \
deservedly the dupes and slaves of the intelligent and reso- '
300 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
I lute. The ruling minority he deemed to have consisted
mostly of the selfish and unscrupulous. Human sympathy
often displays its presence in the 'Essai'; but not more
frequently than human pride and disdain, shown in the con-
viction and feeling that humanity is, and has always been,
1 almost entirely composed of a rabble multitude and a ras-
| cally few, la canaille et les fripons.
Voltaire's appreciation of civilisation was likewise at once
very sincere so far as it went and yet very defective. He
had a genuine enthusiasm for culture of a kind ; a keen sense
of the worth of science, art, literature, and social refinement.
But for such enthusiasm and susceptibility he would never
have formed the design of tracing the stages through which
European society had passed from barbarism to civilisation.
They supplied the inspiration of what is best in his work;
they account for the superiority of its later to its earlier vol-
umes, and for the spirit and the brightness of the descriptions
of the advances achieved during the Renaissance, and under
Charles V., Henry IV., and Richelieu. But his idea of civil-
isation itself was most imperfect. It excluded all earnest
religious faith, and included nothing higher than intellectual
cleverness, moral respectability, and polished manners. It
was not the idea of a civilisation appropriative of all that
is human, comprehensive of all that educates mental and
spiritual life, and which while it should refine and discipline
nature should likewise preserve its simplicity, respect its
freedom, and favour individual and national originality ; but
rather that of a civilisation of a special and artificial type,
such as can only be local and temporary, and as was to be
seen in all its glory in the fashionable salons and philosophic
circles of Paris in the Voltairian period. Civilisation, in fact,
was conceived of by Voltaire and the generality of his con-
temporaries in a way which goes far to explain how Rousseau
should have maintained that civilisation was a curse instead
of a blessing, and had been the destruction of the innocence
and happiness of the human race, and why he should have
found so many to agree with him.
One of Voltaire's chief disqualifications as an historian was
his incapacity to appreciate with sympathy and fairness relig-
VOLTAIRE 301
ious phenomena. It is not to be denied that he saw clearly
and accurately some of the causes of the origination and spread
of religion, and some of the influences which have moulded
its forms ; but this did not prevent his lamentably failing to
do justice to religion and its forms, even regarded simply
as historical facts and forces. He was naturally prone to be
bitter, unmeasured, and unscrupulous in his enmities, and
actually was all these in his enmity to positive religion. His
fanatical hatred of it had, as it could not but have, the most
disastrous effect on his character even as an historian, which
is the only respect in which I am here regarding him. It pre-
vented his attaining to any correct understanding, or truly
philosophic view, of the deeper spirit of history.
All doctrines in which men had tried to express their sense
of the Divine in things, all rites seemingly strange and bizarre
springing from the same root, and, in a word, all manifestations
of religious faith and sentiment which were not in conformity
with his narrow prejudiced rationalism and unsteady abstract
deism, he was always ready to pronounce ridiculous absurdities,
gross impostures, wicked lies of ambitious priests and rulers,
and to assume that when once this was done his business with
them was accomplished. This fault may be so far excused
inasmuch as Voltaire, although marvellously qualified to be the
exponent of the spirit of his age, possessed no exceptional
strength to resist it or to rise above it ; yet none the less it
was an enormous defect. Religion is in scarcely any of its
forms so wholly false as he supposed, so entirely either inven-
tion or illusion. And even were it so, the historian's task as
regards religion, far from being finished when he has declared
any religious system false, cannot be reasonably considered to
have been then even begun. It is no part at all of the his-
torian's proper work to judge of the truth or falsity of any
religion ; it is for the religious apologist or polemic, for the
religious evidentialist or controversialist, to do that. The
historian in dealing with religion is only required impartially
and accurately to show how its various forms and institutions,
doctrines and rites, have attained historical realisation ; how
they have influenced the intellects and the characters of indi-
viduals and generations ; how they have affected and modified
302 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FKANCE
the lives of societies and the destinies of nations ; and how
they have contributed to the development of morality, policy,
art, science, and philosophy. Instead of doing this, Voltaire
occupied himself throughout his ' Essai ' in assaulting positive
religions as corruptions of natural religion, and in seeking to
find in history the means of discrediting them.
He was especially embittered against Christianity. Hence,
whereas Bossuet had sought to make the Christian Church the
centre of all history and the source of all that is good in his-
tory, he endeavoured to turn all history into a polemic against
it, and represented it as the chief source of the evils of the
ages through which it had passed, — a much falser position
still, and one more incompatible with a sound comprehension
of the nature and course of the historical movement. He has
treated Mohammedanism with more favour than Christianity,
and has represented Confucianism as superior to them both.
The care with which he showed that the great heathen nations
of Asia had attained to no inconsiderable height of speculative
knowledge was almost as much owing to his dislike of the
Christian faith as to his love of truth. He saw little else than
decadence in the centuries of transition from Roman paganism
to medieval Christendom. He was a harsh judge of the mid-
dle ages, — those of faith and of an undivided and all-powerful
Church. He was as indulgent, however, towards the Church
as represented by Leo X. and his cardinals, as he was intol-
erant towards her as reformed by Luther, Calvin, and their
associates.
Voltaire failed to recognise clearly in history a compre-
/ hensive plan, a pervasive order, such as implies a Divine will
operating through human wills, a first cause working through
secondary causes. Blindness in this regard makes itself felt in
his whole treatment of the subject, and gives to his book, not-
withstanding conspicuous excellences, a certain character of
meanness which cannot well be described, but which produces
a sad and disheartening impression. The defect is to some ex-
tent an inconsistency ; for among the few principles to which
he clung with anything like steadiness, was belief in an al-
mighty and righteous God, and why he should have practically
denied that history presents any evidence of His power and
-
VOLTAIRE 303
justice is not at first apparent. Yet it was a natural result of
the unworthy conception he had formed of Christianity, and
of his consequent want of sympathy with the spiritual life of
the past, and even hostility to the past as a whole. He could
paint vividly and truly certain aspects of the middle ages ;
but he could not possibly, his own spirit being what it was,
understand its real spirit. His quick, versatile, widely read,
and susceptible mind caught many glimpses of historical truth,
but could not attain to a steady perception of the rational-
ity of the historical development in its entirety. As his anti-
religious prejudices blinded him to the power and operation
of the higher forces of history, he had to seek the explana-
tion of it exclusively in its own lower forces. Hence his
inability to trace the outlines of a general plan in history.
Hence his representation of human nature as a far meaner
thing than it is. Hence his ascription to small causes and_[
accidental circumstances, of a far greater power over the lives
of nations than they exert. Hence his exhibition of supersti-
tions, irrational habits, mere brute violence as the great min-
isters of destiny, the chief moving forces of history, which thus
appears as a badly composed drama, half tragedy and half farce,
a burlesque of a sacred subject, partly hateful and partly ridic-
ulous. Hence the essential truth of these words of Carlyle :
" ' The Divine Idea, that which lies at the bottom of Appear-
ance,' was never more invisible to any man. History is for
him not a mighty drama enacted on the theatre of Infinitude,
with Suns for lamps, and Eternity as a background; whose
author is God, and whose purport and thousandfold moral lead
us up to the 'dark excess of light' of the Throne of God; but
a poor wearisome debating-club dispute, spun through ten
centuries, between the Encyclopedic and the Sorbonne." 1
There is, in fact, in Voltaire's ' Essai ' a decided want of
philosophy. ' Keen, clear, boundlessly clever as it shows its
author to have been, there is little trace in it of the caution
and comprehensiveness of judgment, the patient and method-
ical verification of opinions, the catholicity of feeling, and
control over temper, which all philosophy demands, and the
philosophy of history more perhaps than any other kind of
1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 135 (ed. 1872).
304 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
philosophy. He got much deeper into his subject than the
historical compilers against whom he waged war ; but he did
not get near to the heart of it, nor attain a rational compre-
hension of it.
Of all his prose works, the ' Essai ' is the most remarkable
and the most valuable. It has had a great influence on the
development of historical literature, and will always have a
distinctive place assigned to it in every impartial survey of
that literature. It shows us, perhaps, more completely than
any of his other writings, at once the strength and the weak-
ness of his intellect when fully exerted on a magnificent
theme. After studying that intellect as there exhibited, it
seems to me impossible to characterise it with more accuracy
and force than Carlyle has already done in these few words :
" Let him [Voltaire] but cast his eye over any subject, in a
moment he sees, though indeed only to a short depth, yet
with instinctive decision, where the main bearings of it for
that short depth lie ; what is, or appears to be, its logical
coherence ; how causes connect themselves with effects ; how
the whole is to be seized, and in lucid sequence represented
to his own or to other minds. But below the short depth
alluded to, his view does not properly grow dim, but alto-
gether terminates : thus there is nothing further to occasion
him misgivings ; has he not already sounded into that basis
of boundless darkness on which all things firmly rest? What
lies below is delusion, imagination, some form of superstition
or folly, which he, nothing doubting, altogether casts away."1
1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 164.
CHAPTER IV
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CONTINUED: ROUSSEAU TO CON-
DORCET
The great and momentous change in the spirit and temper
of the French people which made itself outwardly manifest
immediately after the death of Louis XIV., became always
more thorough and complete until the Revolution, which had
been long foreseen and often foretold, at length broke forth.
In the writings of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Turgot, it
showed itself in a stage already far advanced, yet in one still
essentially moderate and reasonable. As time passed on,
however, and as the degeneracy of the ruling classes and the
effeteness of the old methods of government became always
more keenly felt, dangerous passions also became always
increasingly inflamed, extreme and one-sided views more
prevalent, hatred to authority intensified, and Utopian theo-
ries more credulausly accepted.
The old order of society could not endure. The only
question was, How was it to give place to another? Was
it to be through the action of the monarch or of the people ?
I see no reason for believing that it might not have been
brought about in the former way; that the Revolution in
the form which it actually assumed was inevitable even
at the accession of Louis XVI. Had the ruler then given
to France been not that weak well-meaning monarch, but
a clear-sighted and resolute reforming king; a man with
the intellect and will of a Cromwell or of a Frederick
the Great; one who would have kept his wife and court-
iers in their proper places; who would have seen to the
discipline, and made sure of the loyalty of his army; who
would have steadfastly supported his Turgots and other like-
305
306 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
minded ministers and administrators ; who would have called
to such work as was most conducive to their country's good
the ablest of the men of talent at that time abounding in
France, instead of leaving them to declaim about tyrants and
priests, the sovereignty of the people and the rights of men;
who would have removed the burdens under which the peas-
antry groaned, withdrawn unnatural restrictions on individ-
ual energy, and abolished unjust and offensive distinctions
and privileges : had such a man succeeded to the throne of
France when Louis XVI. did, there would have been no
French Revolution like that which actually happened, no
taking of the Bastille or "night of spurs," no September
massacres or Reign of Terror, and yet all the principles and
strivings which led to the Revolution might have been as
fully realised. The Revolution may have no more added to
the power or influence of the stream of thought and tendency
which pervaded and characterised the eighteenth century
than the cataracts of Niagara increase the force or volume of
the St. Lawrence.
When under Louis XVI. the incompetence of the mon-
archy to accomplish the work of social and political reform
which was manifestly indispensable had become apparent to
all, the representatives of the people easily seized the reins
of power. They eagerly undertook to achieve what the
sovereign had failed to effect. But their" divisions, their
jealousies, their unfamiliarity with governmental practice,
their want of appropriate administrative machinery, the
vagueness of their theories and schemes, the extravagance of
their expectations, and the chaotic excitement of the public
mind, made orderly and peaceable reform impossible, fierce
struggles and violent measures inevitable. Hence the Revo-
lution. With that event the ideas and passions which had
produced it were set free by it to assume even the strangest
and most exaggerated forms, and to attempt even the most
fantastic and the most hideous applications. The minds of
men were agitated to the utmost. They were tossed between
the extremes of love and hate, hope and despair, as they have
never been since, and as they had not been for more than two
centuries before. The fountains of emotion in the human
heart were laid bare as if by an earthquake.
ROUSSEAU 307
The historical literature of the latter portion of the eigh-
teenth century was deeply influenced by the then prevailing
state of public opinion and feeling. Indeed, it was affected
by it to an extent most injurious to its character both as his-
tory and literature. Not one good popular history was pro-
duced during the whole period. Impartiality, self-restraint,
self-forgetfulness, strict truthfulness, objectivity, and, in a
word, all the primary historical virtues, nearly disappeared.
Argument and declamation usurped the places of narration
and the disclosure of causation and development. Instead of
faithfully delineating the movement and incidents of history,
and leaving it to suggest its own lessons, the writers who
professed to be historians presented history only so far as they
could make it seem to testify to the truth of views in the
service of which their passions were enlisted. The great
bulk of the so-called historical literature of the period was,
consequently, of a controversial and oratorical nature; and
large so-called histories were often only bulky political
pamphlets. We have here to do with such literature merely
in so far as it bears on the development of historical theory.
The influence exerted by Rousseau was, perhaps, not in-
ferior to that of Voltaire. Although it spread less widely, it
penetrated more deeply ; although it acted on opinions with
less direct effectiveness, it impressed the imagination . and
feelings, more powerfully. Voltaire was a man of marvel-
lously quick and clear understanding; of many and varied
talents always at their possessor's command; of restless
intellectual curiosity and rapid literary productiveness; of
liveliest interest in art and science, culture, and refinement;
of aristocratic feelings and manners ; of shrewdest worldly tact
and the most brilliant social qualities. Rousseau was a man
of great, although morbid, genius; of brooding imagination
and passionate heart; of seductive and overpowering elo-
quence; a skilful and often sophistical dialectician; sus-
ceptible to high ideals and divine inspirations, but also easily
overcome by mean temptations and sensuous lusts ; unsociable
and jealous by temperament, while inordinately eager for
notoriety and praise; plebeian in his tastes and habits; richly
endowed with the feeling for nature. Both were the sons of
their age, but Voltaire inherited its more general character-
308 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
istics, and Rousseau such as were less common. Hence the
latter is often erroneously regarded as having been a man of
greater independence and originality of thought, and less
imbued with the spirit of his time. In reality, there Avas
little substantial novelty in his teaching, and even when he
opposed certain tendencies of the age, it was in the spirit of
the age. Had he been more original he would have been less
influential.
He was not, as Voltaire was, an eminent historian ; he was
not an historian at all, and had little accurate historical
knowledge. Plutarch's 'Lives ' had profoundly impressed
him, and he had loosely read a number of historical books ;
but he knew no portion of history well, nor apprehended
truthfully the spirit of any single people or epoch. His
admiration of Athens, Sparta, and Rome was an ignorant
admiration; his aversion to the middle ages and to modern
institutions a not less ignorant. aversion. Yet his literary
genius, favoured by prevailing tendencies, caused the most
worthless of his historical judgments to be received by mul-
titudes of his contemporaries as oracles revealing the truth
and significance of history, and thus gave them an impor-
tance to which they were far from entitled in themselves.
It was chiefly, however, by his eloquent advocacy of certain
historical hypotheses that he stimulated historical speculation.
To these we must now briefly refer.
His literary career began with a 'Discours sur la question:
Le progr&s des sciences et des arts a-t-il contribue" a corrompre
ou a e'purer les mceurs ? ' (1750), to which the Academy of
Dijon had awarded the prize which it had offered for the best
discussion of the question : " Le re'etablissement des lettres et
des arts a-t-il contribue' a corrompre ou a e'purer les mceurs?"
Rousseau, in answer to the question stated by himself, affirms
that the sciences and arts had depraved the morals and man-
ners of mankind. He argues that they had originated with
the birth, and grown with the growth, of human vices. He
represents the researches of science as unsuited to the nature
of the human intellect and as leading to conclusions which
yield no true satisfaction to the human heart; indicates how
the arts minister to vanity and luxury, and contribute to
ROUSSEAU 309
corrupt society and ruin nations ; and dwells on the mischiev-
ous effects of immoral and irreligious writings. He vaunts
the virtue of the primitive ages in which ignorance and sim-
plicity prevailed, and draws gloomy and satirical pictures of
the moral condition of the periods in which literature and
culture have flourished. Most of what he says in support of
his thesis is true, hut his thesis itself is not true. Such
semblance of being a proof of it as the Discourse possesses,
is due entirely to its one-sidedness. Rousseau refers exclu-
sively to the abuses of the arts and sciences, and assumes that
there was nothing else respecting them to which he ought to
refer. Few men have been more liberally endowed with
the power of the myopic vision characteristic of sincere and
successful advocates of paradoxes.
The 'Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'megalit^
parmi les hommes ' (1754) is a much abler production. It
generalises and develops the thesis maintained in the first
Discourse; and, consequently, attacks civilisation in general
as the cause of human misery and corruption, and represents
history as having been a process not of amelioration but of
deterioration.
It denies that man is corrupt by nature; it affirms that
he is good by nature, and has been corrupted by society.
Readers of Rousseau's 'Emile ' are aware that this dogma of
the natural goodness of man is the corner-stone of the theory
of education therein expounded; it holds the same place in
the theory of the rise and development of inequality given in
the work under consideration. The state of man as a primi-
tive savage is represented as having been better than his state
in any period of culture. It was the state most conformed
to his constitution, and one in which he would have done
well to remain. He remained in it for ages, but not wholly
without change. The state of nature had itself a certain
development; it had epochs, or at least stages.
At first, men lived solitary, naked, speechless, without
instruments, without religious or moral notions, impelled
and guided only by their senses, instincts, and simplest bodily
appetites. In this purely animal condition they were strong
and healthy, innocent and happy, without fictitious wants,
310 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FRANCE
and easily able to satisfy the few desires which they experi-
enced. Civilised men have reason to look back to it with
regret. Why, then, should primitive men have abandoned
it? Rousseau has no explanation to give. He tells us,
indeed, that " the specific characteristic which distinguishes
man from the animal is a faculty of perfectibility almost
unlimited;" but he is not so illogical as to attempt to
account for continuous actual deterioration by the possibility
of indefinite amelioration ; and therefore, he does not conde-
scend to explain at all how men were seduced to fall aWay
from their estate of contented animality. He describes them,
however, as in fact finding out such inventions as hooks
for fishing, bows and arrows for hunting, and how to warm
themselves by the aid of fire and to clothe themselves with
skins.
Next, men are represented as gradually proceeding to form
temporary associations for the sake of the benefits to be thereby
attained. They are thus slowly led to invent language which
is almost indispensable to association. It is, however, a
marvellous invention ; and Rousseau, far from attempting to
explain it, candidly confesses that it seems to him inexplica-
ble. "The invention of speech appears to require speech."
Among the earliest manifestations of association are the con-
struction of huts and the formation of family ties, or, in other
words, the institution of private property and the establish-
ment of domestic society ; and these lead to a greater differ-
entiation of the sexes and their occupations. Then, men
group themselves into village communities; and not only
natural differences manifest themselves, but inequalities of
conditions appear, with love and jealousy and various dis-
turbing and painful passions. Such is the general condition
of savages at present ; one by no means without drawbacks ;
and yet one superior to the ordinary lot of men in all stages
of civilisation.
With the use of metals and the cultivation of the ground,
the division of labour was developed and private property
became a fixed and general institution. The result was "the
civilisation of man and the destruction of the human race."
With indignation Rousseau denounces the appropriation of
ROUSSEAU 311
the earth and the bounties of nature as robbery of the race by
the individual. " The land belongs to no one person, but to
all; all that an individual acquires beyond subsistence is a
social theft (vol social).'1'' With sombre eloquence he describes
the consequences flowing from this primary act of spoliation ;
how it divided society into rich and poor, oppressor and
oppressed; how inequalities increased, how violence spread,
and how the natural promptings of pity and the as yet feeble
voice of justice were extinguished and silenced. The great-
ness of the evil at length caused the necessity for a remedy
to be universally felt. This led, however, to no real improve-
ment, for the rich and crafty were able to turn the desire to
arrest the usurpations of the powerful and the brigandage of
the disinherited to their own advantage. " They formed a
project the most astute that ever entered the human spirit, hy
which to convert their adversaries into their defenders, to
inspire them with wholly new maxims, and to introduce
institutions which would be as favourable to them as natural
law and the law of the strong were the contrary." It suc-
ceeded; and civilisation, society, and laws were instituted,
" which gave new fetters to the feeble, and new forces to the
rich ; which destroyed beyond recovery natural liberty, fixed
for ever the law of property and inequality, converted a
clever usurpation into an irrevocable right, and, for the profit
of a few ambitious men, subjected henceforth all the human
race to servitude and misery."
The establishment of law and property required the insti-
tution of magistrates, and their authority, although at first
only delegated, naturally became absolute. The growth of
inequality and corruption was thereby favoured in all forms,
and at last resulted in the despotism of one and the slavery
of all the rest, — the extreme of inequality engendered by the
excess of corruption. Instead of being compensations for
the evils of civilisation, art, science, and literature are simply
the gilding of the chains of that state of slavery and injustice
to which the name of civilisation is given.
No quite consistent inference, perhaps, could have been
drawn from Rousseau's teaching, seeing that it was not self-
consistent; but the least inconsistent would have been the
312 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
differential tenet of the theory known as nihilism or anarch-
ism. Rousseau affirmed the premisses of this system, and he
should have drawn its conclusions. That is to say, he should
have inculcated the suppression of property, the dissolution
of the family, the obliteration of social distinctions, the abo-
lition of all extant laws and resistance to the enactment of
new ones, the overthrow of government and authority in
every form, and, in a word, a return to primitive savagery.
But, resolute dialectician though he was, he had not the
courage to be thus consistent; he shrank from advocating
mere social destruction, and even, propounded a scheme of
social reconstruction.
The scheme is delineated in his famous ' Contrat Social '
(1762).1 It is not only no legitimate sequel to its author's
hypothesis of historical development, but is utterly unhistori-
cal in character, — a product of conjecture, abstraction, and
argumentation, all divorced from historical experience. The
' Contrat Social ' is an essentially deductive and dogmatic
work. Its central conception is borrowed from Hobbes, but
differently applied, yet not intrinsically improved. Political
Rousseauism may be said to be reversed but unamended
Hobbism. Rousseau, like Hobbes, would organise society
on the basis of a compact which makes the ruling will or
sovereign authority indivisible, unlimited, and unconditioned ;
only whereas Hobbes would place the absolute sovereignty
in an individual will, Rousseau would assign it to the col-
lective will. The ideal delineated in Hobbes' 'Leviathan'
is that of a monarchical despotism, and the ideal delineated
in Rousseau's ' Social Contract ' is that of a democratic des-
potism, both ideals being vitiated by the same error, the
1 The Library of Geneva possesses a MS. of Rousseau which contains the primi-
tive text of the ' Contrat Social,' and was written apparently between 1754 and
1T56. It was printed in 1887 in a Russian work on Rousseau by M. Alexieff, and
is interestingly commented on by M. Bertrand in a memoir published in the
' Compte Rendu of the Acad, of Mor. and Pol. Sciences,' July 1891. It appears
to M. Bertrand to show that Rousseau at the date of its composition had become
aware that his so-called " state of nature " had never really existed, but deemed
that it might be usefully retained as a hypothetical and ideal antecedent of society.
This view is very probable; but certainly the picture drawn of " the state of
nature" in the text and notes of the Discourse on the Causes of Inequality is
very unideal, and the notion that actual history can be truly or profitably repre-
sented as commencing with instead of tending towards an ideal is a self-contra-
dictory and inconsiderate one.
ROUSSEAU 313
ascription of absolute sovereignty to human will. While
Rousseau does not prescribe communism or equality of wealth
in his ideal commonwealth, he recommends that it should be,
as far as possible, aimed at ; and while he does not prohibit
the holding of private property, he affirms that the community
is entitled to dispose of the goods of all its members.
No writer of the eighteenth century contributed so much as
Rousseau to diffuse the following beliefs: that human nature
was originally, and is intrinsically, good; that science, art,
and literature are essentially unfavourable to morality ; that
laws have been always and everywhere instituted for the
oppression of the poor and weak; that private property is
unjust, and has necessarily caused incalculable misery; that
equality is of far more importance than liberty ; that the
history of civilisation has been a process of illusion, crime,
and suffering, determined almost exclusively by the action of
inexplicable accidents and of evil passions ; that the basis of
society in the future should be a contract in which an absolute
sovereignty is vested in the community by the unlimited sac-
rifice of the independence of individuals ; and that majorities,
as the organs of the collective will, are entitled to punish, even
with death, disobedience to any behests either as regards civil
or religious matters which they see fit to enact and impose.
By his advocacy of these and kindred tenets he profoundly
affected social speculation and practice. How far his influence
was good and how far it was evil, this is not the place to
inquire. It was obviously both. It is not inaccurate to say
of him, as Professor Graham has done, with reference to the
very writings which have been under our consideration, —
"the poor had found a powerful pleader, the dumb millions a
voice, democracy its refounder, and humanity in the eigh-
teenth century its typical representative man, who gave vent
to its inmost sentiments, troubles, aspirations, and audacious
spirit of revolt;"1 but it is just as correct also to say that in
him the poor had found a persuasive seducer, the dumb mil-
lions a voice which by the follies it uttered discredited what
was reasonable in their claims, democracy a reconstructor so
unwise as to choose for its corner-stone the very falsehood on
which despotism rests, and humanity in the eighteenth century
1 Socialism New and Old, pp. 55, 56.
314 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
the great literary exponent of those passions and errors which
were " the seeds of the guillotine," the germs of the infamies
of the Reign of Terror.1
The Abbe" Morelly propounded views very similar to those
of Eousseau, although on the whole even more radical and
extreme, first in the 'Basiliade' (1753), and afterwards more
systematically in the 'Code de la Nature' (1756), long erro-
neously attributed to Diderot. His social theories rest on a
doctrine of materialistic egoism. Man, in his eyes, is simply
a physical and sentient organism, whose sole end and summum
bonum is pleasure. Human nature is in itself wholly innocent
and good. "Morality implies no antagonism between the
passions and duty, for the former are legitimate and sovereign,
and would cause no harm if allowed free play ; it is just by
the irritation and restraint of the laws and institutions which
pretend to have a right to confine and regulate them, that
they are rendered corrupt and mischievous. The great social
problem is to find a situation in which the passions will be
fully gratified, while it will be almost impossible for men to be
tempted or depraved. It can only be solved through the
elimination of avarice, the only vice in the world, the universal
pest of mankind, the slow fever or consumptive disease of so-
ciety." And this can only be effected by the suppression of
private property, by rendering the possession of all wealth
indivisible and collective and the enjoyment of all products
common, by the State regulation of marriage, and by the
abolition of public and private worship.
The view which Morelly gave of the place and functions
1 The chief general works on the life and writings of Rousseau are those of
Musset-Pathay, Morin, Brackerhoff , Saint-Mare Girardin, and Morley. A good
account of his religious, political, social, and educational opinions will be found
in Emil Feuerlein's three articles — Rousseau 'sche Studien — in the first and
second volumes of the 'Gedanke.' Bluntschli, Barante, Janet, and others, have
specially expounded his views on the origin of society, social contract, natural
rights, &c. ; and Bourgeand has treated of his religious teaching (J. J. Rousseau's
Religionsphilosophie, 1883). Of exceptional interest are the following: 'J. J.
Rousseau juge par les Genevois d'aujourdhui ' (Geneve, 1879) ; ' Les origines des
idees politiques de Rousseau,' par M. Jules Vuy (Geneve, 1882) ; Baudrillard, ' J. J.
Rousseau et le socialisme moderne ' (in Etudes de philosophie morale, 1. 1) ; Caro,
' Le fin d'un siecle,' 1. 1, c. 3, 4 ; Renouvier's articles in ' Crit. Phil.,' annee xiii. ;
and Prof. E. Caird's paper in ' Cont. Rev.' for Sept. 1877. Few have written re-
garding Rousseau with so much judgment and insight as P. C. Schlosser, 'Hist,
of the Eighteenth Century,' vol. i. pp. 285-314, Eng. tr. Rousseau treats of
history from an educational point of view in ' Emile,' iv. 1.
MOEELLY — MABLY 315
of the passions in the social economy has a special claim to
be remarked, owing to the use which was made of it by
Fourier and his followers. Morelly was the direct and
immediate precursor of Fourier, inasmuch as he laid the
foundation-stone of Phalansterianism. But the system
which he himself attempted to build on it was a very dif-
ferent one ; it was a socialism of the kind which has become
familiar to us in recent times as Collectivism. He is, per-
haps, more entitled than any one else to be called the orig-
inator of the theory of modern Collectivism. A collectivist
socialism was his ideal of the future of human society. As
to the past, the course of actual history, he represented it as
having been essentially a process of falsehood and cruelty, of
folly and crime. He was, like so many of his contempora-
ries, pessimist as1 to the past and optimist as to the future ;
that he was a social revolutionist followed naturally from his
non-recognition of the continuity of history.1
The Abbe" de Mably (1709-85) was a man of a very dif-
ferent type of character than either Rousseau or Morelly, but
in its general scope and direction his thinking had much in
common with theirs. He was austere, independent, and dis-
interested ; he cared little for pleasure, power, or fame ; con-
science was his stay and guide ; he saw in virtue the chief
source and primary condition of individual and social pros-
perity. None of his contemporaries insisted so strongly on the
intimate relationship of morals and politics ; the dependence
of the latter on the former seemed to him the great lesson
taught by history. He was not a believer in Christianity, but
he had a steady faith in God and the moral law. Although
in his earliest publication he appeared as the eulogist of abso-
lute monarchy, he soon afterwards became an ardent admirer
of the republican form of government, and he did much to
spread and confirm republican predilections in France. His
political views were mainly the results of his reflections on
ancient history ; the institutions of classical antiquity seemed
to him to furnish models of political wisdom ; and the lives
of illustrious citizens of Greece and Rome suggested to him
ideals of political virtue. Sparta was the special object of his
1 P. Villegardelle, ' Code de la nature, augmente de fragments importants de
la Basiliade, avec l'analyse raisonne du systeme sociale de Morelly.' 1847.
316 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
idolatrous veneration. Of course, the theatrical antiquity of
which he was the panegyrist never existed elsewhere than in
excited and romantic imaginations.
He has expounded his political and juristic creed in two
treatises of considerable interest, the ' Entretiens de Phocion '
(1763) and 'De la Legislation' (1776). For our purpose it
is sufficient simply to note the following points. Mably has
enlarged on the dependence of politics and legislation on
morality, and has strongly insisted that morality cannot
maintain itself in a society devoid of religious faith, ex-
pressly condemning the opinions of Machiavelli and Bayle
to the contrary. He recommends a community of goods
and the banishment of commerce and the fine arts from a
republic. He represents social inequalities as unjust and
pernicious, and private property as their primary cause. He
holds that equality was the first stage of society, and that
it will be also its final form. He admits, however, that
it cannot be easily or immediately attained, and therefore
merely advises that properties be kept small, luxury in its
various forms repressed, and all due care taken to prevent
both the growth of pauperism and the individual accumula-
tion of wealth. It shows the extent to which he was misled
by his admiration of the Greek republics, that, in despite of
his socialism and equalitarianism, he would exclude artisans
from participation in public affairs.
Two of Mably's smaller treatises belong to the department
of Historic— the 'De l'Etude de l'Histoire' (1778), and 'De
la maniere d'e'crire Histoire ' (1782). Both are contained in
the twelfth volume of the collected edition of his works.
They are rather commonplace and disappointing produc-
tions. The first mentioned, written for the use of the young
Prince of Parma, dwells on the benefits which a ruler may
derive from the study of history, and especially from the
historical study of law and government. The other, which
is the better of the two, especially insists on the importance
to an historian of the study of the principles of morality and
politics. This latter treatise has a certain measure of inter-
est from the way in which the classical historians, Thucyd-
ides, Sallust, Tacitus, and Plutarch, are upheld as models,
while De Thou, Voltaire, Hume, and Robertson are subjected
MABLY 317
to sharp censures. Voltaire's 'Essai sur les Moeurs,' for
example, is pronounced to be only "une pasquinade digne
des lecteurs qui l'admirent sur la foi de nos philosophes "
(p. 445). Of modern historians Vertot alone is praised by
Mably with warmth. What one misses above all in the trea-
tises to which I refer, is any trace of reflection on the condi-
tions and methods of historical research. No attempt is made
in them to analyse the processes of historical investigation,
and to determine what requirements ought to be fulfilled
in sifting and appreciating historical evidence. While they
belong, therefore, to the province of Historic, they cannot
be said to have been of any special, and certainly not of any
scientific, importance therein.
Neither Rousseau nor Morelly gave much attention to the
study of history. Mably did, and he wrote at least one his-
torical work of very considerable merit — ' Observations sur
l'Histoire de la France ' (2 vols. 1T65, with posthumous con-
tinuation, 2 vols. 1790). It was re-edited by M. Guizot, and
well deserved the honour, owing to the light which it casts on
the constitutional history of France. It was not only actu-
ally drawn from the primary documents, but quoted them
throughout, so far as they were founded on, and thus the
reader can judge for himself whether or not Mably correctly
interpreted the authorities on which he relied. It will be
found that he frequently did not; that he was in many in-
stances an unsatisfactory exegete ; but this does not deprive
him of the merit, the rare and immense merit, of always ad-
ducing for his statements as to historical fact what he believed
to be the original and proper evidence for them. He was
among the first of historians fully and practically to recog-
nise that what is of prime importance to a student of history
is to obtain a clear view of the evidence, and that where this
is not given, historical narrative, although it may please the
imagination or exercise faith, cannot train the judgment or
satisfy the appetite for truth. The defects to be found in
Mably 's treatment of French history arose mainly from the
rigidity of his historical ideal and the narroAvness of his histor-
ical sympathy. He so overestimated the pagan type of virtue,
that he could not fairly appreciate the manifestations of Chris-
tian life. His taste was so exclusively classical that medieval
318 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
manners and institutions unduly offended him. His admira-
tion of the Lacedemonian republic was of a kind which ren-
dered it impossible for him to be just to the French monarchy.
All modern history was thus in his eyes a decadence.
By the way in which Rousseau, Morelly, and Mably incul-
cated and diffused the idea of equality, they laid the foun-
dation of the socialist theory of history. They ignored, or
implicitly denied, progress in history ; and although they
may have here and there verbally affirmed the perfectibility
of man, the general tenor of their teaching as regards the
course of human affairs in the past is inconsistent therewith.
In words, they glorified liberty, as all their contemporaries
did ; but they showed by the proposals which they put forth
that they were ready to sacrifice it in any sphere of life and
to an almost unlimited extent if the realisation of equality
could thereby be promoted. The equality, however, which
involves the sacrifice of liberty must be also destructive both
of social order and of social progress ; and consequently its
advocacy must be inconsistent with the admission of true
conceptions of historical development, a process which can
only be natural and normal where there is a due combination
and correlation of factors and an appropriate interdependence
and co-operation of functions. Hence the reason why socialist
theories of history are so generally unsatisfactory ; their au-
thors have not sufficiently reflected on a preliminary question
of decisive importance, — - the question which Shakespeare
puts into the mouth of Ulysses : —
"How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce, and dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place? "
The brother of the Abbe" de Mably, the Abbe" de Condillac
(1715-80), who was, in the opinion of his contemporaries, the
philosopher of their age, and the truest teacher of philosophy
of all ages, published a 'Universal History' (1775) in thirteen
volumes, yet a few lines are, perhaps, all to which he is here
entitled. His ' Universal History ' aimed at tracing the his-
tory of philosophical opinions, of the sciences, and of civilisa-
CONDILLAC
319
tion. Its author's desire to select and present what was likely
to be instructive and improving is throughout conspicuous ;
and his constant preoccupation to discover and indicate the
causes and effects of events is not less manifest. But the
work has the fatal defect of being altogether wanting in re-
search and criticism. The facts in it are in grains and the
reflections in bushels. The course of historical causation is
not shown to have been in the historical development by
exhibition of the facts, but is only diffusely declared to have
been so in the opinion of the author. Besides, the statements
of fact are not only intolerably few in comparison with those
of reflection, but they are obviously drawn from such works
as were most accessible, not from such as had most claim to
be consulted. The account given of Greek philosophy, for
example, is not only derived from Briicker, but so derived
from him as to leave the impression that Condillac had proba-
bly never taken the trouble to read either the fragments of a
pre-Socratic Greek philosopher or a treatise of a post-Socratic
one. If he had at any time thus occupied himself, he cer-
tainly did not employ the knowledge so acqixired to control
or supplement Briicker. He had the keenest interest in psy-
chological analysis, but he had no taste for historical criti-
cism. He adhered to historical tradition with a closeness
very uncommon among the philosophers of the eighteenth
century ; almost alone among them, for instance, he accepted
the Biblical accounts of antediluvian times and miraculous
occurrences.
Condillac has treated of historical progress on various occa-
sions with characteristic judiciousness; but in one respect
only, perhaps, can his teaching on the subject claim to have
been original or distinctive — namely, in that it represented
intellectual progress as entirely dependent on the use made of
language. This he believed was what no one before him had
done. Notwithstanding his acquiescence in the Biblical ac-
count of the primitive condition of man, he assumed that con-
dition to have been one merely animal. The cardinal doctrine
of his whole philosophy was that the sole root of mind is sense,
and that all the contents and even all the faculties of mind
are merely transformed sensations; and hence he naturally
believed that all the mental acquisitions of the race had been
320 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
attained in the course of a process of development which
originated when human beings were more ignorant than the
most ignorant savages are at present. He accordingly sup-
posed that at first, and for long, men had no other means of
making their impressions or desires known to one another than
cries and gestures ; that, like the beasts, like children, and,
according to reports of travellers, like certain still existing
savage peoples, they had no language in the strict sense of the
term ; and hence, that language does not constitute an absolute
distinction between men and beasts, being merely a human
invention, although the greatest of human inventions. Lan-
guage, properly so called, he viewed as the result of a slow
development from the instinctive and natural modes of com-
munication ; but it is scarcely necessary to say that he ignored
the very serious difficulties which must be disposed of before
the development of real words out of inarticulate cries can be
reasonably regarded as proved, or even as intelligible. He
represented the discovery of language as a decisive epoch in
history, and argued that in its first stage it had been a chanted
speech, composed of sounds variously and strongly inflected.
From this stage of it sprang music and poetry, while gesticula-
tion gave rise to dancing ; whence the Greek term /movo-iio] was
inclusive of all the arts. To poetry succeeded prose and elo-
quence, which are indispensable to, and characteristic of, a
still more advanced stage of culture. When a man of genius
arises and so manipulates and moulds a language as to reveal
its merits and capabilities, men of talent hasten to use it as
their instrument ; artistic taste and ambition of all kinds are
evoked ; and an age of rich and refined civilisation appears.
The development of a people's language and that of its intel-
lect are inseparable and always accordant.1
As in England, Italy, and Germany, so in France, many at-
tempts were made in the eighteenth century to explain history,
or at least large classes of historical phenomena, by means of
hypotheses suggested by science. Nicholas Boulanger (1722-
59), when pursuing his avocations as an engineer, was greatly
impressed by certain geological evidences of the action of
1 Perhaps almost everything of value written by Condillao regarding history
is contained in the ' Logique de Condillac, a l'usage des c'leves des prytanees et
lyeees de la republique franeaise,' par Noel. 2 torn. : 1802.
DXJPUIS — RAYNAL 321
water, which he felt constrained to refer to a tremendous flood ;
and, being a man of lively imagination and of confused erudi-
tion, he came to regard this flood as a key to the understand-
ing of all ancient history. It was its terrors, he supposed,
which had originated religion and despotism, and so caused
ancient history to be what it was. The history, he represented,
as having passed through four stages, — theocracy, aristoc-
racy, democracy, and monarchy. He was probably the first
Frenchman influenced to any considerable extent by Vico.1
Charles Dupuis (1742-1809), author of the once famous book
' L'Origine de tons les Cultes,' made an elaborate endeavour
to give an astronomical solution of the mythologies and
superstitions of the human race, and even went so far as to
deny the historical existence of Christ, explaining the events
of his life as corresponding to the course of the sun, and
identifying the twelve apostles with the twelve signs of the
zodiac. Court de Gebelin (1727-84), relied on linguistic
hypotheses in his efforts to throw light on " the primitive
world," and to resolve mythologies into their original ele-
ments. The attempts to combine science and history just
referred to were far from successful, yet are worthy of being
mentioned, as they were attempts in a right direction. More
successful, because easier of accomplishment, were the en-
deavours made to combine the sciences and history in histories
of the sciences. Among those who performed work of this
kind Goguet and Bailly especially distinguished themselves.
Without irrelevance I might proceed to show how, in the
latter part of the eighteenth century, the conception of his-
torical progress was supplemented by that of a universal de-
velopment of nature, and to describe the forms in which this
latter hypothesis displayed itself. Its origination was due to
a variety of causes, and especially to the advances of physical
science, the spread of theoretical materialism, and the in-
creased freedom and boldness of speculation. To trace its his-
tory, however, even as it appears in the writings of Maillet,
1 A collected edition of Boulanger's works (in 8 vols.) was published in 1792.
' LAntiquite devoilee ' and ' Le Despotisme oriental ' are the most important.
Several of the irreligious writings ascribed to him are spurious. ' Le Christian-
isme devoile" ' was fabricated by a person called Damilaville.
322 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOBY IN FRANCE
Diderot, Buffon, Robinet, Dom Deschamps, Lamarck, &c,
would require mucli more space than is at my disposal.
The Abbe- Raynal's ' Philosophical and Political History of
the Settlements and Trade of Europeans in the East and West
Indies' was the most popular of all the historical writings
which appeared in France during the reign of Louis XVI.,
and also one of the most representative of the taste and spirit
of the period. Published in 1771, it rapidly passed through
twenty editions, and was translated into the languages of
almost all civilised peoples. It largely owed the extraordi-
nary favour with which the contemporaries of Raynal received
it to those declamations about liberty and justice, tyrants and
priests, and those effusions of sentimentalism, which now only
give offence. These purpurei pcmni interwoven into it, and
composed, it would appear, for the most part by Diderot,
although they greatly contributed to its immediate success,
have led to its undue depreciation by posterity. It was the
fruit of twenty years' diligent labour, and, intrinsically, a
highly deserving work, containing a vast amount of new and
valuable information, well" arranged, and vividly, although
too rhetorically, presented. It was the first book which
effectively showed how important a factor commerce had
been in modern history. The way in which this was done
was what was truly philosophical in it, not the general and
professedly philosophical reflections which it contains, and
which are mostly superficial and pretentious.
During the progress of the Revolution two works were pub-
lished which professed to delineate philosophically the course
of history. Both were written by enthusiastic advocates of
the principles of eighteenth-century "enlightenment," and
ardent admirers of the Revolution as a grand effort to realise
the true ideal of social life ; by men closely akin in convic-
tions, spirit, and aim. Yet they are of very unequal, merit ;
and while the one may be very briefly dealt with, the other
will require a comparatively lengthened treatment. The two
works referred to are VolUey's ' Ruins ' and Condorcet's
' Sketch/
Constantine Francis Chassebceuf, Count Volney, acquired
fame as a traveller, an orientalist, and an historian. Although
VOLNEY 323
very hostile to religion, he was a sincere, magnanimous, virtu-
ous man. His ' Ruins ; or, A Survey of the Revolutions of
Empires ' (1791), is the work by which he is best known,
although it is much inferior in real value to his ' Travels in
Syria and Egypt,' his ' Description of the Character and Soil
of the United States,' or even his ' Researches on Ancient
-History.' It is a sort of philosophy of history and of religion
based on tenets of Locke, Condillac, Rousseau, and Dupuis.
A general summary of its character and contents may be
given as follows : —
Contemplating the ruins of Palmyra, the author meditates
on the disappearance of extinct empires, and foresees a similar
fate for those which are now most flourishing and powerful.
The genius of history appears to him, and explains that
fatality is a meaningless word, and that the source of human
calamities is in man himself, his passions and faults. Appear-
ing 011 earth as an ignorant savage, man gradually emerges
from this state under the attraction of pleasure and the repul-
sion of pain. His only motive of action, self-love, renders
him at once social and industrious, but also, growing as it
does with the growth of the arts and of civilisation, leads him
to confound happiness with unregulated enjoyment, makes
him avaricious and violent, and causes the strong to oppress
the weak and the weak to conspire against the strong.
Slavery and inequality, war and corruption, have conse-
quently followed on the liberty and equality, peace and
innocence, of primitive times. But as man is perfectible
this condition of things cannot be permanent, and during
the last three centuries there has been great progress : intel-
lects have been brought into communication as never before ;
knowledge has, thanks especially to printing, been marvel-
lously diffused ; discoveries and inventions of all kinds mul-
tiplied and utilised. Humanity is now fairly started on a
career of conquest ; the emancipation of the mind is rapidly
advancing. Soon morality itself will come to be rationally
viewed; individuals and nations will recognise it to be the
object of a physical science ; it will be universally acknowl-
edged that there is only one law, that of nature ; only one
code, that of reason ; only one throne, that of justice ; only
324 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
one altar, that of concord. When men clearly see what
morality is, and consequently clearly see that it is their own
security and advantage, they will not fail to practise it.
Next, the ministers and interpreters of all worships are
represented as convoked, as compelled to speak on behalf of
their various creeds, and in doing so, as contradicting and
refuting one another, opposing revelations to revelations,
miracles to miracles, authorities to authorities, until they
render it evident that they are all deceived or deceivers. A
naturalistic explanation is given of the way in which nations
rise and fall, and of the order in which they appear. Religious
ideas are maintained to spring from the impressions of sense,
and to assume in their course a necessary succession of forms.
The stages through which religion is described as passing are
these : (1) worship of the elements and physical powers of
nature; (2) worship of the stars, or Sabeism; (3) worship
of symbols, or idolatry; (4) worship of two principles, or
dualism ; (5) mythical or moral worship, or the system of a
future state ; (6) worship of the world as animated, or of the
universe under different emblems ; (7) worship of the soul
of the world, the vital principle of the universe ; and (8) wor-
ship of the demiurgus, or supreme artificer. Christianity is
represented as the allegorical worship of the sun. The entire
development of religion is exhibited as a vain and illusory
process ; all the ideas and beliefs which it implies as uncer-
tain and unverifiable. Men are, consequently, exhorted to
renounce all opinions regarding a spiritual world, and to
concern themselves only with that perceptible world of which
alone they can know anything.
Among the last words of the work are these, and they ex-
press well its chief conclusion : "If we would reach uniformity
of opinion, we must previously attain certainty, and verify the
resemblance of our ideas to their models. Now this cannot
be done except in so far as the objects of our inquiry can be
referred to the testimony, and subjected to the examination,
of our senses. Whatever cannot be brought to this trial is
beyond the limits of our understanding ; we have neither rule
to try it by, nor measure by which to institute a comparison,
nor source of demonstration and knowledge regarding it.
CONDORCET 325
Whence it is obvious that, in order to live in peace and har-
mony, we must consent not to pronounce upon such objects,
nor assign to them importance. We must draw a line of
demarcation between such as can be verified and such as
cannot, and separate by an inviolable barrier the world of
fantastic beings from the world of realities ; that is to say, all
civil effect must be taken away from theological and religious
opinions."
Volney was one of the many precursors of Comte ; and,
indeed, as decided a positivist as Comte himself, in all respects
except in name.1
II
Amidst all the crimes and sufferings of the Revolution
many of the sincerest and worthiest of its partisans, among
whom Condorcet must undoubtedly be numbered, remained
full of confidence and hope. The splendours of a mirage
gave a deceptive beauty to the waste howling wilderness
before them. Faith in the future of the human race strength-
ened them to bear even the horrors of the Reign of Terror ;
faith in a thorough regeneration of the world and a blessed
millennium. It was " a time," says Hegel, " in which a spir-
itual enthusiasm thrilled through the world, as if the recon-
ciliation between the divine and secular was now first accom-
plished"; "a time," says Wordsworth, —
" In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance !
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime enchantress — to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name."
The 'Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de
l'Esprit Humain,' written by Marie-Jean- Antoine-Nicolas
Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, in 1793, is thoroughly char-
1 Fr. Picavet, in his valuable work ' Les Ideologues, F-ssai sur l'histoire des
idees et des theories scientifiques, philosopffiques, religieuses, etc., en France
depuis 1789' (1891), treats of Volney, pp. 128-140; of Dupuis, pp. 140-143; 'and of
Condorcet, pp. 101-116.
326 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IS FRANCE
acteristic of the time.1 Although composed when its author
lay concealed from the emissaries of Robespierre in the garret
of a friend, it is pervaded by a spirit of excessive hope-
fulness, and pictures a glorious future as at hand. It was
with the vision of the guillotine before him, and in con-
stant dread of a violent death, that this brilliant and gener-
ous, if somewhat fanciful and vacillating man, sincere in his
love and strong in his faith towards humanity, comforted
himself after all other religion had died out of his soul, by
trying to demonstrate that the evils of life had arisen from
a conspiracy of priests and rulers against their fellows, and
from the bad laws and bad institutions which they had suc-
ceeded in creating; but that the human race would finally
conquer its enemies, and so completely free itself of its evils
that even disease and suffering should almost cease, and truth,
liberty, equality, justice, and love should universally abound.
His work is thus a sort of hymn in celebration of the dignity
of man, and in salutation of the advent of a reign of right-
eousness and peace, which cannot fail to interest and move,
were it only from the fact that it was composed almost under
the axe of the executioner.
The circumstances in which it was written were thus the
most unfavourable that can well be imagined for minute
accuracy of execution, and must, in the eyes of a candid
critic, go far to excuse its numerous errors of detail. It
would be ungenerous to insist on these, and it would be for
our purpose, or any good purpose, useless, as the only value
which can reasonably be attributed to the book lies in its
general ideas. It must be considered, as its author wished
it to be considered, as a mere programme of principles — a
sketch to be filled up in a subsequent and elaborate work
1 On Condorcet as an historical philosopher, see Auguste Comte, 'Cours de
Philosophic Positive,' iv. 252-262, and ' Systeme de Politique Positive,' iv., appen-
dice general, 109-111; Laurent, 'Etudes,' xii. 121-126; Morley's "Condorcet" in
' Critical Miscellanies ' ; Mathurin Gillet, ' L'Utopie de Condorcet,' 1884 ; Janet,
ii. 682-692; and two articles of Renouvier, 'Crit. Phil.,' annee x., pp. 117-128,
145-160. I have restated the most fundamental of Comte's criticisms on pp. 328,
329. I may also refer to my article on Condorcet in ' Encycl. Brit.' In the inter-
val between the publication of Turgot's ' Discourses ' and Condorcet's ' Sketch,'
there appeared writings of a somewhat kindred nature by Iselin, Wegelin, Kant,
and Herder, and by Ferguson, Lord Kames, and Priestley, but Condorcet's work
bears no traces of their influence. In historical philosophy Turgot was his imme-
diate, and almost sole teacher.
CONDORCET 327
could the guillotine be escaped, which, alas ! -was not possi-
ble, except by suicide in prison.
The fundamental idea of Condorcet is that of a human per-
fectibility which has manifested itself in continuous progress
in the past, and must lead to indefinite progress in the future.
Man, he endeavours to show, has advanced uninterruptedly at
a more or less rapid rate, from the moment of his appearance
on earth to the present time, in the path of enlightenment,
virtue, and happiness, and will continue to advance so long
as the world lasts. As the whole intellectual and moral life
of the individual is developed out of a susceptibility to sen-
sations, and the power of retaining, discriminating, and com-
bining them, so all the varieties of civilisation, all the phases
of history, are but the collective work of the individuals thus
humbly endowed. Their starting-point is the lowest stage of
barbarism : the first men possessing no superiority over the
other animals which did not result directly from superiority
of bodily organisation.
The stages which the human race has already gone through,
or, in other words, the great epochs of history, are regarded
as nine in number. Of these the first three can confessedly
be described only conjecturally from general observations as
to the development of the human faculties and the analogies
of savage life. In the first epoch, men are united into hordes
of hunters and fishers, who acknowledge in some degree pub-
lic authority and the claims of family relationship, and who
make use of an articulate language, " invented by some men
of genius, the eternal benefactors of the human race, but
whose names and countries are for ever buried in oblivion."
In the second epoch, the pastoral state, property is introduced,
and along with it inequality of conditions, and even slavery,
but also leisure to cultivate intelligence, to invent some of
the simpler arts, and to acquire some of the more elementary
truths of science. In the third epoch, the agricultural state,
as leisure and wealth are greater, labour better distributed
and applied, and the means of communication increased and
extended, progress is still more rapid. With the invention
of alphabetic writing the conjectural part " of history closes,
and the more or less authenticated part commences. By an
328 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FBANCE
omission still greater than Bossuet's, China, India, "the five
great monarchies," Judea, and, in fact, all nations compre-
hended in the oriental world, are passed unappreciated and
even unnoticed; and the fourth and fifth epochs are repre-
sented as corresponding to Greece and Eome. The middle
ages are divided into two epochs, the former of which ter-
minates with the Crusades, and the latter with the invention
of printing. The eighth epoch extends from the invention of
printing to the revolution in the method of philosophic think-
ing accomplished by Descartes. And the ninth epoch begins
with that great intellectual revolution and ends with the great
political and moral revolution of 1789, and is illustrious
through the discovery of the true system of the physical uni-
verse by Newton, of human nature by Locke and Condillac,
and of society by Turgot, Price, and Rousseau.
Now nothing can be more important in any attempt at a
philosophical delineation of the course of history than the
division into periods. That ought of itself to exhibit the
plan of the development, the line and distance already trav-
ersed, and the direction of future movement. It should be
made on a single principle, so that the series of periods may
be homogeneous, but on a principle so fundamental and com-
prehensive as to pervade the history not only as a whole but
in each of its elements, and to be able to furnish guidance to
the historian of any special development of human knowledge
and life. The discovery and proof of such a principle is one
of the chief services which the philosophy of history may be
legitimately expected to render to the historians of science,
of religion, of morality, and of art. And if it fail to render
this service, this can only be because it has failed to accom-
plish its own distinctive and proper work — failed to grasp
and follow the thread that guides through the labyrinth of
history, and allows the mind to trace in some measure its
plan, and to conjecture with some degree of probability its
purpose. But failure is very possible, success very difficult.
No superficial glance can possibly detect, nor happy accident
disclose, the true principle of historical division, any more
than of botanical "or zoological classification. It does not lie
on the surface, but in the essential nature of the thing, and
implies a thorough acquaintance therewith, a profound insight
CONDOECET 329
into the course and tendencies of history, attainable only-
through prolonged and patient study, and after repeated
failures. Condorcet had not the requisite knowledge of the
subject ; had not gone deep enough in his investigations into
historical development, to apprehend the principle by which
its stages or periods should be determined; and could only
seem to determine them by fixing, and even that on inadequate
grounds, on certain conspicuous events sufficiently distant
from each other to divide the whole of European history into
a few ages, and yet not so unequally distant that the inequal-
ity should of itself show the non-co-ordinacy of these ages.
And not only is there no proof given that the events which
are thus selected as the origins of periods, the turning-points
of history, are all of the same rank — that is, on a level as
to importance or influence; but, as Comte has well remarked,
they are not even of the same order, one being industrial,
another political, another scientific, another religious.
Another defect must be indicated. Condorcet belonged to
a generation which was narrow and unjust in its judgment of
many great causes, and he did not in that respect rise above
the general spirit of his time. He carries into his estimate
of the past not the calm catholic spirit of the philosopher, but
the passionate and prejudiced spirit of sectarian fanaticism.
He sees no beauty or worth in philosophy except when it
attempts to explain the world on mechanical and sensational
principles, and in religion none at all. Idealism and Chris-
tianity appear to him as simply delusions ; Monarchy and the
Church as two essentially pernicious institutions, the one of
which has persistently tyrannised over men by brute force,
and the other constantly betrayed them with lies. These
views are of course, ;both uncharitable and inconsistent with
the testimony of history. They are inconsistent even with
Condorcet's own fundamental notions of progress and perfec-
tibility. Progress, continuous and indefinite improvement,
should have reasons. But what reasons for them can there
be, if all the most powerful and durable agencies and institu-
tions in history have been essentially obstructive and hurtful?
How coiies it, if such be the case, that retrogression is not
the characteristic of history instead of progress ? It might
have been possible for Condorcet, had his philosophy been
330 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
other than it was, to have evaded if not avoided this difficulty
by ascribing progress to a power inherent in human nature,
and capable of not only dispensing with any external aid, but
of triumphing over every external opposition — to an innate
spontaneous and irresistible faculty; but his sensationalism
and denial of a priori principles and original tendencies pre-
cluded his having recourse to this explanation, and left him
no escape from self-contradiction. History itself is less
illogical; never contradicts itself; never presents anything
good or bad for which there is not a sufficient cause. If there
has been anywhere improvement in the world, it has been
because there the forces of good have been on the whole
mightier than those of evil; and if anywhere deterioration,
it has been because there the superior strength has been on
the side of evil.
The most original, and, notwithstanding its errors, the
most important part of Condorcet's treatise, is that which has
been most censured and ridiculed, the last chapter, which
has for subject the future of the human race. There the idea
that generalisations from the past must supply data for pre-
vision of the future in historical as well as in physical science,
is for the first time perhaps adequately insisted on.
"If man,'' it is said, "can predict with almost entire confidence
phenomena when he knows their laws, if even when these laws are
unknown he can from experience of the past foresee with great proba-
bility the events of the future, why should it be deemed chimerical to
attempt to picture the probable destiny of the human race in accordance
with the results of its history? The sole foundation of belief in the
natural sciences is the idea that the general laws, known or'ignored,
which regulate the phenomena of the universe, are necessary and con-
stant ; and for what reason should this hold less true of the intellectual
and moral faculties of man than of the other operations of nature?"
Since opinions formed on the experience of the past are the rules of
conduct adopted by the wiser portion of mankind, why should the philoso-
pher be forbidden to rest his conjectures on the same basis, provided he
attribute to them no greater certainty than the number, the consistency,
and the accuracy of his observations warrant? 1
It is owing to his having at once distinctly enunciated this
idea and sought to realise it that both Saint-Simon aj$d Comte
have assigned to his work a place among the most important
1 Esqnisse, pp. 327, 328 (2d ed.).
CONDORCET 331
productions of the scientific mind, although thoroughly aware
of its defects. The truth of the idea is not dependent on any-
exaggerated view of progress as the continuous, ubiquitous,
inevitable manifestation of an inherent faculty or force, but
on the simple fact of progress in directions which can be traced ;
nor is it affected by mistakes which Condorcet may have made
in his delineation of the future. And without any wish to
excuse or explain away his mistakes of the latter kind, I
believe they have not only been 'more than sufficiently dwelt
on, but greatly exaggerated. It is erroneous to represent
him as assuming the rSle of prophet farther than that a cer-
tain sort of prevision seemed to him essentially involved in
historical science, — farther than that general laws regulative
of the past seemed to him to warrant general inferences re-
specting the future. He confined himself, however, entirely
to general inferences, and never pretended to predict particular
events. He confined himself, indeed, to infer .from the entire
history of the past three tendencies as likely to be character-
istic features of the future ; and to believe with measure in
any of them appears to involve nothing obviously absurd and
Utopian.
These three features of the future, or tendencies of the
present, or directions of progress, are : 1, The destruction of
inequality between nations ; 2, the destruction of inequality
between classes; and 3, the improvement of individuals.
Now, as to the first, the destruction of inequality between
nations, Condorcet does not thereby mean that nations tend
to become, or ever will become, in all respects alike, which
would really amount to holding that nations, as nations, must
cease to exist. Nationality is inconsistent with absolute
equality. But only inexcusable carelessness can explain
any one's supposing him to believe in such equality. That
which he speaks of is equality of liberty or right, the
ordinary signification of the term among his contempora-
ries, and that which is found in the legislation of the period
— e.g., in the Codes of 1791 and 1793. Hence when he
says nations tend to equality he means simply, as he him-
self tells us, that they all tend to freedom ; that liberty is
what they are alike entitled to, and will alike enjoy ; that
nature has not doomed the inhabitants of any country to
332 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FKANCE
slavery either of body or mind, but made them for indepen-
dence and the exercise of reason. The differences or distinc-
tions which flow from the very use of reason and freedom do
not seem to him incompatible with equality, but only those
which cannot be traced to the true, i.e., free moral personality
as their ground; only those which, on the contrary, attack
and seek to subvert it, by denial of the right of all nations
without distinction to rational freedom. Nations, he thinks,
are equal if equally free, and are all tending to equality
because all tending to freedom.
Thus understood, the disappearance of inequality between
nations implies the disappearance of inequality between the
different classes of citizens in a nation. It presupposes that
the right to freedom does not divide but unite men, belonging
of its very nature to all ; that
" Our life is turned
0»t of her course, wherever man is made
An offering or a sacrifice, a tool
Or implement, a passive thing employed
As a brute mean, -without acknowledgment
Of common right or interest in the end ;
Used or abused, as selfishness may prompt."
The inequality between the different classes in a nation com-
prises inequality of wealth and instruction; and, according
to Condorcet, the tendency of historical progress is towards
equality as regards both. In saying this of wealth, he does
not mean that the time is coming when no man will be richer
than another, but simply that the numerous distinctions be-
tween men according to their wealth which have been origi-
nated by the civil laws, and perpetuated by factitious means,
are destined to be swept away ; and that their abolition, leav-
ing property, trade, and industry entirely free, must help to
destroy all fixed class distinctions — moneyed inclusive — all
casteship, in society. He may have been mistaken. Many
think that the experience of our own country since it entered
on the path which Condorcet recommended to the world, goes
to show that wealth left to itself tends not to equality but to
inequality; and the most democratic of nations, the United
States, far from manifesting, as might have been looked for,
an equal or higher faith in freedom of trade, shows a singular
aversion to it. Under the English rSgime of liberty, the rich
CONDORCET 333
are always, it is said, growing richer, and the poor poorer,
and so the distance between rich and poor is continually
widening instead of lessening. But does the little wealth
of the poor tend when free to decrease in the same mode and
sense that the much wealth of the rich tends to increase ? Or
must not, on the contrary, when free, the tendency alike of
small and of large sums be to increase ; and if the little of
the poor be actually seen to become less, must it not be owing
to some disturbing cause, such as population outgrowing
capital, and neither to freedom nor the increase of the riches
of the rich in a state of freedom, both of which of themselves
only tend to diminish the poverty of the poor ? And granting
that the difference of fortune between the wealthiest and the
poorest member of the community is greater at present than
ever it was, are not the number of intermediate fortunes, their
gradation, and the way in which they pass from one person to
another, sufficient notwithstanding to establish the existence
of that tendency to equality, even as regards wealth, for
which Condorcet contended? Further, have we not simply
to look around us and mark how rapidly landed property is
passing out of noble into trading and mercantile hands, and
how vainly the new proprietors must strive to gain the social
position of their predecessors, in order to convince ourselves
that free trade is a most democratic thing, surely and steadily
pulling the higher classes of society down to a lower level ?
It may very well be thought, then, that in this respect society
is tending in the direction indicated by Condorcet; but even
if not, his opinion is simply erroneous, and neither absurd
nor Utopian ; a proposition for discussion, not for ridicule.
So when he speaks of a tendency in history to equality of
instruction, equality must again be understood as an attri-
bute of liberty, and as meaningless or mischievous when
detached from it and regarded as a separate or co-ordinate
principle. He in the plainest terms rejects the notion that
no man is to receive more learning than another, but all are
to be taught the same things and to the same extent. The
equality of instruction for which he contends is certainly not
that which would give all men the same amount of knowl-
edge ; it is only that which will suffice to destroy all slavish
334 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
dependence. He holds that by a choice of the appropriate
kinds of knowledge and of the means best adapted to com-
municate them, the entire mass of a people may be instructed
in all that each individual needs to know in order to secure
the free development of his industry and faculties; that
equality carried thus far, the inequality of the natural facul-
ties of each would benefit all as regards both science and
practice ; and that all men ought to receive so much educa-
tion, and that of such a character, as will enable them to live
as men, as rational and free beings, and not as brute creatures
which are driven and ruled from without for the pleasure and
interest of a master. The pages in which he states what he
means by " the equality of instruction which we can hope to
attain, and with which we ought to be satisfied," and indi-
cates his reasons for believing that it would be favourable to
a real equality in every sphere of life, even where natural
inequalities are allowed free development, are as admirable
for their lucidity and reasonableness as for their eloquence ;
they are full of a noble enthusiasm, but contain not a sen-
tence which warrants the accusation of utopianism.
The third and most famous inference of our author is the
indefinite perfectibility of human nature itself, intellectually,
morally, and physically. He uses even the term infinite, and
Cousin and other critics have taken him rigidly at his word,
but very unfairly, as he clearly shows his meaning merely to
be that no fixed term or limit is assignable to progress. He
has nowhere denied that progress is conditioned both by the
constitution of humanity and the character of its surround-
ings, but he affirms that these conditions are compatible with
endless progress ; and, in fact, only a being not absolute and
infinite, but conditioned and finite, is capable of progress
of any kind. An absolutely infinite progress, implying the
progress of an absolutely infinite being, is a contradiction in
terms ; but Condorcet was quite right in thinking that the
human mind can assign no fixed limits to its own advance-
ment in knowledge, and that science both as to wealth of
results and improvement of methods may grow more and more
for ever, constantly finding its horizon recede, constantly
attaining a wider and clearer range of vision. The very
CONDORCET 335
attempt, indeed, of reason to assign limits to its own prog-
ress, is the same sort of absurdity as would be a man's attempt-
ing to leap out of or into his own body. It is not necessary,
however, here to have recourse to the metaphysical reasoning
which establishes this fundamental truth of metaphysical
science; it is enough merely to ask those who deny it to
state where they suppose knowledge is necessitated to stop.
Thus far, then, Condorcet was on firm ground. But he went
farther; he supposed that intellectual acquisitions do not
entirely pass away with the individuals or generations which
have made them, but are to some extent transmitted or inher-
ited; and that in consequence there is in the course of ages a
gradual increase not only of the intellectual wealth, but of
the intellectual ability of men. It may be so. The opinion
is not absurd, not indefensible. It seems an almost neces-
sary inference from the theory of development which was only
struggling into existence when Condorcet wrote, but which
is now the most prevalent and influential of scientific doc-
trines. It is to be regretted that Condorcet did not indicate
the reasons for his opinion, or attempt to show that the facts
which at least appear to contradict it in reality do not.
Doubtless he would have done so had adverse fate not
prevented him. The want, however, of any proof or inves-
tigation of the kind does not affect his main position. The
doctrine of the indefinite perfectibility of knowledge is quite
distinct from, and rests on quite other grounds than, the doe-
trine of the indefinite perfectibility of the intellectual consti-
tution. Philosophy, science, poetry, and politics may have
made constant progress from the origin of history to the
present day; and yet the philosophic genius of Plato, the
scientific genius of Aristotle, the poetical genius of Homer,
and the political genius of Pericles, may never have been
surpassed or even equalled.
Condorcet believed as firmly in the indefinite progress of
morality as of knowledge. He thought the knowledge of
moral truth could not retrograde or remain stationary if the
knowledge of all other truth advanced, and that, as in other
spheres so in ethics, action would correspond to knowledge.
"Men could not," he says, "become enlightened upon the
336 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FBANCE
nature and development of their moral sentiments, upon the
principles of morality, and upon the natural motives for con-
forming their conduct to their interests, either as individuals
or as members of society, without making an advancement in
moral practice not less real than in moral science itself."
"Just as the mathematical and physical sciences contribute
to improve the arts that are employed for our most simple
wants, is it not equally, " he asks, " in the necessary order of
nature that the progress of the moral and political sciences
should exercise a similar influence upon the motives that
direct our sentiments and our actions ? " The problem with
which he had to deal, however, was too complex and difficult
to be solved in so simple and superficial c way. He was in
all probability right in holding that there has been consider-
able moral progress in the past, and may be illimitable moral
progress in the future ; right in maintaining that the growth
of knowledge is naturally favourable to the diffusion of
virtue, and that the destruction of false and the establishment
of true beliefs are indispensable to the improvement of laws,
institutions, and manners ; right, in short, as against all who
have represented ignorance as the condition of innocence,
intellectual progress as indifferent or prejudicial to moral
advancement, or morality as having been wholly or nearly
stationary. On the other hand, he was as probably wrong
in supposing that the progress of knowledge, and even of
knowledge of ethical subjects, necessarily or universally
brings with it improvement of conduct, or that virtue must
be in proportion to general enlightenment; wrong in believ-
ing, or at least virtually assuming, that moral progress is
dependent on no other causes than intellectual progress and
those influences to which such progress is itself due; and
wrong, like so many of his contemporaries, in regarding man
as good by nature, and only evil owing to ignorance, errone-
ous instruction, or bad institutions. He overlooked the
greatest of all impediments to moral progress, those which
are inherent in human nature itself, in the lusts of the flesh,
in the passions of the soul. He asked: " What vicious habit
can be mentioned, what practice contrary to good faith, what
crime even, the origin and first cause of which may not be
CONDORCET
337
traced in the legislation, institutions, and prejudices of the
country in which we observed such habit, such practice, or
such crime to be committed ? " But he did not ask : Whence
have legislation, institutions, and prejudices derived the
injustice and vice which are in them ? He failed to perceive
that legislation, institutions, and prejudices are effects, not
"first causes."
Admission of the doctrine of indefinite moral progression
does not necessitate admission of the doctrine that the men
of later generations will be born with better moral disposi-
tions than those of earlier times. True or false, this latter
doctrine of Condorcet has no essential connection with the
former. It is proper to add that he himself has not presented
it as more than " a conjecture which enlarges the boundary
of our hopes," and which "analogy, an investigation of the
human faculties, and even some facts, appear to authorise."
The extension of the doctrine of perfectibility to the physi-
cal constitution of man is its most doubtful application ; and
Condorcet at this point must, I think, be admitted to have
fallen into extravagance. It is inexcusable, indeed, to repre-
sent him, as some careless or unscrupulous critics have done,
as holding that our physical constitution may be so perfected
that man will live for ever ; he expressly says, " certainly man
will not become immortal." He believes, however, that the
improvements in medicine, sanitary science, political econ-
omy, and the art of government, may vastly, and even inimit-
ably, prolong life ; " that a period will arrive when death will
be nothing more than the effect either of extraordinary acci-
dents or of the increasingly slow destruction of the vital
powers; and that the duration of the interval between the
birth of man and this destruction, will itself have no assign-
able limit." The distance between the moment in which
man begins to exist and the common term when, in the course
of nature, without malady, and without accident, he finds it
impossible any longer to exist, will, he affirms, for ever
increase, unless its increase be prevented by physical revolu-
tions, either in conformity to a law by which, though approach-
ing continually an unlimited extent, it could never reach it,
or a law by which, in the immensity of ages, it may acquire
338 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FRANCE
a greater extent than any determinate quantity which may he
assigned as its limit.1
Now there is much in this theory which is true and reason-
able. We certainly do not exactly know the normal limits
of human existence, and cannot precisely tell when death
must necessarily occur even in the undisturbed course of
nature. That the rate of mortality diminishes with the.
advance of medical science and the progress of civilisation is
a proposition which had probability in its favour when Con-
dorcet wrote, and which has been amply established since.
However difficult it may be to prove, it is easy to conceive,
and in no way inherently absurd to suppose, that a time will
come when death will result only from accidents which cannot
be foreseen or from slow decay. Reason may not be able
positively to authorise, but neither is it entitled positively
to forbid, the hope that the actual average duration of human
life will approximate indefinitely to its average normal or
natural duration. If, when Condorcet speaks of the infinite
prolongation of human life, he speaks merely of its mean
duration approaching indefinitely its natural limits, then there
is hardly anything unreasonable in what he teaches as to the
physical perfectibility of man. And even according to so
careful an expositor as M. Janet this is really all that he
teaches on the subject.2 I cannot, however, so interpret our
author's language. He appears to me plainly to mean that
"la dure*e moyenne de la vie," "la dure"e de l'intervalle
moyen," is not the average of actual but of normal life — not
the distance between birth and death as it is, .but " la distance
entre la moment ou l'homme commence a vivre et l'dpoque
commune ou naturellement sans maladie, sans accident,
il e'prouve la difficult^ d'etre;" an average and distance,
therefore, which can only be indefinitely prolonged by the
indefinite recession or retreat of such death as is the natural
limit of life. That death will indefinitely recede, and the
distance between the natural limits of life illimitably increase,
is, I think, his doctrine; and it is one for which I cannot
perceive that we have any evidence. The decrease of the
death-rate of a country is no indication that the bodies of its
inhabitants are becoming endowed with more enduring powers
1 Esquisse, pp. 379-383. 2 II. p. 689.
WALCKENAEE
339
of life. Not a step has }ret been made towards proving that
there is an organic evolution towards longevity at work either
among human beings or mere animals.
Condorcet was aware that his hopes as to human progress
were dependent on its not being arrested by physical revolu-
tions, on the earth retaining its situation in the system of the
universe, and on no change occurring which would prevent
the human race from exercising the faculties or finding the
resources which it at present possesses. A more thorough
and searching investigation would have shown him that soci-
ety carries within itself greater dangers to its progress than
any which it is likely to encounter from without, and that
these are of such a kind that we cannot foresee to any great
distance the future of humanity. His optimism as to that
future was as uncritical as is our later pessimism regarding
it. It was not a legitimate inference from his science ; it was
his religion, — the faith which yielded him strength and con-
solation after other faith had been lost.
The erroneousness of Condorcet's opinion as to the indefi-
nite prolongation of human life is clearly pointed out in the
'Essai sur l'Histoire de l'Esp&ce Humaine,' par C. A. Walck-
enaer, published in 1798. It is shown that bodily growth is
otherwise limited than social progress, and that although
individuals must die in a short term of years, it may be pos-
sible for nations to live for an indefinite time. The work is
characterised by good sense ; gives evidence of a large amount
of reading; and touches instructively on a great number of
points. It is not so important, however, as to call for an
extended notice. It distinguishes and distributes the stages
of social development according to the modes in which men
obtain their subsistence. Hence the first period of history is
represented by peoples who nourish themselves chiefly with
the spontaneous productions of the ground; the second by
peoples that live chiefly by fishing and hunting ; the third by
pastoral peoples ; the fourth by agricultural peoples unaided
by commerce and manufactures ; the fifth by peoples at once
agricultural, commercial, and industrial; and the sixth by
peoples in the decadence of the arts, manufactures, and trade.
CHAPTER V
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GENERAL REMARKS —
HISTORIOGRAPHY
The Revolution, after passing through various stages dur-
ing which the minds of men were too engrossed with the
events of the day to be able to study those of bygone ages,
issued in the military despotism of Napoleon, which proved
as unfavourable to historical science as democratic disorder
and violence had been. Napoleon was the persistent op-
pressor of free thought. He feared and hated speculation ;
cherished a mean jealousy of every kind of intellectual
superiority which he could not enslave ; and exerted the
immense force which his genius and fortune gave him to
turn reason from every path of inquiry which might lead to
conclusions unfavourable to his own schemes and interests.
He made France, as has been said, one soldier, and himself
the god of that soldier ; and to confirm and perpetuate the
idolatry, he strove to extinguish light and to crush liberty.
He failed as he deserved to do ; and was signally punished
for his selfish abuse of vast powers, and for preferring a bane-
ful glory to loyal service in the cause of France and of
humanity. When he fell, the profusion with which ideas
burst forth showed how ineffective all his efforts at the
repression of thought had been. By partially and tempo-
rarily checking its utterance he had probably rather favoured
than hindered its formation. During the period of compara-
tive silence which he enforced, men did not cease to investi-
gate and reflect, although they had to keep their conclusions
to themselves. Consequently when freedom returned with
the Restoration, it soon appeared that there had been grow-
ing up diverse systems of opinion, all resting on, or at least
involving, general theories of history.
340
GENERAL KBMAEKS 341
Before reviewing these theories, however, I must indicate
some of the conditions which favoured their rise and affected
their development.
A change which took place in philosophical belief was one
condition of the kind. What little philosophy was taught
in France during the Empire was that which had prevailed
in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Condillacian
ideology which derived all knowledge from impressions of
sense. But this doctrine was already in decay at the com-
mencement of the nineteenth century, and imperial toleration
did not tend to reinvigorate it or to increase its influence.
Some of the latest representatives of ideology were accom-
plished and able men, but they required to discuss only safe
themes and to speak as under authority; they could not
apply their principles with independence to the solution of
religious, political, or social questions, or to the elucidation
of the course or significance of history, or, indeed, to the dis-
cussion of any subject of great and general interest. Besides,
their doctrine itself was increasingly felt to be barren and
unprofitable. Imagination and feeling, the heart and spirit,
metaphysics and religion, made more and more emphatic
claims to a satisfaction which a doctrine reducing everything
to sensation and using only analysis could not give. Ideol-
ogy scarcely survived the Empire. The modifications made
on it by Laromiguidre and Maine de Biran rendered only
more apparent its radical insufficiency. Royer-Collard, in
opposing to it the philosophy of Reid, showed the necessity
of getting rid of it, and suggested the possibility of finding
a better system. Cousin enthroned in its stead an eclectic
philosophy which professed to be the outcome of all the phi-
losophies of the past; to reject what was false and to combine
what was true in sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mys-
ticism; to employ as its method close internal observation,
strict analysis, and careful induction, yet to rise thereby from
psychology to ontology, and not to neglect dealing with any
of the great problems of metaphysics or to refuse satisfaction
to any of the real interests of religion ; to welcome light from
all quarters, and to stimulate research in every direction ; and
to unite philosophy and history in the most intimate and fruit-
342 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FRANCE
ful co-operation. A spiritualist philosophy derived from or
akin to the eclecticism of Cousin was the predominant philos-
ophy in France for about forty years, and is still not without
vigour. What the philosophical situation in France has been
during the last thirty years need not be at present described.1
A change occurred in regard to religion analogous to that
as to philosophy. Before and during the Revolution a fanati-
cally anti-religious spirit prevailed. But this spirit was dis-
credited by the excesses to which it gave rise, as well as by
its coldness, poverty, and self-sufficiency. A reaction ensued
of which Napoleon took advantage, and to which Chateau-
briand's ' Ge"nie du Christianisme ' gave an immense impulse,
as much because of its opportuneness as of its ability. Crowds
flocked to the reopened churches ; Catholicism regained favour.
Napoleon's despotic conduct towards the Catholic clergy and
the Pope seriously injured the Gallicanism which he sup-
ported, greatly strengthened the Ultramontanism which he
opposed, and gave popularity and influence to the writings
and ideas of De Maistre and De Bonald. The sceptical and
atheistical views which had been current in the eighteenth
century were, of course, widely held during the period of
the Empire, but they were not allowed expression, and only
found vent after the Restoration when clerical and political
reactionaries stirred up slumbering revolutionary passions.
Madame de Stael, Benjamin Constant, and others like-minded,
while not acknowledging supernatural revelation, warmly
advocated the claims of religion, and insisted that religious
faith was not merely intellectual assent, but also emotion,
affection, and self-surrender, a conscious experience of life in
God. Since the Restoration the religious condition of France
has been very unstable and fluctuating. Religious indepen-
dence and reasonableness are comparatively little diffused, and
those who possess them are without the union, the organisa-
tion, and the enthusiasm necessary to spread spiritual truth
1 On the history of philosophy in France during the present century see M. Ph.
Damiron, ' Essai sur l'histoire de la Philosophie en France au xixe siecle,' 3d ed.
1835; F. Ravaisson, ' La Philosophie en France au xixc siecle,' 1867, 3d ed. 1889; and
M. Ferraz, ' Histoire de la Philosophie en France au xix» siecle ' ; ' Socialisme,
Naturalisme, et Positivisme,' 1877 ; ' Traditionalisme et Ultramontanisme,' 3d ed.
1880 ; ' Spiritualisme et Liberalisme,' 1887.
GENERAL REMARKS 343
and freedom among a people. Clericalism is admirably or-
ganised and indefatigably active. It abounds in means
and agents of propagandism, and can point to many good
works done and excellent institutions maintained; but it
spreads false and degrading superstitions, is unscrupulous
where its own interests are concerned, and is hopelessly
committed to the denial of rights and liberties essential alike
to individuals and to nations. The more it gains ground and
displays its true character, the more there is evoked a bitter
and passionate spirit of unbelief and irreligion, which far
overshoots its mark, confounds truth and error, good and
evil, and by its blindness and violence increases and consoli-
dates the power of the enemy which it seeks to destroy.
Throughout the present century the religious question has
been keenly agitated in France ; and the course of its discus-
sion has naturally had a very considerable influence on the
general course and character of French historical reflection.
All thoughtful Frenchmen recognise that the question has as
yet been only superficially and inadequately answered.1
The changes which philosophy and religion underwent were
accompanied by a corresponding change in literature. For
more than two hundred years the so-called classical style had
been alone cultivated. The boldest innovators of the eigh-
teenth century did not dream of emancipating themselves from
the rules based on the assumption of its exclusive legitimacj-.
Rousseau and Diderot, B. de Saint-Pierre and A. Chenier,
were, indeed, precursors of the coming change, but uncon-
sciously. With the opening years of the present century,
however, there began to make itself felt throughout France, as
throughout the rest of Europe, a new life which the old liter-
ary forms could not contain or satisfy. It was a freer and
richer, a more natural and yet subtler life, and it originated a
movement of revolt against the inherited traditions and con-
ventions, — a movement which claimed for the ideal and
1 De Pressense"'s ' L'Eglise et la Revolution,' D'Haussonville's ' L'Eglise romaine
et le premier Empire,' and A. Leroy Beaulieu's 'Les Catholiques liberaux et
l'Eglise de France depuis 1830 a nos jours ' ('Rev. des Deux Mondes,' torn. lxiv.
and lxvi.), form a good introduction to a study of the religious situation, and of
the successive phases assumed by the ecclesiastical question in France during the
nineteenth century.
344 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
infinite a fuller recognition, and for imagination a wider
sphere of activity, which did not hesitate to employ hitherto
unused modes of expression and to convey hitherto unfelt
sentiments, and which thus at once enfranchised speech and
enriched thought. Its representatives, with Victor Hugo at
their head, have renewed French literature in all its forms,
and shown that the French mind and language are abundantly
endowed with powers which they were not previously sus-
pected to possess. Victor Hugo has been, perhaps, as much
the literary king of the nineteenth century as Voltaire was of
the eighteenth. Romanticism greatly affected historiography;
in fact, it so quickened the historical imagination and so
enlarged historical sympathy as almost to transform history
into a new art. It is not likely that the spirit of Romanti-
cism, after having for half a century pervaded and leavened
French literature, will be ever again wholly expelled from it.
But during the last twenty years it has ceased to be its chief
inspiration. At present Naturalism or Realism is predomi-
nant in all departments of literary art.1
The political spirit of France in the nineteenth century has
likewise not been what it was in the eighteenth century. It
has been, considerably less self-confident and dogmatic, much
more hesitating and opportunist ; it has learned not to despise
" accomplished facts" and "the powers that be." The politi-
cians of the Revolution, and the philosophers who were their
teachers, started from faith in certain principles which they
held to be ultimate, certain rights which they regarded as
inalienable, and from these they deductively reached codes
and constitutions which they deemed alone legitimate and
unconditionally applicable. They laid comparatively little
stress on historical considerations. It is a common notion, at
least outside of France, that this is still the way in which
Frenchmen deal with political questions and affairs, owing to
an inveterate characteristic which unfavourably distinguishes
the French from the English and German mind. The political
history of France in the present century does not support this
notion. The weakness most conspicuous in French political
practice since the Restoration has been excessive distrust of
1 See G. Pellissier, ' Le Mouvement Litte'raire au xix« Steele,' 1889.
GENERAL REMARKS 345
reason and principle, excessive deference to history and prece-
dent. Whereas in the revolutionary period men too commonly
acted as if free-will were omnipotent, as if the ideal could be
realised in all circumstances, and as if the past could be pre-
vented from influencing the present or the future, they have
since very widely assumed that there is no other truth than
that of fact and success, that history is a process of fatalistic
evolution, and that both universal rights and individual efforts
are of little moment. The political doctrines which have found
favour in France among our contemporaries and their imme-
diate predecessors have been mostly based on the interpreta-
tion or misinterpretation of history, not drawn by deduction
from true or false principles. The connection between
history and politics has been nowhere so close as in France.
While in Germany the course of historical theorising has
been mainly determined by the movement of philosophy, in
France it has been chiefly affected by the interests and vicissi-
tudes of politics.
Further, the spirit of the eighteenth century decidedly
inclined towards individualism, whereas that of the nineteenth ,
century has, on the whole, tended towards socialism. The
great aim of the men of the eighteenth century was to secure
the rights and liberties of individuals, to remove burdens, to
destroy privileges and inequalities, to weaken the power of
the State and to limit the sphere of its action. It was pre-
dominantly negative and destructive. When the Restoration
allowed opinion freely to manifest itself, it was seen that this
was no longer its general character. What all the great
parties in France were beheld to be aiming at was construc-
tion, organisation. The Ultramontanists or Theocratists were
denouncing the ages of private judgment ; and were urging
that authority should be re-established, and that society
should be built up anew, on the basis on which it had rested
previous to the Renaissance and the Reformation. The
Socialists, while maintaining these ages to be transitionally
necessary, and denying that humanity could be reasonably
expected to return to its medieval condition, admitted that
the epoch of private judgment, the critical epoch, ought not
to be prolonged, but that an organic epoch should be intro-
346 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
duced : hence their schemes for the suppression of poverty
through the organisation of industry. The Constitutionalists
of all shades were at one in maintaining that society ought to
be regarded as an organic system, in which all interests should
be duly recognised and guarded, and all forces properly dis-
tributed and harmonised. The characteristic referred to has
been especially conspicuous in the economic domain. The
condition of the labouring population in France became soon
after the Restoration very different from what it had been
previous to the Revolution or under the Empire. As regards
the class occupied with agriculture, its position was greatly
improved in consequence of the changes effected by the
Revolution. But it lost its relative importance. Mechanical
inventions, chemical discoveries, and the applications of
steam, electricity, &c, to the furtherance of production, gave
vast dimensions to manufactures and trade, led to a redistri-
bution of population, and, in fact, brought about an industrial
revolution as socially influential as the political one which
had been so violent and manifest. It called into existence a
fourth estate more formidable than the third estate, in the
interests of which mainly the Revolution had been effected.
It raised questions which no legislation about land, taxes, or
privileges of birth and rank could settle, — questions as to
the right of private property itself, as to the justice of the
gains of capital employed by individuals in any circumstances,
and as to the duty of attempting to reconstitute and reor-
ganise society with a view to the suppression of competition
and the extinction of poverty. The desire, in many instances
so passionately intense as to be akin to religious fanaticism,
for a revolution, social rather than political, and more
comprehensive and constructive than that with which the
eighteenth century closed, has taken a general and tenacious
hold of the industrial population of France since the Restora-
tion, and has been the cause or occasion of infinite perplexity,
of great calamities, and of many and strange speculations
and schemes.
France, in passing through the changes indicated, has
moved with the movement, and lived in the life, of Europe.
The nations which constitute the European system have never
DAUNOU 347
been less isolated, or more manifoldly and intimately con-
nected, than in the nineteenth century. And France has, at
least since 1815, been singularly open and susceptible to ideas
and influences coming from without. While largely giving to
the nations around her, she has as largely received from them.
She has done nothing entirely by herself. She has produced
unaided and alone neither her philosophy nor her science,
literature, art, or industry. Her philosophy has been drawn
to some extent from Scottish, English, Spanish, and Italian
sources, and to a still greater extent from German sources.
The rise of romanticism in French literature was due to causes
which affected all Europe, and which made themselves felt in
Britain and Germany even earlier than in France. The dis-
cussion of social and religious questions in France has been
influenced by their agitation in neighbouring countries. The
students of physical science and of historical research are
throughout all Europe in incessant communication, fellow-
workers in a commonwealth of which the limits are far wider
than those of nationality, and of which the members must be
on the alert to know what all others similarly engaged are
accomplishing.
The foregoing considerations will find ample confirmation
in the succeeding portion of this volume.
II
The rule of Napoleon was extremely unfavourable to his-
torical study; but even under his reign the classical and
ideological school had three worthy representative historians
in Daunou, Ginguene", and Michaud.
Daunou was born in 1761. He belonged in early life to the
Congregation of the Oratory ; played an active and honoura-
ble part in the Revolution ; and was keeper of the archives
under Bonaparte. After 1819 he taught history in the Col-
lege of France for many years ; was elected perpetual secre-
tary of the Academy of Inscriptions in 1838; was raised to
the peerage in 1839 ; and died in 1840. He was thoroughly
imbued with the ideas of the eighteenth century, while a
Benedictine in his habits. He was of a firm and indepen-
348 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
dent character ; strongly opposed the condemnation of Louis
XVI. to death ; and was the reverse of subservient to Napo-
leon, although he lent him important aid in his controversy
with the Pope. His best historical work was done in connec-
tion with the 'Histoire Litte"raire de France.' The 'Discours
sur l'e"tat des Lettres au xiiie sidcle,' which fills most of the
sixteenth volume, is especially remarkable; and that not
merely for its erudition and clearness of exposition, but even,
considering its author's aversion to the medieval spirit, for
its impartiality.1
Ginguene" (1748-1816) was also a contributor to the 'His-
toire Litteraire de France,' but his claim to remembrance rests
chiefly on his 'Histoire Litteraire d'ltalie' (9 vols., 1811-19).
In this work he depicted the intellectual development of
Italy from the close of the thirteenth to the close of the
sixteenth century, giving a full and interesting, although un-
doubtedly a generally too favourable, account of the literary
products of the whole of that time. His work is indeed
based on, and even largely borrowed from, that of Tiraboschi,
but it has also merits exclusively its own, and is still a book
with which the student of Italian literature cannot dispense.
Michaud (1767-1839), we are told by his oollaborateur and
biographer Poujoulat, "spent almost every moment of twenty
of the best years of his life " on his 'History of the Crusades.'
The result was an immense addition to what was previously
known regarding these extraordinary and eventful movements.
Madame de Stael and the Viscount de Chauteaubriand
initiated in France the literature distinctive of the nineteenth
century. Both exerted a powerful influence on the develop-
ment even of French historical literature.
Madame de Stael (1746-1817) has a place apart among the
illustrious women of the nineteenth century. As a literary
artist she may, perhaps, have been equalled or surpassed by
George Sand, or George Eliot, or some others of her sex; but
not in personal greatness or general influence. No other
woman of the century has shown the same force of intellect, as
wide a range of culture, as firm and comprehensive a grasp of
the principles on which social stability and progress depend,
1 Daunou has been admirably appreciated by Mignet, and unjustly depreciated
by Sainte-Beuve. See also Picavet, ' Les Ideologues,' pp. 399-408.
MADAME DE STAEL 349
or a will as energetic in defence of them, and as resolutely and
righteously defiant towards a seemingly omnipotent despotism.
She owes her unique position, notwithstanding some French
defects and feminine weaknesses, not less to her greatness
and generosity of heart, and her strength and nobility of
character, than to her brilliance and vigour of intellect.
Here, of course, I have only to indicate how her writings
concern the art or the science of history. Her 'De la Lit-
te"rature considered dans ses rapports avec les institutions
sociales ' (1800) showed how much she had been influenced
by Rousseau as a writer, but also how much she was his su-
perior in political and historical intelligence. It assigned to
literature its due place in society and history, insisting on its
importance to them, and pointing out how poor and dull they
must be without it. It exhibited in a clear light the close-
ness of the connection between the development of litera-
ture and of society, and established that literature could not
be judged of aright by merely examining its products in
themselves, apart from the social medium in which, and the
social influences under which, they came into being. It thus
made manifest the insufficiency of literary criticism as it had
hitherto been practised, and the necessity of adopting that
comparative and historical method which Villemain, Sainte-
Beuve, Taine, and others, have since so successfully employed.
It likewise maintained that progress in literature required an
originality which could only be attained by having recourse to
fresh fountains of inspiration, and by absorbing new elements
of life ; and that French literature, in particular, needed for
its reinvigoration to avail itself more of what the Christian
spirit and Germanic thought and imagination could supply
it with. The idea that the history of literature, like that
of humanity in general, is ruled by a law of perfectibility,
pervades the whole book, and is presented with some exag-
geration. 'Corinne' (1807), although a romance, helped to
correct and enlarge historical thought by the views which
it gave of the significance of the fine arts in human life,
and of the place and mission of Italy among the nations.
' L'Allemagne ' (1810) was a still greater event. It was mar-
vellously successful in revealing to Europe the originality
and interest of German philosophy and literature, and in
350 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
preparing the way for their serious and sympathetic study.
It broke down, as Goethe has observed, the wall of intellectual
separation between France and Germany, to the great benefit
of both. The 'Considerations sur la Revolution francaise'
(1818), although an unfinished book, not well planned or
proportioned, and too much of an apotheosis of Necker, is
characterised, on the whole, by a power of insight and of
comprehension greater even than had been displayed in any
of Madame de Stael's previous writings. The causes of the
Revolution are accurately indicated ; its principal events are
impartially judged ; its faults and crimes are condemned as
they deserve, while due allowance is made for circumstances ;
its bad and its good effects are alike exhibited ; and the
conditions of orderly and free government are admirably
expounded.1
Madame de Stael was the leader and inspirer of all among
her French-speaking contemporaries who held fast to what
had been true in the Revolution, and who maintained the
cause of unlicentious liberty and constitutional government.
Two of her friends did good service as historians. Sismondi
(1773-1842) devoted almost fifty years of a laborious exist-
ence to historical research and composition. His ' Histoire des
Republiques Italiennes du Moyen Age ' (16 vols., 1807-1818)
is perhaps his best work; but his 'Histoire des Francais' (31
vols., 1821-1844) was much superior to any previous history
of France. Benjamin Constant (1767-1837) was a practical
politician, not a professional historian, but he wrote a history
of religion from a point of view both new and'true. His ' De
la Religion, considered dans sa source, ses formes et ses de"vel-
bppements ' (5 yols., 1824-1831), traces the progress of the
sentiment which he holds to be the constituent element of
religion, as it purines and perfects itself without ceasing, and
creates and destroys a multitude of dogmatic and ecclesias-
tical systems on its way towards full satisfaction. It was one
of the earliest attempts to treat religion simply as a psycho-
logical and historical phenomenon. The merits of the con-
ception may atone for considerable defects of execution.
1 The literature regarding Madame de Stael is vast. The best works belonging
to it are indicated by M. Albert Sorel in his comprehensive and excellent book,
' Madame de Stael,' published in the series of ' Les Grands Ecrivains Francais.'
CHATEATJBBIAND 351
Chateaubriand (1768-1848), while inferior to Madame de
Stael in understanding and character, had more of the
temperament of genius, more of the spirit of poetry, a keener
feeling of beauty, higher gifts of imagination, and finer
powers of expression. He did sore injustice to his real great-
ness by an inordinate desire of appearing great, and marred
the effect even of chivalrous and magnanimous actions of
which few but himself were capable by his excessive love
of effect. If he failed, however, as a politician, he succeeded
in exerting vast influence as a man of letters. His earliest
work, the ' Essai sur les Revolutions ' (1797), is interesting
to a student of his personal history from the date and circum-
stances of its composition, its sceptical and melancholy tone,
and even its immature and chaotic character; but as a treat-
ment of its theme it can only be regarded as an incoherent
rhapsody. The doctrine of perfectibility is scouted. It is
declared that the human race has not made a step of progress
in the moral sciences; and that even the principles of the
physical sciences, in which alone there has been any advance,
may easily be denied. His ' Ge"nie du Christianisme ' (1802)
had an immense effect in recommending Catholicism to the
popular imagination and heart. It was an apology for Ca-
tholicism, not for Christianity. Par from attempting to dis-
tinguish in Catholicism the Christian from the unchristian
elements, it assumed it to be Christian throughout, and
endeavoured by appeals to fancy and feeling to show how
beautiful, consoling, and strengthening it had been, and was
fitted to be, in all its beliefs and practices. It was most
skilfully accommodated to the state of the public mind
when it appeared, exquisitely adapted to secure the immediate
end which it actually attained, and written with a beauty and
charm of style previously unknown in French prose ; but it
lacked the inner truthfulness without which the glory of art
must pass away before the scrutiny of reason as the flower
of the grass withereth under the heat of the sun. Its influ-
ence was, therefore, extensive rather than intensive, wide but
not enduring. No work published in France, however, con-
tributed so much to discredit the eighteenth-century estimate
of the middle ages, and of their institutions. The ' Martyrs '
(1809) were the opening of a new epoch in historical compo-
352 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
sition. Greek and Christian life were there beautifully
depicted, and the Franks marched to battle fierce and terrible
as when they conquered the Gauls and the Romans. It is well
known how the vivid descriptions of this work, and Sir Walter
Scott's ' Ivanhoe,' acted on the imagination of young Augustin
Thierry, and influenced his choice of a career. They thus
directly contributed to give to France the greatest of his-
torical narrators, one of the most illustrious chiefs of the
modern historical school. The principal historical production
of Chateaubriand is his 'Etudes Historiques,' 4 vols., 1836
(OEuvres Completes, iv.-vii.). It is unfinished and fragmen-
tary, and has been the least read of his works. It shows want
of thoroughness in research, numerous marks of haste in the
form of small inaccuracies, and a decided preference for
striking versions of incidents to those which are more prosaic
but better authenticated. On the other hand, as regards sim-
plicity, vividness, and agreeableness of style, it is surpassed
by few histories of the graphic, narrative kind. The preface,
dated 1831, is of special interest. It indicates the character-
istics of a large number of French historians. It gives a
slight account of Vico's historical philosophy (pp. 47-50).
It vigorously criticises and refutes the fatalistic theory of
history attributed to Thiers and Mignet, and the theory of
the Terror propounded by Jacobin historians (pp. 74-88).
It states the reasons which may be assigned for preferring
any of the various species of history, but maintains that no
one is exclusively valid ; that they may be profitably com-
bined ; and that each historian should follow the natural bent
of his own genius. The book professed to be pervaded and
unified by a comprehensive and original philosophical idea.
It claimed to rest the whole system of humanity on the triple
basis of religious, philosophical, and political truth ; to judge
of the progress in history by the measure of the appropriation
of these three kinds of truth ; and to refer to them all the
facts of history according as there is between them conflict,
separation, or harmony. But this idea is left vague and
undeveloped; it does not penetrate, inspire, or mould the
history. In the ' Etudes,' I may add, Chateaubriand appears
as a decided believer in progress. Notwithstanding his
THIERRY
353
faith in Legitimacy, there could never be any doubt of his
regard for liberty.1
The great masters who initiated in France the various
forms of the historiography distinctive of the nineteenth cen-
tury were Augustin Thierry, De Barante, Guizot, Mignet,
Thiers, and Michelet.
Augustin Thierry (1795-1826) almost perfected historiog-
raphy as a literary art. He has no superior as an animated
and picturesque narrator. There is in his style and mode of
treating a subject a simplicity, breadth, and vividness, a charm
and a force, which remind us of Homer. His ' Conqu§te de
1'Angleterre par les Normands ' casts a spell over the reader
not unlike that of ' Ivanhoe ' itself. His ' Re"cits des Temps
Merovingiens ' gave to ages which had previously seemed the
dullest and dreariest imaginable an interest which has stimu-
lated to various fruitful researches, and which has not yet
passed away. In his 'Lettres sur l'histoire de France,' he
showed with rare effectiveness in what respects the older
historians, when dealing with the medieval period of French
history, had failed to satisfy the requirements of historical
investigation and exposition ; and he exhibited in the clearest
light what these requirements were. In his maturest work,
the ' Essai sur l'histoire de la formation et des progres du Tiers
Etat,' he entered on a path which Guizot had opened, and
followed it up with a success which has excited many to
emulation. He fully recognised that the historian should be
content only with the oldest and most reliable testimony ; and
he constantly referred in support of his statements to what he
believed to be such testimony. His historical criticism, how-
ever, was weak. He often failed sufficiently to sift the evi-
dence; often took false for true witnesses; often failed to
observe the order and relationship in which those whom he
adduced as authorities stood to one another and to the facts.
At times his imagination outran his knowledge. And even his
sympathy with the weak and vanquished exercised a disturb-
ing influence on his sense of historical justice. This was in a
i On Chateaubriand see Villemain, ' Le Tribune Moderne, M. de Chateaubriand,'
1858 ; Sainte-Beuve, ' Chateaubriand et son Groupe Litte'raire sous l'Empire,'
1861 ; and the article on Chateaubriand in Sir A, Alison's Essays.
354 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
considerable measure the cause why he represented the history
of England to so exaggerated an extent as the history of
a conflict between Saxons and Normans, and that of France
as the history of a conflict between Gauls and Franks. M.
Amedde Thierry, by his ' Histoire des Gaulois,' ' Histoire de
la Gaule sous 1' administration romaine,' ' Re"cits de l'histoire
romaine au iv° et v° si&cles,' ' Histoire de Saint-Jerome,' &c,
has rendered scarcely less valuable services to historical study
than his illustrious brother.
M. de Barante (1782-1866) published in 1824 his 'Histoire
des Dues de Burgogne de la maison de Valois.' It is purely
narrative, and composed in the style, and largely even in the
words, of the primary authorities, Froissart and other chron-
iclers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It seemed to
him that the history of the period with which he had under-
taken to deal could not be otherwise reproduced with so much
exactness and circumstantiality, so much natural life and local
colour. He did not deem it expedient to pronounce on the
moral character of the events which he describes ; but this was
not owing to moral indifference in himself, but because he
believed that when events are properly described readers may
with advantage be left to form their own estimate of them.
He did not deny that other methods of dealing with history
than his own were legitimate, so long as they involved no
perversion of facts in support of preconceived opinions and
party interests ; he only held that the method which he him-
self employed ought to precede others, inasmuch as faithful
narrative is what is fundamental in historiography. He fully
recognised the necessity of a strict preliminary criticism of the
sources. The preface to his work expounds the theory on
which he proceeded, and deserves careful perusal. Some
of his critics obviously did not take the trouble to read it. In
addition to his chief work, he wrote a widely known book on
the French literature of the eighteenth century, histories of
the National Convention and of the Directory, and many
Studes of an historical and biographical kind.
A new era in the philosophical study of history was initiated
by Guizot, of whom we shall have to treat in a subsequent
chapter.
iUGNET 355
M. Mignet (1796-1884) held for sixty years the first place
among the political historians of his country. He is the Ranke
of France, and his works display the same admirable qualities
which distinguish those of the great German historian. They
are based on the closest study of sources of which many were
previously unknown or unused, and characterised by scrupu-
lous accuracy of statement, keen and comprehensive disclosure
of the causes which determine the course of events, felicitous
and prudent generalisation, perfect impartiality, masterly ar-
rangement, and a style which, although sparingly coloured,
unheated by passion, and seldom irradiated by the play of
imagination, is singularly translucent, harmonious, and grace-
ful. Most of these features are conspicuous even in the work
of his youth, the 'Histoire de la Revolution franchise,' 1824;
they are still more so in those works which relate to the six-
teenth century, the chief field of his researches, — 'Antonio
Perez et Philippe II.,' 'Histoire de Marie Stuart,' ' Rivalite' de
Franc,ois I" et de Charles-Quint,' ' Charles-Quint, son abdica-
tion,' &c. The ' Memoire sur la conversion de la Germanie,'
the ' Mdmoire sur la formation territoriale de notre pays,' and
the ' Memoire sur l'e'tablissement de la r^forme religieuse et
la constitution du Calvinisme a Geneve,' are fine specimens
of philosophical history. Chateaubriand accused M. Mignet, as
well as his friend M. Thiers, of teaching historical fatalism.
And the charge has been repeated by other critics. A sem-
blance of support can be found for it in some insufficiently
guarded expressions of ' The History of the French Revolu-
tion.' But although M. Mignet believed in the action of
general causes and the po^er of general ideas and passions
in history, in the existence of laws of history, and in the
guidance and sovereignty of Providence, and may have at
times expressed his belief in them even too absolutely, no one
who has made himself acquainted with his system of thought
as a whole can doubt that he also held the free agency and
moral responsibility of individuals as unquestionable truths.
He has, in fact, repeatedly insisted that it is an historian's
prime and imperative duty, while exhibiting order and causa-
tion and law in history, not to leave the impression that they
are exclusive of contingency, liberty, and merit or demerit.
356 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOEY IN TRANCE
It is sufficient to refer to the 'Eloge ' on Hallam as of itself
conclusive on this point.1
Shortly before M. Mignet's ' Histoire de la Revolution
francaise ' appeared, M. Thiers published the first volume of
a far more extensive work on the same event. M. Thiers
and M. Mignet were united in the closest friendship and were
ardent believers in the same political principles. Accord-
ingly, their Histories gave substantially the same estimate
of the Revolution. But otherwise they differed greatly.
M. Mignet's History is an epitome or summary; that of
M. Thiers is a detailed narrative and exposition. The former
is written in a style remarkable for literary finish ; in the
latter M. Thiers wrote as he would have spoken — with
marvellous ease, lucidity, animation, and fulness of knowl-
edge, but also with the faults inseparable from extempori-
sation, a certain looseness of arrangement, diffuseness of
statement, and want of minute accuracy. M. Thiers' choice
of his subject was obviously determined both by patriotic
and party feeling. He wished to do justice to a great event
in his country's history and as much harm as he could to his
political opponents, the admirers and upholders of absolute
authority and despotic government. He succeeded, perhaps,
even better in the latter aim than in the former. The work
was a terrible blow to the royalist reactionaries ; its immense
popularity was an overwhelming revelation of the hopeless-
ness of their policy. As to the Revolution itself, he did it,
in my opinion, considerably more than justice, and excused
much which should have been condemned. At the same
time I regard it as substantially just, and a great advance
towards complete justice. I can by no means subscribe to
the following judgment passed upon the work by Mr. Carlyle,
writing in 1837 : " Thiers' History, in ten volumes foolscap
octavo, contains, if we remember rightly, one reference ; and
that to a book, not to the page or chapter of a book. It has,
for these last seven or eight years, a wide or even high repu-
tation ; which latter it is as far as possible from meriting. A
superficial air of order, of clearness, calm candour, is spread
1 See M. Jules Simon's 'Notice sur Mignet,' and M. Edouard Petit's 'Francois
Mignet,' 1889.
THIERS 357
over the work ; but inwardly, it is waste, inorganic ; no
human head that honestly tries can conceive the French Rev-
olution so. A critic of our acquaintance undertook, by way
of bet, to find four errors per hour in Thiers ; he won amply
on the first trial or two. And yet readers (we must add),
taking all this along with them, may peruse Thiers with
comfort in certain circumstances, nay even with profit; for
he is a brisk man of his sort; and does tell you much, if
you knew nothing." Mr. Carlyle did not recollect rightly.
M. Thiers may have given too few references ; he tells us
that he gave them only on points likely to be disputed ; but
there are at least a hundred, and most of them are sufficiently
definite. It has to be remembered likewise that the books to
which he could refer were few; that his sources were the
' Moniteur,' some Memoirs nearly all unedited, and the tes-
timony of ocular witnesses; and that it was his work and
Mignet's which gave rise to that extraordinary outpouting of
publications on the French Revolution which has since pro-
ceeded without interruption. So far from its being the case
that "no human head that honestly tries can conceive the
French Revolution" as M. Thiers represented it, all who
have come after him (Mr. Carlyle included) have conceived
the great bulk and main course of the events composing it
so ; while as regards interpretations of it, M. Thiers' is, after
due discount for exaggeration, the one which is still most
widely accepted, whereas all Mr. Carlyle's genius has been
unable to make the view that it was simply a hideous, fan-
tastic, and meaningless imbroglio, essentially sheer chaos and
bankruptcy, credible to any thoughtful human being. M.
Thiers' strong point was not accuracy in details, and his His-
tory was disfigured by a number of errors due to haste or
carelessness ; but the most scrupulous and laborious careful-
ness would not have saved him from falling into many errors
which would be obvious to critics who had consulted sources
of information inaccessible to him. Mr. Carlyle had an
immense capacity of taking pains ; yet after M. Louis Blanc
had utilised those collections of pamphlets and documents
in the British Museum at which Mr. Carlyle, standing on a
ladder, merely looked, a reviewer even of Mr. Carlyle's
358 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
' French Revolution ' could have no difficulty in finding in it
many times four errors. The ' History of the French Revo-
lution ' by Thiers will not only tell much to those who know
nothing, but may be read with profit even by those who have
studied the Histories of Carlyle and Michelet, Blanc and
Taine. His ' Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire ' is a still
abler work. It is, perhaps, the most interesting history ever
written on the same scale. No reader of it felt its twenty
volumes to be too many. For the author had in perfection
the art of presenting a vast array of facts in their natural
order; of describing a multitude of incidents in a most
graphic and animated manner, while never allowing the unity
of the whole to which they belonged or the co-ordination of
its facts to drop out of sight. He had above all men the
precise kind of talent required adequately to exhibit and ex-
plain the military achievements, the financial measures, and
the policy of Napoleon ; and he did full justice to his talent,
being only too much in love with his theme. His ' History
of the Consulate and the Empire ' had the same fault, how-
ever, as his 'History of the Revolution.' The fault arose
from excess of a virtue, — from the intensity of patriotism
which was so marked a characteristic of M. Thiers. He was
a man who would have sacrificed his own life or any number
of lives, broken any law, or crushed any nation, if he could
thereby have secured the safety or glory of France. Moved
by his predominant passion he has too often made his histo-
ries apologies for, or eulogies of, the Revolution and Napoleon
when both deserved condemnation. What was the result?
His ' History of the Revolution ' gave an immense impulse
to a delirious apotheosis of the Revolution which has done
incalculable harm to France ; his ' History of the Consulate
and the Empire ' to a not less insane and pernicious Caesar-
ism ; and his own public life was largely a struggle with the
two monsters of which he had been, in part at least, the
Frankenstein. History serves patriotism best when . she
maintains a severe impartiality and critical independence of
judgment, and tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, however unpleasant to patriotism that maybe.1
1 See M. Jules Simon's ' Notice sur Thiers,' and M. Paul de Remusat's ' Thiers.'
HISTORICAL WORK IN FRANCE 359
Of M. Michelet's work as an historian I shall have to treat
at a later stage.
Most of the initiators of the French historiography of the
nineteenth century were granted long lives and the full pos-
session of their powers of mental work to the last. Some of
them have only recently passed away, after having presided
over almost its whole development. I shall make no attempt
to trace that development, or to give even the most general
survey of the historical work done in France since Thierry
and Guizot, Thiers and Mignet, commenced their labours.
The study of history has during no other period been cultivated
with equal enthusiasm and success. And among the nations
which have most fully displayed their genius in this form of
intellectual activity France has been among the most conspic-
uous, and probably surpassed only by Germany. There are
few fields of history in which Frenchmen have not made fruit-
ful investigations ; few epochs or great events of history on
which they have not shed fresh light. They have actively
contributed to those sciences of recent growth by which the
darkness shrouding prehistoric time has been at last in part
dispelled; and to those sciences which have been from of old
recognised as auxiliaries to historiography. Knowledge of the
history of China has been promoted by such scholars as Abel
Rdniusat, Reinaud, Biot, Julien, Pauthier, and Pavie ; of India
by Burnouf, Langlois, De Tassy, Foucaux, Saint-Hilaire, Feer,
and Regnaud ; of Persia by De Sacy, Defre"mery, Mohl, and
Gobineau ; of Assyria and Babylonia by Oppert, Fresnel, Le-
normant, and Me"nant; of Egypt by Champollion-Figeac,
Letronne, De Rouge", Mariette, Chabas, Naville, and Maspero ;
and of the Semitic peoples by Munk, Franek, De Perceval, De
Saulcy, De Slane, Quatremere, Sedillot, Fournel, Renan, Reuss,
Derembourg, D'Eichtal, and Vernes. As regards the history
of the classical world, the names of Ampere, Boissier, Bouchl-
Leclercq, Brunet de Presle, Coulanges, Desvergier, Duruy,
Egger, Girard, Guigniaut, Havet, Le Clerc, Maury, Perrot,
Renier, Waddington, and Wallon, are but a few out of the
many names which recall eminent services rendered in this
department. The languages, literatures, institutions, sciences,
arts, philosophies, and religions of classical antiquity have all
360 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
been separately treated of historically in numerous learned
Avritings. It is, however, the history of France itself which
has been most cultivated. Three general histories of France
have succeeded Sismondi's, — those of Michelet, Martin, and
Dareste. Michelet's is a work of great but unequal genius,
of singular merits and serious faults ; Martin's is not a work
of genius, but of talent of a high order, of an intelligence
always clear, vigorous, and alert, and of a conscientiousness
without flaw ; and Dareste's, also, is a work of much research
and ability. There is likewise a general ' History of French
Civilisation ' by M. Alfred Rambaud, in the three unpreten-
tious volumes of which is to be found more of vitally impor-
tant information as to the growth of France than in any twenty
other volumes which I could name. The study of the medie-
val period of French history in all its aspects is, however, that
in which the energies of Frenchmen of learning have been most
zealously devoted since Guizot and Thierry set the example,
and the JScole des Chartes, the Comite des travaux Mstoriques,
and the SooiStS de Vhistoire de France, were founded. Among
the names which most readily occur to me in this connection
are those of Beugnot, Boutaric, Cheruel, Coulanges, Dareste,
Delisle, Haure"au, Jubainville, Levasseur, Littre-, Luce, Lu-
chaire, Mas-Latrie, Montalembert, Gaston and Paulin Paris,
Perrens, Picot, Poinsignon, Raynouard, Ray, and Raoul
Rosieres. In addition to Guizot, Michelet, Mignet, and Thiers,
I shall mention as having distinguished themselves by works
on the modern history of France only the Dukes D'Aumale
and De Broglie, Louis Blanc, Aime" Che"rest, Claretie, Pierre
Clement, Taxile Delord, Feillet, Duvergier, De Hauranne,
Mortimer-Terneaux, Nettement, Quinet, Rousset, Sainte-
Beuve, Sorel, Taine, and Tocqueville. We owe to MM.
Himly, Geffroy, Perrens, Rambaud, Rosseuw Saint-Hilaire,
and Zeller well reputed works on the history of the formation
of the States of Central Europe, and on the histories of the
Scandinavian States, Florence, Russia, Spain, and Germany
and Italy.
There has not only been the most manifold activity in
French historiography during the period under consideration,
but also in essential respects manifest improvement. To
HISTORIANS OF THE VARIOUS SCHOOLS 361
observe it, however, we must not look from a merely artistic
point of view. So regarded, Thierry's ' Norman Conquest ' and
the earlier volumes of Michelet's History have not only not
been surpassed, but have not been equalled. The excellencies
of form and style displayed by Mignet and Thiers have not
reappeared in the same degree in any of their disciples. Yet
there has been progress, and even great progress. There has
been -the progress involved in a continuous subdivision of
labour and an immense multiplication of researches. There
has been a decided progress in method. The obligations of
the historian not to depend on secondary sources of informa-
tion, but to have recourse to the primary sources, and as far as
possible to master and exhaust them all, have been steadily
becoming more fully recognised ; and the necessity for strin-
gency in criticism and exactitude in interpretation has been
growingly felt. And there has been also progress in truthful-
ness and impartiality of judgment. One reason why the his-
torians of to-day are comparatively averse to generalisation, to
high colouring, to the exercise of imagination, and to eloquent
writing, is that they are more conscious than their predecessors
of the extent to which these things have falsified history.
The younger race of historians are more emancipated than
those who preceded them from the prejudices of party, of
country, and of creed; and more anxious to keep all their
feelings and convictions under such control as will prevent
them vitiating their investigations. They have come to learn
that the supreme law of history is not to be attractive and
beautiful, or helpful to patriotism, morality, and religion, but
to be wholly and exactly true ; and that, therefore, the his-
torian is primarily bound to be critical and scientific, and only
secondarily bound to be artistic and edifying.
The various modes or systems of thought which have in
France during the period we are considering given rise to
theories or philosophies of history have likewise produced
histories. The histories exemplify in their own way the prin-
ciples maintained in the theories. And therefore it seems
desirable to indicate the chief works of history thus connected
with the theories which are to be expounded in the chapters
that follow.
362 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PKANCE
The theocratist and ultramontanist party has had among its
adherents in France no historians of great distinction. Rohr-
bacher, author of an ecclesiastical history in twenty volumes
which has taken the place of the much more deserving work
of Fleury, is, perhaps, the most eminent ; but he is deplorably
wanting in candour and justice. Liberal Catholicism, on the
other hand, has had among its representatives such historians
as Montalembert, Ozanam, Riancey, and De Broglie. •
Louis Blanc is by far the greatest historian which French
Socialism can claim. The 'Parliamentary History of the
Revolution ' drawn up by MM. Roux and Buchez is valuable
on account of the documents which it contains, but what M.
Buchez contributed to it of his own is very incoherent and
extravagant stuff. M. Benoit Malon, formerly a member of
the International and the Parisian Commune, has written a
' History of Socialism ' remarkably full of information, and
laudably fair, except to those who are wholly outside the
household of the socialistic faith.
A large number of French historians have acknowledged
Guizot, the chief of the doctrinaire school, as their master.
Once the acknowledgment meant that those who made it
accepted the principles of the historico-political creed which
Guizot maintained ; latterly it has seldom meant more than
that those making it regard themselves as following up the
path of historical investigation into which he led so many.
Historians like Count de Carne", De Tocqueville, and H.
Martin may be reckoned among his disciples.
The Eclectic school had for basis a philosophical doctrine,
and its members have cultivated the history of philosophy
with more zeal and success than those of any philosophical
school of this century except the Hegelian. Cousin, Jouffroy,
De Remusat, Saisset, Damiron, Matter, Wilm, Saint-Hilaire,
Franck, Nourisson, Janet, Bouillier, Caro, Simon, Vacherot,
and many of their associates and disciples, have greatly distin-
guished themselves as historians of philosophy. If eclecticism
has exerted any perverting influence on historical research, it
has been very slight compared with that of Hegelianism.
Positivism has had its best representative among French
historians in Littre" ; and Naturalism in Taine.
HISTOBICAL METHODOLOGY — DATJNOTJ 363
Granier de Cassagnac and Mortimer-Terneaux may be
named as historians of a conservative type, desirous of sup-
porting the cause of authority. Napoleon III. wrote his
'Histoire de Jules Ce"sar' in order to recommend Csesarism.
Lamartine, Michelet, Quinet, Barni, Lanfrey, and others
have sought to spread by their historical writings the prin-
ciples of Liberalism.
At present most of the younger historians are content to
be simply historians. While not denying the legitimacy of
historical generalisation, they carefully refrain from treating
history as subservient to the establishment of extra-historical
creeds or theories of any kind. It is historians of this stamp
who are the contributors to such periodicals as the ' Biblio-
theque de l'Ecole des Chartes ' and the ' Revue Historique.' 1
It is necessary to notice in this chapter only two works
which treat of history. The first is the ' Cours d'fitudes
Historiques ' of Daunou, who has been already under our con-
sideration. This ' Cours ' comprises twenty volumes published
between 1842 and 1849, and is composed of the lectures which
the author had delivered as Professor of History at the College
of France. Some of the earlier volumes alone are occupied
with the methodology of history. The first volume deals
directly with it. In the introduction it is maintained that
those who cultivate the mental and historical sciences should
aim at being as scrupulously exact in observation, as severely
analytical in investigation, and as impartial in judgment, as
the students of physical science ; and that the progress of
mental and historical science warrants us to hope that this
end may be at least approximately attained. The bulk of the
volume (Book I.) is a comprehensive and systematic treatise
on historical criticism. It discusses the following subjects, —
the certitude or probability attainable in history (chap, i.) ;
the sources of history (chap. ii») ; the foundation and prop-
agation of traditions (chap, iii.) ; the traditional histories of
the most celebrated peoples (chap, iv.) ; the rules of criticism
applicable to the traditional past of history (chap, v.) ; his-
1 On French historiography in the nineteenth century, see ' Rapports sur les
Etudes Historiques,' par MM. Geffroy, Zeller, et Thienot: 1867.
364 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
torical monuments (chap, vi.) ; medals and inscriptions (chap,
vii.) ; charters or pieces of archives (chap, viii.) ; records
made at the moment when the facts took place or a few days
after (chap, ix.) ; records written in the course of the age
when the events occurred or shortly afterwards (chap, x.) ;
rules of criticism applicable to contemporary or nearly con-
temporary records (chap, xi.) ; and historical collections,
abridgments, and extracts (chaps, xii.-xv.). It concludes with
a summary of the rules of historical criticism, a statement
of the importance of grammatical criticism to the histo-
rian, and observations on the conditions which must be ful-
filled in order that history may become a science. Almost all
the matters taken up are carefully and judiciously, learnedly
and independently, dealt with. The second book (torn. ii.
pp. 1-290) is on the uses of history. Although less satis-
factory than the first, the disquisitions which it contains
regarding the bearings of historical study on moral and social
science, on the knowledge of human nature and of its original
and acquired tendencies, on perception of the conditions of
domestic, commercial, and civil life, and on political theory
and practice, as well as of the bearings of these things on it,
are generally sound and luminous. The second volume from
p. 291 to its close treats of the history of geography and of
geography as auxiliary to history. Volumes iii.-vi. form an
extremely elaborate and erudite work on chronology. The
bond of connection between these studies on geography and
on chronology is that both are regarded as concerned with the
classification of historical facts or data — the former, namely,
with their distribution in space, and the latter with their
arrangement in time. Volume vii. is a treatise on the expo-
sition of historical facts, or, in other words, on the art of
writing history. It discusses almost all the relevant points
and questions, if not with originality or profundity, certainly
with thoughtfulness and gopd sense. The subsequent vol-
umes contain elaborate disquisitions on the characteristics of
eminent historians, and on the contents, merits, and defects
of their works. History had not been treated of before, at
least in France, in nearly so complete, thorough, and practical
a manner as in the lectures of Daunou.
CEOS-MAYKBVILLE 365
The second work referred to is 'La Me'thodologie des
Sciences Morales et Politiques applique"e a la Science de
l'Histoire ' of M. Cros-Mayreville, published in 1848. While
Daunou regarded history and all questions relating to it from
the point of view of an ideologist of the eighteenth century,
Cros-Mayreville looks at them in the light of an age still
present with us. But he lacks the intellectual thoroughness
and the vast special knowledge of his predecessor. Hence
his work is comparatively slight and unsatisfactory. He
treats first of the nature of historical facts, of their proofs,
and of their criticism ; next, of the reproduction of the facts,
especially in the form of general history ; then, of the causa-
tion, moral succession, and moral appreciation of the facts ;
further, of the influence of the teaching of general history
on the education of peoples, and of the organisation of this
teaching ; and, finally, of the desiderata and ultimate con-
clusions of the science of history. On all these points he
makes good and useful observations ; yet his treatment of
none of them is otherwise than very inadequate.
The views on history of various writers on historical science
will come before us in several of the chapters which follow.
CHAPTER VI
THE TJLTRAMONTANTST AND LIBERAL CATHOLIC SCHOOLS
The historical doctrine of what is variously known as the
traditionalist, or ultramontane, or theocratic school was advo-
cated in defiance of Napoleon during the whole period of his
reign, and appeared to triumph in his fall. Its advocates were
moved by a powerful polemical motive, and had immediately
in view a partisan purpose ; they were as unlike as could be
to calm labourers in the field of science. Hence no system-
atic exposition of their distinctive historical theory is to be
found in any of their writings ; nor has any member of the
French division of the theocratic school given us an elabo-
rated philosophy of history, or, indeed, any philosophy of his-
tory simply for its own sake. Their views of the course and
destination of human history must be disengaged, disentan-
gled, from an extensive literature composed of works belong-
ing chiefly to the departments of theological and political
polemics or apologetics.1
I shall try to indicate what these views were as set forth in
the writings of the three best representatives of the party, —
De Maistre, De Bonald, and De Lamennais during the earlier
part of his career.2
1 Damiron and Ferraz have treated of the traditionalist and ultramontanist
school in the works already mentioned, and Nettement in his ' Histoire de la
Restauration.' I may refer also to Principal Fairbairn's article on " Catholicism
and Religious Thought," in ' Cont. Rev.' for May 1885.
2 A learned Danish baron, M. d'Eckstein, advocated substantially the same
views as De Bouald, De Maistre, and* De Lamennais, in the pages of ' Le Catho-
lique,' a periodical edited and for the most part written by himself. He was,
however, much more temperate in his advocacy of them; and, indeed, expressly
says of the three chiefs of the theocratic party that " their fear of the Revolution
has communicated to their polemic a tincture of reaction which we believe to be
neither necessary nor even advantageous to the maintenance of sound doctrines"
(torn. i. pp. 8, 9). ' Le Catholique ' began to appear in 1826, and extended to twenty
366
MAISTRE — BONALD — LAMENNAIS 367
Count Joseph de Maistre (1754-1821), a Savoyard but of
French descent, was a man of strong convictions and fiery
zeal; dogmatic, intolerant, and paradoxical in his judgments;
a sincere hater of public liberty, and a decided denier of his-
torical progress ; a writer of great directness and force, with,
as has been said, " something of the eloquence of Rousseau,
and something of the wit of Voltaire ; " a most formidable
polemic, audacious and ingenious, trenchant and sarcastic;
and in his private and domestic character, as revealed by his
letters, tender and amiable to an extent which the reader of
his books alone could never expect. Viscount Louis de
Bonald (1754-1840) began his literary career about the same
time as De Maistre, and maintained substantially the same
views, but his method of thought and style of writing were
altogether different, the former being exclusively and rigidly
ratio cinative, and the latter slow and heavy in movement,
although occasionally not without animation and force. The
Abbe- de Lamennais (1782-1854) was a greater and more
interesting personality than either De Maistre or De Bonald.
He was a man who could not rest in doubt or probability ;
who could not tolerate hesitation or indifference ; who must
have certitude, and give himself wholly to the cause which
he espoused. He had a soul of flame in which reason and
passion were combined as light and heat in fire. He was mas-
ter of a commanding eloquence which made him seem a second
Bossuet. His ' Essai sur l'lndiffe'rence ' (1818) had a much
greater practical influence than all the ultramontanist writ-
ings which had previously appeared in France put together.
It is only the general theory of history contained in the works
of these authors which requires to be here exhibited.1
volumes, of which I have only seen the first twelve, those being, I understand, all
that the library of the British Museum possesses. The most interesting of the
studies which they contain are perhaps that on B. Constant's ' De la Religion,'
in vols. i. and ii., and that on 'Industrialism,' i.e., Saint-Simonism, in vol. v.
D'Eckstein was exceptionally conversant with German learning and speculation,
and his periodical must have contributed somewhat to spread the knowledge of
them in France. Philarete Ghasles, in an amusing page of his ' Memoires ' (torn. i.
p. 269), gives personal reminiscences of ' Le Catholique ' and its editor.
1 The following are the works from which my exposition of the theocratic theory
is drawn : M. de Bonald, ' The'orie du Pouvoir Politique et Religieuse dans la
Socie'te Civile,' 1796; 'Essai Analytique sur les Lois Naturelles de l'Ordre
Social,' 1800; and 'La Legislation Primitive,' 2d ed., 1821; M. de Maistre, 'Con-
368 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Like all decided adherents of the theocratic creed, they had
a passionate aversion to the distinctive tenets of the eighteenth
century. They looked on that century as an epoch of shame,
closing in an event the most horrible the world had seen.
They stood too near the Revolution, and had suffered too
much through it, to be able to judge it impartially. The
terror, the religious and moral delirium, the confiscations,
banishment, and bloodshed, which accompanied it, seemed to
them of its very essence, and they believed that they could
not condemn it sternly enough, nor assail its principles too
strongly, nor oppose its influences too resolutely. To meet,
conquer, and crush the spirit of the Revolution, was the aim
which, under a sincere sense of duty, they set before them.
In proposing to themselves to counteract the Revolution,
to root out its principles and undo its effects, they were not
blind to the magnitude of their task. They hated the Revo-
lution, but they did not despise it ; they recognised that it
was no product of petty causes ; they believed it to be the
inevitable result of a radically erroneous conception of man's
relation to God and to his fellow-men which had been grow-
ing and spreading into wrong habits of thought and action
from the time of the Renaissance downwards, till at length
head, heart, and every member of the body politic were dis-
eased and corrupt. De Maistre, indeed, contended that the
siderations sur la France,' 1796; ' Du Pape,' 1819; ' De l'Eglise Gallicane,' 1821;
' Les Soirees de Saint Petersbourg,' 1821 ; and ' Correspond ance ' ; and M. de
Laraennais, ' Essai sur l'lndiffe'rence en Matiere de la Religion,' 1817-23; ' De la
Religion considered dans ses rapports avec l'Ordre Politique et Civil,' 1825-26;
' Des Progres de la Revolution et de la Guerre contre l'Eglise,' 1829; and ' CEuvres
Inedites.' A collected edition of De Bonald's works has been several times
printed. On De Maistre see the essay of Prof. v. Sybel in his ' Kleine Schriften,'
and that of Mr. Morley in his ' Critical Miscellanies ' ; also Janet's ' Philosophie
de la Revolution francaise,' pp. 30-44. In these pages M. Janet has well indicated
the indebtedness of De Maistre to Saint-Martin as regards his views of the Revo-
lution. On Saint-Martin the reader may consult M. Caro, ' La Vie et la Doctrine
de Saint-Martin,' and M. Franck, ' La Philosophie Mystique au xviii" Siecle.' On
Laraennais, besides the 'Essai Biographique ' of M. Blaize and the studies of
Sainte-Beuve, there are various articles worth consulting — e.g., Jules Simon's in
' Revue des Deux Mondes,' 1841, L. Binaud's in same periodical (Nos. for Aug. 15,
1860, and Feb. 1, 1861), E. Renan's in ' Essais de Morale et Critique,' Prof. Huber's
in his ' Kleine Schriften,' and Prof. Dowden's in ' Fortnightly Review,' Jan. 1,
1869. Cardinal Newman's article on Lamennais in his ' Critical and Historical
Miscellanies ' is of no value so far as its subject is concerned, but may be of some
interest as the work of Newman.
THEOCRATIC HISTORICAL THEORY 369
Revolution was not a natural event, but " an event unique in
history," " a satanic event," " a providential event," " a mir-
acle strictly so called," "a predestinated revolution," "a rev-
olution which impelled men rather than they it." But he
thereby meant that it was only intelligible when referred di-
rectly to the divine purpose revealed in it; when viewed as an
awful expiation for enormous sin. He did not mean that it
was an accidental or isolated event, for which there had been
no historical preparation. He and De Bonald, even in their
earliest works — the two books published in 1796 — gave
clear expression to the conviction that the roots of the Revo-
lution went far deeper down and farther back than was gen-
erally supposed. They set themselves to resist it with the
full consciousness that it was but a startling outward phase
of an internal, moral, and social revolution which began when
the modern world emerged from the medieval world, and was
really what had to be combated and overcome. They believed
that it could only be opposed successfully if opposed in its
principles, and they admitted that in undertaking so to oppose
it they proposed to effect a far greater revolution than it had
itself been, even nothing less than resettling and reorganising
society on a foundation from which it had been gliding with
ever-increasing velocity for three centuries. They thus delib-
erately took up a position of antagonism to modern philosophy
and to modern history. " For three hundred years," says De
Maistre, " history has been a continuous conspiracy against
the truth."
In sensationalism, the dominant philosophy in France
during the eighteenth century, the writers under considera-
tion saw one of the most powerful causes of the Revolution
and of the crimes associated with it. Against this philosophy,
therefore, they waged an unwearied polemic, charging it with
degrading man to the level of the brutes, and with leading
inevitably to immorality, anarchy, misrule, and impiety. As,
however, they attacked it solely in the interests of the prac-
tical life, or, in other words, not as false but as evil, they not
only contributed nothing to its philosophical refutation, but
assumed and asserted its causal connection with the vices
which they denounced, even where proof was most incumbent
370 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOEY IN PRANCE
upon them. The refutation of materialism in De Bonald's
'Recherches sur les Premiers Objets de nos Connaissances
Morales,' if an exception to this statement, is the only one.
The writers in question did not stop with opposition to
sensationalism. They went on to attack modern philosophy
in its principle and entire development. De Maistre wrote a
book to prove Bacon a scientific charlatan, and laid it down
as a principle that " contempt for Locke is the beginning of
knowledge." De Bonald argued that the history of philos-
ophy was nothing else than a history of the variations of
philosophical schools, which left no other impression on the
reader than an insurmountable disgust at all philosophical
researches. A considerable portion of the second volume of
the ' Essai ' of Lamennais, and the whole of its ' Defense,' were
devoted to show that all philosophy since Descartes was
radically vicious, — that its method was identical with that
employed by religious heretics, and that it ended inevitably
in scepticism.
The explanation of this direct and conscious antagonism to
modern philosophy is not far to seek, and takes us into the
very heart of the theocratic theory. The philosophers of the
eighteenth century had advocated the rights of reason or
rights of man in a one-sided and exaggerated way : they had
given, that is to say, an undue prominence to the principle of
individualism ; had pushed it too far ; and had forgotten the
claims of the principle which limits it. The consequences
had been terrible. This caused in the way of reaction
another party to arise, who could see only the evil which the
principle of individualism had caused or occasioned, and who
pushed the complementary principle of authority to a farther
but contrary extreme. They saw that to make any man,
however wise, and still more to make every man, however
foolish, believe that any private judgment or private crotchet
of his was entitled to as much deference as great institutions
which had lasted for ages, and which were still satisfying
in a large measure the reasons of vast masses of men, was not
only to make them believe a falsehood, but a falsehood dis-
ruptive of the continuity between the present and the past of
humanity, and incompatible with the existence of the family,
THEOCRATIC HISTORICAL THEORY 371
the Church, or the State ; one which meant, in fact, the entire
dissolution of society. Hence they rushed into the breach to
oppose it.
The easiest way, however, of opposing a doctrine, that which
first suggests itself, and which at first sight seems the most
promising of success, is direct denial of it and the affirmation
of the contrary, — the assertion and defence of the antagonis-
tic principle as the exclusive truth. And this was how the
reaction combated the Revolution. The principle of individ-
ual independence had been taught so as to be scarcely com-
patible, if not altogther incompatible, with that of social
authority; now that of social authority was so taught as to
be incompatible with individual independence. Order had
been sacrificed to progress ; now progress was sacrificed to
order. The present had been glorified at the expense of the
past ; now the past was glorified at the expense of the present.
A theocracy was held forth as the very ideal of society, and
democracy denounced as an insanity. Passive obedience was
represented as the source of all virtue ; the exercise of indi-
vidual independence as the cause of all evil ; tradition, super-
natural in its origin, as the source of all truth; and free
inquiry as the source only of error.
Now, which of these two doctrines, thus held as antagonistic
and mutually exclusive, was the truest expression of the spirit
of modern thought? There could be but one answer. The
men of the reaction themselves could not refuse for a moment
to acknowledge that the Revolution was the legitimate heir of
the preceding four centuries, — the completest assertion in
politics of the same principles which the Renaissance had
introduced into literature, the Reformation into religion, and
Cartesianism into philosophy. They felt that their own doc-
trine was ancient as opposed to modern, and they were too
honest to conceal or disavow what they felt. On the con-
trary, they proclaimed their conviction that the last four cen-
turies were wrong in root and branches, and nowhere more
obviously wrong than in philosophy, which, if it have no other
merits, has at least that of being ever the clearest expression
of the spirit of its age. Its systems seemed to them to con-
tradict and destroy one another, and to leave, as they passed
372 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
in rapid succession, not a wrack behind, because all were
based on the hopelessly false foundation that in order to find
truth the mind must seek it in itself, in its own consciousness,
and differed only as to what principle of the mind, what
faculty of the conscious being, should be supposed to have in
it the supreme criterion of certainty, whether sense, or feel-
ing, or reason. Cartesians and Baconians, sensationalists and
idealists, dogmatists and sceptics, in the judgment of the
writers we are speaking of, alike started from the ego or indi-
vidual consciousness; and to reason from this datum, they
were agreed, could only land in universal scepticism, if the
reasoning were carried far enough.1
The ground, they thought, on which the temple of truth
ought to be raised must be sought elsewhere, — not in man but
out of him. And the criterion of truth, they thought, must be
sought not in the individual but in the race. The individual,
they held, has no true life or light except in the race ; and the
race has in like manner no true life or light except in God.
The general reason of man is represented by them as the
absolute rule of every particular reason, and the reason of God
primitively revealed as the absolute rule and only true foun-
dation of general reason. The reason of the individual when
it seeks to guide itself wanders in darkness ; and only by re-
nouncing itself, only by the self-denial which constitutes faith
in tradition, or common or catholic consent, does it unite itself
to its kindred and its Creator, and come under the enlighten-
ment of the true light which shineth in darkness and lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.
It was as a supposed philosophical basis for this doctrine
that the theory of the origin and nature of language elaborated
by De Bonald appeared to the theocratists as one of the most
important of scientific achievements. According to this theory,
man was the passive recipient of language, and with language
of thought : language being not the product but the condition
of thought. Language, holds De Bonald, contains all thought,
and man can have nothing in his thought which is not revealed
1 All the arguments used by Broussais in his treatise ' De 1' Irritation et de la
Folie ' (1828) , and by Comte against the psychological method, the inductive study
of consciousness, had been previously employed by De Bonald, De Lamennais,
and D'Eckstein.
THEOCRATIC HISTORICAL THEOKY 373
to him by his speech, the relation of thought and language being
like that of light and the organ of vision, so that man can no
more think without words, or otherwise than words will allow
him, than he can see without light or anything else than light
discloses to him. Language, which is thus not merely the
instrument but the very life and substance of intelligence, he
further maintains, is of miraculous origin, or the immediate, as
contradistinguished from the mediate, gift ©f God. In proof it
is argued that it cannot have been invented by man's reason,
for man has no reason until he has language ; that Scripture
represents it as the direct gift of God to the first parents of
the human race ; that the truth of the Scripture representa-
tion is confirmed by philological research, which establishes
the original unity and essential identity of all language ; and
that an examination of its nature clearly shows it to be far
too complex and elaborate, far too perfect and difficult, to be
the work of man. This hypothesis of De Bonald implies the
truth of the fundamental error of Condillac — namely, that
human nature is mere sense and purely passive ; it proceeds
on a view of the relation of language to thought, and of
revelation to reason, which is not only unproved but inherently
absurd; and it is defended by arguments which are either
unsound or irrelevant ; but it was very natural that it should
be readily accepted by the theocratists. Its explanation of the
■origin of speech was equally an explanation of the origin of
reason and of society, and consequently of all that reason has
produced and society has experienced. It referred all these
origins to revelation, and made tradition or the transmission of
revelation the substance or life of history, the law and limit of
rational and voluntary activity. It led directly to the result
which the theocratists were above all anxious to demonstrate
viz., that man is dependent for his intelligence, its operations
so far as legitimate, and its conclusions, religious, moral,
political, and social, so far as true, on tradition flowing from
a primitive revelation.
They were, of course, hostile to the hypothesis that man
had gradually raised himself from a state of ignorance and
barbarism to one of science and civilisation. They treated
this even then prevalent opinion as merely a popular delu-
374 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
sion, le rSve favori. The primitive age was, according to
them, truly the golden age ; and the first men were superior
to their descendants both in intellect and in virtue. In the
pagan religions and philosophies they saw only more or less
corrupt forms of the most ancient religion and science ; and
whatever truths they contained they believed to have de-
scended from the revelation communicated to the earliest
parents of mankind. They regarded the savage state as in
all its phases and degrees the result of a process of degrada-
tion and of departure from divine truth which had its origin
in Adam's sin. They considered the doctrine of the Fall as
going far to explain history. They rejected the doctrine of
progress as a presumptuous falsehood which history contra-
dicted.
They were equally averse to the theory of Rousseau that
society originated in a contract, in the combination and com-
promise of a number of individual wills. They attached but
little value to the individual. They regarded man, apart from
society, as merely a potentiality or an abstraction. Man, ac-
cording to their view, becomes a real person, an actual man,
only through participation in the life of society. Not indi-
viduals, but the family, the State, and the Church are the
true social units. Lamennais' whole doctrine of truth, certi-
tude, and authority implies the vanity of mere individual rea-
son and will. " It is not individuals," says De Bonald, " which
constitute society, but society which constitutes individuals,
since individuals exist only in and for society." De Maistre
will not recognise individuals, " men," at all ; they seem to
him only abstractions. Hence he pronounces the proclama-
tion of " the rights of man " one of the most foolish acts of
the Revolution. " There is," he writes, " no man in the
world. I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians; but as
for man, I declare that I have never met him in my life."
The theocratists further held that society ought not to be
regarded as a mechanism, but as an organism. They charged
the revolutionists with having done just the opposite — with
having supposed that laws could be instituted, constitutions
made, and societies created, by the mere will and wisdom of
men. According to their own view, on the contrary, God
THEOCRATIC HISTORICAL THEORY 375
alone institutes laws ; constitutions are not made, but grow ;
and societies are natural organisms which the skill of man is
powerless to produce. An implicit belief to this effect may be
safely ascribed to the whole theocratic party. De Bonald's
theory of society is a delineation of society as an organic sys-
tem. De Maistre, however, must be credited with having-
alone presented the view with appropriate explicitness and
clearness. Man, he tells us, although capable of modifying
all that lies within the sphere of his activity, can create noth-
ing either in the physical or moral world. He can, for ex-
ample, plant, tend, and train a tree ; but he never fancies
that he can make a tree. He has no more reason for imag-
ining that he can make a constitution. To assign to any
assembly of men the task of making a constitution is a more
insane procedure than any which takes place in lunatic asy-
lums. A constitution is the whole of the organic conditions
necessary to the life of a people, and, therefore, not a thing
which can be produced at will or made to order, like a loom
or an engine or an article of furniture. It is a natural thing,
and therefore no art of man can make it : art can only produce
artificial things ; nature alone can do natural things. It is a
living thing, and nothing which lives is the result of human
deliberation or human decree. The rights of peoples are
never written. No nation which has not liberty can give
itself liberty. Nothing great is great to begin with. All
normal social movement is continuous and unconscious. All
healthy social institutions are the products of time and history.
Such is the substance of De Maistre's teaching in the sixth
chapter of his 'Considerations sur la France.' It will be ob-
served that it is identical with the doctrine of what is known
as the Historical School. De Maistre was the most notable
French precursor of Savigny, the founder of that school.
And so far as general principles were concerned, Savigny did
not add to what De Maistre laid down. Yet the latter dif-
fered from the former in two respects. In the first place, he
was more one-sided and extreme. He went nearer to asser-
tion of the uselessness of reflection and discussion in political
life; nearer to the elimination of reason from among the
means of social progress, and to the representation of history
376 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
as a merely instructive process. In the second place, whereas
the general political theory of Savigny was in accordance
with the doctrine of historical continuity, that of De Maistre
was in glaring contradiction to it. The revolutionists had
endeavoured to throw off and abolish the medieval tradition
of authority in order to realise the modern tradition of liberty
which had been growing up since the fifteenth century; and
De Maistre and those whom he represented were bent on ob-
literating this later tradition, and on expelling and destroying
the spirit of the centuries which had nourished and strength-
ened it. But manifestly this too was an attempt to break the
continuity of history. It was an attempt to tear out of his-
tory the centuries nearest to his own time. History never
shows us individuals or nations going back to the ages which
they have outgrown.
The writers with whose views on history we are now occu-
pied detested what they called liberalism or indifferentism ;
and in assailing it they attacked all the primary rights and
essential liberties of man. They represented the claim to ex-
ercise private judgment as impiety towards God and rebellion
against the authorities that He had ordained ; religious tol-
eration as the persecution of true religion ; the concession
of freedom of speech and freedom of the press as the ap-
proval of all their possible abuses ; and the granting of elec-
toral or self-governing powers to the people as a violation
of the divine order of society sure to produce anarchy and
ruin. They fought against liberty in every form. They
combated especially the independence of reason. Faith, not
reason, and submission, not freedom, seemed to them the true
conditions of social existence.
They defended the cause of absolute authority alike in
Church and State. As to the former, Liberal Catholicism,
Protestantism, deism, atheism, were all condemned as but so
many stages of deviation and descent from the true religion,
the sure and eternal basis of social order. Gallicanism was
keenly attacked; its weaknesses and inconsistencies were
unsparingly exposed. The right of the State to limit the
sphere or control the action of the Church was strongly de-
nied. The right of the Church to freedom was strongly
THEOCRATIC HISTORICAL THEORY 377
affirmed ; but what was meant by, it was a right to despotic
licence, the right of the hierarchy to usurp the rights of the
other members of the Church, and even to lord it over all
mankind in matters of education, morality, and religion. De
Bonald, De Maistre, and Lamennais were at one in claiming
for the Church this sort of freedom, in ascribing to it this sort
of authority. They differed somewhat as to where the free-
dom and authority resided. De Bonald was not strictly
ultramontanist. He placed infallibility and sovereignty, not
in the Pope, but in the Church as a whole. He held that a
general council was superior to the Pope. But he was decid-
edly anti-Gallican and absolutist, maintaining the unlimited
authority of the Church, as represented by a general council,
even in the political sphere. De Maistre maintained the
Pope to be infallible and superior to a general council, yet
unable to dispense with the bishops, his necessary organs, not
instruments that he may use or not as he pleases. In his
famous work, 'Du Pape,' he argued that infallibility was
necessarily implied in sovereignty, and that the sovereignty
of the Pope had its divine warrant in the manner of its acqui-
sition, in the history of the growth and services of the papacy.
Hence the work is largely an account of the development of
the papal power. As such, we can only admire its cleverness,
but may readily grant it to be much truer than any profess-
edly historical survey which traces the growth of the papacy
mainly to deceit and corruption. History, however, can only
justify historical right, and historical right falls infinitely
short of absolute right. Whatever history gives it may also
take away. Lamennais was far the most influential advocate
of the ultramontane creed in its entirety. He taught with a
success which he himself soon came to deplore, but the effects
of which he was unable to undo : that without the Pope there
can be no Church, without the Church no Christianity, with-
out Christianity no true religion, and without true religion
no proper social order; and that, therefore, the welfare not
only of the Church but of society depended on the Pope as
the organ of the divine law, of which kings are merely the
ministers. He inculcated papal infallibility as not only a
religious dogma, and necessary to the safety and strength of
378 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOEY IN PB.ANCE
the Church, but also as the, central truth of political science
and the guiding principle of history, the recognition of which
can alone secure peace, stability, and prosperity to nations.
As to the State, it was argued that sovereignty in the
secular sphere corresponds to infallibility in the religious
sphere, and must, like it, be one and indivisible, and entitled
to unquestioning submission. " The revolution of the six-
teenth century," says De Maistre, " ascribed the sovereignty
to the Church — i.e., to. the people. The eighteenth century
carried the principle into politics. It is the same system, the
same folly, under another name." The temporal power, it
was admitted, ought to be subject, indeed, to the spiritual
power, to which it is naturally inferior, because a more distant
and a feebler emanation from the divine power ; but it can
only be limited from above, not from below — only by the
Pope, not by its subjects. They have no right to judge it,
and still less to resist it and to impose conditions on it. The
constitutional Government of Britain was in this light
specially offensive to the genuine representatives of the
theocratic school. De Maistre contemptuously pronounced it
" an insular peculiarity utterly unworthy of imitation ; " and
De Bonald calmly said that, " mainly owing to its defects,
the English are by far the most backward among civilised
peoples." De Bonald's own type of a good government was
ancient Egypt, with its Pharaohs surrounded by priests, and
seated on the summit of an organised system of rigidly
defined castes. The adherents of the theocratic party in
general adopted the social ideal of the medieval hierarchy,
and glorified the personages and institutions that had come
nearest realising it.
The theocratists sought support for their theorems in the
Bible ; but they had to misinterpret and misapply its state-
ments in order to seem to find it. De Bonald's hypothesis of
the revealed origin of speech and reason, science, art, and
government, was an extravagant exaggeration of a few words
of Scripture, which it was unreasonable to use at all in the
discussion of a scientific problem. De Maistre professed to
found on Scripture, but had no warrant for the profession
when he represented all the evils which afflict society as only
THEOCRATIC HISTORICAL THEORY 379
punishments, and punishments of original sin. Nothing can
be more intensely unchristian, as well as inhuman, than his
glorification of the scaffold, his eulogy of the Inquisition, and
his vindication of war as an eternal ordinance of God and a
fundamental law of the world. Nothing can be more opposed
both to the spirit and to the letter of the Gospel than to
maintain, as he does, that "the earth is for ever crying for
the blood of man and beast ; " that it is " an immense altar,
on which all that lives must be immolated without ceasing
and without end until the consummation of ages, the extinc-
tion of. evil, the death of death ; " and that God has laid on
man the charge of slaughtering his fellow-men, and has made
wars and battles, the incessant effusion of human blood, a
condition of divine acceptance and mercy. Yet he passes off
these revolting falsehoods as truths derived from revelation.
Lamennais, in his references to Scripture, generally shows
himself a loose and capricious exegete.
The writers whose views regarding history we have been
endeavouring to set forth were men of exceptional abilities
and varied gifts ; but they were also men of utterly unscien-
tific minds. They were essentially dogmatists, rhetoricians,
preachers, and pleaders, not men inclined by nature or quali-
fied by training to seek truth in a proper and rational way.
They were ignorant of what science and scientific method
are, and also ignorant of their ignorance. M. de Bonald was
the acknowledged philosopher of the theocratic school ; but
how little he knew of true science is decisively shown by the
fact that he took for scientific laws, for principles explanatory
of real things, these two most absurd propositions : that all
things are included under one or other of the three terms of
thought, — cause, mean, and effect, — and that what the
cause is to the mean the mean is. to the effect. In meta-
physics, the trinitarian formula appears as God, mediator, and
man; in religion, as the Church, priests, and laity; in the
State, as king, ministers or nobles, and people ; in the family,
as father, mother, and child ; and in the individual, as soul,
sense, and body. All these special formulae, M. de Bonald
holds, correspond to one another in virtue of their common
relation to the general formula; so that, for example, the
380 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOEY IN FRANCE
king is in the State and the father in the family what God is
in the universe ; and further, the terms of each formula are
related to one another as the terms of every other, the cause
being always to the mean as the mean to the effect. The
result is obvious, and yet startling — a complete theory of the
theocracy, of absolutism in Church, State, and family, capable
of being expressed in algebra.
The ultramontanist theory of history need not be traced
farther. The Revolution of 1830 showed so plainly that the
French people would not tolerate political absolutism, that
for a time those who had been advocating it in the name of
religion deemed it prudent to be silent. A Liberal Catholi-
cism arose, and strove to reconcile the Church and society by-
gaining the former over to the side of popular rights and
liberties. But when this gradually came to be seen to be a
hopeless task, and at the same time a revolutionary and
socialistic spirit gained ground, ultramontanism reappeared.
Immediately before the Revolution of 1848, and during the
Second Empire, the most active propagandist of its principles
was the violent, domineering, and unscrupulous publicist,
M. Louis Veuillot, editor of ' L'Univers,' and its worthiest
and most cultured advocate was M. Blanc de Saint-Bonnet,
author of ' L'Unite- Spirituelle,' 2d ed., 1845, ' La Restaura-
tion francaise,' 1851, ' De l'Affaiblissement de la Raison et de
la Decadence en Europe,' 2d ed., 1854, 'L'Infaillibilite' au
point de vue me'taphysique,' 1861, and other writings. The
works of M. de Saint-Bonnet have many merits, and abound
in good thoughts and wise 'counsels lucidly and vigorously
expressed. But so far as historical theory is concerned they
add little, if anything, to what had been said by De Bonald,
De Maistre, and Lamennais. The historical generalisations
which they contain show neither extensive nor accurate
historical knowlege, and his judgments on particular histori-
cal events are generally wanting in impartiality and modera-
tion.
The ' Bibliotheque nouvelle,' edited by M. Veuillot, was
begun in 1850 with a work ' De la Philosophie de l'Histoire '
by M. Roux-Lavergne. In this work the philosophy of his-
tory is explicitly identified with the theology of history, and,
FEREAND 381
in fact, is practically treated as a branch of Catholic apolo-
getics. In the opinion of M. Veuillot, the philosophy of
history had been invented in order to destroy Catholicism ;
M. Roux-Lavergne attempts to compose a philosophy of
history which will be a verification of Catholic dogmas.
II
In the party of reaction which rose into prominence at the
Restoration, all who were absolutists in politics were not tra-
ditionalists or ultramontanists in religion. Count Ferrand
(1758-1821), as a historical theorist, represented this type of
opinion. While decidedly opposed to allowing the people any
share in the government of their country, and a sternly hostile
critic'of the creed as to the rights of man proclaimed by the
Revolution, he was also a severe judge of the papacy and of
its policy. Two of his works must be mentioned, but need not
be dwelt on. The 'Esprit de l'Histoire,' 4 torn., 1802, is an
attempt to give, in the form of letters to his son, a general
view of the great epochs of history, and to trace especially
what its author regards as the true substance and main move-
ment of history: the progress of government and laws and
their influence on manners and public happiness. Its central
idea, perhaps, is that political law rests on moral law, and
moral law on divine law. It is a book of little value. The
epochs of history are not determined in it according to any
principle; the generalisations in it. are few and insignificant;
and the reflections which it contains are commonplace and
superficial. The ' The'orie des Revolutions,' 4 torn., is a consid-
erably better work. It abounds in condemnation of Napoleon,
and hence, although printed in 1811, was not published until
1817. It treats first of physical revolutions in relation to
their political effects, and then of religious revolutions and
their political effects ; but five of the nine books of which it
consists deal with political revolutions. Such revolutions are
described as " moral maladies attached to empires as physical
revolutions to the human species, and referable to causes which
produce them in all times and places, although always with
modifications according to times and places." Starting from
this view of their nature, it is argued that there must be a
382 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
theory of revolutions, just as there is a theory of laws. This
theory he endeavours to supply by a study of the species,
causes, occasions, pretexts, motives, immediate effects, and en-
during consequences of revolutions. The study is commend-
ably comprehensive, but generally wants thoroughness. The
most interesting portion of it is that which treats of the effects
of revolutions (vii.). It is of a truthfulness altogether remark-
able, and obviously drawn directly from the life. The rest of
his work a study of history under the guidance of Aristotle,
Bossuet, and Montesquieu might have enabled him to write ;
but this part of it could not have been composed had he not
been an interested and observant witness of the tremendous
revolution through which his country passed in the closing
years of the eighteenth century. Many of the positions laid
down by him regarding that revolution have since been elab-
orately maintained by M. Taine, very possibly without knowl-
edge of the views of the earlier writer. Also specially worthy
of being noted is the use which he makes (iv. 4) of Aristotle's
distinction between absolute and proportional equality. He
has forcibly shown that to affirm absolute equality as a politi-
cal principle must destroy liberty and establish despotism.
Count Ferrand was an uncompromising opponent of the spirit
of the French Revolution. Its chief aim he believed to be an
impious desire to destroy the religion of the State, and all
religion. In his own opinion the union of religion and of the
State has been felt in all times and countries to be a natural
and sound principle, and is, in fact, altogether necessary to the
preservation and welfare of communities. Religion is the true
basis of civil society, of policy, and of legislation.
It must further be observed that all those who were theoc-
ratists and traditionalists in religion were not absolutists in
politics. M. Ballanche (1776-1847) was an instance, and he
too was among the historiosophists. He was a man of delicate
and easily moved sensibility and lively imagination ; of gentle
and tolerant disposition ; of meditative and mystical, not rati-
ocinative or dogmatic mind. He was fertile in peculiar and
ingenious views, but very sparing of proofs, and very imper-
fectly aware of when they were needed. He was, perhaps, the
only Frenchman who, prior to Michelet, had gained a real
insight into the ideas of Vico ; and he was also among the first
BALLANCHE 383
of French writers sympathetically to appreciate that regenera-
tion of the German genius which showed itself in Goethe and
Schiller, Winckelmann and Herder, Goerres and Schelling,
and Creuzer. His literary career began in 1801, with a book
on ' Sentiment conside're'e dans ses rapports avec la Literature
et les Arts.' His views on history are to be found chiefly in
his ' Essai sur les institutions sociales dans leurs rapports avee
les ide"es nouvelles,' 1818, and ' Palinge"n6sie Sociale,' 1823-
30. Two unversified poems which had once a certain celeb-
rity, 'Antigone,' 1814, and the ' Vision d'Hebal,' 1831, may
be regarded as so far complementary to them. Ballanche Avas
in all respects a romanticist.1
The idea which pervades and unifies his historical views is
that history is a progressive rehabilitation of humanity from
the evils of the Fall, marked by successive initiations, palin-
geneses. Man gradually raises himself from the state into
which he sank through his first sin, by a series of acts of self-
sacrifice and devotedness which unloose, one by one, the bur-
dens that press upon him, and remove the obstacles which
nature and society oppose to his advancement. These acts of
redemption and deliverance are in most instances performed
by individuals, but the benefits of them devolve on communi-
ties in accordance with the law of revertibility on which De
Maistre had so emphatically insisted.
As regards the history of the ancient world, he was, in the
main, a disciple of Vico. Like Vico, he deemed the struggle
of the patricians and plebeians to be the key to its explanation
■ — the fact which determined the stages of historic movement
prior to the establishment of Christianity. Like Vico also, he
represented mythology as being a kind of history of the oldest
societies, and saw in languages the most ancient archives of
the human race.
As regards the Christian world, Vico could no longer serve
him as a guide. According to M. Ballanche, Christianity is
an eminently plebeian religion. It is the law of emancipation
and of grace for all; it secures to the whole human race the
1 There are essays on Ballanche by Sainte-Beuve, De Laprade, and J. J. Ampere.
His general system of thought has been well expounded by M. Ferraz (' Tra-
ditionalisme et Ultramontanisme'), and by M. Eug. Blum ('Crit. Phil.' of 30th
June 1887).
384 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOEY IN FEANCE
right to liberty and equality. Its spirit was misunderstood in
the middle age, and it is vain to imagine that mankind can be
satisfied by the restoration of medieval institutions. It is
the perfect and final religion. It is the permanent and inex-
haustible source of progress. Within it there is room for the
utmost possible progress. " Fundamentally and in itself, in-
deed, religion is not, and cannot be, progressive. But in the
measure that time moves on, the veils fall, the seals of the
sacred book are broken, a new spirit bursts forth from under
the letter of the old texts, and things appear under an alto-
gether fresh light."
Ballanche supposed the material of all truth to be a sacred
tradition, which, while ever substantially the same, was also
ever varying. He fully accepted the doctrine that language
was a revelation ; that it had been directly and immediately
taught by God to the first man ; that the words of God were
what originally communicated thoughts to man ; but he insisted
on the gradual alteration and development both of the contents
and form of this revelation, both of language itself and the
spiritual truths it conveyed ; and even divided the whole move-
ment of history into epochs corresponding to the chief phases
through which language had passed. First, language was
merely spoken. This was when man was in his naive and
graceful childhood, when all the world around him appeared
in the colours of poetry, when religion was an intuition and
inspiration, when reflection had scarcely dawned and specula-
tion and doubt were unknown, and when song was the com-
mon channel by which the divine word passed from heart to
heart. In this stage the sacred deposit of spiritual truth
transmitted in language was in imminent danger of being
corrupted, owing to the vague and unfixed character of its
medium or form or vehicle, and society had to be distributed
into castes, with priests and poets specially set apart to pre-
serve and diffuse it in purity and power. But beautiful and
graceful as the childhood of the race is, it must, like that
of the individual, be outgrown. In the course of time thought
ceases to be mere intuition, poetry, and faith; it becomes
reflective, regular, and less graceful, but more powerful and
mature ; and can, consequently, no longer be left to be merely
uttered by the voice, merely spoken, but must be fixed in a
BALLANCHE 385
visible and more permanent form, must be written as well as
spoken. In this second stage of tradition, which is also the
second great epoch of history, the priest and poet no longer
suffice, and the philosopher rises to interpret or question their
message and share in their authority. At the same time
authority is weakened by being divided, inquiry spreads,
activity finds new channels, and knowledge grows from more
to more. Writing even perfected to the utmost is at length
found insufficient to contain and convey the wealth of expe-
rience and ideas which has been acquired, and a new art is
sought and discovered to satisfy the new demands which have
arisen. Thenceforth thought is not only spoken and written,
but also printed. It has reached its majority and stands no
longer in need of protection. It claims the completest free-
dom within the limits of reason and justice, and will, sooner
or later, inevitably secure it. All castes and class privileges
will disappear. All will know the truth, and the truth will
make them free. Those who attempt to obstruct humanity
on its march towards its goal — the realisation of rational free-
dom — must fail and be put to shame. Such is the general
formula of historical development suggested by M. Ballanche.
It implies that history is a progressive movement or growth,
ever advancing and spreading into a broader liberty, always
tending towards perfect freedom in every phase of life.
Ballanche recognises in history the combination of liberty
and necessity ; of the free agency of individuals and the de-
terminating influence of the social medium. He insists at
once on the importance of personal initiation and on the con-
ditioning and constraining power of the collective movement ;
both on the ability of men to create and shape the future for
themselves, and on the certainty that every future will neces-
sarily correspond to the past and present from which it pro-
ceeds. Like Hegel and Cousin he ascribes a vast historical
importance to great personalities — revealers and initiators,
prophets and heroes; like them also he attributes their in-
fluence and significance not to what isolates and individual-
ises them, but to what unites them with their fellows and
renders them the fitting instruments and organs of the spirit
of their age and people.
He does not confine his views of the future of humanity to
386 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOBY IK FKANCE
the present world, but represents the souls of men as passing
after death through many lives in many worlds, gradually
raising themselves by their own efforts into ever nobler lives
in ever brighter worlds, until they reach at length the glory
which is immutable, where progress must cease. This portion
of his teaching — his doctrine of metempsychosis — took root
in the minds of Pierre Leroux and Jean Reynaud, and re-
appeared in their writings.
Ill
The Revolution of 1830 was a heavy blow to ecclesiastical
as well as to political absolutism. In striking down the
latter it terrified the former into silence. It compelled the
admirers of theocratic despotism to understand that an open
advocacy of their cause was in the then state of public opin-
ion the worst method of serving it. Accordingly they retired
into obscurity, kept quiet, and waited for an opportune season
when they could reappear. The place from which they had
withdrawn was occupied by the Liberal or Neo-Catholic party,
which had been forming and growing for a considerable time
previous to 1830, but which only became conspicuous and
influential when its natural ally, constitutional monarchy,
triumphed over absolute monarchy. It was a party generous
in its aims, full of hope and courage, lavish in promises, and
eager for action. Its chiefs were brilliantly gifted, thoroughly
sincere, nobly self-denying, and inspired with the enthusiasm
both of patriotism and of piety. Their followers, largely
composed of the brightest and best of the youth of France,
were every way worthy of such leaders as Lamennais, La-
cordaire, and Ozanam, as Montalembert, De Falloux, and De
Broglie.
What this party had in view was to help to bring back into
the fold of the Church those who had withdrawn from it, to
secure and set forth the harmony of Catholic doctrine and of
modern science, and to reconcile the claims of the hierarchy
with the rights of the laity and the liberties of nations. It
was certainly a grand and most desirable end ; one which all
who believed it attainable were clearly bound to strive to
reach. And although to realise it was even then manifestly
LIBERAL CATHOLICISM 387
a most arduous task, it was not yet a wholly visionary and
hopeless one. The disastrous pontificate of Pius IX., the
Syllabus, the decreeing of the Infallibility of the Pope as a
dogma, were still in the future. But it is easy to see why
the work so earnestly attempted failed, and failed so utterly
that intelligent men are never likely to undertake it again.
The Church had for ages been departing from truth, justice,
and liberty, and could only return to them by an act of self-
humiliation hardly to be expected from any great world-power,
and especially from one which claimed to have immunity from
error. The interests of those who ruled it were directly
opposed to restoring to the lower clergy and the laity the
rights of which they had deprived them, and which they were
able to retain by their absolute command of the administration
and resources of the Church. The great majority of the Cath-
olic laity were too ignorant and superstitious to take the side
of enlightenment and independence. Many even of the edu-
cated and intelligent minority held aloof from the new move-
ment, either because they doubted of the practicability of its
aims, or because they feared lest the freedom which was
sought for the Church would be employed by it to the injury
of the State. And, further, the advocates of Liberal Cathol-
icism were not themselves prepared to assert their principles
in opposition to an express condemnation of them by the Pope.
With the exception of Lamennais, they were all found at the
critical moments afraid to incur for their convictions the risk
of excommunication, the danger of losing their souls through
separation from the Church. But the Pope and hierarchy
must always prove too strong for those who are thus afraid of
their condemnation.
While the Liberal Catholic movement utterly failed to
attain the ends towards which it reached, it is not to be sup-
posed that it was wholly in vain. It greatly stimulated
intellectual activity and quickened spiritual life while it
lasted; and good effects of it remain. The truths contended
for by those who took part in it may, even where dormant
and buried now, yet "awake to perish never."
One incidental result of it was the production of various
historical works which have been widely read, and which have
had considerable influence on public opinion. Viewed gen-
388 PHILOSOPHY Of HISTORY IK FB.ANCE
erally, these worts are, as regards style, remarkably eloquent;
as regards spirit, ardently in sympathy with what is noble
and good; and want only critical thoroughness and impar-
tiality to be excellent. With the exception of eloquence,
there is little to commend in the 'Vie de Saint-Dominique,'
1840, of the famous Christian orator, Lacordaire. It conceals
the ferocious fanaticism of the persecutor in order to glorify
the piety of the ascetic. It is disappointing to find that so
one-sided and unfair a book could be written b}' so eminent
a man. The 'Vie de St. Elisabeth' of Montalembert is a
beautiful piece of literary composition, but scarcely to be
regarded as a biography at all. Its author overlooked the
proper sources of information, gave credence to legend, and
allowed free scope to his feelings and imagination. Hence a
very erroneous representation of the facts as to Elisabeth,
and an ignoring of the baneful influence of the infamous
Conrad of Marburg, papal inquisitor-general, upon her nature
and happiness.1 Montalembert's chief work, 'Histoire des
Moines d'Occident, ' 6 vols., is of high value. It is the fruit
of lengthened and sympathetic study. Its subject is one of
great interest and importance, and amply worthy of the elo-
quence and learning devoted to its treatment. It is avowedly
apologetic in aim, " intended to vindicate the glory of one of
the greatest institutions of Christianity; " but that it should
be so is much better than if it had been hostile and deprecia-
tory. The reader, however, who wishes to distinguish fact
from legend in it must do so by the continuous exercise of
his own critical faculty, as the author is very sparing in the
exercise of his. Ozanam was richly endowed with the best
qualities of a historian. Although an early death prevented
his executing more than some parts of the great work which
he had planned, these amply prove his right to be ranked
among the best historical writers of his country. His 'His-
toire de la Civilisation au 5e sidcle,' 1889, and 'Etudes Ger-
maniques, ' 1847-49, are the products of rare mental and of
accurate and extensive research. Although a desire to do
apologetic service to the Church is always apparent in them,
it can also be seen to have been kept, on the whole, well
iFor proof see Wegele's art., "Die heilige Elisabeth von Thiiringen," in v.
Sybel's ' Hist. Zt.,' Bd. v., 1861.
ABBE GRATRY 389
under control. The brothers Charles and Henry de Riancey
published in 1838 an 'Histoire du monde,' which gave a gen-
eral delineation of human history as viewed from the Liberal
Catholic standpoint.1
None of those who took an active part in the Liberal Catho-
lic movement wrote on the philosophy of history any work
which calls for notice. But the celebrated Abbe" Gratry
(1805-72) may perhaps be considered as belonging to the
Liberal Catholic party in virtue of his enlightened and liberal
opinions; and his 'La Morale et la loi de l'histoire, ' 1868,
2e ed., 1871, ought not to be passed over in silence.2 It is,
indeed, more the production of a preacher than of a philoso-
pher, more a work of practical edification than of science.
It is nevertheless an able and valuable book by a very remark-
able man. While unequal, often diffuse, abounding in repe-
titions, sometimes rash in assertion and exaggerated in
expression, and bearing other traces of improvisation, and of
an intensity and fervour of conviction not conducive to
orderliness, thoroughness, or accuracy of exposition, it is also
characterised by independence and considerable originality of
thought, as well as by impressiveness and vigour of style. It
presents in a most striking manner some truths of vital
importance to historical philosophy, and contains many admir-
able pages.
Gratry prefaced the first edition of the work by the words :
" The science of the laws of history, this New Science which
Vico has named, but could not know, is the science the prin-
ciples of which I endeavour to teach in this book." Hence
it is, I suppose, that he has been called the " Christian Vico "
and the " Vico of the nineteenth century. " He had, however,
little intellectual resemblance to Vico ; and, notwithstanding
1 There are English biographies of Lacordaire, Ozanam, and Montalembert re-
spectively by Dora Greenwell (1867) , Kathleen O'Meara (1876) , and Mrs. Oliphant
(1872), the first two of which are good, and the last in every respect admirable.
The French biographical writings relating to the leaders of the Liberal Catholic
movement are numerous. The most philosophical history, written by a repre-
sentative of French Liberal Catholicism, is ' L'Eglise et l'Empire Romain au
quatrieme siecle ' (6 vols., 3° ed., 1860), by M. Albert de Broglie. It is charac-
terised by profound insight into the period studied, and chargeable neither with
want of critical thoroughness nor of impartiality.
2 On Gratry, see the art. " Gratry " in Franck's 'Diet, des Sci. Phil.,' and the
essay of M. Caro on Gratry 's religious philosophy in ' Philosophie et Philosophes.'
In the latter work there is also a most interesting notice of Ozanam.
390 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
his real ability, cannot justly be represented as nearly equal
to tbe Italian historiosophist in genius. He bad read Vico's
'Seconda Scienza Nuova,' and mates a long quotation from
its fourth book, but there are no traces of his having studied
it closely or sympathetically. The fact that he can charge
Vico with having seen in history only the political movement,
is sufficient to show that he did not really understand his
system.
Gratry has himself delineated what he calls " the scientific
framework " of his theory of history in words which I shall
reproduce so far as abbreviation will allow.
" The new science, the science of history, is one greatly needed in the
present age of restlessness, uncertainty, and suffering, for it is the science
of hope. As such it rests on this solid basis, — the history of humanity
has its laws, or, more correctly, its law, and that law is worthy of man
and worthy of God. The idea of law and the idea of liberty do not in
any way exclude each other. Law and fatality are not the same thing.
The life of the human race is subject to a law, not less than the motions
of the stars. But while the stars obey their law necessarily, man obeys
his law freely. As inertia is the essential property of matter, liberty is
the essential characteristic of man. Man, therefore, can do what matter
cannot : he can accept or resist impulses, and alter the velocity and direc-
tion of his movements. He can struggle against the law of his life and
the immense force which inspires and directs it. He can choose. He can
triumph under the law, or break himself against the law. But the law
reigns whether it breaks or glorifies the free being which it rules. All
the movements of history are the inevitable effects of the force of man
acting under his law, to follow it or violate it : movements of life or
death, of progress or decadence, according to the way in which the force
acts under the law. The law always r-eigns ; no one violates it in itself.
The free force breaks itself against the law, or triumphs under the law,
but it is always in virtue of the law that it is either triumphant or broken.
The law always reigns, even in the details and form of the breakage and
failure, as attraction always reigns through all so-called perturbations :
every detail of perturbation is a regular effect of the law."1
" What is the law of history ? It is one which was thus formulated
by Jesus : ' All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you,
even so do ye also unto them.' This formula is even shorter than that
of the law of attraction, and like it involves a whole science. It is the
law of history inasmuch as it is the law of the cause which produces all
the facts of history. But as in astronomy besides the law of attraction,
the law of the cause, there are three secondary laws, inevitable conse-
quences of the attraction acting under its law, which describe the form
1 T. i. 4-6.
ABBE GKATRY 391
of its movements, so in history besides the fundamental law, the law of
the force, there is a law of the phases of progress, and of the form of
the movements. This latter law has likewise been formulated by Jesus,
and is: 'If ye abide in my word, ye shall know the truth, and the truth
will make you free.' Its three phases or moments are : abiding in the law,
knowing the truth, and becoming free ; and they are the effects of human
force acting under the law. If man does not abide in the law, instead of
advancing to the knowledge of the truth, and by this knowledge attaining
freedom, he will go into darkness, and through darkness into slavery." 1
" The significance of the law of the force and of the law of the form
of history, however, can only be properly realised when it is recognised
that man is born into three worlds in which they apply, — the physical
or natural world, the human or social world, and the supreme or divine
world. Hence the true division of his duties : duties towards nature, —
towards man, — and towards God. He has to increase, multiply, and
replenish the earth ; to subdue and transform, improve, and enrich it, by
his labour and science. He has to bring society, throughout the whole
earth, into order and justice; to cause war, spoliation, and misery every-
where to cease. He has, further, to seek the kingdom of God and His
righteousness ; to draw by faith, piety, and religious science, from the
bosom of the heavenly Father, the infinite source of life and energy, those
divine forces which will solve the problems and overcome the obstacles
with which the forces of nature and of humanity cannot successfully
cope. These tasks, these duties, are incumbent on all generations of
men, but they are unequally accomplished at different periods. Hence
the three ages of history : 1. The struggle against nature ; 2. The strug.
gle for justice ; and 3. The endeavour after the freedom and perfection
of the religious life. These ages are inseparably connected and inter*
dependent. For men find that in order to subdue the earth they must
establish justice, and in order to establish justice must have recourse to
God ; and that then they must recommence their labour to subdue the
earth and to establish justice. These are the three great historical circles
of which Vico caught a glimpse, without being able to distinguish the
special content of each. He correctly perceived that they always follow
in the same order, and then recommence ; but not that they also always
rise, and always in each circle lessen labour and enlarge the range of
vision, like those spiral paths which mount up from the plain to the tops
of mountains." 2
" This law of progress explains the history of the Christian world. In
its first phase, the Church struggles during more than a thousand years
against Roman paganism and German barbfarism, practising the word of
God and justice. Next, it enters into the phase of truth, which, at first,
was entirely theological and scholastical, which afterwards illumined
nature, and which, in our days, carries light into the social world. The
third phase, that of liberty, has been badly inaugurated by the French
1 T. i. 6-10. 2T.i. 11-18, 297-302 ; T. ii. 382-387, &c.
392 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Eevolution, and dates only from the present day. Humanity hitherto
passive now begins, with full knowledge and entire freedom, to take into
its hands the management of the affairs of the world ; it enters into its
age of manhood." 1
Such is the general outline of Gratry's historical philoso-
phy. That philosophy was inspired by a firm faith in prog-
ress, but in a progress which is the work of freedom, a
" facultative " progress. Gratry criticises and judges severely
society as it actually exists ; some of his chapters are on fire
with a fierce indignation against the enslavement and spolia-
tion of man by man, the unjust and homicidal conduct, which
still prevail; and he sees and dreads the dangers of the near
future ; but his general view of the duty of the human race
is characterised by a hopefulness which may very possibly be
excessive. At least he has not proved that he has a right to
suppose that the powers of mankind will be multiplied so
many times an hundredfold that the earth will nourish mil-
lairds of persons; that the limits of life will be greatly
extended ; that the stars will be utilised in now unsuspected
ways ; and that the place of immortality will be perceived.
The main source of such optimism as is to be met with in his
view of the course which history has to run was obviously
the intensity of his belief in providential wisdom and good-
ness. It was also, doubtless, in part derived from the teach-
ing of the celebrated economist Bastiat, the ingenious and
brilliant opponent of socialism and protectionism. For that
teaching Gratry had great admiration, and its influence is
very visible in the work under consideration.
The chief service rendered by our author to historical
philosophy is the demonstration which he has given of the
dependence of political and social progress on moral progress.
He has shown with singular clearness and force that the great
obstacle to progress is vice ; that almost all the evils of soci-
ety would be removed if men would only consent to refrain
from lying, theft, murder, and the like ; that a right moral
state is indispensable to economic prosperity, and every other
kind of human welfare; and that if nations die it is not
inevitably, but because they are guilty of preferring death to
i T. i. ch. xiii.
ABBE GRATRY 393
life. It is especially on account of this merit that Gratry's
work deserves to be kept in remembrance; and it is not to be
denied to it, or depreciated, because, not content with repre-
senting morality as the condition of progress, he also main-
tained it to be its law. This latter position is an obvious
error, — one too obvious to require refutation. Any truly
ethical law must be essentially distinct from a merely or
strictly historical law.
I shall only add that the worthy Abbe' strangely says noth-
ing about the Reformation ; is refreshingly satisfactory and
outspoken for a Frenchman in regard to Louis XIV. ; passes
a judgment on the Revolution remarkable for the courage,
insight, and fairness which it displays ; and attacks Buckle,
Malthus, and J. S. Mill too violently.1
1 It seems desirable to mention at this point the following works : —
1. Abbe' Gabriel, ' La vie et la inort des nations,' 1837. Its chief thesis is that
the science, art, and industry of the present day tend of themselves only to push
society to the abyss, and that its salvation must come from the love or charity
which Christ, the Church, and sacraments inspire or convey. It is the work of
a pious mystic, and written not without eloquence, but is hazy and uninstructive.
2. Abbe Frere, ' Principes de la philosophie de l'histoire,' 1838. Worthless.
3. Baron A. Guiraud, ' Philosophie catholique de l'histoire,' 1839. The author
acquired some fame as a poet, and was a member of the French Academy, but
the book named is of a positively ludicrous character, dealing only with such
subjects as the two principles of good and evil, creation, universal soul, state of
man before sin, alimentation and multiplication of men before sin, and various
unprofitable questions unfortunately suggested by the first chapter of Genesis to
an over imaginative mind.
4. Abbe" L. Leroy, ' Le regne de Dieu dans la grandeur, la mission et la chute
des empires, ou Philosophie de l'histoire consideree au point de vue divin,' 1889.
This book I have not seen. It is unfavourably noticed by Rougemont, t. ii. 482.
5. L. Lacroix, ' Dix ahs d'enseignement historique a le Faculty des lettres de
Nancy,' 1865. This is a collection of " opening discourses." Their subjects are
respectively — the union of religion and science; the law of history; the gener-
ating principle of societies ; Moses as historian and legislator ; the Greeks and
Persians — the Medic wars; Rome, the Empire, and the Church; Christianity
and Islamism ; and the dynastic revolutions of France. They are the produc-
tions of a cultured and scholarly mind, and present attractively a general view
of the course of history as seen from the standpoint of Liberal Catholicism ; but
they fathom no depths and solve no difficulties.
6. Pere Felix, ' Le Progres par le Christianisme. Conferences de Notre-Dame
de Paris, 1856-64.' These discourses are eloquent, but devoid of philosophical
or historical value.
CHAPTER VII
THE SOCIALISTIC SCHOOLS
I have now to consider the historical theories of a class of
thinkers who felt as deeply as those treated of in the preced-
ing chapter that society was grievously diseased and disor-
ganised, but who held very different views both as to the
character and causes of the evil and as to what would be the
appropriate remedy. Instead of being, like the theocratic
absolutists, wholly hostile to the Revolution, they largely
accepted its ideas and continued its spirit. Equality and
fraternity, in particular, they regarded as the highest and
most sacred truths, the latest and noblest births of time.
And far from looking, as even the Catholic Liberals did, to
the Church for inspiration and guidance, they believed that
it had long ceased to be a life-giving and socially beneficent
institution. All the powers of the past, they thought, had
been proved incapable of regenerating society, of raising the
masses, of extinguishing injustice and misery; and so a new
way must be attempted — ■ reorganisation from the veiy foun-
dations, and not merely some reform of religion or philosophy,
of this institution or of that, which would leave the world
much the same as before. It was also essential, these thinkers
believed, to carry out this attempt in a direct way. It seemed
to them very unfortunate that religion in its various forms
had either entirely despaired of society, and aimed only at
the salvation of individuals, or had assumed that society
could only be saved, regenerated, through the salvation,
regeneration, of individuals. Even the latter view, they
said, is just the reverse of the truth. We must seek to regen-
erate individuals through the regeneration of society, by the
establishment of new social arrangements and institutions;
394
SAINT-SIMON 395
and as an essential condition we must persuade men to fix
their eyes on a goal, not beyond the earth, but on it; and to
regard religion, like everything else, as of value only in so
far as it guides society to the great object of ameliorating the
condition of the class the most numerous and poor. It was
thus that Claude Henri de Saint-Simon and Francois Marie
Charles Fourier, the founders of modern socialism, were led
to their peculiar speculations. These speculations, of course,
only concern us here so far as they have history for their
subject.1
Saint-Simon was born in 1760. He belonged to a family
which professed to be descended from Charlemagne, and
claimed to be better entitled to the throne of France than the
Bourbons. He had, however, no aristocratic prejudices, or
family pride, and was even deficient in self-respect. Relig-
ion had a slight hold on him, and his morality was lax.
But he was generous and benevolent, athirst for glory, and
from youth to old age resolutely bent on doing great things
for mankind. He wandered in many lands, witnessed ex-
traordinary events in the New World and in the Old, made
acquaintance with all conditions of men, and had experience
of the most varied phases of life and of the extremes and
vicissitudes of fortune. He acted, experimented, and endured
much before he undertook to teach.
The literary career of Saint-Simon began in 1803, and from
1807 to 1825 was characterised by uninterrupted activity.
From 1807 to 1814, general science was the chief subject on
which his mind was occupied; from 1814 to 1824, political
and social organisation; and a new religion, "le nouveau
Christianisme," was its latest product. He died in 1825.
Of his works those which have most interest for a student of
the development of historical philosophy are the 'Introduction
aux Travaux Scientifiques du xixe sidcle,' the 'Me"moire sur
l On the general history of socialism in France the following are among the
best works to consult: L. Eeybaud, 'Etudes sur les re'formateurs contemporains,'
4" ed., 1844; A. Sudre, 'Histoire da communisme,' 2° ed., 1887; B. Malon,
'Histoiredusocialisme,'5 vols, (the second volume) ; L. Stein, 'Der Socialismus
und Communismus des heutigen Frankreich,' 2 Aufl., 1848 ; K. Griin, ' Die
sociale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien,' 1845 ; and W. L. Sargant, ' Social
Innovators,' 1858.
396 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
la Science de l'Homme, ' and the 'Travail sur la Gravitation
Universelle. ' They all belong to what may be conveniently
designated the scientific period of Saint-Simon's life, the first
having been written and privately circulated in 1807-8,
although not, properly speaking, published till 1832; and
the two latter having been written and privately circulated
in 1813 and 1814, although not, properly speaking, published
till 1859. It is also necessary, however, to have an acquain-
tance with the more important of Saint-Simon's other writ-
ings, as well as with the celebrated 'Exposition de la
Doctrine Saint-Simonienne, ' published in 1832, and chiefly
the work of M. Bazard.1
Saint-Simon had considerable power of historical insight
and historical generalisation, and abounded in ingenious
views on the course and tendencies of human development.
He was a lavish sower of ideas. He was not, however, spe-
cially qualified to cultivate and reap them. He had a sus-
ceptible, original, and fertile mind, but not one whose habits
of thought were scientific ; and he seldom either adequately-
verified or developed what he had conceived. He was in
this respect a contrast to M. Comte, whose 'distinctive merits
lay much less in wealth and originality of conception than in
persistent pursuit of scientific certainty, and power of elab-
orate co-ordination and construction. Almost all Comte's
leading ideas on the philosophy of history may be found more
or less plainly expressed in works written and either published
or privately circulated by Saint-Simon before his acquain-
tance with Comte, which began in 1818, and came to a
1 All the writings of Saint-Simon, although not very numerous, are only to
be found in the 'CEuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin,' a publication begun in
1865, and now containing at least 40 volumes. His principal works are to be
found in the two-volumed edition of Hubbard, 1857, and the three-volumed
edition, published at Brussels in 1859. Booth's ' Saint-Simon and Saint-Simon-
ism,' 1871, and Janet's ' Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme,' 1878, are excellent
studies. Probably the most instructive document on the history of the Saint-
Simonian school, from the death of Saint-Simon to its disruption, is the " Memoire
sur le Saint-Simonisme," by the late M. H. Carnot, published in the Compte-
Rendu de l'Acad. d. Sc. Mor. et Pol., 1887 (7e and 8" livraisons). See also the
account in Louis Blanc's ' History of Ten Years,' B. III. ch. 3 (E. T.). Michelet
has some interesting pages on Saint-Simon in his ' Histoire du xix° siecle.'
The most thorough treatment of his views on history and historical progress
will be found in four articles of M. Renouvier in the 'Critique Philosophique,'
Anne'e x.
SAINT-SIMON 397
violent close in 1824. The Saint-Simonian doctrine, as it
came to be received in the Saint-Simonian school, went far
beyond what Saint-Simon had explicitly taught, and much of
it, perhaps, he would have refused to acknowledge.
It is much easier to exaggerate Saint-Simon's originality
than to say precisely in what it consisted. It was not origi-
nality of the highest order. It did not imply extraordinary
power of independent, self-productive thought, deep intel-
lectual penetration, or the apprehension even of a single great
entirely unknown truth. It sprang chiefly from openness of
mind to novel ideas of all kinds, and readiness to perceive
their bearing on social reorganisation, the absorbing interest
of his life. He has himself very candidly stated how much
he was indebted in forming his system not only to the writ-
ings of Vicq-d'Azir, Cabanis, Bichat, and Condorcet, but also
to the friendly instructions of Dr. Burdin, Dr. Bougon, and
M. Oelsner. But the loans acknowledged made up a very
large portion of his whole intellectual capital. It is enough
to refer here only to those of which we should have known
nothing but for his own statement. He owed to Dr. Burdin
those views as to the nature of knowledge, the law of the
development of thought, and the order of the evolution of
the sciences, which Comte appropriated, and made the basis
of the system of Positivism.1 Dr. Bougon removed his doubts
as to the continuity of beings. M. Oelsner convinced him
that the middle age was not a period of retrogression.
Saint-Simon had the merit of assigning to the science of
history a clearly denned place in the general system of the
sciences. The science of history forms, according to him,
the second part of the science of man — that part which treats
of the human species or race. The first part treats of man as
an individual composed of body and mind, and so comprises
a physiological and psychological section. The whole science
of man, however, is but a part of a more' comprehensive
science, physiology, which, as understood by Saint- Simon,
includes biology, psychology, and the science of history.
Mental action and historical evolution are both regarded by
1 See ' CEuvres Choisis de C. H. de Saint-Simon,' 1859, t. ii. 20-35. The
' Me"moire sur la Science de l'homme,' in which the passage occurs, was first
published in 1813.
398 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOBY IN PKANCE
him as physiological functions; only the physiologist can
hope to study either with success. M. Comte, I may here
remark, partly followed and partly abandoned this view of
Saint-Simon, merging psychology in physiology, and yet
including historical evolution in the separate and final science
of sociology. But surely consistency is on the side of the
earlier thinker. If the progress of the individual mind be
merely a biological function, how can the collective progress
of any number of individual minds be an essentially different
sort of function, the subject of a distinct and fundamental
science ?
Physiology understood as stated, is further regarded by
Saint-Simon as the last of a series of sciences which have
gradually and slowly passed one after another out of a con-
jectural and theological state into a positive and properly
scientific state. The entire movement of thought in history
is from the one to the other of these states. The mind passes
through a succession of religious phases, — fetichism, poly-
theism, deism, — and steadily substitutes for them in one
department of inquiry after another those positive and scien-
tific conceptions, the sum of which Saint-Simon designates
by the word physicism. This law of two states is as funda-
mental in the system of Saint-Simon as the more celebrated
law of three states in that of Comte ; and the latter law differs
from the former only by the insertion between its terms of
the metaphysical state. M. Littre" was bound to have re-
membered this circumstance when denying M. Hubbard's
statement that the law of three states was borrowed from
Saint-Simon. He was correct when he said that the law of
three states is not enunciated in any of Saint-Simon's writ-
ings ; but as there is undoubtedly often enunciated and con-
stantly implied a law of two states, both included in Comte's
three, he was quite mistaken when he affirmed that as to the
origination of Comte's historical conception Saint-Simon is
hors de cause. So little is that the case, that Comte's own
assertion of originality cannot be allowed for a moment to
weigh against the opposing texts and facts. Comte could
not but have learned from Saint-Simon a law of two states
substantially the same as that which has become so closely
SAINT-SIMON 399
associated with his own name ; one to which he only added
a term which few even of his disciples seem to think on a
parity with the other two, and which others of them appear
not unwilling altogether to extrude. Comte may have been
quite sincere in affirming the whole conception to have been
his own; but the affirmation itself was certainly not true, and
only showed how little either his memory or judgment could,
after the rupture of 1822, be trusted as to his obligations to
his former friend and master.
With the age of Bacon and Descartes, according to Saint-
Simon, the day of positive science began to dawn out of the
night of theological conjecture. And first astronomy, with
the help of mathematics, next physics, and then chemistry,
came under the beams of the light; the reason of this order
being that the facts of astronomy are the simplest, and those
of chemistry the most complicated. Physiology, more con-
crete and complex still than chemistry, is as yet partly con-
jectural and partly positive, although on the eve of becoming
completely positive. When it has done so philosophy itself
will attain to positivity. " For the special sciences are the
elements of general science ; general science, that is to say,
philosophy, could not but be conjectural so long as the special
sciences were so ; was necessarily partly conjectural and partly
positive when one portion of the special sciences had become
special while another was still conjectural, and will be quite
positive when all the special sciences are positive, which will
happen when physiology and psychology are based on observed
and tested facts, as there is no phenomenon which is not
astronomical, chemical, physiological, or psychological. We
know, therefore, at what epoch the philosophy taught in the
schools will become positive." It is only when the sciences
have all become positive that society can be rationally organ-
ised; for religion, general politics, morality, and education,
are only applications of principles which must be furnished
by science. Such is Saint-Simon's view of philosophy or
general science, and of the place occupied therein by the
science of history. This view was derived from Dr. Burdin,
and is substantially the same, as I have said, with that of
M. Comte. As it is most explicitly stated in the 'Me"moire
400 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
sur la Science de 1' Homme, ' written five years before the
commencement of Comte's intercourse with Saint-Simon,
there is no room for doubt that the former received it from
the latter. It is quite in vain to say, as M. Littre* does, that
that work ought to be regarded as non-existent, seeing that
although written in 1813 and sent to certain persons whose
names are known, it was not published till 1859 ; for, first,
the list to which M. Littre- refers contains only the names of
twenty-eight distinguished public men, leaving Saint-Simon,
as sixty copies of his book were printed, thirty-two to dispose
of among his personal friends and disciples at a time when
these were very few ; and further, the work is incontestable
evidence that Saint-Simon- possessed certain ideas in 1813,
which it is simply impossible to believe he would not com-
municate to any person who was on such terms of intimacy
with him as Comte was some years later.
It will be obvious from what has been said that Saint-
Simon was aware of the closeness of the connection between
the science of history and physical science. Indeed he con-
ceived of it as far closer than he was warranted to do. He
regarded the science of history as a physical science ; in other
words, refused to recognise the distinctions which exist be-
tween the physical and moral worlds, or at least that any of
these distinctions necessitate essentialty different explana-
tions of physical and moral phenomena. He had consequently
to attempt to bring physical law over into the moral world,
and into history a province of the moral world. His attempt
was a very curious one, and he himself came to acknowledge
that it was unsuccessful. Fancying that the unity of the
system of nature and the unity of science implied that there
was one all-pervasive law from which every other law and fact
in existence might be derived, he was led by obvious and
superficial considerations to believe gravitation that law, and
to maintain that it accounted for chemical and biological,
and even mental and historical, phenomena ; that gravitation
was, in fact, the law of the universe, of the solar system, of
the earth, of man, of society, or, generally, of the whole and
all its parts ; and that if other laws had the appearance of
independence, it was only because they had not yet been
reduced under or deduced from it.
SAINT-SIMON 401
The social atmosphere seems to have been full of ideas of
this kind when he wrote. His rival Fourier was at the same
time insisting with much greater emphasis that the central
social law was what he called the law of passional attraction,
which he believed to be a rigorous deduction from Newton's
law; and M. Azais, with copious speech and too facile pen,
was explaining everything in the material, mental, and social
worlds by expansion. Of course, all these attempts at uni-
versal explanation must be regarded as utter failures. No
explanation of the kind aimed at has yet been reached even
for the physical world, and there seem to be no good reasons
for supposing that any such explanation ever will be reached.
Far less likely is it, however, that the mind will ever attain
to a unity so absolute that it will account at once for all the
phenomena of matter and of spirit, which have so little in
common and so much in contrast. To establish that the law
which regulates the motions of material masses is likewise
that which reigns in the reason, conscience, affections, and
will of man, and which determines their evolution in history,
must be regarded as a task far surpassing in difficulty any
achieved by Newton ; and it may safely be said that neither
Saint-Simon, nor Fourier, nor Azais has given us anything
designed to that end which has even the semblance of long-
sustained reasoning and profound truth. They had, indeed,
no better reason for their transference of physical law into
the spiritual world than the existence of those analogies
between the physical and the spiritual the recognition of
which is the source of metaphorical language. To talk of the
gravitation or attraction, or expansion of the thoughts or
feelings of the individual, or of the successive or coexistent
states of society, is purely such language; and the whole
argumentation of those who maintain spiritual fact and law
to be reducible to material fact is a process in which they
cheat their minds by understanding figurative speech literally.
Serious as Saint-Simon's error was, it is not, as M. Littre"
maintained, conclusive against his claims to be ranked among
positivists. It has nothing to do with that claim, but is
simply a case of false explanation of phenomena. It differs
from Comte's own reduction of psychology under biology only
in degree ; it is a greater error, but the same sort of error.
402 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
As it does not proceed on the assumption that the mind can
know anything beyond phenomena and their laws, it cannot
be pronounced, on the mere ground of falsity, inconsistent
with positive philosophy. It must be further remarked that
Saint-Simon does not appear to have promulgated the idea in
any of his works written subsequently to 1814, and that he
stated to M. Olinde Rodrigues that he had found reason to
abandon it.
In the judgment of Saint-Simon, Vicq-d'Azir, Cabanis,
Bichat, and Condorcet were those among his immediate pre-
decessors who had advanced most the science of man; and
Condorcet he regarded as the person who had done most for
that part of the science of man which is conversant with his-
tory. He took, in fact, precisely the same view of the spec-
ulations in Condorcet's 'Esquisse' and of the relation of his
own speculations to them which we find subsequently taken
and expressed by Comte in both of his great works ; that is
to say, while censuring the exaggerations, the prejudices,
the manifold errors of omission and commission with which
the book abounds, he accepted its leading principles, that
man must be studied as a species no less than as an individ-
ual; that generations are so bound to generations that the
species is progressive and perfectible; that human develop-
ment is subject to law and passes through a series of phases ;
and that from the past the future may be so far foreseen, as
true and fundamental, as requiring only development and a
more careful application. He professed to do no more than
to build on the foundation constituted by these principles.
The idea which Condorcet merely incidentally expresses,
that " the progress of society is subject to the same general
laws observable in the individual development of our facul-
ties, being the result of that very development considered at
once in a great number of individuals," seems to me the cen-
tral principle of the Saint-Simonian philosophy of history.
" General intelligence and individual intelligence are devel-
oped according to the same law. These two phenomena differ
only as regards the size of the scales on which they have been
constructed." This being his guiding thought, Saint-Simon
naturally compares, as so many others have done, the periods
of human life to the stadia of history. A fondness for build-
SAINT-SIMON 403
ing, digging, using tools, seems to him distinctive of child-
hood in the individual, and of the Egyptians in the race ; a
love of music, painting, and poetay, of youth from puberty to
twenty-five, and of the Greeks ; military ambition, of most
men from that age till they are forty-five, and of the Romans
among nations; while at forty-five the active forces of the
individual begin to diminish, but his intellectual forces,
imagination excepted, to increase, or at least to be better
employed — and to this age corresponds the era of humanity
inaugurated by the Saracens, to whom we are indebted for
algebra, chemistry, physiology, &c. The race is now about
the middle of its allotted course, or at that epoch when the
human mind is in fullest possession both of imagination and
reason. Our predecessors had, relatively to reason, too much
imagination, and our descendants will have too little. A
year of individual life probably answers to about two cen-
' turies in that of the species. It was thus that our author
worked out a parallelism which is too fanciful to require
criticism. But his principle led him to other thoughts which,
whether true or not, are at least suggestive.
One of these is the doctrine of an ever-recurring alternation
of organic and critical periods in history. It is constantly
implied, and often partially stated by Saint-Simon ; but its
clearest expression is due to Bazard, who in this as in sev-
eral other instances, has expounded his master's thought
better than he succeeded in doing himself. The doctrine is
to this effect. The human spirit manifests its rational activ-
ity in analysis and synthesis, in ascending from particulars
to generals, and in descending from generals to particulars.
These are the two directions either of which it may, and one
of which it must, take when it reasons; and upward and
downward, an a posteriori and a priori direction. The gen-
eral process inclusive of both, Saint-Simon proposed should
be designated by the rather extraordinary name of the Des-
cartes. The twofold procedure of reason is not confined to
the individual mind, but regulates the development of the
race as a whole. Societies, like individuals, employ some-
times analysis and sometimes synthesis ; and this determines
whether the epoch which they pass through will be critical
or organic. All history may be divided into critical periods
404 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOBY IN" FRANCE
and organic periods. The critical periods are those in which
the minds of men are employed in investigating the principles
of the government under which they live, in endeavouring
to amend old institutions and to invent new ones ; in which
no creed commands the assent of all, so that society is without
principles, discontented, changeful, and, in a word, in a state
of anarchy. Organic periods, on the contrary, are those which
possess an accepted doctrine, in which society is cemented by
the synthesis of a common faith, in which the actual institu-
tions give satisfaction to the world, and men's minds are at
rest. Thus pre-Socratic Greece was organic — post-Socratic
Greece, critical. Roman history began to pass from organic
to critical with Lucretius and Cicero. With the definite
constitution of the Christian Church in the sixth century
began the new organic period of feudalism; and in the six-
teenth century the Reformers inaugurated another critical
period which the philosophers have continued until the pres- '
ent time, when the great want of society is not more analysis,
not the continuance of criticism, but a new synthesis, a new
doctrine.
The correspondence between individual and social develop-
ment suggested likewise to Saint-Simon a mode of giving
increased extension and precision to the idea of progress or
perfectibility which Condorcet had insisted on. It seemed
to him that that idea had hitherto been barren, because there
had been no vigorous attempt in presence of a vast variety of
the facts of history to co-ordinate them into homogeneous
series with the terms so connected as to manifest laws of
increase or decrease. All the facts of history, such as
equality, liberty, authority, war, industry, could be, he
thought, thus ranged, so as to show regular growth or deca-
dence in the past, and such as might therefore be anticipated
in the future. Hence, besides the classification of the facts
of history into critical and organic, he endeavours to exhibit
three great subordinate or auxiliary series, answering to the
three great phases of human nature. In that nature there are
intelligence, sentiment, and physical activity. The products
of intelligence are the sciences ; of sentiment, religion and the
fine arts ; of physical activity, industry. Saint-Simon tries
to form serial co-ordinations of these products in order to find
SAINT-SIMON 405
the laws of development of the principles which have origi-
nated them, and imagines that here too he discovers an alter-
native movement of analysis and synthesis, of the a posteriori
and a priori method.
He makes another important use of the series when he
attempts to arrange the various societies on the earth in a
scale graduated according to their mental development. He
points out that every degree of culture from the lowest bar-
harism to the highest civilisation is represented somewhere ;
and on this principle describes what he considers the different
stages or terms. The lowest he illustrates by the state of
the savage of Aveyron at the time of his capture ; the second
by the savages of Magellan Straits, without fire, without
houses, or chiefs ; the third by some tribes on the north-west
coast of America, unable to count beyond three, and with the
merest rudiments of a language and chieftainship ; the fourth
by the cannibal New Zealanders ; the fifth by the inhabitants
of the Friendly Society and Sandwich Islands ; the sixth by
the Peruvians and Mexicans as discovered by the Spaniards ;
the seventh by the Egyptians ; after whom the series becomes
chronological or strictly historical, its eighth term being the
Greeks; its ninth, the Romans; its tenth, the Saracens; its
eleventh, European society founded by Charlemagne ; and the
twelfth, that which is rising on its ruins.
A general glance at this scale or series, and still more a
close study of the fifty pages devoted to its consideration,
will disclose many defects. Some of them, however, were
inevitable in the wretched condition in which ethnologjr was
half a century ago; and had they been even more numerous,
they would not have annulled the merits of the general con-
ception and of the attempt to realise it ; a conception on which
well-known and very able works have since been based, and
on which many other works, we may safely say, will be based;
a conception which so links together ethnology and history as
to allow of their giving full assistance to each other. The
greatest error into which Saint-Simon fell in connection with
it seems to me to have been his making it the expression of
an hypothesis, instead of regarding it simply as a mode of
arranging facts in such a way as might be hoped would event-
ually lead to the scientific proof of a theory. He assumed
406 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
that the lowest stage of culture was representative of the
oldest; that man made his first appearance on earth as a
speechless and disgusting brute, and gained his present
height of attainment step by step. It may be so ; but that
assumption is one thing, and the series itself is another.
And it cannot be regarded as otherwise than in the main a
misfortune that the ruder races of mankind have been studied
even by ethnologists with undue reference to the question,
whether or not barbarous peoples can civilise themselves.
Theological prepossessions of an opposite character have led
some to affirm and others to deny that they can, with an
emphasis and assurance out of all proportion to the evidence ;
and, in the case of most of those who claim to speak merely
in the name of science, with a singular forgetfulness that its
first duty must be to collect and analyse all that is to be
learned regarding the ruder tribes of the world, and its next
to endeavour without prejudice to ascertain what are the
various stages of social elevation or degradation, and what
the laws of transition from the one to the other; and that
only through the accomplishment of these two duties can it
hope successfully to solve the problem of the origin of civili-
sation.
Naturally it was the future of civilisation which interested
Saint-Simon most. Naturally, also, his views as to the future
were optimistic. The true "age of gold," he taught, was
not in the past, where a blind tradition had placed it, but in
Z1 the future. The reign of happiness was at hand. It would
give full satisfaction to all the wants of that "flesh" which
Christianity and the Church had so mischievously sought to
repress and crucify. With the true organisation of society
there would be a rehabilitation of the flesh and a fuller ap-
preciation of material enjoyment. It is with a view to the
requirements of industry and to the attainment of earthly
happiness that the whole process of organising society is to
be effectuated. Theocracy and feudalism, the ages of faith
and of force, of the priest and the warrior, have irrevocably
gone. The age of industrialism, of labour, of "the exploita-
tion of the globe by association," has definitively come.
Henceforth society must act on the axiom that "as industry
does all things, all is to be done for industry." Industry
SAINT-SIMON 407
must be the subject of administration, and those who govern
society ought to be those most competent to administer
industry, to act as the officers of the vast army of labour in
which every citizen should be assigned his place. His views
as to the character and composition of the regulative and
administrative body passed through various modifications,
but in no form did they show any trace of a demagogic or
revolutionary spirit, or even any aversion to absolutism or
despotism provided it succeeded in realising desirable ends.
He was evolutionist and anti-revolutionist; a believer in
order and authority, but not in personal rights or liberties.
These last seemed to him merely metaphysical abstractions.
He recognised the permanent need of religion as a social
force. But he had no belief in it, or appreciation of it, as
anything more; and, in fact, he meant by religion simply
philanthropy. His 'Nouveau Christianisme' contains no
theology, and but one doctrine — namely, that "all should
labour for the material, moral, and intellectual development
of the class the poorest and most numerous." Catholicism
and Protestantism are represented as effete and injurious,
because they forget practice in speculation, and insist on more
than that men should regard themselves and labour to the
utmost for their common happiness. Conduct, individual
and social, philanthropically directed, is, according to Saint-
Simon, the destined religion of the future, the result and
goal of all the religions of the past. In setting forth this
"religion " in the latest work which he wrote, he did not, as
has often been alleged, break with his own past, and take up
a different attitude towards religion. In the first of his
writings he is found applying the word "religion " so as to
give a sentimental sanction and colouring to his proposals
for social reconstruction. In the last of them he employed it
no' otherwise. In commending religion he always used the
term in a merely rhetorical or metaphorical manner, not in its
proper signification. It was probably from inattention to
this, that the 'Nouveau Christianisme' was not only supposed
to contain what it did not, religious doctrine in the ordinary
sense of the phrase, but that a suspicion was entertained that
the Saint-Simonians had forged the work and published it in
their master's name. Wronski told M. Rougemont in 1831
408 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
that such was the case; and the latter accepted the account.1
There can be no reasonable doubt, however, that M. Wronski
had been misled. The direct testimony to Saint-Simon's
authorship is clear and decisive; and there is nothing which
really renders it suspicious in the contents of the work.
The opinions of Saint-Simon on particular events and
institutions of history, on individual personages and various
periods and nations, always show independence, and often
insight. At the same time they are not infrequently vitiated
by prejudice, and are perhaps rarely based on adequate
research. These opinions, however, time and space forbid
my examining.
Charles Fourier was born in 1772, twelve years after Saint-
Simon. From early youth to the age of sixty he was engaged
in commerce, although he had the greatest repugnance to this
mode of life, owing to the dishonesty practised in it. His
works are the 'Theorie des quatre mouvements,' published
in 1808, the 'Association domestique agricole,' published in
1822, the ' Nouveau monde industriel et societaire,' published
in 1829, and the ' Fausse industrie,' published in 1835. Of
these works the first contains in outline or germ the author's
whole system, the second is the most comprehensive and devel-
oped account of it, the third is its clearest and most sensible
exposition, and the last is merely an application of it and
comparatively to the others of little importance. Fourier
died in 1837.2
Although his moral creed was in various respects objection-
1 Rougemont, ' Deux Cites,' ii. 439.
4 Numerous papers of Fourier were published posthumously in ' La Phalange.'
Some of them were collected under the title, of ' Mannscrits de Fourier.' A selec-
tion of them was translated by J. R. Morell, and edited, with notes, biography,
and introduction, by Hugh Doherty. This is the work entitled ' The Passions-of
the Human Soul,' 1851. On Fourier and his system, the following works can be
recommended : Dr. C. Pellarin, ' Fourier— sa vie et sa theorie,' 1" ed. 1839, 5" ed.
1871 ; H. Renaud, ' Solidarite, vue synthetique sur la doctrine de Fourier,' several
editions ; Victor Considerant's ' Destinee sociale,' 1836-38 ; P. Janet, ' Socialisme
au xixe siecle — Charles Fourier' ('Rev. d. Deux Mondes,' 1879); A. Brisbane,
'Social Destiny of Man,' 1840; and A. Bebel, 'Charles Fourier, sein Leben und
seine Theorien,' 1888. The Fourierist philosophy of history was, perhaps, best
developed by Fourier's earliest disciple, Just Muiron (Virtomnius) , ' Transactions
Sociales,' 2' ed. 1860. It has been expounded and criticised with thoroughness and
impartiality by M. Renouvier (' Grit. Phil.,' Annee xii.).
FOURIER 409
able, and even monstrous, his personal conduct was strictly
honourable. He was disinterested and benevolent to a rare
degree. He had a more original and a far more ingenious and
powerful mind than Saint-Simon, to whom he' was not in any
way indebted for his ideas. Whereas Saint-Simon did little
more than throw out general views and vague suggestions,
Fourier elaborated a vast and complicated system, and dwelt
with even ridiculous minuteness on details. Everywhere in
the universe and throughout society he fancied that he saw
definite mathematical relations and subtle analogies. His
imagination was strong and exuberant but unchastened
and unregulated. He was a keen critic and a formidable
polemic. Shrewd observations and sensible practical sug-
gestions abound in his writings amongst innumerable absurd-
ities. He fully respected liberty, and made no appeal to
authority either for the establishment or support of his
system. Compulsion is not to be employed even in the
nurseries of the new societary world. Attraction is to do
all. He was logically more of an anarchist than a socialist,
but can only properly be called a Fourierist. He hated the
French Revolution ; its oracles Voltaire and Rousseau ; its
leaders, and especially Robespierre and his abettors ; and its
methods. He had the utmost confidence in his own wisdom,
and in the importance of his message to mankind. He started
in the formation of his system with what he calls the doute
absolu, — i.e., the conviction that the social world as at pres-
ent constituted is throughout a violation and reversal of the
laws of nature and of God; and the Scart absolu, — i.e., the
adoption of an entirely original procedure, unlike any which
had hitherto been attempted. We may learn from his own
words how he thought he had succeeded : " I have done what
a thousand others might have done before me ; but I have
marched to the goal, alone, without acquired means, without
beaten paths. Alone I have put to confusion twenty centu-
ries of political imbecility ; and it is to me alone that the pres-
ent and future generations will owe the initiative of their
immense happiness. Before me, humanity has lost several
thousands of years in foolishly struggling against nature ; I,
the first have bowed before her in studying attraction, the
organ of her decrees ; she has deigned to smile on the only
410 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
mortal who has offered her incense ; she has given up to him
all her treasures. Possessor of the book of destinies, I come
to dissipate political and moral darkness, and on the ruins of
the uncertain sciences I raise the theory of universal har-
mony." Charles Griin and others have called Fourier "the
Hegel of France." The title seems to me unjust to Hegel.
Fourier would have deemed it the reverse of a compliment to
himself, as he had a supreme contempt for all who, like Hegel,
were professors of les sciences incertaines, ■ — metaphysical,
moral, or political. He resembled Swedenborg much more
than Hegel. He had the same materialistic and figurate
style of thinking ; the same kind of faith in universal anal-
ogy ; and the same sort of tendency to trace correspondences
between the most heterogeneous things. The character of
their systematisation and the cast of their imaginations were
not unlike. . And, I must candidly avow, they seem to me to
have resembled each other in the want of full mental sanity.
As in the case of Swedenborg, I can find no other explana-
tion of much that he wrote than a strange and subtle sort
of hallucination, an insane belief as to what was done in the
world of spirits, coexisting with great general strength of
mind and great religious discernment ; so in that of Fourier,
while admitting his ability and perspicacit}r in certain direc-
tions, I cannot but consider him to have been under the sway
of a deranged imagination, and an insane belief in wonderful
things soon to happen on the earth. This is surely not an
unfair judgment to pass on a man who believed that the world
was to be improved until the ocean should be lemonade, zebras
as much used as horses, and herds of llamas as common as
flocks of* sheep ; until men should live three or four hundred
years, and there should be on the globe thirty-seven millions
of poets equal to Homer, thirty-seven millions of philoso-
phers equal to Newton, and thirty-seven millions of writers
to Moli&re.
The historical speculations of Fourier are connected with
his cosmogonical speculations, but not indissolubly. He him-
self admitted that the latter were neither proved nor capable
of proof, and left his disciples free to accept or reject them.
It is not wonderful that they should have generally elected
FOURIER 411
to reject them, and, indeed, should have said very little
regarding them. Fourier's cosmogony is, for the most part,
indescribably absurd, proceeding on the supposition that the
stars are animated, sentient, and voluntary beings, who pro-
create their own species and exercise their generative powers
in the production of minerals, plants, and animals ; and on
other assumptions of a like nature. It is as fantastic as the
wildest cosmogonical dream of the Hindu mind. At the same
time, it is not wholly without coherence, suggestive views, and
thoughts which future science may in some measure confirm.
The theology of Fourier is also connected, and very inti-
mately connected, with his doctrine of human destiny and
development and his system of social organisation. He was
very hostile to atheism and materialism ; a most severe judge
of what he regarded as the irreligiousness of Owen and Saint-
Simon ; and not merely a theist, but, in his own opinion, a
good, if not the only good, Catholic. It is obvious, however,
that his theology was not the root of his sociology but a
growth from it ; not a primary but a secondary formation.
It was what it was because his views of men and of society
required that it should be so. He conformed his idea of God
to the requirements of his social theory, and then argued that
his social theory must be correct because it was implied in
his idea of God.
The corner-stone of his whole system is a curious psychol-
ogy, which, though essentially erroneous, is not unmixed
with important truths. He claims to have found the fun-
damental law of society, — that which explains its past and
enables us to foresee its future, — in the nature and workings
of the passions, which he reduces to twelve primitive ten-
dencies, the sources of all action, progress, and enjoyment.
The first five are the sensitive, and have the senses for organs
and stimulation to industry for function. The next four
consist of love, friendship, ambition, and familism, which
originate the smaller social groups and the virtues which find
therein appropriate exercise. The final three are the butter-
fiyish (papillonne), or craving for change, the spirit of party
(passion calaliste), and the enthusiasm caused by the simul-
taneous enjoyment of many sensuous and mental pleasures
412 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
{passion composite) ; they have hitherto been only sources of
suffering and vice, but were designed to combine and concil-
iate the sensuous springs of action with the social affections,
and will be of unspeakable service in the reign of harmony
and in those phalansteres which are to regenerate the world.
The satisfaction of all these tendencies or passions, the har-
mony of the whole inner and outer man with himself and
the world, is unitiisme or religion ; and the law according to
which human nature moves onward to its realisation is their
attraction when left free and unthwarted.
It is on this law, the law of passional attraction, a deduc-
tion from the Newtonian law, that, according to Fourier, the
welfare of society entirely depends. The passions are not to
be checked and resisted, — all the misery in the world has
arisen from the false belief that this is necessary ; they are
to be harmonised and allowed full scope, and they will pro-
duce a social system as orderly and perfect as is the sidereal
system. What has to be done is not to curb and crush the
passions into conformity with the social medium, but to
modify that medium till it offers no opposition to the freest
and fullest development of the passions. Fourier claims to
have devised a social mechanism, according to the diversity
and intensity of individual attractions, which would com-
pletely secure this end and make every person ineffably happy.
The closest and most comprehensive connection is repre-
sented as existing between man and the earth on which he
lives. About 80,000 years is the duration assigned to both,
and the history of the one, it is held, will be found to cor-
respond at every stage with that of the other. The earth is
bad when man is bad, — contains noxious beasts and behaves
itself ill, because he has perverted appetites and conducts
himself irrationally, — and will ameliorate itself as he grows
better. The simple change, for instance, of sea-water into
lemonade, will purge the ocean by a sudden death of legions
of useless and frightful marine monsters, images of our pas-
sions ; and replace them with a crowd of new creations,
amphibious servants for the use of fishermen and sailors;
while a boreal crown will bring about marvels as great for
the good of landsmen. The 80,000 years of human history,
FOURIER 413
we are further told, divide themselves into thirty-two periods,
naturally reducible to four great periods which correspond
to the infancy, youth, manhood, and old age of the individual.
The whole course being a natural movement from birth to
death is one of growth and decline ; or, as Fourier says, of
" ascending and descending vibrations of life, the two first
being phases of ascent and the two last phases of descent.
The ascent and the descent are equal in length — i.e., about
40,000 years each." The notion that the collective move-
ment of humanity is like the course of the individual through
infancy, youth, manhood, and age, is applied, however, to the
lesser periods of history as well as to its total development
on earth. Each of these lesser periods is thus like Leibniz's
monads — a sort of mirror of the whole. From what has just
been said the reader will perceive that Fourier's general con-
ception of the historical movement was not one merely of
progress ; it was one of retrogression as well, as every con-
ception of the kind founded on the assumption of a strict
analogy between the course of history and the life of indi-
viduals must in consistency be.
The first of the four periods of history, that of infancy,
is as yet nowhere outgrown, although little more than 5000
years have been allotted to it. To represent the human race
as having existed on earth so short a time as this implies, is,
of course, not in accordance with the findings of modern
science. Fourier is only concerned, however, to vindicate
Providence for its having been so long, seeing that it has been
almost entirely a period of subversion and discord, of delusion
and misery. The first and the last periods of planetary life and
of historical development, he argues, ought to be very short
relatively to the intermediate periods. But the earth and the
human species have had their first period abnormally prolonged
by two misfortunes : " The scourge of the Deluge, by which the
aromal system of our planet was vitiated and obstructed with
deleterious germs, which horribly impoverished the post-
diluvial creations ; " and " the no less terrible 'scourge of the
philosophic or twisted mind, the obstinacy in neglecting to
study the divine laws and passional destinies in the analysis
and synthesis of attraction." However, it is but short, we are
414 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOEY IN TRANCE
assured, compared with those vast stretches of happiness which
lie before humanity, and into which all the souls which have
lived in " the state of limbo or subversion " will live many
times under many forms. What Fourier teaches as to the
childhood of humanity is the only portion of his historical
theory which can be tested or verified. All that he says of
the other three ages is, of course, prophecy ; and most of it
is prophecy which is not in the least likely to be fulfilled. It
is, therefore, with this first period that we here chiefly require
to occupy ourselves.
It includes seven of the thirty-two lesser periods. The
first is Edenisme, the primitive paradisiacal state in which
men satisfied their simple wants without artificial production
and almost without exertion, lived in peace, and enjoyed a
"shadow of happiness." The human species, according to
Fourier, was created in 34 or 36 races, of which only about
a third composed the happy society, the remembrance of which
has been transmitted to us through traditions that have been
greatly vitiated. Geologists, archeologists, and philologists
are severely censured for having instituted frivolous investi-
gations as to Adam (the primitive collective man) and the
Edenic state while neglecting to seek to ascertain what is alone
of importance, the cause of the primitive social happiness.
Fourier informs us that it was "the serial system, or the devel-
opment of the passions by series, graduated into ascending and
descending groups, an order which a certain state of things
rendered practicable in the first ages of the world, and which,
having become impracticable afterwards, by a defect of the
enlarged industrial system, might be re-established with
splendour in the present day, when enlarged industry being
fully developed, furnishes to the societary system immense
resources that did not exist in the primitive or infantine
ages of humanity." The happiness of Eden, however, did
not endure long. The spontaneous productivity of nature
ceased to be able to supply the wants of the population of
Paradise as that population went on increasing. Inventive-
ness and exertion, science and instruments, became necessary,
and were not forthcoming. Privation began to be felt; dis-
cord arose ; selfishness and the consciousness of superior
FOURIER 415
strength suggested to the men to make the women labour for
them ; the reign of tyranny, deceit, and injustice originated.
Offjjihis fall tradition has handed down an account, but an
erroneous one, man having taken care to attribute the chief
blame of it to woman. Its consequences have made them-
selves always increasingly felt in the four periods which fol-
lowed, — those of Sauvagerie, JPatriarcat, Barbarie, and Civil-
isation. These are all incoherent and unhappy ages ; times
of ignorance and of a philosophy worse than ignorance, of
feebleness and poverty, of coercion and injustice ; stages of
unnaturalness and untruths, — Echelons de faussete.
The character of the second period, that of savage hordes,
is drawn with little exaggeration or passion, and certainly not
in too dark colours. The common lot of the savage man is
described by Fourier as, on the whole, happier than the com-
mon lot of the civilised man. He represents the mass of
mankind in the savage state as in possession of a measure of
freedom which comparatively few enjoy in civilisation ; and
as exercising without restraint the natural rights of which the
vast majority of men have now come to be almost entirely
deprived. They were free to take the fruits of the earth,
to fish, to hunt, to feed animals on the land of the horde, to
share in all that was involved in membership in the horde, to
appropriate whatever lay outside its common property ; and
they were free from care. But while Fourier holds that the
modern proletarian may justly envy the condition of the
savage, and that the aversion of the latter to change his state
was not altogether without reason, he also maintains that the
freedom and the happiness of the savage were insecure and
insufficient inasmuch as they did not rest on industry and
passional attraction. Besides, such as they were they were
only possessed by the males of the tribe, and frequently only
by these while in the vigour of life. Women were excluded
from all share in them ; their lot was slavery and misery.
And children and old men were generally harshly dealt with.
In the third period, that of the patriarchal clans, agriculture
is supposed to have been practised to some extent ; industry
to have appeared in rudimentary forms ; a certain differentia-
tion of classes to have been developed in society ; the natural
416 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
rights of men to have been encroached on ; and the condition
of women to have been ameliorated. In the fourth period,
that of barbarism, the head of the society wielded unlisted
power ; industry was pursued on a large scale ; the arts sprang
up ; and violence and perfidy prevailed. Fourier, however,
has neither clearly distinguished nor carefully characterised
these two periods ; indeed, he has been content to do little
more than represent them as subversive and deplorable.
Civilisation, the fifth period of the infancy of the human
race, is the stage at which the more advanced nations of the
world have now arrived. It has, of course, an ascending and
descending movement, and passes through four stages,—
childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, — like humanity
itself. In the first stage the governing authority is no longer
as in barbarism absolute and undivided, but the kingly power
is limited by combinations of great vassals, the feudal nobil-
ity. Slavery has also generally given place to serfdom.
Monogamy is recognised as the foundation and law of the
family, women attain civil rights, and wives become entitled
to participate in the social advantages and consideration en-
joyed by their husbands. The change in the condition of the
female sex which distinguishes civilisation from barbarism
gives a new tone and colouring to manners, and is highly
favourable to the development of the arts and sciences, and
especially of music and poetry. The ideals of chivalry are
the illusions of this epoch.
Gradually, however, the feudalism which was the cradle
of civilisation was outgrown. There was a development of
industry and trade, of art and science, which lessened the
power of the nobility while it increased that of the general
population. Guilds became strong, townships independent,
and even agricultural serfs comparatively free. The wealth
and organisation of the burghers enabled them to resist and
rival the nobles, and to wrest from kings the rights and
privileges which they desired. The foundations of the repre-
sentative system of government were laid. The illusions of
freedom displaced those of chivalry as social ideals.
Civilisation at length reached the highest point it was to
attain. Experimental and mechanical science succeeded in
FOURIER 417
transforming industry, and endowing it with hitherto un-
known resources. The art of navigation was greatly im-
proved ; geographical discoveries of vast importance were
made ; the distribution of goods was facilitated ; and the
world-market was opened up. The consequences are to be
seen in the destruction of small industries by production on
a large scale ; in the disorganisation of agriculture by manu-
factures ; in the rise of an industrial feudalism more oppres-
sive than military feudalism ever was ; in wealth becoming
the chief object of desire, and the chief source of power; in
the general adulteration of goods, systematic and shameless
financial swindling, and commercial dishonesty everywhere
prevalent ; in the rapid and constantly accelerating spread of
pauperism and misery ; and in a division of society into hos-
tile classes which threatens to issue in a terrible proletarian
revolution. The cherished illusions of this stage of civilisa-
tion are economic illusions, those dear to the egoistic mercan-
tile spirit.
Whereas the predominant characteristic of the third phase
of civilisation is mercantile anarchy or false competition, that
of the fourth phase, or age of the senility or decrepitude, of
civilisation, is a species of false regulation, resulting from a
general monopoly of commerce and industry by an oligarchy
of capital. A feudality based on wealth is fully developed,
gains the command of all labour, regulates all the movements
of trade, monopolises industrial and financial enterprise, con-
trols governments, and by its system of loans draws to itself
the revenues of nations. The mass of mankind thus find
themselves in the last phase of civilisation destitute of all
the natural rights which the savage enjoyed, including that
of sharing in the consumption of what they have themselves
produced. The earlier servitude of individuals has only been
replaced by a collective servitude. While the two first ages
of civilisation diminished and abolished personal and direct
bondage, its two last ages produce an increase of general and
indirect bondage, seeing that, as population grows and industry
expands, the labouring classes become more and more depend-
ent on a league of capitalists who have the wealth of society
in their hands. The hopes of man in its closing phase are
418 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
placed iii association, but these hopes are illusions, for the
association aimed at is the false association which merely
combines capitals, and so only increases their power of absorp-
tion; it is a caricature of the true association which duly
combines capital, labour, and talent.
The succession of the aforesaid states of society, — Eden-
ism, Savagery, Patriarchalism, Barbarism, and Civilisation, —
shows on the whole declension, or decrease of good and in-
crease of evil. In the first only a shadow of happiness was
enjoyed, and the other four have been subversive and anarchi-
cal ages, during which the earth has been the abode of fraud,
oppression, falsehood, and misery. . Fourier treats with scorn
the upholders of the theory of continuous progress; those
who look upon such progress as the law of history, or on the
actual course of human events as having been one either of
necessity or of wisdom, either in accordance with nature or
approved by Providence. He admits, however, that notwith-
standing their essential incoherence and baseness, they pro-
vide, by developing industry, arts, and sciences, important
elements and means for the true organisation of society.
His delineations of the periods referred to, and their
sub-periods, and especially of civilisation and its stages, are
regarded by his disciples as " veritable masterpieces of obser-
vation and description." They are certainly instructive and
vigorous ; and they may be justly regarded as the direct or
indirect source of nearly the whole historical philosophy on
which contemporary socialism rests. It is, however, in his
criticism of the characteristics and tendencies of the past ages
of history, and especially of the existing constitution of soci-
ety, that his intellectual power is most fully displayed. He
censures and satirises what he calls the periods of subversion
and misfortune, and above all modern industrialism, with
extraordinary keenness and force. Rousseau had assailed
society with eloquent vituperation, but his declamatory anath-
emas are not to be compared with the methodical and com-
prehensive, persistent and relentless attack of Fourier. No
socialist has since surpassed our author in the vigour, close-
ness, and bitterness of his criticism of the organisation which
he wished to overthrow. True, his picture of it is not a
FOURIER 419
faithful likeness but a caricature. It is, however, a caricature
drawn with amazing power ; one which is at no point wholly
without resemblance to the object delineated, while it so gives
prominence to every weak, discordant, and repulsive feature
thereof as most effectively to produce the impression desired.
With the close of the period of civilisation a process of im-
provement sets in. The next period, Guaranteeism, is the
state of full transition between false and true organisation,
" between limbo and harmony " ; the stage of federation among
nations, and of the insurance of individual interests through
collective guarantees against risk and loss in all departments
of social, domestic, and industrial economy. This sixth period
leads to a seventh, that of series Sbauchees, or dawn of happi-
ness ; the age of Seriosophy, the all-important science, hitherto
so irrationally and disastrously neglected, of the organisation
of society by attraction or pleasure according to natural groups
and series. When proficiency in this science has been attained
the earth will soon be covered with a federation of phalan-
nteres, and the second great era of time, the adolescence of
humanity, will begin.
At this point humanity " makes a leap (fait un mut) out
of chaos into harmony." Harmony is to last about 70,000
years, and will include two great periods of about 35,000
years each: those of the youth and manhood of the race ; the
former consisting of nine lesser periods of gradually increas-
ing happiness ; and the latter of the same number of such
periods of gradually decreasing happiness. The height or
fulness of happiness is to last 8000 years.
Fourier has discoursed with even more fulness and minute-
ness on harmony than on limbo. It was his principal and
favourite theme, and he has dwelt on it with inexhaustible
ingenuity and enthusiasm. The commingling of sense and
nonsense, of shrewd practical insight and of extravagant
credulity, in his treatment of it, is phenomenal, and perhaps
without parallel. It is no part of my task, however, to ex-
pound or examine his theory of social organisation. Yet I
may relevantly express my disbelief that any world of har-
mony will ever be raised on such a view of the relationship
of reason and passion as that which he has given. It seems
420 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
to me a thoroughly false one. It led Fourier to form imagina-
tions as to the relations of the sexes in harmony which have
been justly condemned. It is true that he admits that these
relations would be altogether wrong in civilisation, and that
amorous liberty ought not to be exercised until harmony is
firmly established; but moral blindness was shown in his
fancying that any alteration of the social mechanism, or any
effects of its alteration, could make immoral relations legiti-
mate, vices virtues. Harmony will be a very short period
indeed if on this point Fourier be accepted as its moral legis-
lator. Most of his disciples, it is right to add, have rejected
this part of his teaching. It is further only fair to himself to
state that he has often written very worthily of the rights
of woman and of her place in history. For example, in his
' Theory of the Four Movements,' he has maintained and de-
feuded the following general thesis : " Social advances take
place in proportion to the progress of women towards liberty;
and decadences in the social order in proportion to the de-
crease of the liberty of women. . . . Other events affect
political vicissitudes ; but there is no cause which produces
so rapidly social progress or social decline as change in the
condition of women. The adoption of closed harems (sSraih
fermes) would of itself render us in a short time barbarous,
and the mere opening of the harems would make the barba-
rians pass into civilisation. In fine, the extension of the
privileges of women is the general principle of all social im-
provements."
When the close of the third great period, or twenty-fifth
lesser period, is reached, humanity is to take a second leap;
but this time, unfortunately, out of harmony into chaos. The
epoch of its old age will begin. And it will go on declining
through seven stages corresponding to those of infancy, but
following in the reverse order, thus : (1) traces of happiness ;
(2) garantisme ; (3) civilisation; (4) barbarie; (5) patriar-
cat; (6) sauvagerie; and (7) series confuses. Fourier gives
us no particulars as to any of these periods ; his descriptive
survey of the course of human history ends with harmonisni.
Life at length ceases to manifest itself in this world, our
race dies, and the earth bursts up, and scatters itself in frag-
ments among the star-dust of the Milky Way. But this is
BUCHEZ 421
far from making an end either of it or of us. It has a living
soul, and that soul, carrying with it all the souls which com-
pose it and have dwelt in it, goes into a comet which is to
become a planet and to make part of the sidereal harmony.
The soul of every planet has a multitude of successive lives ;
and the diminutive souls which reside within it often come
and tabernacle in individual bodies born on the planet, al-
though where souls outnumber bodies they may have often
to wait a considerable time for resurrections. On our present
globe every one of us is sure of enjoying about 400 consecu-
tive and bodily existences in the course of a career estimated
at 80,000 years. Out of these 400 existences seven-eighths
(350) will be happy. The material death of the soul will
only transport its great soul and its partial souls to a planet
of higher degree, where they will recommence careers of fuller
life and richer happiness, although these careers will conform
to the same law of birth, development, and death, of ascend-
ing and descending phases, as those of the past. Thus the
souls of men, passing from existence to existence in the
course of their resurrections on this globe, and then rising
from star to star, from system to system, in the more fortu-
nate path which they will traverse during eternity, always
uniting themselves with matter, and clothing themselves in
new bodies, will experience the immensity of happiness which
God has in store for them.
Some of Fourier's critics, taking into account only his views
regarding the subversive periods of history on our earth, have
very erroneously represented him as a pessimist. We must
judge of his historical theory as a whole ; and considered as
a whole it was highly optimistic. His faith in the future
was not affected by his estimate of the present; it was an
unbounded confidence that all men were destined to enjoy in
countless existences every variety of pleasure to an extent
of which they can as yet form no conception.
II
The direction of thought inaugurated by Saint-Simon and
Fourier was followed by various authors who applied them-
selves to the study of the laws of history. Three of them
422 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOE.Y IN PKANCE
arrived at sufficiently distinctive results to have a claim on
our attention. They were Philippe Joseph Benjamin Buchez,
Pierre Leroux, and Auguste Comte. I shall in this chapter
speak only of the first two.
M. Buchez was born in 1796. He was a physician by-
profession, a very ardent republican, and a copious writer on
philosophy, religion, history, and politics. He was for some
time a member of the Saint-Simonian society, but left it in
consequence of aversion to the strange theological dogmas of
its spiritual chief, M. Enfantin. He himself devised and ad-
vocated a sort of Socialist Catholicism, in which traditional-
ism, mysticism, and rationalism, despotism and democracy, the
sovereignty of the Pope and the sovereignty of the people,
the teaching of Christ and of Robespierre, of De Bonald and
of Saint-Simon, and many other heterogeneous and incon-
sistent things, were confusedly thrown together. He edited,
along with M. Roux, the ' Parliamentary History of the Early
Periods of the first French Revolution.' He began his philo-
sophical career in 1833 with the publication of his ' Introduc-
tion a la Science de l'liistoire,' which was received by the
public with considerable favour, and very warmly commended
by the eminent jurist, M. Lerminier. A second edition ap-
peared in 1842. In it M. Buchez felt at liberty to dispense
with several discussions on general philosophical problems
which he thought necessary in the first edition, having in
the interval published a ' Traite- de Philosophic ' and an
'Introduction a l'e'tude des sciences me'dieales,' where they
found more appropriate places. He added much more, how-
ever, than he retrenched, and so expanded into two volumes
what had been originally one. He was raised by the Revolu-
tion of 1848 to the presidency of the National Constituent
Assembly. The honour could not have been conferred on a
more sincere republican or on a better-intentioned man ; but
he wanted the firmness, decision, and political capacity needed
in a situation so difficult and in days so tempestuous. On the
fall of the second French Republic he retired into private life.
He died in 1866.
His general philosophy seems to me of very small value ;
and as it has been the subject of studies by Simon, Damiron,
BUCHEZ 423
and Ferraz, I shall say nothing regarding it. On the other
hand, his ' Introduction to the Science of History ' contains,
I think, a good deal which deserves to be clearly indicated.
The work commences with two prefatory chapters, the first
describing the present condition of society, and the second ex-
plaining the general purpose of the treatise, the thought which
gave rise to it and rules it. The picture of society is painted
in the gloomiest colours. Distrust, selfishness, misery, are
described as spread over all. Class is represented as at war
with class ; the rich as restless and insecure ; "the poor as
envious and oppressed ; women as frivolous, unfortunate, and
enslaved; religion, moral principle, worthy aspirations, sure
and elevating hopes, as lamentably wanting. The sight of
the evil suggests the question, Is there a remedy ? The con-
sideration of that question leads to inquiry into the nature of
man and of society, and that to the search for a science of
history. It is history which shows us the actions of human-
ity; and only through its actions can we know its nature,
trace its past, or foresee its future fortunes. Hence it is the
science of history which must discover the final causes of
human societies, explain their revolutions, account for their
miseries, and suggest the appropriate remedies.
The first book treats of the design and foundation of the
science of history, and consists of seven chapters. In chap. i.
M. Buchez seeks the definition of the science. Science, he
argues, is a systematised whole of knowledge, an organised
body of principles and consequences, co-ordinated in relation
to an end or purpose. Science can only be defined according
to its end. The definition of a science ought to include a
statement of the purpose which it serves. Like Comte and
others who had been taught in the school of Saint-Simon, he
insists on the prevision of phenomena as the test of true
science. He defines, accordingly, the science of histoiy as a
science which has for end the prevision of the social future of
the huftian race in the exercise of its free agency. But is
prevision possible where there is free will? or, in other
words, is a science of history possible? This question M.
Buchez discusses in chap. ii. under the impression that he is
the first who has done so. Leaving its more thorough inves-
424 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOEY IN PKANCE
tigation to other parts of his work, he here treats of it, however,
only in the most general way. He points out that history as
a whole and in all its parts is not stationary ; that it is a
process in which beliefs, manners, actions, are constantly
varying ; that, in a word, it moves ; further, that movement
is of two kinds, fatalistic and free : and then, having endeav-
oured to establish that all human and social movements tend
towards ends which are not arbitrary but determined by man's
nature and rooted in the reason of things, he concludes that
their course can be in some measure foreseen and calculated.
This suffices, he thinks, to show that a science of history is
possible.
In the next chapter we are told that the science of history
rests on two ideas, — ■ that of humanity and that of progress.
The four following chapters treat of these two ideas. The
former is but feebly dealt with. Humanity he explains as
meaning the whole human species, the entire succession of
generations and the entire host of peoples, regarded as one
vast society, bound together by manifold ties of nature and
responsiblity; participant in one spiritual life, in a continuous
education, and in an unbroken tradition ; and predestined
and organised for the realisation of one great aim. He em-
ploys two arguments to prove the truth of this conception.
The first is, that " humanity is the function of the universe,"
— a grandiose phrase, by which M. Buchez means, on the one
hand, that humanity is not self-existent and self-dependent,
but, as geology, physics, physiology, and other sciences show,
closely related to the various orders of phenomena amidst
which it exists, so that an essential alteration in any of them
would render its existence impossible ; and, on the other
hand, that the whole universe is subordinate to man. His
other argument is, that the activity of the individual is con-
ditioned by that of the nation; and the activity of the nation
by that of the race, — or, in a word, that the end of the race
determines the place and character of all minor ends.#
The idea of progress is treated with much greater ability
and success. M. Buchez gives in a special chapter a better
history of the idea than any one had given before him.
Another chapter on the definition of the idea shows that
BUCHEZ 425
Saint-Simon's best thoughts on the subject had largely fruc-
tified in his disciple's mind. The remarks which he makes
under this head on the consequences which may be truly
drawn from the idea, and on those which are falsely drawn
from it, are generally both just and useful ; while those on
the resemblances and differences between mathematical and
historical series, successions of quantities and successions of
actions, are particularly valuable. Up to the time of Saint-
Simon, progress in history had been merely stated and illus-
trated as a fact ; with him and his followers it began to be
analysed. The impulse to analysis came from natural science,
and especially from physiological science, which became
aware in the earlier part of the century of the immense
significance of the ideas or facts of development and organic
evolution. In this connection it merits remark that M.
Buchez is careful to show that human progress is a part of
the law and order of the world ; that progress is not merely
an historical but also a universal fact.
The second book of his treatise is occupied with " The
Methods of the Science of History." The following is a very
brief summary of its contents. The aim of all scientific inves-
tigation is to discover the order of succession of phenomena,
and to ascertain their relations of dependence, so that one
phenomenal state being given, those which precede and those
which will follow it may be known. Science is a power of
prevision, and prevision has two degrees, — a lower, founded
on the knowledge of the order of succession of phenomena —
and a higher, founded on the knowledge of the law of their
generation. Both imply the coexistence and presence of two
conditions, — a constant, i.e., an invariable, principle of order
in the production of phenomena, and variations in the mani-
festation. There are both " constants " and " variations " in
history. There are " constants," because the faculties of men
have been neither increased nor diminished in number in the
long series of generations. There are " variations," because
these same faculties have increased in energy and range of
action both as regards physical nature and social life. The
" constants " originate in human spontaneity, and all the active
elements subordinate thereto ; the " variations " are the ex-
426 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
pression of all the difficulties of realisation, of all man's strug-
gles against the inanimate world or against mankind itself.
If we take the various social constants of history, make of
each a subject of special study, and range under it according
to the dates of occurrence all the variations which belong to
it, the result will be so many linear classifications of facts,
identical in essence, homological in character, chronological
in order, and increasing or decreasing in some relation of
proportion. These linear classifications or series give some
knowledge of the course of succession among phenomena, and
some power of prevision; but only a knowledge which is
slight and imperfect, only a power of prevision of the feeblest
and lowest kind. It is of the very nature of the process to
overlook the great facts that human nature is a whole, and
that all its faculties, all the social constants, act simultaneously,
act and react at every instant on each other. In order to
bring events under a common heading, it has to separate them
from all other kinds of events, however closely connected with
them in reality. It does not enable us to determine the nature,
number, or relative importance of the different social constants
and the series dependent on them. It tells us nothing except
that a certain order of facts tends to increase or tends to dis-
appear. It needs to be supplemented, therefore, by another
process or method, — one which will put us in possession of
the law of the generation of phenomena. (I.-IV.)
This law must be sought among the laws of human activity,
— the cause of every social change,. — and these in its modes
of manifestation or forms of production, not in its essence or
in the abstract categories of reason. Social activity is simply
the sum of individual activities, and cannot be essentially
different in its laws and characteristics from the forces which
compose or engender it. The law of the generation of social
phenomena must therefore be involved in the analogy between
the faculties of the individual and of humanity. This implies
that that analogy contains both a law of constants and a law
of variations. The first of all social constants is a common
end of activity, a consciousness of a common work to do —
not merely community of belief, language, or locality. It is
that which makes a society, however numerous the individuals
BUCHEZ 427
which compose it or the ages through which it passes, a single
living and acting being. It is that also which gives rise to all
other social constants, such as the wants of spiritual conser-
vation, material conservation, individual conservation, good
government, right, the discharge of duty, &c, with all the
institutions which correspond to them. From it, the true
principle of social synthesis, of social life, every other constant
may be deduced, and only through such deduction can they be
assigned their proper places. (V.-VI.)
The laws of variation are twofold — logical and tendential.
The movement determined by logical law is the succession of
states through which, an end of activity being given, history
must necessarily pass in order that it may attain outward ex-
istence and embodiment. There is, according to M. Buchez,
such a movement in the individual mind; since every action
which has for end to manifest externally any idea or spiritual
principle must necessarily pass in an invariable order through
the three stages of desire, reasoning, and realisation. This
logical law is universal. There is another which is more lim-
ited. Ideas involving a doctrine, plan, project, &c, in order
to be realised must not only be desired, demonstrated, and
executed, but must pass through two secondary states, which
may be called the one theoretical and the other practical.
These two movements frequently so intersect and combine
that each period of the ternary movement may be decomposed
into two periods, according to the binary movement, and each
period of the binary movement into three periods, according
to the ternary movement, and this many times. Now social
activity is subject to the same conditions and laws as individ-
ual activity. It passes through states similarly related, similar
in character and functions, and passes through them in the
same order ; although what lasts but an instant in the history
of the individual often occupies an age in the life of the race.
Thus — to take only the ternary movement — every great
epoch of humanity, which, as we shall presently see, M. Buchez
identifies with every revelation, has three periods or stages.
There is first that of the revelation of the principle, that in
which doctrines are imparted and accepted as immediate
satisfactions to emotional wants, — the age of theology ; next
428 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
that of rationalism, of scholastic explanation and exposition ;
and finally, that of practical experience and application, of the
close study and skilful utilising of all kinds of facts, — the
period of Christian history, for example, which dates from
Bacon and Descartes. The first corresponds to the stage of
desire, the second to that of reasoning, and the third to that
of execution in the movement of individual activity. It is
unnecessary to describe the minute and complicated, yet regu-
lar and systematic, subdivision of these periods through binary
and ternary decompositions. Let it suffice to say that these
decompositions do not prevent the entire social development
being reducible, as Saint-Simon taught, to organic or synthet-
ical, and critical or analytical ages. (VII.)
The principles of the movement called tendential are spirit-
ual appetencies continuous in their action, indefinitely pro-
gressive, and always aspiring after an end. They have their
foundation in the social constants, and constitute the variations
which form the elements of the series ; each social constant
being capable of becoming the basis of a progressive series.
The constants may be viewed as regards either organised cor-
porations or individuals, and this leads to the classification of
tendencies through their relation to duties and rights. But
as, after reading several times what M. Buchez has written
concerning these tendencies, I find myself unable to under-
stand it, I can only report that he believes he has discovered
and described a method which remedies the defects inherent
in the mere analysis of history into separate chronological
series of similar events considered as a means of attaining
scientific certainty and prevision. His remarks on the con-
version of the laws of the logical and tendential movements
into methods of historical classification and prevision are, on
the whole, both intelligible and just. (VIII.-IX.)
The third book is devoted to the consideration of four of
the most important social constants, the common end of ac-
tivity, art, science, and physical labour, but unfortunately in
the way of mere general disquisition; so that it contains
exceedingly little which properly belongs to a philosophy of
history. The next two books are wholly occupied with mat-
ters still more extraneous and irrelevant ; the fourth treating
BUCHBZ 429
of the idea of progress as a means of forming encyclopedias
of science and of education; and the fifth propounding a
multitude of geological speculations, mostly worthless.
In the sixth book, M. Buchez reaches the sixth day of the
Mosaic account of creation, and so plants his foot again on his-
tory, or, at least, on what he calls androgeny. But more than
the half even of this book is occupied with discussions regard-
ing the creation of man, original sin, the deluge, &c., of a kind
little calculated to benefit historical science. In its fourth
chapter, however, we come to what may perhaps be fairly
considered the chief doctrine of his system. It is that divine
intervention has been the great motive force in the develop-
ment of humanity ; that the principle of each distinct histor-
ical synthesis, of each complete logical epoch, the common aim
of every entire civilisation, is only to be found in a revela-
tion. History is represented as having four great stages,
each initiated by a universal revelation given either through
the inspiration of certain men by God or the incarnation of
God in man. The first revelation was made through Adam ;
and founded an epoch which had for end the conversion of
its precepts enjoining the domestic duties, into habits and
institutions. The second, given through Noah, founded an
epoch which had for end the realisation of the more compre-
hensive class of duties involved in the relationships, both
internal and external, of tribes and races. The third was
imparted to some great prophet who lived where the sons of
Japheth were in contact with those of Shem, so that its
influence might extend to Egypt, India, China, Greece, and
Rome, and was designed to communicate the sentiment of
social unity and the idea of equality, along with that of the
diversity of functions. And the last of all was the perfect
revelation of truth and life in Christ, the source of a civilisa-
tion which has lasted eighteen centuries, and has still before
it an indefinite future. The revelation given to Moses is
not included in the series, because, although most important,
it was not universal but particular — i.e., designed for a
single people.
The seventh book is a succession of pictures of the four
great epochs of history, and of the lesser periods which they
430 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IN FRANCE
contain. These are but feebly and inaccurately drawn.
Perhaps M. Buchez thought that the 'Essai d'Histoire Uni-
verselle ' and ' Histoire des Transformations Religieuses et
Morales des Peuples ' of M. Boullard, and the ' Manuel d'His-
toire Universelle ' of Dr. Ott, both friends and almost disciples,
rendered it unnecessary for him to bestow much care on this
part of his task.
We have now a general knowledge of what M. Buchez
has done in connection with the science of history. What
judgment are we to pass thereon ? My findings are as follows :
First, his treatise is prolix, wearisome, and in some places
apparently almost devoid of meaning. Second, three out of
its seven books are not occupied with the science of history
at all; and, entirely irrespective of condensation, by the
simple exclusion of what was irrelevant, it could have been
easily and most advantageously reduced to less than half its
actual size. Third, what is most distinctive in M. Buchez's
theory — the division of historical development into four
great epochs originated by four universal revelations, of
each epoch into three periods corresponding to desire, reason-
ing, and performance, and of each of these periods into a
theoretical and practical age — is, although ingenious, so
erroneous and fanciful, that a refutation of it will not be felt
necessary by any intelligent reader. Fourth, the truly valua-
ble part of the work of M. Buchez is that which treats of the
aim, foundation, and methods of the science of history. It
appears to be, on the whole, worthy of much commendation.
As a contribution to the methodology of historical science or
philosophy it has not received the attention and recognition
which are its due.
Pierre Leroux was born at Paris in 1798. His parents
were Breton peasants, and his sympathies with the peasant
class were always keen and strong. He received the elements
of a good education at Paris and Rennes; and he showed
throughout life much more aptitude for learning than for
practical affairs. After having been for some time a printer,
he became a contributor to the 'Globe.' With the other
members of its staff he helped to bring about the July Revo-
LEEOUX 431
lution of 1830. In that year he joined the Saint-Simonian
school, and had influence enough to make the ' Globe ' its
organ. But the ideas of Enfantin on marriage and female
messiahship forced him to secede before he had been two years
in the society. He set himself, in consequence, the more
earnestly to deepen and extend his knowledge ; to examine
the systems of philosophy which had acquired most reputa-
tion in the past or were enjoying it in the present ; and to
elaborate a social doctrine of his own. One result of these
studies was the ' Refutation de l'dclectisme,' 1839, a severe
criticism of the principles of Cousin. It was received with
great favour by all sections of the socialistic party, and was
certainly not devoid of ability ; but it lacked moderation and
impartiality, insight into the nature of the system assailed
and power of philosophical discrimination. Being far from
just it was far from conclusive.
Leroux was almost industrious publicist, and, between the
years 1834 and 1848, edited or co-edited the ' Revue Encyclo-
pe"dique,' the ' Encyclope"die Nouvelle,' the ' Revue Inde"pen-
dante,' and the ' Revue Sociale.' He issued besides many
books, of which it may suffice to name the following : ' De
1'EgaliteY 1838 ; ' De 1'HumaniteV 1840, 2e e"d. 1845 ; ' Sept
discours sur la situation actuelle de la socie'te' et de l'esprit
humain,' 1841 ; ' De la doctrine de la perfectibility et du
progr^s continu,' 1845 ; and ' Du Christianisme et de ses
origines de"mocratiques,' 1848. Through these works he
became the recognised founder of a form of socialism called
Humanitarianism, which was much the fashion in Paris for
some years, and which had one persuasive prophet at least,
Madame Georges Sand.
The celebrity he had thus acquired, and the character of
his political views, led to his being elected in 1848 a member
of the National Constituent Assembly. There, however, he
was sadly out of his place ; and, it was affirmed, rather abused
his position, by giving wearisome expositions of iiis system,
and even reading chapters out of his own books, instead of
speaking to the points under discussion. Hence one day a
member gravely moved that no books should be read at the
tribune ; and on another, when the subject of debate was
432 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Algeria, General Lamorici&re, rising immediately after the
philosopher, remarked that M. Leroux had taken them all
through the histories of Greece and Rome, but had forgotten
the Arabs, and he hoped the Assembly would allow him to
endeavour to supply the omission, as the Arabs were some-
what interested in questions connected with Algeria. Driven
into exile in 1851, he lived for some years in Jersey, and
afterwards at Lausanne, until the general amnesty of 1869
permitted him to return to France. He was a genial and
benevolent man, who had amassed much knowledge, and
whose brain was full of ideas as to the advancement of
science, the renovation of religion, and the organisation of
society ; but he was a hazy and confused thinker, very apt
not to prove what he maintained, and often laying himself
open to ridicule by the absurdity of his hypotheses. He died
at Paris in the sad and evil April of 1871.
The most important of his works is the ' De l'HumaniteV
It contains all that is essential in his social and historical
theory, but the ' Refutation of Eclecticism ' may almost be
considered as an introduction to it. He singled out eclecti-
cism as an example of systems based on the psychological
analysis of the individual consciousness ; a process which he
held could only lead to delusion, the individual conscious-
ness or Ego being a mere abstraction, devoid of real exist-
ence. The fundamental error and weakness of the dominant
philosophy, he thought, was forgetfulness of the fact that the
individual mind only exists as a part of a whole, and can only
be studied in the whole of which it is a part. The life of
each man, he insisted, does not belong to him absolutely, and
is not in him simply, but is in him and without him, through
an incessant communication with his fellows and the uni-
verse : the thoughts, feelings, principles, beliefs of each man
do not spring up originally in the individual mind, but are
received as a part of the universal truth of mankind. The
history of humanity, he maintained, is the direct object of
philosophy, the true basis of the science of life. He took up,
in fact, much the same attitude towards the psychological
method in philosophy as the writers of the theological school
and M. Comte.
LEROTJX 433
Now we may grant that he had some reason for doing so,
the psychological method having been often explained and
applied in a narrow, one-sided, and deceptive way. We may
grant, and I believe must grant, that the analysis of the in-
dividual consciousness requires to 'be both confirmed and
supplemented by objective observation of various kinds ; that
the consciousness of the race and not of the individual is the
true subject of mental science in all its branches ; and that if
it attempt to proceed entirely from within, ignoring the com-
binations of human nature which are presented in history,
literature, and language, and which ought to be employed as
the materials of analysis and induction, it must inevitably fail.
But it must be an even more fatal error of method to en-
deavour to discover the laws of human nature by any process
which has not psychological analysis as its basis and animating
principle. No immediate or direct apprehension of the facts
in which these laws are manifested is possible by any form of
outward observation, since what is presented to outward ob-
servation is always mere movements of matter, not facts of
human nature at all. The signs and expressions of conscious-
ness can only be recognised as such, and interpreted, through
the subjective experience of conscious states corresponding
to those signified and expressed. In opposing one error of
method, then, M. Leroux fell into another and greater error.
Passing from his method to his doctrine, it is to be observed,
in the first place, that he rests his theory of human develop-
ment on a definition of human nature. The only adequate
definition of man, according to him, is " an animal transformed
by reason, and united to humanity." Man is not a mere
animal — i.e., a being endowed simply with sensation and
sentiment, nor even an animal with reason, an animal plus
reason ; he is a unity of sensation, sentiment, and reason, and
not a combination of them formed by mere addition. M. Le-
roux attaches the greatest importance to this proposition, and
ascribes most of the failures of previous systems of political
and historical philosophy to the denial or imperfect apprehen-
sion of it. Thus, he thinks, Plato saw in man only reason ;
Hobbes, only appetite ; and Rousseau, only sentiment or will :
and these three errors all naturally led to despotism as the
434 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IK FRANCE
ideal of social life ; that of Plato to a theocracy, that of Hobbes
to an absolute monarchy, and that of Rousseau to the unlimited
subjection of the individual to the community. He (M. Le-
roux) believes himself to have been the first to apprehend
what man is, at once in the unity and entirety of his nature,
and so to have been the first to enter the path which leads to
an adequate theory of historical development and social life.
Man is not only an animal transformed by reason, but " united
to humanity." The end for which he is destined can only be
known through a knowledge of the nature of humanity, and
is, in fact, no other than the full development of entire
humanity which constitutes progress, and in which the Eternal
Essence and the Creative Principle of the universe reveals
itself. M. Leroux is a firm believer in continuous progress. He
discards the Saint-Simonian view of the alternation of organic
and critical, constructive and destructive periods. He sup-
poses that where intelligence may not be advancing the affec-
tions are growing, and that, in the course of generations, ideas
are changed into faculties, which would remain although all
the products of human reason were swept from the face of the
earth by some great convulsion of nature ; and that thus,
notwithstanding many appearances to the contrary, there is
everywhere, and always, progress.1 He records what Bacon,
Descartes, Pascal, Fontenelle, Herder, and others have done
for this idea, and claims to crown their labours by what he
calls the axiom of solidarity. It is a rather curious axiom,
has extraordinary consequences, and probably needs much
more exposition than I can afford to give it.2
It means that entire humanity is one vast society, of which
all nations, tribes, communities, and men, are, in their several
places and degrees, parts, which cannot attempt to separate
from the other parts, and to isolate themselves, without violat-
ing reason and producing evil ; but it means more — viz., that
men are fragments or portions of an infinite and eternal
1 See ' De l'Humanite,' 1. i. ch. iv., and especially the essay, " De la Loi de
Continuity, " &c, in the Rev. Encye., 1833.
2 It is explained at length in ' De l'Humanite,' 1. iv. v. ; while the whole of the
second, and a considerable part of the first, volume of that work, is an attempt to
prove that the ancients universally believed, more or less clearly, in the reappear-
ance and revival of the individual in the race, of man in humanity.
LEROUX 435
Being, the all-present, all-pervading world-soul, and identical
in essence ; so that in seeing one man we see all other men, so
that in seeing Peter we see also Paul, so that Confucius and
Newton lived in one another no less than in themselves. It
means that the men of the present are the very men who were
in the past, and who will be in the future ; 1 that a child born
brings with it into the world only a soul which has already
lived ; that each of us reappears, after death, on the earth in
the form of a child. The solidarity of men, as taught by
M. Leroux, thus involves the doctrine of the transmigration of
souls, and represents humanity as a succession of generations,
not of different individuals, but of the same individuals.2
Humanity is immortal, and so is each individual of which it is
composed ; but humanity has no destiny except on the earth,
and the individual no destiny except in humanity. The indi-
vidual carries with him into each new stage of existence no
remembrance of what he experienced in anterior states. The
remembrance of such experience, M. Leroux thinks, would
be no boon, but an intolerable burden. Those who wish it
are as foolish as the miser who desires to carry his gold with
him when he dies. Memory is but a superficial property ; it
belongs not to our essential life. The old Greeks knew its
1 The title of ch. xii. 1. 5°, 'De l'Humanite,' runs thus: "Nous sommes non
seulement les fils et la posterite de ceux qui out deja vecu, mais au fond et
reellement ces generations anterieures elles-memes."
2 As an advocate of the doctrine of transmigration, M. Leroux was far sur-
passed by his friend M. Reynaud (1806-1863), the celebrated author of 'Terre et
Ciel.' The hypothesis has perhaps never been presented in a more attractive
form than in this work. M. Reynaud does not, like Leroux, assign to souls a
succession of merely terrestrial lives. Wonderfully combining science and imagi-
nation, Ingenuity and eloquence, he argues that the medieval conception of
heaven, earth, and hell has been for ever discredited by the enlarged views of
the universe which modern science has given us; that the true heaven is the
heaven of astronomy, the heaven of stars of which earth is one, a heaven which
has no limit in space or time ; and that in this heaven souls pass through an end-
less and ever-varying existence, the path of the just being ever upwards, from
star to star, as they continually approach, without ever completely attaining to,
the perfect life of the God-man Christ, while failure and sin involve the most
manifold deflections from the straight course, with the sufferings and penalties
which follow as their natural consequences. Into our planet spirits who have
transgressed in some other come as into a place at once of probation and of ex-
piation. All of them share in the guilt and punishment of the sin of Adam,
because all of them have committed it in a distant age. M. Reynaud's book had
an immense success in France, and deserved it. However erroneous or question-
able its teaching may be, the genius which it displays is great and undeniable.
436 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IF FRANCE
character better than we, when they represented those who
went into the under world as drinking out of Lethe, the river '
of forge tfuln ess. The slumber and oblivion of death are as
refreshing and strengthening as those of nightly rest.1
It is obvious that the axiom of solidarity, as explained by
M. Leroux, must tend to magnify the importance of the idea
of progress. It seemed to himself to raise that idea to the
rank of a religious doctrine. And it certainly leaves no room
for any other religious doctrines. It proves, if true, that no
hopes or fears are warranted except those which are involved
in the earthly destiny of collective humanity. All hopes and
fears not thus warranted are now, according to the teaching
of M. Leroux, unnecessary. Morality once needed the stimu-
lus of everlasting reward, and the restraint of everlasting
punishment, but faith in social progress is now sufficient.
" There is no heaven or hell," cries our author : " the wicked
will not be punished, nor the good rewarded ; cease, mortals,
to hope or fear. Humanity is an immortal tree, the branches
of which wither and fall, one after another, but in doing so
nourish the root in unfading youth."
The course of progress is described as a continuous advance
towards equality. It is apprehended chiefly, if not entirely,
in its negative aspect, as a deliverance from class distinctions,
an abolition of unjust privileges. It has had three great
stages, corresponding to the three chief forms of caste. In
the first, the task of humanity was its self-deliverance from
the slavery of the family, the patriarchal caste of the oriental
world ; in the second, from the despotism of the state, as ex-
emplified in the political caste of Greece and Rome ; and in
the third, from the tyranny of property, and all the medieval
privileges associated therewith. It is at the close of this
third epoch that we are standing now ; and, with a view to
the reorganisation of society in the future, it specially behoves
us to remember that the family, the state, and property, are
all in themselves good, and that only when they assume the
form, and involve the distinctions of caste, are they evil.
1 M. Leroux devotes three chapters to repel the objection to his doctrine,
drawn from the fact that men have no remembrance of their pre-existence ; and
to maintain that the want of such remembrance is more than supplied by latent
or innate powers, and new conditions of existence. — L. v. c. xiii.-xv.
BLANC 437
" Tout le mal du genre humain vient des castes. La famille
est un bien, la famille caste est un mai ; la patrie est un bien,
la patrie caste est un mal; la propri^te" est un bien, la pro-
prie'te' caste est un mal." Future progress must lie in reject-
ing the evil but retaining and organising the good, alike in
the family, the state, and property. Especially is organisa-
tion of the good needed in the period of history at which
we have arrived. The equality of all men before the law
has come to be recognised. The greatest of revolutions, the
French Revolution of 1789, established it as a principle, and
so inaugurated a new and better era of history. The new
form of society, however, is not yet constituted, although its
principle has been found. The generation in which we live
is one without faith, law, or system. The old order is broken
down, but the new has not been built up.1
Ill
Louis Blanc (1813-1882) is entitled to a prominent place
in the history of socialism, inasmuch as he greatly advanced
the socialistic cause by separating the problem of the organi-
sation of labour from such dreamy and fantastic theories as
those in which Fourier, Buchez, and Leroux indulged, by
putting forward so definite and plausible a proposal as that of
State-aided industrial co-operation, and by advocating it with
remarkable literary and oratorical talent. He was not, how-
ever, a philosophical thinker ; and his philosophy of history
does not deserve more than the briefest statement. The fol-
lowing sentences taken from the first pages of the 'Histoire
de la Revolution Franchise ' present it to us in his own
words : —
"History nowhere begins or ends. The facts which compose the con-
tents of the movement of the world exhibit such confusion, and then-
relations with one another are so obscure, that neither the first cause
nor the final issue of any event can be indicated with certainty. Their
•beginning and ending are in God — that is, in the unknown."2
" Three great principles have, one after another, ruled the world and
1 The theory of M. Leroux regarding the historical evolution of humanity and
its stages will be found in the preface, and second and third books, of 'L'Human-
ite',' but more fully in the ' Essai sur l'l^galite. ' 2 P. 1.
438 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY EST FRANCE
history: Authority, Individualism, and Fraternity. . . The principle
of authority is that which rests the life of nations on beliefs blindly
accepted, a superstitious regard for tradition, and inequality ; and which
employs constraint as its means of government. The principle of indi-
vidualism is that which isolates man from society ; constitutes him the
sole judge of his surrounding and of himself ; gives him a lofty opinion
of his rights while not pointing out to him his duties; abandons him to
his own resources ; and proclaims laisser-faire as the sum and substance of
government. The principle of fraternity is that which, considering those
who belong to the great family of mankind members one of another, tends
to organise societies, the work of man, after the model of the human body,
the work of God ; and bases government on persuasion, on the voluntary
consent of hearts. Authority has been employed with astonishing eclat
by Catholicism; it prevailed until Luther appeared. Individualism, in-
augurated by Luther, developed with irresistible force ; and, freed from
the religious element, triumphed in France through the publicists of the
Constituent Assembly. It rules the present; it is the soul of things.
Fraternity, announced by the thinkers of the Mountain, disappeared at
that time in a tempest, and appears to us even at present only in the
ideals of the future ; but all great hearts evoke it, and already it illum-
ines the highest sphere of intellects. Of these three principles, the first
engenders oppression by stifling personality ; the second leads to oppres-
sion through anarchy; the third alone brings forth liberty through
harmony." J .
What M. Blanc here represents as the principles of author-
ity and of individualism are merely abuses of the principles
of order and of liberty: two principles which are necessary
to each other, and which have always coexisted to some extent.
Authority was resisted and restrained by individualism even
in the middle age. Feudalism was a manifestation of inde-
pendence as well as of obedience ; and so, although in another
form, was the Church. No institution in history has tended
more than feudalism to isolate and individualise men of the
ruling class ; and none has been more effective than the Church
in limiting the sphere of the State, and withdrawing a large
portion of human life from its control. The honour of an-
nouncing fraternity ought certainly not to be assigned to men
who so lavishly murdered their brethren as did Robespierre
and the so-called penseurs de la Montague. No one has ever
proclaimed the principle of human brotherhood more clearly
and fully than the founder of the Christian Church, and that
1 Pp. 9, 10.
BLANC — PEOTJDHON 439
Church has always both taught and practised it in some
measure.
M. Blanc has endeavoured to trace the rise and growth of
" individualism " in France : to show how it gradually acquired
supremacy in the domains of religion, philosophy, politics, and
industry ; how it sapped the authority of the monarchy and ,
nobility, and made the bourgeoisie the ruling power in the
nation ; and how, in conjunction with the spirit of fraternity, '
it produced the Revolution and destroyed the old order of so-
ciety. His socialism, however, made him incapable of rightly
appreciating liberty, and caused him often to condemn it as
individualism, and to ascribe to it evils which were not its
natural consequences, or which even arose from its absence or
violation. What he states as facts, indeed, are almost always
real facts and truly stated ; but they are selected and often
misinterpreted facts, insufficient to establish the general con-
clusions drawn from them. M. Blanc obviously comprehended
very imperfectly the teaching of Hus. He displays little of
the insight into the genius and influence of the Reformation
and of Calvinism so conspicuously manifested both by Ranke
and Mignet. He indicates well the services of Richelieu, but
overlooks the mischievous tendencies of his policy. He char-
acterises the historical personages whom he deems the repre-
sentatives of individualism chiefly by their defects ; and those
whom he regards as the prophets of fraternity almost entirely
by their best qualities, or their mere professions, or the grand
and generous intentions which he himself attributes to them.
He vigorously denounces the Terror as at once wicked and
foolish, yet, in part and by implication, justifies it in repre-
senting it as an inevitable fatality. For so representing it
he certainly gives no solid reasons. Some of the guiltiest of
the Terrorists he portrays as the prophets, heroes, and martyrs
of the faith which is to save society and to rule the future.
The historical philosophy of M. Blanc is so feeble, so
meagre, and so vague that I must npt dwell on it further.
The socialistic theorists whose historical speculations have
been under consideration in this chapter had no keener or
more outspoken opponent than P. J. Proudhon (1804-69),
440 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
who was commonly regarded as himself the most extreme
and dangerous of socialists, although he was really much
more of an extravagant individualist. He was very radical
and revolutionary : his social ideal was an-archy, — absolute
equality, the absence of government, — which he held was
not to be confounded with anarchy — i.e., chaos or disorder.
Possessed of rare ability as a polemic, and reckless of re-
straints in regard to the manner of exercising it, he assailed
and ridiculed with tremendous effect the doctrines of the
Saint-Simonians and Fourierists, of Leroux and Louis Blanc.
Unfortunately he was as indulgent a judge of his own ideas
as he was a severe critic of those of other people. Besides,
he changed his opinions very often ; indulged most liberally
in exaggerated statements and in self-contradiction ; pro-
claimed that he had got possession of truths when he was
merely hoping to find them ; and never did attain the proved
and definitive system which he sought for. He loved to
startle the public by audacious propositions, la propriety, c'est
le vol; Dieu, c'est le mal, and the like, — regardless of the
misconceptions which they would cause and of the needless
offence which they would give. Yet he was not only a man
of great talent but of many estimable qualities of character.
In the most violent of his controversies he took no mean ad-
vantages and showed no malignity; although intensely in
sympathy with the working classes, far from flattering them,
like Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, and so many
others, he never hesitated to tell them the most disagreeable
truths in the plainest way ; notwithstanding his avowed con-
tempt for women in general he showed due respect for them
individually, and was an excellent husband and the affec-
tionate father of two daughters; and rigid honesty, abhor-
rence of licentiousness, helpfulness to the unfortunate, and
absolute faith in justice, were among his most prominent
traits. He had an original and resourceful intellect, a rich
and good nature, and remarkable literary gifts, but was so
deficient in self-restraint and patience, calmness and modera-
tion, that the fruits of his mind and activity never ripened,
but were forced to appear as crude and undeveloped thoughts,
abortive schemes and efforts, or even outbursts of passion,
PKOUDHON 441
vanity, and impiety, which did great injustice alike to his
talents and to his deeper and better self.1
Proudhon has in several of his writings treated of history.
His ' De la Creation de l'Ordre dans l'Humanite' ' (3d ed.,
1849) has for its central and ruling conception an historical
hypothesis. It is, however, one directly borrowed, although
without explicit acknowledgment, from Comte. Proudhon
expressed it thus : " Religion, philosophy, science ; faith,
sophistic, and method ; such are the three moments of knowl-
edge, the three epochs of the education of the human race." 2
He endeavoured to prove it by a somewhat lengthened ex-
amination of religion and philosophy, and concludes in the
following terms : —
" Without religion humanity would have perished at its birth; without
philosophy it would have remained in an eternal infancy : but the opinion
that religion and philosophy have meant anything more than a particular
state of consciousness and intelligence has been the worst malady of the
human mind. Religion and philosophy, conceived of, the first as a reve-
lation of divine dogmas, the second as the science of causes, have filled
the earth with fanatics and fools. ... A little of philosophy has always
mingled with religion ; a breath of religion has always penetrated phi-
losophy. Christianity was a philosophical religion, the most philosophi-
cal of religions : Confucius, Plato, the apostle Paul, Rousseau, Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, have been religious philosophers. Their
writings are immortal : but of all the things which it most concerns us
to know, and of which they have sometimes spoken with an eloquence
so grand, they have known nothing, and have taught us nothing; and
the combination of contrary qualities which we observe in them has been
without profit to science. How great, then, is the illusion of those who
now speak of uniting, as two realities, philosophy and religion ? Theology
has fallen, sophistic has been struck dead : there is no more religion, there
is no philosophy." 8
Having reached this result M. Proudhon forthwith proceeds
to expound a philosophy of his own, akin to the philosophy
of Comte, although directly drawn to a greater extent from
the teaching of Kant, Fourier, and Ampere. It is a sort of
theory or logic of science, and he calls it Metaphysics, not
1 The character of Proudhon can be best studied in his ' Correspondance,' 14
vols., 1875. Besides the articles of Ferraz (op, cit.), Renouvier (Crit. phil.), and
Franck (Diet.), see Sainte-Beuve's ' Proudhon, sa vie et sa correspondance,' 1872.
2 P. 10. s p. 96.
442 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
improbably just because of Comte's repudiation of the term.
He next treats of what he designates Political Economy, but
by which he means all science that bears on economical,
political, and social organisation. The laws of Political
Economy thus understood he holds to be the laws of his-
tory : and thus is led to set forth his views on history (pp.
340-404).
He defines it as " the succession of states through which
the mind and society pass before the former attains pure
science and the latter the realisation of its laws." He argues
that it is properly speaking not science, but only matter of
science ; and that it is an evolution the laws of which are
those that Political Economy ought to ascertain and expound.
He throws out a considerable number of interesting remarks
and plausible generalisations regarding the movement of his-
tory under the action of these laws, and the perturbations
which follow from their violation; but he fails to combine
them into any consistent whole. The general impression
produced is confused and disappointing. He follows Saint-
Simon and Fourier in attempting to elucidate history by the
conception of the series, and, as he supposes, Hegel by apply-
ing to its evolution the formula of thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis.
In the work just referred to, Proudhon has treated of the
notion and fact of progress at considerable length, but with
arbitrary ingenuity, uselessly quibbling over mere words and
phrases, and arriving at no clear general result. He has, how-
ever, dealt with the subject in a far more able and satisfactory
manner in his later and much more important work, ' De la
Justice dans la Revolution et dans l'Eglise.' Here he has
shown with great effectiveness the vagueness, superficiality,
and exaggerations of the representations given of progress by
ordinary theorists and eulogists ; and has traced them to their
source, a want of insight into what human progress really is.
It does not follow that there must be such progress because
population or wealth is increasing, or because the arts and
sciences are advancing. While any or all of these things are
happening, man himself may be deteriorating; he may be
losing in independence, in virtue, in manhood. But the true
PEOUDHON 443
progress of man implies the true progress of men ; and, there-
fore, can only be their own work, and must be inclusive espe-
cially of what distinguishes them as men. Its chief criteria
must be found not in what is external to or independent of
man, but in what is most essentially his own and constitutive
of himself, — liberty and justice. All development which is
not due to man's own energy, and which does not tend towards
justice in all the relations of life, must be merely an illusory
semblance of progress. True historical progress, having for
its condition freedom and for its end the establishment of jus-
tice, may be denned as " la justification de l'humanite" par elle-
m§me sous l'excitation de l'ide'al." It is no organic evolution
or inevitable necessity : decadence is possible, and has often
occurred; it takes place whenever justice is only feebly and
partially sought for, or when any other ideal is preferred to
that of justice. For Proudhon, justice consists of equality,
and whatever creates inequality is unjust. Hence, while a
decided opponent of communism, he was also an enemy of
property in land, of the exclusive possession by individuals
of the instruments of labour, and of the remuneration of work
according to any other scale than duration. He clearly saw,
however, what communists have almost always failed to see,
that the pursuit of equality as the ideal of justice could not
lead to wealth but to indigence : that, for example, were his
ideal obtained, the annual income of France could not give
more than three francs per day to each French family of
four persons; and consequently, that the existing state of
variety of fortunes in the nation would be replaced not by one
of abundance for all, but by one of universal poverty. But
this caused him neither fear nor regret. Always poor, always
laborious, he never complained either of poverty or of labour.
He held that labour requires poverty and that poverty is the
condition of labour; that they are naturally conjoined, and
that both are necessary to the moral development of man.
He indulged in no excesses of sentimentalism over the toils
and hardships of the poor ; he -was fierce in his denunciations
of the frivolity, the luxury, and the immorality of the rich.
Wealth, not poverty, was in his eyes the evil which had to
be overcome ; the evil which corrupts individuals and ruins
communities.
444 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Proudhon's intense conviction of the reality and supremacy
of moral law was what gave its chief attraction and value to the
historical theory expounded in his ' De la Justice.' A narrow
and extreme view of its all-sufficiency and exclusive legitimacy
was the source of its most pervading defect. He unnaturally
opposed justice to piety, morality to religion. He contended
that the decay of faith was the indispensable condition of the
development both of reason and of virtue ; and that all history
teaches the necessity of getting rid of religion. His histori-
cal theory is thus, while profoundly moral, thoroughly anti-
religious. The book in which he has most fully expounded
it is a continuous assault on religion; representing it as a
power which invariably perverts reason and conscience, and
produces weakness and disorder in society.1
In his ' La Guerre et la Paix,' Proudhon committed himself
to a defence of the right of force and of conquest which cannot
be reconciled with faithful adherence to the principle of jus-
tice. The view which he has there given of war as a means
of peace is one which history certainly does not confirm.
He was a strenuous opponent of the principle of nationality,
which has attracted so much attention and exerted so much
influence in the nineteenth century. He did not regret the de-
struction of Poland, and he regarded the restoration of Italy
as a deplorable error. He believed the dissolution of all ex-
tant nationalities into small communities to be indispensable
to the attainment of a truly free and just condition of society.
The State he regarded as incompatible with liberty and equality,
and as, like religion, a most formidable obstacle to progress.
He believed that what was needed was its destruction, not its
mere reformation ; that social life could only be what it ought
to be when the very idea of the State had been cast out of the
mind as a pernicious idol, and when all that had been built on
it — legislation and administration, kings, senates, tribunals,
diplomacy, armies, &c. — had disappeared. He wished that
1 Proudhon's teaching in favour of the separation of morality from religion and
philosophy was adopted by a school or party which had for some years an organ
in the weekly press of Paris, 'La Morale Inde'pendante,' 1865-69. Its chief con-
tributors were Mme. Coignet and MM. Massol and Morin. For an examination
of the fundamental theses maintained in it, see E. Caro, ' Problemes de Morale
Sociale,' ch. i.-iii.
PROUDHON 445
there should be no social authority whatever; that there should
be only free associations of workmen. It was because he held
this doctrine that he called himself an an-arohist. As he was
the first to present it with clearness, he has the best claim to
be considered the founder of Anarchism.1
The Anarchism of Proudhon forms a striking contrast to the
Positive Sociocracy of Comte. These two systems represent
the antithetic extremes of social theorising. The one springs
from an exaggerated and exclusive conception of liberty, and
the other from an equally exaggerated and exclusive concep-
tion of authority. Yet both led their authors to contemplate
with satisfaction the prospect of national dismemberment.
They agreed, although on very different grounds, in desiring
that existing nations should be broken up into smaller com-
munities concerning themselves chiefly or entirely with indus-
trial interests. Wherein they differed was that while Comte
approved of states of small size, because only such could, in
his opinion, be adequately influenced and effectively con-
trolled by the positivist priests and bankers in whose hands
he hoped to see all spiritual and civil authority invested,
Proudhon desired communes of limited extent, because he
believed that only such could dispense with authority and
organise themselves freely by association.2 Proudhon has
expounded his theory in a special work, ' De la F^ddration.'
And the theory there presented as the complement of Anar-
chism has had a far greater influence on practical politics than
when exhibited in its Comtist form as a corollary from Soci-
ocracy ; but its influence has been the reverse of beneficent.
Propagated by so fanatical and reckless an apostle as Bakunin,
arid adopted by Russian anarchists, Parisian communists, and
1 Anarchism has gained a large host of adherents, and assumed a variety of
forms. Russia, owing to easily perceptible causes, has been its chief hotbed and
nursery. Its history, so full of political and pathological interest, has necessarily
as yet been only very partially and superficially traced. Almost all self-conscious
revolutionary radicalism is in the present day either anarchist or collectivism
Anarchists look for no good from the State, and seek to destroy it. Collectivists
expect everything from the State, and strive to make it omnipotent.
2 Fourier, by his advocacy of the division and distribution of Europe into
phalansteres, had preceded Comte and Proudhon in sacrificing historical nations
to small, independent, and self-sufficing industrial societies, federatively con-
nected.
446 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
Spanish Federalists, it has been a source of serious disturb-
ance and disaster in the Europe of recent years.
The doctrine favourable to small states or communities has
found at least three ingenious and cultured advocates in
France, the geographer Elise Reclus, and the journalists
Justin Drommel and Odysse-Barot. It has been expounded
with special attractiveness and skill in the ' Lettres sur la
philosophie de l'histoire,' 1864, of the last-mentioned writer,
and with the consideration of it as there presented I shall
conclude my account of the historical speculations to which
French socialism has given rise.1
The first nine letters of M. Barot deal with war and peace,
military genius, the superiority of Frederick the Great to
Caesar and Napoleon, diplomacy, treaties, and congresses.
Their connecting thought is that society is constituted by
two principles — force and justice — of which the former
leads to war and finds expression in battles, while the latter
tends to peace and finds expression in treaties. These two
principles are compared to positive and negative electricity,
the warm and cold currents of the Gulf Stream, the ebb
and flow of the sea, the male and female, &c. They are held
to be equally necessary, since the one supplements and com-
pletes the other, since right without force and force without
right are alike nugatory and sterile. But force is described
as the more prevalent. M. Barot has counted, he says, the
years of war and peace and the treaties concluded and broken
from the fifteenth century before Christ to the present time,
and has found that there have been 3130 years of war to 227
of peace, and 8397 treaties sworn to be eternally observed,
the mean duration of the eternities of which has been two
1 M. Odysse-Barot was an active coadjutor Oi" the late M. Emile de Girardin in
'LaPresse,' ' La Liberte,' and 'La France.' In 1871, he was secretary of Gus-
tave Flourens and editor of ' Le Fe"deraliste ' ; and from 1871 to 1874, an exile
in England. His ' Histoire de la litterature contemporaine en Angleterre,' 1864,
is a work of exceptional merit. His ' Letters on the Philosophy of History ' ap-
peared at first in 'La Presse,' and were addressed to M. de Girardin, whose
criticism of them is appended to the volume of the ' Bibliotheque de Philosophie
Contemporaine,' in which they were republished in 1864. As the criticism as-
sumes that there is no difference between fact and right, and some other peculiar
fancies of M. de Girardin, it is even less satisfactory than the theory criticised.
ODYSSE-BAROT 447
years. War, lie contends, is not accidental or contingent,
but universal and necessary, having its primary cause in the
essential nature of man, and its final cause in the essential
nature of things. The progress of civilisation has, in his
opinion, no tendency to destroy or even to diminish it.
With the tenth letter we reach the kernel of his theory.
He here tells us that historical study has three stages, the
empirical, the critical, and the philosophical, or the stages of
fact, method, and law, of observation, classification, and gen-
eralisation ; that it has now reached the second but not the
third of these stages ; that important materials, however, for
a philosophy of history have been collected and prepared ;
and that the general conclusion which he himself proposes
to expound is the result of ten years' research and reflection.
He then attacks the notion that France is a single national-
ity, and that French unity has existed for ages. He insists
that, on the contrary, France is only a geographical expres-
sion, and French unity a quite recent creation.
In the next letter M. Barot proceeds with his proof. He
regards every State in Europe, except Portugal, Belgium,
Holland, and Switzerland, as not a nationality, but " a com-
posite of heterogeneous elements, a Macedonia of peoples, an
ethnological harlequin, a social mosaic." He tells briefly
the story of the formation of the British empire through the
union of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland with England; and
gives a very interesting account of the slow and painful
process by which what is called France was built up on the
ruins of the independence of Normandy, Provence, Guienne,
Gascony, Lorraine, and Brittany. Of course, he lays the
greatest possible emphasis on the fact that each of the differ-
ent peoples incorporated into Britain and France still retains
its distinctive character and feelings.
He commences the twelfth letter with the prophecy that
perhaps before the end of the century, and certainly before a
hundred years have passed, the great States of Europe will
be dismembered ; that factitious nationalities will have given
place to real nationalities ; that Britain, for example, will be
redistributed into four kingdoms, and France broken up into
five States — France proper, Brittany, Aquitaine, Burgundy,
448 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and Lorraine. Such is the inevitable conclusion, he argues,
of two principles which have taken root in the world, and
can neither be arrested nor eradicated, — the principle of de-
centralisation and the principle of nationalities ; the former
meaning dismemberment, and the latter the system of small
or natural States, as opposed to that of artificial or agglom-
erated States. But what is a natural State ? a true or simple
nationality? It is, M. Odysse-Barot asserts, neither a lin-
guistic, nor an ethnological, nor a religious, nor a moral fact,
nor a combination of these four orders of facts, but a purely-
geographical fact. " Une nationality, c'est un bassin." The
centre, the axis, of a real nation is a river. This, we are told,
is a law which has no exception ; and an attempt is made to
show that geology and climatology accord with history in
recommending the distribution of peoples according to basins.
In the following chapter a second so-called law is deduced
from the first: "Une frontidre, c'est une montagne." The
two alleged laws are said completely to define what a natural
nationality is. Then a third law is laid down as determining
the whole course of the historical movement. " The world
oscillates between two systems of society; simple and com-
pound societies; natural nationalities and artificial agglom-
erations ; peoples with frontiers and peoples without them ;
the system of small states and the system of great empires."
These two systems, according to M. Barot, regularly alternate,
and historical progress is little else than the periodical return
of the same facts and ideas. The system of agglomeration
or of great empires being at present at its height, must be
speedily succeeded by that of true nationalities. A confed-
eration of such nationalities is what Europe will present in
the near future. Small and natural States are those which
are most favourable to civilisation and liberty, to material
and moral wellbeing.
Such is the theory of M. Odysss-Barot. It seems to me
that he has wholly failed to establish it. He has been partic-
ularly unfortunate in his search for " laws." The first two
of his so-called laws are plainly not of the nature of laws at
all ; they are merely attempts, and very unsuccessful attempts,
at definition. The third might reasonably pass for a law were
it proved ; but it is not proved.
ODYSSE-BAEOT 449
" Nationality is a river-basin." This is affirmed to be a law
without exception. In reality, it is a paradoxical assertion
forced to serve as a definition. To give it some appearance
of truth, our author finds it requisite to deny that there are
any but three real nations in Europe. Perhaps he should
have gone further, and denied that there are any real nations
in the world. Even Egypt is not with strictness a basin,
being bounded not by mountains but by a desert and a sea.
If Great Britain were divided according to basins, it would
contain far more States than four. But Great Britain never
was divided in that way ; nor, so far as I can discover, has
any country of Europe been so divided within historical
times ; and certainly none has since national feeling made its
appearance in history.
" A natural boundary is a mountain." This so-called law
is of precisely the same character as the previous one : an
attempt not to formulate a law but to define a fact, and an
attempt which fails. Any line of demarcation whatever be-
tween two nations is a natural boundary ; for what makes a
boundary natural is nothing in itself, but the circumstance
that it separates distinct nations. The line of contact is the
natural boundary, whether it be mountain, or river, or sea, or
even merely a hedge or ditch. M. Odysse-Barot regards the
sea as an unnatural boundary ; but assuredly the inhabitants
of Great Britain will not be found to agree with him. It is
deeply to be regretted, indeed, that the principle of national-
ity should ever have been associated with the dogma of so-
called natural boundaries. The association, or confusion,
may be traced chiefly to an obscure and unscrupulous party
in France before the Franco-German war, who wished their
country to have the Rhine for a boundary ; and, under the
name of the Monroe doctrine, to a similar party in America,
who wished the whole North American continent to become
the seat of a single great republic. The theory advocated by
these parties amounted to the virtual affirmation of an almost
universal right of international robbery, since Russia, Prus-
sia, Bavaria, Austria, and many other nations, have no more
natural boundaries than the United States or France. The
theory of M. Barot, although it equally conjoins the principle
450 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
of nationality with the hypothesis of natural boundaries, is
not fairly chargeable with affording either a provocation to
international robbery, or a justification of such robbery. The
nations, however, which venture to act on it cannot fail to
be thereby involved in the horrors of civil war.
The two fictitious laws referred to reduce nationality, as
M. Barot himself says, to " a geographical fact." But who
does not see that this is a one-sided and exaggerated, a mean
and narrow, view of nationality; and that geography, like
race, language, religion, and unity of government, is merely
one of the factors which contribute to form nationality?
Geographical limits, identity of race and descent, community
of speech and faith, the same government and the same polit-
ical antecedents, participation in the same triumphs and the
same disasters, all conduce to the rise and growth of nation-
ality. Yet not one of them constitutes it, and not one of them
will infallibly and in all circumstances generate it. It arises
from the action of many and various causes. It is no natural
quality, and no necessary product of natural forces, but a
spiritual creation, a result of intellectual and moral develop-
ment, merely influenced by natural forces and outward cir-
cumstances. To this extent all nationality is artificial, and it
suffices to show that the distinction between natural and
artificial nationalities as drawn by M. Barot is inherently
untenable.
For the third alleged law — " the world oscillates between
a system of small States and a system of great empires " —
no historical proof is attempted. But without ample proof we
must decline to accept a proposition which identifies progress
with oscillation, development with the incessant recurrence of
the same facts and ideas. M. Odysse-Barot has so much faith
in its truth that the prevalence of the system of large States
appears to him enough of itself to warrant his prediction of the
near advent of a system of small States. It does not seem to
have occurred to him that the former system is a natural
expression of economical and social conditions which are not
likely to pass away in the course of a century ; that it is im-
plied in railways and telegraphs, and the gigantic proportions
of modern industry and commerce, as well as of modern war,
ODYSSE-BAROT 451
and will prevail so long as these continue. Divide France into
five independent nations to-day, and the work of unification,
by fair means and foul, by force, fraud, and honest exertion,
will commence to-morrow. A great empire is now not more
difficult to govern than a small State was formerly, while the
disadvantages of small States are more numerous and decided.
A great European war would obviously tend not to destroy
but to develop the prevalent system. The disintegration or
dismemberment which is predicated will require to be realised,
therefore, by an internal movement, by the irresistible enthu-
siasm of the populations of large empires for reorganisation
according to " basins." But are " basins " at all likely so to
inflame the imaginations of men? Is "a banner with the
strange device " " Basins " at all likely so to terrify or so to
charm the powers that be in Russia, Prussia, and Austria, in
France, and Italy, and England, that they will hasten to parcel
out their kingdoms into " natural nationalities," and forthwith
retire in favour of Governments which can have only a frac-
tion of their strength ? What probability is there of Russia
dividing herself according to river-basins, even if she possessed
mountains enough to serve as natural boundaries to the terri-
tories through which they flow ? And if Russia does not, how
can Prussia ? And if Prussia does not, how can France ?
It is true, as M. Odysse-Barot points out, that a general
movement in favour of decentralisation is discernible. But
why should it end, as he infers it must, in dismemberment ?
Most peoples are suffering more or less from undue centrali-
sation, and nature and reason are prompting them to seek a
remedy for the evil. But the remedy for one evil is not another
evil, although its contrary. The remedy for the evils of exces-
sive centralisation is not dismemberment, but simply a reason-
able decentralisation, the limitation of the central power, and
the leaving to provinces and municipalities the management
of properly provincial and municipal affairs. It is to add to
the advantages of general unity those of local and personal
liberty, and to avoid excesses on either side.
CHAPTER VIII
SPIRITUALISTIC MOVEMENT: SO-CALLED ECLECTIC AND
DOCTRINARIAN HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY
The Theocratic movement in the France of the nineteenth
century was mainly a reaction from the mode of treating relig-
ion and religious authority prevalent in the eighteenth cen-
tury. The Socialistic movement originated in a recoil from
the ethical and politico-economic principles and ideals which
gained ascendancy in the same period. There was, however,
another and profounder movement ; one which started with
rejection of the exclusive sensationalism and negative ration-
alism implied in the religious and social theories against
which Theocracy and Socialism were protests.
This movement of philosophical reaction and revival found
a brilliant leader in Victor Cousin (1792-1867). He began
to teach philosophy when twenty-three years of age, and in
singularly conspicuous and influential positions. His philo-
sophical studies had been brief and slight, so that he had
largely to learn what he taught while teaching it, and in the
intervals of leisure which a jealous Government gave him by
suspending his courses. He had to borrow largely from such
sources as were most easily accessible to him, and probably
often required to extemporise his thoughts as well as his
words. When forty years of age his career as a public teacher
of philosophy, and also as a productive speculative thinker,
was brought to a close, and gave place to one of political and
administrative activity. Thenceforth, although he long
powerfully influenced the fortunes of philosophy in France,
it was as an educational reformer, the defender of the liberties
of the university against the assaults of Ultramontanism, the
dispenser of the patronage of chairs of philosophy, and the
452
cousin 453
incessant and sagacious exciter of others to philosophical
research and labour. That the philosophy which he pro-
pounded in the courses of lectures delivered by him between
1815 and 1833 should have been one far from quite consistent
with itself at all stages of its evolution, or either thoroughly
thought out as a whole, or carefully enough tested in many
of its details, was inevitable. But that it had also remark-
able merits which go far to explain and justify its extraor-
dinary success, and that its influence on the thought of
France was in the highest degree stimulating, must in justice
be admitted.
Cousin made apparent how inadequate the theory of
knowledge of the ideologists was in itself, and as a basis
for philosophy. He set forth with a powerful and attractive
eloquence a view of philosophy which showed how compre-
hensive and important it really is, and what its true place
and functions are in human life and universal history. He
contended for a method of philosophical investigation appro-
priate in its character to the nature, and conformed in its proc-
esses to the variety and vastness, of philosophy itself; and
traced to defectiveness of method what is erroneous in empiri-
cism and transcendentalism, scepticism and mysticism. He
showed more truthfully than had been previously done how
philosophy is related to its own history. He drew a luminous
and masterly general sketch of that history, and instituted
into special points and particular sections of it original in-
vestigations which were, perhaps, none the less fruitful for
being fragmentary. He translated and interpreted Plato;
commented on Aristotle ; edited Proclus, Abelard, and Des-
cartes; promoted the study in France of Reid, Stewart, and
Hamilton, of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel; and instigated
a host of gifted men to rethink for the benefit of their con-
temporaries all past philosophies, — -to reproduce, criticise,
and judge, in new conditions and under fresh and fuller
lights, the views and systems of the great thinkers of human-
ity in all lands and ages. He expounded with consummate
literary skill in the most celebrated of his philosophical
writings, 'Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien,' the main conclu-
sions at which he had arrived in psychology, in metaphysics
454 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and theodicy, in ethics, and in esthetics. As regards psy-
chology, his proof of the irreducibility of sensation, will, and
reason to a single principle was of vital importance; his
account of intelligence as spontaneous and reflective had much
influence ; and his theory of the impersonality of reason was
worthy of all the attention which it has received. As to
metaphysics and theodicy, he based them on the most solid
foundations, gave prominence to the truths which deserved
it, and committed himself to the defence of few untenable
positions. Alike as regards spirit and substance his ethical
teaching was admirable. And although his solutions of the
chief problems of esthetics were vague and inadequate, his
criticisms of antecedent and contemporary theories were
relevant and decisive, and prepared the way for such inves-
tigations as those to which we owe the 'Cours d'Esthe'tique'
of Jouffroy and 'La Science du Beau' of LSvSque.
Notwithstanding what I have just said, I admit that
Cousin was much better qualified to draw up philosophical
programmes than to realise them ; that he showed little taste
for psychological research; that he was not a metaphysician
of the first order; that he overlooked the connections of
physical science with philosophy; and that he sometimes
made fine words pass for great thoughts, and displayed his
rhetorical gifts to excess. Hence in the representation of
him given by Taine and Lewes there is the modicum of truth
which is indispensable to give verisimilitude to caricature.
A gross caricature, however, it is, and not a portrait of the
man, who is justly entitled to be regarded as the most nota-
ble and influential personage in far the most comprehensive
and fruitful philosophical movement which France has felt
in the nineteenth century.1
1 See on Cousin the ' Eloges ' of Mignet and Jules Favre ; Taine, ' Philosophes
fran9ais ' ; Renan, ' Essais de morale et de critique ' ; Frauck, ' Moralistes et
philosophes,' and ' Nouveaux essais de critique philosophique ' ; Caro, ' Philo-
sophic et philosophes ' ; and especially Paul Janet, ' Victor Cousin et son oeuvre,'
1885, and Jules Simon, ' Victor Cousin,' 1887. His general philosophy has been
treated of by Damiron, Bersot, Alaux, Secretan, Ravaisson, Ferraz, &c. He has
himself described in the famous prefaces to the first two editions of his ' Frag-
ments ' the successive steps of his philosophical career with great candour, and
with a truth which can be easily substantiated by an examination of bis works
in their chronological order.
COTJSLN 455
The greatest service rendered by Cousin to philosophy
was one which was also a direct service to the philosophy of
history. It was the impulse which he gave to a truly philo-
sophical and at the same time truly historical study of the
history of philosophy. With marvellous success he induced
men to interest themselves in the history of philosophy as
being philosophy itself in the process of evolution; and to
study it as such in a free, critical, and impartial spirit. It
will be said, and with perfect justice, that Hegel had preceded
him in so conceiving of the relation of philosophy to its his-
tory ; and that he had even applied his conception by treating
of the history of philosophy with a profundity and subtlety
of which Cousin was incapable. But in this reference a very
important difference between them must be noted. Hegel
went to the history of philosophy in order to show that its
whole evolution was an exemplification of the philosophy
which he had elaborated; Cousin went to it in order to be
guided to a philosophy which he wished to discover. Hegel
construed the history to make it conform to his speculative
conclusions; Cousin was content to study it without any
other assumption than that if examined impartially and com-
prehensively it would lead to the discovery of a catholic
eclecticism which would separate the true from the false in
, all anterior systems, and harmonise all truths in them which
had hitherto appeared inconsistent and antagonistic. This,
however, is equivalent to saying that Hegel's method of
treating the history of philosophy was directly anti-scientific
and unreasonable, while Cousin's was legitimate and appro-
priate.
It was in the lectures delivered at Paris in 1828 to an
admiring audience of two thousand persons that he pro-
pounded his historical theories ; and it is only with that part
of his system which relates to history that I mean to deal.
It was the last part added, and it is that on which the influ-
ence of Hegel is most apparent. As regards this influence,
it must be remembered that although Hegel's 'Philosophy of
History ' was only published in 1837, Cousin was not only
acquainted with the outlines of world-history contained in
the ' Encyclopaedia ' (1817) and the ' Philosophy of Right '
456 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOEY IN FRANCE
(1820); but during a stay of some months at Berlin in
1824-25 had met Hegel, and become intimate with some of
his most zealous disciples, Gans, Hotho, Henning, and
Michelet ; and again in 1827 had enjoyed a month of Hegel's
society in Paris. It is very probable, therefore, that Cousin
derived his views on historical optimism, war, great men,
and some of the other subjects treated by him. in the 'Cours
de 1828 ' directly or indirectly from Hegel. Certainly his
intercourse with Hegel must have confirmed him in them.
As he has generally stated them with more clearness and more
appearance of proof than Hegel, I shall discuss them as he
has presented them, and shall not consider it necessary to
dwell on them when Hegel comes under review.
The general aim of the first three lectures is to determine
the place of philosophy and of its history within universal
history. Psychological analysis is maintained to be indis-
pensable to the accomplishment of the task. The various
manifestations and phases of social life are all traced back to
the tendencies of human nature from which they spring; to
five fundamental wants, each of which has corresponding to it
a general idea. The idea of the useful gives rise to mathe-
matical and physical science, industry and political economy;
the idea of the just to civil society, the State, and jurispru-
dence ; the idea of the beautiful to art ; the idea of God to
religion and worship ; arid the idea of truth in itself, in its
highest degree and under its purest form, to philosophy.
These ideas are argued to be simple and indecomposable ; to
coexist in every mind ; to constitute the whole foundation of
humanity; and to follow in the order mentioned. But if
human nature manifests itself in the individual, it manifests
itself also in the race, the history of which is, in fact, but the
representation of human nature on a great scale. There is in
the race only the elements which are in the individual. The
unity of civilisation is in the unity of human nature; its
varieties are in the variety of the elements of that nature.
All that is in human nature passes into the movement of
civilisation, to subsist, organise itself, and prospers, if essen-
tial and necessary, but soon to be extinguished if accidental
and individual. Therefore, as human nature is the matter
cousin 457
and the base of history, history is, so to speak, the judge
of human nature, and historical analysis is the counterproof
of psychological analysis. History, called in to the help of
analysis, shows us that civilisation — the magnified image of
human nature — includes at all epochs a philosophic element,
which has a distinct, always subsisting, and continually
increasing part or history on the stage of the world ; and that
what philosophy is to the other elements of human nature and
civilisation, the history of philosophy is to the other branches
of universal history. It shows us that the history of philoso-
phy is the last of all the developments of history, but superior
to them all, — the only one in which humanity knows itself
fully, with all its elements borne, as it were, to their highest
power, and set in their truest and clearest light.
In the fourth lecture M. Cousin treats of the psychological
method in history. He argues that the historical method can
be neither exclusively empirical nor exclusively speculative,
by which he means deductive, but both in union ; and that,
combining speculation with empiricism in a legitimate man-
ner, it must start from the human reason, enumerate com-
pletely its elements, reduce them by a severely scientific
analysis to the lowest number possible, determine their
relationship, and follow their development in history, with
the hope of discovering that the historical development is an
expression of the internal development of reason. Accord-
ingly, he sets about laying the foundation of this method by
a study of the categories of thought. He reaches the result
that in the last analysis the constitutive and regulative
principles of reason are three : the idea of the infinite, other-
wise called unity, substance, the absolute, &c. ; the idea of
the finite, likewise designated plurality, difference, phenom-
enon, relative existence, the conditioned, &c. ; and the idea
of the relation between the infinite and the finite, a relation
which so unites the two terms that they are inseparable, and,
along with itself, constitute, at the same time, a triplicity
and an indivisible unity.1
1 It has been considered expedient to distinguish the expository and critical
portions of this chapter by printing the former in larger, and the latter in
smaller, print.
458 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FBANCE
Cousin had the great merit of seeing that psychology and the philos-
ophy of history are intimately related. He perceived that the latter has
its root in the former ; that the science of history is properly a psycho-
logical science; that it presupposes a knowledge of the fundamental
powers, affections, and laws of the human mind and character ; and that
historical analysis may supplement and correct, but can neither be severed
from nor substituted for psychological analysis. Probably no one before
him had seen so clearly that " necessity of connecting all our generalisa-
tions from history with the laws of humau nature," the honour of recog-
nising which J. S. Mill most erroneously ascribed to "M. Comte alone,
among the new historical school."
It must be admitted, however, that Cousin was far from entirely faith-
ful to his own doctrine. Indeed, he had no sooner enunciated it than he
to a large extent implicitly withdrew it by surreptitiously substituting
human reason for human nature. What warrant is there for this? Why
limit the field from which deductions applicable to history may be drawn
to reason, a single part or faculty of human nature? Why exclude any-
thing truly belonging to that nature? Cousin does not give any explicit
reasoned answer. He makes an attempt to show that in every act of
consciousness the three terms or ideas which have been specified are in-
volved as conditions, and forthwith proceeds to argue as if he had thereby
reduced all the phenomena of consciousness to these terms, in strange
obliviousness of there being a great difference between the detection of
the formal or metaphysical conditions of consciousness and the analysis
of consciousness into its real or psychological elements. It does not
appear to have occurred to him that he might have succeeded in dis-
covering the ultimate categories of reason, and yet have the inquiry into
human nature as the basis of history to begin ; that the conditions im-
plied in the possibility of reason are not the laws of the development of
reason, and still less of those principles which are distinct from reason.
He abandons, in fact, without seeming to know that he is doing so, the
great truths with which he starts : that the matter of history is human
nature in its entirety, in all its wants, faculties, and principles ; and that
a science of history can be founded on no narrower basis than the whole
of psychological science supplies. He seeks to build not on the whole
mind, but on reason alone, or rather not even on reason, as a positive
principle of the mental constitution and life — which is the only sense in
which it is a true factor of history — but on abstract ideas of reason with
which metaphysics is conversant, but with which the science of history
has tio more to do than the science of chemistry. He thus sacrifices in
practice the important truths which he holds in theory.
The next three lectures treat of the fundamental ideas of
history, the great epochs of history, and the plan of history.
The reduction of reason into three ideas is supposed to have
already determined all the conclusions to he come to on these
cousin 459
points, and the course of actual history is referred to only as
affording illustrations of truths obtained independently of the
study of it.1
The development of intelligence is described as of a two-
fold nature, spontaneous and reflective. The spontaneous
development, taking place in all men without exception,
instinctively and involuntarily, is a primitive, impersonal,
and universal fact. The reflective development, displaying
itself in a marked degree only in the philosophical few, is
a secondary, personal, and particular fact. Reflection pre-
supposes and is occasioned by spontaneity. It is a sort of
reversal of the spontaneous process, a going over it again
from the opposite point, an analysing of it, a scrutiny of its
conditions and rules. It adds nothing new, nothing of its
own, to it ; but only seeks to account for it, to find how it
has reached its present stage and character, out of what prin-
ciples it has grown up, and what elements it includes. To
effect this end it is necessitated to decompose, separate, dis-
tinguish. To apprehend clearly the different constituent
elements which are all confusedly united in spontaneous
consciousness, it must apprehend them one by one, and while
intent on the contemplation of any one must extrude the
others from its sight.
Hence clearness, but hence also error. Error is one of
the elements of thought taken for the whole of thought ; an
incomplete truth converted into absolute truth. No other
error is possible, because thought, if it exist at all, must
possess some one of the elements which constitute it, some
element of reality. Reflection, therefore, always includes
truth, and almost always error, because it is almost always
incomplete. And error necessitates difference between men.
The primitive unity of spontaneous intelligence, not suppos-
ing distinction, admits neither of error nor difference; but
reflection, in discriminating the elements of thought, and
considering them separately and exclusively, produces error,
1 1 leave unnoticed, as properly falling within the provinces of the theologian
and metaphysician, what is said in these lectures as to the ideas of the infinite,
finite, and the relation of the infinite and finite, belonging not to man, but to
absolute intelligence, constituting the nature of Deity, and necessitating and
explaining the creation of the universe.
460 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and variety of error or difference. Hence the different epochs
of individual existence, which are only the stages caused by
a change in ideas, by variations in the points of view of re-
flection.
Hence, further, the differences of men compared with one
another. It is impossible for them to agree together to con-
sider at the same time the same side of thought and of things,
and so they necessarily differ, fail to comprehend one another,
and even despise one another. • He who is exclusively pre-
occupied with the idea of unity and infinity, pities the man
who enjoys the finite world, life in its movement and variety;
and he who is wholly attached to the interests and pleasures
of this world, regards as a fool the man whose thoughts and
affections are centred on the invisible principle of existence.
Most men are thus merely halves or quarters of men, and can
become entire men only by delivering themselves from the
exclusiveness which renders them unable to comprehend
others, and by realising in themselves all the elements of
humanity.
It is with the human race as with individuals. What
reflection is to the individual, history is to the race. It is
the condition of the successive evolution of all the essential
elements of humanity, and has consequently epochs, an epoch
being nothing else than the predominance of one of the ele-
ments of humanity during the time necessary for it to display
all the powers which are in it, and to impress itself upon
industry, the State, art, religion, and philosophy. As the
essential elements of thought are three, no more and no less,
the epochs of history must be three, no more and no less.
The three elements are, indeed, to some extent in each epoch;
but each one of them, in order to run through its whole de-
velopment, must have an epoch to itself. The three epochs
succeed each other in a necessary order. It is not man him-
self, not the sentiment of the me and of liberty, which is
dominant in new-born reflection, but the sense of feebleness,
the consciousness of dependence upon the infinite, upon God:
and as it is thus in the individual life, so, too, the first epoch
of humanity is necessarily pervaded with the sentiment of the
misery and nothingness of man, and filled with the idea of
the infinite, of unity, of the absolute, and of eternity. The
cousin 461
growth of reflection in the individual gives rise to a feeling
of personal freedom and power ; and equally the exercise of
liberty leads humanity to feel the charm of the world and
of life, and to yield itself up exclusively thereto, which is
the reign of personality, the epoch of the finite. Having
exhausted the extremes, there is nothing left either for the
individual or the race but to unite and harmonise them ; and
so the two epochs of the infinite and finite are necessarily
succeeded by a third which reconciles them and sums them
up, impressing everywhere upon industry, the State, art,
religion, and philosophy, the relation of the finite and the
infinite, and thus gives to that relation its own expression in
history, its own empire.
Such are the epochs of history, and the order of their
succession; but under the relation of succession lies one of
generation. The first epoch of humanity begets the second,
and the fertile residua of the two first epochs combine to pro-
duce the third. Although the different epochs of humanity
are wholes which have each a life of its own, humanity itself
is an active and productive force which pervades them all,
and an organic whole which comprehends them all. The
truth of history is therefore not a dead truth, or one confined
to any particular age, but a living and growing truth, which
comes forth gradually from the harmonious work of ages, and
which is nothing less than the progressive birth of human ity.
It is more. History reflects not merely the movement of
humanity, but of God's action on and in humanity. It is
the government of God made visible. And as His govern-
ment must be like His character, perfect, everything in his-
tory must be in its place, must be reasonable, and for the
greatest good of all things.
This is M. Cousin's celebrated theory of historical development,
stated, as far as possible, in the words of its author. It is impossible
to deny to it a certain sort of grandeur and plausibility ; but it fails at
almost every point to satisfy the legitimate demands of science.
The distinction between spontaneity and reflection with which it starts
was one to which M. Cousin attached great importance, but which he
never succeeded in clearly and distinctly apprehending. He regarded
spontaneous reason as reason in itself, as absolute or impersonal reason,
as consequently incapable of error, and a sure foundation for the author-
ity of universal beliefs ; and reflective reason as that which is modified
462 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and guided by will, the principle, according to him, in which personality
consists ; and therefore as individual, variable, and subject to error.
Now this is untenable. Spontaneous thought does not differ from reflec-
tive thought by being unaccompanied and uninfluenced by will. The
progress of spontaneous thought, like all progress in thought, implies
throughout the active concurrence of the will with the intelligence. In
the course of that progress, which embraces human history in all its
length and breadth, arts have been invented and sciences evolved, poems
written, moral creeds elaborated, religions established, complex and dur-
able civilisations built up : and although the mind has not proceeded
along this lengthened road with a clear perception of the goal to which
it leads, neither has it taken steps in utter darkness ; and as little has it
been driven on by any fatalistic force either over it or within it. It has
had light and freedom sufficient to make it responsible for each suc-
cessive step, as it became right that it should be taken. The will has
everywhere been present? choice everywhere called for, error everywhere
possible. To speak, as M. Cousin does of spontaneous intelligence as
instinctive, is, taken literally, no less absurd than to speak of white
blackness or a circular square.
Further, M. Cousin, instead of drawing a consistent distinction, has
merely mixed up and confounded a number of distinctions. When he
distinguishes spontaneous from reflective intelligence by characterising
the former as immediate, involuntary, and incapable of error, the only
real mental fact which corresponds to it is perception external or internal,
and reflection includes the whole of what is commonly called thought.
This, however, was by no means the distinction which he wished to draw.
While, however, a part of what we are told of the distinction between
spontaneity and reflection is true only of the distinction between percep-
tion and thought, another part of it is true only of that between ordinary
and scientific thought, or, more accurately, between the lower and higher
stages of thought. When spontaneous intelligence is described as com-
paratively obscure and confused, reflective intelligence as comparatively
clear and distinct ; when it is admitted that the former really, although
slowly, progresses through the ages, and constitutes the thinking of the
mass of men, while the latter is characteristic of the philosophic few, —
a difference of degree is presented to us as a distinction of kind. Science
differs from ordinary knowledge not absolutely or specifically, but relar
tively and in degree. Science has grown out of ordinary knowledge, and
ordinary knowledge is on the way to become science. The knowledge
which enables the rudest savage to satisfy his simplest wants, and the
broadest and best-established generalisations of the most advanced living
astronomer or chemist, are merely the extremes of a process which has
been continuous, and which has gradually filled up the whole distance
between them.
Then, another, a third distinction seems to be the only one which will
answer to that part of M. Cousin's account which refers the origin of
religion and poetry to spontaneity, and of philosophy to reflection — viz.,
cousin 463
the distinction between thought combined with and thought separated
from emotion. This, also, is only a difference of degree; for a complete
severance of thought from emotion is impossible ; and it is further, prop-
erly speaking, no division of thoughts themselves into kinds.
And there is at least another, a fourth distinction with which that
under consideration is identified : that of thought which works on objects
given to it, and of thought which makes itself its own object ; of thought
which deals with exterior things in order to ascertain their natures and
laws, and of thought which studies and analyses its own processes. This
is a distinction of kind and not of mere degree ; for, thus understood,
reflection is not the continuance of spontaneity, not a further stage of the
same process, although it presupposes and is occasioned by it ; but is a
sort of reversal of it, a going over it again from an opposite point and
with an opposite aim. It is only when M. Cousin's distinction of spon-
taneous and reflective intelligence is understood as equivalent to this
distinction that the statement that reflection, in going over the processes
of spontaneous thought, adds to them nothing new, and not a few other
statements which he has made, can be received as true. Perhaps the
general impression his account leaves is that this was the distinction he
had in view, but that he altogether failed to steady his eye upon it. It
was certainly, I think, the distinction which he should have drawn, and
to which he should have exclusively adhered.
But then, if this be "the distinction, spontaneous intelligence may be
very clear and precise, and reflective intelligence very obscure and con-
fused. The great mass of thought will be what is called spontaneous
thought, and it need not necessarily be vaguer, or shorter, or easier than
reflective thought. There is probably no psychological analysis which
has displayed so much perspicacity, vigour, concentration, and persever-
ance of mind, as the discovery of the law of gravitation, an achievement
of spontaneous research. The spontaneous intelligence, in this accepta-
tion of the term, originates not only the simplest but the subtlest inven-
tions ; apprehends not only the most obvious but the most recondite truths.
It is to it, and not to reflective intelligence, thus distinguished, that the
world owes its religions, its legislations, its arts, its industries, its sciences,
and even far the larger portion of its philosophy.
M. Cousin has not succeeded, then, in distinguishing between sponta-
neous and reflective intelligence, although there is a real distinction be-
tween them on which he has occasionally touched. Had he apprehended
it more clearly and consistently, he would have seen that it could not
possibly be applied to history in the way he attempted. If reflection be
restricted to denote that kind of thought which has its origin in the con-
viction that processes of mind require explanation no less than processes
of matter ; and that if the mind will only turn its eye inwards — will only
bend its attention back upon itself, and study these processes — an expla-
nation of them may be reached ; and if spontaneity be understood as
comprehending all other thought ; the notion that the whole mass of
thought in individuals, nations, and humanity is set in motion and kept
464 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
in motion by the action of reflection, ceases to be in any degree plausible.
Reflection must then be admitted to be a kind of thought, which, instead
of setting all other thought in motion, makes its own appearance only
when most other kinds of thought have already run a lengthened course;
only after notable results have been reached in science, art, morals, and
religion. Instead of determining the general movement of thought, it
must be determined by it ; and instead of imposing a law of movement
on spontaneous thought, a law of movement already there must compre-
hend and regulate its own movement. But this means ruin to M. Cousin's
theory ; it is the pulling out of its foundation-stone. If true, whatever
be the cause of historical movement, that cause cannot be the decompo-
sition of spontaneous thought into its essential elements under the action
of reflection ; and whatever be the law of historical movement, that law
cannot be the inability of reflection to think more than one of these ele-
ments at a time, or in any other order than that of infinite, finite, and
relation of finite and infinite. Both cause and law must be looked for
elsewhere. The attention must no longer be confined to the relation of
one kind of thought to another; but the whole movement of thought
must be studied in itself, and in relation to nature.
But may not, it will be said, spontaneous thought, although it move
independently of the impulse of reflection, still, in the course of its move-
ment, manifest one of its elements after another, so that each element
shall have an epoch to itself after the manner indicated by Cousin? I
think not. If spontaneous intelligence develop, and if there are certain
elements so essentially constitutive of it as to be included in its every
act, it is hard to see how all these elements can fail to be continuously
and contemporaneously developed, and especially how they can be so
separated as to be the distinctive principles of historical epochs of im-
mense duration. And whether such a successive development of the
elements of reason be possible or not, obviously every presumption ad-
duced by M. Cousin in its favour is swept away by the dispersion of the
confused augmentation on which he rests it. Any presumptions or prob-
abilities which remain point to the opposite conclusion. Thus the specu-
lative grounds on which Cousin bases his hypothesis of a successive
separate development of the elements of intelligence in successive histori-
cal epochs are undermined ; and it is on these grounds that he has chiefly
rested it. Indeed it may be said to have been exclusively on these grounds,
there being nothing else adduced in its favour except a passing assurance
that the actual course of history is found to confirm the conclusion which
they, according to him, support.
The ultimate appeal, however, must be to the facts themselves. What,
then, do they say? Do they substantiate the notion of three historical
epochs, the first characterised by the supremacy of the infinite, the second
of the finite, and the third of the relation of the infinite and finite ? To
my thinking, they do not. The epoch of the infinite, according to M.
Cousin, was that of the East, where everything was more or less immo-
bile, industry feeble, the arts gigantic and monstrous, the laws of the
cousin 465
State fixed and immutable, religion a longing after absorption in the
invisible, and philosophy the contemplation of absolute unity. Well, was
the East in any form in which this description can be regarded as even
approximately true, the first epoch of history? Is it possible for us
seriously to hold it was? M. Cousin, while believing in a primitive reve-
lation, an age of gold, the Eden of poetry and religion, discarded the
question of a primitive people, as more embarrassing than important, and
as not properly belonging to history, which, strictly, is only where differ-
ence and development are. So be it. But there was no long interval, no
time of difference and development, of struggle and evolution, no epoch
between Eden and the East described by M. Cousin ? Did the latter
spring immediately out of the former ? There was, we may be certain, a
long interval, and no immediate connection, or even sudden growth. The
East presents us with several elaborate and artificial civilisations, but with
none which we have reason to suppose dates from Eden ; on the contrary,
we have more or less evidence of their having developed gradually from
simple, if not barbarous, conditions of society. But rude and simple
peoples, still more barbarous peoples, are never found absorbed in the
contemplation of the infinite, and of absolute unity. The Brahmins and
Buddhists of Asia may be so ; but the low and sensuous populations which
the Aryans encountered in India on their arrival were not; and these
Aryans themselves — the Vedic hymns show us — were, so far from being
at first weighed down with a sense of the infinite, feebly and dimly con-
scious of any such feeling, while keenly alive to the phases and impressions
of nature, and to the interests of a life, healthy, varied, mobile, active, and,
in a word, all that, according to M. Cousin, life in the epoch of the infinite
should not have been.
This is not all. M. Cousin applies his description of the epoch of the
infinite to the East. But the East is a very wide word. Did M. Cousin
realise how comprehensive it was ? A little inquiry shows us that he did
not. His description of the East is to a considerable extent true of India,
after the definite establishment of Brahminism, but of no other Eastern
nation ; it characterises not very inaccurately a stage of Hindu life, but it
most unwarrantably professes to be a delineation of the whole life and
history of Asia plus Egypt. There is, for instance, no country in Europe
to which that description of the East applies less than to China. It is
true, indeed, that China affords a good example of comparative immo-
bility; but nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that immobility
due to the absorption of the Chinese mind in the study of the infinite
and the absolute. That mind is exceptionably indifferent and dead to
these things ; strangely atheistic and materialistic ; engrossed in the finite ;
indefatigable in the pursuit of earthly gains ; greedy of sensuous joys. It
might readily be shown that M. Cousin's description also fails to answer
to the monarchies of Middle Asia and to Egypt. And although it should
be granted that the Jewish people was distinguished by its consciousness
of the presence of an infinite and eternal God and Judge, it must at the
sametime be maintained that that consciousness elicited instead of crush-
466 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
ing the sense of personality, freedom, responsibility ; and that it proved
itself to be in no wise incompatible with vigour and enterprise.
There is yet another difficulty. The epoch of the infinite comes to an
end. When Y M. Cousin answers : When the infinite is exhausted in every
direction. And it appears not to have occurred to him that there need be
any hesitation in accepting the answer. But surely it is a most mysterious,
if not a self-contradictory one, and the very reverse of explanatory. How
can the infinite be exhausted in any direction ? and much more, in every
direction ?
The epoch of the finite M. Cousin finds in the history of classical
antiquity. In describing it, however, he keeps his eye exclusively fixed
on Greece ; and yet entirely overlooks the obvious difficulty, that if the
finite realised itself so admirably in Greece, it should not have reappeared
in a less perfect form in Rome. This difficulty he could not have got over
by saying that in Greece the finite did not impress itself on all the phases
of life, and therefore had to continue itself in Rome ; because, according
to his own teaching, the last phase of life on which an idea can impress
itself is the philosophical ; and it is certainly not true that Rome was,
and Greece was not, a philosophical nation. In order that the finite
should have had all its development, he tells us that it must have had an
almost exclusive development, unhindered by any movement of the infi-
nite ; and accordingly he describes Greece as having been wholly dominated
by the idea of the finite. But he thereby only shows how dangerous is
the kind of historical speculation in which he indulges. For the sake of
his formula, he has to ignore the plainest teaching of such expressions of
Grecian life as the mysteries, metaphysics, and tragedy ; has to mutilate
the facts, or notice only those which suit the foregone conclusion, seeing
that, looked at fairly and fully, they would show Greece to have contrib-
uted very greatly to the development of the ideas of the infinite and of the
absolute. Greece certainly did not represent the infinite less than China,
nor did it even represent the finite more. The superiority of Greece over
the East lay, not in carrying the finite farther — which would have been no
merit or progress — but in having a truer sense of beauty of form, of pro-
portion, of harmony. Of course finiteness and form are very different
things ; and a graceful form is no more finite, or suggestive of the finite,
than one which is the reverse.
To the modern world — the third epoch — is assigned the task of
apprehending and expressing the relation of the infinite and finite. How
this can be done, apart from the development of the related ideas, M.
Cousin does not show. Neither does he show that the effort to reconcile
these two ideas is really distinctive of the modern world. And this for
the good reason that such is not the case. It is impossible to study the
Hindu philosophies without coming to the conclusion that their object
was not the infinite to the exclusion of, but in relation to, the finite;
nor the Greek philosophies without similarly discovering that their object
was not the finite in itself, but in its connection with the infinite.
Tested, then, by the facts, this distribution of epochs is found to be
cousin 467
false. Whatever be the plan of history, it cannot be that drawn by
M. Cousin. And there is some comfort in this reflection, seeing that
he denies our race a future. There can be, he tells us, no new epoch of
history. "Try," he says, "to add a fourth. It is not in the power of
thought, I do not say to succeed in it, but even to attempt it ; for thought
is able to conceive of anything only by reason of the finite, of the infinite,
and of their relation." Had there been no other objection to M. Cousin's
theory than that it logically involved the dogmatic denial of the possi-
bility of any new epoch of history in the future, I should consider that in
itself to outweigh any reasons he has given for it. It is true he tries to
break the force of the objection by saying that the present epoch is only
emerging from the stage of barbarism. This assertion, however, is not
only unsupported by any appeal to facts, but is in manifest contradiction
to his account of what determines the completion of an epoch, and to the
character which he ascribes to his own philosophy as an all-comprehensive,
all-reconciling eclecticism.
M. Cousin, as I have indicated, concludes his exposition of the plan of
history by a profession of his faith in historical optimism . " History is
the government of God made visible ; and hence everything is there in
its place: and if everything is there in its place, everything is there for
good ; for everything arrives at an end, marked by a beneficent power."
It is marvellous how our author could fancy he was entitled to believe so
great a theory on such a faint appearance of reason. There are things
without number which, our intellects and consciences testify, appear to
be indubitably out of place, bad, and mischievous. If it can be shown
that they are not what they appear to be — not really bad, but really good
— let it be done ; but let us not ignore the facts, or affirm without exam-
ination, that they are just the opposite of what they seem, on no better
ground than an enthymeme so contemptible as that God is good, and
therefore everything is good.
There are still three lectures of Cousin to notice, and they
treat of places, nations, and great men ; because these are the
three things by which the spirit of an epoch manifests itself,
— the three important points on which the historian ought
to fix his attention.
As to the first — places, the part of geography in history,
which is the subject of the eighth lecture — the substance of
M. Cousin's teaching is as follows : Everything in the world
has a meaning; nothing is insignificant; and consequently
every place necessarily represents an idea, — one of the ideas
which underlie and connect all other ideas. The relation of
man to nature is not one of effect to cause; but man and
nature are two great effects of the same cause, so harmoni-
468 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
ously correspondent to each other that, given a country, you
may tell what the people will be, or, given a people, what
sort of country they must inhabit. No place represents more
than one idea. The three great epochs must therefore have
three different theatres. If we consider what these must be,
we shall be forced to conclude that the theatre of the epoch
of the infinite can only be an extensive continent with vast
plains and almost impassable mountains, and bordering upon
the ocean ; that of the finite, countries comparatively small,
on the shores of some inland sea ; and that of the relation of
the finite to the infinite, a continent of considerable size,
bordering on the ocean, yet possessing inland seas, sufficiently
yet not too compact, and varied in its configuration and
climate. In other words, these theatres must be — for the
infinite, Asia; for the finite, Greece and Italy; and for the
relation of the finite to the infinite, Europe.
The following remarks may be made on this theory. First, Although
M. Cousin starts with the affirmation that everything, and consequently
every place, in the world, has a meaning, or represents an idea, the
result of the survey which he takes of the earth to illustrate it is, that
the greater part of Africa and the whole American continent have no
meaning and represent no idea. Two contradictory propositions pervade
the lecture. The one is, God made every place to represent an idea;
and the other is, He made only some places to represent ideas, — or,
in other words, made some, and notably America — to represent none.
Secondly, Although everywhere nature influences man and man nature
— although everywhere man conforms his habits to his habitat, and
modifies matter to serve his ends — and everywhere the character of a
land impresses itself on the intellect, imagination, and feelings of its
inhabitants, and so enters, as it were, into their moral being and national
life, — it is, nevertheless, great exaggeration to say, as M. Cousin does,
" Give me the map of a country — its configuration, its climate, its waters,
its winds, its natural productions, its botany, its zoology, and all its
physical geography — and I pledge myself to tell you what will be the
man of this country, and what place this country will occupy in history."
Man has other relations than to nature, and some as important ; and to
judge of him by that one relationship alone can never lead us to the
knowledge of what he is, nor of what his history must be.
Thirdly, The way in which M. Cousin conceives of the relation of
nature to man is vain and fanciful. It is not as a relation of cause and
effect, of action and reaction, of mutual influence, but of effects designed
to correspond to each other, of a pre-established harmony like that which
Leibniz supposed to exist between the body and the soul. This notion
cousin 469
is not only puvely conjectural, but inconsistent with the innumerable
facts which manifest that nature does influence man, and that man does
modify nature. It is impossible to hold, either in regard to the body
and soul, or in regard to nature and man, both the theory of mutual influ-
ence and of pre-established harmony. All that, in either case, proves the
former, disproves the latter. The belief in a pre-established harmony
between man and nature is, indeed, considerably more absurd than in a pre-
established harmony between the body and soul ; for when a body is born
a soul is in it, which remains in it till death, and is never known to leave
it in order to take possession of some other body : but every country is
not created with a people in it, nor is every people permanently fixed to
a particular country. Imagination may be deceived for a moment by an
obvious process of association into this belief of certain peoples being
suited for certain lands, independently of the action of natural causes —
the Greeks, let us say, for Greece, the Indian for the prairies and forests
of America, the Malayan for the islands of the Indian Archipelago ; but
a moment's thought on the fact that the Turk has settled down where
the Greeks used to be, that mighty nations of English-speaking men are
rising up where the Indian roamed, and that Dutchmen are thriving in
the lands of the Malayan, should suffice to disabuse us.
Besides, just as the dictum "Marriages are made in heaven " is seriously
discredited by the great number that are badly made, so the kindred
opinion that every country gets the people which suits it, and every
people the country, as a direct and immediate consequence of their pre-
established harmony, is equally discredited by the prevalence of ill-as-
sorted unions, a great many worthless peoples living in magnificent lands,
while far better peoples have much worse ones.
The ninth lecture treats of nations. They exist, we are
told, to represent ideas comprehended under the general idea
of the epoch to which they belong. In order to understand a
nation, the philosophy of history must ascertain the idea it is
meant to represent; the stage it has reached in the realisation
of that idea ; the evolution of the idea in industry, laws, art,
religion, and philosophy ; and the order of sequence and sub-
ordination among these elements. It is only through reach-
ing the truth on all these points that we can escape partial
and narrow views. The nations of an epoch necessarily have
resemblances greater than their differences since they belong
to the same epoch, but necessarily have differences since they
have separate or independent existence. Philosophy, seeing
that the differences of nations — that is, their particular ideas
— are incomplete truths, can look upon them all not only
with toleration but with favour ; and humanity will be taught
470 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
to do the same by its own history in the course of
Nations themselves, however, cannot fail to regard their
particular ideas as absolute and complete truths, entitled to
universal and exclusive dominion. Hence the origin of war,
which is simply the violent encounter or collision of the par-
ticular ideas of different nations. The certain and inevitable
result of war is the triumph of the stronger over the weaker
idea — of the nation which has its time to serve over that
which has served its time. War is necessary and beneficial,
because it is the condition and means of progress. A battle
is nothing else than the combat of error with truth, and vic-
tory nothing else than the triumph of the truth of to-day
over the truth of yesterday, which has become the error of
to-day. It is a mistake to speak of chance in war — the dice
are loaded ; humanity loses not a single game ; not one battle
has taken a turn unfavourable to civilisation. Nor is war
only necessary and useful: it is also just. The conquered
party always deserves its fate ; and the conquering party
triumphs because it is better, more provident, wiser, braver,
and more meritorious than its foe. War is action on a great
scale, and as such the test and measure of a nation's worth.
In the military history and military organisation of a people
its whole spirit and character may be studied.
Such is M. Cousin's celebrated theory of nations, and the still more
celebrated doctrine of war which he deduced from it. Both seem to me
very inadequate, very false. As to the nature of nations, the important
preliminary investigation as to what a nation is not, is altogether
omitted ; and (partly in consequence thereof) there is no investigation
into, or description of, the conditions and characteristics of national
existence. M. Cousin, simply for an a priori dogmatic reason, differen-
tiates nations by their supposed final causes, the purposes for which
he imagines them to have received existence, telling us that there are
different nations because there are different ideas; that each nation
represents one idea and not another; and that that idea represents for
that nation the whole truth. This kind of thought is essentially anti-
scientific. It proceeds upon an obviously illegitimate use of the principle
of final causes. Besides, it is no excellence in a nation to be dominated
by a single idea, and no nation seems to have been meant to realise only
a single idea. A monomaniac nation must be far more than a mono-
maniac man. Instead of the apprehension of one idea and the applica-
tion of one idea being that for which nations exist, it is the very thing
cousin 471
they need to be most on their guard against. They are all prone to be
one-idea'd and one-sided. The characters which the circumstances,
physical and historical, in which nations are placed in the earlier stages
of their existence tend to form are narrow and defective characters,
their ends very definite and distinctive, but also very low and selfish
ends; and nations have only to isolate themselves from one another,
and yield each to its own exclusive tendencies, and concentrate itself on
its favourite aim and private good, and they will undoubtedly soon repre-
sent and realise only one idea. But this is just what nations should not
do. It was because the nations of antiquity thus isolated and narrowed
themselves, that they ceased to serve an end in the world and passed
away. It is because such isolation is not to anything like the same extent
the law, or such selfishness the motive principle, of modern nations, that
we see reasons of hope that they may never cease to promote noble ends
and never require to pass away. One-idea' dness, one-sidedness, is shown
most explicitly by all history to be full of danger ; a thing which nations
ought to strive strenuously to be delivered from, and in working against
which they are certainly not resisting the providential law which rules
over their destinies.
The doctrine of war which M. Cousin has appended to his theory of
nations was borrowed by him from Hegel. It is precisely the teaching of
the most worthless of the old Greek sophists, that nature's right is might,
and justice the advantage of the stronger.
War, according to M. Cousin, is the violent concussion of the particular
ideas of different nations, and is caused by nations regarding their
particular ideas as complete truths, instead of what they really are —
incomplete truths. This account of the origin of war is scarcely plaus-
ible, and not at all accurate. Try to apply it, and its inadequacy
immediately becomes obvious. M. Cousin did not venture to make the
attempt. Had it been true, he would have been able to point out what
were the particular ideas of different nations living in the same epoch,
and how these ideas were what made these nations rush violently against
each other ; what particular apprehensions of the relation of the infinite
to finite, for example, have been peculiar to England, France, and Ger-
many, and how they have made them fight so much with one another,
and with so many other nations. He was not able, because it was not
true ; because it has not been the particular ideas of different nations,
nor even the particular characters of different nations, which have made
them go to war, but certain evil passions common to all nations, common
to all men. That the French nation has one character and represents
one idea, and the German nation has another character and represents
another idea, no more accounts for the wars they have waged against
each other, than that men have another character and represent another
idea than women, necessitates war between men and women. The true
causes of war are those so well described by Hobbes, — competition, dis-
trust, and glory, — or, in other terms, greed, jealousy, and ambition,
472 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN PKANCE
making men invade for gain, for safety, and for reputation. They are
those indicated by St. James : " From whence come wars and fightings
among you ? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your
members?"
The primary cause of war is never anything so excellent as even
imperfect truth, is never even the humblest form of good, but always
evil, some evil lust. War is murder on a gigantic scale ; and the true
sources of it are those selfish and hateful passions of avarice, envy, ambi-
tion, and pride, out of which murder issues. This is not to say that war
either can or ought always to be avoided. On the contrary, evil should
be opposed, despotisms overthrown, mutinies quelled, invasions driven
back, the oppressed liberated, might violating right punished by the
sword if nothing else will do — by the sword, taken up as a last sad
necessity, to be cast down with joy as soon as its harsh work is over.
But although men, although nations, may have to go to war for the sake
of truth, justice, or mercy, it is never these things that are the real
causes of war, but their opposites — the evil lusts which have produced
their opposites, those wrongs that must be righted. It follows that those
who argue that war is just because it is necessary, reason badly. Strictly
or philosophically speaking, war is not necessary any more than injustice
is necessary. Popularly speaking, or as a matter of fact, it is necessary,
but only because of the existence of injustice. It is not necessary in
any sense incompatible with injustice on both sides, £>nd is only necessary
in a sense which involves injustice on one side.
The notion that the inevitable result of war is the triumph of truth
— that civilisation gains by every battle — is simply the revival and ex-
tension of the medieval superstition which originated the judicial duel.
People in that age ignorantly supposed that if the justice of heaven were
thus directly appealed to, it would infallibly declare itself in the vindica-
tion of the innocent and punishment of the guilty. There is no more
reason for believing that in a duel of nations the one which has most
truth and justice on its side will conquer, than that in a duel of persons
the good man will overcome the bad. Since wicked Cain killed righteous
Abel, history has supplied unbroken testimony to the possibility of the
innocent suffering, even to the loss of life. The Romans succeeded less
easily in their just than in their unjust wars, sustaining many serious
defeats in the former and very few in the latter. No amount of truth or
justice could have prevented Poland from being partitioned or Denmark
from being despoiled.
So far from civilisation gaining by every battle, a main cause of nu-
merous tribes of men being still uncivilised has been their constant war-
ring against one another. Civilisation surely suffered from the wars
which laid Italy beneath the feet of Spanish, French, and German inva-
ders. Was Germany the better of the Thirty Years' War? Did the
victories of Napoleon contribute greatly to spread the truths of the Revo-
lution, or truth of any kind ? Has his influence not been on the whole
cousin 473
baneful, and especially so to France ? Further, although every war may
have been followed by some good, and many wars by much good, that
good may have been only seldom, and in a small degree, the direct or
proper effect of the antecedent war. And, in fact, the only good which
can directly and truly result from war is the redress of some wrong, the
punishment of some injustice. All other advantages — all that really
does much for civilisation — must follow, not from war itself, but from
things associated with it ; so that war is not the cause but the occasion
thereof — an evil overruled to produce good, as any evil, whether pain or
sin, may be overruled to do. Thus the greater part of the good which
can be shown to have some connection with war cannot be shown to
have any causal connection with it, says nothing for the goodness of war,
and is no justification of the men who engage in it, although it may
testify to the wisdom and goodness of Providence.
The argument that war is always just, because the party which is
defeated always deserves to lose, and the party which conquers to gain, is
fallacious. There is no truth in the assumptions on which it rests — that
a nation which cannot defend its existence must needs be corrupt, de-
graded, unworthy to exist, and that a nation must be superior in virtue
to every neighbour which it can conquer in war. Virtue does not neces-
sarily tend to victory, or vice to defeat. Honesty may stand in the way
of a nation's seizing wealth and power. Many nations have grown
strong by deceit, by violence, by abominable means. The man who
knows the histories of Rome, of France, of England, of Prussia, and yet
denies this, must be wanting in clearness of moral vision. It is not
merely foresight and self-denial which will help a nation to become a
great military power : revenge and greed, a servile spirit in its masses,
and ambition and lust of rule in its nobles, will help also. I deny not
that justice will carry it over injustice in the end, the good cause triumph-
ing in some future age, although perhaps a very distant one, and the good
man in a better world ; I deny not that there are in virtue higher possi-
bilities even for war than in vice ; — but more than this I do deny, and
especially that the conquerors in war are necessarily more meritorious
than the conquered.
In the tenth lecture M. Cousin theorises on great men, and
reaches the following results : First, The great man is not
an arbitrary or contingent existence — not a creature which
may or may not be — but the representative, more or less
accomplished, which every great nation necessarily produces.
Second, The great man, like everything truly sublime and
beautiful, combines universality with individuality. He rep-
resents the general spirit of his nation and times, — this is
the stuff of which he is made, what unites him with all, and
474 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
enables him to influence and dominate all ; but he represents
it under the finite and particular form of his own person or
individuality; so that the particular and the general, the
original and the ordinary, the finite and the infinite, mingle
in him in that measure and harmony which is true human
greatness. Third, Great men so sum up nations, epochs,
and humanity, that universal history is but their united biog-
raphies. Fourth, The great man comes to represent an idea
so long as it has force and is worth the representing — not
before and not after ; is born and dies at the proper time ;
and feels himself more or less the instrument of a power
which is not his own, of an irresistible force, of destiny.
Fifth, The sign of a great man is great success ; and from
great success results first great power, and next great glory
— things which are never awarded to those who have not
merited them. Sixth, A great man is great, and he is a man.
What makes him great is his relation to the spirit of his
times and to his people ; and this alone properly belongs to
history, which is bound to pass over what is merely individual
and temporary, and to attach itself to what is great and per-
manent, what has made a man historical, and given him
power and glory. What makes him a man is his individu-
ality; and this may be small, vicious, almost contemptible,
but should be abandoned to biography. Seventh, The epoch
of the infinite, where the absolute reigned to the suppression
of individuality and liberty, was unfavourable to the develop-
ment of great men; the epoch of the finite so especially
favourable, that it may be called the heroic age of humanity ;
and the epoch of the relation of the finite with the infinite
produces them in equal abundance, but less distinct and bril-
liant. Eighth, and last, Industry is the sphere of life least
favourable to the manifestation of great men ; war and phi-
losophy are the spheres most favourable : because the two
chief modes of serving humanity are, to cause it to advance a
step in the path of truth, by elevating the ideas of an age to
their highest expression, or by impressing these ideas on the
world by the sword, and by making for them extensive
conquests.
cousin 475
I have compressed a very able, very eloquent lecture into these eight
propositions, in order to be able to indicate in the briefest possible way
how far the theory therein contained seems to need correction. Proposi-
tion the first, then, may be true, but it has not been proved true. It
might be proved true in two ways, and only two, — viz., by showing that
all existence is necessary — or, in other words, that there is no such thing
as contingency or freedom ; or by discovering some necessary law which
determines the appearance and disappearance of great men. M. Cousin
does neither, and no one, in fact, has yet succeeded in either. Necessita-
rianism has still libertarianism strong and defiant in front of it. The
necessary law of the coming and going of great men, if there be such a
law, is still to seek ; and no step even has been taken which promises to
lead to the finding of it. Was there any other law for the birth of
Luther than for those of his father and mother, the miner of Mohra and
his wife? Who can tell why a great man has been born here and not
elsewhere, at one moment of time and no other ? Why one generation
has been favoured with a crowd of great men, and other generations
refused one in seasons of greatest need? In every great nation great
men have been produced; but that the great nations have necessarily
produced them is what our profound ignorance of the conditions of their
production should prevent us from asserting.
The second proposition may be regarded as M. Cousin's definition of
the nature of the great man. It contains most important truth; above
all, it gives due prominence to this truth, that a man cannot be really
great merely by some single aptitude or ability, by what is isolating and
distinctive, but by greatness of nature as a whole, greatness of mind,
greatness of heart, so that the roots of his being strike deeper and wider
into the life of his nation and time and humanity itself, than those of
other men. But it does not express truth only : on the contrary, it is
a serious error to represent generality and individuality as two things
which are combined or mingled in the great man ; to maintain that he is
great by the one and a man by the other ; and so to separate the great-
ness from the man and the man from the greatness. The greatness of
the great man is not an element, but a predicate of him — a predicate of
him as a man, an individual, a whole human being.
I regard the third proposition, which will be recognised as the expres-
sion of almost the entire positive substance of Mr. Carlyle's philosophy
of history, as in the main untrue. There is the valuable truth in it, that
general causes, as they are called, are not omnipotent, not independent of
individual intelligences and wills, or irresistible over them ; that these
latter have spheres of action of their own, and when powerful, wide
spheres of action. But everything more which it contains is exaggera-
tion and error. The greatest man's work is but an addition to the sum
of work done by his fellow-men, and in no respect the sum itself. Great
men are in no special way representative men — nay, the completest rep-
resentative men are invariably mediocre men. The great man depends
476 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
on others just as they depend on him ; improves and develops what others
have done, and leaves his own work to be in the same way improved and
developed by others. Newton was perhaps the greatest man who has
appeared in the history of mathematical and physical science; and it
may be, as Mr. Mills thinks, " that if Newton had not lived, the world
must have waited for the Newtonian philosophy until there had been
another Newton or his equivalent ; " but a long succession of far lesser
men have followed him and added to what he did, as a long series of
labourers preceded him whose results made his possible. It is by no
means so certain that some succession or combination of eminent men
might not in the lifetime of the first or second generation after Newton
have found out the law of gravitation without his help, as it is that New-
ton himself, with the whole thought and theory of his great discovery in
his head, had to wait for sixteen years, unable to accomplish its proof,
till Picard, by correctly measuring an arc of the meridian, gave him the
true length of the earth's radius, a necessary element in his reasoning.
I readily grant, however, that a great man may accomplish what no com-
bination of lesser men, not even the united efforts of the whole human
race besides, can effect ; but then, on the other hand, a small combina-
tion of men far from great, may equally be able to accomplish what he
cannot. The work which an age has given it to do may only be achieva-
ble under the guidance of a great man ; and yet more work may be
allotted to be done, and actually be done, by an age of merely ordinary
men. The age of Voltaire was not an age of great men, but it accom-
plished work both for good and evil, in a measure equalled by few other
ages in the world's history. In a word, those who vindicate for great
men a place, and even a large place, in history, defend the interests
of truth ; but those who represent history as only their united biog-
raphies or the connected series of their actions, only resuscitate an old
error which died and was buried long ago, — that narrow, superficial,
and false notion which caused a justly forgotten race of authors to
suppose the history of nations was merely the history of their kings
and nobles.
The fourth proposition into which I have condensed M. Cousin's doc-
trine of great men asserts that they are born and die at the proper time,
, but no criterion is given of what is the proper time. It is, consequently,
so far a vague unverified assertion. And when it adds that the great man
is always more or less of a fatalist, it passes into positive error. Fatalism
may be an article of a great man's creed, an element of his faith, but
nevertheless is a weakness, and no sign of greatness. In so far as a man
is possessed by a blind feeling of being an instrument of destiny, used by
an irresistible force he knows not to what end, instead of being rationally
conscious of having a mission to accomplish, a worthy work to do, he is a-
man whose claims to leadership ought to be distrusted. There have been
two men in the present century who have demanded to be received as
political Messiahs on this ground of being " men of destiny," Napoleon I.
cousin 47 T
and Napoleon III., one of them undoubtedly a very great man, the other
not an ordinary man ; and have not both, like blind men leading the
blind, led those who followed them into the ditch ? Fortune, fate, one's
star — belief in these things may have characterised Wallenstein, Napo-
leon, and many other great men as well as small; but certainly not all
great men, and not the greatest of great men, the wisest and best among
them.
The fifth proposition contains probably the most dangerous error of
any in the whole theory, and, at the same time, truth enough to give it
plausibility. A great man must certainly be a man who can do great
things ; the greatness of his work, all hindrances duly taken into account,
must be the truest sign of the greatness of his character. But success is
another matter. The greatest man may be sent into the world either too-
soon or too late to succeed. " The noble army of the martyrs " has num-
bered in its ranks the wisest and bravest, the greatest and most heroic of
our race. He who was the perfect type of greatness and the author of the
greatest thing on earth, had no success in the sense meant, and founded
His work on a death not of glory but of shame. " Give me an instance,"
says M. Cousin, " of unmerited glory ; " as if times without number the
cry of, "Not this man, but Barabbas," had not ascended from the earth,
absolving the vile and criminal, and dooming to death the hero and the
sainf ; and again, "whoever does not succeed is of no use in the world,
leaves no great result, and passes away as if he had never been," as if
there had not been many sad defeats worth far more than many brilliant
triumphs, and as if the blood of a Polycarp and a, Hus, an Arnold of
Brescia and a Savonarola, and all the host of those who have died for
faith, for science, for freedom, for country, had been shed in vain because
shed for a good afar off, and not for that glory which our author tells us
is ■"' almost always contemporaneous with a great action, and never far dis-
tant from a great man's tomb.'' M. Cousin speaks in a higher and truer
strain when he says, " We should despise reputation, the success of a day
and the trifling means that lead to it. We should think of doing, doing-
much, doing well — of being, and not appearing ; for it is an infallible
rule, that all which appears without being, soon disappears ; but all
which exists, by virtue of its nature, sooner or later must appear." But
'this is not only inconsistent with the tenor of all that goes before it
and follows after it in the lecture under consideration, but is still
merely partially true, dubious, incapable of verification. Evil is no
empty appearance, but a strong reality which can struggle with good
on not unequal terms ; which has conquered good almost or altogether
as often as it has been conquered by it ; and which equally with
good has powers and laws by which it grows and spreads. There are
lies and vices dating from the first man, which are as strong to-day
as ever they were, as flourishing as anything to be seen in this world ;
and those who tell us they are unreal, mere appearances, which must
soon vanish away, are confident as to the future only from having
478 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
failed to look at the facts of the past and to study the powers of the
present.
The sixth proposition rests on the error contained in M. Cousin's
third proposition. There ought to be no such distinction admitted as
that which it draws. The meannesses of great men cannot be so separated
from their greatness : on the contrary, their every meanness is a deduc-
tion from their greatness ; their vices are as historical as their virtues ;
some of them have been as great for evil as for good. The right of every
man to be judged fairly, charitably, not by single acts and features, and
especially not by single facts and failures, but by his character and works
in their entirety, is enough for the greatest man. And those who like
Hegel, like Carlyle, like Cousin, claim for the great man more than this,
— as that he shall be judged by another standard than his fellow-men,
that his greatness shall be counted goodness, that his strength shall be
held to be its own law, that his sins against humanity shall be blotted
out from the page of history and only what redounds to his glory recorded,
and the like, — simply advise us to falsify history, to delude ourselves, and
to set up idols and worship them. When, going farther, they sneer at
those who reject their advice as " small critics," or " psychological peda-
gogues," or " valet-souls, incapable of recognising the worth of a hero,"
they show a foolish contempt for reason and conscience, and a foolish
respect for what is precisely the valet's creed, — that belief in power and
consequent disbelief in the primacy of right which make mean and igno-
ble souls. By such a creed no man ever has been, or ever will be, helped
to be heroic.
The seventh proposition involved in M. Cousin's theory must be dis-
carded with the division of the course of history on which it depends.
Even the so-called epoch of the infinite produced many great men.
The founders of all the great religions belonged to it ; and they have
influenced humanity not less than either philosophers or conquerors.
But the East had also philosophers who thought out profound sys-
tems of speculation, and conquerors who created and destroyed vast
empires. Egypt and Assyria must have had many men of genius in
the spheres of art and industry. The authors of the Book of Job and
of the Bamayana must be allowed to rank high among the world's
great poets.
The last proposition suggests a question which M. Cousin should not
have overlooked : Is there any standard by which we can compare the
great men of different spheres of life, the poet and the mechanical
inventor, the founder of a religion and the conqueror, the painter or
musician, and the mathematician or philosopher, — and if so, what is it?
How are we to measure the relative magnitudes of Aristotle, Casar,
Raffaelle, Luther, Shakespeare, and Newton? Individual preference is
obviously worth little, as each individual is more able to appreciate some
excellences than others, and, by constitution and habits, prone to over-
estimate certain merits and to underestimate others. Popular opinion is
JOUFFBOY 479
obviously worth little move, based as it invariably is on a superficial
acquaintance with facts. And even were both far more reliable than
they are, it could only be through their conforming to a, standard, a real
or objective rule of measurement. Till this is discovered, therefore, — and
it is not likely to be easily discovered, — all discussion as to which sphere
of life has been adorned with the greatest men must be fruitless, and all
decisions in favour of one over another arbitrary and premature.
II
M. Theodore Jouffroy (1796-1842) shared many of M.
Cousin's ideas, without detriment to his own independence,
originality, and ingenuity as a thinker. He could not rival
Cousin in producing broad general effects, but he had greater
influence on a select class. He was almost as remarkable as a
literary artist, while his style was characteristically different.
He was much more interested in psychology, and less in gen-
eral metaphysics ; indeed, for him philosophy was the science
of man, and its chief problem was to determine the destiny of
man. Cousin was enthusiastic in seeking and setting forth the
truth, but apt to be much too easily convinced that he had got
it, and to proclaim his views with a confidence and unquali-
fiedness more consonant to an oratorical than a philosophical
temperament. Jouffroy was an unresting and indefatigable
inquirer, distrustful of himself, and prone to doubt. His early
beliefs had failed him, and he was not inclined to adopt others
without a thorough sifting. At the same time he was a nat-
urally pious, earnest, and truthful soul. Hence his short
and sad, yet beautiful and useful, life, was mainly a pathetic
struggle to overcome his own intellectual scepticism.1
He repeatedly touched the subject of historical philosophy
with all his natural superiority of thought and style. In the
first series of his ' Melanges philosophiques ' (1833) he has
brought together, under the heading of ' Philosophie de l'his-
toire,' the following essays, which had for the most part
1On Jouffroy may be consulted, Mignet, ' Eloges historiques ' ; Ad. Gamier in
Franck's ' Diet. d. Sc. phil.' ; Taine, ' Philosophes francais ' ; Ferraz, ' Spiritualisme
et liberalisme ' ; and Caro, ' Philosophie et philosophes.'
480 PHILOSOPHY Or HISTOKY IN 1TEANCE
appeared in the ' Globe ' from 1825 to 1827 : 1. How dog-
mas come to an end ; 2. The Sorbonne and the philosophers ;
3. Reflections on the philosophy of history ; 4. Bossuet, Vico,
and Herder; 5. The part of Greece in the development of
humanity ; 6. The present state of humanity. All these
essays are attractive and suggestive reading ; but only the
third and sixth are of a sufficiently general nature to warrant
our giving an account of them.
Here is a summary of the Reflections : The great difference
between man and the other animals is, that while their con-
dition remains from age to age the same, his is continually
changing. History is the record of these changes, and the
philosophy of history is the investigation of their cause and
law. Now human mobility cannot have its principle in the
outward world, which acts on the brutes not less than on man,
and besides, changes not; nor in the animal instincts and
passions, which are the same in all lands and ages; but in
that which is essentially changeable in the constitution of
man — the ideas of his intelligence. The changes which
take place among ideas originate all other changes which
take place in the condition of man ; or, in other words, all
the changes of history ; so that the sole object of history is to
trace the development of human intelligence, as it is mani-
fested by the outward changes which it at different epochs
produces. But as ideas, which are invisible, can only be
inferred from facts which are visible, history, to accomplish
its single aim, must solve these three problems: 1°, What
has been the visible form of humanity from the beginning to
the present time ? 2°, What has been the development of the
ideas of humanity from the beginning to the present time?
and, 3°, How these two developments have corresponded —
how the development of ideas has produced the development
of the visible form of humanity from the beginning to the
present time.
The majority of historians have confined their attention
to the facts, and frequently to the least important classes of
facts. The authors who introduced the history of manners
and institutions into general history accomplished a revolu-
tion, but did not, as was at first supposed, get at the root of
jouffkoy 481
•
the matter, the cause of these causes being now seen to be the
succession of ideas. A time may be anticipated when this
also will be regarded as a secondary and subordinate cause,
and valued chiefly as leading to the discovery of the fixed and
immutable law of the succession. That reached, history will
lose its independent existence, and be resolved into science ;
but the day is obviously distant, since even the events, insti-
tutions, religions, and manners of different epochs and coun-
tries are imperfectly known, and their immediate cause — the
succession of ideas — far more imperfectly still. To ascertain
the development of ideas is, and will long be, the grand
desideratum.
In the individual, in society, and in humanity, there is a
twofold movement of intelligence ; the natural or spontane-
ous, and the voluntary or reflective ; the former regulative of
common thought, and the latter of philosophical thought.
The reflective movement is always in advance of the spon-
taneous movement, the few who deliberately seek truth
necessarily finding it sooner than the many who do not.
Both movements proceed towards the same end and in obedi-
ence to the same law, but differing in velocity, and yet acting
on each other, the more rapid accelerating the slower, and
the slower retarding the more rapid; so that the velocity of
the development of humanity is the resultant of the unequal
velocities of these two movements. This combination of
movements in the generation and succession of ideas, and in
the transformation of ideas into laws, institutions, and man-
ners, is a beneficent necessity, since, if the movement of the
masses retards that of the philosophers, it also renders it more
certain and fruitful, prevents mistakes, and secures correct-
ness.
The great question whether the movement of humanity is
necessary or not, can only be determined by a consideration of
the two elements or principles which enter into the produc-
tion of all human events — the passions of human nature and
the ideas of human intelligence. If reason always ruled in
an individual we could foresee his conduct ; that we so often
cannot foresee it is because we cannot divine how far he
will listen to passion, and because passion is so variable and
482 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
•
capricious in its working that its movements cannot be cal-
culated. Passion has, however, less influence, and reason
more, on the conduct of peoples than of individuals. The
passions of individuals in a community neutralise one another
by their opposition ; and so leave the general ideas, on which
all are agreed, to rule with comparatively little resistance.
Hence the conduct of peoples is far more conformed to their
ideas than the conduct of individuals, and can be far more
easily foreseen. Hence, also, the ease and accuracy with
which the conduct of nations can be calculated are in propor-
tion to their freedom and self-government, since the greater
the influence of public opinion in a nation, and the less the
direction of the nation depends on the will of certain indi-
viduals, the greater is the ascendancy of ideas, which conform
to law and logic, and the less the ascendancy of the passions,
which contravene law and are contrary to logic. " But, in
every case, the influence of individual passions can reach only
events of a secondary and transient importance. Great events
are always beyond it ; for nothing great, nothing permanent,
can ever be produced among a people, whatever be its govern-
ment, except by the force and with the support of the convic-
tions of that people. All that the passions of individuals
can attempt and accomplish in opposition to these convictions
is speedily swept away. No despot, no favourite, no man of
genius, may neglect these convictions in his enterprises and
institutions ; nay, more, no one can be a successful despot or
a great statesman except by obeying them. In fine, passion
acts only on the surface of the history of nations, while the
foundation is in ideas." It is unwarrantable, then, to explain
everything in history by the inevitable development of
ideas, as some moderns do; but it is still more unwar-
rantable to explain everything by individual characters and
passions, like the ancients. The truth lies between these
two extremes.
The passions of individuals, however, really exerted a
greater power in ancient than they do in modern times. The
necessary progress of intelligence is what Bossuet called
Providence, and what others call destiny, or the force of
things. Bossuet's word is good, but not in the sense of
JOUFFROY 483
an actual interposition of God, who acts with regard to
humanity, no less than with regard to the heavenly bodies,
through fixed and certain laws, although He acts differ-
ently, since the laws which determine the development of
humanity presuppose reason and liberty, and operate through
them.
Further, the movement of humanity is not in a circle, like
that of the stars, but progressive. The sentiments of an
age as to the Good, Beautiful, and True, are expressed with
greatest vividness by the poets. True poets are always the
children of their age. It is the mission of philosophers to
comprehend their age, to advance before it, and to prepare
the future ; and a few of them have risen to so lofty a point
of view, and seen so much of the course to be traversed by
man through time, as to have become intelligible only after
ages of progress.
As a work of art, M. Jouffroy's essay is almost perfect. And the
thoughts which it conveys are, on the. whole, both true and important,
well worthy of the beautiful expression which they have received. At the
same time, they are too general, and, so to speak, external, to constitute
a philosophy of history. They are simply what they profess to be —
" reflections on the philosophy of history," — nothing more.
Regarded as such, there is only one point to which we feel compelled to
take decided objection. M. Jouffroy adopted M. Cousin's division of
intelligence into spontaneous and reflective, without improvement or modi-
fication; and hence what has been said on this subject with respect to M.
Cousin is equally applicable with respect to M. Jouffroy. The two sections
of his essay which he devotes to the exposition of the distinction are con-
fused and inaccurate. All that he says of spontaneous intelligence pro-
ceeds on the absurd and self-contradictory supposition of its being " blind
and involuntary." Almost all that he says of reflective intelligence is
true only if it be no separate mode of intelligence, as it is described to
be, but only an extension of spontaneous intelligence. Thus M. Jouffroy
insists that reflective intelligence is always in advance of spontaneous
intelligence in the discovery of truth ; whereas, in the only sense in
which reflection can be with any propriety described as a distinct mode of
thought, it never is, and never can be, in advance of spontaneous thought,
since that thought is its object.
On another point M. Jouffroy has expressed himself too absolutely.
It is a very important truth, when properly understood, that the principle
of the mobility of human things is in the mobility of the ideas of human
intelligence ; but an adequate comprehension of it will lead us to guard
484 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and qualify it, and not to affirm, with M. Jouffroy, that the whole of his-
tory is, in the last analysis, only the history of ideas. Feelings presuppose
ideas — they cannot operate without ideas ; it does not follow that they
have no real existence, that they can be resolved into ideas, or even that
they are less powerful factors of history than ideas. The development of
intelligence is of primary importance in the philosophical study of history,
not because intelligence is the only, or even the most powerful, element
in history, but because it holds such a position in the human mind that
all other principles are dependent on it, and can only be studied as de-
pendent on it. The dependence of the emotional principles of human
nature on the intellectual, however, is not due to their inferior power,
but to the character of their power — the need which they have, owing
to their blindness as mere impulses, of the enlightenment and guidance
which intellect alone can supply.
The title, 'De l'^tat actuel de l'humanite', ' is an inadequate
and inaccurate designation for an essay which is, in reality, an
attempt to forecast the future of our race. The author glances
over the world of humanity, and sees it divided into two very
unequal portions, barbarous tribes and civilised nations.
History, he thinks, warrants him at once to conclude that the
former are destined to become civilised; and he asks, Will
this be through a new system of civilisation, arising from
the bosom of barbarism, or through the triumph of the already
■existing systems of civilisation over barbarism? He finds
in the progressive advance of our present civilisation — the
gradual diminution of barbarism — the relatively small num-
ber of savages — their division into feeble and unconnected
portions — and the neighbourhood and pressure of civilised
peoples, more powerful and active, — so many obvious proofs
that the number of systems of civilisation is finally settled ;
and that it is the destiny of the savage portion of human-
ity to be amalgamated with the civilised masses already
formed.
He surveys these masses and discovers that they fall into
three groups, or belong to three different systems of civilisa-
tion, based on three different religions or philosophies, the
Christian, the Mohammedan, and the Brahminic. The radi-
cal difference between savages and civilised nations is that
the former have only crude and vague ideas on the great
JOUFFROY 485
questions which interest humanity, while the latter have
complete and coherent religions, which involve not only a
certain mode of worship, but an entire system of civilisation,
bearing to the religion the relation of effect to cause. M.
Jouffroy then compares the three systems, and finds that
Christianity alone is at present endowed with expansive life,
— with the twofold zeal of improvement and proselytism;
that while the Christian system is making progress, and the
nations which compose it are daily becoming more united and
powerful, Mohammedanism and Brahminism make no con-
quests, resist the invasion of Christianity chiefly by their
inertia, sap the strength of the nations which receive them,
and, in a word, manifest all the symptoms of decay. Hence,
he concludes that, if the Christian system of civilisation be
not destroyed by internal defects, it will gain possession
of the world, — that its future involves the future of the
world.
Then, looking more closely at the movement of Christian
civilisation, he seems to himself to see that it is led by three
nations, France, England, and Germany; all other nations
imitating what is already realised in these, while they,
although finding much to imitate in each other, have yet in
certain respects reached a height from which they can make
further advances only by invention. Each of these nations
has a special faculty in which it excels, each has its peculiar
employment in the work of civilisation, but the distribution
of their gifts is for the good of the world, their labours tend
towards a common and beneficent end, and there exists be-
tween them an involuntary alliance, truly majestic and holy,
having for object the progress of humanity. Germany is the
learned nation, distinguished by patience of intellect, accum-
ulating with a laborious curiosity and prodigious memory
all the facts of history and science, and thus supplying the
Taw materials of ideas. France is the philosophical nation,
distinguished by clearness of understanding, by the power of
drawing from facts what is general and suitable in them with
accuracy, order, and acumen, — in a word, of forming ideas
into shape and rendering them popular. England is the
486 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY HST FRANCE -
practical nation, distinguished by public spirit, industry,
and the excellence of her institutions, and having for task
the application of ideas to the concerns of life. The true
statesman in each of these nations should look beyond the
good of his own country, the worn-out end of its aggrandise-
ment and the abasement of its neighbours, to the advantage
of the union of Europe, and of the civilisation of the world
by the union and the ideas of Europe. " The politics of our
day should look not to the balance of Europe, but to the
future of humanity. The civil wars of Europe are ended;
the rivalship of the peoples which compose it is about to cease,
as the rivalship of the cities of Greece ceased under the sway
of Alexander, as the diversities of the provinces of France
disappeared under the unity of the monarchy."
It would be most unreasonable to object to the speculations of ■which
a summary has now been given that they are merely general ; that they
involve no conclusions as to particular contingencies, no predictions of
particular occurrences. In carefully refraining from all such, M. Jouf-
froy has shown his wisdom, his knowledge of the limits within which
historical prevision is possible. The science of history, whatever it may
in the future become, is as yet very far from being an exact science like
astronomy. It furnishes us with no means of calculating the courses of
nations with precision and definiteness like the courses of the stars; of
foretelling that at this or that period of future time a nation will do this
or that action, as we can foretell that at a certain date a star will arrive
at a certain point. To forecast, through reasoning on the general ten-
dencies of nations, the general character and direction of their future
movements, is the utmost that can be accomplished, and even this can-
not be done without difficulty, and without considerable probability of
error. Perhaps M. Jouffroy, notwithstanding the caution of procedure
which has been noted, and his exceptional clearness and penetration of
intellect, has not entirely escaped error.
The inference that what remains of barbarism cannot give rise to any
great and independent religion or philosophy, nor, consequently, to any
great and independent civilisation, appears irrefragable. The inference
that the Christian system is — even looking exclusively to historical con-
siderations — incomparably superior to the Brahminical and Mohamme-
dan systems in all the elements of life and power, and must conquer and
destroy them if the struggle be sufficiently prolonged, appears equally
obvious and certain, although the number of adherents of Brahminism
and the extent and possibilities of Mohammedan proselytism may have
been understated. But it is not legitimate to identify, as M. Jouffroy
JOUPFROY 487
has virtually done, the conditional conclusion that the Christian system
will gain possession of the world if not destroyed by internal defects,
with the positive and unconditional conclusion that the Christian system
will gain possession of the world. The former conclusion is alone proved
by M. Jouffroy, and because it is proved the latter is falsely supposed to
be proved. In order to reach the latter conclusion — in order to make
out the probability of the Christian system destroying every other and
becoming universal — it was incumbent on our author to show that the
hypothesis contained in the former conclusion might be rejected ; that
there was no probability of the Christian system perishing through inter-
nal defects. The neglect to attempt this was a serious omission. It is
precisely at this point that all European thinkers who doubt or deny that
the future will belong to Christianity diverge and differ from those who
believe and affirm it. They do not imagine that the Christian system
will be overcome by Mohammedanism or Brahminism ; but they pretend
that it is a combination of truth and error, that it has defects as well as
merits, and must eventually give place to a more complete and determi-
nate system of solutions to the problems which interest humanity. They
look especially to science, which has in recent times made such wonderful
and rapid progress in so many directions, to bring forth a general doc-
trine capable of supplying all the wants and guiding all the activities of
man in a more satisfactory way than any religion. The aim of M. Jouf-
froy's argument required him to prove such hope an illusion, and to con-
vict those who indulge in it of turning away from the highest and most
comprehensive truth to one lower and narrower, from the ultimate and
complete to a derivative and partial good. This requirement he has
failed to fulfil, —has failed even to see that it existed.
Dissent must further be expressed from that portion of M. Jouffroy's
speculations which concern the relation of England, France, and Ger-
many to humanity and its future. Although his views on this subject
are the reflections of a just and generous nature, include some important
truths, and are very generally entertained, they are, as a whole, not true ;
and it is most undesirable that they should longer continue to be re-
ceived so implicitly and widely as they are. That England, France, and
Germany are, if all things be taken into account, at the head of Euro-
pean civilisation, is doubtless true ; and that each excels the other two in
some respects, and is inferior in others, is likewise true : but there is a
wide interval between the first of these truths and the assumption that
the nations mentioned will retain in the future the same rank relatively
either to each other or to other nations which they occupy at present ;
and a wide interval also between the second truth and the assumption
that their excellences and defects are due to the presence or absence of
special faculties which mark out for them their proper and peculiar
employment in the work of human progress.
What guarantee is there that England, France, and Germany will long
retain their present relative positions ? What certainty is there for any
488 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
one of them, that a hundred years hence it will be in the first rank of
nations? What probability is there that no other nation will have
reached an equal height ? Italy, so far behind them when M. Jouffroy
wrote, is already nearly on a line with them, being probably, of all the
nations of Europe, that which has made, in the present generation, the
greatest progress of a truly satisfactory kind; and this in the main, not
through following or imitating any foreign state, but by advancing along
a path of her own, by the development of her own proper life. We have
but to recall the names of Manzoni, Pellico, Niccolini, Giusti, and Balbo,
of Kosrnini, Gioberti, and Mamiani, of Cavour and D'Azeglio, of Manin,
Mazzini, and Garibaldi, and of the other noble men whom Italy has pro-
duced during the present century with such wonderful profusion, to con-
vince ourselves that she has been for more than a generation, in one
respect at least, first among the nations — viz., in the intensity of her
desire to impress the image of her own national individuality alike on
her philosophical speculations, her works of art and literature, and her
political action. And why should Italy not advance as far on her way as
England, France, or Germany on theirs? For peace and war, for adven-
ture by land and sea, for science and art, prose and poetry, political subt-
lety, religious fervour, and heroic self-sacrifice, the Italian genius is
inferior to no other in Europe. Further, there are two nations which in
strength are perhaps even at present equal to those which M. Jouffroy
described as bearing with them the whole race of mankind; which are
growing more rapidly than they; which are so situated as to be safer
than the safest of them from permanent conquest ; and which appear to
be far more distant from their natural limits of increase. The possibili-
ties before the United States and Russia are so grand that no mortal has
a right to deny that the time may come when the mightiest power by sea
at present will be doomed to stand before the one, and the mightiest on
land before the other, like Hector before Achilles, able only in presence
of the stronger and more heaven-favoured foe to resolve, "not inglorious
at least shall I perish, but after doing some great thing that may be
spoken of in ages to come."
" M17 fiiiv acnrovSet ye tcai clkKclSh airoKoturjV ,
'AMa fLeya pe£as Tt Kal eacrOfnevourL TrvBecrdat.*'
To speak of the distinctive merits of nations as due to the operation
of special faculties, also appears erroneous and misleading. Literally
and strictly understood, indeed, it is so obviously absurd as to be inde-
fensible, since every man of sane mind has the same faculties as every
other. In order to get from it a credible meaning, we must understand
by faculty merely an aptitude resulting from the circumstances in which
a people has been placed, a facility of thought or action which has
required time, long or short, to form. To affirm that a nation has a
special faculty in this sense, is not only to make a loose and confused
JOUFFROY 489
application of language, but to state what, if true, obviously both de-
mands and admits of explanation instead of being itself the sufficient
explanation of anything, since such a faculty is an effect, may be even
of recent origin, or capable of being easily acquired. To attribute to a
nation a special faculty in any other sense, has no warrant either in rea-
son or facts. Undoubtedly there is more learning in Germany than in
France or England : but the causes plainly are not special faculties for
learning granted to Germans and denied to Frenchmen and Englishmen,
or even the same faculties in any exceptional measure, quicker apprehen-
sions, more capacious memories, greater love of knowledge for its own
sate, more patience of intellect or more energy of will; but the superior-
ity of the arrangements and institutions in that country for the promo-
tion of secondary and higher education, the monopoly of all military and
political power by the nobility, the comparatively small dimensions of
German trade until quite recently, and other general social circumstances
which concur either in drawing or driving the elite of the middle and
lower classes in Germany into some department of learning as the most
accessible and promising sphere of ambition, whereas in France and
England the most varied and powerful influences combine to attract
them elsewhere. While the best minds among the youth of Germany
are permanently gained to the service of science by being drawn into the
professoriate of its numerous .local and rival universities, similar minds
are in France drawn, as by the suction of a maelstrom, into the vortex
of Parisian society, and there lost to learning through absorption in
financial speculation, political intrigue, journalistic ambitions, and all the
caprices, aims, disappointments, and successes of a fleeting and feverish
day. But the juristical school of Cujas, the philosophical school of Des-
cartes, the French Benedictines, the French mathematicians and physi-
cists who adorned with such profusion the earlier part of the present
century; and, in a word, persons and works without number, have con-
clusively proved that Frenchmen are not necessarily, or in virtue of any
essential characteristics of their nature, either less profound or less in-
dustrious, less original or less persevering, than Germans. Similarly,
there is no conclusive evidence that the English genius is in itself either
less scientific and philosophical or more worldly-wise and practical than
the German.
Had M. Jouffroy lived to the present day, it is most improbable that he
would repeat either that civil wars were ended, or that the wars of the
peoples were about to cease. We, who have so recently seen civil war in
America, France, and Spain, will not venture to say it may not be seen
again even in England or Germany. And the peoples are arming and
preparing for war in a way which can scarcely fail to be followed by an
enormous effusion of human blood.
490 philosophy op History in feancb
III
The eclectic philosophy had its counterpart, or rather com-
plement, in doctrinaire politics. What the one was in specu-
lation, the other was in action. The former, regarding all
antecedent philosophies, sensualistic, idealistic, sceptical, and
mystical, as composed of truth and error, as never wholly
false but only incomplete, sought to separate what was true
in each from what was false, and so to combine the truths
thus obtained as to produce a complete philosophy, a com-
plete expression of consciousness and reality. The latter,
in precisely the same way, treated all antecedent political
theories, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical, as
right in themselves, but wrong in relation to other theories,
— wrong in their exclusiveness ; and attempted, by selec-
tion, by compromise, and by combination, to do justice to
all the forces of society, and to secure their complete rep-
resentation and their harmonious development. They may
thus be almost considered as the two sides of one system,
or as different applications of the same principles. But as
philosophy and politics, however closely connected, remain
always very distinct departments of activity, and require
very distinct and special talents for their successful culti-
vation, it was only natural that the chief representatives
even of the eclectic philosophy and doctrinaire politics
which flourished in France forty years ago, should not have
been the same persons ; that MM. Cousin and Jouffroy should
have attained eminence as philosophers, and M. Guizot and
the Due de Broglie as politicians.
Yet M. Guizot was drawn as directly and strongly to his-
torical research and meditation by his political convictions
and sentiments as M. Cousin by his philosophical principles
and aims. He felt himself compelled to seek in the past a
vindication of the legitimacy of the various forces which had
ruled society, and a proof of the various articles of the politi-
cal creed which he believed ought to regulate the conduct of
statesmen in the present and future ; just as M. Cousin felt
GUIZOT 491
himself compelled, to seek in it the truths contained in pre-
vious philosophies, in order to compose a philosophy which
would he final because complete. The result was in both
cases most favourable to historical inquiry and speculation.
Indeed, eclecticism did more for the history of philosophy than
for philosophy itself, and doctrinairism more for political his-
tory than for political science. As the philosophical spec-
ulations of M. Cousin, although brilliant, are wanting in
thoroughness and logical severity, so the political disquisi-
tions of M. Guizot, notwithstanding their elevation of tone
and breadth of thought, are almost always somewhat super-
ficial. M. Cousin and M. Guizot both showed great skill in
constructing a symmetrical and elegant system, the one of
philosophy and the other of policy, and both failed to rest
their systems firmly on sure foundations. Hence the eclec-
ticism of the one and the doctrinairism of the other have
suffered change and loss. The impulse, however, which
they gave to historical study still operates. In this con-
nection no fair judge will deny them the heartiest gratitude
and admiration.
The story of the life of Francis Guizot (1787-1874) is
known to all educated men, for he lived long full in the
world's eye, was not sparing of personal explanations and
reminiscences, and had his character, words, and actions
closely scrutinised from many points of view. His name
recalls to us a most distinguished and influential career, a
varied and indefatigable activity, important political services
rendered when in opposition, great political ability displayed
when in power, dignity and fortitude in the bearing of ad-
versity, brilliant oratorical achievements, numerous literary
works, some of which are of high intrinsic value, while all
are admirable in aim, and the most rigid probity and pro-
priety of personal conduct. It recalls also, unfortunately,
other things and qualities — lamentable mistakes, serious
inconsistencies, faults which were almost crimes. He was a
man of powerful intellect, imperious will, pure and noble
sentiments, strong and austere character ; but he was de-
ficient in practical political wisdom and tact, inventiveness
and resourcefulness. After a perusal of his ' Memoirs ' the
492 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
deepest impression left is one of regret that a man so largely
endowed with many of the gifts of the statesman should
have been so incapable of seeing how to apply the truths
which he could expound so well, and to distinguish what
was comparatively insignificant in affairs from what was
vital. Here, however, we only require to treat of him in
that capacity in which he won his purest and highest dis-
tinctions, — in his character of philosophical historian.1
All the best qualities of M. Guizot's mind are seen to their
fullest advantage in his historical works, — accuracy in inves-
tigation, thoroughness of scholarship, a laboriousness which
leaves nothing necessary undone, comprehensiveness of view
and moderation of judgment, insight into political causation,
elevation of moral sentiment, religious reverence and con-
viction. He is not, however, strictly speaking, a great
historian. He wants the narrative and descriptive power,
the pictorial and dramatic imagination, the interest for what
is individual in characters or actions, without which no man
can be a great historical artist.. He is, however, what is
still rarer and not less important, a great historical thinker
or philosopher.
Perhaps we cannot fix more precisely what he is and what
he is not, than by availing ourselves of the distinctions
which he has himself drawn in the admirable estimate of
Savigny's ' History of the Roman Law in the Middle Ages,'
given in the eleventh lecture of the ' Cours de 1829 ' : —
" Every epoch, every historical matter, may, so to speak, be considered
in three different aspects, and imposes on the historian a threefold task.
He can — nay, ought — first seek the facts themselves, collecting and
bringing to light, without any other aim than exactitude, all that has
happened. The facts once recovered, it is necessary to know what laws
have governed them ; how they were connected ; what causes have
brought about those incidents which are the life of society, and which
propel it in certain paths towards certain ends. I wish to mark clearly
and precisely the difference of the two studies. Facts, distinctively so
called, outward and visible events, are the body of history — the mem-
1 He has been studied in this aspect by Mr. J. S. Mill, ' Discussions,' vol. i. ; by
Sir Archibald Alison, ' Essays,' vol. iii. ; by M. Renouvier, ' La Critique Pbilo-
sophique,' torn. i. and iii. ; and by Perraz.
GTJIZOT 493
bers, bones, muscles, organs, material elements of the past; and the
knowledge and description of them form what may be called historical
anatomy. But for society, as for the individual, anatomy is not the only
science. Facts not only exist, but are connected with one another ; they
succeed one another and are engendered by the action of certain forces,
which operate under the empire of certain laws. There is, in a word, an
organisation and life of societies as well as of individuals. This organi-
sation has also its science, the science of the secret laws which preside
over the course of events. This is the physiology of history. But neither
historical physiology nor anatomy is complete and veritable history.
You have enumerated the facts and traced the internal and general laws
which produced them. Do you also know their external and living
physiognomy f Have you before your eyes their individual and animate
features? This is absolutely necessary, because these facts, now dead,
once lived — the past has been the present ; and unless it again become so
to you, if the dead be not resuscitated, you know it not — you know not
history. Could the anatomist and physiologist guess what man was if
they had never seen him alive ? The investigation of facts, the study of
their organisation, the reproduction of their form and motion, these con-
stitute what is truly history. And every great historical work, in order
to be assigned its true position, should be examined and judged of in
these relations."
When we examine the historical labours of M. Guizot
himself from these three points of view, we find that he is
certainly not seen to great advantage under the third. If
we wish to know the external and living physiognomy of
Merovingian and Carlovingian France — to have a truthful
transcript of the individual features and incidents of medieval
life — we must turn not to his pages but to those of
M. Augustin Thierry or M. Michelet. As a work of art, his
' History of the English Revolution ' is certainly cold and
colourless if compared with what Mr. Carlyle has written on
the same theme. With a correct and dignified style, with an
eloquence which never fails and sometimes rises high, he yet
shows comparatively little of the power which reproduces
the form and motion of history, its local hues, its poetical
truth, its dramatic aspects, the feelings of the hour, the
peculiarities of individuals. It is altogether different in the
other two relations. M. Guizot is very great as an historical
anatomist, and still greater as an historical physiologist. He
may not, indeed, in the former respect, rank as high as a
494 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
Savigny, but the reason obviously is not inferiority of ability,
but merely want of the time and leisure which the Berlin
professor enjoyed. He gives ample evidence of possessing in
a most eminent degree all the faculties which are called into
action in the ascertainment, criticism, distribution, and com-
parison of facts. Then, no one will say of him what he
justly says of Savigny — viz., that he overlooked the internal
concatenation of facts, the organisation and laws of the social
movement. It is in laying bare that concatenation and the
motive forces of the social organism that his merits are most
conspicuous. He shows a singular faculty for apprehending
the ideas which underlie facts, the inner changes which
determine outer changes, for detecting the social and intel-
lectual tendencies of an epoch, for tracing the operation of
the larger and more lasting causes which chiefly influence
human affairs, and yet which escape the ordinary historian's
vision. In a word, he has not been surpassed as an historical
physiologist, as a student of the general and progressive
organisation of social facts.
The fame of M. Guizot as a philosophical historian rests
chiefly on his ' Histoire gdne*rale de la civilisation en Europe,'
and ' Histoire de la civilisation en France,' which consist of
lectures delivered at the Sorbonne in the years 1828, 1829,
and 1830. The 'Essais sur l'histoire de France' (1st ed.
1823 ; 5th ed. 1841) is the substance of discourses delivered
at an earlier period, and contains little which may not he
found in a more elaborate form in those two works. Indeed,
four of the six essays which it contains — viz., those on
"The Origin and Establishment of the Franks in Gaul,"
" The Causes of the Fall of the Merovingians and Carlovin-
gians," " The Social State and Political Institutions of France
under the Merovingians and Carlovingians," and " The Politi-
cal Character of the Feudal Rigime " — are simply the first
drafts, as it were, of the views which he afterwards expounded
more perfectly in the Lecons.
The remaining two — the first and last essays in the volume
— contain a little more of distinctive matter. In the former,
" Concerning Municipal Government in the Roman Empire
during the fifth century of the Christian Era," M. Guizot
guizot 495
discusses a great problem which he has only touched on else-
where, and which, as the translator and annotator of Gibbon's
immortal work, he was specially prepared successfully to
discuss. The problem was to explain the fall of the Roman
empire. It had already occupied the minds of many thinkers,
including a Montesquieu and Gibbon, and yet it received
for the first time perhaps even an approximate solution from
M. Guizot. His predecessors had merely treated of the
general causes of Roman decadence in a general way, and
had therefore merely talked round and round about the par-
ticular problem. They had referred the fall of the empire to
the institution of slavery, to the despotism of the emperors,
the decline of religious faith, luxury and moral corruption ;
and overlooked that, although all these things doubtless did
indirectly contribute to the result, they must have done so
only indirectly, since they were in full operation centuries
before, when the empire was in all the glory of its strength.
When Rome fell she was not more dependent on slave labour
than when, under Scipio and Caesar, her legions vanquished
Hannibal and conquered Gaul ; a religion infinitely superior
to any she had ever had before, had won for itself general
acceptance ; and poverty prevented luxury from being nearly
so widely spread as in former generations when the barbarians
caused her no fear. It was, accordingly, a distinct and
decided step towards a solution, although certainly not a
complete or exhaustive solution, when M. Guizot, leaving
vague generalities, fixed attention on the circumstance that
the empire was an agglomeration of towns held together by
the central sovereign power, and showed how, by tracing
Roman legislation regarding the curiales, — the class which
managed municipal affairs, and not only paid all municipal
expenses, but collected and were responsible for the revenue
of the State — the landed but unprivileged class, the middle
class, of Roman society, — they could be proved to have
gradually sunk under their burdens, and at last to have dis-
appeared. With their extinction the central authority had
no longer resources ; the legions could not be recruited with
Roman men ; the cities were unable to support one another or
496 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
defend themselves ; internal decay had ensured the success of
external violence.
The last essay of the volume is on " The Causes of the
Establishment of a Representative System in England." It
describes and explains the characteristics which distinguish
the political development of England from that of France ;
how the history of England antecedent to the Norman con-
quest, and the circumstances of that conquest, had for result
an equality of strength between royalty, aristocracy, and the
commons, unknown elsewhere; and how the simultaneous
unfolding of these different social elements enabled England
to attain a government at once orderly and free, earlier than
any Continental nation, and called forth that political good
sense, that spirit of political compromise, which has long
been one of her most conspicuous qualities. Ever since
Montesquieu and some of his contemporaries gave popularity
to the study of English political institutions, the British
Constitution, or at least what was supposed to be the British
Constitution, has had admirers in France anxious to see it
transplanted to their own country. The possibility and
desirableness of such transplantation were fundamental
articles of the doctrinaire creed adopted by M. Guizot.
They explain his predilection for the study of English con-
stitutional history, shown not only by his elaborate researches
regarding the English Revolution, but by his having devoted
early in his political and professorial career an entire course
of lectures to the development of the views contained in the
essay just mentioned. I refer to the ' Cours de 1822 sur les
origines et les deVeloppements de la constitution Anglaise,'
which was published in 1851 as the second volume of the
' Histoire des origines du gouvernement representatif en
Europe.' It is a work kindred in character and spirit to
Hallam's 'Constitutional History of England,' although less
elaborate. It may very profitably be read before Mr.
Hallam's work, and in connection with it, as it leaves off
about the period at which the other begins.
The ' History of Civilisation in Europe,' and the ' History
of Civilisation in France,' are closely connected works ; indeed
they may be regarded as one work. The former is, as it were,
guizot 497
an introductory volume to the five volumes of which the lat-
ter consists. It is a summary statement of the positions, which
they elucidate with all the illustrations, and confirm with all
the proofs, deemed essential. It is indispensable to any right
understanding of what M. Guizot has attempted and achieved
as an historical philosopher, that we apprehend accurately the
relation of these works to each other ; and in the first lecture
of the ' Cours de 1829 ' he has been carefully explicit on the
subject.
What he says is to the following effect. In the lectures
delivered in 1828 he gave a general view of the history of
European civilisation, and promised to study it in following
years in detail. When he set about attempting, in the lec-
tures for 1829, to fulfil his promise, he found he had to choose
between two methods. He might recommence the Course of
1828, and proceed to go over in detail what had been gone
over in almost breathless haste. But to that two insuperable
objections presented themselves, — the difficulty of maintain-
ing unity in a history so extensive, and the difficulty of mas-
tering the immense extent and variety of knowledge which it
required. He decides, therefore, to adopt the other method,
that of abandoning the investigation of the general history of
European civilisation in all the nations which have shared in
it, and confining himself to the civilisation of one country,
while yet so marking the differences between it and other
countries, that it may reflect an image of the whole destiny
of Europe. Although difficult, it is yet possible to acquire
and use the knowledge necessary to proceed thus, and possi-
ble also to pass from fact to fact without losing sight of the
whole picture — to preserve unity of narrative along with an
adequate study of particulars. The important question here
arises, Which country ought to be selected ? M. Guizot an-
swers — France. Why ? Because France is the country in
which civilisation has appeared in its most complete form,
where it has been most diffusive or communicative, and
where it has most forcibly struck the European imagination.
The superiority of French civilisation to that of other coun-
tries is shown not merely in there being greater amenity in
social relations, greater gentleness of manners, a more easy
498 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
and animated life in France than elsewhere, but still more
decisively by the fact that there the essential elements of
civilisation — the intellectual and social developments —
have progressed more equally, and at a shorter distance
from each other, than elsewhere. " In England the devel-
opment of society has been more extensive and more glorious
than that of humanity ; social interests and social facts have
there maintained a more conspicuous place, and exercised
more power than general ideas ; the nation seems greater
than the individual; its great men, even its philosophers,
belong to the practical school." " In Germany the develop-
ment of civilisation has been slow and tardy, and the intel-
lectual development has always surpassed and left behind
social development; the human spirit has there been much
more prosperous than the human condition." " In Italy civ-
ilisation has been neither essentially practical as in England,
nor almost exclusively speculative as in Germany ; but it has
been weighed down and impeded from without, and the two
powers — speculative genius and practical ability — have not
lived in reciprocal confidence, in correspondence, in continual
action and reaction." " In Spain neither great minds nor
great events have been wanting, but they have appeared
isolated and scattered like palm-trees in a desert." "In
France, on the contrary, alongside of great events, revolu-
tions, and public progress, we always find universal ideas
and corresponding doctrines. Nothing has passed in the real
world but the understanding has immediately seized it, and
thence derived new riches ; nothing has occurred within the
dominion of understanding which has not had in the real
world, and that almost always immediately, its echo and
result. This twofold character of intellectual activity and
practical ability, of meditation and application, is shown in
all the great events of French history, and in all the great
classes of French society, and gives them an aspect which we
do not find elsewhere. To France, therefore, must be ascribed
the honour, that her civilisation has reproduced more faith-
fully than any other the general type and fundamental idea
of civilisation."
guizot 499
M. Guizot, then, it will be observed, when he found himself compelled
to study the history of civilisation in one great European nation instead
of in all, did not abandon the idea with which he started, that of trac-
ing the general history of European civilisation. He concentrated his
faculties and researches on France, but only because he thought he
could thus arrive more quickly and surely at the desired result. The
positions which he sought to establish in the volumes on the history of
civilisation in France, were just those which he had previously laid down
in the volume on the history of civilisation in Europe. The more elabo-
rate work was meant, notwithstanding its more special title, to be really
as wide in its scope as the other, and to be, in fact, the continuation and
development of the other.
But at this point a doubt presents itself which M. Guizot has, perhaps,
not satisfactorily dispelled. Does the civilisation of any one European
nation give us the general type, or image, or fundamental idea of Euro-
pean civilisation as such? Is the history, for example, of France essen-
tially the history of Europe? Can the whole be discovered in any single
part, or even in less than all the parts? I think M. Guizot should have
put these questions quite clearly and distinctly to himself — more so,
certainly, than he did — and that if he had he would have answered them
differently. Had he simply maintained that, by noting the differences
and resemblances between the civilisation of one European country and
the others, a view of the general civilisation of Europe could be acquired,
there would have been no ground for objection. In that case the general
view would be obtained, not from a particular civilisation itself, but from
its comparison with, and contrast to, the other particular civilisations.
Any of the more important countries of Europe might be chosen as the
fixed term for this sort of comparison and contrast. Italy, Germany,
England, France, would obviously all equally serve the purpose — the
truth and value of the result depending, not on which civilisation is made
the centre of comparison, but on the accuracy and thoroughness of the
process of comparison. But M. Guizot goes much further. He takes up
the position that there is a particular civilisation which answers to the
idea of general civilisation ; that there is one country in Europe, the civil-
isation of which is so much more perfect than that of the other countries,
that it may be regarded as the normal form of the civilisation of Europe,
an approximation to the absolute standard of civilisation, a practical
standard by which to measure civilisation everywhere else. Now, a grave
suspicion is raised against the legitimacy of this assumption by the fact,
that those who make it differ widely as to which nation is to be deemed
the pattern nation. Guizot argues that it must be France ; but Gioberti
writes a book to prove that it must be Italy ; Hegel, and the Germans as
a body, quietly assume or confidently affirm that the whole of what is
called Christian civilisation may equally be called Germanic civilisation ;
and Mr. Buckle has no doubt that the history of England is that which
shows most clearly " the normal march of society, and the undisturbed
500 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
operation of those great laws by which the fortunes of mankind are
ultimately regulated."
It is not enough to refer this variety of discordant decisions to the
operation of national prejudices. The question still remains, Why is it
— how is it — that national prejudices have in this instance such power?
And the- only satisfactory answer to this question is, — because no par-
ticular civilisation is normal, or answers as a whole to the idea of civil-
isation. It can only be made to appear so by narrowing the idea of
civilisation to suit the pretensions put forth on its behalf. By a similar
narrowing of the idea, quite as warranted, another standard may be
obtained which will be as favourable to some other civilisation. Grant
that in the civilisation of France intellectual activity and practical ability,
meditation and application, have, as M. Guizot says, progressed more
equally, and at a shorter distance from each other, than in England —
and what then ? Does it follow that it reproduces better the general type
and fundamental idea of civilisation than the civilisation of England?
No ; but merely that it reproduces it better in one respect. It may repro-
duce it much worse in some equally essential respect. And an English-
man looking at it in that respect may quite as fairly conclude it to be
inferior to English civilisation, as M. Guizot has concluded it to be
superior.
This is precisely what Mr. Buckle has done. He, like M. Guizot,
found himself compelled, by the magnitude of the task, to write the
history, not of general civilisation, but of the civilisation of a single
people ; and he has endeavoured, still more elaborately than M. Guizot, to
show that he could realise the larger design within the narrower compass.1
He fixes, however, on England as the nation which has approached
nearest to a complete and perfect pattern, chiefly on the ground that, "of
all European countries, England is the one where, during the longest
period, the government has been most quiescent, and the people most
active; where popular freedom has been settled on the widest basis;
where each man is most able to say what he thinks, and to do what he
likes ; where every one can follow his own bent, and propagate his own
opinions ; where, religious persecution being little known, the play and
flow of the human mind may be clearly seen, unchecked by those re-
straints to which it is elsewhere subjected; where the profession of
heresy is least dangerous, and the practice of dissent most common;
where hostile creeds flourish side by side, and rise and decay without
disturbance, according to the wants of the people, unaffected by the
wishes of the Church, and uncontrolled by the authority of the State;
where all interests and all classes, both spiritual and temporal, are most
left to take care of themselves ; where that meddlesome doctrine called
Protection was first attacked, and where alone it has been destroyed;
and where, in a word, those dangerous extremes to which interference
i Hist, of Civilisation in England, i. 209-221, 1st ed.
GUIZOT 501
gives rise having been avoided, despotism and rebellion are equally rare,
and concession being recognised as the groundwork of policy, the national
progress has been least disturbed by the power of privileged classes, by
the influence of particular sects, or by the violence of arbitrary rulers."
Now, the reason which Mr. Buckle thus gives for choosing English civil-
isation as normal, may be no better than M. Guizot's for choosing French
civilisation, but neither is it worse. It presupposes a different standard,
but one quite as good.-
And this holds true even if we grant the accuracy of the objection
which M. Guizot makes to English civilisation — viz., that it has been more
favourable to the development of society than of humanity, of the nation
than of the individual. It is an objection, however, I may remark, which
Englishmen at least will certainly not grant, and in which probably few
candid foreigners even will concur. "We in England are generally under
the belief that historical and social conditions have been in no Conti-
nental nation so favourable to the development of individuality as here ;
and, with all due distrust of national judgments, as exceedingly likely
indeed to be baseless prejudices, I think this is one the truth of which
few competent third parties will contest. I am quite unable to see that
the great men of England have belonged more exclusively to the practical
school than those of France. Its philosophers do not seem to me to have
done so, and I profess to have studied most of the philosophers of both
countries.
I might proceed to show that claims as strong might be put forward
on behalf of the civilisation of Italy and Germany, as those which Guizot
has produced for that of France, and Mr. Buckle for that of England.
Was not Italy from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Reformation, on
the whole, the most civilised nation of Europe, and that which exerted,
through religion, learning, art, industry, and commerce, the greatest influ-
ence on the civilisation of other nations ? The time which has elapsed
since is comparatively short. While France developed her civilisation
along the path of centralisation, Germany seemed to retrograde by trav-
elling in the opposite direction ; but does it not remain to be seen which
path is really the best, and whether France, after having apparently
moved straight up to the goal, may not have to retrace her steps and
come back by another way before she can truly reach it ? That Germany
has gone round about and France straight forward, by no means of itself
proves that the French course has been the better one, and still less that
it is the only right one. A straight line is in practice often the greatest
distance between two points. I deem, then, the claims made on behalf
of various civilisations to be regarded as the exclusive representatives of
general civilisation no less inadequate and illusory than they are invid-
ious. If true in what they affirm, they are false in what they deny.
Alike in France, Germany, England, and Italy, civilisation has had a
special and one-sided, not a general and normal development. It cannot
be fairly judged of in any one of them by what it is in any other. If
502 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
we would know the general type of civilisation we must study all the
specimens of civilisation, and especially all its chief specimens. A part
can never be the whole.
The first three lectures of the Course of 1828 — that on
"The General History of Civilisation in Europe" — contain
the preliminary-observations which M. Guizot deemed neces-
sary. They are a statement of views and principles essential
to a right understanding of his labours in the department of
historical philosophy. He begins in the most natural manner
— viz., with an attempt to fix the meaning of the terms
"European civilisation." That is his subject. It presents a
very wide field for research, beyond which he has not attempted
to range. He has never sought to construct a philosophy of his-
tory — ■ he has never professed to have discovered a universal
law of history ; he has attempted only to analyse the civilisa-
tion of Christian Europe into its elements, and to trace the
causes and stages of its development. In this reference noth-
ing can be more accurate or succinct than the words of Mr. Mill :
" His subject is not history at large, but modern European his-
tory ; the formation and progress of the existing nations of Eu-
rope. Embracing, therefore, only a part of the succession of
historical events, he is precluded from attempting to determine
the law or laws which preside over the entire evolution. If
there be such laws — if the series of states through which
human nature and society are destined to pass, have been deter-
mined more or less precisely by the original constitution of
mankind, and by the circumstances of the planet on which we
live — the order of their succession cannot be discovered by
modern or by European experience alone ; it must be ascer-
tained by a conjunct analysis, so far as possible, of the whole
of history, and the whole of human nature. M. Guizot stops
short of this ambitious enterprise ; but, considered as prepara-
tory studies for promoting and facilitating it, his writings are
most valuable. He seeks, not the ultimate, but the proximate,
causes of the facts of modern history; he inquires in what
manner each successive condition of modern Europe grew out
of that which next preceded it; and how modern society-
altogether, and the modern mind, shaped themselves from
GUIZOT 503
the elements which had been transmitted to them from the
ancient world." 1
M. Guizot uses these terms " European civilisation," he
says, because it is evident that there is a European civilisation ;
that a certain unity pervades the civilisation of the various
European states ; that, notwithstanding infinite diversities of
time, place, and circumstance, this civilisation takes its first
rise in facts almost wholly similar, proceeds everywhere upon
the same principles, and tends to produce almost everywhere
analogous results. He insists that civilisation is as really a
fact as any material and visible individual event; a general,
hidden, complex fact, difficult to describe, difficult to trace
the progress or history of, but which none the less exists, with
a right to be described and to have its history written. What,
then, he asks, is involved in this complex fact which we call
civilisation ?
He answers, that, in the first place, it involves progress, im-
provement, amelioration ; but, in proof, he merely appeals to
"the natural good sense of mankind," to "general instinct."
As regards the progress of which he says that civilisation con-
sists, he represents it as comprehending two facts or conditions :
the development of society, the perfecting of civil life, on the
one hand ; and the development of the individual or internal
life of man himself, his faculties, sentiments, and ideas, on the
other hand. And these two conditions, these two movements
— the progress of society and the progress of humanity — are,
he argues, so connected, that, sooner or later, whatever im-
proves or degrades the internal man turns to the profit or hurt
of society, and whatever affects the development of society
similarly affects the individual. The progress of humanity is
the end ; that of society the means.
It has been said that M. Guizot forgets this distinction in practice, and
studies exclusively the progress of society. Those who have urged the
charge, however, have overlooked the Course of 1829, which is the
only complete course of the three, and in which there is a care-
ful examination, not merely of the political but of the intellectual
state of Europe during the period of which it treats ; and that
1 Dissertations and Discussions, ii. 223-4.
504 PHILOSOPHY OF flISTOKY IN FRANCE
the lectures of 1828 and 1830 did not embrace more than polit-
ical and social development, simply because the Courses of these
years were unfinished, — the former having been begun late, and the
latter prematurely broken off in consequence of political events.
More might be said for an attack on the distinction itself.
Humanity — internal life — intellectual development, are hardly synony-
mous expressions, and they are neither logical antitheses nor co-or-
dinates to society — civil life — political development. But it must
be considered that a logically satisfactory division is here scarcely
possible, and that whatever faults that of M. Guizot may have had,
it was not only much better than none, but very tolerably served his
purpose.
The appeal to "natural good sense" or "general instinct" for
proof of civilisation implying progress is plainly illegitimate. They
have no right to pronounce civilisation to be progress, or even progress
to be an essential and universal characteristic of civilisation. The
truth or falsity of these propositions must be determined by facts;
and the facts happen to establish that both are false. A very large
part of the civilisation of the world is stationary or declining. Pro-
gressive civilisation is probably not the rule but the exception. It is
only progressive civilisation which involves the notion of progress.
But although progress is not essentially implied in the idea of civ-
ilisation, the opinion of Guizot to the contrary exerts no evil influence
on the course of his speculations, seeing that European civilisation,
the real subject of his studies, is, viewed as a whole, undoubtedly
progressive.
He shows in the second lecture that modern civilisation is
distinguished from ancient civilisation by being much less sim-
ple, much more diversified and complicated, by the continued
■coexistence, conflict, and co-operation of a vast variety of powers
and interests which in the ancient world were found apart.
He insists that this in great part accounts for its superiority.
And he explains it by the great diversity of the elements from
which, and of the circumstances under which, modern society
was formed. When Rome fell, she left behind her the muni-
cipal system, the idea of imperial majesty, and a body of
written law ; nor did she drag down with her the Christian
Church, an organisation resting on religious doctrines and
convictions, and possessed of a regular government and defi-
nite aims. Alongside of the Church was the barbaric inva-
sion, animated by a spirit of personal liberty and of voluntary
association previously unknown. Thus, at the beginning of
GUIZOT 505
modern civilisation, there were almost all the elements which
have united in its progressive development; three societies
— the municipal, a legacy of the Roman Empire, the Chris-
tian, and the Barbaric society — very variously organised,
founded upon wholly different principles, and inspiring men
with wholly different sentiments. "We find the craving
after the most absolute independence side by side with the
most complete submission ; military patronage side by side
with ecclesiastical dominion; the spiritual and temporal
powers everywhere present; the canons of the Church, the
learned legislation of the Romans, the almost unwritten cus-
toms of the barbarians; everywhere the mixture, or rather
the coexistence of the most diverse races, languages, social
situations, manners, ideas, and impressions." This lecture
has justly been the object of special admiration. The theory
it contains is not only indubitably true as a whole, but highly
important and beautifully expounded.
M. Guizot proceeds in the third lecture to point out that
although the facts are as he has stated, an opinion directly to
the contrary prevails, and each element, each system, has put
forth a claim to have alone ruled society. " A school of feu-
dal publicists, represented by M. de Boulanvilliers, pretends
that after the fall of the Roman Empire, the conquering
nation, afterwards become the nobility, possessed all powers
and rights, which they have lost only through the usurpation
of kings and peoples ; a school of monarchists, represented by
the Abbe* Dubos, maintains, on the other hand, that all the
acquisitions of the nobility have been unjustly wrung from
the German kings, who, as the heirs of the Roman emperors,
alone ruled legitimately ; a democratic school, represented b}r
the Abbe" de Mably, argues that nobles and kings have only
risen to power on the ruins of popular freedom, and that the
government of society primitively belonged to, and still prop-
erly belongs to, the people ; while above all these monarchi-
cal, aristocratical, and popular pretensions, rises theocratical
pretension, the claim of the Church to rule society in virtue
of her divine title and mission." This leads our author to
insist first on what he calls the idea of political legitimacy.
All powers claim to be legitimate. They all refuse to admit
506 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FKANOE
themselves founded on force. They all thereby profess to
rest on right, justice, reason. And this is why they also
claim long duration, a high antiquity; for the mere fact that
a power has long existed is itself a ground for believing that
reason and right have in some measure belonged to it. " From
the mere fact of its enduring, we may conclude with certainty
that a society is not completely absurd, insensate, or iniqui-
tous — that it is not utterly destitute of those elements of rea-
son, truth, and justice which alone can give life to society.
If, further, the society develops itself — if its principle grows
in strength and is daily accepted by a greater number of men
— that convincingly proves that in the lapse of time there
has been progressively introduced into it more reason, jus-
tice, and right. It is this introduction of right and truth
into the social state which has given rise to the idea of poli-
tical legitimacy; it is thus that it has been established in
modern civilisation."
M. Guizot is here — what he very rarely is — obscure; the reason
of which no doubt is, the mysterious nature of the subject, the inscrut-
able profundity of the idea of political legitimacy. It is only in the
dark that such a spectre of a thought can show itself. The light causes
it to vanish — makes apparent its nonentity. It pretends to be a some-
thing—a right to authority — a claim to obedience; but the slightest
criticism, the slightest explanation even, shows it to be in and of itself
absolutely nothing. The right of any power to rule in society depends
solely on the truth and justice of the reasons on which the right is
rested ; legitimacy is a word which may be allowably used to express a
conviction that these reasons are in a given instance satisfactory, but
not to denote a reason in itself, nor anything apart from the reasons,
anything- added to or developed out of the reasons. Of course, if this
were admitted, there would be an end of what is spoken of as political
legitimacy in France.
A French legitimist is a man who argues that the claims of his
party to rule are good because of legitimacy, not that they are legiti-
mate exclusively because, and only in so far as, they are good. Legiti-
macy is a fiction which he interposes between his own mind or the
public mind and reasons which he half-consciously suspects to be an
insufficient basis for his theory ; a fiction which serves to conceal their
insufficiency from himself and others. It is curious to see a mind like
that of M. Guizot under the sway of so poor an idol ; curious to see how,
instead of "casting it to the moles and bats," he decks and dresses it up
anew for public homage. To M. de Boulanvilliers, feudalist ; the Abbe'
GUIZOT 507
Dubos, monarchist ; the Abbe de Mably, democrat ; and the Comte de
Maistre, defender of the theocracy, he virtually says, — "I admit all your
claims ; you are all right in what you affirm, and wrong only in what you
deny — the powers which you severally defend are all legitimate: and my
system, which comprehends and harmonises them all, is consequently pre-
eminently legitimate. It is a great word — a great idea — legitimacy."
And there is a certain impartiality and comprehensiveness in the answer
which makes it attractive and plausible. Yet none the less is it erroneous
and ensnaring. The cobweb may not be so perceptible when thus drawn
out wider and thinner, but that is all, — it is still there. The truth in
this case is not to be found in a general affirmation, but in a general nega-
tion. The claims which different parties have made under the name of
legitimacy have not had their source in the facts and reasons which truly
entitle these parties to a certain measure of authority; but in the insuffi-
ciency of their facts and reasons as a title to all the authority which they desire
to exercise. Instead, therefore, of all the claims being granted, all ought
to be repelled and this truth affirmed — that no power has any other
legitimacy than its reasonableness and its utility. This, besides being
a truth, will be found at least as impartial and comprehensive a conclu-
sion as M. Guizot's.
He next maintains that " the very dispute which has arisen
between the various systems that have a share in European
civilisation upon the question which predominated at its ori-
gin, proves that then they all coexisted, without any one of
them prevailing generally enough, or certainly enough, to
give to society its form and its name." He points out that
this was precisely the characteristic of the barbarian epoch.
"It was the chaos of all elements, the infancy of all systems,
a universal turmoil, in which even strife was not systematic."
The work of the centuries which have since elapsed has been
to effect in some measure the reconciliation of these elements,
the amalgamation of these systems, and to bring order and
peace, with their products, out of this chaos and turmoil.
And the task which M. Guizot proposed to himself was to
trace the progress of the work of the centuries.
Other labours — other duties — prevented the complete
performance of what he intended ; but he accomplished suffi-
cient to show both the excellence of his method of operation
and the superiority of his intellect. The history of Europe
from the fall of the Roman Empire is divided into three
periods: the period of confusion, the feudal period, and the
508 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
modern period. The outlines of the development of civilisa-
tion during these three periods were twice drawn by M. Gui-
zot, first in the 'Essais' and next in the 'Cours de 1828. ' But
he rightly felt that outlines were not enough — that what
was above all needed was a thorough, a detailed, an exhaus-
tive analysis of civilisation. In the ' Cours de 1829 ' he
undertook and accomplished such an analysis of civilisation,
so far as it was represented by the civilisation of France, for
the period of confusion — for the five centuries between Clovis
and the end of the Carlovingian dynasty. In the following
year he entered on the analysis of the feudal period ; and was
carrying it forward on the same comprehensive scale, and
with an ability and success no less remarkable, when his
Course was abruptly terminated before it was half finished —
before the speculative, religious, and literary characteristics
of the period had been brought under review. Beyond that
point the work, unfortunately, never got. The last or strictly
modern period of European, or even French history, was never
taken up at all. Thus the Course of 1829 is the only one in
which the method of M. Guizot is seen fully exemplified; in
which a period of civilisation is analysed with the thorough-
ness and exhaustiveness which he deemed essential. It is
especially in it that his historical philosophy is to be seen in
operation. Let us recall what he does there.
After the preliminary lecture to which I have already had
occasion to refer, he describes the social and intellectual, the
civil and religious, state of society in Gaul prior to the Ger-
man invasion, at the end of the fourth and the beginning of
the fifth century (L. 2-6); then the dispositions, the manners,
and institutions of the Germans before they began to take
possession of the lands of the Celt and the Roman (7); and
next, the invasion and conquest itself, its character, the
changes it caused in the distribution of society, its various
immediate consequences (8). These are, as it were, the three
scenes of the first act of the drama. After having delineated
them, our author turns to trace through the two follow-
ing centuries the action and reaction of the Barbarian and
Romanised societies, their progressive development and amal-
gamation, alike in the civil, the religious, and the intellec-
tual order of things. As to the civil order, he shows how
G0IZOT 509
the Barbarian codes of law arose and how the Roman law was
perpetuated (9-11). As to the religious order, he explains
the internal organisation of the Church, the varieties of grade
and function among its regular and secular clergy, its rela-
tions with civil society, its aims, its tendencies, its influence
(12-15). And, as illustrative of the intellectual life of the
period, he analyses and describes its scanty literature, both
sacred and profane (16-18).
The fall of the Merovingian and the rise of the Carloving-
ian dynasty about the middle of the eighth century intro-
duced a third epoch, a third act. After showing the nature
and causes of that revolution (19), M. Guizot dwells upon
the position and significance of the reign of Charlemagne —
on the character and designs of that great monarch — on his
influence, direct and indirect, on outward affairs, legislation,
and the development of mind. Thence he proceeds to trace,
step by step, the operation of the causes which decomposed
his vast empire, and, at the same time, produced the feudal
system (20-25). Nor does he forget to study either the his-
tory of the Church (26-27) or the movement and manifesta-
tions of reflective thought (28-29) during the same period.
In fact, he analyses the entire constitution and development
of society during these five centuries ; lays bare all its essential
elements, all its chief forces; traces them all continuously
from the beginning to the end of the period investigated ;
traces them separately, yet also in connection, never forget-
ting that they are the component parts or principles of a sin-
gle self-dependent and active whole.
The originality of M. Guizot's work consists in the truly
scientific spirit and character of his method. He was the
first to dissect a society in the same comprehensive, impar-
tial, and thorough way in which an anatomist dissects the
body of an animal, and the first to study the functions of the
social organism in the same systematic and careful manner
in which the physiologist studies the functions of the animal
organism. Before him there had been a vast amount both
of historical research and historical speculation ; states, ages,
classes, individuals, had had their histories, some of which
were excellent; the development of laws, manners, sciences,
arts, letters, had been traced, and in some cases not only
510 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
learnedly but with considerable insight into causation; and
there had even been systems not a few as to the course, and
plan, and laws of history as a whole ; yet he was fully enti-
tled, I think, to speak of the work he accomplished as new.
It was not conceived of before the eighteenth century. It
was first truly commenced by himself. And what a noble
commencement he made! Of course in a work so extensive,
so difficult, every careful student must find something to
criticise, something to dissent from ; yet few will deny that
it is a model of scientific skill, comprehensively treating of
all the vast variety of facts included in civilisation, while
never allowing to drop out of sight the unity of life that
underlies the multiplied manifestations ; that it is not only
wonderfully true and satisfactory as an organic whole, but
that it has illuminated a multitude of particular points and
dispelled a multitude of serious errors ; that it disclosed in
every order of social phenomena a significance unnoticed
before, by the manner in which it showed them in constant
contact with the other orders of phenomena.
The application which M. Guizot made of his method to a
portion of history was conclusive evidence that the same
method could be applied to all history. It was, however,
more. It was a practical, irrefragable proof of the existence
of a science of history, not indeed in every sense of the word
science, but in the most usual sense, the only sense in which
there is a science of geology or of physiology. He applied
the same sort of method, the same rules of method, which are
employed in these sciences, and he obtained results as cer-
tain, as comprehensive, as important, as those which are
reached through geological or physiological research. The
term science may be so strictly defined that branches of
knowledge like geology and physiology have no right to be
called sciences ; the term law is very often so defined that
no geological or physiological truth is entitled to the name ;
but if science and law be used so as to include such divisions
of knowledge and to designate their highest truths, there can
be no reasonable doubt of the existence of historical science
and historical law. M. Guizot has proved their existence, as
Columbus proved the existence of the New World when he
sailed onwards until he reached it.
JAVAIIY 5H
IV
It is especially by their researches into the history of philos-
ophy that those who are regarded as followers of Cousin have
contributed to the philosophical study of history, and to a
profounder and more enlarged conception of the development
of humanity. They have not attempted to construct philos-
ophies of history ; but several of them have dealt with special
aspects and problems of historical philosophy ; and, in partic-
ular, with the idea of progress. I shall briefly notice some
of the most interesting of the works which treat of this theme.
In 1851 M. Javary (1820-56) published his ' Ide"e de Pro-
gress. ' It was the first really good general treatment of its
subject. It was at once an important contribution to the
history of the idea of progress, a careful analysis of the nature
of progress, and a judicious criticism of the chief erroneous
views prevalent regarding progress.
Its author's independence, as well as soundness, of judg-
ment is everywhere apparent. Although accepting the gen-
eral principles of Cousin's philosophy, he does not hesitate
to reject his particular conclusions. He vigorously opposes
the historical optimism which Cousin derived from Hegel
and endeavoured to propagate in France. He solidly refutes
such dicta as that " whatever is is good," and that " evil neces-
sarily produces good"; combats the fatalistic theory of his-
tory; and maintains that human progress is not the inevitable
result of natural laws and forces, but that it largely depends
on how individuals and societies employ the freedom with
which, they have been endowed whether there will be prog-
ress or decadence. He indicates with special clearness the
moral and religious conditions which are implied in healthy
social development. The distinctive characteristic of true
progress is represented by him as advance towards a complete
realisation of human nature through its own spiritual energy ;
that is, through the victory of the rational and moral will
over the passions which war against the higher life of the
soul.
512 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Iii M. Javary's work we may not find any absolutely orig-
inal ideas ; but we never fail to find important and carefully
considered ideas. Like his ' De la Certitude,' it is a book
which no one specially studying its subject can afford to
neglect.
The question of progress has also been treated, and with
characteristic ingenuity, by M. Bouillier, the eminent author
of the ' History of Cartesianism. ' In his ' Morale et Progres, '
he seeks to determine how far there has been progress, and
how far there has not. The investigation is throughout con-
ducted with reference to the positions regarding progress
maintained by Mr. Buckle in his ' History of Civilisation in
England,' and the discussions to which they gave rise.
M. Bouillier describes progress as a legacy or inheritance
which is transmitted from generation to generation, and
which increases with the advance of the ages. Only what
can be transmitted and accumulated is susceptible of prog-
ress. He draws a distinction between the elements or mat-
ter and the conditions or means of progress. Its elements are
intellectual facts, the various kinds of knowledge. Its con-
ditions are the qualities of the will, — character, virtue. The
former are perfectible in the species ; the latter are perfecti-
ble only in the individual. The acquisitions of intellect do
not disappear with the death of those who make them.
Truths once discovered, inventions once found out, have only
to be made known, and the knowledge of them "wakes to
perish never." If a great physicist through his labours
extends the limits and increases the treasures of science,
advances the industrial arts, facilitates the production of
wealth, and enriches civilisation, he does so for the good of
the world in all time. Any young man with a turn for phy-
sical science may easily serve himself, heir to the whole of
the intellectual legacy which he bequeathed to the race. The
gains of intellect being thus transmitted from person to per-
son, from generation to generation, are constantly accumu-
lating; the intellectual capital of mankind grows steadily
vaster ; and those who live latest, and are the heirs of all the
ages, are the richest. In a word, intellectual progress is a
BOUILLIER 513
fact. Moral acquisitions, however, are not transmitted and
accumulated. They are entirely personal. Virtue is not
heritable. There is no evidence that the force of will neces-
sary for conformity to moral law is increased in the course of
ages ; or that the men of to-day act up to their standard of
duty more faithfully than those of the earliest times. There
is, therefore, not a growth of virtue in the species, as there
is of knowledge. We are not entitled to affirm the existence
of moral progress.
Thus far the conclusions at which M. Bouillier arrives are
the same as those of Mr. Buckle, although the reasons which
he gives both for admitting intellectual progress and for
denying moral progress are different. Yet even the general
point of view from which he surveys history, and the spirit
in which he judges it, are in one respect very unlike those
of the English writer. Buckle represents the intellect as
not only alone perfectible, but as the alone active and impor-
tant factor in history ; and morality as not stationary but with-
out influence and significance in social development. In his
eyes the great fact in history is progress; and the essence of
progress is enlightenment, and the cause of enlightenment is
the triumph of intellect over ignorance of nature and faith.
This mode of thought does not at all commend itself to
Bouillier; it seems to him uncritical and superficial. Prog-
ress he thinks over-praised; and enlightenment as well.
Severed from virtue they are really of slight account. Ages
intellectually cultured but morally corrupt are not great ages,
and they initiate weakness and decay. Without the impulse
and support of virtue progress cannot sustain itself, and
knowledge fails to benefit those who possess it. Although
will, force of character, does not itself make progress in
humanity, it is the motive power of all human progress.
While M. Bouillier acknowledges progress to be a fact, he
refuses to admit that there is or can be a law of progress.
Law implies necessary causation, but history and progress
are effectuated through causes which are not necessary, —
through free agents, free wills.
I shall make only a very few observations on the views
thus indicated.
514 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
The description given of progress as constituted by the
transmission and accumulation of truths, experiences, and
acquisitions is clear and accurate. The criticism of Buckle's
glorification of intellect and of progress, and of his deprecia-
tion of the function and significance of morality in history,
is incisive and conclusive. That there is not sufficient evi-
dence to warrant the affirmation that the men of the present
day are more virtuous than those of early times is probably
to be admitted, if by virtue be meant fidelity to the law of
duty so far as it is apprehended, conscientiousness, meritori-
ousness. Thus far M. Bouillier seems to me to establish
what he maintains.
Yet he has failed, I think, to draw the true distinction
between what is progressive and unprogressive in the species.
That distinction is not the distinction between intellect and
virtue, but the more general distinction between the powers
or internal principles of the mind and their products or
external results. There is insufficient evidence for holding
that any of the former, whether intellectual or moral, are
capable of being transmitted and accumulated. We can no
more prove that the Europeans of to-day surpass the primi-
tive Aryans in power of reason or imagination than we can
prove that they surpass them in force of will, virtue of char-
acter. We can no more show that the great men of ancient
Greece and Rome were not intellectually, than we can show
that they were not morally, the equals of the great men of
modern France and England. It seems to me irrelevant to
discuss in connection with history the question whether or
not there has been a growth of virtue in a sense of which
history can tell us nothing. Such a discussion may be neces-
sary in ethics and theology, but it cannot in the least decide
whether or not there has been moral progress.
It is obvious that moral gains, in the form of thoughts,
sentiments, examples, influences, customs, and institutions,
not only can be, but are constantly being transmitted ; and
that in consequence the moral wealth pi mankind is increased
from age to age. The fundamental principles of morality are
few, and may have all been discovered in very early times, but
their applications are innumerable, and no limit can be set
to their development. Justice and charity are as capable of
BOUILLIER 515
an endless and ever-varying evolution in conduct and insti-
tutions as truth and beauty are in the sciences and fine arts.
The poets have contributed immensely to enrich and refine
the moral feelings of mankind. Grand moral examples can
be as effectively perpetuated as great scientific discoveries or
important mechanical inventions. Socrates lives for ever in
the pages of Plato and Xenophon, and Jesus in those of the
Evangelists. The children of the earliest fetish-worshippers
may have been born with as honest and good hearts as those
of Christian parents in the nineteenth century, but they were
certainly born to a far poorer moral heritage ; and, relatively
to their lights, means, and opportunities, they may have
lived as faithfully and virtuously, but their lights, means, and
opportunities were vastly different and vastly inferior.
The reality of free agency is not a sufficient reason for
denying that progress can have a law. Progress implies law,
inasmuch as it implies order and development. But it im-
plies only such law as is involved in order and development,
not a law of mere mechanical causation ; only such law as
can be discovered by observation and analysis, not such law
as can be dealt with by deduction and calculation. There
is, however, no fact in history which is of such a nature that
it cannot be traced to a cause, or even which is not neces-
sarily just what it was caused to be. The freedom of the
human will does not imply that the connection between the
actions and the effects, which are the only components of
history, has not been a necessary connection, but only that
there might have been other actions which would' necessarily
have had quite other effects. If free-will be admitted, we
must infer that there might have been a very different human
history than the actual one ; but not that the actual one is
other than the result of all the causes which really acted.
Free agency transcends history; only realities, not possibili-
ties,— only actual volitions and their effects, — compose his-
tory, and the connection between them must be acknowledged
to be a necessary connection.1
1 There is a valuable essay by M. Bouillier on an important historical theme,
La justice historique, in the ' Compte Rendu de l'Acad. d. Sc. mor. et pol.,' t. xxv.,
1886; and a sagacious discussion of the question Ya-t-il une philosophie de I'his-
toire? in ' Rev. phi].,' t. xxi., pp. 329-347.
516 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Spiritualistic philosophy has had no more accomplished
expositor and defender in France during the present genera-
tion than the late M. Caro. The greatest problems of thought,
those which lie at the very foundation of theodicy, ethics, and
sociology — of belief in God, the soul, duty, and immortality
— were those on which his interest was especially concen-
trated. He was brilliant alike as a lecturer and a writer.
Hardly in any age has there appeared so consummate a mas-
ter of the art of philosophical polemic. The lucidity and
grace, the exquisite blending of naturalness and refinement,
and the perfect accordance of thought and feeling with their
expression, which characterise all his compositions, are reflec-
tions of the harmony and beauty of his personality, expres-
sions of the light and sweetness of a most lovable character.1
He has devoted four chapters of his ' Probl&mes de la
Morale Sociale, ' 1876, to the consideration of social progress.
He first gives a general view of the history of the idea, and
dwells particularly on its transformations in the nineteenth
century. He had studied closely the growth of the theory
of evolution, or of physiological determinism, as applied to
history, and his observations on the forms which it had
assumed under the hands of Comte and Littre", of Buckle,
Bagehot, and Spencer, are of special interest. He further
treats of the laws and limits of progress in science, industry,
institutions, morality, and art. The discussion is through-
out marked by comprehensiveness and penetration of view,
by caution and sureness of judgment, by ingenuity and elo-
quence. All its main conclusions seem to me sound. In
the portion of it relating to moral progress the criticism of
the theory of M. Bouillier deserves to be noted.
Two other chapters of the same volume concern historical
philosophy. The first (chap, vi.) is an examination of the
evolutionist hypothesis of the origin and future of societies.
The relevancy and the gravity of the objections which he
urges against it are only too obvious ; but it is, perhaps, to
1 Regarding the life and writings of M. Caro, see the Notices of M. Constant
Martha (in vol. i. of ' Melanges et Portraits '), of M. Ch. Waddington (in ' Compte
Rendu de l'Acad. d. Sci. mor. et pol.,' Mai-Jnin 1889), and of M. Jules Simon (in
January No., 1890, of same publication). Also Art. of M. Brunetiere in 'Rev. d.
Deux Mondes,' 1 Juin 1888.
CAEEAIT 517
be desired that he had more distinctly indicated what is true
or probable in it, as he might quite consistently have done.
The other chapter (xv.) is that with which the work closes.
Its subject is "human destiny according to the scientific
schools." The conception of human destiny implied in those
positivist, evolutionist, and pessimist systems, which repre-
sent faith in the Divine as incompatible with the findings of
science, is strikingly exhibited, and it is maintained to be
such as of itself renders these systems very doubtful. In
the working out of this argument, skilful use is made of the
painfully interesting volume (' Poe'sies philosophiques ') in
which a woman of genius (Madame Ackermann) has made
apparent how terribly the science, falsely so called, at present
prevalent, may darken and disorder even a vigorous mind.
I pass to another author whose memory is also dear to me,
the late M. Ludovic Carrau. His life was brief but fruitful.
He early made himself known to the philosophical world by
his important work ' Morale utilitaire, ' which was followed
by 'Etudes sur revolution' and ' Philosophie religieuse en
Angleterre.' The works testify to the thoroughness of his
studies, the amplitude and accuracy of his information, and
the clearness, strength, and acuteness of his understanding.1
While engaged on the translation of my ' Philosophy of
History in France and Germany, ' he wrote, partly with refer-
ence to it, an interesting and able article on the subject of
progress in the ' Revue des Deux Mondes ' (Oct. 1875). In
this essay he indicates and characterises the various ways in
which progress has been conceived of, and in which it has
been attempted to reach and formulate its law. He fully
recognises the difficulties of determining with sufficient pre-
cision its law, or even its conditions and end. But he
holds that the reality of progress is certain. Evolution, as
a mass of evidence shows, has been a feature of all nature,
" the universal formula of existence;" and historical prog-
ress is a variety or department of evolution. The course of
evolution, although for countless ages mainly physical and
animal, was always upwards, and issued at length in the
1 See M. Fr. Pioavet's ' M. Ludovic Carrau,' 1889.
518 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
appearance of man ; its interest since has been chiefly spirit-
ual, and its direction, so far as it has yet gone, has been still
more clearly that of elevation and improvement. It is true,
however, that man is not borne upward and forward by any
fatalistic or physically necessary law; he is a rational and
free being, and his progress is just the triumph of reason and
moral liberty over nature and necessity. Man has been so
constituted in intellect and in heart that he cannot but form
ideals of truth, beauty, happiness, and perfection which he
feels drawn and bound to strive to reach and to realise. It
is through the general yielding of mankind to this sense of
attraction and of obligation that the history of humanity is
a movement of growing approximation towards a goal which
will never be completely reached, but every step towards
which means fuller knowledge, greater reasonableness, a
richer enjoyment of beauty, a more perfect righteousness, a
purer and more diffused happiness. There is no evidence
that the course of nature and of history will be reversed, so
as to tend towards unreason, unrighteousness, and misery,
towards death, darkness, and chaos. If the power which
made and rules the world and humanity be rational and
righteous such a reversal is incredible. The main conclu-
sion, in short, reached by M. Carrau is one to which an Eng-
lish poetess has given magnificent expression ; the conclusion
that we may well
" Rest in faith
That man's perfection is the crowning flower,
Towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree
Is pressing, — seen in puny blossoms now,
But in the world's great morrows to expand
With broadest petal and with deepest glow." x
1 George Eliot, ' The Spanish Gypsy.' All M. Carrau's ' Etudes sur la the'orie
de revolution ' hear on historical philosophy, and are eminently judicious and
instructive. They treat of the following subjects : (1) the origin of instinct and
of thought; (2) the origin of man; (3) the origin of belief in a future life; (4) the
origin of primitive worships; (5) the origin of the moral sense; and (6) the
origin of language. The essay noticed in the text was republished in the volume
entitled ' La conscience psychologique et morale dans l'individu et dans l'his-
toire,' 1888, which contains several articles on subjects closely akin to those dealt
with in the ' Etudes.'
DE TOCQTJEVILLE 519
The influence of Guizot is perceptible on almost all later
French historians. It is easily traceable in the writings of
many who were personally and politically hostile to him, as,
e.g., Michelet and Quinet. Those who rejected his doctrina-
rianism were often more doctrinarian than himself, and that
in fashions which bore his impress. Like the eclecticism of
Cousin, the doctrinarianism of Guizot, in its strictest accep-
tation, was almost confined to its propounder, but in a wider
yet very real sense, or, in other words, in its general spirit
and principles, it also, like eclecticism, entered very widely
into the creed of studious men. His analytic and inductive
method of dealing with history as a complex and ever-vary-
ing, an organic and spiritual development, was followed to a
still greater extent. In the present chapter I shall refer only
to one of the philosophical historians influenced by Guizot,
but to one of the most celebrated and most esteemed.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-58) was a high-minded and
pure-hearted man, of rare beauty of character and life. He
was a moderate and judicious, profound and sagacious
thinker. His faith in the liberalism of his Church was a
natural and amiable illusion. Some political mistakes into
which we may think he fell should not cause us to withhold
from him the admiration due to the political wisdom of which
he gave ample proof.1
He had no belief in the easy discovery of general laws of
historical evolution. He did not profess to have discovered,
or even to be aware of, any such laws himself; although, as
he jocularly observed, he heard almost every morning that
somebody had been more fortunate, and had found a hitherto
\Mt. Henry Reeve has enriched our literature with an excellent translation of
De Tocqueville's writings. They have nowhere found more appreciative readers
and reviewers than in Britain. I have felt bound to refrain from dwelling on
their general merits and characteristics, work well performed already by Alison,
Mill, and others, and simply to indicate their relation to historical philosophy.
'The Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, translated from the
French by the translator of Napoleon's Correspondence with King Joseph,' 2 vols.,
1861, renders into English the charming work of M. Gustave de Beaumont, and
supplements it with large and interesting additions.
520 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
unknown fundamental law of history by means of which the
most wonderful social improvements were to be brought
about. He had a constitutional aversion to all general his-
torical speculation, because it could not be based on a full
and accurate knowledge of the whole time and space, of the
whole mass of facts, covered by its conclusions. He could
always find scope enough for his powers of acquisition and
reflection, great as they were, within a comparatively limited
area; and he preferred cultivating a small and distinctly
defined territory thoroughly, to cultivating a vast and vague
one superficially.
But notwithstanding this jealousy of general historical
philosophy, both his 'De la Democratic en Arnerique,' 1835,
and his 'L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution,' 1856, have
great interest and value for the historical philosopher. The
former especially is an original and masterly application of
the inductive method to the study of history. Never before
had the social characteristics of a country been so faithfully
observed and skilfully analysed, or so ingeniously yet impar-
tially compared with those of a country very different in its
history, and very differently circumstanced in many ways, in
order to discover the real workings of certain dispositions or
tendencies of spirit which they possessed in common. As an
admirable exemplification of the logical processes by which
social and historical science is to be obtained, the work is
invaluable, independently of the worth of its results. Most
of these processes, indeed, Guizot had already successfully
practised in his examination of the development of European
civilisation : but it fell to De Tocqueville to employ them
with a fulness of illustration, a thoroughness, and a detail,
only possible within a more limited and manageable sphere ;
and to show that a smaller field with a more intensive and
elaborate culture would yield a harvest of results not less
rich and precious than a much larger one less carefully and
skilfully tilled.
De Tocqueville's work had an immense success. It set
a vast number of persons to theorising on the tendencies of
democracy, and to studying the institutions of the United
States. To the interest which it excited and the impulse
DE TOCQITEVILLE 521
which it gave, we owe a multitude of works on democracy
and on America, some of which are of great value, as, e.g., to
mention only the two best of those which have lately ap-
peared, the ' De la De"mocratie ' of Laveleye and the 'Ameri-
can Commonwealth ' of Prof. Bryce. They have all derived
to some extent their existence, and even the best of them
much of their merit, from the epoch-making treatise of De
Toequeville.
A part of the task, however, which he attempted in that
treatise was one which the human intellect can as yet accom-
plish with only very partial success, namely, the forecasting
of the future. Induction from the facts of history is too
difficult, and deduction from its tendencies too hypothetical,
to allow of this being done with much certainty or precision ;
hence it is not to be wondered at that several of his anticipa-
tions or prophecies have not yet been confirmed, and seem
now less probable than when they were first enunciated. It
is more remarkable that he should have been so often and so
far right ; and that he should have been always so conscious
that he might very probably be mistaken. Adequately to
appreciate the latter merit, we have only to contrast him with
a man like Auguste Comte, almost wholly destitute of humil-
ity, and consequently always sure that every vaticination of
his would be fulfilled, yet almost never making even a toler-
ably successful guess as to the course which events were
about to take either in France or elsewhere. Humility is
essential to foresight; and De Tocqueville's foresight was
largely due to his humility.
He shared in democratic convictions, but with intelligence
and in moderation. He acknowledged that democracy at its
conceivable best would be the best of all forms of government ;
the one to which all others ought to give place. And he was
fully persuaded that all others were rapidly making way for
it ; and that the movement towards it which had been so visi-
bly going on for at least a century could by no means be
arrested. He elaborated his proof of the irresistibility and
invincibility of the democratic movement, and he emphasised
and reiterated the conclusion itself, because he deemed it to
be of prime importance that men should be under no illusion
522 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
on the matter. He succeeded at once in getting the truth
generally accepted; and there has been so much confirmation
of it since 1835 that probably no one will now dream of con-
testing it. At present Russia and Turkey are the only abso-
lute monarchies in Europe, and it seems impossible that they
should long retain their exceptional positions. There is no-
where visible on the earth in our day any power capable of
resisting or crushing democracy. If there be none such it
does not follow that it will not be arrested in its progress;
but it follows that it will only be arrested by itself.
That it may be thus arrested De Tocqueville saw; that
it would be thus arrested he feared. While sensible of its
merits he was also aware of its defects, and keenly alive to
its dangers. While he recognised that it might possibly be
the best of all governments, he also recognised that it could
easily be the worst, and that it was the most difficult either
to make or to keep good. The chief aim of his work, indeed,
was to demonstrate that democracy was in imminent peril of
issuing in despotism ; and that the more thoroughly the dem-
ocratic spirit did its work in levelling and destroying social
inequalities and distinctions, just so much the less resistance
would the establishment of despotism encounter, while at the
same time so much the more grievous would be its conse-
quences. As regards France, his gloomiest forebodings were
realised. She had shown, by the Revolution of July 1830,
that she would submit neither to autocratic nor to aristo-
cratic government ; and in 1835 she was chafing under pluto-
cratic rule, rapidly becoming more democratic, and getting
largely imbued with the socialistic spirit which insists not
only on equality of rights but on equality of conditions.
The Guizot Ministry (1840-48), by blindly and obstinately-
refusing to grant the most manifestly just and reasonable
demands for electoral reform, greatly contributed to augment
the strength and violence of the democratic movement, until
at length it overthrew the monarchy, and raised up a repub-
lic, one of the first acts of which was to decree universal
suffrage. But in 1852 the workmen and peasants of France
made use of their votes to confer absolute power on the author
of a shameful and sanguinary coup d'Stat; and Caesarism was
DE TOCQTJEVILLE 523
acclaimed by 7,482,863 Ayes as gainst 238,582 Noes. There
could be no more striking exemplification or impressive warn-
ing of the liability of democracy to cast itself beneath the feet
of despotism. Yet history, so far as it has gone since De
Tocqueville wrote, has not, on the whole, shown that democ-
racy is more than liable thus to err; has not tended to prove
that it must necessarily or will certainly thus err. For the
last twenty years France has been organising herself as a de-
mocracy according to the principles of constitutional liberty.
America, even while passing through a great war, gave not
the slightest intimations of desire for a Caesar. Instead of
there being less there is far more inequality of conditions
in the United States to-day than there was in 1835. In no
other country, in fact, have such inequalities of wealth been
developed during the last half-century; and inequality of
wealth necessarily brings with it other kinds of inequality.
In no country is the establishment of a despotism so improb-
able. It should be observed, however, that the only way in
which we can conceive of such an event being brought about
is one which would be in accordance with De Tocqueville's
theory. Let the conflict between labour and capital in Amer-
ica proceed until the labourers attempt to employ their polit-
ical power in the expropriation of the capitalists; let the
democracy of America become predominantly socialistic, in
the sense of being bent on attaining the equality which re-
quires the sacrifice of justice and of liberty; and there will
happen in America what happened about two thousand years
ago, in the greatest republic of the ancient world, a Caesar
will be called for and a. Caesar will appear, and democracy
will be controlled by despotism.
'L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, ' owing to the death
of its gifted author, was left incomplete. The differences
between French society before and after the Revolution are
not brought out in it, nor are their causes. The influence
of the literary men of the eighteenth century on opinions and
events is passed over unestimated. Still the work accom-
plished much, although not all that it sought to accomplish.
It investigated the causes of the catastrophe which cast to
the ground the old French monarchy, in a manner far more
524 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
sifting and trustworthy than had previously been displayed.
The inductions it contained were based on the most labori-
ous and conscientious study of original testimonies, the
accounts and correspondence of intendants, parochial regis-
ters, parliamentary decisions, and contemporary memoirs. It
was the least declamatory, and yet the most terrible, expos-
ure of the incompetency and oppressiveness of the monarchy
which had appeared, as well as the most convincing demon-
stration that the Revolution had left essentially unaltered far
more of the governmental system of the monarchy than was
supposed. It showed that while the fall of the monarchy
was the natural consequence of its faults, the Revolution had
affected the course of the development of French history
much less than was believed, and much less than was to have
been desired. It showed, in particular, the absurdity of
attributing to the Revolution the administrative centralisa-
tion of France ; and, at the same time, the folly of the pro-
moters of the Revolution in maintaining centralisation while
desirous of fostering liberty.
VI
"We shall conclude this chapter with Barchou de Penhoen
(1801-57), one of the few French writers who have attempted
to treat of the philosophy of history as a whole. He attained
considerable eminence in general literature, and was a mem-
ber of the French Academy. His mind being of a naturally
imaginative and speculative cast, found a special satisfaction
in the study of German idealism. Besides special labours
on Fichte and Schelling, he published an ' Histoire de la
philosophic allemande depuis Leibnitz -jusqu'a Hegel ' (2
vols., 1836). In 1849 he sat in the National Assembly as a
Catholic and Legitimist ; but his Catholicism and Legitimism
were both of a very broad and liberal kind. He protested
against the coup d'etat. His most ambitious work is the
' Essai d'une philosophie de l'histoire ' (2 torn., 1854). It is
characterised by literary grace, poetical feeling, moral eleva-
tion, and considerable philosophical originality. As to the
order and nature of its contents, the following remarks may
suffice.
BARCHOU 525
It begins with the Absolute, with necessary Being, with
God. He is the source and the end of all ; everywhere pres-
ent; essentially self-conscious; infinitely and eternally opera-
tive. In the divine nature there is an intellectual evolution
so far explicable by the evolution of human thought; the
birth of an ideal world which is also a real world. God
manifests Himself in the universe. Time, space, and mat-
ter are forms of the divine activity; time of its suocessivity,
space of its simultaneity, and matter of their combination, as
it partakes alike of the mobility of time and the immobility
of space. Primitive matter is the ether. With it the mate-
rial creation starts, and from it it is evolved; in it the im-
ponderable fluids originate ; out of it arise, under the influence
of causes as yet unknown to us, the solar and planetary bodies.
In space the universe is infinite ; in time it is a continuous
evolution. Being the expression of the thought and of the
activity of God, it has no limit either in extension or dura-
tion. Our earth has not a definite relation to it as a drop of
water has to the ocean; for while the ocean is finite and con-
tains a finite number of drops, the universe is infinite and
comprises an infinity of worlds which arise and perish, coex-
ist with or succeed one another, in infinite series.1
M. Barchou proceeds to trace the general course of cos-
mical, geological, and especially biological evolution. He
denies the fixity of species. He affirms that life has always
and everywhere existed, instead of originating in a particu-
lar spot at a particular date. He believes in spontaneous
generation so far as consistent with the universality and
eternity of life. And he decidedly maintains transformism,
although admitting that it must have taken place not by in-
sensible gradations, but "by leaps."1
He next takes up historical development. Man, he con-
tends, must have arrived on earth not as a child but as a
complete man. Society was not invented by men but con-
stituted by them. The hypothesis of Rousseau and other
eighteenth-century philosophers which assign to society,
religion, and language, an intentional or artificial origin, are
baseless ; these things are the products of nature and spon-
1 Essai, t. i. 1-31. 2 T. i. 35-81.
526 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
taneity, not of chance or reflection. Man is endowed with
a threefold life, which has revealed itself, first, in speech,
religion, and association ; next, in the relations of peace and
war between peoples ; and, further, in the struggle with
nature. There is a continuous evolution of the threefold life
of humanity towards perfection; and this evolution is the
substance of history, and the immediate object of the philos-
ophy of history.1
In delineating the first stage of history, le monde primitif,
our author follows Vico and Ballanche, and represents the
earliest, societies as having been ruled and organised by divine
dynasties, by inspired legislators. The reign of the gods, he
argues, was a universal fact, rendered necessary by the very
constitution of human intelligence. No other rational ac-
count, he maintains, can be given of the origins of religion,
industry, science, and art.2
According to Barchou the life of each people is presided
over by a distinctive fundamental idea. Thus China, India,
and Persia represent three phases or elements of oriental civil-
isation. In the lives of all three the idea of the Divine is
dominant; but in China its power is seen in the annihilation
of personality, in India in the separation of social functions,
and in Persia in religious proselytism. Persia was the link
between the East and West, and the commencement ef uni-
versal history.3
The other stages of universal history are the Hellenic
world, the Eoman world, the Barbarian world, the Feudal
world, the world of the Renaissance, and the Modern world.
To each of these M. Barchou devotes a book. All this por-
tion of his work is excellent. Each world has obviously
been carefully and impartially studied ; has obviously been
made the subject of prolonged inquiry and reflection. It has,
further, been allowed naturally and slowly to disclose its
own character and significance. It has not been interpreted
by means of extraneous and alien principles or in favour
of preconceived opinions ; and it is vividly, accurately, and
artistically delineated. In a word, the books referred to bring
before us a succession of luminous, faithful, and effective
1 Essai, t. i. 85-136. 2 T. i. 139-203. 8 T. i. 207-294.
BARCHOTJ 527
pictures, full of interest and instruction, of attractiveness
and suggestiveness. They are at once truly historical and
truly philosophical.1
From them we are led to the consideration of a world in
which there are as yet no facts, and consequently no data for
inductions. In treating of this, the world of the future, M.
Barchou necessarily proceeds deductively, and arrives only
at vague and uncertain conclusions. Seeing in the develop-
ment of society from the dawn of history to the present time
the realisation of individuality, he regards it as the germ of
the societies of the future, the forms and conditions of which
are still unknown. New hierarchies, new distributions of
social functions, will arise. The work of society will be
chiefly accomplished by association ; it will be an exploita-
tion in common which becomes more and more detached from
possession. Wealth will be completely mobilised; the war
between labour and capital will cease; competition will give
place to harmony ; nature will be rendered entirely docile to
the will of man; and the peoples of the earth will be united
in the same faith and participant in the same civilisation.
The unity of the future will be far richer and more compre-
hensive than that of the middle age. Christianity will reign
in the world far more powerfully than it has ever yet done.
The kingdom of God on earth will fully come.2
But our thoughts and expectations should not be confined
to the earth. Man is related to the entire universe. The
terrestrial globe is only a portion of the universe, and far
even from being either its centre or crown. There is life in
the rest of the universe as well as on earth. Humanity is
only the fragment of the immense system of animated crea-
tion on and beyond the earth. Evolution, the general law
of nature, will not stop at the present order of things, or
come to a close with the earth. There are forces in operation
which will bring the planetary and solar bodies into collision
and form vaster masses, an endless series of mightier worlds,
each with their appropriate types of inhabitants. Beyond the
universal resurrection of which Christianity speaks, on other
earths and under other heavens, mankind will accomplish
1 Essai, t. i. 299; t. ii. 372. 2 T. ii. 375-444.
528 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
other social functions in the kingdom of God. Life and rea-
son, the universe and humanity, are ever rising upwards,
ever drawing nearer to the Eternal.1
In the historical philosophy of Barchou de Penhoen it is
easy to distinguish what must be referred to historical gen-
eralisation from what has had its source in Christian faith,
socialistic convictions, and sympathy with socialism and evo-
lutionism, German transcendentalism and French spiritual-
1 Essai, t. ii. 447-478.
2 M. Renee Lavollee is the author of a work which bears two titles, ' La morale
dans l'histoire: etude sur les principaux systemes de, philosophic de l'histoire
depuis l'antiquite jusqu'a nos jours,' 1892. The former title is altogether inap-
propriate. After devoting sixty pages to a general view of the historical theories
promulgated in antiquity, the middle ages, and the period of the renaissance, M.
Lavollee treats of those of modern times in three books. In the first of these books
he expounds the views of Bossuet and Leibniz on history ; in the second, those of
Vico, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, Turgot, Herder, and Condorcet ; and
in the third, those of the Catholic school, and of what he calls " the German
school " and " the Contemporary school." His knowledge of the history which
he has undertaken to trace is obviously inadequate. One page is all that he
assigns to Auguste Comte ; and Fr. Schlegel is set before us by him as the1 repre-
sentative of historical philosophy in Germany during the nineteenth century.
At the same time his book is written in an agreeable style, and is substantial and
satisfactory in most of its parts. Its faults are chiefly of omission. M. Lavollee
thinks that four great laws have been discovered and formulated by the philoso-
phy of history : " the absence of chance in the concatenation of facts; the unity
of the human race ; the continuity of events and of beings; and the perfectibility
of man and the continuous progress to which history testifies," pp. 382, 383.
CHAPTER IX
THE DEMOCRATIC HISTORICAL SCHOOL
France has become a democratic country within a com-
paratively short period. For many ages it was ruled by
princes almost or entirely independent of the kings from
whom they held their fiefs. Then it was slowly transformed
into the most centralised and absolute of monarchies. It was
not until the eighteenth century that public spirit and national
consciousness were so developed that there could properly be
said to be a French people, as well as a French State. The
spirit of democracy in France, — the feeling of the French
people of its own unity and of its right to govern itself, —
first became practically and conspicuously apparent in the
Revolution of 1789. It was crushed and flattered, used and
abused, by Buonaparte. It had under the reign of Charles
X. distinguished representatives, — a man like Lafayette,
orators like Foy and Manuel, a publicist like Carrel, poets
like Bdranger and Delavigne, and an historian like Sismondi.
Under Louis Philippe these multiplied into a host. One of
the first acts of the Provisional Government of 1848 was to
decree universal suffrage; and neither the Second Empire
nor any of the Governments which have succeeded it, has
ventured to revoke or restrict the right thus conferred, al-
though it is only since the re-establishment of the Republic
that there has been full freedom in exercising the right. At
the present day no European country is more democratic than
France.
In this chapter I shall endeavour to show how history has
been exhibited and interpreted by some of the advocates of
democracy most distinguished for historical insight. In
doing so I shall refer, so far as is necessary, to the theories
529
530 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IK FRANCE
of those who have sought to defend by historical considera-
tions the cause either of imperialism or of aristocracy, and to
discredit that of democracy.
Democracy had two fearless, zealous, and brilliant cham-
pions in Jules Michelet and Edgar Quinet. The name of
either can hardly be pronounced without recalling that of the
other, as for half a century they were close companions in
arms, and intimately bound to each other by joy, sorrow, and
labour, the same triumphs and defeats, the same convictions
and hopes. Their lives were so associated that death could
not separate their memories.
M. Michelet was born at Paris in 1798. His parents were
poor, and he was inured in youth to privation and labour;
but they were too noble to sacrifice his future to their own
interests, and so he was sent to the Lyceum instead of being
apprenticed to a trade. He showed extraordinary aptitude
for study. At the age of twenty-three he was appointed a
professor of history and philosophy in the College Rollin, and
began to display that marvellous power of influencing and
impassioning youth which he afterwards exercised in more
conspicuous positions.
His first important publications appeared in 1827. One of
them was merely a summary and the other only a translation.
But the summary, ' Precis d'histoire moderne, ' was one which
only a true historian of exceptional knowledge and still more
exceptional insight, a man of genius with the powers of a
great literary artist, could have made. And the translation
was still more important. By his ' Principes de la philoso-
phic de l'histoire, traduites de la Scienza Nuova de Vico,'
Michelet may almost be said to have made the great Neapol-
itan philosopher known to France, and, indeed, helped con-
siderably to make him known to all the rest of Europe, Italy
excepted. The dissertation prefixed to the volume gave a
decidedly truer estimate of Vico's position in the history of
speculation, of his merits and services, than had ever been
given before.1
1 "Michelet," I have elsewhere said, "most wisely renounced the idea of a
literal rendering, and applied himself to reproduce with faithfulness and vivid-
MICHBLET 531
The mind of M. Michelet was naturally much influenced
by his study of the ' Scienza Nuova, ' one of the profoundest,
greatest of books, — the philosophical complement of Dante's
' Divina Commedia.' "I am born," he said, "of Virgil and
of Vico." Vico taught him that divine ideas are manifested
through human actions ; that the providence of God permeates
the world of nations ; that the idea of God is the productive
and conservative principle, of civilisation ; that as is the re-
ligion of a community, so will be, in the main, its morals,
its laws, its general history: and all such truth as this he
eagerly imbibed, notwithstanding that he had drunk, even
too deeply, of the wine of Voltaire.
He presented his work on Vico to Cousin ; and it was at
the house of Cousin that he first met Quinet, who, by a curi-
ous coincidence, had shortly before presented to the chief of
the eclectic school a translation of Herder's 'Ideas towards a
Philosophy of the History of Mankind. ' They were drawn
to each other at once as by a moral magnetism. They had
already become engrossed in the same subjects, and were
dealing with them in the same spirit. Their principles,
their aspirations, their intellectual interests, their moral
sympathies, their tastes, were in full accordance. While
both were men of genius and of strong will, finely cultured,
widely learned, poetical, imaginative, of delicate emotional
susceptibility, and ardently patriotic, yet the gifts of each
were so distinct, the individuality of each so marked, that
rivalry between them was impossible.
The philosophy of Vico is a generalisation of the history
of Rome ; and hence the student of Vico must have the his-
tory of Rome always before his mind. Not unnaturally,
therefore, we find Michelet visiting Rome in 1830, and pub-
lishing in 1831 an ' Histoire romaine. ' It is a work in which
inaccuracies are not difficult to discover; yet one which
shows a great power of divination and peculiar charms of
style. In the same year appeared his ' Introduction a l'his-
ness the substance and spirit of his author. He so succeeded that the great
majority even of persons capable of reading the original will find it much more
profitable to read his translation, itself a work of genius. It has its defects and
inaccuracies, but to emphasise these (as many critics have done) is not only un-
generous but unjust." — ' Vico,' p. 230.
532 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FKANCE
toire universelle. ' It is the work of his which has most inter-
est for us in our present research ; and I shall soon return to it.
In 1833 he began the publication of the magnum opus of
his life, his ' Histoire de France.' In the following year,
Guizot appointed him his substitute in the Chair of History
at the Faculte" des Lettres. At this time, and for several
years after, his mind was much under the influence of Gui-
zot's historical views. He speaks of him as his " illustrious
master and friend ; " he it was, he says in the preface (of
1833) to the ' History of France, ' who taught him to " trace
the course of ideas underneath the course of events '* ; he it
was, he says in his Inaugural Discourse at the Sorbonne,
who, "freeing science from all ephemeral passions, all par-
tiality, all falsehood of matter and style, raised history to the
dignity of law."1 In 1838 he was appointed to the Chair of
History and Morals at the College of France. The volumes
1 M. Miehelet published in 1837 a work on which he himself set a high value,
but in which there is a good deal that is of a rather whimsical character,—
' Origines du droit francais cherchees dans les symboles et les formules du
droit universel.' It was designed to show how laws were developed by society
in their earliest shape, when the processes of thought which they contain were
latent in symbols, in significant imagery. Its central idea was derived from
Vico, and a considerable portion of its materials from the stores of erudition of
Jacob Grimm. The following passage of the preface gives a general conception
of its philosophy: "There are two questions with respect to legal symbols—
their nationality and their age. The latter is of difficult decision. It has been
well said that there are three ages in history; the sacred, the heroic, and the
human, or, in other words, the sacerdotal, the military, and the critical. In
the first age law appears as a substance, as an immovable symbol ; in the second
as an act; in the third as an intention. But generally one nation expresses
strongly only one of these three. Thus, among Asiatic peoples, India represents
the sacred age, Persia the heroic age, and Judea the human or critical age. It
is not always easy to determine to what age a symbol should be referred. One
may generally recognise clearly enough a sacerdotal or heroic character; but
rarely can one assign dates to symbols. Their origin was so natural and so
necessary that they seemed to have existed always. Whilst they were in use
they were unregarded, and as soon as they became obsolete they were forgotten.
But that which renders it specially difficult to fix the age of symbols is, that
such a particular symbol, such a poetic fact, which might naturally be attributed
to a very ancient epoch, is discovered in modern barbarism. . . . We have
studied the juridical symbol under the two points of view of its age and its
nationality, which diversify it infinitely. Nevertheless, whatever variety may
be discovered, unity predominates. It is an imposing spectacle to find the
principal legal symbols common to all countries, throughout all ages. . . . Unlike
the sceptic Montaigne, who so curiously ferreted out the customs of different
nations to detect their moral discordances, I have found a consentaneous harmony
among them all."
MICHELBT 533
of his ' History of France ' appeared in regular succession till
1844 — the sixth volume, which was published in that year,
closing with the reign of Louis XI. These six volumes are
the most perfect portion of his historical writings. In them
we find an historical philosophy on the whole sound, wedded
to an art of historical painting the most wonderful, and
producing a true resuscitation of the past, both in body and
spirit. They are the creations of a subtle, varied, powerful
imagination, working patiently on all the data which a vast
erudition could supply, and under the guidance of elevated
and comprehensive ideas. They are free from all traces of
party bias and sectarian passion ; just towards all classes and
institutions of medieval France. They exhibit the life and
mind of the people in each age, their hopes and anxieties,
enthusiasms and sorrows, with a distinctness and vividness
far superior to all former histories. If they show that their
author had certain prejudices, these do not much affect the
accuracy of his narrative. Generalisations so abound that
many may be doubtful, but all are suggestive.
Instead of proceeding uninterruptedly with the publication
of his ' History of France, ' Michelet made a gigantic leap for-
wards from the age of Louis XL to the French Revolution,
the history of which appeared, in seven volumes, between
1847 and 1853. The reason which he himself gives for this
is that he felt he could not comprehend the monarchical ages
without establishing in himself the soul and faith of the peo-
ple. Another reason, doubtless, was that the French Revo-
lution had become the burning topic of the day; and still
another, that he and Quinet had become engaged in a severe
struggle with the priest party on the question of the freedom
of university teaching, and were opposing the Revolution to
Ultramontanism. The assailants, Veuillot and his coadju-
tors, were characteristically violent and unscrupulous in
their attacks ; and the assailed, not content to stand merely
on the defensive, turned on their foes, and exposed their
cause and aims by lectures on " The Jesuits, " and " Ultra-
montanism" (Quinet), and on "Priests, Women, and Fami-
lies" (Michelet), and kindred themes. The excitement
produced was immense. The Government, represented by
534 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Guizot and Salvandy, vainly tried at first to control the
storm, and then suppressed the courses of the two belligerent
professors. Michelet was suspended from his office in 1847.
It was under the influence of the feelings natural to this
struggle with the priests and the doctrinarian ministers of
State, that, abandoning for a time the older history of France,
he threw himself into the study of the French Revolution.
The result was a great work, which represents the inner
movement, the emotional life of the time, in a succession of
pictures as remarkable, from an artistic point of view, as
those in which Carlyle has represented its outward move-
ment, its external agitation. The whole soul of the author
is in it. It glows through every page. Of all histories of
the Revolution, Michelet's is the warmest and most ani-
mated, the most engrossing and exciting. Yet it lacks
order, comprehensiveness, and evidence ; does not give a con-
tinuous and full account of the facts, and rarely indicates
proofs even where they are most needed. Although no one
doubts that it was preceded by an eager and laborious inves-
tigation of the sources, it contains numerous inaccuracies.
In every volume there are not only the most masterly pic-
tures, flashes of insight which certify their own truth, keen
and fine psychological observations, and all the marks of a
rare genius and a rich humanity, but also numerous and
manifest traces of caprice, of morbid susceptibility, and of
prejudice. The unquestionable sincerity of Michelet did
not prevent his showing himself in this work lamentably
unjust. His hatred of England led him into only a few
erroneous judgments : his hatred of the priest caused him to
take an utterly false view of the Revolution as a whole, and
to represent it as essentially opposed to Christianity, and
itself the appropriate object of a higher worship. Most of
the prominent actors in the Revolution who did not belong
to the ' Mountain ' are treated by him ungenerously. The
venality and other faults of Mirabeau are extenuated. The
crimes of Danton are sought to be explained away, imaginary-
merits are assigned to him, and his faculties and character
immoderately glorified. Michelet claims to have been the
first to write the history of the Revolution from the point of
view "not of any party or man, the Constituents, Girondists,
JI1CHELET 535
or Robespierre, but from that of the principal actor, the
anonymous hero, the people." And there is a considerable
measure of truth in the claim. Love to the people was his
predominant passion, and it inspires every page of his his-
tory of the Revolution. He has continuously tried to con-
sider the Revolution in relation to the people, and has often
succeeded in this better than his predecessors had done. He
has not attributed it to a party to the same extent as Lamar-
tine attributed it to the Girondists, or identified it with a
man as fully as Louis Blanc idehtified it with Robespierre.
Nevertheless he has by no means made good his promise.
He has generally conceived of and represented the people in
a sectarian and partisan way ; as the poor in opposition to
the rich. To justify the people he has palliated the crimes
of sanguinary ruffians. To personify the people he has con-
verted into an idol the memory of the demagogue who en-
couraged the perpetrators of the massacres of September, who
instigated the creation of the Revolutionary tribunal, and who
did more even than Robespierre to transform the Revolution
into the Terror.
The Revolution of 1848 restored Michelet to his professor-
ship for a short time, but he was again silenced in 1851.
After the coup d'Stat he refused to take the oaths of alle-
giance to Louis Napoleon, and was, in consequence, dismissed
from his offices. In 1855 he resumed his 'History of France '
at where he had left off, and carried it on to where his 'His-
tory of the Revolution ' began, eleven volumes filling up the
intervening void. These volumes show no decrease of tal-
ent. They abound in original and lucid views. Many of
their pages are beautiful and precious, and even those which
offend us interest us. But they also show us their author,
instead of correcting his faults, persisting in them and add-
ing to them. He continues to leave his authorities unindi-
cated; he gives himself up still more to divinations, often
baseless and fanciful ; he judges persons more according to
his likes and dislikes, and explains events more by referring
them to trivial causes ; at times even he makes very infelici-
tous applications of sickly and semi-prurient conceptions,
akin to those which he has expounded in "L'Amour" and
"LaFemme."
536 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
I need not speak of Michelet's incomparable prose poems
on "The Bird," "The Insect," "The Sea," and "The Moun-
tain." His ' Bible de rhumanite", ' 1865, concerns us more,
yet need not detain us. Each great civilisation is regarded
as a verse written by the life of a people in a universal, eter-
nal, ever-advancing Bible, or gospel of humanity. India,
Persia, Egypt, Judea, Greece, Rome, Christianity, are delin-
eated as stages of this revelation of reason and justice ; and
are set before us in a series of pictures loosely strung
together. Some of these pictures, as, e.g., those of India,
Persia, and Greece, are beautiful and moderately accurate;
but none of them presuppose in their composition sustained
labour or comprehensive reflection. Christianity is poorly
described, and is, indeed, caricatured. The Stoic is exalted
above the Christian. Men are exhorted to turn their backs
on the mystic ideas which religions present to them, and to
put their trust in science, industry, and moral enlightenment.
In the last years of his life Michelet was occupied with
the history of France in the nineteenth century. He died on
the 9th of February 1874. 1
I return to the work in which he has presented his histori-
cal philosophy in its most general form — the 'Introduction
to Universal History.' It belongs to the period of his
spiritual health, when Vico and Guizot had great influence
over his mind, although he had a faith in progress unknown
to Vico, and democratic sympathies which Guizot never felt.
It is brief, unlaboured; it touches only the summits of things,
aims merely at fixing the positions which the chief nations
of the world have occupied, or still occupy, in the history of
humanity. When its author says that he might as well have
entitled it an ' Introducion to the History of France,' because
" logic and history " have proved to him that his "gjorious
country is henceforth the pilot of the vessel of humanity,"
and assures us that patriotism has had no share in his reach-
ing this conclusion, we can only smile at his naivete", and
suggest that France may find quite enough to do in steering
her own bark.
1 Michelet, 'Ma Jeunesse'; Gabriel Monot), 'Jules Michelet,' 1875; Jules
Simon, ' Notice historique sur M. Michelet,' 1877.
MICHELBT 537
The point of view from which Michelet surveys universal
history had been previously occupied by Hegel. What he
sees is in great part what Hegel had seen, as it is in great
part what every eye must see which looks from the same posi-
tion. Whether or not he borrowed from Hegel I cannot ven-
ture to determine. His book appeared in the year in which
Hegel died; but at that date Hegel's views on the course of
history were only known to the public by a very brief and
dry summar}' of them in his ' Grundlinien der Philosophie
des Eechts,' published in 1821. If we compare Michelet'.s
essay with that summary we must fail, I believe, to find in
any sentence of the former a reflection or echo of any expres-
sion in the latter. And we cannot reasonably compare it
with any of the works in which Hegel's views on history
were more fully expounded, as these were all posthumous
publications. His ' Philosophie der Geschichte ' first ap-
peared in 1837.
The real inspirer of Michelet with the conception that his-
tory is the progressive development of freedom was very
probably his friend Quinet, to whom it had occurred when
occupied with the translation of Herder, as being a funda-
mental truth overlooked by that author. In the ' Introduc-
tion ' to his translation, published in 1825 (i.e., four years
later than Hegel's ' Philosophie des Rechts,' and six years
earlier than Michelet's essay), Quinet gave eloquent expres-
sion to his opinion that Herder required to be thus corrected ;
and that, to use his own words, " History is, from beginning
to end, the drama of liberty, the protest of the human race
against the world which enchains it, the triumph of the infi-
nite over the finite, the freedom of the spirit, the reign of
the soul." This view Quinet certainly did not derive from
a knowledge of Hegel, but from dissatisfaction with Herder.
As he had it, however, and expressed it with the utmost
clearness, at the date mentioned, there seems to be no reason
for supposing that Michelet got it from any one else. Hegel
must be credited with the priority of conception ; but there
is no warrant for regarding Quinet or Michelet as indebted
to him for the conception.
At the outset of the work now under consideration, Miche-
538 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
let declares history to be the story of the interminable war
between man and nature, between the spirit and matter,
liberty and fatality. He laments that the doctrine of fatal-
ism is taking possession of science, philosophy, and history.1
Pronouncing that doctrine pernicious in history as else-
where, he undertakes to show that, notwithstanding many
appearances to the contrary, history is the progressive tri-
umph of liberty. Nature, he says, remains always the same,
but man changes for the better. The Alps have not in-
creased, but we have made a path across the Simplon. The
winds and wayes are as capricious as ever, but steam has ren-
dered us independent of their caprices. If, following the
course of the sun and the magnetic currents, we proceed from
east to west, from India to France, the fatal power of nature
will be found showing itself less at each station.
Michelet starts with India, and describes man as there
utterly overpo.vered by nature — as like a feeble child on its
mother's breast, alternately spoiled and beaten, and intoxi-
cated rather than nourished by^ a milk too strong and stimu-
lating for it.2 He passes onwards to show us Persia as the
country in which liberty commences to manifest itself in
fatality. The Persian discards with hatred the Hindu mul-
tiplicity of gods, and takes refuge in the thought of a divine
power of pure and intellectual light which will eventually
conquer the principle of darkness and matter. The next
stage is Egypt. The very soil of Egypt is the gift of the
Nile, and the Egyptian necessarily felt himself entirely
dependent on nature, yet, thanks to his faith in the immor-
tality of the soul, he did not wholly sacrifice to it .his per-
1 In a note he expressly exempts Guizot from the reproach of favouring the
belief in historical fatalism. He afterwards concurred with Quinet in represent-
ing him as specially censurable on this ground.
2 Michelet is like Hegel in following the course of the sun, but unlike him in
starting with India instead of China. But why, we naturally ask, pass over
China, which is still farther east than India? Is it not because man is less
enslaved in China than in India, less the victim either of superstition or of
despotism ? If so, the course of history fails at its very outset to coincide with
the course of the sun. We naturally ask also, Why should the course of history
coincide with the course of the sun? How comes it that freedom should follow
the same path with an object the movement of which is mechanically necessitated ?
Is freedom, then, but an appearance, and really subject to fatality? How is it
that there is even an appearance of such subjection? Michelet gives no answer
to these questions.
MICHELET 539
sonality; the aspirations crushed in this world betook
themselves to another. Human liberty next pursues its
course from Egypt to Judea — which is placed in the East
only to curse it and all its creeds in the name of unity and
the spirit. Among the Jews nature is dethroned in the
sphere of religion, and God is recognised as apart from and
ahove nature.1
Proceeding with his argument, our author points out that
Asia is a comparatively uniform mass : that Europe is vastly
more articulated; that it is consequently more perfectly
organised; and that it shows its superiority by a higher
development of freedom. He compares and contrasts Greece
and Rome with Asia and with each other. Much as both
did — beautiful as was the one, and sublime and strong as
was the other — they left the arts of peace to the conquered
and enslaved, and so that victory of man over nature which
is called industry was pursued by them but a little way.
Rome dreamed that she had subdued the world and succeeded
in building up a universal and eternal city; but the slave,
the barbarian, and the Christian protested each in their own
way that she was deceived, and each in their own way con-
tributed to destroy the delusive unity which bore her name.
While she dreamed, her physical and moral dissolution has-
tened on ; Greece and Asia, whom she had vanquished by her
arms, invaded and conquered her by their beliefs. Among
the religions which reached her from Asia was one profoundly
different from the rest; one which immolated the flesh and
glorified the spirit, while the others immersed and defiled
man in matter. It — Christianity — is still the only refuge
of a religious soul. " L'autel a perdu ses honneurs, l'huma-
nite' s'en eloigne peu a peu; mais, je vous en prie, oh! dites-
le moi, si vous le saves, s'est-il eleve" un autre autel?"
After referring to the barbarian invasions, the kingdom of
Charlemagne, the Crusades, the medieval organisation of the
Church or empire of the spirit, and of the State or empire
of force, and affirming that the Me, liberty, the heroic prin-
1 Michelet wisely overlooks the fact that Judea is not situated to the west of
Egypt. He wisely lets go consistency, and so escapes erring like Hegel, who,
rather than allow that freedom could run in any other than a straight line, made
Palestine an appendage of Persia.
540 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
ciple of the world, has slowly but gradually triumphed, as is
evident alike in science, religion, and industry, Michelet
proceeds to show what part the political persons named Ger-
many, Italy, England, and France, have taken in the enfran-
chisement of the human race. This is much the most carefully
executed portion of his work, and it is illustrated and sup-
plemented by very interesting notes.
He starts with the thought that Europe is a complex organ-
ism, of which the unity, soul, and life are not in this or that
part, but in the disposition or relationship and interaction of
its parts, so that any one part, any one of its peoples, is only
to be understood through the others. Then he delineates the
character of Germany as it has expressed itself in history,
literature, and manners. The renunciation of self, the devo-
tion of man to man and of man to woman, sympathy, inde-
cision, mysticism, pantheism, — these are, he thinks, its chief
features. Germany is "the India of Europe, vast, vague,
unsettled, prolific, like the pantheistic Proteus, its god."
The Italian genius he regards as forming in almost all
respects a contrast to the German ; as not less strongly and
persistently individual and independent than the other is soft
and easily disciplined. The Italian cannot consent to sacri-
fice his personality even to God, and much less to man ; he
is capable of the highest devotion to a definite cause or inter-
est, but not to an individual, nor in the service of a vague
idea or feeling. He is the man of the city, not of the family,
or tribe, or country. Politics, jurisprudence, art of the kind
which is passionate yet severe, are the departments in which
he excels. Michelet insists strongly on the perpetuity of the
Italian character, its essential identity in ancient and modern
times. He maintains that the German influence on it has
been but external and superficial ; and that the inhabitants
of the different districts of Italy still display the same pecu-
liarities of talent and disposition by which they were distin-
guished in the days of the Roman Republic.
In Germany and Italy, he goes on to say, fatality is still
strong ; moral freedom is still borne down by the powerful
influences of race, locality, and climate ; in both, races and
ideas are imperfectly or unequally mixed. The civilisation
which is the least simple and natural, the most complex and
MICHELET 541
artificial, the most European, the most human and free, is
that of France. France is much more a person than Ger-
many or Italy, better organised, greatly more centralised, —
indeed, France only has a true centre and head. French
genius is essentially social and active; its bent is towards
war, politics, argument. What it seeks in war is not selfish
gain but proselytism, the assimilation of intelligences, the
conquest of wills. In literature it displays itself to most
advantage in rhetoric and eloquence; it is unequalled in
prose, but deficient in poetical feeling. The spirit of the
French people is profoundly democratic, and has always been
so in a large measure.
England is the antithesis of France, and explains France
by contrast. England is " human pride personified in a peo-
ple." Its pride punishes itself by internal self-contradiction,
the antagonism of feudalism and industry, two powers which
agree only in an insatiable thirst for gain that leads to life-
weariness and despair. The Satanic school is the most repre-
sentative phase of English literature. The English genius
is aristocratic and heroic. England entered first among
modern nations into the field in the struggle for liberty, but
has no real love of liberty. It wishes liberty without equal-
ity, which is a selfish and impious liberty; whereas France
seeks liberty with equality, which is alone a just and sacred
liberty. It is France, therefore, which must inaugurate the
coming era of a new unity, which will this time be a free
unity. Every solution either of social or intellectual prob-
lems is sterile and unsuccessful until it has been interpreted,
translated, and popularised by France. France is the word
of Europe as Greece was of Asia.
Perhaps few of these positions as to Germany, Italy, Eng-
land, and France are wholly true; probably a considerable
number of them are not far from being wholly false. Yet
if they had been all true, if Michelet's whole book had been
irreproachable both in its reasonings and facts, we would
obviously not have had a science of history before us, but
only an account of a single aspect of history, of one phase
of its development. Even that aspect or phase is merely
described, not explained. We are told that liberty has pro-
gressed from age to age ; that nation after nation has contrib-
542 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOPvY IN FRANCE
uted more or less to its growth : we are not shown the course
of causation through which, in each age and nation, the
result has been brought about. A line of thought is run
through history just sufficient to connect the principal States
which have risen and fallen with the lapse of time, and the
general truth is established that all the arts of oppression
have ever been found insufficient permanently to prevent the
advance of liberty. This is a high and consoling truth ; one,
it may well be, than which history can show us none nobler or
more precious ; but it wants the precision of a scientific law,
and is certainly insufficient of itself to constitute a science.
History shows us a progressive realisation of freedom. It
does not follow that history is the realisation of freedom —
that and nothing more. In the progressive realisation of
freedom there may be an historical truth, yet not the whole
truth of history, not the definition of history. Growth in
freedom is only one of several facts all equally essential to
humanity and its development. Truth, beauty, and morality
can no more be resolved into freedom than freedom into any
of them. Yet they belong no less than it to the substance of
mind, and their evolution belongs no less than its to the sub-
stance of history.
II
Edgar Quinet was born at Bourg in 1803.1 His father, a
firm republican, devoted to scientific research, just, inde-
pendent, and austere in character, was an army commissioner
under the Republic and during the early years of the Empire.
His mother, born near Gevena, a Protestant but of most
catholic spirit, and a woman of clear cultured intelligence
and of rare sweetness and richness of disposition, was the
centre of her son's affections, and the light and inspiration
1 The student of Quinet should consult, in addition to the works which I have
brought under review, M. Quinet's 'Histoire de mes idees,' 'Correspondence:
Lettres a sa mere,' and 'Lettres d'exil'; Madame Quinet's 'Me'moires d'exil,'
and ' Paris, Journal du Siege ' ; C. L. Chassin's ' Edgar Quinet, sa vie et son
ceuvre,' 1859; Richard Heath's 'Edgar Quinet, His Early Life and Writings,'
1881 ; and Prof. Dowden's ' Studies in Literature,' 1883. It would be a valuable
contribution to our literature if Mr. Heath were to give us ' Edgar Quinet, His
Later Life and Writings,' as no one has treated of Quinet with more knowledge,
insight, and sympathy than he has done.
QUINET 543
of his early life. Both parents hated Napoleon, and refrained
from even mentioning his name, yet their boy soon became one
of his idolaters. It was only with a painful struggle, after
he had reached middle life and contributed to create and
spread the Napoleonic legend, that he was able to emancipate
himself from the tyranny which the memory of the Conqueror
exercised over his imagination. He was educated at Cha-
rolles, Bourg, Lyons, and Paris. He early began to cultivate
poetry, history, and philosophy; to study diligently many
subjects; to read the best books in various languages; and
to form literary projects. As he began, so he continued.
His whole life was a course of self-education, carried on
through meditation, the study of books, the close observation
of events, and foreign travel. His pen was seldom at rest,
and its products were very varied — poems, political pam-
phlets, histories, impressions of travel, philosophical and
theological disquisitions, &c.
In 1823 an English translation of Herder's ' Philosophy
of the History of Humanity ' fell into Quinet's hands. It
led him to learn German, and to translate the work of Her-
der into French. This translation (1825-27), prefaced by an
able Introduction, was his first publication of importance.
In 1827-28 he was in Germany, and deeply immersed in the
study of German philosophy, literature, and art, intimate
with Creutzer, occupied wih Schelling, and enthusiastic over
Tieck. When at Heidelberg in 1827 he published an ' Essai
surles ceuvres de Herder.' As this 'Essai ' and the 'Intro-
duction a la philosophie de l'histoire, ' not only show us how
thoroughly he had adopted and assimilated what was true in
Herder, but exhibit to us his own historical philosophy in a
general form and at its earliest stage, they demand from us
special attention.
Quinet may almost be said to have found himself in Her-
der; to have had himself revealed to himself by Herder's
book as in a mirror. Herder is in some measure at the bottom
of all that he has attempted and accomplished. He accepted
Herder's central thoughts as his principles, Herder's aims
as his own purposes. He thus came to the study of history
with the same comprehensive conception as Herder of man's
relation to nature and of humanity in itself, and with the
544 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
same catholic spirit. Almost all that is true in Herder is
presupposed in Quinet.
But there was a weak side, an element of error, in Herder.
He was right in holding that all nature is related to man,
and conditional of the histroy of man; but wrong in that
he exaggerated the power of nature over man, and left the
impression that the moral world is only the product of the
natural world, the laws of history simply the laws of nature
manifesting themselves through a particular organism. Qui-
net, however, was even from the first no servile disciple of
Herder, but a free critic and impartial judge as well as a dis-
ciple, and he not only never fell into this grave error, but
assigned the utmost importance to its antagonistic truth.
He founds on the truth which is in Herder, but at least as
much on the truth which Herder overlooks. Far from
regarding human history as merely natural history (eine
reine Naturgeschichte), he insists that there is in it a some-
thing altogether peculiar and distinctive — a something no-
where found in nature, but which struggles against, subdues,
and uses nature. What this something is we know and can
name, because we have it within us and can feel it. It is
the Will. The Will which we are conscious of in our-
selves, and in virtue of which we resist the force of circum-
stances, the seductions and oppression of society, was also in
our earliest ancestors, to render them capable of resisting the
tyranny of physical nature. When Cato slew himself in
order to escape from a world where he could no longer be his
own master, when More, and Russell, and others ascended
the scaffold for a cause which they deemed worthy of their
blood, their actions may have been more heroic than that of
the first man who, in the exercise of his free-will, confronted
unintelligent nature, and strove to determine his own future;
but although different in form, these two orders of action
were one in principle, alike springing from the activity of
the mind itself. This internal self-activity is no prodigy
which heaven creates for a daj- and never renews, is no
special gift conferred only on highly favoured individuals,
but what is most essential in man and the root of all his
history. History is from beginning to end the development
and display of liberty, the continuous protestation of the
QUINET 545
mind of the human race against the world which oppresses
and enchains it, the process through which the soul gradu-
ally secures and realises its freedom.
Thus regarding history as the manifestation of free-will,
Quinet pronounces against subjecting it to any rigid formula.
Its course is not a straight line, but tortuous ; instead of mov-
ing direct to its end, it has gone back upon itself a hundred
times. There is, however, a general movement which is on
the whole upward and onward. The Me only gradually dis-
engages itself from the universe which surrounds it, as the
sculptor only gradually disengages from his block of marble
the image which originally existed merely within himself.
It rejects by degrees all that is foreign to itself, all that is
contrary to a complete display of its nature, to perfect free-
dom. It progresses in a path which is substantially a vast
and unending evolution from the general to the particular.
Human personality at first diffuses itself through the im-
mensities of space and time, animating with its own life the
-wandering hosts of heaven, the mighty seas, the teeming
earth, the mountains, forests, and floods. In this stage of
his existence — one which may be studied in India — man,
embracing all, adoring all, forgetting only himself, has a
cosmogony and a theogony, but no proper history. With-
drawing from the waste vagueness of the physical universe,
the spirit then proceeds to confine itself in empires — Media,
Persia, Egypt, Assyria — with which its existence is so
bound up that it has no individual force or worth. Another
step, and personality, although still half confounded with
the city and borrowing thence its vigour, is seen to have
gained greatly b}r concentration. With Greece and Rome
the city is broken, and now the Me, the spirit, alone with
itself, finds in itself an infinity surpassing that with which
it started, the true infinity, the Christian universe. This
infinite it again proceeds to divide, to analyse, seeking to
explain and derive it wholly from its own self. Hence the
Reformation, Cartesianism, the Revolution have been, and
an unknown future will be. Humanity wanders like Ulysses
from land to land, from sea to sea, from adventure to adven-
ture, in quest of a lost home. Impelled and guided by an
invisible hand and divine instincts, it never rests long con-
546 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FKANCE
tent in any dwelling-place. India and China, Babylon,
Palmyra, Ecbatana, Memphis, Athens, Rome, and other
countries and cities, it has lodged in for some hour of its
life, some age of time ; but finding in none of them what it
sought, it has forsaken them one after another, and is still in
search of its Ithaca.
It is a natural consequence of Quinet's attaching the im-
portance which he does to the fact of will or personality in
history, that he should strongly insist on the necessity of
every man who would understand history studying his own
nature. He who would comprehend the life of a hero, or of
a nation, or of humanity, must seek the principles of expla-
nation within himself. He has there the key to all history.
If we would give a true basis to historic science, we must
"start from the narrow sphere of the individual Me, and
thence ascend, step by step, along the succession of empires
and peoples, up to the hut of Evander, the tent of Jacob, and
the palm-tree of Zoroaster."
In 1829, Quinet was in Greece, as member of a scientific
commission sent to explore the Morea; in 1832-33 he travelled
in Italy; and in 1834 he was again in Germany. Wherever
he went, it was not as an ordinary sight-seer, but as an earn-
est and sympathetic student of nature, of historical monu-
ments, of literature, of men and their ways. The fruits of
his travels in the years indicated, and of those in later years,
have not been lost to posterity. They have gone to enrich a
number of admirable and important writings which have
exercised a powerful influence on modern thought. The
writings to which I refer have for their common aim to show
the significance of nationality in itself and in relation to
cosmopolitanism; to explain and delineate the spirit and
characteristics of the nationalities of Europe ; and to stir up
in the peoples of Europe a sense both of their own rights and
of their duties to one another. Nowhere else has the frater-
nity of nations been more sympathetically and effectively
inculcated. Modern Greece, Roumania, Poland, Italy, Spain,
Holland, have good reason to honour his name. His ardent
patriotism was singularly free from jealousy and exclusive-
ness ; his love of France only helped him the more fully to
QUINET 547
realise the sacredness of the independence and rights even of
the weakest among the peoples.1
In 1839, Quinet became Professor of Foreign Literatures
of the Faculty of Letters at Lyons ; and as such delivered,
during the years 1839 and 1840, a course of lectures on the
Civilisations of Antiquity. It contained the materials out
of which he composed his ' Ge"nie des Religions, ' published
in 1841. In this work he has carefully developed an idea
which he regarded as of prime importance to the right under-
standing of history: the idea that the fundamental and gen-
erative principle in civilisation is the religious principle;
that the political form assumed by society is universally
determined by its religious beliefs, and moulded on its reli-
gious institutions. He insists that what raises man above
an animal subject to mere natural laws and forces, and by
uniting man to man originates society, is the apprehension
of divinity; that the fetich assemblies around it the tribe,
and a national god brings forth a nation ; that religious unity
founds political unity; and that all the revolutions which
have taken place in the social relations of human beings have
been owing to the modification of their thoughts about God.
Later works — 'Le Christianisme et la Revolution frangaise, '
'Les J^suites,' 'L'Ultramontanisme,' and 'La Revolution'
— are pervaded by the same principle, and apply it to the
elucidation of medieval and modern civilisation. The high-
est point of view from which the works of this group can be
surveyed collectively, and in connection, is as an attempted
demonstration of the doctrine that the idea of divinity is the
root of civilisation, and the gradual apprehension of that
idea the regulative principle of the history of civilisation.
Quinet was not the first to avow the doctrine. It had pre-
viously found some measure of expression through Fichte,
Baader, and Krause, Goerres and Steffens, Schelling and
Hegel, &c. To some extent it underlay the whole teaching
1 No man has done more than Quinet to delineate and explain the spirit and
characteristics of the nationalities of Europe. In proof it is sufficient to refer to
the following works: in vol. iv. of his 'CEuvres Completes,' "Les Revolutions
d'ltalie; " in vol. v., " La Grece moderne," " Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde," and
" Fondation de la Republique des Provinces-Unies ; " in fi., " Les Roumains," and
" Allemagne et Italie ; " in ix., " Mes vacances en Espagne ; " and in xi., " Reveil
d'un grand Peuple."
548 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOEY IN FBANCE
of the Theocratic School. It first received from Quinet, how-
ever, its adequate historical proof and illustration.
In 1841, he was transferred from Lyons to a chair of
Southern Literature, instituted expressly for him at the Col-
lege of France. His teaching excited great enthusiasm
among the students of Paris, but brought him into conflict
with the clerical party and the Government. He was sus-
pended from his office in 1845, about two years before his
friend Michelet was similarly silenced. In 1848, he was
among the first to enter the Tuileries, gun in hand. He was
restored by the Republic to his chair, and chosen by the elec-
tors of his native district to represent them in the National
Assembly. From 1848 to 1 851 he laboured by speech and
writing to prevent the faults committed by his own party,
and to counteract the operations of anarchists and reaction-
ists. He did what he could to prevent that wicked act, the
French expedition to Rome. He foresaw the triumph of
Louis Napoleon, as he had foreseen the fall of Louis Philippe.
The coup d^itat cast him into exile; and for twenty years it
was his lot to suffer those pains which none but the banished
patriot himself can know. Sustained, however, by a good
conscience and by the perfect sympathy of the worthy com-
panion of his life, he laboured without ceasing through all
these weary years for the instruction of his countrymen and
of his race.
Of the writings which he published during his exile sev-
eral directly relate to the Philosophy of History. The first
two requiring to be mentioned are specially occupied with
the history of France. One of them is the article published
in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes ' (Jan v. 1855) under the
title, "Philosophie de l'Histoire de France;" the other, 'La
Revolution,' is an elaborate work, the product of ten years'
labour. Both grew out of their author's meditations on the
national demoralisation visible in the collapse of the Repub-
lic and the rise of the Second Empire. The review article,
owing to its wider scope, has the greater claim on our attention.
It was an eloquent and impassioned protest against the
dominant historical philosophy in France, as from beginning
to end an affirmation of the fatalism of facts, and a denial of
the claims of justice in estimating the character of national
QUTNET 549
events. That philosophy is affirmed to be at once a symptom
and cause of the sickness of society in France. Nations, it
is said, had irretrievably fallen much more frequently through
their infatuated faith in false ideas, or infatuated rejection of
the truth, than through the power of their enemies : and as
France was cherishing a number of grave errors regarding
her own past, she was in imminent danger, if every man who
could use a pen did not come forward in defence of the
simple truth which was discarded and dishonoured ; if every
thoughtful Frenchman were not willing to have his night of
the 4th of August, and loyally sacrifice for his country his
errors in history, philosophy, and science. But one of the
greatest and most pernicious of these errors is an immoral
historical optimism, which rests on two sophisms that have,
unfortunately, come to be accepted as axioms: viz., that des-
potism leads to liberty, and that men always do the opposite
of what they suppose they are doing.
This doctrinarian optimism M. Quinet has described as
applied to the history of France, in a way which may be thus
summarised. At the very commencement of French history
it is found pronouncing the Gauls incapable of self-educa-
tion, of self-civilisation, and vindicating their conquerors in
the name of the future of France and of humanity. It teaches
that it was necessary for the progress of both, that the Gauls
should first be trampled under foot by the Romans, and after-
wards, along with the Romans, by the Franks; that not
otherwise than through violence and slavery could order and
freedom be reached. In a word, it begins by justifying con-
quest, representing wrong as necessary, might as inherently
■right, and thus discrediting, as far as it can, the holy idea
of justice. As it begins, so it continues. It maintains that
it was most fortunate that the Albigenses and Waldenses, and
other protesters against Papal and feudal tyranny, who, even
in the twelfth century, proclaimed such great truths as that
every believer is a priest, did not succeed, and that their
ideas were effaced in blood, till the world, some generations
later, was prepared for them. Thus it makes irrational any
■such thing as pity for the fate of the victims of Toulouse
and Beziers. It maintains equally that the success of the
j.struggles of the provinces, the communes, and the third
550 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PliANCE
estate, which began so early and terminated so late, would
in every case have been disastrous to France; and that, in
fact, France owes its very existence, and almost all its great-
ness and glory, to the victory of the monarchy over these op-
ponents, the victory of unity and despotism over liberty and
self-government. When it comes to deal with the struggles
which arose out of the spread of the principles of the Refor-
mation, instead of acknowledging that France went griev-
ously wrong in rejecting Protestantism, — that her policy
with regard to the new faith, under Francis I., and Henry
III., and Charles IX., and Henry IV., and Richelieu and
Louis XIV., was at once unjust and foolish, criminal and
pernacious, — it pretends that the real significance of the
wars of religion, and of the measures pursued relative to the
Reformed, was not whether France should be Protestant or
Catholic, but whether it should be feudal or monarchical;
and that, as the triumph of Protestantism would have in-
volved the victory of the nobles over the crown, and the
recovery of their medieval powers and privileges, it was
necessary, for the welfare of France, that Protestantism
should be defeated and suppressed. Arrived at the age of
Louis XIV., it salutes it with boundless enthusiasm, as the
glorious consummation of all the bloodshed, and usurpations,
and oppression of the centuries which preceded it, as the end
which sanctified all the means which led to it, as the crown-
ing of the edifice of centralised authority. It finds a place
for the Revolution on the ground that freedom ought to be
developed after authority, but justifies all the governments
which followed, on the plea that they were occupied in
organising those liberties which the Revolution proclaimed.
From first to last, it finds that France has committed no folly,
and perpetrated no wrong ; that what ought to have been has
always been ; that the successful cause has uniformly been a
just cause.
From this whole view of French history, which he regards
as the official and universally accepted view — that taught in
every school where French history was taught at all — Quinet
dissents and protests, severely, and almost violently. France,
he maintains, far from showing herself either infallible or
impeccable, really erred and sinned grievously, preferred
QUINET 551
darkness to light, and sowed for herself the seeds of a vast
harvest of evils, in the instances referred to, and many others,
where historical doctrinarianism vindicates her conduct. And
the first act of her regeneration, he declares, must be that she
confess her sins and repent of the iniquities of her fathers.
An attack so direct, so sweeping, and so little conciliatory,
on what was widely accepted as established historical doc-
trine, naturally excited considerable anger, which found vent
in counter-protestation. It was not shown, however, and
could not, I believe, be shown, to be other than substantially
just and greatly needed. Historical optimism is an evil so
subtle and seductive, that perhaps few historians in any
country do not occasionally, and to some extent, yield to its
influence, while it wholly masters and possesses many with-
out their being aware that such is the case. Any historical
philosophy which commits itself to an absolute or uncondi-
tional defence of social institutions as they are, which iden-
tifies the real of any given time with the rational, must be
optimistic, fatalistic; must identify the real with the rational
throughout all time. For the present is the necessary prod-
uct of the past. The present could not have been precisely
what it is had not the past been precisely what it was. The
true and adequate explanation of any social fact or institu-
tion can be found only in its actual historical antecedents,
and will be found there. But if we absolutely approve the
end, it is absurd not to approve the means which necessarily
led to it. If we accept, for example, as the best thing which
could have happened to France, precisely what happened, in
the early and complete triumph of the monarchy over its
enemies, in the centralisation of all powers in the hand of
the king, it is utterly unreasonable to regret the measures
which arrested, say, the south of France in that career of
national development, of independent religious thought, and
independent literary activity, on which it entered so early,
— or any of the other measures, however sanguinary and
treacherous, by which local independence, and personal, poli-
tical, and religious liberties, were crushed down and rooted
out. The historian is, in fact, in all circumstances, in dan-
ger of confounding the necessary connection which he finds
between institutions and their antecedents, with the moral
552 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FKANCB
necessity which is a moral justification, or the physical neces-
sity which takes away moral responsibility ; and the histori-
cal philosopher who sets to work with the political aims
which Hegel had as regards Germany, and Guizot as regards
France, leaves himself not even a chance of escape. Guizot
by no means escaped without injury, although he did not
drive his bark on the rock with full sail, like Hegel or his
own friend and colleague, Cousin. He did not explicitly
maintain that the real world of history was just what it ought
to be, but he suggested that conclusion. He did not censure
the instinctive protests of conscience against triumphant
wrong as "subjective fault-finding; " but the whole drift of
his reasoning tended to prove that the wrong had a right to
be triumphant, and that it would have been unfortunate for
humanity if events had occurred in a way which would have
pleased conscience better. He found each event necessary
to that which had succeeded it, onwards to a state of things
which he regarded with complete satisfaction, and virtually
justified the entire series, on account of this necessary con-
nection between antecedents and consequents. The accusa-
tion brought by M. Quinet against the doctrinarian philosophy
of history was thus not irrelevant, not misapplied.
Where, however, was the logical error committed by doc-
trinarian historical philosophers ? It lay in two things. The
first was the accepting any actual state of society as a state of
realised reason. The real in history is never the rational, but
only more or less of an approximation to the rational, never
identical with, but only participant in, reason. No fact, no
group of facts, no social state, has that absolute goodness in
virtue of which it can be regarded as an end which justifies
the means absolutely necessary to attain it. We can always
ask, Might society not have been better, and would it not
have been better, had antecedent acts and events been better?
But that is what the doctrinarians never ask. They accept
a certain state of society as above criticism, as entirely con-
formed to the standard of reason, and then show that it was
precisely what the actual past was capable of producing.
Their primary assumption is erroneous. Let any state of
society be critically examined, and its defects and evils will
testify to what the crimes of the past have done for it. M.
QUINET 553
Guizothad no difficulty in showing that what M.'Qurnet,
giving expression to the natural voice of human conscience,
has denounced as crimes, were the steps which led to the
early unification of France and the centralisation of power
in the person of the monarch ; and these results he was en-
titled to hold had been in many respects beneficial to France,
and probably the chief reasons why she so early became the
leading nation in Europe; but he ought not to have over-
looked as he did the debtor side of the account, the terrible
price which France has already paid, and must still pay, for
the glories of the monarchy and the advantages of adminis-
trative centralisation. Otherwise he could hardly have failed
to perceive that France might have been much happier and
stronger if her history had been quite other than it was ; if
the natural development of the different divisions of France
had not been violently arrested ; if liberty had earlier been more
successful ; if Protestantism had conquered as it deserved ; if
unification had been later, and centralisation less complete.
The second error implied in historical optimism was the
failing to recognise that freedom of choice and action is com-
patible with necessary connection between historical phe-
nomena. That the present is precisely what the past has
made it is true ; but not more true than that the men of the
past had it in their power every hour so to act as would have
given us a different present. We do not need to deny the
connection between actions and their effects to be necessary
because we hold actions to be free ; and it is only actions and
their effects which history shows us. Necessity runs through
actual history from beginning to end, yet actual history rests
on free choice from beginning to end ; on choice out of manjr
possibilities, some better and some worse. It is from ignor-
ing this latter fact, from confining their regards solely to
actuality, that so many historical philosophers have found in
their systems no room for conscience.
Quinet, then, performed excellent service by insisting on
the rights of conscience in relation to historical speculation.
Perhaps it would not have hurt his own cause, and it would
only have been just to his opponents, if he had acknowledged
that his objections applied less to the substance of their his-
torical philosophy than to assumptions associated with it.
554 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Suppose all that he has urged against the historical philos-
ophy of Guizot, for example, to hold true, the value of that
philosophy as an explanation of the actual course of events
remains intact. The optimism and fatalism implied in it
must go, if Quinet be right ; but these will not carry away
with them any of its explanations as to how fact gave rise
to fact, how social revolutions succeeded one another, in the
history of France.
' La Revolution ' (1865) is much less a history than a
philosophical study on history. It is a remarkably able
attempt to understand and judge the Revolution : to ascer-
tain precisely what was aimed at by it; to discriminate
between the good and the evil in it; to assign to its various
parties and agents only what they were really responsible
for; and to show why it had deplorably failed to realise the
hopes in which it originated. By writers like Lamartine
and Michelet the Revolution had been treated as a sort of
sacred mystery and divine incarnation, an object of faith and
adoration, rather than as simply an historical and human
phenomenon which should be judged of conformably to the
ordinary laws of historical, rational, and moral criticism.
Quinet was as sincerely attached as they were to what he
deemed the principles of the Revolution; but 1852 con-
vinced him of the folly of looking at the Revolution itself
through the medium of sentiment and imagination. Hence
he sought in the work mentioned to exhibit it solely in the
light of reality, reason, and conscience; to clear away the
legends which had grown up as to Girondists and Jacobins ;
to unmask Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, and other popu-
lar heroes; and to expose the errors and crimes which had
been committed, to account for them, and to trace their con-
sequences. A book so thoroughly honest, dispelling so many
illusions and shattering so many idols, necessarily gave wide
offence; but it was immensely useful.
At the same time it was not without defects. Its author,
holding that a political and social revolution must depend on
a religious revolution, and that the principles of Roman
Catholicism were irreconcilable with those of the French
Revolution, was naturally led to discuss at length the ways
in which the men of 1789 and 1793 dealt with the religions
QTJINET 555
question. The discussion occupies j;wo books of his work,
and is the portion of it which has attracted most attention.
It is ingenious, and abounds in excellent observations and
suggestions; but it is inconclusive. The general finding
implied is that the politicians of the Revolution, even al-
though not Protestants by conviction, should, in order to
counteract and destroy Catholicism, have established Protes-
tantism as the national religion of France. But it was surely
most excusable that those of them who were not Protestants
should not have seen how this could be their duty. There
were more atheists and deists than Protestants among the
leaders of the revolutionary movement. The former natur-
ally sought to establish atheism (le eulte de la raisofi) ; the
latter deism (le culte de Vllltre SuprSme'). They failed. If
Protestants, and especially if merely pretended Protestants,
had tried to establish Protestantism, they must equally have
failed. The faith of a nation cannot be altered of a sudden
or at will. By merely political devices no great religious
changes can be effected.
Further, Quinet ignored to a regrettable extent the most
obvious and powerful of all the causes of the failure of the
French Revolution : the toleration and encouragement given
in it to violence and crime, to brutal and sanguinary mobs,
to conspirators and ruffians. None of its chiefs showed any
adequate sense of the importance of law, morality, and order
to society. All its parties connived at and countenanced
disorders and excesses, the most hateful in themselves and
the most dangerous to society, when they seemed to tend to
their own political advantage. Those aspects of the Revolu-
tion on which Taine has almost exclusively dwelt, Quinet
has almost entirely overlooked.
In the seventh year of his exile Quinet left Belgium, and
took up his abode in Switzerland, settling at Veytaux, near
Montreux and Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva. Isolated
from society, he made the Alps his companions, questioned
them as to their secrets, and studied the history of the earth.
Nature, which "never betrays the heart that loves her,"
rejuvenated his spirit, invigorated his mind, and opened up
to him new vistas of thought.
He soon saw that the inquiries which now engaged him
556 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
were not alien to those with which he had hitherto been
occupied, but intimately connected with them; and he set
himself to trace out the relations between them. For ten
years he was thus employed. The conclusions at which he
arrived are presented in the work which he himself calls " the
ripe fruit of his life " — 'La Creation' (2 vols., 1870).
This work, so admirable by the simplicity of its plan, the
grandeur of manj' of its ideas, the vividness and impressive- ,
ness of its descriptions, the serenity of its tone, and the
beauties of its style, gives a synthetic view of nature and
humanity as they appear in the light of modern science and
of rational speculation. Its essential conception is that the
history of nature enlightens that of man, and the history of
man that of nature ; that these two species of history exem-
plify the same laws, and that the sciences conversant with
them must follow the same method; that, although natural-
ists and historians have long worked apart, without mutual
recognition or understanding, indifferent or hostile, they
have at length met, found themselves to have been engaged
in the same task, exchanged their torches, and combined their
forces; and that they will henceforth be powerful and suc-
cessful in the measure that they consciously realise their alli-
ance. To awaken, deepen, and guide this consciousness, is
the main aim of the book.
The pictures of geological epochs in books m.-v. are bril-
liant products of a constructive imagination which had been
long exercised in the sphere of history, and which submitted
itself to scientific control. In order to compose them Quinet
made himself thoroughly acquainted with the works of
Alphonse de Candolle, Pictet de la Rive, Oswald Heer,
Agassiz, Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, and other great palaeonto-
logists and naturalists. They form an appropriate and mag-
nificent introduction to what he has to say of man, but they
are not introduced solely to serve that end, and still less for
their own sake: on the contrary, their chief design is to
show the identity of two methods of research commonly con-
sidered distinct; and the unity of nature and history, which
although long separated and contrasted, are now ascertained
to be only two divisions or branches of history. The discov-
ery by modern science of this identity and unity Quinet re-
quenet 557
as the. greatest fact of modern times ; the one which
must revolutionise most the realm of intellect, and effect
the most momentous changes on our conceptions of the world
and man, of life and death.
He entirely rejects the hypothesis of multiple creations,
of repeated interventions of supernatural power ; and he fully
accepts the general doctrine of transformism and develop-
ment. In the book (vi.) devoted to "the Ape and Man,"
he indicates the differences and resemblances between them,
and infers that there must have been an intermediate type
which soon entirely disappeared. Once separated, however
slightly, from the simian stock, man rapidly removed from
it, underwent decisive consecutive changes in his principal
organs, and speedily reached the final or fully human type,
which has alone survived. Primitive man had scarcely time
to leave his impression on the earth. Men are of one type,
origin, and blood, in a sense and measure in which the apes
are not. There is but one human family ; there are many
simian families. Millions of ages separate the origins of
man and the ape. A variety of considerations are adduced
to prove that the human race appeared before the great ice
age; not on an island but a continent; and in a subtropical
climate. Its relations to the large vertebrate animals of the
quaternary and tertiary epochs, as well as such glimpses into
the psychology of fossil man as the crania which have been
discovered seem to give, are the subjects of ingenious and
suggestive remark. Universal life is shown to concentrate
itself in man alone ; all the vicissitudes of its history to pass
into and be continued in his ; all the revolutions of the earth
to have left their traces and their echoes in the human heart.
In books vn. -viii. the man of the glacial period, the ages of
the lacustrine city, and the social and religious consequences
of the discovery of fire, are the chief subjects discussed.
The next book (ix.) treats of the palaeontology of lan-
guages, and of the laws of life and speech. It abounds in
hypotheses, not a few of which may be mere conjectures.
They are always, however, of the kind necessary to scientific
progress. Max Miiller has argued that the science of lan-
guage is not a mental (or, as the French say, moral) or histori-
cal science but a physical science. Quinet maintains that it
558 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
is both a physical and historical science ; and endeavours to
show that comparative philology is intimately connected
with comparative anatomy. In the origin, growth, and
decay of languages, he sees exemplified the general laws of
life. He traces language back from the inflectional to the
agglutinative, and from the agglutinative to the monosyl-
labic stage, and conjectures what it was on the lips of fossil
man. After Buffon and Herder, and in opposition to Max
Miiller, he refers the origin of its primitive radicals to imita-
tion of the voices of animals and of the sounds produced by
natural agents. His chapters on the songs or languages of
birds, their varieties or dialects, are at least curious and in-
genious. In discussing the application of the laws of natu-
ral history to linguistic science and of those of linguistic
science to natural history, he represents the monosyllable as
the organic cell ; compares the succession of the chief branches
of human speech to that of the chief divisions of the animal
kingdom; and explains the formation of such idioms as the
Neo-Latin as a process of the same kind as the modification
and ramification of biological species. The causes which
limit the power of languages to unite in the production of
other languages are akin to those which condition the fer-
tility of races inter se.
The tenth and eleventh books are of special interest.
Their author undertakes to establish in them, by tracing the
parallelisms of nature and humanity, the principles of a new
science. He claims to have entered a virgin forest, full of
mysteries and of promises, and where no one had previously
been. I must be content, however, to indicate merely a few
of the ideas which he has set forth in this portion of his treatise.
Progress in nature and history, we are told, is not effected
along a single line, but on as many parallel lines as there are
organised beings and human races. It does not always pro-
ceed in the same direction or at the same rate ; nor is it even
continuous. There are times of relapse, aberration, and
decadence. Not every new species or generation is an im-
provement on that which preceded it. The march of nature
and humanity is less rigidly and narrowly regulated, and is
nobler and freer, than is supposed. Yet the thread of organic
life and of civilisation is never severed. The vital force
QUINET 559
passes from one genus or empire to another ; it is circulated
and transformed, not lost. When the capability of further
development ceases in one genus or nation, it leaves them
in a condition of immobility akin to decline, and passes to
others which spring into life, bearing in their bosoms an
incommensurable future.
"Humanity is an embryo always growing, and which suc-
cessively assumes diverse forms. The epochs through which
it travels are marked by the peoples which there stop in their
course, ceasing to advance, but not to exist. Thus they all
coexist on the earth at the same time: the first beginnings
among the Chinese, the age of stone among the savages, that
of Egypt among the fetichists of Senegal, that of Abraham
among the nomadic Arabs, &c. The diversity of epochs
gives rise to the diversity of societies. Corresponding to
these stages of arrest in the development of humanity are
species in the development of the organic world."
Natural and human history are subject to common laws.
Both, for instance, imply the law of unity of composition and
correlation of parts. It is only through the practical recog-
nition of this law that either palseontological or archselogical
research has been prosecuted with success. The palaeonto-
logist and the archaeologist alike have often before them
merely the slightest fragments of organic or social systems
which have disappeared, and yet they are able to divine what
these systems were. They have a sure guiding thread in the
principle that every organic whole, animal or social, is of a
definite type, with parts mutually dependent in their growth
and development, and the characters of each part related to
those of all the rest. This law was recognised and acted on by
historians before it was formulated by Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire.
The law of unity of composition has its complement in the
law of specialisation of functions, which also prevails in the
social, as well as in the vegetable and animal, world. In-
deed it was in the social world, and especially in the sphere
of economics, that its working and importance were first dis-
tinctly recognised. The division of labour in industry is
only an exemplification of the differentiation which is now
recognised to be a law alike of natural and of human devel-
opment; but it is the one which was first studied with care.
560 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PKANCE
The struggle for existence, as exhibited by Darwin, is, in
like manner, a generalisation of the law of social order on
which Malthus had laid so much stress. It is the extension to
the whole domain of living nature of an hypothesis which had
been employed to explain the economic condition of mankind.
Further, progress is not universal either in nature or his-
tory ; selection does not act alike on all ; it is chiefly in the
higher grades or orders of being that improvement is to be
observed. The simplest of living beings are the oldest.
Molluscs and zoophytes are now much what they ever were.
The masses of the human race have advanced little in com-
parison with its leading classes. It is by its head that human-
ity is progressive. Duration is no evidence of the superiority
of a species or of a civilisation. The glory of Greece far sur-
passes that of China. When an empire declines, what is
noblest in it is what becomes earliest atrophied : first, thought ;.
next, art ; then industry ; and, finally, military power.
The phenomena of atrophy are as apparent in human socie-
ties as in the organisms of which botany and zoology treat.
The law of atavism, the tendency to return to the primitive
type, is also a sociological not less than a biological law.
Yet nature and humanity never simply retrace their steps ;
never recommence their work ab ovo. Nature never employs
again a mould which it has once broken ; nor does humanity
ever reinvest itself with a social form which it has once aban-
doned. But although the doctrine of progress has been
exaggerated by historians, and requires to be corrected and
brought into accordance with the teaching of naturalists,
progress is the rule. A general rise of creation, a gravita-
tion towards spirit, is traceable. The successive generations
of individuals, both human and animal, work out a plan of
which they have no consciousness or discernment, yet one
which is an onward and upward development, a realisation
of vast and lofty ends.
The problem of the origin of life itself is dealt with.1 It
is maintained that life is cosmical, not merely terrestrial;
that it did not originate on the earth at a given time out of
non-living matter, but that the earth carried it along with
it from the mass from which it was detached. Life, it is
1 xi. ch. 2.
QUINET 561
argued, is not confined to certain points of space or periods
of time, but is coextensive and coeval with the universe.
The same germs which were in the outer layers of the primi-
tive nebula of a solar system, may take different forms appro-
priate to each planet of the system. The earth has no more
given itself life than it has given itself light. The first
living being had its ancestor in the infinite. This theory
had been previously suggested, we have seen, by Barchou
cle Penhoen ; since it was propounded by Quinet it has been
advocated by Preyer and several other scientists.
The work closes with "a prophecy of science."1 The
natural science of the present day utters, we are told, a
prophecy far more remarkable than any to be found in Isaiah
or Ezekiel ; one which has respect not to some petty empires
condemned to speedy destruction, but to all nature and to
all humanity. It leaves us with the assurance that creation
is unfinished, and will be completed; with the prediction
that the human race will pass away, and give place to one
which is higher and nobler.
Looking at the course of things in the past as disclosed by
science, M. Quinet anticipates that the future will be in
the same direction, and, therefore, better and more glorious
than the past. It may be so ; it is even a not unnatural
inference that it will be so. But there is no necessity or
certainty that it will not be quite otherwise. What the dis-
tant future will be, and whether the final consummation of
things will be glorious or the reverse, the fulness of life or
the nothingness of death, mere natural science, science
detached from religious faith, has as yet assuredly not ascer-
tained. The hope of the optimist may be less unreasonable
than the despair of the pessimist; but it cannot justly claim
to be vouched for by positive science.
On the fall of the Empire in 1871 Quinet hastened to Paris
to encourage his countrymen and to share in their privations.
He was reinstated in his Chair, and offered an indemnity for
having been illegally driven from it; but he refused any
recompense. While Paris was being besieged, his 'Creation'
was translated into German by a distinguished naturalist,
Professor B. von Cotta of Freiburg; and when the siege was
1 xii. eh. 11.
562 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN FBANOE
raised a copy of this translation was one of the first things
which reached him.
Notwithstanding failing health, and the harassing labours
of a representative and legislator in a time of sore civil
troubles, he continued to study and write. 'L'Esprit Nou-
veau, ' the last of his works published in his lifetime,
appeared in 1874. It completes and crowns 'La Creation.'
There are various matters in it worthy of being dwelt on
which I must leave unconsidered: e.g., his views on the
place of justice in history, its relation to love, and how it is
that it holds its own, and even triumphs in the struggle for
existence, notwithstanding the advantages of the wicked;
his explanation of the decadence of aristocracies ; his remarks
on the falsification of history by servility of spirit; and
especially his brilliant exposition of the causes and refuta-
tion of the theories of recent pessimism.
Edgar Quinet died on the 26th of March 1875. Few have
lived in any age a life so singularly unselfish, so conspicu-
ously pure and high in aims, so earnest in endeavours, so
fruitful in works, and so profoundly religious in spirit.1
1 Democracy in France has had among its adherents many historical theorists
besides Miehelet and Quinet. I shall mention here only the following : —
1. Lamennais (during the last period of his life). He entered on this stage ol
his career with the ' Paroles d'un croyant,' 1833, a work written with an intensity
of sympathy and passion hardly surpassed in any book of Hebrew prophecy; anil
he followed it up by various attacks on civil and ecclesiastical absolutism, and
appeals on behalf of freedom and religious and social renovation. To the same
period belongs his chief philosophical production, the ' Esquisse d'une philosophie,'
4 vols., 1840-46. It is the most speculative, the most serene and dispassionate,
and the most artistically constructed of all his writings. Its first principle is
Absolute and Infinite Being, and from it all knowledge and existence are repre-
sented as naturally and rationally derived. It gives evidence of earnest study,
abundant ingenuity, and remarkable architectonic power; but also of lack of
critical insight and caution. With all his gifts Lamennais was constitutionally
incapable of being wisely sceptical. The third volume of his ' Esquisse ' is the one
which is of most interest to an historical student. It treats of the development
of the powers of humanity, and of their manifestations. Its best chapters are
those on the evolution of the various arts, and especially of architecture, sculp-
ture, painting, poetry, and oratory. No light was thrown by Lamennais on the
nature of beauty, or the psychology of our aesthetic sentiments, hut he was ex-
ceptionally successful in showing how the history of art has been related to the
history of religion, and to history in general.
2. Eugene Pelletan has been an ardent advocate of the democratic cause. He
is, perhaps, best known by his eloquent exposition and advocacy of the theory
of indefinite progress in his 'Profession de foi du xix" siecle,' 1850. His view as
there set forth having been criticised in one of the ' Entretiens ' of Lamartine, he
defended and reiterated them in 'Le Monde marche,' 1856. Progress means.
C^ESARISM 563
III
The revolution of 1848, the troubles which followed, and
the triumph of imperialism in 1851, greatly influenced his-
torical thought in France. They caused the past history of
France and of humanity to assume to many Frenchmen a
much altered aspect. The events and personages of bygone
ages were viewed through the media of the experiences and
feelings of the actual time ; and the consequence was in not
a few cases an entire change of opinion as to their character
and significance. One result was the spread of distrust in
democracy, and in democratic interpretations of history — ■
i.e., in such readings of it as conclude in favour of the self-
government of nations and the rightful liberty of individuals.
Absolute rule found a larger number of admirers. Some
openly proclaimed force to be the law of society. There
came forward authors who sought to convert all history into
an apology for Csesarism. They represented the fortunes of
according to him, the increase of life. Its motive force is desire. He combats the
ascetic theory of progress, founded on self-renunciation, and so generally approved
by the Church. At the same time, he rests his own doctrine on faith in God and
immortality. As God is the source of all, man tends continually to approach Him.
And God through His various attributes is continually expanding His empire in
time ; continually building up that divine kingdom of which the best formula is
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. While not a mechanical evolutionist or trans-
formist, he maintains that progress is continuous and unending. Life continuously
ascends from the fluid to the mineral, from the mineral to the vegetable, from the
vegetable to the animal, and from the animal to man, the final term of life ; but
human life is immortal, and will have infinite space for its place of pilgrimage.
"Man will go always from sun to sun, ever mounting, as on Jacob's ladder, the
hierarchy of existence " (' Prof, de foi,' 376, 3" e'd.) .
3. Lamartine. In opposition to Pelletan, he took a desponding view of the
future of humanity, and doubted if faith in moral progress could justify itself
before reason and history. His ' Histoire des Girondins,' 1847, originated in zeal
for the spread of democratic ideas and aspirations. No book had a greater im-
mediate popularity and influence ; but it was nearly all that an historical work
should not be.
i. Victor Hugo. It seems to me that in the ancient world there were two poets
whose thoughts on the order and course of human affairs might, without irrele-
vancy, be treated of at length in a history of the philosophy of history — namely ,
the author of the Book of Job and iEschylus ; and that in the modern world there
have been three, Dante, Shakespeare, and Victor Hugo. As in Dante the ' Ge-
schichtsanschauungen ' of Catholicism, and in Shakespeare those of Humanism,
so in Hugo those of Democracy, have found their noblest and fullest poetical
expression. I refer especially to his ' Legende des Siecles ' and similar poems.
To write profitably, however, of Hugo in this connection, would require an extent
of space which is not at my disposal.
564 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
mankind as dependent on a few individuals of commanding
genius, in whose hands Providence places the whole force
of the nations in which they appear; and they regarded
opposition to the wills of these predestined " saviours " as
folly and impiety.
This theory was set forth in the most outspoken and cyni-
cal fashion by M. Romieu in his 'Ere des Caesars, ' 1850. The
Csesarism advocated by him is the incarnation of sheer force ;
the rule of an absolute personal will which despises ideas
and principles, and relies on swords and guns. It differs
from monarchy precisely in that it thus subsists of itself and
by itself, while the latter is maintained only on the condi-
tion of inspiring belief. The root of monarchy is a faith born
in the infancy of nations, and subsequently developed and
■exalted into a dogma, but which dies in late and rationalistic
ages. These call for strong, and not for hereditary, power.
As soon as any people accepts " the insensate dogma of rea-
son, " and seeks to govern itself by free discussion and parlia-
mentary methods, it shows that it has become insane and
Tequires to be ruled by force in the hands of a man who sub-
stitutes deeds for words. "Force is the inevitable issue of
all the debates in which words entangle nations; it is the
decisive and potent corollary of every contradictory theorem
engendered by the spirit of disputation — call it philosophy,
reason, or liberty ; it is the solution of all the problems pro-
pounded in every age by pretended reformers; it is, in a
word, the ultima ratio of all human calculations, which can
come to nothing without force. And when I say force, I
mean that very force of which people complain, and of which
they blame the excess."
While thus avowing his preference of force to reason and
liberty, Romieu professes great respect for what he calls holi-
ness and Christianity, and declares that he has written in
their interest. "Mankind has two sorts of respect, — respect
for holiness, and respect for power. The element of holi-
ness has ceased to exist in the present age; the element of
strength is of all ages, and can alone restore the other. This
is why I have pleaded the cause of force in this book, which
may be deemed coarse (brutal). . . . Christianity so com-
pletely embodies all the aspirations of- the soul, that it must
C^SAEISM 565
revive once more, sooner or later, after the mad doctrines
which have usurped its place are abandoned. If there be in
the word progress any sense applicable to our order of ideas,
it must be sought for in the rehabilitation of the most sublime
of creeds. He who said, 'Blessed are they that mourn,'
uttered the one great maxim of humanity. Whenever that
maxim shall be universally believed, all codes, all laws may
be destroyed, and the world will go on smoothly of itself."
Romieu presents us in proof of his theory with a survey of
Roman history, and endeavours to make out that the Euro-
pean world is in the same position as the Roman world was
when it found relief and rest under Augustus. His predic-
tion, that "in 1852, if no event hurries on the catastrophe,"
France would freely seek salvation in the way which he
recommended, showed that he possessed a considerable meas-
ure of perspicacity. It has to be remembered, however,
that he was one of the band of Caesarian conspirators who
were striving to bring about the catastrophe of which he
announced the approach.
M. Dubois Guchan likewise attempted, in his 'Tacite et
son siScle,' 1851, to find in the history of Rome the justifi-
cation of Caesarism in France. He contrasted the Republic
and the Empire to the disadvantage in almost all respects of
the former ; maintained that the Caesars were not only useful
but necessary men; and sought to discredit, as far as he
could, the reputation of the immortal historian who had
shown what Roman Caesarism actually was. With the same
aim, and with the same desire to recommend himself to the
new Caesar, the celebrated jurist M. Troplong, in his study
'Sur les fautes et les crimes qui precipiterent la chute de
larepublique romaine' ('Rev. Con.,' t. xxi., xxiii., xxviii.),
gave a most unfavourable view of all those who had opposed
the great Julius. He showed in it a want of moral percep-
tion, an inability to distinguish right and wrong from failure
and success, most deplorable in a judge and jurist.
The best book of the class under notice was the 'Histoire
de Jules Caesar' (2 vols., 1865), written by Napoleon III.
himself. While not displaying great .talent of any kind, it
bore abundant traces of carefulness and industry, and em-
bodied the results of special surveys and researches which the
566 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN .FRANCE
author had caused to be made. It is undoubtedly of consid-
erable value. It was avowedly written with the intention
of proving "that when Providence raises up such men as
Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, it is to trace out to peo-
ples the path which they ought to follow ; to stamp with the
seal of their genius a new epoch ; and to accomplish in a few
years the work of many centuries." "Happy are the peoples
which comprehend and follow them! Woe to those that
misunderstand and oppose them! Like the Jews, they
crucify their Messiah." The personal interest of the author
obviously determined his choice of this thesis ; but there is
nothing to complain of in the way in which he maintains it,
which is ingenuous and dignified, and free from aught akin
to the insolence of Romieu or the servility and spitefulness
of Troplong. The admiration which he professes for Caesar
is immense, but obviously sincere, and not altogether with-
out discrimination; and if his estimate of the character and
policy of his hero may be in various respects questioned, it
can at least be said for it that it is substantially identical
with that of Mommsen and Froude, and not decisively dis-
provable. He shows himself to us as a worshipper of political
genius ; as a believer in fate or destiny, which he confounds
with Providence ; and as a vague and hazy thinker, with a
tendency to speculation but no real aptitude for it.
In all the works just noticed, Roman history is treated as
the norm or type of universal history; and it is compared
with the historj^ of France, in order that the Napoleons may
have a place assigned them therein corresponding to that of
the Caesars in the history of Rome. There could hardly be
a more superficial way of regarding history, or a feebler
method of attempting to refute the historical doctrine of
republican liberalism and to justify imperialism. It was,
in fact, not only a logical inconsistency but a strategical
blunder in the party of force and action to appeal to reason
and betake itself to discussion at all. For, although it had
gained possession of the will and sabre of France, it had not
succeeded in appropriating her intellect and pen. With few
exceptions, her eminent thinkers and distinguished writers
were in the opposing camp, irreconcilably hostile to the
Empire and to its principles and methods. The advocacy of
ANTI-CLESARISM 567
Csesarism on historical grounds in the interests of the Empire
afforded democratic publicists and historians a welcome op-
portunity of assailing it, and indicated how this might be
done. The theory which sought its vindication in the his-
tory of Julius Caesar could be, with more relevancy and effect,
attacked through the history of Napoleon I. ; and every such
attack, if skilfully and vigorously conducted, could not fail
to tell heavily against Napoleon III.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that during the reign
of Napoleon III. a favourite subject of historical study
among the democratic writers of Fiance should have been
Napoleon I., or that they should have scrutinised his char-
acter and action with at least no prejudice in his favour.
When Napoleon III. ordered the publication of the 'Corre-
spondance de Napoleon I.,' he rendered a great service to
the cause of historical truth, but the reverse of & service to
Napoleonism ; he rendered easy the task of the hostile critics
of the first Emperor, and impossible any moral admiration
of him.1 Of the anti-Bonapartist historical literature which
appeared under the Second Empire, such studies as those of
Charras, Quinet, and Littre- on the campaigns of 1815, had
for aim to indicate the limitations of the military genius of
Napoleon, and the faults which he had committed even as a
commander. The 'Napoleon et son historien, M. Thiers,'
of Jules Barni, was a vigorous, severe, and effective attack
both on Napoleon and on the most brilliant historian of his
Consulate and Empire. The 'Histoire de Napoleon lcr ' of
M. Paul Lanfrey was a very able counterpart of the work of
M. Thiers ; not more impartial, but written under a contrary
bias; and not more a perfect or definitive history, but one in
which the moral side of Napoleon's life is more adequately
and faithfully represented, and in which an important class
of documents too much neglected by M. Thiers are utilised.
It had an immense effect on public opinion.
All the works just referred to were intended to discredit
the dominant Csesarism. The 'Th<k>rie du ProgreV 1867,
of M. de Ferron has the same aim, but is more general in its
1 The letters in the first fifteen volumes (embracing the period from 1793 to
1809) were printed " without alteration or suppression." In the succeeding vol-
umes were allowed to appear " only what the Emperor would have printed."
568 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IN FBANCE
scope, and distinctively philosophical in nature. It begins
with a sketch of the history of the theory of progress, in
which Vico and Saint-Simon are treated with special appre-
ciation. The doctrine of Vico is elaborately expounded.
M. de Ferron combines Vico's conception that historical
development has had three stages, the divine, the heroic, and
the human, with Saint-Simon's conception that organic and
critical periods have succeeded each other. These two gen-
eralisations, when united, seem to him to determine what is
the line or course of human progress. He makes a sustained
endeavour to show that they are warranted by history.
Greece, Rome, France, and England are represented as hav-
ing had their theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases,
and the histories of law, art, religion, and science, as having
exemplified the alternation of organic and critical epochs.
Although unable to accept this composite theory, I shall not
here discuss it, as I have already dealt with the conception
of Saint-Simon, and hope, at the appropriate time, to exam-
ine that of Vico.
Greece and Rome not only reached a democratic stage,
but they passed through it into Csesarism. The nations of
Europe either have reached, or will reach, the same stage.
Can they avoid the same fate? That depends upon what
organisation can be given to democracy, which again implies
a knowledge of the conditions and means of progress. How
has progress been brought about in the past? Has it been
by authority or by freedom? M. de Ferron goes directly to
history in order to discover what answer should be returned
to this question. He institutes an independent investiga-
tion into the influence of the control of society by the State
on progress under the Romans and in modern times, on the
one hand, and into the influence of liberty in France and
England, on the other. His finding is that the political
lessons Avhich have been inculcated by Madame de Stael,
Benjamin Constant, M. de Tocqueville, and M. Laboulaye,
in France, and by John Locke, Lord Macaulay, and J. S.
Mill, in England, are alone those which history warrants;
while the Csesarists, Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc, and Thomas
Carlyle, recommend us to follow a path which history abun-
dantly proves to be one of shame and death. His argumen-
THEORISTS AND CRITICS OF DEMOCRACY 569
tation is always able, and even where not decisive it is
valuable. In the main, or, in other words, as a proof from
facts of the pernicious tendencies and effects of Csesarism, it
is entirely conclusive.
M. de Ferron's 'The'orie du Progress ' is, then, an excellent
specimen of a legitimate combination of historical and politi-
cal science, or of the application of the historical method to
the confirmation of political truth. In later writings he has,
with equal solidity and judiciousness, employed the same
method to solve other political problems of vital importance.1
The deplorable aberrations of democracy in 1848 and 1871
damped and moderated a too enthusiastic faith in its prom-
ises, revealed its defects, and deepened and diffused a sense
of its dangers. While not arresting the spread of democracy
in France, they taught all teachable men in it that the dem-
ocratic movement, like every other great social movement,
carries within it terrible possibilities of evil; and that the
exclusive and entire realisation of the ordinary democratic
ideal of society would be neither the perfection of govern-
ment nor a goal worthy of history. The results are to be
seen even in literature in various forms.
For instance, it has led some sincere and thoughtful
democrats to labour earnestly to give greater precision, con-
sistency, and completeness to the democratic ideal; and
especially to seek to trace the conditions — educational, in-
dustrial, political, moral, juridical, and religious — requi-
site to secure a gradual, peaceable, and beneficent approxima-
tion to it. This has been the origin of various interesting
and instructive works ; one of the ablest and most typical of
the class, perhaps, being the 'De'niocratie ' of the eminent
philosophical thinker, M. Vacherot.2
1 ' Institutions municipales et provinciates compare'es dans les differents Etats
de l'Europe,' 1883. From the historical and comparative study of these institu-
tions, M. de Ferron draws conclusions as to how they should he reformed and de-
veloped. 'De la division du ponvoir le'gislatif eu deux Chambres,' 1885. In this
work we have first a lengthened historical account of the division of legislative
power in antiquity, the middle age, the different countries of modern Europe, and
the United States ; and next a theoretical and practical discussion of the ques-
tion as to the expediency of the division, and as to the best form and method of
making it. All who think either of ending or mending the House of Lords would
do well to consider M. de. Ferron's facts and arguments.
2 The first edition of ' La Democratic,' published at Paris in 1859, was seized and
suppressed as treasonable and dangerous to public order. The author was sen-
570 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
Others, again, have probed the sores and studied the dis-
eases of contemporary democracy with a view to discover the
appropriate remedies. They have sought to substitute for
Utopian socialistic schemes legitimate sociological generalisa-
tions based on the close and methodical investigation of facts.
A powerful impulse to inquiry of this kind was given by F.
Le Play through his 'Ouvriers Europeans,' 1855, 'Biforme
Sociale, ' 1864, and ' Organisation du travail, ' 1870.
Then there are those who have dealt with the history and
theory of democracy in a severely critical or positively hostile
spirit. The late M. Renan, under the impressions pro-
duced by the disasters of France in her last war with Ger-
many, maintained that) she owed all her greatness in the past
to the monarchy, clergy, nobility, and upper portion of the
third estate, and her weaknesses in the present to the pre-
dominance of a democracy aiming at equality of material
advantages; and insisted that she could only renew her
strength and regain her proper place among the nations by
the adoption of measures of education and discipline too
severe and heroic to be other than displeasing to the popular
mind.1 The volumes of M. Taine on the 'Revolution ' have
been extremely unpalatable reading to the host of people in
France who idealise and idolise that great catastrophe.
Never before had so fierce a light been thrown on the confu-
sion, violence, and misery of the time ; nor had the characters
of the most typical and prominent of the revolutionists been
dissected with such merciless severity. Although his work
is one-sided, and not strictly a history of the Revolution,
it is a brilliant study on it, an incisive and powerful criti-
cism of it, and a valuable contribution to its psychology.
Another keen critic of democracy is the Viscount Ch.
d'Ussel in his 'Essai sur l'esprit public dans l'histoire,'
1877. His work is, however, of wider scope than those of
tenced by the Tribunal correctionnel de Paris to twelve months' imprisonment.
The Gour impgriale reduced the term of imprisonment to three months. In the
second edition, published at Brussels in 1861, all the incriminated passages are left
unaltered and printed in italics. The book is throughout an unimpassioned philo-
sophical discussion.
1 ' La Reforme intellectuelle et morale,' 1871. Compare Mazzini's profoundly
interesting estimate of this work in the essay, "M. Renan and France," 'Fort-
nightly Review,' February 1874.
d'ussel 571
Eenan and Taine, to which we have referred, and lies more
within the sphere of philosophy. A few words must be said
regarding it. It is an attempt to delineate the fundamental
and ruling common thought or social ideal of each of the
chief successive phases of civilisation, —the Hebrew, Greek,
Roman, medieval, modern, and contemporary phases. Its
introductory observations on the origin, spread, and influence
of social ideals, or, in other words, on public spirit in general,
are striking and good ; but the few pages which are all that
are devoted to "the general laws of history" are altogether
inadequate. We are told that there is " a law of community
of the ideal in each society," "a law of speciality in the
vocations of peoples, "" a law of cycles," "a law that the
military and religious spirit are powerful in prosperous
■epochs," and "a law that intelligence survives after the loss
of the other qualities of nations " ; but it is neither proved that
there are such laws, nor even explained with precision what
is meant by them. M. d'Ussel shows an enthusiastic admi-
ration for the military ideal or spirit of the warrior. I can
agree, in the main, with what he says, understanding him
to speak of just war and of true soldierly virtue; but he
might advantageously, I think, have dwelt a little on the
criminality of unjust war, and on the baseness and selfish-
ness of the motives which have so often been conspicuous in
the prosecution of war. The chapter on the ideal of the
Hebrews suffers from its author's obvious want of acquaint-
ance with the history of Hebrew sacred literature. It is
not permissible, in the present state of Biblical science, to
assume, and reason on the assumption, that the Pentateuch
was written about the sixteenth century before our era, or
to quote Bishop Bossuet as an authority on any question of
Old Testament criticism. The chapters on Greece and
Rome are good; and those on the middle ages, modern times,
and the contemporary period, are still better. They abound
in just and even original views, expressed with vividness
and force. But the last chapter — that on democracy — is the
most interesting. The rapid growth of democracy is fully
recognised, and its universal triumph regarded as not im-
probable. The characters common to it are attempted to be
f
\
572 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IN FBANCE
ascertained by an examination of its manifestations and
effects in countries where it is dominant or becoming so, —
Switzerland, the United States, South America, China,
France, and England. That there is reasonableness in its
principle, the equality of individuals, and in its law, the
will of the majority, is admitted ; as also that it tends to good
by favouring sociability, producing respect for labour, pre-
venting oppression of the poor by the rich, and bringing the
means of comfort within easier reach of all. On the other
hand, it is strenuously maintained that a logical development
of the democratic principle, or an exclusive endeavour to real-
ise the democratic ideal, over-excites selfishness and the de-
sire of material enjoyment, lowers the standard of intellect,
discourages originality, independence, and genius, demor-
alises political leaders, and renders life mean and prosaic.
Many will, perhaps, disapprove of this part of M. d'Ussel's
teaching. I am not of the number. I am convinced that
any absolute or exclusive democracy, or, in other words, any
democracy which does not sufficiently appreciate the truth
and value of the principles which theocracy, monarchy, and
aristocracy erred not by honouring but by exaggerating and
misapplying, will come to an ignominious end. The de-
mocracy which has so much faith in the sovereignty of the
people, in the right of majorities, and in the equality of
individuals, as to have none in the supremacy of the divine
law, in the necessity of a strong central authority to main-
tain peace or conduct war, and in the justice and expediency
of giving free scope to all inequalities which are not contrary
to but rooted in human nature, cannot fail to have an inglo-
rious career, and is likely to have a short one.
This chapter may be brought to a close with a glance at the
'Lois de l'histoire,' 1881, of M. Louis Benloew. The title is
appropriate, for the direct and main aim of the work is to
ascertain and trace the laws of historical movement. Unfort-
unately, it is just its chief aim, I think, which it is least
successful in accomplishing. M. Benloew starts, as many
others have done, with the thought that humanity is an evolu-
tion between the successive stages of which and those of the
life of the individual there is an analogy, so that each great
BENLOEW 573
stage of history shows features like to those which characterise
the chief periods of personal development. The human infant
is a heing in an embryonic state, in which nutrition is its chief
preoccupation. But in the measure that the soul unfolds itself
it is always the more clearly seen to function through its three
principal faculties— sensibility, will, and reason. These facul-
ties imply each other, yet although coexistent are distinct, and
each in its turn obtains predominance. In youth sensibility
rules, in mid-life the will, and in mature age the reason. So
is it with humanity. It existed at first in an embryonic state,
a period of preparation, in which order was only the product of
force. The stages which follow are three : the first, that of
sensibility, ruled by the Ideal of the Beautiful; the second,
that of will, ruled by the Ideal of the Good ; and the third,
that of reason, ruled by the Ideal of the True.
The embryonic or preparatory period of which M. Benloew
treats, is not, as we might naturally expect it to be, the pre-
historic age, one of unknown but certainly vast duration ; it is
only a so-called primitive age, which extended from about the
year 4200 to 1200 B.C., the primitive times of Egypt and the
oldest Asiatic States. The cycle of the Ideal of the Beautiful
runs from B.C. 1200 to A.r>. 300. Greece was its glory, the
most perfect realisation of its ideal. The last 600 of the 1500
years assigned to it are represented as a time of transition to
the cycle of the Good. The chief part of the work of Rome is
regarded as having been the mediation of this transition. The
cycle of the Good comprises also 1500 years : it stretches from
a.d. 300 to A.D. 1800. The China of Confucius, Buddhism,
and later Hinduism, Bactria, and Persia, are represented as
having displayed imperfect forms of its ideal ; Israel the per-
fectible form ; Jesus of Nazareth the perfect form ; and Islam
a secondary form : and we are told how that ideal displayed
that of the Greco-Roman world; evolved itself into medieval
Christendom; and then passed into the phase of decadence.
The period from the Renaissance and the Reformation to the
Revolution is considered to have been that of transition to
the cycle of the Ideal of the True, the highest form of the
Good. The characteristics of this cycle, the features of this
new world, are interestingly delineated. The growth of self-
574 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
government is traced. Democracy, it is maintained, may
already safely feel confident that the future belongs to it.
The work which it is now called to undertake is described as
being to constitute the confederation of the States of Europe,
to enlighten and moralise the proletariat, to organise a vast
system of colonisation, to civilise all barbarous peoples, and
to fashion the globe into a rich and beautiful habitation for
man. In a word, M. Benloew shows himself a democrat of
firm and hopeful faith.
It seems to me that he has altogether failed to prove what
he regards as the great law of history. But had it been prova-
ble I am quite inclined to believe that he would have proved
it. He has distinguished himself in various departments of
philology, literature, and erudition. The book under our
consideration itself shows an exceptionally wide and intimate
familiarity with history. It contains many luminous and in-
genious views, and various excellent sections. Its estimate
of the significance of the chief phases of Christian civilisa-
tion is especially remarkable for the insight and impartiality
which it displays. Rarely, I should suppose, has a Jew,
warmly attached to the ancient faith of his race, appreciated
so justly and sympathetically the influence of Christianity
on the history of humanity.
M. Benloew, I may add, makes an interesting attempt (pp.
291-300), to prove a law of evolutions of fifteen years. M.
Soulavie had previously attempted to show that such a law
was traceable in the history of France during the eighteenth
century.1 M. Benloew maintains that it can be verified
throughout the whole history of France, and also, although
less distinctly, in the histories of most countries which have
been drawn into the general movement of civilisation. I
shall consider laws of this kind when I examine the histori-
cal theories of the late Joseph Ferrari.
1 ' Pifeces inedites sur les regnes de Louis XIV., Louis XV., et Louis XVI.,' 1809.
CHAPTER X
HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY OP NATURALISM AND POSITIVISM
The sensationalism or empiricism of the eighteenth cen-
tury was cast down but not destroyed, widely displaced but
not extinguished, by the religious and philosophical reaction
■which set in against it early in the present century. When
least popular it had still some adherents. Ideology contin-
ued to be the psychology most in favour with physicists. It
found a home in the School of Medicine. It was the source
whence the Saint-Simonians and Fourierists derived the
principles on which they based their sociological construc-
tions. It has survived the attacks of the theocratists, roman-
ticists, and spiritualists of all shades and schools, and has
even renewed its vigour, assumed new forms, undertaken
fresh enterprises, and regained much of the ground which it
had lost. The representatives of the antagonistic philosophy
overlooked the necessity of giving an adequate place in their
system of thought to physical science. The seriousness of
this error has made itself increasingly felt with every marked
advance and new development of the physical sciences, and
such advances and developments have been unprecedentedly
numerous in the present century. Hence sensationalism has
to a large extent regained its empire, and is very prevalent
in the forms of Naturalism and of Positivism. Both owe
what favour they enjoy mainly to what measure of plausibil-
ity they have been able to give to their pretensions to be sys-
tems of philosophy founded on the methods and conclusions
of the natural or positive sciences. It is not my business to
discuss these pretensions in a general form, or these systems
in themselves. It is only necessary for me to treat of the
historical theorising to which the principles and tendencies of
575
576 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
French Naturalism and Positivism have given rise. The first
two thinkers who have to be brought under consideration both
bore the name Comte, but were not related by birth, and were
very unlike each other, intellectually and morally.
Charles Comte (1782-1837), one of the founders of Natu-
ralism, was born sixteen and died twenty years earlier than
Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism. As editor of
the ' Censeur, ' and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies,
he maintained, in the face of opposition and even persecution,
the principles of political justice and liberty with a courage
and consistency which did him infinite honour. As a man
he was conscientious and generous ; unselfish, unpretentious,
and unambitious; not subtle, profound, or brilliant, but of
vigorous and sound judgment, much learning, and indefatiga-
ble industry.
His "Traite" de Legislation ' (4 vols., 1822-23) has been
deservedly commended by judges so competent as Sir G. C.
Lewis and Mr. Buckle. Both had found in it aid and in-
struction, as all may do who are engaged in the study of his-
torical and political science. It is not, and does not profess
to be, an abstract or theoretical treatise on legislation.
Neither is it quite what it does profess to be, "an exposition
of the general laws according to which peoples prosper, per-
ish, or remain stationary," seeing that it cannot be said to
have established any laws of the kind strictly so called. It is
rich in instructive facts and judicious reflections, but it con-
tains few, if any, properly historical laws. Had it realised
its author's aim it would have been a system of historical
philosophy ; but this it certainly is not.
Charles Comte contends for the application of the same
method of study to the moral world which had been found
successful in the case of the physical world. His only aim,
he tells us, is "to trace back the sciences of legislation and
morals to the simple observation of facts, and so to give to
them the same certainty which has been given to others less
important." But he recognises such facts only as are not of
an individual but of a social character ; only the manners and
history of nations, not states of personal consciousness. Like
Auguste Comte, he treats the introspective or psychological
CHARLES OOMTB 577
method as illegitimate and futile. To study aright those
external, social, or historical facts which are alone, in his
view, to be relied on, he insists on our examining them with-
out prejudices of any kind, and uninfluenced by religious
beliefs, moral convictions, or philosophical speculations. He
overlooks to what a vast extent historical development is a
psychological process, and, therefore, only explicable by psy-
chological analysis and induction. Not exclusive attention
to fact, but failure to recognise an immense department
of fact, is the sole source and whole secret of his "nat-
uralism."
It is impossible, he thinks, to account for the origin of
society. The attempt of Rousseau to do so he subjects to a
criticism perhaps the most searching and severe which it has
ever received. It is more crushing than any which came from
the theocratic school, inasmuch as it is more unimpassioned.
While implacably calm, it leaves unexposed hardly anything
that is false in the alleged facts, sophistical in the pretended
arguments, hollow or exaggerated in the declamations, or
pernicious in the doctrines, of the author of the 'Contrat
Social. '
C. Comte's discussion of the questions which relate to the
influence of physical nature on human development must have
been the fruit of long and careful study. It was as great an
advance on Montesquieu's treatment of the subject as Mon-
tesquieu's had been on that of Bodin. It disproved, corrected,
or confirmed a host of Montesquieu's observations and con-
clusions. It showed that he had ascribed too much to cli-
mate, and too little to the configuration of the earth's surface,
the distribution of mountains and rivers, &c. ; and that he
had conceived vaguely, and even to a large extent errone-
ously, of the modes in which climate and the fertility or ste-
rility of soil affect human development. But while Comte
thus justly criticised Montesquieu, he himself exaggerated
the efficiency of physical agencies. Indeed, he virtually traced
to their operation the whole development of historjr. And
this he could not consistently avoid doing. Having assumed
that human nature was essentially sensation conditioned by
organisation, and, consequently, essentially passive, he could
578 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IN FRANCE
not logically avoid holding also that the development of
human nature and the evolution of human society have been
absolutely determined by the factors which modify the bodily
organisation and act on the bodily senses of men. Accord-
ingly he has assumed that physical agencies ultimately
account for historical change and movement, for public in-
stitutions and laws. To the influence of race he has ascribed
only a secondary and subordinate place among these agencies.
He maintains that the distinctions of race are not primary or
specific, but explicable by the action of climate and the physi-
cal medium.
Various authors have represented civilisation as advancing
from east to west. According to Charles Comte it has spread
from the equator northwards. " When we watch the course
of civilisation on each of the chief divisions of the earth, we
see enlightenment at first acquired in warm climates; then
expand into temperate climates; and at length stop at, or
hardly penetrate into, cold climates." Had he proved this
proposition he would not have demonstrated a law, but have
simply indicated a general fact, presupposing law and re-
quiring explanation. But he has not proved it. There is
no evidence that civilisation originated at the equator; no
likelihood even that it originated either in the moister or the
drier parts of the torrid zone, alike unfavourable as they are
to the development of man. The lands earliest civilised,
Comte says, were China, Hindostan, Persia, a part of Arabia,
Egypt, and Asia Minor. But none of these lands are on the
equator; and most of them are a long way from it. Further,
it is not certain that the civilisation of any of these countries
was original, or how their civilisations were related to one
another. The oldest remains, indeed, of great cities are to
be found in these lands; but civilisation must surely have
long preceded architectural achievements, which are in many
cases as remarkable as those of the present day.
Charles Comte fully recognises that the same physical
medium has a very different influence on different genera-
tions ; and that institutions and laws, education and manners,
and, in a word, all the constituents of the social medium,
have as real an influence on the development of history as
those of the physical medium. Yet he assumes the latter to
AUGUSTE GOMTE 579
be the first, although to a large extent only indirect, causes
of the whole amount of change effected. A human nature in
itself utterly empty and passive must be built up through the
senses from without. It may be the subject of history, but
it cannot be also its chief factor. Here lay Charles Comte's
radical error. He failed to perceive that the intelligence,
the imagination, the passions, the conscience, and the will
of man are more direct and powerful historical agencies than
climate or soil. The human soul itself is the main and dis-
tinctive source of history. History is essentially the work
and manifestation of human nature. A true science of his-
tory can only be attained through the investigation of history
as a psychological phenomenon, — a product of mind, influ-
enced but not generated by the physical medium in which it
appears.1
Auguste Comte was born at Montpellier in 1798. Al-
though both his parents were Legitimists and Catholics, he
had become at fourteen years of age a republican and an un-
believer. He was educated at the Lyceum of Montpellier
(1807-14), and at the Polytechnic School of Paris (1814-16),
from which he was expelled on account of insubordination.
As a student he was diligent but intractable; he excelled
especially in mathematics, but gave proofs of a generally
powerful intellect, and devoted much time to private reading
and reflection. While at the Polytechnic School he perused
the works of most of the leading philosophical writers of the
eighteenth century. Shortly after his expulsion from it he
began his literary career.2 From 1817 to 1824 he was closely
1 The fourth volume of the ' Traits ' is one of the best studies on slavery and
its effects ever published.
2 The earliest essay of Comte which has been published, ' Mes reflexions,' is
of date June 1816. It is, for the most part, a parallel between " the tyrants of
the Terror and the tyrants of the Restoration," in which " eleven points of
resemblance " are insisted upon. It displays an intense hatred of Louis XVIII.
It gives expression also to that aversion to Napoleon which Comte retained to
the end of his life, and which led him to recommend, in the fourth volume of
the ' System of Positive Polity,' that the ashes of the Conqueror should be sent
back to St. Helena, his column in the Place Vendome cast down, and " a noble
statue of Charlemagne, the incomparable founder of the Western Republic "
substituted for it. This essay first appeared in Renouvier's 'Crit. phil.' for
June 1882. The Appendix to the fourth volume of the 'System' contains a
series of essays 'originally published at various dates between 1819 and 1828,
including that of 1822, in which Comte first stated what he regarded as his great
580 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
associated with Saint-Simon. In 1826 he began to expound
his philosophy in a course of lectures, which was interrupted
for a lengthened period by insanity. The first volume of his
'Cours de philosophic positive ' appeared in 1830, and the
last (sixth) in 1842. This is far the most important of his
works ; and is even, perhaps, notwithstanding many imper-
fections, the most important work which had appeared up to
the time of its publication in one great department of philoso-
phy — philosophy as the theory of the sciences, or, as Comte
calls it, positive philosoph)^. And whatever else philosophy
may or should be, it is clearly bound to be what Comte, in
his great work, represents it with so much ability and general
truthfulness as being — namely, science, yet not merely a
special science, but the science which has the processes and
results of all the special sciences for its data : the general or
universal science which has so risen above the special and
particular in science as to be able to contemplate the sciences
as parts of a system which reflects and elucidates a world of
which the variety is not more wonderful than the unity.
With the completion of his 'Cours ' Comte worthily closed
the first period or phase of his philosophical career. He had,
as he thought, elaborated a strictly scientific philosophy, based
on the co-ordination and generalisation of all the sciences,
and established and evolved in a truly rational manner. He
held that he had transformed science into philosophy by a
self-consistent and comprehensive logical process which ad-
vances from the general to the special, from the universe to
man ; and this so as to show the falsity and futility of all
theological and metaphysical philosophy, and to provide an
discovery of the law of the Three States. These essays are very interesting,
exhibit the best qualities of their author's mind, and form the best introduction
to his other writings. They were collected and republished by him in order to
prove that his " political system, far from being opposed to his philosophy, is so
completely its outcome, that the latter was created as the basis of the former."
He had published others which have not yet been identified ; and which he did
not wish to be brought to light, for the reason given in the following naive and
suggestive words: "Those alone are preserved which reveal any characteristic
aspirations, all such being set aside as betray the unfortunate personal influence
that overshadowed my earliest efforts. ... I disavow any other edition, and I
have destroyed the unpublished materials." — See Special Preface to General
Appendix. My quotations from the ' System ' are from the English translation,
which is an almost perfect rendering of the original.
AUGUSTE COMTE 581
indispensable and solid basis for a definitive doctrine of
social organisation, such as he had from the beginning of his
connection with Saint-Simon had in view. But he had still
to work out this doctrine. To do so was the task to which
he devoted the second part of his life — that in which the
following works were produced: 'Discours sur l'ensembledu
positivisme, " 1848, 'SystSme de politique positive,' 1851-54,
'Cate'chisme positiviste, ' 1852, and 'Synthese subjective,'
1856. The 'SystSme ' embodies nearly the whole thinking
of Comte's life during the second period. It was deemed by
its author his chief work, and is generally so regarded by
orthodox Comtists — a judgment in which I cannot at all
concur. The general results which had been reached in the
'Cours ' are retained in the 'Syst&me, ' and the end to which
the former was designed to be a preparation is in the latter
directly sought to be realised ; but the points of view taken
up in the two works are opposed, the methods followed are
different, and the general character of the doctrine in passing
from the one to the other has been profoundly changed. In
the later years of his life Comte was absorbed in the exercise
of his functions as "the high priest of humanity," and in
endeavouring to gain converts to his system of polity and
worship. He died on the 5th September 1857, in Paris, at
Rue Monsieur-le-Prince 10 — the most sacred spot on earth
in the eyes of the religious positivists of all lands.1
Comte's philosophy of nature and of history originated in
the interaction within his mind of the chief intellectual and
1 As to the life, system, and influence of Comte, in addition to his own works
already mentioned, his letters to Valat, and his ' Testament,' the following
writings may be indicated as among those most worthy of being consulted:
Littre", 'Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive,' and 'Fragments de philo-
sophic positive ' ; Eobinet, ' Notice sur l'ceuvre et sur la vie d'A. Comte ' ;
'Revue Occidentale,' 1878-92; C. de Blignieres, 'Exposition de la philosophie
positive ' ; Ch. Pellarin, ' Essai critique sur la philosophie positive ' ; Poey,
'Le positivisme'; Lewes, 'Philosophy of the Sciences'; J. S. Mill, 'Auguste
Comte and Positivism ' ; E. Caird, ' The Social Philosophy and Religion of
Comte'; and Hermann Gruber, S. J., 'August Comte, der Begriinder des
Positivismus,' and ' Der Positivismus vom Tode August Comte's bis auf unsere
Tage' (1857-1891). Among the host of pamphlets, lectures, and essays on
Comtism which have appeared in this country, those of Bridges, Congreve, Har-
rison, Huxley, Martineau, Spencer, Tulloch, Whewell, &c, are too well known to
require to be more exactly specified. Similar publications have been at least as
numerous in France, and not rare in Germany, Italy, and America.
582 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
social movements in the France of his age. It was a sort
of synthesis, instructive even in its inconsistency because
reflecting the incoherence and self-contradiction of a disor-
ganised and transitional epoch. It can only be understood
aright when viewed in relation to the movements and ten-
dencies to which it owed its being and form.
Comte was thoroughly French, the direct and immediate
influences which moulded his life and doctrine being almost
exclusively French. He was very slightly affected by Ger-
man thought. He was to the end of his life virtually igno-
rant of German philosophy. In 1843 he consulted Mr. Mill as
to the advisability of making some general acquaintance with
German philosophical doctrines, but, on being dissuaded,
abandoned the idea.1 It is true that in 1824 his friend M.
d'Eichtal sent him from Berlin a translation which he had
made for him of Kant's short essay, "Idea of a Universal
History," and that Comte expressed in reply the warmest
admiration of it; but in 1824 he had already discovered his
sociological laws, and his political convictions were defini-
tively formed. There are no traces in his writings of ac-
quaintance with either the metaphysical or ethical works of
Kant. It is quite certain that his classification of the sciences
was not suggested, as J. D. Morell and others have supposed,
by acquaintance with Schelling's successive "potences"of
the Absolute. He once pronounced Hegel "un homme de
me"rite," but it was when he hoped he might be made use of
to spread positivism in Germany; and he has .assigned him
a place in the 'Positivist Calendar,' but as the coequal of
Sophie Germain. Any coincidences which have been pointed
out between the views of Comte and Hegel are of such a
nature as would not, although multiplied fifty-fold, prove in
the least that the former had borrowed from the latter. They
relate to views of which Hegel was neither the author nor
the sole proprietor, which he only shared with hundreds of
other thinkers, and which were current in the catholic and
socialistic medium in which Comte lived. Why label as
" Hegelian " what were commonplaces among the adherents
of socialism and the theological reaction? Why suppose
1 Littre, ' Auguste Comte,' pp. 446, 447.
AUGTJSTE COMTE 583
Comte to have derived from a distance opinions which were
floating in the intellectual atmosphere around him, and to be
had for the inbreathing ? x
The generation which lived under the First Empire knew
no other philosophy than that which had become prevalent
before the Revolution. Comte came under the influence of
this philosophy in early youth ; at the Polytechnic School he
read the works of most of its leading representatives. He
accepted its cardinal principle that "thought depends on
sense, or, more broadly, on the environment"; he became
imbued with its aversion to metaphysics and theology, and
with its ardent faith in physical science ; and he set himself
to build, up all the materials of knowledge into one grand
and solid edifice, resting on the foundation which it had laid.
Considered simply as a philosophy, the positivism of Comte
is essentially a continuation of the empirical philosophy of
the eighteenth century, any superiority over earlier forms of
that philosophy being mainly due to the remarkable develop-
ment of the several sciences which have been combined by it
into a single theoretical system. It is otherwise with posi-
tivism as a social doctrine. Social and religious reactions
generally precede philosophical reactions. In France the
social and religious reaction was in full force before the phil-
osophical reaction made itself felt. Comte yielded to it.
Hence two contrary and contending currents of thought met
and mingled in his mind, and made of his intellectual life
an inherent and permanent contradiction. He was intensely
hostile to what he regarded as the anarchical and revolution-
ary tendencies of the eighteenth century. He hated individ-
ualism, laisser /aire, and such " rights of man " as private
judgment, human equality, and sovereignty of the people.
1 Comte owed more to Scottish than to German writers. Hume he acknowl-
edges to have been his " chief philosophical precursor " ; and he often so refers to
Mm as to show that he had studied both his ' Essays ' and his ' History.' He avows
his indebtedness to Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations ' ; and, writing in 1825,
says of the ' Philosophical Essay on the History of Astronomy ' : " This work, too
little known on the Continent, and generally insufficiently appreciated, is more
positive in its character than the other productions of Scottish philosophy, those
of Hume excepted. Remarkable in its day, it may even yet be studied with
great advantage." — Pos. Pol., iv. 591. He has given both Robertson and Fergu-
son a place in the ' Positivist Calendar.' *
584 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
His sympathies were more with the reaction than with the
Revolution. He speaks of the services rendered by the
representatives of the former with an enthusiastic recogni-
tion which he never manifests, except in the case of Con-
dorcet, to those of the latter. He thought revolutionary ideas
had overdone their work; that destruction had been carried
to excess ; and that construction was much more needed. For
his estimate of the medieval type of society, and of medieval
institutions, he was indebted to writers of the theocratic
school.. He showed for De Maistre a somewhat excessive
admiration : ' Le Pape ' was, I think, the source of more of
his ideas than any other single book. It was De Maistre
and De Bonald, he has said, who taught him that " the past
as a whole could not be understood unless it be steadily
respected."1 Yet he had no sympathy with the deeper and
truly spiritual convictions and feelings of the theocratists ;
with their faith in God and Christ, their sense of sin and
craving for sanctity, their consciousness of the need of
redemption and divine guidance, and their aspiration tow-
ards a real immortality. In one respect, however, he saw
more clearly than they: he never fell into their illusion that
the future of society would be essentially a reproduction of
the past. He perceived that mere reaction must have always
a very temporary success; that humanity never simply
returns to a position which it has once abandoned. Natur-
ally he showed himself more conscious of the retrograde
character of the teaching of the reactionists in the earlier,
than in the later period of his life: and yet he became
increasingly dependent on them, and indebted to them, as
he became more retrograde in his own aims, more zealous
and ambitious to be accepted as the supreme legislator of
humanity : or, in other words, as* he advanced in the trans-
formation of his system, into an atheistical Popery, with
himself for chief priest and sole prophet.
The connection of positivism with socialism was of the
closest kind. The socialistic movement aimed at the rejec-
tion of what was false and the retention and development of
what was true both ir^the reactionary an&in~the revolution-
1 Pos. Pol., iii. 527. The literffl rendering of "tne last words of the sentence is,
" without an unchangeable veneration."
AUGUSTE COMTE 585
ary movement. It sought to overcome the existing anarchy
and to organise society by following the guidance and em-
ploying the methods of modern science. Positivism arose
directly and entirely out of this movement. It is an offshoot
or variety of socialism, and, indeed, of Saint-Simonian social-
ism. The socialism of Saint-Simon contained all the germs
of the positivism of Comte. Almost every leading idea
which Comte expounded and applied had been previously
enunciated by Saint-Simon. Comte was to the end of his
days, as regards the cardinal principles of his system, a dis-
ciple of Saint-Simon, although a very ungrateful one, jeal-
ously anxious to be supposed not to have been indebted to
him. Let us recall to mind in a general way what Saint-
Simon preceded Comte in teaching. Repeatedly he used the
term positif in the sense which suggested the formation of
the .term positivism. He employed habitually the word
"philosophy" to denote precisely what Comte meant by it.
Thus he says : " The particular sciences are the elements of
the general science to which we give the name of philosophy ;
so philosophy has necessarily had, and always will have, the
same character as the particular sciences." Then, just as
Comte afterwards did, he insisted that the only legitimate
method of finding truth is the immediate investigation of
facts, the data of the senses ; and he equally inferred that
knowledge is limited to the relative and phenomenal, and
that belief in aught absolute or supersensuous, in entities or
substances, in efficient or final causes, in God or soul, must
be mystical and chimerical. Instructed by Dr. Burdin, he
further taught that science as a whole and all its divisions
pass from a conjectural into a positive state, from theolo-
gism into positivism, through a transitional state partly con-
jectural and partly positive; that the chief divisions of
science have done so in an order determined by the degree of
the generality and complexity of their objects; that these
sciences are mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and phys-
iology; and that the order of their discovery is also that in
which they should be studied. Psychology he represented
as a mere derivative from physiology, not as an independent
science, or one of a distinct group. Physiology he main-
tained had at length passed into the positive stage, and
586 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FKANCE
morals and politics were about to do so. Philosophy he
asserted could not become positive until the several funda-
mental sciences had become positive, and could not fail to
become so when that happened. Comte only reaffirmed and
developed what he said on all these points. When we pass
from general philosophy to sociology we find that Comte was
here also, in the main, a disciple of Saint-Simon. Comte
followed Saint-Simon when he represented the development
of humanity as having been throughout subject to unal-
terable laws of nature which excluded the intervention of
any wills higher than human; when he took Condorcet's
'Esquisse ' as the work to be resumed, revised, and com-
pleted by the true historical philosopher; and when he
showed in what ways the attempt made in it might be sur-
passed. Saint-Simon conceived of the course of history as
passing through three phases or periods — one credulous and
theological, another critical and incoherent, and a final
stage which is scientific and organic; he thus made it easy
for Comte to formulate and apply "the law of the three
states." Saint-Simon further subdivided the theological
period into fetichistic, polytheistic, and monotheistic epoch;
and in this likewise he was followed by Comte. Again, one
of the thoughts which Saint-Simon most frequently ex-
pressed, and which exercised most influence on his life and
theorising, was that the organisation of society could only
be achieved through the organisation of the sciences into a
general science or true philosophy. Only sensitive vanity
and prejudice can account for Comte denying this, and alleg-
ing that Saint-Simon had proposed "to put the cart before
the horse." When Comte, avowedly as the disciple of
Saint-Simon, wrote the essay published in 1824 as a "Pros-
pectus of the scientific labours necessary for the reorganisa-
tion of society," Saint-Simon praised it as a plan of the
scientific part of his system, but pointed out as a defect that
it dealt with science without reference to religion and senti-
ment. He showed his own sense of the importance of pro-
viding satisfaction to the religious nature and the social
sentiments when, in the last of his writings, he propounded
a new religion, and tried to put humanity in the place of
God. How unable Comte was to emancipate himself from
ATJGTJSTE COMTE 587
Saint-Simonian principles was clearly shown as soon as he
came face to face with the problem of social organisation,
and had the question as to how the moral and emotional
principles of human nature are to be satisfied forced upon
him. He had no other solution to give than that which
Saint-Simon had already given. Even in devising a scheme
of worship, a positivist " cult, " he had not merely to borrow
from Catholicism, but to become an imitator of the Saint-
Simonian P£re Enfantin, whose pretensions and sickly
absurdities he once thoroughly despised. In a word, Comt-
ism must be admitted to be, as a whole, a modified and
developed Saint-Simonianism.
It is quite consistent with the truth of all that has just
been stated, to hold that the disciple was in most respects
much greater than the master. And he undoubtedly was
so. Although Saint-Simon had the most genial affinity for
novel and interesting ideas, he had scarcely any other
remarkable intellectual qualities, and was quite incapable of
developing, as Comte did, either a philosophy of the sciences
or a theory of society.
Comte was not a discoverer or eminent specialist in any of
the sciences, not even in mathematics ; nor had he the ency-
clopaedic knowledge of, for example, Amp&re or Whewell
among his contemporaries. It has been shown by competent
■critics that his knowledge of astronomy, optics, chemistry,
and biology, was in various respects not up to date when he
published his 'Cours'; his psychology was of the crudest
kind; and his social dynamics had many faults which arose
from an inexcusable ignorance of history. A man, how-
ever, who takes all the sciences for his province, cannot be
expected to know that enormous province as minutely as
those who confine their studies to a single science or por-
tion of a science should know the limited field of their
choice. And when all deductions have been made in esti-
mating Comte, he must be allowed to have been a very excep-
tional and remarkable man. He had a capacious memory, a
powerful and logical intelligence, a wide acquaintance with
scientific facts, and a firm grasp of the scientific generalisa-
tion to which he attained. The truly philosophical charac-
ter of his mind appeared in his constant striving after
588 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FBANCE
comprehensiveness and completeness of view, his insight-
into the unity and relationships of the sciences, and his pro-
found study of scientific method. The power which most
distinguished him was that of systematisation, one not to be
confounded with mere aptitude for classification, but com-
prising all the qualities which constitute ability to connect
and distribute facts and truths according to their natural
affinities, even on the most extensive scale. Few have
possessed this power in a higher degree than Comte ; and he
employed it, so far as his properly philosophical task was
concerned, to excellent effect. In resolving to elaborate a
doctrine so complete and comprehensive that it should em-
brace all knowledge and action, he proposed to himself a
magnificent aim; with a noble tenacity he adhered to his
purpose; and in labouring to realise it he displayed a
devotedness, perseverance, ingenuity, and constructive power
most worthy of admiration. The work which he left behind
him has already exerted, and will probably long exert, a-
great and stimulating influence on the minds of men; for
although much of it will probably perish, much of it may as
probably endure. In the character of Comte there was much
to respect and much to regret. His will was strong; but so,
likewise, was his wilfulness. He was self-denying, but
also self-assertive. The absorbing affection for a woman,
which revealed to him the significance of emotion and the
power of religion, testify to greatness of heart; but the
testimony is weakened and stained by extravagance and
sickly sentimentalism. The love of humanity which in-
spired his labours reflects the purest glory on his life; but,
unhappily, it was never dissociated from an inordinate self-
esteem — an exorbitant pride and vanity. It is .difficult to'
do full justice to the real merits of a man so full of the con-
ceit of his own incomparable superiority, so suspicious of
rivalship, so unable to bear contradiction and criticism, as
Comte was. A nature so devoid as his of true self-knowl-
edge and humility may seem "the normal type of human
nature " to a small sect of peculiarly minded persons ; but to
men in general it cannot fail to seem a saddening spectacle,
whatever be its powers and excellences. These words are
not irrelevant. We can only explain aright the despotic
ATJGUSTE COMTE 58&>
features of the Comtian polity and the deplorable foolishness
of the Comtian religion by tracing them primarily to those
defects of Comte's character and temperament to which I
have referred as briefly as I could.
It was not Comte's endeavour merely to discover special
subordinate laws; or to expound isolated ideas, however
admirable ; or to establish in any department of study truths
of detail ; but to construct a system of thought so wide and
well arranged, that not only every science, but every large
scientific generalisation and every great social force, would
thereby have its proper place assigned it and full justice
done to it : a system in which nothing should be arbitrary,
but everything determined by a few closely connected laws
proved by the concurrent application of deduction and induc-
tion. This was a perfectly legitimate and rational under-
taking, the accomplishment of which would be the fulfilment
of one of the great functions of philosophy, although not, as
Comte thought, of its only function.
In the Comtian system the philosophy of history ranks not
as a science, but as a division of a science, — the second
part of Social Physics or Sociology. Social Physics is rep-
resented as ruled by biological laws, yet not a mere corollary
of biology, but an independent science, which has a distinc-
tive and dominant method of its own, the historical method.
It is the function of this method to compare the various con-
ditions through which humanity passes in its entire histori-
cal development. It is only by such comparison that any
social condition can be understood. The particular is unin-
telligible without some measure of knowledge of the whole.
The laws of social sequence and concomitance, however,
which are discovered by the historical method, ought always
to be connected with the positive theory of human nature
established by biological science. Comte regarded socio-
logical laws as not merely empirical but rational, as capable
not merely of inductive but also of deductive demonstration.
He denied, of course, that law can be rational in the sense of
being traceable to any innate principle, or to any metaphysi-
cal principle, as power, force, efficient causality, or that it
can be anything deeper than, or different from, a uniform
relation of sequence or resemblance between phenomena.
590 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
But he affirmed that laws may be rational in the sense of
being deducible and deduced from wider laws as well as
empirically ascertained by an induction from instances; and
that in this sense — the only sense in which the word rational
can, consistently with the principles of positivism be used
in connection with law — the fundamental laws of sociology
are actually rational. Besides the historical method, the
methods of the antecedent sciences are represented as more
or less applicable in sociological study. Being the most com-
plex of the sciences, sociology admits of and requires the
employment of all the processes and resources of research
and reasoning. Comte had no sympathy with historical
scepticism, which he denounces as sophistry and traces to
unwillingness to admit the credibility of the Bible. He had
little sympathy, indeed, even with the critical spirit either
in sociology or any other department of science. He warned
thinkers against inquiring "too closely " into the exact truth
of scientific laws ; and pronounced worthy of " severe repro-
bation " those who break down, "by too minute an investi-
gation," generalisations which they cannot replace. Yet
there is little to criticise and much to admire in his treat-
ment of sociological and historical method. It was not the
original and exhaustive exposition of the logic of social and
historical science which it has often been represented to be ;
but it was a very judicious and useful contribution to it.
Of novelty and subtlety in it there is almost none, but of
solid truth and good sense abundance.
Social physics (sociology) is divided into social statics and
social dynamics.1 Social statics is the theory of the spon-
taneous order of human society, and social dynamics the
theory of its natural progress. The one exhibits the condi-
tions of the social existence of the individual, the family,
and the species, and the other the course of human develop-
ment. It is essential, Comte insists, to regard these two
theories as supplementary or complementary of each other.
The ideas of order and progress correspond in sociology to
the ideas of organisation and life in biology, and are as
1 Holding that sociology is not a physical science, I, of course, object to its
being designated "social physics," or divided into "social statics" and "social
dynamics."
AUGTJSTE COMTE 591
rigorously inseparable. The combination of them is the
grand difficulty of the science, but of primary importance.
It was because he thought he had succeeded in combining
them that Comte claimed to be the founder of sociology.
He admitted that Aristotle had almost wrought out the
theory of social order, and that for nearly a century that of
progress had been receiving a continuous elaboration ; but he
held, notwithstanding, that order and progress had never
been exhibited in their true relationship, but, on the con-
trary, set in radical opposition to each other. And his own
view of his position as a sociological theorist was that, stand-
ing between two extremes of hitherto antagonistic opinion,
he could not merely effect a makeshift compromise between
them like the eclectics and the doctrinaires, but could estab-
lish on a truly scientific foundation a doctrine which would
definitely settle the strife between the advocates of order and
progress, and help to settle the wider and deeper strife in
society itself, of which that was but the expression in specu-
lation. He flattered himself that his theory of society con-
tained all the truth that had been said on behalf of order by
the reactionary school, and all the truth that had been said
on behalf of progress by the revolutionary school ; while it,
further, so reconciled the claims, and exhibited the relation-
ship of order and progress, that order would henceforth be
seen to be the basis of progress, and progress to be the
development of order.
It would be out of place to discuss here the doctrine
expounded in the social statics. But we may relevantly say
that it is an appropriate introduction to the social dynam-
ics, and a valuable contribution to politics. The conclu-
sions which it embodies as to the relations of the individual
and society, of egoism and altruism, of intellect, action, and
affection, of the family, the state, and government, of worldly
and spiritual power, of education and morals, are generally
excellent; and even when questionable or erroneous, tbey
are serviceable from their suggestiveness. Its moral spirit
is, on the whole, sound and invigorating. It certainly does
not flatter or foster the evil tendencies most prevalent in
the present age. But it is unquestionably a reactionary doc-
trine. Comte has not held the balance of judgment justly
592 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FKANCE
poised, but has thrown more weight into the scale of social
authority, and given less to that of individual independence,
than is due. Instead of rejecting only what was false, and
retaining only what was true in the conflicting doctrines of"
Rousseau and De Maistre, he, in reality, gave up what was
true in the doctrine of the former for what was false in that
of the latter. Rousseau ascribed worth to the individual
alone ; Comte followed De Maistre in denying all worth to
the individual, and in representing him as owing everything
to society; and, as he expressly says, as being apart from
society a mere abstraction. He will not allow that the indi-
vidual has any right, except the right of doing his duty ; or,
in other words, that he has any rights properly so called.
Hence he consistently objects to the use of the word right al-
together, and maintains that it " ought to be excluded from
political language as the word cause from truly philosophi-
cal language." Comte was a genuine socialist. He was
hostile to freedom of thought and action ; so impressed with
a sense of the importance of authority, that he could not ven-
ture to recommend any guarantees against, or restrictions on,
its abuse, in the least likely to be effectual. This explains-
the chief faults both of his social statics and his social
dynamics.
Comte expounded his theory of social dynamics first in the
'Cours, ' and afterwards in the 'SystSme.' So far as re-
gards the history of the past, although the two expositions
bear witness to a change in the spirit and point of view
of their author, they differ little in their matter, or as to
principles, laws, general conclusions, periods, &c. With
these we shall deal in the first place, and chiefly. The pecul-
iar opinions as to the social and religious future of human-
ity, set forth in the works which belong to Comte's second
period, concern us comparatively little. It must be here
observed, however, that at no period did Comte look upon
history from a purely scientific point of view. He was
always influenced in his treatment of it by practical inter-
ests. From the outset of his career as an author, his mind
was possessed and ruled by the fundamental principles of
socialism. What was the chief end of life to Saint-Simon
became also his : the reorganisation of society through the
AUGUSTE COMTE 593
■establishment of a "new spiritual power " capable of giving
unity and direction to opinion and action. He gave clear
expression to this aim in his early essays ; and its influence
is evident throughout the entire system of his positive phi-
losophy, but especially in that part of it which explains the
historical evolution of humanity. The judgments he passes
on institutions have a double reference, — one to what has
been, another to what he has decided ought to be and will
be in the future. Thus the grounds of his extremely favour-
able estimate of medieval Catholicism were not merely
•certain considerations of a partly sentimental and partly
historical nature, but, still more, the belief that although the
•Catholic doctrine, like every other theological doctrine, was
to be rejected, the Catholic organisation was to be retained
and extended by positivism, with such modifications as the
substitution of a scientific for a theological creed might
render necessary. And his aversion to Protestantism and
modern philosophy had for one main reason the fact that
they had broken up the external unity of the Catholic or
medieval form of social organisation, and were hostile to its
restoration.
Social dynamics studies the changes which society under-
goes in the course of ages ; the development of humanity in
time. It is the science of history. Social changes follow
one another in a natural order of filiation, each state of
society necessarily arising from its antecedent state, and
necessarily determining the character of its consequent state.
Human development could not have been other than it is.
History is a process subject to fixed and unalterable laws,
which manifest their presence with ever-growing clearness
as the effects of merely transient and particular influences
are eliminated. This process has obviously been one of prog-
ress, — one in which human nature has gradually come to
the knowledge and possession of itself, and shown what it is
and is capable of.
Progress is a law of the physical world as well as of
human history. There is progress from plant to animal,
from animal to man; and progress within the vegetable,
animal, and human kingdoms. Social evolution succeeds
to and implies organic evolution; historical progress is a
594 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FKANCE
form of biological progress, and presupposes it. Yet social
or historical evolution and progress are distinct from organic
or biological evolution or progress. There is a solution of
continuity between them. For although man is merely the
highest animal, he is not any lower animal transformed by
development or modification. There are distinctions between
things for which development and modification cannot ac-
count. The lower never explains the higher: it is at once
the differential characteristic and the fundamental error of
materialism to have ignored or denied this principle. Omne
vivum ex vivo is a truth which no really scientific man will
question. The doctrine of the fixity of species must be
firmly maintained against the Lamarckian theory of develop-
ment. Man is sui generis. All the lower creatures are rude
and partial embryonic prefigurations or sketches of man.
All the laws of the universe meet and rule in him. And
yet he has a nature of his own, with its distinctive qualities
and laws. And what is true of himself is equally true of
his history.
Comte's conception of human progress is not only con-
nected with that of progress in general, but with that of
social order. While accepting, as a whole, the previous
elaboration of the conception of human progress by his pred-
ecessors, he added to it not a little which they had over-
looked when he defined progress as the development of order,
and prefaced his treatment of it with an investigation into
the conditions of order. Progress thus viewed must not
only never violate but always involve the principles of social
stability, personal morality, a naturally regulated family life,
and subordination to organised authority in the State. Ac-
cording to this conception of progress, the character of all
social changes may be ascertained from their influence on
these the fundamental principles of social existence.
The direction of progress is represented as being the estab-
lishment of the supremacy of the distinctively human facul-
ties of man over his merely animal faculties. According
to Rousseau the natural man is a self-dependent being,
guided by infallible instinct. The man who thinks, he
said, is a depraved animal. According to Comte, although
reason and the sympathetic feelings are at first weak in man,
AUGUSTE COMTE 595
while instinct and the personal desires are strong, the former,
nevertheless, constitute his true nature, and human progress
is the process by which they attain supremacy. It is the
triumph of mind over sense, of reason over appetite, of the
altruistic or social over the egoistic or selfish affections.
The rate of progress is represented as determined by vari-
ous causes, of which some are primary and universal, and
others secondary and particular. Among the former are
changes in the human organism and the media in which it
is developed. Among the latter are the mean duration of
human life and the natural increase of population. Were
the mean duration of life, for example, a thousand years,
progress would be necessarily much slower than it is, for the
conservative tendencies of age would be, relatively to the
innovating tendencies of youth, far stronger than at present.
A rapid increase of population produces a rapid progress by
rendering necessary a more specialised and intense activity.
In social progress there is, according to Comte, no varia-
tion either of the general direction or of the order in which
the stages succeed each other. As to the latter, however,
he holds that progress or retrogression may be so rapid that
the intermediate stages may be imperceptible. Hence he ex-
pects that the fetichistic communities which have survived to
the present day will, under the systematic guidance of the
positivist priesthood, pass straight into positivism, without
halting in polytheism, monotheism, or a metaphysical mode
of thought. Further, the movement of progress is, in his view,
not rectilineal but oscillatory around a mean movement which
is never widely departed from. Nor is it, as Condorcet and
others have held, unlimited. Humanity is equally an
organism with the individual man ; and, like every organ-
ism, it must decay and die. As yet it is only emerging from
the preparatory period of its existence ; and, therefore, we
may be certain that ages of vigorous and progressive life are
still before it. It is useless to conjecture when decay will
set in or death arrive.
Comte regarded progress as a development of the whole
man, intellect, activity, and affection; and therefore, as a
general development comprehensive of various particular
and correlative developments. He not only saw' that there
■596 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
was an industrial development, an intellectual development,
a moral development, and an aesthetic development ; but that
there must be a general historical development inclusive
of these particular developments; and that the particular
developments must be not mere stages of the general develop-
ment, but movements pervasive of it from beginning to end,
and parallel to one another. He saw that the elements of
the social evolution are throughout connected and always
acting on one another. His perception of the fact that social
evolution is a general or collective movement, inclusive
throughout its whole length of certain distinct special and
particular movements, caused him to infer that, though the
elements of the historical process are connected, and always
acting and reacting on one another, one must be preponder-
ant in order to give impulse to the rest, and to guide them
all in the same direction. He saw that only on this condi-
tion could there be a general collective movement, correlation
between the particular constituent developments, a com-
mon goal, and, in a word, the unity presupposed by science.
And accordingly, he inquired which was the guiding ele-
ment. The conclusion he came to was, that it must be that
element which can be best conceived of apart from the rest,
while the consideration of it enters into the study of the
others — i.e., the intellect. The history of society, he argued,
must be regulated by the history of the human understanding.
Thought is that which determines and guides the course of
society. " It is only through the ever-increasingly marked
influence of the reason over the general conduct of man and
of society, that the gradual march of our race has attained
that regularity and persevering continuity which so radically
distinguish it from the desultorj' and barren expansion of
even the highest orders of animals, which share, and share
with intensest strength, the appetites, passions, and even
the primary sentiments of man."
If these views be correct, the fundamental law of history
must be sought for in the evolution of the intellect. Comte
believed that he had found it in what he called the law of
the three states, or the law of historical filiation. It affirms
" the necessary passage of all human theories through three
successive stages : first, the theological or fictitious, which is
AUGUSTS COMTB 597
provisional; secondly, the metaphysical or abttract, which is
transitional; and, thirdly, the positive or scientific, which
alone is definitive." "This law," we are told, "is the most
precious intellectual acquisition of the human mind. "With
its ascertainment that long search after the laws of the uni-
verse, which began with Thales at the first awakening of the
reason, is completed. The immutable order which had been
proved to rule throughout the entire physical world, extends
its reign over the world of liberty." "What is called "the
law of hierarchical generalisation or of the encyclopaedic
scale " may either be combined with the law of the three
states, or reckoned as a second law. It is manifestly the
complement of it. It runs thus : " Our subjective concep-
tions reach the scientific or positive stage in the order of
their dependence on each other, which is that of decreasing
generality and increasing complexity." Hence the funda-
mental sciences — mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemis-
try, biology, sociology, and morals — have become positive
in the order in which they have just been named.1
If the fundamental law of intellectual evolution, the law
of the three states, and its complementary law, the law of
hierarchical generalisation, be reduced to one, the second
general law of historical progression will be the law of the
active evolution of human nature. But according to Comte,
the evolution of the active or practical life was in its initial
stage one of offensive war or conquest, in its transitional
stage one of defensive war, and has become in its final stage
industrial. "These three consecutive modes of activity —
conquest, defence, and laboui correspond exactly to the
three stages of intelligence — fiction, abstraction, and dem-
onstration. This fundamental correlation gives us also the
general explanation of the three natural ages of humanity.
Its long infancy, covering all antiquity, had to be essen-
tially theological and military ; its adolescence in the middle
age was metaphysical and feudal ; and lastly, its maturity,
which only within the last few centuries has become at all
distinguishable, is necessarily positive and industrial."
The affective evolution of human nature has not, accord-
1 1 have examined Comte's view of the evolution of the sciences in the last of
*e papers indicated in the note on p. 22.
598 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
ing to Comte, the independence either of the intellectual or
the active evolution, seeing that the affective region of the
brain is not, like those of contemplation and action, in any
direct contact with the external world ; but it is none the
less of immense importance. Feeling is at once the source
and end of progress. It is the only standard by which we
can properly measure civilisation. It has also its law:
"Feeling has its three successive stages, the spontaneous
correspondence of which with those of intellect and activity
is now recognised as the necessary consequence of the joint
influence of those two evolutions. In other words, the social
instinct had to be purely civic in antiquity, collective in the
middle age, and universal in the final state, as its modern
aspirations indicate."
The three chief laws regulative of human evolution are
thus represented as belonging respectively to the three ele-
ments of human nature — speculation, action, and affection.
As such evolution must comprehend these elements, and the
historical developments to which they may give rise, we
must acknowledge that Comte deserved credit for attempting
to formulate the laws of their developments, and to indicate
at once the course and the correlation of these developments.
But the man who fancies that the attempt was successful as
regards either the active or the affective evolution must
be excessively easy to satisfy. Their so-called "laws" are
beneath criticism ; they are of a kind which any moderately
ingenious person may devise by the dozen. Human activity
was not first military and then industrial, but has always
been more or less both. The social organisation of ancient
Egypt, India, China, Phenicia, &c, was affected at least as
powerfully by labour as by war. That war should ever have
been more offensive than defensive, or defensive than offen-
sive, is a saying hard to understand. That the social in-
stinct was "purely civic in antiquity" is an affirmation in
which the terms "civic" and "antiquity" are both ambigu-
ous. That it was more "collective " in the middle age than
in the ancient empires in which the system of castes pre-
vailed would be difficult to prove. And that it has not been
" universal " in its aspirations since the spread of Christian-
ity and the conquest of the world by Rome is not in accord-
ATJGUSTE COMTE 599
ance with facts. Comte, it must be added, has made no
serious endeavour to prove his alleged laws of active and
affective evolution.
We readily admit that such considerations as those just
stated are not fatal to his historical doctrine, but only indic-
ative of its incompleteness. If the law of intellectual evo-
lution be satisfactorily made out, that doctrine will be
substantially established, however uncertain or erroneous
any of its supposed supplementary laws may be found to be.
The law of the three states is the nceud essentiel of Comte's
philosophy of history, as it is of his general philosophy. It
is necessary that we have it principally in view both in our
exposition and in our criticism.
The three states are the successive stages through which
the mind of man is maintained to pass in the course of his-
tory in nations, individuals, and each order of conceptions.
The first state is the theological. Theology preceded either
metaphysics or science ; it goes back as far as history will
take us ; there is reason to believe it coeval with man. In
this state the facts and events of the universe are attributed
to supernatural volitions, to the agency of beings or a being
adored as divine. The lowest and earliest form of this stage
is fetichism, in which man conceives of all external bodies
as endowed with a life analogous to his own. Astrolatry is
a connecting link between fetichism and polytheism, there
being a generality about the stars which, connected with
their other characteristics, fits them to be common fetiches.
Polytheism is directly derived from fetichism; and it is the1
second stage or phase of the theological state. It is either
conservative and theocratic, as that of Egypt, or progressive
and military, as those of Greece and Rome, the one of which
was of an intellectual, and the other of a social type. It gradu-
ally concentrates itself into monotheism, which, growing out
of different forms of polytheism, is of different kinds. Thus
the monotheism of the Jews differs from that of Europe,
because evolved out of a conservative instead of a progres-
sive polytheism. The contact of these gave rise to Chris-
tianity, which culminated in Catholicism, the last and
highest type of monotheistic development. With it the
long infancy of human thought terminates.
600 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
The metaphysical spirit which has been operative in some
degree through almost the whole theological period, bringing
about even the transition from fetichism to polytheism, and
still more from polytheism to monotheism, and which has
been constantly growing in strength, now, as there is noth-
ing beyond monotheism but a total issue from theology,
throws theology off altogether, and establishes a metaphysical
state. Theology dies, and the intellect of humanity which
has passed away from it embodies itself in another form. In
this second state, abstract forces are substituted for super-
natural agents. Phenomena are supposed to be due to
causes and essences inherent in things. First causes and
final causes, these are 'what the mind in this state longs and
strives to know, but in vain ; and it begins slowly and gradu-
ally to recognise in one sphere of nature after another that a
knowledge of these is unattainable to it.
It thus at length reaches a third and final state, that of
positive science. In this state the mind surrenders the illu-
sions of its infancy and youth, and ceases to fancy it can
transcend nature, or know either the first cause or the end
of the universe, or ascertain about things more than experi-
ence can tell us of their properties and their relations of
coexistence and succession. It is a state of learned igno-
rance, in which intelligence sees clearly and sharply its own
limits, and confines itself within them. Within these limits
lie all the positive sciences ; beyond them lie theology and
metaphysics, the two chief forms of pseudo-science or false
belief.
Comte has elaborated and applied these thoughts ; and in
doing so he has traced the course of the general history of
mankind, viewed as exemplif3Ting the law of the three
states, and its correlative laws. The picture of universal
history which he unfolds is one drawn with great skill and
vigour, and in which there are many true and striking
features. In various respects it surpassed all previous
attempts of the kind.
The ability with which it is executed is apt, indeed, to
conceal the fault in it which is least excusable, such un-
truthfulness as is due to its author's insufficient acquaintance
with history. Now, Comte is not to be blamed for having
AUGUSTE COMTE 601
resolved to exhibit not the concrete but the abstract in his-
tory; for seldom mentioning particular events, persons, or
dates ; for confining himself almost exclusively to the delinea-
tion of main currents and movements, of general features and
tendencies. On the contrary, he deserves credit for having
so clearly seen that only thus could history be treated in a
philosophical manner, or a philosophy of history be reached.
But he erred greatly when he failed to recognise that a real
knowledge of the abstract and general in history can only be
acquired through a careful and extensive study of its concrete
and particular contents ; that a philosophy of history ought
not to be based on views as to the facts of history hastily
adopted without due criticism and verification. According
to his own statement, he "rapidly amassed in early youth the
materials which he thought he would need in the great
elaboration of which he had already conceived the design,
and thenceforth read nothing likely to have an important bear-
ing on the subjects with which he was himself to be occu-
pied." This abstinence from reading he imposed on himself
under the name of "cerebral hygiene," "in order not to hurt
the originality and homogeneity of his meditations," and as
"necessary to elevate the views and give impartiality to the
sentiments." He adhered to it with special care when
it was peculiarly unreasonable and pernicious — namely,
when engaged in theorising on the history of humanity.
His historical philosophy is a wonderful testimony to the
extraordinary power of reflection and systematisation which
enabled him to make so much theory out of so little knowl-
edge. But while we may admire the power which he thus
displayed, we must regret the excessive self-confidence which
made him unconscious of the extent of his ignorance of the
subjects on which he dogmatised. His absolute faith in his
own thoughts, his neglect of research, and his ability in con-
structive theorising, make him a dangerous guide to unwary
readers.
We can only touch very briefly even on the chief points in
Comte's survey of historical development.
1. It is not altogether a survey of universal history even
in its most general or abstract form. It leaves out of view
all central and eastern Asia, with its great empires and
602 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
peculiar civilisations. By this omission Comte evaded the
difficulty of verifying his fundamental law where there is
least appearance of evidence for it, as it cannot be pretended
that the peoples of that portion of Asia have ever been out
of the theological state. And even as regards theologism,
if he had taken India into account he could hardly have
excluded, as he has done, pantheism from the series of theo-
logical phases. It is as distinct a phase of theology as any
of those on which he dwells. On the other hand, if he had
recognised it his series of theological phases would have
received an addition which would not fit into his scheme of
general, and especially of European, history. Nay, more,
acknowledge pantheism as a phase of theological develop-
ment, and it becomes apparent that the idea of the Divine
as One may be reached, and has been reached, by another
route than that which led to monotheism. But this raises
the question, Is there any single necessary linear series of
theological phases or historical states ? It forbids our assum-
ing that there is. If, like Comte, we affirm that there is, we
must, unlike him, prove the affirmation.
2. Fetichism was, according to Comte, the earliest, and
at the same time the purest and best, of the forms to which
man's religious tendencies have given rise. He thought
there were traces of it to be observed in the actions of the
animals immediately below man in the scale of organisation.
In the infancy of our race, according to his representation,
the spontaneous activity of the human brain predominated
over the mechanical influence of the external world, and
consequently imagination over observation, sentiment over
experience; and man was therefore necessitated to invent
causes instead of seeking laws. But these causes could only
be reflections of himself, the one being which he knew. He
ascribed, therefore, to all objects his own nature, thoughts,
motives, and feelings. Everything was to him living, vol-
untary, intelligent; everything, in a word, was to him
divine. All was god; all was fetich. Fetichism is the
basis of all theology and of all metaphysics. And it is akin
to positivism itself. "Where the fetichist sees life, the
positivist sees spontaneous activity. " Positivism must go
back to fetichism in order to become popular. The panthe-
ATJGTJSTE COMTE 603
ism of Germany is only a generalised and systematised fetich-
ism. In spirit it is inferior to the primitive doctrine. " The
general progress of the human intellect was in no way re-
tarded by the necessary impotence of fetichism as regards
the highest speculations. In the eyes of a true philosopher,
the artless ignorance which in this respect characterises the
humble thinkers of Central Africa is worth more even in
point of rationality than the pompous verbiage of the proud
doctors of Germany. For it proceeds from a real, though
confused, feeling that any one who remains unfurnished
with the scientific basis is unripe for such speculations ; and
of this basis our metaphysicians are more disgracefully igno-
rant than the lowest negroes."
In both of his chief works Comte has treated of " the age
of fetichism," or what he calls "the spontaneous rSgirne of
humanity," devoting to it in the 'Cours ' more than eighty,
and in the 'Syst&me ' more than sixty, pages. It is highly
probable that he never read a dozen pages regarding it writ-
ten by any other person than himself. His discussion of
fetichism displays a combination of historical ignorance and
speculative ingenuity unsurpassed by any of those " doctors
of Germany " on whose pride he looked down with at least
equal pride. He employs the term "fetichism," as Saint-
Simon had done, in an unusual and improper sense; and
does not seem to have been aware what its usual and proper
sense was. As he uses the term, it means, when stripped
of exaggeration, simply nature-worship ; and in this sense it
may be very plausibly maintained that fetichism was the
earliest form of religion, but only on psychological and
theoretical grounds. There is no strictly historical evidence
that it was the first phase of religion ; and it is quite certain
that it is not the theology of " the humble thinkers of Cen-
tral Africa," or the faith most prevalent among any known
rude savage tribes. Comte knew exceedingly little about
fetichists, and those whom he supposed to be fetichists.
And yet he theorised on their motives and beliefs with a
confidence, ingenuity, and seeming profundity, not unlikely
to deceive to some extent even experts in comparative the-
ology, and almost certain thoroughly to mislead ordinary
readers. His extravagant laudation of fetichism is due
604 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
partly to the ignorance which left him free to evolve his
idea of it out of his own inner consciousness, and partly to
the affinity between the idea of it thus evolved, and that of
positivism as he coneeived of it. Of course, if where fetich-
ism sees life positivism sees spontaneous activity, they are
very like indeed. They are in that case about equally fanci-
ful, and both directly anti-scientific. Had Comte not been al-
most as ignorant of the opinions of " the doctors of Germany "
as of those of "the thinkers of Central Africa," he would
have perceived that modern pantheism was not mere general-
ised and systematised fetichism, but presupposed some such
development of monotheism, metaphysics, and science as that
which history shows to have actually occurred.
3. Polytheism he has treated of with fulness, regarding it
as the most prolonged of the theological phases. Its rise he
attributes to the gradual concentration of fetichism, and to
the growth of self-consciousness and will. On the one hand,
man necessarily comes in the course of his observation of
objects to perceive that they have permanent attributes and
relations, and is thus enabled to group them into genera.
On the other hand, he also comes to feel his distinctness from
nature, to oppose his will to the action of external things, to
struggle with the world in order to subdue and utilise it, and
to seek auxiliaries in this struggle. In other words, he is
led both to consider the qualities common to several objects
as independent of each of them, and to separate the Divine
from objects, or to refer phenomena to invisible supernatural
Wills. Thus fetiches give place to gods who are generalisa-
tions personified, matter being thenceforth looked on as inert,
objects as passive. In this process of transition the working
of the metaphysical spirit already shows itself at once modi-
fying and undermining theology. While Comte deems
polytheism inferior to fetichism as a religion, he fully recog-
nises it to have been much more favourable to.intellectual cul-
ture. He points out with remarkable insight and ingenuity
how it contributed to the rise and development of science,
art, and industry; and how it was related to the military
spirit, priestly influence, slavery, political organisation, &c.
All the general portion of his treatment of polytheism • — what
he calls his "abstract appreciation" of it — is admirable.
ATJGUSTE COMTE 605
His "concrete appreciation " of it is the special treatment of
what he describes as its three chief forms: the Egyptian,
which is conservative and theocratic; the Greek, which is
progressive and intellectual ; and the Roman, which is also
progressive but predominantly military and social. It is also
rich in excellent observations and truly philosophical views,
but it likewise contains many errors, mostly due to inade-
quate study of the facts. While its merits, however, are rare
and conspicuous, of exceptional value, and of essential sig-
nificance, its defects are, in general, merely blemishes, more
disfiguring than destructive, which may be overlooked or
eliminated. When attempting to account for the transition
from polytheism to monotheism, Comte falls into some of his
worst mistakes. Nothing need here be said to show how
baseless are such hypotheses as that the Jews were a mono-
theistic colony from Egj'pt or Chaldea; that Christ was
"no extraordinary type of moral perfection," but simply
"one of the many adventurers who were constantly making
efforts to inaugurate monotheism, and aspiring, like their
Greek forerunners, to the honours of persomal apotheosis ; "
and that Paul, "perceiving the useful purpose to which the
dawning success of Christ might be turned, voluntarily sub-
ordinated himself to Him," and became the true founder of
Catholicism.
4. We thus reach the age of Catholic monotheism. Comte
shows slight esteem for its monotheistic doctrine, but high
admiration of its social spirit and institutions. The claim
has been put in for him that he was the first worthily to
appreciate the middle age. It is a claim, I need scarcely say,
which cannot be seriously maintained. He himself expressly
ascribes the honour to those to whom it was more due, the
chiefs of the theological school, whose reaction, however, in
this as in other respects was but a sign of a general change
in the current of European thought, which began in Ger-
many, and only reached France after having passed through
England. But although the claim be absurd, and although
it be strange that, after Thierry's celebrated account of the
rise and spread in France of correct views as to the middle
ages, it should have been made, yet Comte is entitled to the
honour of having estimated their character and significance
606 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
on the whole well, and even in some respects better than
any of his predecessors. The medieval Church, feudalism,
and scholasticism, are appreciated in their general relations
and influences with comprehensiveness and truthfulness;
and, in fact, all the great systems of speculation and religion
belonging to Western Europe down to the Keformation are
judged of, so far as they can be regarded merely as histori-
cal phenomena, with a fairness and insight surprising in a
man whose own views as to speculation and religion were
so peculiar. I wish this, however, to be understood as
merely a general judgment, and as not inconsistent with the
conviction that there are great errors even in his analysis of
medieval society. The good accomplished by the Catholic
Church in the middle ages cannot be justly ascribed to the
extent which he had done merely to the merits of its organi-
sation and the wisdom of its priesthood. The Christian
truth contained in its doctrine must be allowed to have done
far more than simply " lent itself to the situation." What
Comte admired in the medieval world was its order and dis-
cipline ; whatever in it tended to establish and preserve the
unity of its faith, to discourage doubt, and to repress intel-
lectual and spiritual independence. It owed its greatness
in his eyes to its having made faith the first of duties and
shown no tolerance to dissenters. In this respect his view
of it was as one-sided and reactionary as that of De Maistre ;
and, in addition, logically most inconsistent, and morally
most equivocal, seeing that he had himself no belief in the
truth of the doctrine for the support of which he deemed that
falsehood and persecution had been laudable.
5. "The theological philosophy and military polity, su-
preme in antiquity, and modified and enfeebled in the middle
age, decline and dissolve in the transitional modern period,
in preparation for a new and permanent organic state of
society." This traditional modern period is the epoch of
that "metaphysical philosophy" which substitutes for deities
entities, for personifications abstractions. It is, according to
Comte distinctively a period of negation, criticism, and anar-
chy. Of its spirit and ideals he shows a cordial dislike. On
its chief forces and institutions he seldom looks with an im-
partial or favourable eye. To the philosophy of the eighteenth
ATJGTJSTE COMTE 607
century and to Protestantism, for example, he is decidedly-
unjust, seeing both only on their negative side, and regard-
ing them as stages of a merely critical and destructive move-
ment. There was a great deal more than that to be seen in
them. The philosophy of the eighteenth century had seri-
ous faults and disastrous consequences ; but it also signally
promoted principles and ideas of incalculable value. The
work which it accomplished was not one of mere negation,
or of simple transition, but one which is likely to be as en-
during as the future of humanity itself. If Protestantism
rejected and discarded much, it was in the interest of truths
displaced, disfigured, and almost extinguished by what it
renounced; and if it insisted on the rights of reason, it
equally insisted on the claims of legitimate, i.e., reasonable
spiritual authority, both divine and human. The reader
must not suppose, however, that Comte's treatment of the
metaphysical period was exclusively negative and censorious ;
it was only predominantly so. He has not failed to realise
that alongside of the negative movement there was a positive
movement, directly tending to and preparing for a definitive
and perfect reorganisation; nor did he fail to attempt to
indicate its course and results both as an industrial and an
intellectual development.
6. In the third or positive stage of history the mind recog-
nises, according to Comte, that it can only know phenomena
and their relations of succession and coexistence or laws ; that
it is vain for it to seek acquaintance with divine volitions,
substances, forces, or final causes. His account of this stage
is largely also a theory of the future of man. It is to be found
in what he regarded as its definitive form in his 'Positivist
Catechism, ' ' Positivist Calendar, ' and especially in the
fourth volume of his 'System of Positive Polity.' I have
no wish to enter into an examination of the scheme of faith
and discipline, of intellectual and industrial, spiritual and
social organisation, expounded in these works. I readily
admit that there is a good deal which is true and valuable in
it; but, as a whole, it seems to me a most monstrous combi-
nation of fetichism, scepticism, and Catholicism, of sense and
folly, of science and sentimental drivel. It assumed as a
fundamental truth that belief in the entire subordination of
608 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
the individual to society, which, more than any other error,
vitiated the political philosophy and political practice of
classical antiquity, and from which Christianity emancipated
the European mind. It proposed to organise the definitive
society of the future according to the medieval pattern ; to
intrust the government of it to a temporal and spiritual
power — a patriciate and a clergy — the former centring in a
supreme triumvirate, and the latter in a supreme pontiff,
— and the two conjointly regulating the whole lives, bodily
and mental, affective and active, private and public, in
minute conformity to the creed of Comte ; and even, while
forbidding belief in the existence of God and of the immor-
tality of the soul, to impose a varied and elaborate worship.1
The great aim of Comte in the latest period of his life —
i.e., from 1847 until his death in 1857 — was to transform his
philosophy into a religion, and to apply his religion to the
regulation and systematisation of all the activities and insti-
tutions of humanity. The doctrine which he inculcated dur-
ing this period was largely evolved from that which he taught
in his earlier and more sober-minded period; but it was also
largely a reaction from it, and irreconcilable with it. Dr.
1 It is when treating of the positivist age and the organisation of the future
that Comte expounds what he calls his " fundamental theory of the Great Being "
— i.e., Humanity (Pos. Pol., vol. iv. ch. 1). The pretentious way in which he
states his conclusions is very characteristic, and their futility is very obvious.
"The Great Being" is defined as "the whole constituted by the beings, past,
future, and present, which co-operate willingly in perfecting the order of the
world;" and more succinctly as "the continuous whole formed by the beings
which converge. ' ' It is, we are informed, a real and indivisible Being, more distinct
and definite than the family or the country, and has laws of its own both internal
and external. It does not consist of all human individuals. Its " unworthy
parasites in human form " are to be " eliminated " ; and it must be judged of by
its adult state, which is just "beginning," not by its childhood and adolescence,
which we have as yet only before us. Although " every gregarious animal race "
answers so far to the definition of "humanity," we are justified in overlooking
such races ; but we must recognise " as integral portions of the Great Being the
animals which voluntarily aid man." Humanity consists chiefly of the dead, who-
are " the patrons and protectors of the living." " The dead alone can represent
humanity; they collectively really constitute humanity; the living, born her
children, as a rule become her servants, unless they degenerate into mere para-
sites." The dead have no objective existence, but they have "a subjective life,
which is the true sphere of the soul's superiority." " No amount of superiority,
however, can call the- subjective life into existence, or give it permanence : for
this it is dependent on the objective." It is on the ground of such teaching as this
that Comte claims to have developed and completed "the preliminary apercus of
Pascal, Leibnitz, and Condorcet."
ATJGUSTE COMTB 609
Bridges, and many other positivists of the so-called orthodox
school, have laboured to make out the unity of Comte's life
and doctrine. It seems to me that they have failed. They
have satisfactorily proved, indeed, "that the conception of
an organised spiritual power was not one of Comte's later
speculations, but one of his earliest; that social reconstruc-
tion was from the first and to the last the dominant motive
of his life; and that the 'Philosophie Positive' was con-
sciously wrought out not as an end in itself, but as the neces-
sary basis for a renovated education, the foundation of a new
social order." But this has never been denied, and is not
at all the thesis which they require to establish. The Comt-
ist religion is not to be confounded with the Comtist polity.
The chief doctrines of the polity were certainly among the
earliest published speculations of Comte, and even if false,
are false inferences from the philosophy. It is not so with
the chief doctrines of the religion. The polity, as conceived
by Comte before the change produced on his mind by his
affection for Madame Clotilde de Vaux, aimed at the organi-
sation of society by reason and science. The religion is based
on the assumption of the supremacy of imagination and feel-
ing. It enjoins humanity, instead of putting away, to take
back the childish things it had outgrown. It undertakes the
spiritual organisation of society, while admitting itself to
be only a sort of poetical creation, a product of self-illusion.
The Comtist polity may thus be regarded as a defective struct-
ure insecurely founded on the philosophy. The Comtist
religion cannot be regarded as founded on the philosophy at
all. Now it admits of no doubt that the doctrines which
constitute the religion, as such, are among the latest specu-
lations of Comte, — those which originated in what he char-
acterised as "the revelation of power, purity, genius, and
suffering " made to him through Madame de Vaux. It was
the inspiration flowing from that revelation which filled him
with the ambition of " rendering to his race the services of a
St. Paul, after having already conferred on it those of an
Aristotle."
What are we to think, however, of " the law of the three
states" itself? It seems to me that there is a certain meas-
ure of truth in it. There are three ways of looking at things,
610 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
— a religious, a metaphysical, and a scientific. It is natural
for the mind to believe that things and the successions of
things tell something about a Being in or beyond them with
faculties analogous to those which it possesses itself. It is
natural for it also to speculate on the reason and mode of the
existence of things, and to ask a number of questions about
them which cannot be immediately answered from observa-
tion of their properties and ascertainment of their relations
of coexistence and succession. It is natural for it no less to
observe these properties and study these relations. It is
natural for it to do all three, and even all three about the
same things; in other words, things may be looked at in
three aspects. But three aspects are not three successive
states. From the fact that it is natural for the mind to look
at things in all those three ways, it in no wise follows that
it is necessary or even natural to look at them one after an-
other. Nay, just because it is so natural to look at things
in all these three ways, it is not natural to suppose that the
one mode will be exhausted, gone through, before the other
is entered on, but that they will be simultaneous in origin
and parallel in development; or at least that the religious
and positive will be so, however the metaphysical, as, so to
speak, the least natural and imperative, may lag somewhat
behind them.
Now, what say the facts ? Comte believes that man started
with a religion. He attempts a refutation of those who sup-
posed a state prior to all religion, even to fetichism. But,
I ask, had man no positive conceptions even then? Did he
live by fetichism alone ? How could he build a hut, or cook
his food, or shoot with precision, otherwise than by atten-
tion to the physical properties and relations of things?
Without some conceptions identical in kind, however differ-
ent in degree, with the latest discoveries of positive science,
life were impossible. Positive conceptions, then, instead of
only beginning in modern times, began with the beginning
of human history. And they have been increasing and grow-
ing all through it. True generalisations as to the physical
properties and relations of things were multiplied and
widened by one generation after another in the so-called
theological and metaphysical states. Then, as to metaphys-
AUGTTSTE COMTE 611
ics, according to Comte's own account, it pervaded almost
the whole theological state. Fetichism passed into polythe-
ism, and polytheism into monotheism, from the impulse of
the metaphysical spirit, and under the influence of meta-
physical conceptions. And Comte, however inconsistent, is
here obviously quite correct. Nothing has so powerfully
affected theological development as speculative philosophy ;
and that such philosophy may flourish at a comparatively
early stage of theological development, ancient India and
Greece, with their marvellously subtle metaphysics coex-
isting with the most imaginative of polytheisms, are surely
indubitable proofs.
Now, what does this amount to ? Why, that Comte has
mistaken three coexistent states for three successive stages
of thought, three aspects of things for three epochs of time.
Theology, metaphysics, and positive science, instead of fol-
lowing only one after another, each constituting an epoch,
have each pervaded all epochs, — have coexisted from the
earliest time to the present day. There has been no passing
away of any of them. History cannot be invoked to show
that theology and metaphysics are purely of her past domain,
merely preparatory for positive science, stages in the inter-
pretation of nature through which the mind required to pass
from infancy to maturity. History certifies, on the contrary,
that positive science and they began at the same time, that
they and it have developed together through all history, and
still continue to exist together. Her own birth and theirs
were simultaneous, and she has not yet had to record the
death of any of them.
But it is said science has been continually gaining, theol-
ogy and metaphysics continually losing, ground: science has
been gradually expelling both theology and metaphysics from
one region of knowledge after another, until they will soon
have no foot of ground to stand on. I ask, however, for
proof of this assertion, and not only cannot find it, but feel
confident it cannot be found. There is, indeed, a fact which,
confusedly apprehended, has given a certain degree of plau-
sibility to it; but this same fact, correctly apprehended, is
really its refutation. The fact I refer to is, that in the early
history of the race the three leading aspects of things are not
612 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FKANCE
clearly distinguished. Theological, metaphysical, and posi-
tive conceptions are commingled — their developments
thoroughly entangled; often so commingled and entangled
that it is impossible to determine whether they would be
better described as bad theology, bad metaphysics, or bad
science, being really all three. But the effect of progress
here, as everywhere, is differentiation, the increasing separa-
tion of things really and properly distinct, the inclusion of
each within its own sphere, and consequent exclusion from
those of others. Theology is driven more and more out of
metaphysics and physics; metaphysics out of theology and
physics ; and physics no less out of metaphysics and theology.
Comte says fetichism is the first and lowest stage of human
development. What, then, precisely is fetichism as de-
scribed by himself? Just the chaotic union of theological,
metaphysical, and positive thought. It may be described
equally well either as a physical theology or a theological
physics, and it is at the same time obviously a metaphysics,
an attribution of vital essences and personal causes as inher-
ent in inanimate things. But thought has come out of this
chaos, and how? By the continuous evolution of all the
three orders of conceptions, by an ever-growing comprehen-
siveness and distinctness of vision as to the proper spheres
of all three. Each has been gradually emancipating itself
from the interference and control of the others. It is not
more true that physics began with being theological and
metaphysical, than that metaphysics began with being physi-
cal and theological, and theology with being physical and
metaphysical. The law of the three states is to about the
same extent true of all the three developments, only, of
course, the arrangement of the states is different in each.
It is only in a very general .way that it is true of any of
them, and in such a way it is, with the necessary change of
terms, true of all.
I have no objection, then, to admit that in a very general
way the so-called Comtist law of the three states is true of
most orders of properly positive conceptions ; and I should
hold as strongly as Comte himself that every order of prop-
erly positive conceptions ought to be freed from the inter-
ference and intermixture either of theology or metaphysics.
ATTGUSTE COMTE 613
The confusion of either with positive science is illegitimate
and mischievous ; and the expulsion of them from a domain
which is foreign to them must be beneficial to them no less
than to the science whose rightful province it is. Now it is
only this sort of expulsion, and the restriction consequent on
it, which history shows them ever to have met with. In
every other way, each advance of science, instead of being a
limitation of either, has been an extension of both. So far
from metaphysics and theology having been driven from any
region of nature by science, no science has arisen without
suggesting new questions to the one and affording new data
to the other. Each new science brings with it principles
which the metaphysician finds it requisite to submit to an
analytic examination, and in which he finds new materials
for speculation; and also, in the measure of its success,
results in which the theologian finds some fresh disclosure of
the thoughts and character of God. Underneath all science
there is metaphysics, above all science there is theology;
and these three are so related that every advance of science
must extend the spheres both of true metaphysics and true
theology. Comte has failed entirely to prove that theology
and metaphysics are mere passing phases of thought, illu-
sions of the infancy and youth of humanity, which have no
sphere of reality corresponding to them. The testimony of
history is all the other way ; it gives assurance that they have
always been, and grounds of hope that they will always be ;
that they represent real aspects of existence, and respond to
eternal aspirations in the human heart.
My reason for holding it true only in a very general way,
or, in other words, only very partially true, that positive
science has passed through a theological and metaphysical
state, must be obvious from what has been already said.
There must have been some conceptions positive from the
first. It is impossible to conceive of an exclusively theo-
logical cooking, hunting, or hut-building; for although many
tribes of savage men believe that food and fire, bows and
arrows, &c, have souls, they must none the less attend to
the positive properties of these things in order to make use
of them. There are other conceptions which, although they
may or must have been late in being discovered, must yet
614 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
have been at their discovery apprehended as positive. It is
most improbable that either arithmetical or geometrical
truths were first apprehended as either theological or meta-
physical. It is true that even arithmetical and geometrical
truths had been theologically and metaphysically regarded,
as by Laotseu, the Pythagoreans, and Eleatics ; but in these
cases the theology and metaphysics were by subtle efforts of
speculative ingenuity associated with, grafted on, positive
conceptions. In mathematics, the positive stage is the first,
and spontaneous, and only natural stage.
This is so obvious that Comte and his disciples have been
unable altogether to ignore it; yet they have, notwithstand-
ing, adhered to their law as if it were unaffected by such
facts. A more inconsistent and futile expedient could not
be imagined. By having recourse to it they have exposed
themselves to the charge of the crassest ignorance of what is
meant by a law of nature. A law which does not apply to a
class of phenomena is surely not the law of these phenom-
ena; and even a so-called law, which only sometimes or in
part applies to a class of phenomena, can surely be no true
law. The most elementary notion of a law of nature is a
rule without exceptions — a uniformity of connection among
coexistent or successive facts. And yet Comte, although
maintaining his law of the three states, three mutually ex-
clusive phases of thought, to be the law of historical evolu-
tion, an invariable and necessary law, can write thus : —
"Properly speaking, the theological philosophy, even in the earliest
infancy of the individual and society, has never been strictly universal.
That is, the simplest and commonest facts in all classes of phenomena
have always been supposed subject to natural laws, and not ascribed to
the arbitrary will of supernatural agents. The illustrious Adam Smith
has, for example, made the very felicitous remark, that there was to be
found in no age or country a god of weight. And even in more compli-
cated cases the presence of law may be recognised whenever the phe-
nomena are so elementary and familiar that the perfect invariability
of their relationships of occurrence cannot fail to strike even the least
educated observer. As to things moral and social, which some would
foolishly exclude from the sphere of positive philosophy, there has
necessarily always been a belief in natural laws with regard to the sim-
pler phenomena of daily life — a belief implied in the conduct of the
ordinary affairs of existence, — since all foresight would be impossible
on the supposition that every incident was due to supernatural agency,
LAFPITTB 615
and in that case prayer would be the only conceivable means of influ-
encing the course of human actions. It is even noticeable that the prin-
ciple of the theological philosophy itself lies in the transference to the
phenomena of external nature of the first beginnings of the laws of
human action ; and thus the germ of the positive philosophy is at
least as primitive as that of the theological philosophy itself, though
it could not expand till a much later time. This idea is very im-
portant to the perfect rationality of our sociological theory; because,
as human life can never present any real creation, but only a gradual
evolution, the final spread of the positive spirit would be scientifically
incomprehensible, if we could not trace its rudiments from the very
beginning." x
1 consider these remarks excellent, but excellent as a proof
that there is no such law as the so-called law of three states.
If they be true, as I have no doubt they are, it cannot possi-
bly be in any recognised or proper sense of the term the law,
the fundamental law of history; it can at the most be only
the law of some historical phenomena which Comte should
have carefully discriminated from other phenomena, in order
not to impose on himself and his readers a secondary and
special in place of a primarjr and general law. If true, he
was logically bound entirely to recast his statement of his
supposed law, and to acknowledge that, if a law at all, it
was by no means one so important as he had at first imagined.
He failed to take this course, and involved himself, in con-
sequence, in obvious self-contradictions on which I need not
insist, as they have been clearly pointed out by many of his
critics.2
II
Auguste Comte left behind him a school of disciples who
accepted his system in its entirety, — its philosophy, polity,
and religion. The head of this school, the immediate suc-
cessor of Comte, and the present pontiff of " the religion of
humanity," is M. Pierre Laffitte. He is a learned man, well
acquainted with the sciences in favour among positivists,
and intimately conversant with the doctrine in which he
believes that social salvation can alone be found. He has
'Phil. Pos., iv. 491.
2 See Prof. Shield's ' Philosophia Ultima,' vol. i., pt. ii., ch. ii., pp. 287-314;
Prof. Caird's ' Social Philosophy of Comte,' &c.
616 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
earnestly laboured to propagate the creed and realise the
aims of his master. He has written some works which
expound and so far supplement and develop the historical
theories of Comte, but which do not substantially add to
them. A mere reference to these works will, I think, be
sufficient.1
There is, further, an extreme positivist party, a so-called
"party of strict observance." In the eyes of its members M.
Laffitte is deficient in zeal, orthodoxy, and priestliness. They
accept Comte's wildest absurdities as precious certainties,
and would rigidly obey all his injunctions. They are, be-
sides, very irascible, and much given to impute bad motives
to those whose faith does not coincide with their own. Drs.
Audiffrent, Robinet, and Se'me'rie are representatives of the
French section of these positivist puritans. The way in
which they assailed those who stated and proved the harm-
less and easily verifiable historical fact that Comte's "law of
the three states " was not an altogether original discovery,
is too characteristic of their party.
Far the most eminent of Comte's disciples in France was
the late Emile Littr6 (1801-1881). By the orthodox posi-
tivists he was fanatically hated, and, no doubt conscien-
tiously, habitually calumniated. What unprejudiced persons
•could only have ascribed to his love of truth, they unhesitat-
ingly attributed to hatred of Comte. He seems to me to
have shown himself as loyal to Comte as loyalty to conscience
would allow him to be. He did more than all the orthodox
positivists combined have done to recommend and diffuse
what was true or plausible in the doctrine of Comte. A
wonderful amount of admirable work was accomplished by
this modest, indefatigable, most virtuous, and highly gifted
man. Much of it, and the best part of it, however, owed little
or nothing to Comte, although he himself thought other-
wise. His philosophy only was derived from Comte. And
1 ' Cours philosophique sur l'histoire generale de 1'humanite',' 1859 ; ' Les grands
types de 1'humanite,' 1874-75 ; ' Considerations generales sur I'ensemble de la
civilisation chinoise,' 1861; and the outlines of his lectures on "the third phi-
losophy" in the 'Rev. Occid.' for 1886 and 1887. The 'Revue Oeeidentale,' the
official organ of the positivist priesthood, is a bi-monthly publication, and has
appeared since May, 1878. A chair of General History of the Sciences has been
created for M. Laffitte at the " College de France."
LITTEB 617
that as a general doctrine I require neither to expound nor
criticise.1 But I must, of course, consider the account which
he gives of "the law of the three states," and his attempt to
improve on it.
He at first accepted it just as it had been presented by
Comte. But in his 'Paroles de philosophie positive,' pub-
lished in 1859, he maintained that, although it must be held
to be a true law, the discovery of which had founded sociol-
ogy, it was only an empirical law, a mere general statement
of historical fact ; and accordingly, he proposed to substitute
for it a law of four states, as at once of a deeper and more
comprehensive character, as inclusive of Comte's law, and
entitled, in consequence of explaining the development of
humanity by the development of the individual mind, to the
designation of rational. In his much more important work,
'Auguste Comte,' published four years later, he confessed
to have discovered in the interval that a law very similar to
that which he had proposed had been enunciated by Saint-
Simon so far back as 1808. Still maintaining, however, the
great importance and substantial originality of his own con-
ception, he not only adhered to his criticism of the Comtiari
law, but greatly extended it. He denied that that law
applied to the development of industry, morality, or art ; and
affirmed that it held true only of the development of science.
"This criticism," he says, "I uphold; however, I wish not
to be misunderstood and supposed to reject the law of the
three states. I do not reject it, I restrict it. So long as we
keep within the scientific order, and consider the conception
of the world as at first theological, then metaphysical, and
finally, positive, the law of the three states retains all its
validity for the guidance of historical speculations. . . .
But all that is in history is not confined within the scientific
order. M. Comte, who has somewhere said that we must
suppose some notions to have been always neither theologi-
cal nor metaphysical, has indicated the germ, I shall not say
of my objection, but of my restriction. In fact, the law of
'For a masterly exposition and criticism of it, see Caro's 'M. Littre et le
Positivisme,' 1883. The positivism of Littre had for its literary, organ ' La
Philosophie Positive,' a review founded in 1867, and which appeared until the
close of 1883. Among its most active contributors were, besides Littre', Wyrou-
t>off, Robin, Naquet, De Koberty, &c.
618 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
the three states applies neither to the industrial development,
nor to the moral development, nor to the aesthetic develop-
ment."1 The law which Littre" imagined to comprehend and
supplement that of Comte, he stated thus : " It seems to me
that history is divisible into four fundamental ages : the most
ancient is that in which humanity is under the preponderat-
ing sway of its wants and appetites; the next, or age of
religions, is that in which the development of the moral nat-
ure produces civil and religious creations ; the third, or age
of art, is that in which the sense of the beautiful, becomes
in its turn, capable of gratification, gives rise to aesthetic
constructions and poems; finally, the fourth age, or age of
science, is that in which reason, ceasing to be exclusively
exercised in the accomplishment of the three foregoing func-
tions, works for itself and proceeds in the search after ab-
stract truth."
I much prefer Comte's law of the three states to the one
thus formulated by Littre'. Certainly the latter is remarka-
bly similar to that which Saint-Simon had laid down half a
century earlier, when he maintained that the development,
both of the race and of the individual, might be divided into
four stages — -viz., 1st, Infancy, characterised by delight in
construction and handiwork; 2d, Puberty, characterised by
artistic aspirations ; 3d, Manhood, characterised by military
ambition ; and 4th, Age, characterised by the love of science.
Of course, Littre" has endeavoured to show that his law is
much superior to that proposed by Saint-Simon. It seems
to me that there is very little to choose between them; and,
indeed, that both are so bad that it would be mere labour lost
to try to ascertain which is best or worst. Every so-called
law which represents the elements of consciousness as taking
what is colloquially called turn about in ruling the historical
evolution, one element being the superior principle in one
age of the world, and another in another, is utterly unsatis-
factory. And the reason of this is that all such laws implic-
itly contradict the truth which Comte had the wisdom to lay
down as the very corner-stone of his historical philosophy.
Believing as he did the continuous homogeneousness of
the collective movement of humanity to be an indispensable
1 ' Auguste Comte,' pp. 49, 50.
LITTRE 619
presupposition to the construction of a philosophy of history,
he could not have failed to be astounded at any one who
denied it fancying he nevertheless accepted his philosophy
of history on the whole. Such is, however, the position
taken up by Littre", when he maintains that the law of the
three states regulates only the intellectual, or, as he gener-
ally calls it, the scientific development ; and that expressly
on the ground that the industrial, moral, and aesthetic devel-
opments are separate from, and antecedent to, the intellectual
development, instead of being, as Comte so strongly insisted,
dependent on, correspondent to, and contemporaneous with
it. Comte had a clear recognition of the truth that the spe-
cial developments of human activity are not successive
epochs of history. Littre" 's distinctive theory affirms that
they are so. To me Littre" seems entirely wrong, and Comte
thoroughly right.
Littre- believed his law to have the advantage over Comte's
of being not only empirical but rational. Comte, however,
held the law of the three states to be rational as well as em-
pirical. He has explicitly and repeatedly argued that it can
be reached by deduction no less than by induction, and is
not merely a description of the ascertained course of human
events, a general statement of historical fact, but a law of
which the a priori reason is known, and which is the expres-
sion not simply of what has happened, but of what, from the
very nature of the human mind, must have happened. In
contrasting the law of the three states with a law of four
states as an empirical with a rational law, Littre" overlooked
both the direct claims made by Comte on behalf of the first-
mentioned law, and the numerous passages in which he
attempted to assign its logical, moral, and social grounds.
He may have failed to prove it to be rationally or philosophi-
cally necessary ; but he certainly took much more trouble in
endeavouring to do so than Littre" himself took in connection
with the alleged law of four states.
It is only necessary further to remark that the law of the
three states so restricted as Littre" would restrict it cannot
possibly be a fundamental law of history. If it be, as he
represents it, empirical in character in the humblest sense of
the term, and confined to a single sphere of human activity,
620 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
and to one of the four ages of history, it can only be at the
most a law of secondary importance, and the pretensions put
forth by Comte in connection with it, and unanimously and
enthusiastically endorsed by his disciples, must have been
highly extravagant. However, even after all his admissions
and restrictions, instead of confessing that what Comtists
had hitherto so exultingly proclaimed as the greatest, most
fundamental, most distinctive discovery of their master, the
so-called central law of social evolution as much as gravita-
tion is of the solar system, had been found to be a very
imperfect and incomplete achievement, the recognition of a
mere fragment or section of the truth, Littre" showed him-
self quite unconscious that any such confession was needed.
The mode of thought which found expression in the natu-
ralism of Charles Comte and the positivism of Auguste
Comte became the predominant one in France. For nearly
half a century it has been more prevalent and powerful than
any other. We can see the effects of it everywhere, — in
the tone of society, in the conduct of life, in politics, in
poetry and other arts, in fiction, and in the aims and efforts
of science and speculation. But this is largely owing to its
having escaped from the confinement of a particular philo-
sophical school, and dissociated itself from any very definite
or much developed doctrine. The positivism which now
prevails in France and elsewhere, is indistinguishable from
naturalism, experientialism, and materialism; is indefinitely
variable in its forms ; and is pledged only to the acknowledg-
ment of a few rather vague general principles. It is little
more than a mode of thought, a tendency of spirit. Its most
obvious characteristic is its distrust of all pretensions to the
possession of absolute truth ; its aversion to all belief in the
supersensuous ; its contentment with a reference of phenom-
ena of any kind to antecedent and contiguous phenomena
as an adequate elucidation. Positivism thus understood has
penetrated into all departments of history, and made its in-
fluence strongly felt within them all.
It has undoubtedly Contributed to the spread and enlarge-
ment of historical study- but it has also, I think, considera-
bly biassed and depraved it. The positivist spirit necessarily
SAINTE-BEUVE 621
looks at all things historically, and treats as history what-
ever can be so treated ; but it also naturally loves to attach
itself specially to the consideration of those sections or
phases of human history which it can most easily represent
as being developments of merely natural history, and from
which it can most plausibly conclude that there is no essen-
tial and immutable truth in thought, religion, or morality.
This largely accounts for the predilection which writers
imbued with it have shown for anthropology, ethnology, pre-
historic archaeology, and the comparative study of religions
and of languages, as well as for a want of scientific impar-
tiality too often apparent in their works. M. Hovelacque,
Lefevre, Letourneau, Topinard, E. Ve"ron, and many others,
might be referred to in proof and illustration of the state-
ment. The treatises which they have produced in the
departments of historical study mentioned, although in vari-
ous respects highly useful and meritorious, are far from
being uniformly trustworthy, the anti-theological and anti-
metaphysical fanaticism of their authors having frequently
led them not only to draw their conclusions hastily, but to
collect their data uncritically.
The power of the positivist and naturalist tendencies of
the age has made itself deplorably conspicuous in France, by
giving rise to a school or rather generation of UttSrateurs
whose ambition has been to make even their novels studies
in natural history, delineations of individual and social exist-
ence, from which all spiritual elements and ethnical motives
have been carefully eliminated, while bestial passions and
physiological or pathological laws are exhibited as the sole
springs of human action, the forces which really sway human
nature. That it should also have shown itself in the trans-
formation of certain disciplines which had previously been
treated as theoretical or practical into historical was what
was to be expected. The most striking example, perhaps,
of a change of this kind, is that which was mainly effected
by Sainte-Beuve in literary criticism.
Charles August Sainte-Beuve (1804-69) must be ac-
knowledged to have been among the most eminent of the
literary critics of the present century, even if we restrict
6 22 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
the signification of literary criticism to appreciation of the
phenomena or products of literature ; for incessant and com-
prehensive study, and the varied and careful culture of a
pliant and penetrating judgment and delicate aesthetic sen-
sibilities, had given him a vast and exquisite familiarity
with the achievements of art through the instrumentality of
language. He was, however, even more an historian than
a critic; occupied himself more with authors than their
books. Each literary work seemed to him to be a product
of mind only capable of being understood by a study of the
character, genius, temperament, bodily constitution, educa-
tion, ancestry, race, country, and intellectual, moral, and
social surroundings of the individual who produced it.
Such is the positivist method as it was applied to criticism
by a man of fine taste and rare talent, and applied in the
freest and most genial way, without any systematic exclu-
siveness or dogmatic narrowness. It may, perhaps, be justly
held that the method was at times unfavourable even to
Sainte-Beuve's work as a critic; and that, in that capacity,
he would not infrequently have been more profitably occu-
pied in the direct study of the writings under his examina-
tion than in the collection of biographical and historical data,
with the hope of being thereby able to throw a fuller light
on them than that which they possessed in themselves. But
it cannot be doubted that, owing to his predilection for the
method, we have in his 'Portraits Litte"raires, ' 'Causeries du
Lundi,' and 'Nouveaux Causeries,' taken collectively, one of
the richest contributions made to history, and especially to
literary history, by any single individual in this age. His
'Histoire of Port-Royal' (6 vols.) is not merely a complete
account of the famous Jansenist community immortalised by
the genius and piety of the Arn<u^|ds, of Saint-Cyran, Pascal,
De Sacy, and their friends, but the most brilliant and in-
structive representation yet given of the religious life of
France in the days of Louis XIV.
The late M. Renan (1823-92) entertained a very poor
opinion of A. Comte and his philosophy. He was of too
tolerant a temperament and too familiar with doubts and
difficulties to have any sympathy with a nature so arrogant
RENAN 623
and dogmatic. He was too learned to be able to overlook
Comte's ignorance of historical and other facts which he pre-
tended to reduce under rigid laws. He had too delicate a
perception of the fitnesses of things not to be shocked by the
want of common-sense and ordinary foresight shown in many
of the doctrines and prophecies of the founder of " the relig-
ion of humanity." A writer of the lightest and deftest
touch, master of a style so simple and graceful that it never
ceases to charm and enliven the reader, he naturally re-
garded the strong and original but lumbering and overloaded
sentences of Comte as "bad French." He rejected "the law
of the three states," and, so far as I know, all Comte's other
laws, as generalisations faulty in excess; and he thought
that such truths as he had expressed, Descartes, Voltaire,
D' Alembert, and others, had uttered before him in more appro-
priate language.
Yet M. Renan may, without any substantial injustice,
be numbered among positivists. He discarded theology and
metaphysics as entirely as Comte. Only positive science, he
held, could supply men with the truths without which life
would be insupportable and science impossible. He believed
in the ideal but not in the supernatural ; in God and Provi-
dence, but as "categories of thought." What may be called
his pantheism is neither more nor less inconsistent with
positivism than was Comte's ascription of self -activity to
matter, and of divinity to humanity; it was a belief that
there is a latent living reason in everything, and that in the
course of millions of years the universe may evolve an abso-
lute consciousness, and so bring forth God, although there is
at present no trace either in nature or history of any will
higher than the human.
History has been Renan's favourite department of study;
and in historical study he has sought to employ the method
of the natural sciences. He early saw, and set forth with
admirable clearness of view and statement, the fact that nat-
ure has had a history as well as humanity, and that evolution
is a conception of fundamental significance both in the physi-
cal and human sphere. At the same time he rejected fatal-
ism and necessitarianism, accepting the belief in freedom as
sufficiently attested by consciousness. Nor can he be charged
624 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
with having identified the physical and the spiritual, or
having unduly subordinated the latter to the former, as so
many positivists and naturalists have done. On the. con-
trary, it is one of his chief merits to have clearly seen that
history must be explained from within, not from without.
No one has more fully recognised that it cannot be justly
considered to have been understood until it has yielded a
psychology of humanity — i.e., led to a scientific knowledge
of the formation and growth of consciousness, or of the devel-
opment of mind, on earth. His predilection for the study
of languages and of religions was intimately connected with
his interest in human nature and his sense of the importance
of a psychology of humanity. Languages and religions are
the clearest and most truthful mirrors of the mind and heart
of man. They are those products of the human spirit from
which the elements of a comparative psychology, a psychol-
ogy entitled to be regarded as the fundamental historical
science, may be most easily and abundantly drawn.
The 'Histoire G6ne"rale des Langues Semitiques, ' 1855, —
the best, I think, of all M. Renan's writings, — • is to a large
extent a study in comparative psychology, an attempt to
delineate the characteristics of the Semitic race. It was
meant to have been completed by a Comparative Grammar
of the Semitic Languages, which never appeared, possibly
because the task contemplated — namely, the unfolding of
" the internal history of these languages, the organic develop-
ment of their processes, their comparative grammar viewed
not as an immutable, but as a subject of incessant changes,"
— was found too difficult of accomplishment. It is at
least a task which remains unaccomplished, no German
orientalist even having as yet taken it in hand, and the work
on Semitic Comparative Grammar of the late Prof. Wright
being merely linguistic, without any direct historical or
psychological interest. Many of the views first expressed
in the 'Histoire G^nerale ' he found occasion to reiterate
and develop in his subsequent publications.
His delineation of the Semitic mind must not be judged
of as an attempt exactly to portray actual reality, but as one
merely meant to convey a generally correct impression of a
type of character more commonly manifested in the Semitic
• RENAN 625
group of peoples than in those of any co-ordinate group.
Through overlooking this, his critics have often interpreted
his statements too absolutely, and censured them unjustly.
In my opinion, he has rightly attributed to the Semites a
peculiar genius for religion ; rightly maintained their inferi-
ority to the Aryans as regards both imagination and specu-
lation; and rightly indicated how their inferiority in these
respects favoured their attainment of a simpler, more ele-
vated, and more, ethical idea of the Divine. He has well
shown how the Semitic mind is at once reflected in Semitic
speech, and restricted by its imperfections as an instrument
of thought, the Semitic languages being in vocables, inflec-
tions, qualifying and copulative terms, as a rule, far poorer,
more mechanical in their applications, and more limited in
their capabilities, than the Aryan, while the words them-
selves are more sensuous, less ideal. Notwithstanding errors
of detail, he has, on the whole, correctly as well as strikingly
delineated the general features of the Semitic character and
genius in the chief spheres of human life, — in practical affairs,
in political conduct, in literature, in art, in science, in philos-
ophy, and in religion. The attempts which have been made
by Steinthal, Max Muller, Grau, Hommel, Von Kremer,
Noldeke, Le Bon, Fairbairn, and others, to trace these feat-
ures, have been so far due to the interest excited by that of
Renan, and but for it would have been of less value than they
are. The results at which they have arrived, although, per-
haps, more definite and developed than his, seem to me to be
for the most part substantially the same.
. While Renan has represented races as important factors in
history, and specially endeavoured to show how the mental
characteristics of one of those races have manifested themselves
therein and affected the destinies of humanity, he cannot be
fairly charged with having sought to explain history merely by
the principle of races, or with having treated races as species,
their aptitudes as exclusive properties, and their influences as
necessary and invariable. He has so repeatedly expressed him-
self to a contrary effect, so fully recognised the derivative and
modifiable nature of race, that this common misrepresentation
of his teaching is hardly excusable.
His celebrated hypothesis attributing to the Semitic race a
626 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PEANCE 9
monotheistic instinct, generated by living in the solitude of the
desert, can certainly not be accepted strictly or literally. Com-
parative psychology has nowhere found an instinct or faculty
which is the exclusive possession of any one portion of human-
ity. A vast sandy desert could never of itself impress on the
human mind an idea of the oneness of God. All the Semitic
peoples have been at some time or other polytheists, and several
of them were never monotheists. But these admissions do not
dispose of the hypothesis. Fairly interpreted, M. Renan will
not be found to have meant by a monotheistic instinct more
than a tendency towards monotheism, or, more precisely, more
than a mode of conceiving of the Divine favourable to monothe-
ism. Although it is far from certain that the childhood of the
Semites was spent in the desert, it can hardly be doubted that
just as the manifoldness and wealth of nature around the early
Aryans must have contributed greatly to their looking upon
nature and its processes in a way which led them both to their
polytheism and their pantheism, so the surroundings of the
early Semites equally favoured the rise and growth of the
simpler and sterner faith which their names for the Divine
clearly attest that they held before they separated and became
distinct peoples. Renan was not only fully aware of, but freely
accepted, the facts as to Semitic polytheism ; and he could con-
sistently do so, inasmuch as he had never assigned to the early
Semites a distinct, much less a developed monotheism, but
merely an undefined germinal monotheism, which consisted
simply in a vague consciousness of the Divine powers or Elo-
him as undivided, separate from the world and man, and essen-
tially superior to them. The oldest and most prevalent Semitic
names for the Divine are sufficient to prove that long before the
Semites had any written records, they had a conception of the
Divine markedly distinct from the corresponding conception
among the Aryans, and one which tended more towards
monotheism.
M. Renan claimed to have " the facility of reproducing in him-
self the intuitions of past ages," — "the faculty of comprehend-
ing states very different from that in which we live." And it
must be admitted that he really possessed such a facility or
faculty in an exceptional degree. His mental organisation was
at all points sensitive and sympathetic ; it was readily and deli-
KENAN 627
cately responsive to very varied kinds of impressions. He was
quick to perceive the beauty, to divine the truth, and to appre-
ciate the good, presented in many forms, and under many dis-
guises and corruptions. Yet this fine gift, this enviable power,
was far from perfect. It partook of the limits and defects of
his nature, which, with all its eminent and attractive qualities,
lacked depth and earnestness, was more aesthetic than moral,
more finely cultured than seriously religious. He was a stranger
to the spiritual experiences without which great religions, their
prophets and apostles, and even their doctrines and practices,
cannot be understood adequately, and from within. And he
did not so understand them. Scholarly and ingenious, always
interesting and in many respects valuable, and inimitably grace-
ful in diction, as are his volumes on the origins of Christianity
and the History of Israel, they are somewhat superficial, inas-
much as they have grown less out of realisation of the inner his-
tory or life-development of Christianity and of Israel than out of
a critical interest in intricate historical problems and an artistic
interest in subjects admirably adapted for effective delineation.
For Eenan philosophy was simply a noble style of thinking,
and religion but a superior kind of poetry. Absolute truth
and goodness he regarded as only ideals, to be sought merely
for the pleasure of seeking them ; and their appearances he
deemed wholly relative and ever varying. Hence he dis-
liked decided affirmations and negations, and delighted in
nuances of thought and expression suggestive of the uncer-
tainty and illusoriness which must prevail in a world of which
the universal law is " an eternal fieri." He had temptations,
which less richly endowed artistic natures are spared, to
sacrifice critical rigour and historical precision to beauty of
form, and to supply from imagination what was wanting in
facts to make a picture lifelike or a story dramatic. But if
sometimes led astray by the characteristic qualities of his
genius, he was also enabled by them to render to the studies
to which he devoted himself services far beyond the power of
men of mere talent and learning to confer. His works lack
merits which those of Reuss, Pressense\ and ReVille possess,
but they have a greater vitality, originality, and charm, and
have exercised a far wider influence.1
1 M. Renan's philosophical views are to he found chiefly in his ' Dialogues et
628 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY 1ST FRANCE
Not a few of my readers may think that Renan should not
have been treated of in the present chapter. But that M. Taine
should ha\e a place in it no one will dispute ; for there can be
no doubt as to which camp he belongs to. " La verite-," accord-
ing to M. Renan, " reside tout entidre dans les nuances." If
such be the case, M. Taine obviously knows nothing about "la
venteV' " Les nuances " are not at all in his line. Indefinite-
ness and indecision are faults of which he is entirely guiltless.
On the contrary, he is in his own way as one-sided and dog-
matic, as confident and uncompromising, as were our Scotch
Covenanters of the seventeenth century in their Calvinistic
and Presbyterian fashion. He is a thorough-going experi-
mentalist, starting from sensation, and explaining all things
by a mechanically necessitated evolution. While philosoph-
ically more akin to Littre" than to any other older French
thinker, he is still more closely related, perhaps, to our British
empiricists the Mills and Dr. Bain, and to our British evolu-
tionists Darwin and Spencer. His great distinction as a man
of letters, his vigour as a thinker, his scientific culture, his la-
borious industry in historical research, and the zeal which he
has shown for psychological study, have made him the most
eminent representative of contemporary French experimen-
talism. M. Th. Ribot, editor of the ' Revue Philosophique,'
and many of the contributors to that invaluable periodical,
honour him as their chief.
M. Taine has said that " virtue and vice are to be regarded
as products, just like sugar and vitriol;" and that "man may
be considered as an animal of a superior species, who manu-
factures poems very much as silk-worms make their cocoons
and bees their hives." These rather unguarded words have
been probably more frequently quoted than any others which
he has written ; and because of them he has often been
represented as identifying chemistry and morality, and as
Fragments Philosophiques ' and 'L'Avenir de la Science.' The extraordinary
conception of a gradual growth and organisation of God, evolution dUfique, which
he sets forth in the former of these works, is a sort of counterpart to Comte's
dogma of the Virgin-Mother, which some of his followers regard as the central
article of the Positivist religious creed. Renan has been to a considerable extent
his own biographer. See his ' Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse,' &c. Sir
Mounstuart E. Grant Duff gives a very appreciative estimate of his character as
a man, and a very comprehensive view of his activity as an author, in 'Ernest
Renan — In Memoriam,' 1S93.
TAINE 629
■attempting to study history as a physical or physiological
process. I shall not do him the injustice of attributing to
him anything so absurd. He is, of course, quite aware that
virtues and vices cannot be subjected to the same tests and
processes as chemical substances; that poets are a very
.superior species of creature indeed to silk-worms and bees,
which by no means differ so peculiarly from' one another as
Shakespeare from Be'ranger, or Milton from Alfred de Musset ;
and that the instruments and artifices employed by us in the
investigation of cocoons or hives would not help us to explain
■or appreciate Spenser's " Fairy Queen " or Tennyson's " In
Memoriam." He can only have meant that moral and social
facts should be studied according to the same general method
•as those of a physical and physiological kind, and that the his-
tory of humanity will never be truly described or elucidated
if the precautions and rules which all successful inquirers into
the history of nature recognise to be imperative are neglected or
violated ; and this is what few will deny. He has certainly not
shown himself capable, any more than have other inquirers, of
studying psychological phenomena otherwise than psychologi-
■cally, i.e., through consciousness and psychical (not physical)
analysis.
Most of M. Taine's works are of a psychologico-historical
•character. That by which he made his dibut in literature —
the 'Essai sur Tite Live,' crowned by the French Academy in
1855, and published in 1856 — is of this nature. It traces " the
■conditions of light and liberty " in which the mind of Livy
was developed ; indicates the sources of his information and
the examples which inspired and guided him ; examines and
appreciates his work from three points of view — the critical,
philosophical, and artistic ; and endeavours to determine and
formulate the essential character of his genius. While Livy
is its central and main subject, its general theme is history
itself ; and so it is divided into two " parts," — the first devoted
to " history considered as a science," and the second to " history
considered as an art." In dealing with history as a science,
M. Taine treats of historical criticism in itself, and as ex-
emplified in the writings of Livy, Beaufort, and Niebuhr,
and of the philosophy of history in general, and as traceable
m the works of Livy, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu. In dis-
630 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
coursing of history as an art he has comparatively little to say of
historical art as such, but his characterisation of the historical
art of Livy is strikingly just and brilliant. In the conclusion
of the work he sets forth an idea which has reappeared in
almost all his subsequent writings : the idea, namely, that
the character or genius of a man, as also of a society or
a nation, may.be summed up in a formula, owing to that
character or genius being an organic unity all the parts of
which are interdependent, and act according to a unique law
under the influence of a single dominant principle, unefacultS
maitresse. His formula for Livy is : "His oratorical genius,
accordant with his character, which is that of a patriot and
a man of honour, Roman like his character, explains all else."
This, he holds, sums up Livy, and explains his work; so
expresses his nature and the law of his activity that what
he was as a man and accomplished as an historian may be
deduced or construed from it. M. Taine himself has, however,
neither deduced nor construed anything from it. He has not
even been able to state it in a self-consistent form, but in one
which manifestly implies, if it does not explicitly state, that
Livy's oratorical genius presupposed, and was conditioned by,
the very character which it is alleged to explain.
In 1857 his ' Philosophes Frangais du xix° Sidcle ' appeared.
It showed that he was already a decided ideologist, a lineal
successor of Condillac and De Tracy, who had been en-
thusiastically studying physical science, and was in full
sympathy with the naturalistic tendencies of the time. His
criticism of Eclecticism and its chief representatives was in
some respects just, superabounded in force, and displayed a
characteristic lack of comprehensiveness of vision and moder-
ation of judgment. It is at once the strength and the weak-
ness of M. Taine that he must always study not simply to
know but also to prove a thesis, and that he so concentrates
his mind on the proof of his thesis that he loses sight of
everything in his subject which does not serve his purpose :
this, one might almost say, is his faculte maitresse. In the
last two chapters of the work he set forth views as to method
which he has since somewhat more fully developed. The
' Essais de Critique et d'Histoire ' appeared in the following
year. All the studies contained in this volume are able and
TAINE g31
interesting, and exemplify the method which their author
regarded as fitted to disclose the natural history of the soul
in an individual or nation. The preface is a defence of
the method against the criticisms of Sainte-Beuve, PreVost-
Paradol, and others. It is, however, in the introduction to
his great work, the ' Histoire de la Litte'rature Anglaise ' (5
vols., 1864), that we find the most explicit and matured
statement of his theory of history.
It is to the following effect. In historical study documents
are to be regarded only as a clue to the reconstruction of the
visible or outer man, and he only as a clue to the discovery
of the inner invisible man. The state and actions of this
latter man have their causes in certain general modes of
thought and feeling, — certain characteristics of the intellect
and the heart common to men of one race, age, and country.
The mechanism of human history is always the same. The
mainspring is constantly some very general disposition of
mind and soul, innate and attached by nature to the race,
or acquired and produced by some circumstance acting on
the race; and it. produces its effects inevitably and gradually,
bringing a nation into a succession of conditions, religious,
literary, social, economic, sometimes good, sometimes bad, act-
ing sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, and so forth. The
whole progress of each distinct civilisation may thus be re-
garded as the effect of a permanent force, which, at every
stage, varies its operation by modifying the circumstances
of its action. There are three primordial forces which by
their combination produce a civilisation and all its trans-
formations through the ages by a succession of natural and
necessitated impulses: the race, the medium, and the moment.
Race includes the innate and hereditary dispositions which
man brings with him into the world, which are, as a rule,
united with marked differences in the temperament and
structure of the body, and which vary with various peoples.
The medium comprises all physical and social circumstances
and surroundings. Besides the forces within and without,
there is the work which they have already produced together,
and which itself contributes to produce that which follows.
This work is the moment, or epoch, the momentum acquired
at a given period, and resulting from the permanent impulse
632 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and the medium in which it has operated. These primordial
forces produce a system of effects which is a civilisation in its
various stages. " History is a mechanical problem ; the total
effect is a result, depending entirely on the magnitude and
direction of the producing causes. The only difference which
separates it from a purely physical problem is that it cannot
be measured or computed by the same means, or denned in
an exact or approximative formula. As in both, however, the
matter is the same, equally made up of forces, magnitudes,
and directions, we may say that in both the final result is
produced after the same method."
In history, as everywhere, the law of the mutual depend-
ence, or correlation of parts, holds an important place. "As
in an animal, instincts, teeth, limbs, bony structure and mus-
cular envelope, are mutually connected, so that a change in
one produces a corresponding change in the rest, and a skilful
naturalist can by a process of reasoning reconstruct out of a
few fragments almost the whole body; even so in a civilisa-
tion, religion, philosophy, the organisation of the family,
literature, the arts, make up a system in which every local
change induces a general change, so that an experienced his-
torian, studying some particular portion of it, sees in advance
and half predicts the rest." Hence one great phase or fact
of history thoroughly understood is sufficient to enable us to
understand those concomitant with it, and largely to antici-
pate the future. The main work of the historian is, accord-
ingly, to determine what moral condition produced a given
literature, philosophy, society, or act, and how the race, the
medium, and the moment, produced that condition.
History is psychology developing itself in time and space.
It may be best studied in the documents which bring human
sentiments and their evolution most clearly and fully to light;
and these are just those which constitute literature. It is
chiefly by the study of literature that one may construct a
history of mind and gain a knowledge of the psychological
laws from which events spring. "In this respect a great
poem, a fine novel, the confessions of a man of genius, are
more instructive than a crowd of historians with their pile of
histories. I would give fifty volumes of charters, and a hun-
dred volumes of diplomatic documents, for the Memoirs of
TAINE 633
Cellini, the Epistles of St. Paul, Luther's Table-Talk, or the
Comedies of Aristophanes. . . . Literature resembles those
admirable apparatuses of extraordinary sensibility by which
physicians disentangle and measure the most obscure and
delicate changes of a body. Constitutions and religions do not
approach it in importance ; the articles of a code of laws and of
a creed only show us the spirit roughly and without delicacy."
It was in order to exhibit the psychology of the English
people in the various stages through which it has passed, and
to show how, in accordance with the theory of historical devel-
opment just indicated, these stages were naturally and inevi-
tably evolved, how great political, religious, and literary works
were produced, and how the Saxon barbarian was transformed
into the Englishman of the present day, that M. Taine wrote
his ' History of English Literature.' By the way in which he
performed the task he has rendered both France and England
greatly his debtor. There is no other history of the subject
which displays so much talent and the same combination of
excellences. It is everywhere characterised by freshness and
independence of thought, brilliancy and vigour of style, and
fulness and accuracy of information. It is eminently success-
ful in almost all respects except one — ■ namely, the proof of
the theory on which it proceeds. As regards that, it is a
signal failure. Sometimes, indeed, M. Taine is to be seen
in it struggling vaguely and spasmodically to establish the
theory he had laid down, and he is still oftener to be heard
proclaiming that he has succeeded ; but he brings it to a close
without any real fulfilment of his promise.
For such assertions as that all events are necessitated, that
history is simply a mechanical problem, and that freewill is an
illusion, he produces no evidence. These assertions, although
the very foundations of his theory, are allowed to remain to the
end of his work the mere assumptions which they were at its
commencement. They are metaphysical dogmas only capable
of being proved, if provable at all, by metaphysical reasonings ;
certainly not by historical research. M. Taine seems to think
their truth so manifest that to attempt any kind of proof of
them, or even to answer the most obvious objections to them,
is unnecessary.
He has equally failed to make out that either the individual
634 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PRANCE
or the collective mind is like a machine or an organism ruled by
a central and dominant force from which all the other forces may-
be inferred, and by which its whole activity may be explained ;
and that, accordingly, the entire character and work of a man
or a nation may be summed up in a formula which indicates
the chief motive, principle, or distinctive quality of that man or
nation. There is no machine or organism of the kind. Even
a timepiece is not explicable merely by its mainspring. To
affirm that " man is a walking formula " may be tolerable as
a joke, but it is execrable as a definition, and ludicrous as a
philosophical thesis. M. Taine would improve his admirable
study on Shakespeare were he to leave out the meaningless
paragraph in which he pretends to resolve " the whole genius "
of the great dramatist into " a complete imagination." All
paragraphs of the same kind in his work, — e.g., those refer-
ring to the spring- (ressort) Milton, the spring-Macaulay, the
spring-Dickens, the spring-Carlyle, &c, are equally worthless.
Fortunately they are far fewer than his theory logically re-
quires, easily separable from the rest of the book, and too mani-
festly futile to mislead an intelligent reader. So far as I know,
they have not misled — that is, convinced — a single mortal.
The three causes which, according to M. Taine, originate
history and determine its form and development are unques-
tionably real and influential historical factors ; yet they are
not so powerful as he represents them to be. They are not
the only causes which act on history, and they are improperly
asserted to be " primordial." Behind and beneath the acquired
peculiarities of the race are the essential and universal qualities
of the man. This man, to whom M. Taine's theory does such
scant justice, yet to whom belongs the reason, will, conscience,
and feelings common to all races, is the prime and main agent
in history, and its sole subject. How he was differentiated
into races is itself a difficult historical problem. The medium,
in so far as it is social, is wholly of human formation, and
largely so even as physical, wherever man is an active histori-
cal agent. The moment is only another name for history itself
at a given time ; and cannot cause or account for itself. Race,
medium, and moment, therefore, far from being the primordial
sources of historical explanation, need to be either wholly or
largely historically explained.
TAINE 635
Further, M. Taine should not merely have insisted that each
people is an organism, and the history of each people an organic
development ; he should also have sufficiently explained what
that meant. It is easier to understand what a society or nation
is, than to recognise how it is an organism ; and what history is,
than wherein its organic development consists. In order not
to be chargeable with explaining the ignotum by the ignotius,
our author, instead of being content merely to carry the terras
and notions of " organism " and " organic development " from
biology over into sociology, from natural history over into
human history, should have also shown what changes in signi-
fication they underwent in the transference. He has made no
serious attempt of the kind ; and that obviously because he
has not clearly seen how great are the differences between
individual and social organisms — between wholes in which
each part is merely a part, and wholes in which each part is
a free and rational individual. While there are relations be-
tween the civilisation, religion, philosophy, and literature, &c,
of a nation, just as there are between the various organs
and members of an animal, they are relations of a very differ-
ent kind, and change in a very different manner. Prevision is
consequently much more difficult in the case of the historian
than of the naturalist. It has to be observed, also, that hu-
manity, if an organism, is most unlike other organisms, in that
it is single and unique, whereas they are multiple and reducible
to classes. Its history is a whole of which all particular his-
tories are merely sections, or stages, or phases.
M. Taine's 'History of English Literature ' is in the main of
a truly psychological nature ; it exhibits the operation not of
his so-called primordial forces but of the actual proximate
mental causes. To this happy inconsistency it owes much of
its value. Unquestionably it is an important contribution
to comparative psychology. Yet not more so than Renan's
' History of the Semitic Languages.' Literature regarded as
a source of comparative psychology is by no means so superior
to language or religion as M. Taine supposes. Literature,
indeed, is the fullest revelation of the minds of certain men ;
but it is not as direct a revelation as language or history of
collective mind, the mind of races and nations. No History
of English Literature can be an exhibition of the mind of the
636 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOBY IN PKANOE
English people, or of more than the minds of English men
of letters. To attribute to the English mind any quality of
the genius of Shakespeare or Byron is a fallacious procedure,,
if it have no other warrant than a study of the works of these
authors. From overlooking this fact M. Taine, notwithstand-
ing his wide and minute knowledge of England as well as of
France, has represented many peculiarities of no great gen-
erality as traits which differentiate English from French
thought and character. Comparative Psychology must seek
its data primarily in language, general beliefs, common cus-
toms, &c.
Between the years 1865 and 1869 M. Taine was actively
occupied in attempting to apply his naturalistic principles
and historical theory to the elucidation of the nature and
development of Art. 1
In 1870 appeared his subtle and influential treatise, ' De
l'lntelligence.' In the preface he thus points out its relation
to the works to which we have just been referring : " History
is applied psychology, psychology applied to more com-
plex cases. The historian notes and traces the total trans-
formations presented by a particular human molecule or group
of human molecules ; and to explain these transformations,
writes the psychology of the molecule or group ; Carlyle has
written that of Cromwell ; Sainte-Beuve that of Port Royal ;
Stendhal has made twenty attempts on that of the Italians ;
M. Renan has given us that of the Semitic race. Every
perspicacious and philosophical historian labours at that of a;
man, an epoch, a people, or a race ; the researches of linguists,
mythologists, and ethnographers have no other aim ; the task
is invariably the description of a human mind, or of the char-
acteristics common to a group of human minds ; and what
historians do with respect to the past, the great novelists and
dramatists do with the present. For fifteen years I have con-
tributed to these special and concrete psychologies ; I now
attempt general and abstract psychology." He concludes the
treatise thus : " The reader has seen how cognitions are formed,
and by what adjustments they correspond to things. They
have, as materials, sensations of various kinds, some primitive
1 ' Philosophie de l'Art,' ' Philosophie de l'Art en Italie,' ' Philosophic de l'Art
dans les Pays-Bas,' &c.
TAINB 637
and excited, others spontaneous and reviving, attached to one
another, counterbalanced by one another, purposely organised
by their connections and their antagonism, composed of ele-
mentary sensations smaller than themselves, these again of still
smaller ones, and so on, till their differences are finally effaced
and permit us to divine the existence of wholly similar infini-
tesimal elements whose various arrangements explain their
various aspects. Thus in a cathedral, the ultimate elements
are grains of sand agglutinated into stones of various forms,
which, attached in pairs, form masses, whose thrusts oppose and
balance each other ; all these associations and all these pres-
sures being co-ordinated in one grand harmony. Such is the
simplicity of the means, and such the complication of the effect,
and both the simplicity and the complication are as admirable
in the mental as in the real edifice." No words could be
better fitted to suggest the radical and pervading defect of the
treatise. The analysis by which M. Taine reduces intelli-
gence entirely into infinitesimal elementary sensations is pre-
cisely of the same illegitimate and illusory nature as that
which would resolve a cathedral into the grains of sand of
which its stones are composed. The latter analysis, in order
to arrive at its ridiculous result, must leave out of account the
intelligence and skill to which the simplicity and complica-
tion, the proportion and harmony, of the cathedral are directly
due ; the former similarly leaves out of account the presence,
laws, and conditions of the mental activity which makes of
sensational elements conscious states and works them up into
intellectual edifices. In both forms alike, the analysis, instead
of really and honestly explaining the phenomenon to which
it is applied, overlooks or attempts to explain away what
is absolutely essential to the existence and intelligibility of
the phenomenon.
M. Taine's greatest work, 'Les Origines de la France Con-
temporaine,' began to appear in 1875, and four volumes have
since been published. It bears no traces of that historical
theory to which our attention in treating of M. Taine has of
necessity been chiefly directed. It disclaims party preposses-
sions, and even political principles. Of the latter the author
says that he has tried to find them, but as yet has discovered
only one,— namely, "that human society, and especially modern
638 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FKA2TOE
society, is vast and complicated — difficult to know and to
understand, but more easily known and understoood by the
cultivated than by the uncultivated mind, and by him who has
studied it than by him who has not." The volume on the
' Ancien Regime ' gave great offence to Conservatives by its
trenchant and thorough criticism of the old monarchy. The
three volumes on the Revolution excited the wrath of demo-
crats by their full exhibition of those facts which Thiers over-
looked, which Louis Blanc slurred over, and which Michelet
refused to contemplate, but a clear recognition of which is in-
dispensable as a protection against lying legends which have
done incalculable mischief to France. The volume which treats
of Napoleon displeased imperialists by its searching analysis
of the character of the Emperor. Hence numerous have been
the complaints of one-sidedness brought against the work, and
copious the talk of critics about its lack of lofty impartiality
and sobriety of judgment. A certain kind of one-sidedness in
it I fully admit that there is ; but I consider that it is of a kind
which is here scarcely a fault. What right had the critics of
M. Taine to expect from him a complete history ? None. They
had a right only to expect a history true so far as it goes; one
in which what are stated as facts are true and important facts;
and that they have got. The work of M. Taine may be, perhaps,
in the strictest sense, not a historj^ at all, but rather a study
on history, a series of demonstrations of historical and psycho-
logical theses; but it will be none the less entitled to be regarded
as one of the most important historical treatises produced in the
present age : a treatise admirable for its fearless honesty, for its
extensive original research, and for the psychological penetra-
tion and the power of delineation which it displays. Any
history of the period of which it treats which would not give
serious offence to political parties in France, would require to
be written from a stand-point of impartiality so lofty that all
clear vision from it would be impossible, and with a sobriety
of judgment closely approximating to total abstention from
judgment.1
1 The foregoing pages on M. Taine's historical philosophy were written prior to
his death. I have left them, however, unaltered, in the belief that their contro-
versial character will not to any great extent conceal my sincere admiration of
TAINE 639
the illustrious man whose death is so vast a loss to France and to European
literature. For general estimates of his character I may refer to the articles of
.St. Faguet in the ' Eevue Bleue' of March 11, of M. Lolie'e in the 'Nouvelle
Kevue ' of March 15, and (especially) of M. Gabriel Monod in the ' Contemporary
Review' for April.
The following authors have theorised on history in accordance with naturalist
or positivist principles : —
1. Eugene Veron. — He is a well-known publicist, who has written a number of
able works, and is the chief editor of the journal 'L'Art.' His 'Progres Intel-
lectual dans l'humanite: Superiorite' des arts modernes sur les arts anciens'
(1862), is of most interest for the historical philosopher. The alternative title
indicates what is its chief theme; but a philosophical view of the history of
humanity is also presented. That history is supposed to have commenced with
the lowest stage of savagery ; to be divisible into two great periods — the first the
period of objectivity, and the second the period of subjectivity; and to be indefi-
nitely or infinitely progressive. On this very slender thread M. Veron has con-
trived to hang a wonderful amount of ingenious, and even of true thought. In
regard to Art and its history he is especially informative and suggestive. His
later writings ' L'Esthetique,' ' La Mythologie dans l'Art,' ' Histoire naturelle des
Religions,' and ' La Morale,' are also largely historical ; and necessarily so, seeing
that, like Comte, he despises introspection and psychological analysis. Of course,
he has often recourse to them, although unconsciously and inconsistently.
2. Paul Mougeolle. — His ' Statique des Civilisations ' is an elaborate attempt
to prove that civilisation has developed from the equator towards the poles. This
thesis I have already had to refer to in treating of Charles Comte. ' Les Pro-
blemes de l'Histoire' (1886) of M. Mougeolle is a pleasant book to read, being
written in a light and lively style ; contains a great many interesting ideas and
facts, suggestions and criticisms ; and is comprehensively planned, and, externally
at least, well arranged. It is divided into four parts. The First Part treats of
" the Facts, or the matter of the Drama," and is composed of three books, which
treat respectively of the facts in relation to one another, in relation to time, and
in relation to space. As regards their relations to one another, he dwells on the
proportionality, equivalence, and constancy of these relations. As regards their
relations to time, he assails the theory of the fall or decadence, and the theory of
cycles, and argues in favour of the theory of progress. And as regards their
relations to space, he seeks to establish (unsuccessfully, I think,) what he calls the
law of altitudes not the law of latitudes — meaning thereby that the earliest cities
were built on hill-tops and that the plains were only built on comparatively late,
and that civilisation has spread from the equator towards the poles. The so-
called law of longitudes, which affirms that civilisation has moved from east to
west, he maintains, and, in my opinion, on much stronger grounds, to be a false
generalisation. The Second Part treats of "Men, or the actors of the Drama,"
and is divided into three books, which have for their several subjects Individuals,
Societies, and Races. Kings and political leaders, founders of religion and their
apostles, poets, philosophers, scientists, and inventors, are represented as having
had far less influence on history than is supposed. The biographical method
which has hitherto prevailed in the writing of history is strongly condemned ; and
it is maintained that it must give place to the democratic method, which sees in
history the work not of a few great individualities but of the innumerable multi-
tude of individuals which have made up the successive generations of mankind.
The refutation of the theory which explains history by the action of races is, per-
haps, the most satisfactory portion of M. Mougeolle's work. The Third Part
expounds his own theory. It treats of " the Medium, or the author of the Drama."
"The medium," we are told, "makes men." The stable elements and the shift-
640 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOBY IN FRANCE
ing scenes which surround humanity compose and evolve the drama of history,
and even create and train the actors in it; such is the hypothesis which alone
finds favour in M. Mougeolle's eyes. The Fourth Part is on " Historians, or the
critics of the Drama." These are distributed into three schools, — the German,
British, and French, — on grounds which are very worthy of consideration,
although they may be, perhaps, not quite conclusive. M. Mougeolle touches on a
great many of the problems of history in an exceptionally interesting way, but too
lightly to reach, except rarely, sound solutions of them. The chief defects of his
work, I must add, are clearly indicated in the "Preface" to it, written by M.
Yves Guyot. It might be of great public advantage if authors generally were to
get their works prefaced by such perfectly candid friends.
3. Louis Bourdeau. — He is the author of one very remarkable and important
book, which I have had special occasion to study in another connection. I refer
to his ' Theorie des Sciences ' (2 vols. 1882), an elaborate attempt to improve and
advance the work of Comte, in the spirit of Comte, and to expound an " integral "
or universal science into which shall enter no metaphysical or theological concep-
tion. In his ' Histoire des Arts Utiles ' he has made a valuable contribution to
the history of industry. But his ' L'Histoire et les Historiens ' (1888) is, on the
whole, disappointing. M. Bourdeau considers that of true history there is as yet
almost none, and that the foundations of a science of history have still to be laid.
He begins his treatise by attempting to define history, with the result which I
have already noticed on page 11. He then discourses on " the agents " and " the
facts " of history ; and strongly complains that historians have attended exclu-
sively to celebrated personages and to striking or singular events, not seeing that,
in reality, the human race is only to be known aright by studying it in its average
condition, and in its general, regular, or functional facts. He devotes only six
pages to "the methodical analysis" or "rational distribution" of history, and
more than two hundred to an attack on " the narrative method." He would have
been well advised, I think, if he had done just the reverse. Thierry, Buckle, and
others have sufficiently entertained us with accounts of the blunders and defects
of the older historians. And if M. Bourdeau's collection of instances of error and
of prejudice on their part had been even a hundredfold more copious than it is,
it would not have justified the historical scepticism ■ into which he falls — a
scepticism almost as extreme and irrational as that of Father Hardouin.
Strange to say, none of his instances are drawn from the pages of modern
historians imbued with the critical spirit, although it is surely manifest that
before condemning the historical method hitherto exclusively employed as alto-
gether untrustworthy and useless, it was its latest and most accredited practition-
ers whom he was especially bound to expose and discredit. To the narrative
method he would substitute a mathemetical or numerical method, the statistical
method. It is only by this method — by measurement, enumeration, and calcula-
tion— that, in his opinion, true history can be obtained, and a positive science of
history established. He eulogises the method, and explains how he would apply
it, but he shows no perception of the proper limits of its applicability. He
does not seem to have studied its history, logic, or relationships ; to know any-
thing of the researches and discussions of a Guerry, Dufau. Guillard, Legoyt,
or Leplay, of an Engel, Wappaus, Wagner, Drobisch, von Oettingen, &c. He
treats, in conclusion, of the laws of history: first, of its special laws, which are
either laws of order or of relation ; next, of its general law, the law of progress ;
and then, of the demonstration of the laws. The law of progress he represents
as a necessary law, and as of a mathematical nature like other laws ; the theory
of progress as still an hypothesis, like Newton's theory cif attraction ; and the
formula of progress as one analogous to that of gravitation.
CHAPTER XI
HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CRITICAL SCHOOL
Positive philosophy, in the acceptation of the positivists,
is a legitimate stage or form of philosophy. All the various
special sciences aim merely at the extension of knowledge of
a particular kind, at the acquisition of truth in regard to cer-
tain specific objects. Each of them is confined within a sphere
of its own, and has its own class of specialists. And yet not
one of them is entirely independent and self-sufficient. They
have all a community of nature, and are in various ways
related. There are precedence and subordination, order and
harmony, among them, so that many and diverse as they are
they imply a whole not less than do the objects of which they
severally treat, a system in which each of them should find
its appropriate place. But this whole or system when discov-
ered by a scientific investigation of the limits, methods, affini-
ties, and inter-relations of the sciences, will be itself a science
equally with the sciences which it presupposes, and of which
it is the theory or doctrine. It will be of the same 'nature as
they are, and differ from them only as general from special
science, or as an organism from its members. There is mani-
festly not only room but need for such a science, even if it be
nothing more than such a doctrine of the sciences as affords
a synthesis and organisation of them. And such a science or
doctrine is what the positivists call positive philosophy.
Their philosophy is a science of the sciences which is a nec-
essary complement of special science, and yet of the same
nature, at least in their view. It assumes the special sciences,
and builds itself up on what these sciences teach.
Now this is well so far as it goes, but it does not go far
enough. It is unsatisfactory, not because it is false, but inas-
641
642 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PKANCE
much as it is superficial and inadequate. Positive philosophy,
understood as indicated, in basing itself on the special sciences
assumes their assumptions. It assumes that we know what
knowledge and science, certainty and probability, are; that
truth of various kinds is within the reach of the human mind ;
that it is to be sought by certain methods ; and that there are
fundamental ideas and fixed laws of thought on which we can
rely in our investigations. All the special sciences make these
assumptions, and must, if they are unsound, fall to the ground,
and bring down the positive philosophy of which these sciences
are at once the sole supports and the sole objects. Neither such
science nor such philosophy is thorough, or capable of satisfy-
ing a completely rational being. A fully awakened mind is one
awakened from the dogmatic slumber which accepts assump-
tions without examination : assumptions which may be denied
not less than affirmed, and of which the affirmation and the de-
nial alike require justification. " Scientific thought," to use
here words which I have elsewhere employed, " is not neces-
sarily self-criticising thought ; on the contrary, mere scientific
thought, however rigid and methodical, is essentially dogmatic
thought. It is not dogmatism, but it is dogma. It is reasoned,
yet unreflective. It builds up what is admitted to be knowledge,
but it does not inquire what so-called knowledge is or is essen-
tially worth. Positive philosophy is such thought at its highest
perfection, or in its purest and most comprehensive form, but
it has all the essential defects of such thought. It is merely
an advance on special science, as special science itself is on
ordinary knowledge, and ordinary knowledge on crude sensa-
tion. Along the whole line the mind never changes its attitude
towards its objects ; at the end this is just what it was at the
beginning. The scientist often fancies that he is a man who
takes nothing on trust; in reality, he takes everything on trust,
because he accepts without question or reservation thought it-
self as naturally truthful and its laws as valid. Whatever a
multitude of superficial scientists may suppose to the contrary,
the fact is that the entire procedure of science, and of philos-
ophy in so far as it is simply a generalisation of science, is as-
sumptive and dogmatic. At bottom, science, which is so often
contrasted with and opposed to faith, is mere faith, implicit
HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CRITICAL SCHOOL 643
faith, and in the view of a serious and consistent scepticism
must be blind faith. Thought may assume, however, and is
bound to assume, a very different attitude towards itself and
towards its objects. It may pass, and ought to pass, from a
believing to an inquiring, from a dogmatic to a critical stage.
It may turn, and ought to turn, its attention and force from a
study of the relations of the known to an examination of the
conditions and guarantees of knowledge."1
The need for a critical philosophy was made apparent by the
destructive work of Hume. Reid and his followers saw what
was wanted, but only imperfectly supplied it. Kant gave the
first general yet profound exposition of philosophy as a criti-
cism of knowledge. The French critical school consists of
thinkers who have deeply felt the influence of Kant, and who
for the most part accept his principles even when they reject
his conclusions. In the view of its representatives the inquiry
neglected by the positivists, the inquiry into the conditions of
experience and the assumptions of the sciences, is of primary
importance. They recognise the absurdity of a man excluding
metaphysics and theology from the sphere of knowledge, and
including physics and sociology within it, although he has
never taken the trouble to ask what knowledge is, whether it
is attainable at all or not, and if attainable what its criteria
and limits are. And, as a consequence of thus differing from
the positivists, they aim likewise at being more severely
scientific ; are much more exacting and difficult to satisfy in
regard to proof ; and have a keener sense of the uncertainty
latent in general theories and complex inquiries, and less re-
spect for the mere name of science and for much of what passes
as science. They are not so positive as the positivists in the
sense of being prone to make either decided affirmations or
negations. They are well aware that for such intellects as the
human the domain of probability is far more extensive than
that of certainty, and are perhaps even apt to suppose that
rational certainties are fewer than they are. The positivist
is a dogmatist even when he calls himself an agnostic. The
criticist is not as such a sceptic, but he is more likely to fall
into scepticism than into dogmatism. The criticist often holds
1 Presbyterian Review, July 1885, p. 2.
\\
644 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN PBAKCE
phenomenalism and relativism as narrowly and exclusively as
the positivist, but he has always more reason for holding them,
and a clearer conception of what he means by them.
The criticist mode of thought has found in France its two
most typical representatives in the late M. Cournot and M.
Renouvier. Both have occupied themselves with historical
philosophy. They have written in entire independence of
each other. While both may be regarded as in a general way
disciples of Kant, neither has sacrificed to Kant, or any other
thinker, his own rights of private judgment.
M. Augustin Cournot (1801-77) had a remarkable capacity
both for speculative thought and scientific research. He filled
difficult and important educational positions. He wrote valued
works on the higher branches of mathematics. The treatises
in which he attempted to apply mathematics to economics
have been allowed by competent judges to be among the most
ingenious and successful of their kind. He expounded his
philosophical opinions in the ' Essai sur les fondements de nos
connaissances,' 2 vols., 1851 ; the 'Traite- de l'enchainement des
idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l'histoire,' 2 vols.,
1861 ; and ' Considerations sur la marche des ide"es et des
eVenements dans les temps modernes,' 2 vols., 1872. These
are all most instructive and suggestive books, such as could
only be produced by a mind of rare intellectual sincerity,
thoroughly disciplined in exact science and in the practice of
analysis, and with a grasp of facts at once capacious and firm :
books not written with a view to being easily read, and to please,
impress, or astonish ; not written for a vulgar and thoughtless
public, but for the only public worthy of them, one which
earnestly seeks truth precisely as it is, truth in its purity,
naked, un exaggerated, and unadorned. The last mentioned
of them is of most interest for the philosophical historian.
Cournot's conception of philosophy is peculiar. He does
not admit it to be a science, inasmuch as he holds it neither
to have a definite object nor to be capable of furnishing
demonstrative proof or certainty. To represent it as being,
or capable of being, science can only tend, in his opinion, to
spread and confirm the pernicious impression that it is nothing
COURNOT 645
Teal at all, but merely a pretentious illusion. It has no par-
ticular object, for whatever objects there may be they are the
proper subjects of particular sciences, mathematical, physical,
biological, noological, or political. Nor does it deal, as Comte
taught, with the whole of the generalities of the sciences, the
sum of certainties established by the sciences : these generali-
ties and certainties must always belong to the sciences which
prove them. Philosophy is an indispensable element of all (
the sciences, a spirit which inspires and vivifies them. Its
conclusions are not certainties. Every philosophy, so far as
it embodies itself in doctrines, is only a whole of more or less
probable views relative to the order and the reason of things.
€ournot's conception of philosophy is thus entirely different
from Auguste Comte's. The latter would have all problems
which do not admit of a positive solution wiped out ; all ques-
tions which cannot be definitely settled by experience and
scientific proof denied the right of being put. He was by
nature and on system intolerant of doubts, questionings, hesi-
tations of belief. Cournot shows himself profoundly conscious \\
that a finite intellect must be a fallible intellect ; that man as
a conditional being cannot have a strictly absolute certainty ;
that it is not merely human to err, but that the possibility of
«rror is so involved in the very constitution of the human mind
that it cannot be thought of as absent from it; that in all
perception, all consciousness, all reasoning, there lurks, and
must ever lurk, this possibility; and that we must often
Tesign ourselves to be guided, even in matters of high con-
cern, by low probabilities. In his view all that we can say of
the most completely verified laws of nature is that they are
infinitely probable ; and "speaking physically, infinite proba-
bility is equivalent to reality, but logically speaking it is never
more than a probability." It is just those questions which
most interest and concern humanity which are generally
least susceptible of scientific treatment; and therefore it is
no disparagement to philosophy to represent it as occupied
with such questions.1
Cournot's philosophy of history is merely an historical
1 There is a good study on the general philosophy of Cournot hy T. V. Char-
pentier, in the ' Eev. Phil.,' t. xi.
646 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
etiology, an analysis and discussion of the causes and con-
catenations of causes which have concurred to bring about
the events of which history presents us with the picture. It
is not simply the history either of civilisation or of humanity,
for universal history has its etiology just as have the histories
of religion, science, morality, policy, art, and industry, or, in
other words, the special historical developments which it in-
cludes. Nor is it the ambitious and hypothetical teleology of
history, to which the name of philosophy of history has been
so often given. M. Cournot does not contest that the course
of humanity proceeds according to a fixed plan and towards a
decreed or designed end ; but he thinks that all attempts to
trace such a plan and determine such an end are plainly de-
fective and unreliable, and that the most celebrated of them,
like those of Hegel and Cousin, although they might be received
with applause around a professorial chair, are worthless before
criticism, the only good kind of philosophy. He abjures for
his own part such venturesomeness. His historical philosophy
is critical, not speculative. It allows the use of hypotheses
only in so far as they suggest, or are suggested by, inductions.
Cournot rejects the Comtian law of the three states, and,
succinctly but conclusively, shows its inconsistency with facts.
He does not attempt to replace it by another ; he does not even
venture to affirm that there is any law of history. Denning a
law of nature to be "a constant mathematical relation between
two variable quantities," he finds nowhere in history laws cor-
responding to his definition. It is not laws, therefore, which
he seeks in history, but causes or reasons, connections and
relations. " Whether there are or are not laws in history, it
is enough that there are facts, and that these facts are some-
times subordinate to one another, sometimes independent of
one another, in order that there may be room for a criticism
designed to trace out in the one case the subordination and in
the other the independence. And as this criticism cannot pre-
tend to irresistible demonstrations, such as produces scientific
certainty, but is restricted to the setting forth of analogies and
inductions, like those with which philosophy must be content
(otherwise it would be a science, as so many people have vainly
pretended it to be, and not philosophy), it follows that we are
cournot 647
quite entitled to give this criticism of which we are speaking,
and which, notwithstanding its uncertainties, is of so much in-
terest, the name of 'philosophy of history.' The same holds of
the history of peoples as of the history of nature, which is not
to be confounded with the science of nature, seeing that the
one has chiefly for object facts and the other laws, but facts
which may be on so great a scale, and have consequences so
vast and durable, that they appear to us to have, and really
have, the same importance as laws. None the less reason
recognises a radical difference between laws and facts: the
former valid always and everywhere, by a necessity inherent
in the permanent essence of things ; the latter brought about
by a concurrence of anterior facts, and determining in their
turn the facts which are to follow them." 1
Cournot considers it essential to a correct understanding of
history to distinguish between necessary and fortuitous events,
and to assign a considerable place to the latter. He holds that
the idea of chance or hazard is not a mere phantom evoked by
the mind to hide from itself its own ignorance, or to express
the imperfection of its knowledge in certain circumstances and
conditions, but the notion of a fact true in itself, demonstrable
in some cases by reasoning, and more commonly confirmed by
observation. The fact which it implies is the independence of
series of causes which, although unrelated, do in fact concur to
produce certain phenomena or events, which are on this account
appropriately termed fortuitous. Such independence of series
of causes Cournot regards as quite consistent with belief in their
common suspension to a single primordial ring beyond, or even
within the limits to which our reasonings or observations can
attain. There is, in his view, no opposition between chance
properly understood and Providence, between hazard and Di-
vine Will or Fate. An accidental fact does not mean an effect
without a cause,«or a fact which human wisdom cannot in any
measure foresee or provide against, but a fact brought about by
the interaction of chains or groups of facts which are not
naturally connected. Were there no facts of this kind there
could be no history, but only science. Were all facts of this
kind there could equally be no history, but only annals. His-
1 Page i of Preface.
648 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
tory properly so called implies the commingling of fortuitous
and necessary facts. The part of fortuity, according to Cournot,
is especially large in political history, as the action of excep-
tional and superior personalities has there most effect; it
diminishes, however, as general causes, the collective reason
and will, attain ascendancy. Inasmuch as the efficiency of for-
tuitous events may be extensive and even permanent, partic-
ularly in the political sphere, the student of historical etiology
must be on his guard against overlooking them ; at the same
time, political history, in which hazard has most influence, is for
the historical etiologist not the first but the last department
of history, the most superficial, particular, and external. On
this very account, however, political history is always the chief
object of interest to the ordinary historian, constitutionally
incapable of general and philosophical views.
With characteristic caution M. Cournot refrains from at-
tempting to survey the course of history as a whole, and
confines his reflections chiefly to modern times. He has, how-
ever, some introductory chapters on the medieval period ; and
in these he characterises with remarkable sagacity its general
spirit, its scientific condition, its scholastic philosophy, its
ecclesiastical organisation, and it feudal constitution. He
shows very clearly how it ought to be differentiated from
ancient and modern history. It is to be regretted that the
late Professor Freeman did not become acquainted with his
observations on the division of history into "ancient" and
" modern." He could hardly have failed to learn from them
that there was more to be done in relation to that division
than simply to assail it and condemn its abuses ; that it was
also necessary to inquire how far it is legitimate, and what the
terms ancient and modern, old and new, when applied to history
and historical phenomena, really mean.
Even of the limited period of history selected by him for
investigation, Cournot does not attempt to give a systematic
survey, to trace in it the operation of laws, or to formulate its
characteristics and results. His treatment of it is comprehen-
sive, but not deductive or constructive ; it has no other unity
than that which arises from sameness of spirit and method. His
conclusions are the results of careful analysis and reflection, but
COTTRNOT 649
they do not pretend to be more than " considerations," probabili-
ties, generalities. To detach them from the discussions to which
they belong, and to force them into more definite and rigid forms
than the author himself has given them, would be to falsify his
thought. Cournot's disquisitions hardly even admit of useful
abridgment, as there is no diffuseness of language in them to
prune away, and the probabilist traits of the reasoning in them
require for their exhibition almost exact reproduction.
Each century of modern European history — the sixteenth,
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth — has assigned to it a
separate book ; and in each book the general plan followed is
the same. What that plan is will be best stated in the au-
thor's own words : " If we were treating of some ancient or
remote civilisation, it would be proper to present first the
ethnographical data which are chiefly supplied by the study
of languages ; then we should occupy ourselves with geographi-
cal data, with the conditions of climate and of soil ; and, the
medium or theatre of the civilisation having been thus denned,
we should successively pass in review the different elements of
this civilisation, the religion, morals, customs, political institu-
tions, poetry, philosophy, art, industry, sciences, in the order of
their antiquity and originality, as nature regulates it, when
there are no abnormal causes of a hasty or a tardy develop-
ment, or even of a complete atrophy. But for our purpose,
whether we take account of peculiarities of origin or have
regard to its final term, a nearly inverse order is to be followed.
We must give the first place in our plan to what truly con-
stitutes the common substratum of European civilisation ; that
which has been the least altered or repressed in its progress by
elements of a more variable nature; that which will have for
future generations the most persistent interest. We shall
therefore give the positive sciences priority to philosophical
systems, and even philosophical systems — notwithstanding
their following one another so rapidly, although in a circle deter-
mined by the immutable constitution of the human mind — pri-
ority to religious doctrines, which, humanly considered, depend
much more on historical conjunctures, a circumstance which
does not hinder them from exerting an influence far more
penetrating, general, and enduring. And we shall assign the
650 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
last place in our plan to all that directly tells of the diver-
sities of origin, genius, and customs, among the nations which
participate in our European civilisation; concluding with
views on the great historical events in which accidents have
certainly more effect than elsewhere, although not so much
as to compel us to despair of recognising in them any traces
of order and regular concatenation." 1
As any book of the treatise under consideration will, accord-
ingly, serve as well as any other to exemplify Cournot's general
method of procedure, let us select for the purpose the fifth,
which treats of our own century.
"The exact sciences in the nineteenth century" are the
subjects of its first chapter. These sciences — mathematics,
physics, chemistry, &c. — have, we are told, so extended and
ramified, so developed and subdivided, that the possibility of
writing a history of them has almost vanished. It is only
possible to record their achievements from day to day in a
multitude of journals and in their own technical language.
Their historical interest has decreased with the general dim-
inution of their intelligibility. Mathematics has been rela-
tively losing its supremacy. Its progress has not been so
closely and entirely connected with the advances of the physical
sciences in the present as in the two previous centuries. It
has been becoming not less but more apparent that the key
to the knowledge of all physical nature will not be found
in mathematics themselves, or even in mathematics conjoined
with mechanics. Physicists are learning that they must trust
less to mathematics and more to their own combined efforts ;
mathematicians are realising that they must occupy them-
selves more exclusively with perfecting their science for its
own sake. Physics has been growing more experimental, and
mathematics more speculative. Astronomy from being almost
entirely mathematical has largely developed into a natural sci-
ence, thereby gaining greatly in cosmological interest.
Passing over what is said of the condition and historical bear-
ings of optics, thermology, and chemistry, we come tothesecond
chapter, which is on " the progress of the natural sciences in
the nineteenth century." The chief question discussed in it is
1 ' Considerations,' t. i. pp. 34, 35.
COURNOT 651
whether or not the development of these sciences has tended
to show that organic nature admits of a merely mechanical
explanation. Cournot contends that it has not ; that it has
even confirmed the distinction between the organic and inor-
ganic, and made apparent that "vitalism is the .true renovating
principle of philosophy in the nineteenth century." Matter,
Life, and Reason are, in his view, three distinct stages of reality;
the higher of which, while implying, are inexplicable by the
lower. Indicating the significance of the advances in the know-
ledge of nature represented by the origination of such new dis-
ciplines as embryology, teratology, and botanical and zoological
geography, he describes these advances as, strictly and distinc-
tively speaking, more historical than scientific. He holds that
there will always be a natural history, as well as a human his-
tory, incapable of being raised to the rank of science, yet none
the less important on that account. In every form history has
more affinity than exact science with the genius of democracy.
The question of the origin of species and the Darwinian hy-
pothesis come under consideration in the next chapter. The
question is shown to be of the widest and most far-reaching
significance. Darwin's hypothesis is argued to be very partial
and defective, yet to have the great value of indicating or sug-
gesting ways in which the problem should be attacked.
The following chapter is a discourse on " the historical la-
hours of the nineteenth century." Prominence is given to the
fact that the history of man and of society has been in the
present age attached more closely to that of nature ; and an-
thropology, ethnology, and linguistics are referred to in con-
firmation of it. Cournot agrees with Max Miiller in regarding
the Science of Language as a natural science ; and only regrets
that he has made too much concession to " the cavilling logi-
cians of the country in which he writes," by admitting that
what is said of the life of languages is merely to be under-
stood metaphorically. According to Cournot's own view, the
use of the term life in linguistics is not properly metaphori-
cal, or more metaphorical than the terms force, attraction, or
affinity in physics. Surveying the jurisprudence, politics, and
economics of the historical school, the historical criticism of
art and religion characteristic of our age, and the prevalence
652 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTOKY IN FRANCE
of the naturalistic or historical spirit in almost all spheres, he
comes to the conclusion that the nineteenth century may be
justly affirmed to have been, on the whole, a century of his-
torical reaction and renovation.
The philosophy of the nineteenth century is brought up for
review in the next chapter. This philosophy is also represented
as haviug been, in the main, a reaction and a renovation. The
judgment which our author pronounces on Electicism is more
severe than that which he passes on Positivism, but he points-
out with clearness and effect the errors even of the latter, and
comes to the conclusion that it has no claim to be called posi-
tive in the sense of scientific.
The sixth chapter treats of "the economic revolution in
the nineteenth century." That revolution is argued to have
been due to the natural and concurrent developments of me-
chanics, chemistry, and geology, and to have owed nothing
to the great catastrophes which happened in France at the
close of the previous century, or to any other political changes.
Some of its moral and political effects are indicated. It has
largely contributed to make the pursuit of wealth the princi-
pal aim of men, and to raise industry above all other interests*
It has in various ways exerted a socially levelling influence,,
and has favoured the growth of democracy. On intellect and
morality it has worked in some respects for evil, in others
for good.
The economic revolution of the age has produced the So-
cialism of the age. Hence the next chapter treats of " Social-
ism." In contemporary Europe there are, according to Cour-
not, three, and only three, great parties face to face: one
which would revive the old religious faith, and on that basis-
build up and maintain the social system ; another which puts
its trust in democratic institutions, more State control, en-
larged municipal powers, and the like ; and a third which ab-
hors the Church, and sets slight value on individual rights or
popular liberties, but deems it intolerable that a few should
be wealthy while many are poor, and urges as a remedy for
this evil the appropriation by the community of the means
of production and of exchange, for the common benefit. The
conflict between Liberalism and Socialism he describes as
COUENOT 653
one of the conspicuous characteristics of the nineteenth
century. Socialism is the younger force, and its advent
and development are peculiarly worthy of study. Its pro-
gress has been remarkable, and there are obvious reasons
why it should have been so ; but the socialistic idea is only
capable of partial realisation. It is impossible to eliminate
economic competition ; manifestly impossible, for example, to
get rid of it between nations, and if impossible to get rid of it
between them, necessarily also impossible to get rid of it within
them. The protection which Socialism offers is a symptom of
relative feebleness. Those who are desirous of it must be
wanting in that individual energy which is after all the source
of national energy ; and it is not likely that they will exercise
the chief influence on the future of civilisation. The principles
of economic liberty are, indeed, much less scientifically estab-
lished theorems than postulates necessary to the establishment
of economic science. Such postulates, however, they are ; and
Socialism, which denies them, has not, and cannot have, any
economic science properly so called.
In the eighth chapter the movement of opinion during the
present century in relation to public law and political insti-
tutions is the subject under consideration. It is maintained
that in this sphere also it is necessary to distinguish between
the effects of general causes and those of a particular cause
however powerful, — between the consequences of the spirit of
the age and of a revolutionary accident. In confirmation it is
argued that the removal of political inequalities and religious
disabilities, the extinction of slavery, &c, far from having been
directly and mainly due to the French Revolution, have been
chiefly accomplished by those who have been least in sympathy
with that Revolution. The present age is held to be even more
democratic and mare levelling in its tendencies than the pre-
ceding, but to be so owing to internal, intellectual, and economic
transformations of society brought about by causes independ-
ent of the Revolution. Various changes in law and govern-
ment are traced to a general change which has taken place in
thought and feeling towards humanity. Humanity has become,
to a large extent, the object of a sort of religious worship,
hased, however, not on the Christian idea of an incarnation of
654 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY 1ST FRANCE
God in humanity, but on faith in a self-perfecting development
of humanity which will end in a realisation of its immanent
divine ideal. The present age, as compared with that which
preceded it, is, further, described as being somewhat indifferent
to liberty, and more ready to submit to encroachments on it
which promise to be generally advantageous. This is traced in
part to weakened spiritual faith and to loss of enthusiasm, but
chiefly to the confidence which the people have acquired that
their liberty can no longer be seriously endangered. Of the
last chapter I shall merely say that it treats of " the European
political system in the nineteenth century, and the advent of
the principle of nationalities ; " and that its conclusions are of
a kind which there would be little or no advantage in merely
stating.
It would be foolish to recommend the work of Cournot to
general readers of any type or class. He probably never wrote
a paragraph for such readers, and certainly none of them
would ever care to read any book of his. I strongly recommend
the work, however, to the attention of thoughtful students of
history. They will find that every page bears the impress of
patient, independent, and sagacious thought. I believe I have
not met with a more genuine thinker in the course of my
investigations into the development of historical speculation.
My admiration of his merits as a thinker, I must add, does not
arise from any very close accordance between my own opinions
and his. I decidedly reject his view of philosophy. In my
opinion philosophy has definite objects, may attain certainties,
and is as properly of the nature of science as are the special
sciences. His probablism, like all other probabilist systems,
seems to me an inconsistent scepticism. I do not think that
his doctrine of the accidental in history has either the degree
of truth or the measure of importance which he attaches to it.
The contingency which pervades and characterises history
ought, in my judgment, to be traced mainly to human free-
dom, not to such accidents as he emphasises, which are simply
necessities that men cannot foresee or avert. The chief defect
of Cournot's treatment of history is an insufficient apprecia-
tion of the power and efficiency of conscience and moral free-
dom in history. The answers which he gives to the particular
RENOUVIER 655
questions he discusses are naturally often disputable. But he
was nevertheless a man of the finest intellectual qualities, of
a powerful and absolutely truthful mind ; and his writings
will richly repay careful study.
II
The chief of French criticists is M. Charles Renouvier.
Like Auguste Comte, he was born at Montpellier, and edu-
cated at the Ucole Poly technique of Paris, where he was distin-
guished by his proficiency in mathematics. He has, however,
far greater power of abstract thought and of logical and psycho-
logical analysis than Comte possessed, as well as a far wider
and more thorough general culture. He has also, what Comte
had not, a healthy and harmonious mental constitution. Hav-
ing an independent fortune he has never worked for bread
or gain ; but he has been a most indefatigable worker in the
cause of truth. He has been a voluminous publicist. In
theorising he has never lost sight of ethical and practical aims.
His philosophical conception of the universe is a pre-eminently
moral conception of it. Liberty is, in his view, the essence of
man, and the ground of certitude ; and the moral law is the one
fixed point beyond phenomena, the first of all truths, and the
warrant for all such belief in God, the soul, and immortality,
as men need in order that they may live a life of duty. The
treatises in which he has expounded his philosophy present to
us a wide territory ; but, as Dr. Shadworth H. Hodgson has
said, " the crowning peak of the whole land, the glorious sun-
lit summit to which its roads have led him, and from which
we obtain no uncertain glimpses of the promised future of
humanity, is the ' Science de la Morale.' " 1
M. Renouvier has sought to be more Kantian than Kant ;
to correct and complete the thought of Kant ; to rethink and
revise his criticism and its results, and to develop and apply
what is true in them. He claims to have freed the doctrine
1 M. Renouvier's philosophy was almost unknown in England until Dr. Hodgson
called attention to it by his articles in ' Mind ' (vol. iv.). My own acquaintance
with it, however, began much earlier. There are two excellent articles on " M.
Renouvier et le Criticisme Francaise " by M. Beurier, in the ' Rev. Phil.,' t. iii.
.656 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
of which Kant established the principles from the contradic-
tions and errors into which Kant fell, and to have given it
by a new analysis of the laws of thought and means of knowl-
edge what it previously lacked, a truly positive character and
a complete and1 harmonious systematic unity. He resolutely
rejects "noumena," " things-in-themselves," "substances,"
" the absolute," &c, under all forms and disguises. He has
reasoned out with a comprehensiveness and consistency prob-
ably unequalled a doctrine of phenomenism,- distinct from
empiricism and positivism in almost all respects except one, —
the reduction of knowledge to the laws of phenomenism. Of
this doctrine he has given a full and systematic exposition in
the works indicated below.1
The fourth of M. Renouvier's "Essais de la Critique Gen-
e"rale " is entitled ' Introduction a la Philosophic Analytique de
l'histoire.' It was published in 1864. A second edition of
it may be expected soon to appear; and it will doubtless,
like the second editions of the other " Essais," largely alter
and add to the earlier edition. In its present form the
work must be regarded as a very imperfect expression of
its author's views on the subjects discussed in it. All these
subjects, and many of a kindred nature, have been often dealt
with by him since in the pages of the ' Critique Philosophique,'
or elsewhere. The ' Critique Philosophique,' which appeared
fortnightly from 1872 to 1889 inclusive, was, for the most
part, the joint production of M. Renouvier and his friend
M. Pillon. It is a remarkable monument of their energy
and talent, and an abundant source of information as to the
New Criticism, and its founder's views on philosophy, politics,
and history.2
M. Renouvier indicates in the opening sentences of his
11 Essais de Critique Generale,' i vols., 1854r-64. Of this work there has
appeared a second edition of the ' Logique,' 3 torn., 1875; of the 'Psychology,'
3 torn., 1875 ; and of the ' Principes de la Nature,' 2 torn., 1891. ' La Science de
la Morale,' 2 vols., was published in 1869; and the 'Esquisse d'une Classification
Systematique des Doctrines Philosophiques,' 2 vols., in 1886.
2 It has been succeeded by the ' Annee Philosophique,' which, under the
editorship of M. Pillon, has appeared since 1890. From 1879 to 1883 MM.
Renouvier and Pillon edited ' La Critique Religieuse,' which contains many very
remarkable dissertations on religious questions, both of a • theoretical and prac-
tical character.
EENOUVIER 657
Fourth Essay — the ' Introduction to the Analytical Philoso-
phy of History ' — its general aim. " History," he says, " is the
experience which humanity has of itself. Approached without
criticism, history can only multiply and magnify those inco-
herent phenomena which exclusively individual experience
yields when the moral law does not rule the conduct and the
judgment. Treated according to an a priori system, it disfig-
ures or despises the facts ; it rejects some or inserts others, in
order to arrange them with more ease into series. The neces-
sity of a so-called organic development is thus substituted for
the simple and strong light of consciousness, which, for the
universal as for the particular, is incomparably the best means
of judging the data of experience, of assigning them their true
place, and even of supplying at need the want of them. But
history studied without a foregone conclusion, without a cos-
mical, or theological, or physiological hypothesis, without a
plan drawn up in ignorance and prejudice beforehand, history
supported entirely on an impartial registration, and guided by
the simple laws of judgment and of morality, must enlarge the
range of personal experience, respecting the knowledge of
humanity, by all the distance which separates general facts
from individual phenomena." By these words we are told
that, in the opinion of their author, reliable and useful views
of history are only to be obtained by a careful analysis of the
contents of history, — one uninfluenced by any a priori prin-
ciples or hypotheses, but which conforms to the laws of infer-
ence and does not contradict primary moral perceptions.
Questions and hypotheses relating to the physical or physio-
logical origin of man are not discussed in the Fourth but in
the Third Essay — ' The Principles of Nature ' — the most ap-
propriate place, as they refer rather to the general kingdom
of nature than to the special province of human history. They
are discussed by M. Renouvier with entire independence, and
rare profundity and penetration. He has studied most care-
fully evolutionism in its various forms, and especially in its
chief English exponents. In treating of such themes as onto-
genic, embryogenic, and palseontological progress, physical
evil, species, transformism, the struggle for existence, the de-
scent of man, his primitive unity or plurality, the conditions
658 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
and mode of his advent on earth, he steadily regards them
in a critical spirit, or, in other words, from the point of view of
the logician, not of the fanciful deviser of hypotheses, or of
either the affirmative or negative dogmatist. He would, of
course, be untrue to his own principles if he failed to show
himself fully aware that all conclusions on these obscure and
complicated topics must be of a dubious character, and stand
in need of continuous revision. This charge, however, can-
not be brought against him. He may have been at times
too severe a critic of others, but he has certainly been also a
strict critic of himself, and shown himself ready to modify his
opinions into accordance with the evidence.
The reader of the Fourth Essay must also bear in mind that
it implies the Second — the ' Psychology.' It rests upon the
doctrine of human nature which is there carefully expounded.
It may seem to assume without proof, or to adopt without
adequate confirmation, disputable and peculiar views as to
human sensibility, intelligence, passion, volition, liberty, and
their relations ; but these views, it must be remembered, have
been argued at length in the earlier and more fundamental
treatise. It is in this treatise also that the theory of his-
torical certitude, as included in the general theory of certitude,
one which M. Renouvier has discussed very earnestly and in-
geniously, is expounded ; and that the probabilities concern-
ing the moral order of the world, the grounds of faith in
immortality and in God, which are of essential moment and
intensest interest to the historical philosopher, are set forth.
The Fourth Essay begins with an inquiry into " moral
origins," or, in other words, into the principles of the rise and
development of good and evil in humanity. M. Renouvier
fully recognises the difficulty of the inquiry. The question of
pure origins is one always of inscrutable obscurity. The
question even of such relative origins as those which he has
here in view refers to a period concerning which there are no
records or testimonies. It is, therefore, peculiarly necessary
in discussing it to maintain a critical attitude towards all
attempts to deal with it in an easy, dogmatic, hypothetical,
<£w<m'-scientific manner. Yet of a directly and strictly scientific
solution it does not seem to admit. The only available method
KENOUVIER 659
of grappling with it, M. Renouvier thinks, is by the aid of
inductions drawn from the nature of man as that is known to
us in our own experience, but reduced to its essential, gen-
eral, and simplest elements, those elements which there is
every reason to believe are invariable.
He has always seen with exceptional clearness the inherent
unreasonableness, so prevalent among scientists, of assimilating
primitive man to a modern savage, and arguing directly from
the latter to the former. Primitive man may have been su-
perior to savage man, while yet destitute of advantages which
the savage possesses. The primitive man, just because primi-
tive, although endowed with a good intellect, heart, and will,
could have no traditions, acquisitions, or habits, no words
except those which he invented, no tools or rudiments of art
not of his own devising, no beliefs not attained by personal
exertion. As regards language, implements, arts, and amount
of experience, even the lowest savages may reasonably be held
to have been superior to primitive man, and yet their manhood
may as reasonably be supposed to be inferior owing to their
intellectual perversion and moral corruption. The modern
savage is to a very large extent a creature of traditions and
habits ; and to that extent he is not primitive. You must
strip your savage of all that he has inherited or acquired be-
fore you can get at anything primitive in him. But this means
that you must take from him all the corrupt tendencies he has
inherited, all the evil habits which he has formed, all the be-
liefs in which he has grown up, the language which he has
learned, tribal customs and usages, &c. But when you have
done all this, where is your savage ? He is clean gone as a
savage. There remains nothing of him but those rudiments
of humanity which are common to him and to yourself. And
these you must obviously study in yourself, seeing that it is
only of yourself that you have direct knowledge, immediate
experience. But the knowledge and experience of yourself
must be so analysed and generalised, that what is individual
and peculiar, secondary and factitious in it, may be eliminated.
The primitive man' must be conceived of as a true and whole
man, yet only as an abstract or generic man, without racial or
individual determinations. And the history to be elucidated
660 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
must be of a corresponding character. "This history, with
which I am about to deal, is that which considers human
determinations of the most general kind, and which holds
collective ideas and beliefs to be the most important of all,
inasmuch as they are the common coefficients of any individ-
ual whatsoever. But these great intellectual facts must not
be separated from the passions and from morality : from the
passions which are the stimulants and very matter of life ; or
from morality, of which the form modified by contact with
various external and internal phenomena, acts on beliefs and
ideas, and then experiences their reactions."
M. Renouvier attributes to the first mien the primaiy capaci-
ties of sensitivity and the simple emotive tendencies of human
nature, and also reason and freewill, but the latter only in the
state of potentialities, or powers as yet unformed by exercise
and experience. Without these they would not be men. To
come forth from the instinctive condition which is character-
istic of the animal, they must have been endowed with reason
in, so to speak, an instinctive state, and with liberty as a power
of representing their determinations as possible. The passage
from potentiality to actuality is the fundamental fact of the
history of primitive man ; and the chief traits of it may be
ascertained, with a fair measure of probability, through intro-
spective analysis and induction. In order to exhibit the more
clearly his views on this point, and as to the general moral
condition of primitive man, Renouvier introduces them by an
examination of those propounded by Kant in his ' Conjectural
Commencement of the History of Mankind,' and in his ' Criti-
cism of Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason.' It is a
searching investigation, and, on the whole, a most successful
attempt to distinguish between the true and the false ele-
ments in Kant's theory of the moral origins of humanity: a
theory, according to Renouvier, far more profound and in-
structive than that of any other philosopher on the same sub-
ject, yet hopelessly inconsistent, and burdened with serious
errors, owing to Kant having had a narrow conception of lib-
erty, failed to recognise the law of moral solidarity, and dealt
with his problem in a way contrary to critical principles.
Renouvier proceeds otherwise than Kant. He begins with
EENOUVIEE 661
complete moral persons — i.e., complete in the elements of
manhood, or, as having in indissoluble conjunction passions
and affections, conceptions, and will. He posits no original
antagonism between the law and the affections, or serious
contrariety among the affections themselves. He does not
assume that the law is ever unrelated to, or unconnected with,
some affection ; or that it is realised in the consciousness of
primitive men in its distinctness and generality, or otherwise
than as vaguely and obscurely blended with particular feel-
ings and passions, and as associated with particular acts ; or
that it is felt to have been promulgated by any power external
to humanity, or to have penal sanctions attached to it. He
is content to suppose the reverse of all this to have been
characteristic of the primitive state, although a state thus
simple and indeterminate could hardly, he thinks, have been
of long duration.
Thus conceiving of primitive man he does not find it neces-
sary to think of him as either originally good or originally evil,
but only as innocent and peccable. It is by the exercise of his
liberty that man becomes either truly good or truly evil.
" The conflict of the passions arises inevitably from the plural-
ity of the ends which man from the very constitution of his
nature sets before him. Evil never tempts him as evil ; but a
good which he pursues is often unattainable without detriment
to another good, so that each of these goods appears an evil
with reference to the other. Conscience is therefore bound to
choose between them by its self-determining activity. The
commonest form of the opposition occurs in relation to time,
when two goods, both really good relatively to the agent yet
incompatible, concern different periods and imply more or less
of duration or of generality; or in relation to persons, when the
good of the agent excludes that of the beings connected with
him, and particularly of his fellows and kindred, those with
whom he recognises himself to be in communion. The first of
these cases is of prime importance for the development of each
man and of his worth as a man. It is there that the virtues
and vices which specially concern the agent himself have their
origin. For example, experience has soon taught him that the
eager and obstinate pursuit of a certain end, without any con-
662 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
sideration of what may result from it or what it may lead to,
brings dangers and evils, that is to say, excludes other goods
either essential to him, or which will be of great consequence
to him in the course of his life. According as he will learn by
an effort of reflection and of will to measure his acts and to
moderate his present affections, or will abandon himself with-
out reserve to the passions which animate him, he will train
himself to prudence or contract the vices which follow the
habit of yielding without reflection to the precipitate move-
ments of the soul." 1 As with prudence so with temperance,
fortitude, benevolence, justice, and their opposites, — with all
the virtues and all the vices. They are all the products of
liberty in given historical conditions. By accumulated acts
habits are formed, and with the habits the virtue or vice. The
fall of primitive man is thus, according to Renouvier, intelli-
gible ; but it is not to be understood as a, fall from the height
of a developed morality or from the virtue acquired by ante-
rior efforts. Analysis of the data of moral experience shows,
he thinks, that it must mean that man instead of reflectively
and voluntarily accomplishing a possible ascent in good from
innocence to virtue, everywhere worked out a real descent
from innocence to vice.
My limits do not allow me to indicate how he describes the
processes originative of the virtues and vices, or how he char-
acterises the phases of the development of moral qualities.
Suffice it to say that the method which he follows is critical,
psychological, historical; that it shuns all metaphysical as-
sumptions, all speculations unverifiable by experience ; that it
treats the growth of morality as throughout an historical move-
ment, and, indeed, as comprehensive and regulative of the
general movement of history. The whole history of man is
viewed by Renouvier as the product of the use or abuse of
freedom ; the outcome of the moral agency of man. The prin-
ciples of morality he represents as necessary to the very exist-
ence of, and pervasive of the entire evolution of, society, and
everywhere present and operative in history as law is present
and operative in its applications. No one else has brought the
Science of Morality and the Philosophy of History into such
1 Quatrifcme Essai, p. 56.
KENOUVIER 663
close conjunction. For him the former is the central and
ruling science, and the latter one of its dependencies. Hence
his great work — perhaps his greatest — 'La Science de la
Morale,' is at almost all points in contact with, and the
complement of, the work now under our consideration.
I regret that I must not attempt even to summarise M. Re-
nouvier's admirable observations on the law of solidarity in
good and evil, the formation of ethic races, and the principles
of the perversions of justice, although they are novel and of
much interest for an understanding of history. After he has
set forth his views on the various subjects to which I have
now referred, he deems it expedient to contrast them with the
divergent or antagonistic views of some notable and influential
thinkers, and is thus led to criticise the moral theses of Kant,
the historical series of Hegel, the doctrine of the Saint-Simo-
nian school, the Positivist theory of history, and the concep-
tions of Fourier as to history and social organisation.
I have already had occasion to observe that, in taking account
of the historical philosophy of Renouvier, the Fourth Essay
must not alone engage our attention ; but I must still in con-
nection with this first part of it refer to the valuable series
of papers in the ' Critique Philosophique ' on " the psychol-
ogy of primitive man." Their criticisms of the arguments of
those who maintain the primitive brutality of man, or who
identify the primitive man with the modern savage, are
among the best which have been anywhere presented. The
examination to which they subject the hypotheses that have
been set forth by Comte, Darwin, Lubbock, Tylor, Spencer,
Bagehot, Romanes, and others, as to the origin of intelligence,
speech, morality, religion, civilisation, and progress, is always
relevant and acute, and often, I think, either to a large ex-
tent or wholly, just and decisive.
The second, third, and fourth parts of his treatise are devoted
to the study of the history of religious beliefs and ideas.1 He
holds that in religions are contained nearly all that we know
of remote antiquity ; that they have always been intimately
connected with the state of moral sentiment and even intellec-
1 The early history of language he treats of in the ' Psychologies t. i., pp.
136-139, 2d ed.
664 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
tual speculation ; that the only proper method of investigating
them is that of comparison, analysis, induction ; and that all
a priori philosophies of history have arbitrarily and excessively
simplified their course and succession, — their slow, multiple,
unequal, and troubled march. He gives us his views of the
duties and laws of historical criticism when applied to religions,
and especially when required to deal with miracles, revelations,
and prophets, with myths, symbols, and legends. He sets aside
various erroneous or inadequate hypotheses as to primitive re-
ligion, inquires as to how the primitive man probably looked
upon nature, and endeavours to define and account for fetichism.
He shows that it is not at all necessary to suppose that religion
originated with fetichism ; and he describes the tribal religions
— African, Boreal, Polynesian, and American — in which fet-
ichism has prevailed. He compares, and analyses somewhat
minutely, the religious and ethical systems of the Chinese and
Egyptians.
The whole of the third part is occupied with the religions
(understood as inclusive of the ethical and speculative con-
ceptions or theories) of the Aryan world, — chiefly, indeed,
with those of India, Greece, and Rome, but also with those of
the Germans, Celts, &c.
The fourth part deals exclusively with the religions of the
Semitic world. Here M. Renouvier begins by instituting an
inquiry as to the chronological data, the traditions, and the
documents which have to be taken into account. This in-
quiry he conducts in the spirit of the higher criticism, and with
an obvious desire not to yield to any theological bias. He
then discourses on the unity, divisions, and characteristics of
the Semites. He thinks that, on merely physiological grounds,
no one would pronounce the Semites and Aryans essentially
distinct; that their intellectual and moral differences, both
negative and positive, are, on the other hand, strongly marked,
although they are not of such a character that we cannot easily
suppose them to have originated at a greater or less distance
from a basis of common qualities ; but that the grammatical
system common to the Aryan languages and that of the Sem-
itic tongues are irreducible, and require us to regard the
Aryan and Semitic peoples as primitive, until much stronger
RENOUVIER 665
reasons to the contrary have been adduced than has yet been
done. He proceeds carefully to characterise the Semitic race
both intellectually and morally ; to lay bare the roots of its
idea of Deity, and to determine the content of that idea, by
the analysis of its names for Deity ; and to connect the chief
intellectual and moral division of the Semites with a " cruel
scission," going back to the remotest age of which they re-
tained any recollection. This " scission " may have been com-
paratively slight at first, but becoming ever deeper, it in time
produced profound ethical and spiritual changes, and parted
the race into two branches — the one monotheistic and the
other polytheistic. He is thus naturally led to treat specially,
first, of Semitic monotheism ; and, secondly, of Semitic poly-
theism.
M. Renouvier does not carry his study of religions beyond
what he calls primary epochs. He does not follow them into
secondary epochs, those in which beliefs are developed into fully
formed dogmas ; or into tertiary epochs, those in which faith is
revolutionised by the progress of science and the commingling
of peoples. But the field of his investigation, even when thus
limited, is a wide one. The number of distinct inquiries which
he institutes is very great. And they are carefully, learnedly,
and ably conducted. At the same time, their relations to one
another and their bearings on the general aims of the Essay,
are never lost sight of. Notwithstanding the merits, however,
of the contributions to the Science of Religions contained in
his treatise, M. Renouvier must, of course, find, in re-editing
it, a good deal to alter in them, owing to the great advances
made by this science in all directions since 1864.
In the last division of his history M. Renouvier sums up the
conclusions to which his investigations have led him. His ex-
position of his views of progress is of special interest. The
subject is treated with the earnestness which naturally springs
from a clear view of its importance. He recognises how
strongly the belief in progress differentiates the present from
preceding ages, and how inevitably it must be either invig-
orating or enervating, either a source of virtue or a cause of
demoralisation, according as it is of a rational and moral
character, or the reverse. If it be a belief in a progress
G66 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
which produces good of necessity, which uses men as mere
instruments, which does not require their self-devotion, their
watchfulness, restraint, endurance, and labour, and, in a word,
their virtue, it must be prejudicial to virtue, and to progress
itself. Profoundly convinced of this, M. Eenouvier has been
indefatigable in contending for truth and in assailing errors as
to progress. What he says on the subject in the Fourth Essay
is but a small part of what he has written concerning it. His
papers in the ' Critique Philosophique ' on the various questions
connected with it are very numerous. In fact no writer has
treated the theme with equal closeness or fulness. He is quite
entitled to hold that his predecessors have in general dealt with
it very superficially, his own treatment of it being so much more
searching and profound.1
All forms of the doctrine of a continuous progress, and all
theories of physical and mechanical, fatalistic and predesti-
narian, necessitarianism, from which it derives support, have
found in him a most formidable assailant. He has been always
ready to expose the optimistic illusions which abound on the
subject. He admits the possibility of progress. " We must
work for progress, therefore it is possible, and necessary at least
that we believe it possible." It is possible for individuals and
nations, in all spheres of human life and activity. And it is
not only possible, but the analysis of facts shows that it has
actually taken place during certain periods in the history of
many peoples. No facts warrant us, however, to ascribe to it
universality, continuity, or necessity. Deterioration has been
as prevalent as amelioration. There has not been anywhere or
in any respect uninterrupted progress. If we compare medieval
Europe with ancient Greece and Rome in their prime, and
apply proper criteria in an impartial manner, the former must
be acknowledged to have been on a lower intellectual and
moral level. If we examine into the history even of such a
phenomenon as slavery, it will be found that for long periods
and over wide spaces it was not liberty which gained ground.
1 In the series of papers entitled "Politique et Socialisme," published in the
' Critique Philosophique,' he has passed in review the systems of the chief theor-
ists of progress, — Herder, Kant, Hegel, Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Fourier,
Comte, and Spencer. — See Annees ix., t. xi. ; x., t. i.-xi. ; and xii., t. i.-xi.
KENOUVIEK 667
Europe is no more entitled to believe herself at present secure
against future slow decadence or rapid collapse than Asia was
when in her glory. France still requires to struggle with
anxiety if she would even retain the liberties, rights, and
advantages which she has with so much labour and difficulty
gained. Those who have discoursed on progress have gener-
ally erred as to its point of departure. They have supposed
it to have started from conditions which can only have been
gradually produced. They have imagined a perfectible bru-
tality for which there is no evidence to be found in history.
They have not deemed it necessary to inquire by what marks
societies are to be ranked as superior or inferior to others. They
have not seriously endeavoured to determine what constitutes
progress, and have, consequently, failed to see how inseparable
it is from morality, and how necessarily it must be the work of
individuals and of societies themselves. They have announced,
so-called laws of progress, but they have not proved that there
is any such law in the proper sense of the term, any necessary
rule and invariable succession of phenomena. Those which
they have propounded either do not apply to, or are contra-
dicted by, numbers of facts.
These theses, and others of a kindred nature, Renouvier has
laboured on many occasions, and with great ability, to establish
by critical and analytical disquisitions on the relevant data.
A mere statement of them can do scarcely any justice to his
theory of progress. To make it fully intelligible would require
a long series of quotations, and of long quotations, such as
wouldshowthe character of the method, and the general course
of the argumentation, pursued. I must content myself with a
single extract from the Fourth Essay. By simply transcribing
the author's words I shall enable my readers to form some con-
ception of his style as a philosophical writer, — a style to
which neither a literal nor a free translation will do justice.
"Ce n'est qu'apres avoir parcouru les periodes principales des faits,
des idees et des croyances dans les differentes senes de l'humanite que
je pourrai justifier en quel sens et sur quels sujets, dans quelles limites,
pour quelles raisons, il y a eu progres jusqu'a nous, et en quoi nous
devons esperer que ee progres se continuera a l'avenir. Les prestiges
de la loi fatale se dissipant a nos yeux, avec les fausses relations
668 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
historiques, qui ont etd imaginees pour la servir, nous verrons cette
gratide loi se reMuire pour l'experienee a un fait de"ja bien considerable,
savoir que la civilisation europdenne est heritiere des conquStes morales
et des travaux de plusieurs grandes races diversement douses et diverse-
ment meritantes; qu'elle est parvenue sur ce fondement a prendre la
conscience et la possession de ses propres fonctions a un degre" jusqu'ici
inconnu, a s'appuyer sur la notion meme du progres, et a cre"er des
m^thodes, a composer graduellement des sciences et des arts qui
deviennent k leur tour des aides puissants de son perfectionnement.
" Au-dessus de ce fait immense, mais auquel rhumanite" tout entiere
est si loin d'avoir participe, on peut ensuite concevoir deux lois ; l'une
serait la donnee divine et providentielle d'une destinee pour les hommes
envisages en un seul corps, destinee qu'ils attendraient independam-
ment des fluctuations de la liberte", et peut-dtre par l'organe de certains
d'entre eux seulement. L'autre serait une simple loi psychologique
en vertu de laquelle Taction constante des bons mobiles, des bonnes
passions fondamentales de la nature humaine, jointe a l'accumulation
des merites et des connaissances, pendant que toutes les determina-
tions fausses ou perverses de la volonte se de"truirait mutuellement
ou ne produiraient que des ondulations bientot interrompues, condui-
rait infailliblement les soci^tes k Tamelioration croissante de leurs
relations et k la moralite de plus en plus grande de leurs membres.
"La croyance a une destinee est de l'essence de toute religion deve-
lopp^e. Mais la fin que l'humanite doit atteindre, selon les croyances
de ce genre, n'est pas toujours terrestre; elle n'est jamais promise a
tous les hommes sans conditions; elle n'est pas attendue de leur seule
vertu, mais il faut l'intervention d'un Dieu. Un but infaillible n'est
fixe religieusement, soit a un homme, soit a une socie"te, qu'autant que
Ton croit k Paction divine sur l'ame ou sur le monde. Sans cela les
vertus humaines individuelles ne suffiraient point, et les vices, k plus
forte raison, demeureraient un empechement. La destinee en ce sens
ne peut done etre ni afnrme'e, ni combattue que dans la sphere des
religions et de la critique religieuse. En un mot, ce ne saurait etre une
loi reconnaissable de l'histoire. Mais ceux qui posent la destined tem-
porelle sur une notion vague d'optimisme, avec une idee vague de Dieu
pour garant, ou plutofc n'ayant pour tout Dieu que le Progres meme,
ceux qui d'ailleurs effacent l'individu et son vrai caractere, qui mecon-
naissent la liberte et ses ceuvres, qui extfhment le mal en le declarant
indifferent a l'obtention definitive du bien, ceux-la ne sortent du
fatalisme vulgaire que par une religiosite sans base oil manquent
les elements essentiels de la foi aussi bien que de la science et de
l'histoire.
"Au premier apercu, une loi psychologique, telle- que je l'indiquais,
paraitrait se distinguer du fatalisme. Les produits de la liberte y
sont recue a condition de se neutraliser quand ils se dirigent en sens
contraire du bien et du progres ; et il est tres-vrai que l'accumulation
RENOTJVIER 669
des actes favorables, tant pour le me'rite morale que pour les con-
naissances acquises et les oeuvres realisees, ehez les nations comme
chez les individus, est une loi qui se oomprend clairement, et d'ail-
leurs s'observe et se verifie. Or, cette loi est precisement le progres.
II serait certain et se continuerait inddfiniment si le mal ne venait
point a la traverse, si les erreurs, les vices, les crimes n'avaient aussi
leur resultats et leurs accumulations, chez les nations comme chez les
individus. Mais la croissance du mal se concoit non moins aisdment
que la croissance du bien. Les exemples n'en sont pas rares : on en
trouve sur toute echelle, dans l'homme, dans le monde, dans l'histoire.
II m'est done impossible d'admettre que les actes de deviation, en egard
a la loi et aux Veritas morales, soient necessairement et par leur nature
appeles a s'annuler mutuellement et a disparaitre dans les resultantes.
Au contraire, je crois avoir moutre' comment les lois de l'habitude
et de la solidarity e'tendent, generalisent et prolongent les effets des
premieres aberrations de la conscience, dans une serie quelconque
de determinations iudividuelles ou sociales. L'experience la plus som-
maire, un seul regard sur la vie des peuples conflrment suffisament ici
l'analyse psychologique, pour tout esprit que ne dominent pas de fortes
preventions.
"II est incontestable, et e'est encore un fait qu'on peut hardiment
appeler historique et general, aussi bien que singulier et d'experience
personelle, que ces premieres aberrations dont je parle, n'ont 6t6 epar-
gnees aux auteurs d'aucune race. II s'ensuit de la que la loi du progres,
sur quelques pointes qu'elle porte, et quelles que soient les nations
assez heureuses pour s'Stre affermies dans la voie du bien, ne saurait
en tout cas exister simplement, naturellement, et s'etre manifested des
le point de depart de la conscience. C'est au contraire une ddcheance
morale qui s'est caracterisee partout a l'origine ou des les premiers
termes de l'exercise de l'arbitre humaine. Je suppose, en efiet, que
l'homme a du commencer sa carriere en tant qu'homme, e'est-a-dire sous
la loi de moralite et sous l'impression de cette loi. Je le suppose, faute
de pouvoir comprendre un autre commencement, une autre nature pre-
miere, ou un passage de cette premiere a une seconde nature ; et parce
qu'il faut de toute necessite, independamment de toute hypothese sur
les origines physiques, envisager quelque part et de quelque maniere un
commencement moral pour un etre moral, et des donnees historiques
primitives de conscience, de reflexion, de raison, de justice, pour un
etre qui a developpe tout cela dans l'histoire."
M. Renouvier has supplemented the exposition of his
analytical philosophy of history by an original, if not unique,
attempt to reconstruct history hypothetically, in order to
illustrate how it might have been quite other than, and much
better than, it has been. Many authors have delineated
670 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN FRANCE
Utopias which they located in the future ; M. Renouvier has
ventured on the much more difficult but also much more in-
structive task of picturing a Utopia in the past, and as realised
under historically probable conditions, while yet most unlike
what actually occurred. I refer to his ' Uchronie (L'Utopie
dans l'Histoire),' 1876, which bears the alternative and ex-
planatory title, ' An Historical and Apocryphal Sketch of
European Civilisation, not as it was, but as it might have been.'
The design of the work is to help its readers to realise the
superficiality and unreasonableness of historical optimism and
necessitarianism. To attain this end it presents us with the
outline of an apocryphal or hypothetical history, feigned to
have been written at the beginning of the seventeenth century
by a free-thinking monk on the eve of being burned by the
Inquisition at Rome. In this sketch the whole course of
European civilisation, from the age of Marcus Aurelius to that
of the supposed author of the narrative, is described as having
been altogether different from the course which it actually took.
The ancient civilisation which was, in fact, left to decline and
die through the unchecked growth of its corrupt and destruc-
tive tendencies, is set before us as having been restored to
health and vigour by the wise and steady application of
remedial and reformatory measures. Christianity, which in
fact displaced it, but under a debased, superstitious, and in-
tolerant form, is represented as having been thrown back into
the East, and as only readmitted into the West long after-
wards, when it could be received in its true character into a
society ordered on principles of reason. The ideal of society
which the best minds of the present day are still only striving
after, is pictured and prefigured as one which had been already
reached. In appendices, dated 1658 and 1709, and notes of an
assumed editor of the present day, the reader is reminded of
what was the actual and " worse " course of history, which he
is expected to compare with the hypothetical and better one.
The ' Uchronie ' makes no pretension to disprove the doc-
trines of historical necessitarianism and optimism. It is ob-
vious that, strictly speaking, no doctrine can be either proved
or disproved by the inventions and constructions of imagina-
tion. But imagination may, by ingeniously elaborating and
EENOUVIER 671
supporting in opposition to a doctrine which is merely an
hypothesis, without any real warrant in facts, a counter-hypoth-
esis, cause the arbitrariness and baselessness of a prevalent
assumption to be vividly seen, and may thus both effectively
and legitimately, discredit it. This is what M. Renouvier
has attempted,*and accomplished, in the ' Uchronie.'
I shall offer no criticisms on his historical doctrine. It is
one to which, in all its fundamental principles and positions, I
assent. I do not know any other writer with whose views on
the chief problems of historical philosophy my own are so
much in accordance. And he has, in my opinion, rendered
to that philosophy one service so inestimable, that in any
account of its development his name deserves to be placed in
the very foremost rank of its cultivators. He has shown, far
more profoundly and conclusively than anyone else, the close-
ness of the connection between history and morality; that
neither is intelligible or realisable without the other; that
history is an ethical formation and morality an historical pro-
duction. He has made apparent by a critical analysis of the
historical process itself that it is in the exercise of rational
freedom that societies, as well as individuals, have risen or
sunk, elevated or debased themselves. He has disclosed the
manner in which families, tribes, and nations have acquired
for themselves a common character, fixed habits and manners.
He has explained how ethic races are formed, and of how much
greater significance they are for the understanding of history
than merely ethnic races, or the external causes which originate
or modify these latter races. He has refuted, in a way at once
original, profound, and conclusive, those theories which repre-
sent history as a mechanically necessitated product, or an inev-
itable dialectic movement, or a simple organic growth, or the
natural consequence of a struggle for existence between indi-
viduals and societies, or a fundamentally economic evolution.
He has proved it to be, on the contrary, an essentially ethical
creation, the formation of the world of humanity by free indi-
vidual wills, always conscious of moral law, while always
working in given conditions of time and space, of heredity
and solidarity, and always influenced by interests and pas-
sions, by physical and spiritual surroundings.
672 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN PRANCE
It would not be appropriate to discuss in this work the
general philosophy of M. Renouvier.
His teaching for a long time attracted little attention.
During the last twenty years its influence on the philosophi-
cal, theological, and political thought of France has been con-
siderable ; and it can hardly fail to increase. "The number of
what would be called his disciples is not large, and may never
be so. M. Pillon has most completely assimilated his doctrine,
and is a very able expositor of it. In part and in applications
it has been widely adopted. M. Lavisse's ' Vue g6ne"rale
de l'Histoire politique de l'Europe ' may be referred to as a
fine exemplification of its principles in the purely historical
sphere.
Little has been done for Historic in France during recent
years. M. Tardif's ' Notions FAe"mentaires de Critique His-
torique,' 1883, presents us with a mere outline of the subject.
M. Rabier, in the second volume of his ' Lecons de Philoso-
phie,' 1 has treated with characteristic judiciousness of " tes-
timony," "historical criticism," and "the method of social
science " ; but he has not left the beaten path and attempted
to explore new territory. M. Seignobos, in his articles on
" Les conditions psychologiques de la connaissance en histoire,"
in the ' Revue Philosophique,' 2 has made a careful study of the
problem, How is any particular historical proposition to be
reached? In dealing with it he inquires as to (1) the character
of historical knowledge, (2) its materials, (3) the conditions
necessary to disengage any historical proposition, (4) the con-
ditions necessary for attaining a proposition which is certain,
(5) what vices of method lead to false or uncertain proposi-
tions, and (6) in what sense history is verifiable. Thus, al-
though he excludes from consideration the question as to how
general propositions in history are to be attained, his investi-
gation is not wanting either in breadth or interest. He reaches
the following conclusions. " Historical knowledge is an indi-
rect knowledge only attainable by reasoning. The documents
which supply the ctarting-points of the reasonings only make
known to us psychological operations. History arrives at a
conclusion only through the reconstitution of these operations.
1 Ch. xvii., pp. 316-345. 2 Douzifeme Ann^e, Nos. 7 and 8.
CEITICIST SCHOOL 673
It can do so only by means of a series of psychological analyses
and of analogical reasonings of which the major premisses are
borrowed from descriptive psychology. Almost all faults of
method proceed from errors of psychology." M. Seignobos
has clearly recognised the importance of the study of the his-
torical method. " Almost all that we know of men and of
societies is reducible to historical knowledge. The historical
method not only rules in the sciences called historical which
operate on ancient phenomena, but in all the psychological
and social sciences, because they operate on fleeting and com-
plex phenomena. It is necessary not only to the historians
of the past, but to every one who studies human societies.
History is only entitled to a small place in the whole of
knowledge ; but the logic of the sciences should give a large
place to the study of the historical method, for it is the method
of all indirect knowledge." I cannot entirely subscribe to these
words, inasmuch as it seems to me that history, properly un-
derstood, is coextensive with the historical method ; but then-
author is entirely right as to the wide range of the historical
method, and the importance of its study. It is deplorable
that historians should show so little interest as they actually
manifest in " the logic of the sciences," or even of the science
which they themselves cultivate. It is no valid excuse for
them that almost all other classes of scientists are in the same
respect chargeable with the same fault.1
1 In the writings of M. Fouillee and of the late M. Guyan an interesting form
of criticist thought is allied with remarkably original and ingenious sociological
speculations. They are rich in fresh and suggestive views, brilliantly expounded,
relating to the evolution of morals, law, art, and religion, and undoubtedly fall-
ing within the sphere of historical philosophy. My not attempting to give in this
place any account of these views is not owing to want of appreciation of their
importance, but because I wish to contrast and compare the most distinctive and
fundamental of them with the correlative evolutionist conclusions of Mr. Herbert
Speneer.
M. Tarde, well known by his studies in criminology and the philosophy of penal
law, has also published a most original and ingenious treatise on Sociology,
entitled 'Les Lois de l'Imitation,' 1890. He has dedicated it to the memory of
Cournot, and he is, although not a pupil or disciple of that author, a thinker of the
same order. He seems to me to have been very fairly successful in his endeavour
to "delineate a General Sociology of which the laws are applicable to all societies
actual, past, or possible, as the laws of General Physiology are to all species liv-
ing, extinct, or conceivable." He has at least shown that there is another sort of
Sociology than the merely descriptive study commonly so called. In reducing the
social world to imitations and their laws, and history to initiatives which have
674 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN FRANCE
been the most imitated, he has begun to render to Sociology a service of the same
kind as the associationists have rendered to Psychology. It is to be hoped that
he may himself follow up the investigations which he has begun, and that he may
also have not a few imitators. I shall not now summarise the views which he has
set forth in his sociological treatise, most able and valuable although it be, as, if
permitted to carry this work to completion, I shall have to take special account
of them when I attempt to determine the relation of Sociology to History and its
Philosophy.
The works of the late M. Fustel de Coulanges are among the most brilliant
exemplifications of a strictly critical and historical method. They are eminently
worthy of study even from the merely methodological point of view. As regards
their general characteristics, and the light which they have thrown on the trans-
formations of society in general, and of the early history of French institutions
in particular, it may be enough to refer to the Notices of M. Sorel in vol. 35, and
of M. Jules Simon in vol. 37 of the ' Travaux de l'Acade'mie des Sciences Morales
et Politiques.'
CHAPTER XII
HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND
I
The geologists of Belgium have shown that their country
had human inhabitants many thousands of years before history
began to be recorded in writing. When Caesar conquered
Gaul, the most powerful and warlike portion of its population
were the Belgians, comprising a number of peoples, partly of
Celtic and partly of Teutonic origin, and occupying the terri-
tory north of the Seine and the Marne. Every part of the
soil of the Belgium of to-day is historic ground ; its towns and
provinces have had long, changeful, and eventful histories,
and have not lacked chroniclers to record what happened in
them worthy of remembrance. The historical spirit was early
awakened in Belgium. I have already had occasion to refer
to Eginhard and Suger, to Froissart and Comines ; but Bel-
gium can claim them at least as justly as France. Here, how-
ever, I shall not go farther back than to the origin of the
kingdom of Belgium ; and that is of quite recent date.
In 1830 the provinces of which it is composed seceded from
the Netherlands, and succeeded in becoming an independent
state. This result was accomplished through a combination
of clericals and liberals ; and the Constitution of the new king-
dom was necessarily a compromise between two irreconcilable
parties which have since been in constant and often keen con-
flict. It was a Constitution framed with wisdom ; one which
safeguarded the rights of individuals and of associations, and
which allowed extensive powers of self-government to com-
munes and provinces; and although it has been repeatedly
attacked, and been often in serious danger, it has, owing to
the intelligence and patriotism of Leopold I. and Leopold II.,
the sagacity of its political leaders, and the general good sense
675
676 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN BELGIUM
of an exceptionally enlightened and energetic people, remained
unviolated. Under it the nation has not only prospered
greatly, but greatly distinguished itself in all the chief depart-
ments of human activity.
The Belgian people is composed of two races, the one
mainly of Celtic and the other mainly of Teutonic extraction.
It has three languages : Flemish, closely allied to Dutch ;
Walloon, an old dialect of French; and French. In all these
languages there is a considerable amount of literature, but
only in French is there any literature of the kind which here
concerns us. Belgian thought has been greatly affected both
by French and German influences, but more by the former
than by the latter. Belgium has offered a safe asylum to the
victims of party violence who have fled to it from other lands,
and a favourable soil for the propagation of new ideas and the
application of new systems of a social and practical character.
Speculative philosophy has not found in it a congenial home.
Owing to its connection with Holland, Belgium started well
as regards education ; and it continues to be a relatively well-
educated country, although instruction is too much under the
control of the clergy, and the extent of illiteracy is consider-
able. It has numerous gymnasia and diocesan seminaries,
and four universities — Ghent, Liege, Brussels, and Louvain ;
the two former being state institutions ; that of Brussels inde-
pendent both of Church and State ; and that of Louvain under
the direction of the episcopate. In Ghent history is taught
by seven professors, in Liege by five, in Brussels by four, and
in Louvain by three, exclusive of those who teach history of
philosophy, of literature, of law, &e. Historical research has
been, like science, literature, and art, greatly indebted to the
Royal Academy of Belgium. The Roman Catholic Church
contains the vast majority of the professing Christians of Bel-
gium ; but its power is to a large extent counterbalanced by
the prevalence of religious rationalism and scepticism. The
most enlightened and energetic portion of the nation is anti-
clerical. Nowhere has the religious question been a more
burning question than in Belgium; and nowhere has history
been more discussed in connection with it. That Socialism
should have widely spread in a country so densely peopled
ALTMEYER 677
as Belgium, and with such large and concentrated masses
of poorly paid workmen, is altogether natural. It had
adherents among those who founded the new kingdom ; has
been engaged ever since in more or less successful propagand-
ism; and is very prevalent and active at present. I have
thus referred to these facts, elementary although they be,
because they are really those which have had most influence
on the development of historical thought in Belgium.
There has been displayed in Belgium since 1830 remarkable
activity in the department of historiography, and especially of
national historiography. A comprehensive and graphic picture
of that activity and its results has been drawn by the skilful
hand of M. Ch. Potvin in ' Cinquante Ans de Liberte" ' (torn,
iv.) ; and to it I must be content simply to refer my readers.1
The first writer in Belgium to draw general attention to the
philosophy of history was J. J. Altmeyer (1804-75). When
the University of Brussels was created he was appointed
professor of history; and in 1836 he published a brief 'Intro-
duction a l'fitude philosophique de l'histoire de l'humaniteV
It consists of a discourse supplemented with notes. He him-
self speaks of the discourse as " ce chant " ; and it is certainly
of a rather lyrical and militant strain. It recalls in spirit,
content, and form Michelet's 'Introduction to Universal
History.' It also shows traces of the influence of Vico,
Ballanche, Buchez, Conside"rant, Lamennais, Gerbet, and other
historical philosophers. " History," he says, " is the dialectic
of the spirit, the universal judgment, the story of the gradual
progress of humanity towards its physical, intellectual, and
moral amelioration. This progress has caused a struggle
between two hostile elements, spirit and matter, moral force
and brutal force ; elements which combat, dethrone, and sub-
jugate each other. This struggle is as old as the world; yet
it is not infinite ; but no mortal can pretend to predict when
1 ' Cinquante Ans de Liberte",' 4 vols., 1881-82, shows what had been accom-
plished in Belgium from 1830 to 1880 in all the chief departments of human
activity. The scheme of distribution is as follows : Vol. i., Political Life, by Count
Goblet d'Alviella ; Education, by Emile Greyson ; Political Economy, by Julian
Schaar. Vol. ii., Physical and Mathematical Sciences, by Ch. and E. Lagrange ;
Natural Sciences, by A. Gilkinet. Vol. iii., Painting and Sculpture, by C. Lermon-
aier; Music, by Ad. Samuel. Vol. iv., History of Literature, by Ch. Potvin.
678 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN BELGIUM
it will cease ; that is covered with the veil of the Egyptian
Isis." In this work Altmeyer shows no evidence of ac-
quaintance with the doctrine of Krause, to which he was so
soon to become a convert ; but he shows a certain prepared-
ness of spirit for its reception in his ardent faith in a divine
kingdom of harmony to result from realisation of the provi-
dential plan which pervades history. " The highest degree of
perfection," he says, " to which man is destined, arises from
the complete and free development of his personality in the
kingdom of truth, beauty, and goodness, and in the closest
union with his fellow-men. The principle of perfectibility
must, therefore, introduce a state in which matter and spirit,
reconciled, reunited, and commingled, will form a beautiful,
grand, and finished harmony; in which all specialities will
find their object, and occupy their proper sphere of activity ;
in which men, instead of exhausting their forces in fighting
one another, will employ them to complete the subjugation of
nature ; in which the injury done to one, being of advantage
to no other, will be regarded as injurious to the whole society;
in which the annihilation of evil will put an end to the war
between good and evil, a war of which there will survive only
a generous emulation among the good when there is oppor-
tunity for doing good ; a state, in short, of rest which will not
be inaction, and a state of action which will not be tumultu-
ous agitation."
Four years later Altmeyer published a larger work, his
' Cours de Philosophie de l'Histoire,' 1840. It is composed
of fifteen lectures, which were delivered before 500 hearers.
It is said, there would have been 3000 of an audience if a
large enough hall could have been found. The interest in
them thus manifested was, doubtless, partly due to the fact
that the war between liberalism and clericalism was at that
time intensely keen, and had penetrated into the universities,
so that Brussels was arrayed against Louvain, "chair against
chair, tribune against tribune." Between the ' Introduction '
and the ' Cours ' there was one great difference, owing to
the fact that in the interval between their publication
Altmeyer had been completely converted by his colleague,
the celebrated German jurist, Henry Ahrens, to Krauseanism.
ALTMEYER — TIBERGHIEN 679
The latter work, accordingly, is essentially an exposition of
the Krausean theory of human development, and a detailed
application of it to the stage of development represented by
the oriental world. In the first lecture he himself thus
speaks: "The theory, gentlemen, of which I have just
expounded the first principles, and which I shall have the
honour to develop to you in its entirety, before applying it
to the special facts, belongs, in substance, to a philosopher
still little known, but the greatest that can be cited since
Leibniz ; to Krause, whose high significance my honourable
colleague, M. Ahrens, has made known and felt. Great
theologians, illustrious philosophers, from Bossuet to Hegel,
have treated eloquently, profoundly, one or several parts of
the philosophy of history; but in their writings you will
vainly seek a complete system, a satisfactory theory, on the
development of humanity. Krause is the first who has laid
down a priori the laws to which humanity is providentially
submitted, and which it must accomplish in the full exercise
of its freedom ; and he has shown how these laws are related
to the general movement of humanity. When this theoretical
exposition is concluded, we shall set out on our march from
the high regions of Asia, and try to follow step by step in the
path of the human race, across time and space, along the
movement of ideas, passions, and facts; confronting with
the discoveries of Krause the development of the peoples, and
in verifying them if we can, to recognise a new title of glory
in a man who has already so many others, and, in particular,
that of having lived a martyr to his convictions." The first
eight lectures contain the exposition of the theoretical part
of the Krausean philosophy of history, and the seven which
follow inquire as to the truth of it so far as that can be
ascertained from the history of the Asiatic people. A com-
plete philosophical survey of history was contemplated, but
the intention was not realised.
The most eminent Belgian representative of the school of
Krause is M. Guillaume Tiberghien. He was born in 1819;
was a pupil of Ahrens and Altmeyer ; and as professor of
philosophy has long adorned the University of Brussels. He
has published treatises on almost all the chief departments
680 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN BELGIUM
of philosophy — metaphysics, logic, psychology, ethics, and the
theory of religion. They are characterised by clearness and
consistency of thought, and by elegance and precision of lan-
guage. Most of them have been translated into Spanish, and
some of them into Portuguese. He has greatly contributed to
the diffusion of the principles of Krause, not only in Belgium,
but also in the Iberian peninsula. No one, indeed, has pre-
sented the doctrine of Krause in a more attractive form.
In his ' Introduction a la Philosophie ' there is a masterly
sketch of the philosophy of history as it is to be seen in the
light of the philosophy of Krause. All the chief traits of the
movement of humanity, when so contemplated, are there admi-
rably indicated in the brief compass of 150 pages. I can, of
course, here merely refer to them, as I must reserve what I
have to say of the Krausean philosophy of history until I reach
Krause himself. It is not inappropriate, however, to add that,
both in the work just named and in his celebrated 'Essai
the'orique et historique sur la Ge'ne'ration des Connaissances
Humaines,' M. Tiberghien has striven to show by a survey and
criticism of all the chief systems of philosophy that that of
Krause alone satisfies all the requirements of science and all
the aspirations of the age which has at length arrived, the
age of the maturity of humanity, the age of harmony and of
organisation.
I now pass to one whose work must be longer under our
consideration. Francois Laurent was born at Luxembourg in
1810 ; studied at the Universities of Louvain and Liege ; was
appointed professor at Ghent in 1836 ; published from 1 850
to 1870 the eighteen volumes of 'fitudes sur l'histoire de
I'humaniteY to which he owes his fame as an historical philos-
opher, and from 1869 to 1879 the thirty-two-volumed work,
' Principes de Droit Civil ' ; likewise, a ' Cours e'le'mentaire de
Droit Civil,' 4 vols., * Droit Civil International,' 8 vols., and
numerous pamphlets, mostly of a polemical character. His
activity was not confined to his labours as professor and pub-
licist, but showed itself also in those of a communal coun-
cillor, an organiser of workmen's societies, and a director of
evening schools. Singularly disinterested and self-sacrificing,
he lived almost as an anchorite, dressed almost as a peasant,
LAUfiENT 681
and devoted his entire time and strength to propagate his faith
and to promote the good of his fellow-men. He retired from
his professorship in 1882, and died in 1887.1
The work of Laurent with which we are concerned is his
' Studies on the History of Humanity.' Its publication, as has
been already stated, extended over twenty years. Its author was
privileged to study every stage of human history known to us
through written documents leisurely and long enough to enable
him to master the contents of the original sources of information,
and of the principal treatises of the more eminent scholars of
all times and countries ; to trace, age after age, with indepen-
dence and profundity, the development of society, and of the
ideas most influential in preserving and regulating it ; and to
communicate to the world the results of his researches and
reflections in a long series of volumes, each devoted to some
great epoch of time — the East, Greece, Rome, Christianity,
the Barbarians and Catholicism, the Papacy and the Empire,
Feudalism and the Church, the Reformation, the Wars of Re-
ligion, &c. In this vast monument of toil and talent, moral
earnestness, independence of judgment, and diligence in re-
search are conspicuous qualities ; and equally so is the desire to
comprehend the meaning and purpose of facts, to discover the
ideas which underlie events. In facts by themselves, facts out
of which no thoughts can be extracted, M. Laurent manifested
no interest ; in all facts, on the other hand, which could be
seen to have influenced the essential destiny of man, to have
helped or hindered the human race in its struggle for freedom
and justice, he showed an almost too passionate interest.
The last volume of the work is entitled ' La Philosophic de
l'Histoire.' It is partly a resumS of the volumes which pre-
ceded it. It also expounds the general doctrine involved and
established in those volumes. That it is thus the summary
and conclusion of such a series of elaborate and masterly
" studies " confers on it an authority which it could not have
possessed had it stood alone. It not only speaks for itself, but
all its predecessors speak for it and through it. The same cir-
1 See the article of M. Ernest Nys on " Francois Laurent, sa vie et ses oeuvres,"
in the ' Rev. de Droit International,' t. xix. M. Nys is himself the author of
learned ' Kecherches sur l'Histoire de Droit,' of interest to students of the history
of historical philosophy.
682 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN BELGIUM
cumstance, however, which greatly enhances its value in one
respect, has not proved favourable to it in another ; and is,
indeed, the chief reason why it falls so far short of being a
philosophy of history. M. Laurent's work has for alternative
title ' History of the Law of Nations and of International
Relations.' That title is too narrow, and the author did well
to take the more general one of ' Studies on the History of
Humanity'; still these "studies" are mainly on the moral
history of humanity, on its progress in the knowledge and
practice of justice and benevolence, on the growth of man's
insight into and reverence for the law of conscience both as
regards himself and his fellow-men. Now, notwithstanding its
title, M. Laurent's ' Philosophy of History ' is so much the
summary of the " studies " that it deals exclusively with the
same phase of human development, and overlooks the scientific,
the aesthetic, and the industrial evolution of society. It is,
consequently, not, properly speaking, the philosophy of history,
not the scientific comprehension of history as a whole.
It was doubtless, in part at least, owing to the same circum-
stance, that M. Laurent made no attempt to determine the
problem of the philosophy of history, to define or describe what
that philosophy ought to do ; none to lay for it a foundation in
the science of human nature, or even to indicate its relationship
to the science of human nature ; none to fix its general position
among the sciences ; and none to ascertain the methods required
for its successful study. These are serious omissions in a work
professing to be a philosophy of history. They are explained
in the case of M. Laurent's volume by its author having pro-
ceeded at once to enunciate the general theory which had
underlain and directed his anterior labours.
In the Introduction he expounds his own views regarding
the immanence of God in humanity, the coexistence of divine
Providence and human liberty, and the reality of progress,
moral and religious progress not excluded; and attacks the
views of those who would banish God from history, or acknow-
ledge the working of the devil in history. He argues that
there can be no philosophy of history unless it be admitted that
God is present in the minds and hearts of all men, controls and
guides the entire series of events, and, while respecting human
LAURENT 683
freedom, is continually raising the human race to higher stages
of being. Naturally we ask, — Does not history, then, prove
these truths? And to our astonishment we find that M.
Laurent not only believes it does, but believes that these truths
•with their proofs actually constitute the philosophy of history.
Why the philosophy of history should presuppose what it can
prove, or even how it can presuppose what it is the proof of, he
does not explain. And, in fact, his conception of the relation
of theology or theodicy to the science of history appears to be
just the reverse of the truth. He represents the science of
history as a department of natural theology, when all that can
be properly maintained is, that there is a department of natural
theology the truths of which may be legitimately inferred from
the findings of the science of history. The science of itself —
i.e., in its strictest and narrowest sense, or as distinguished from
the philosophy of history, — • neither requires nor admits of any
theological presuppositions.
M. Laurent conceives of the philosophy of history as a
theodicy. His point of view is not the scientific as exclusive
of the religious, but the religious as inclusive of the scientific.
It may, perhaps, be too little scientific, too much religious.
The principle of final causes was a ruling one in Laurent's
mind. Each event, each institution, suggests to him the ques-
tions — What was the design of it ? What did man intend by
it ? What did God intend by it ? The ideas of efficient causa-
tion and of law are much less prominent. He is more concerned
to know why events happened than how they happened. He
does not neglect to inquire into how great social changes were
effected, but his chief interest in the inquiry is that he may be
helped thereby to understand why these changes were brought
about, what their place and significance were in the providential
plan of the universe.
It is altogether with reference to his own historical theodicy
that Laurent treats of the historical theories of his predecessors.
He makes no attempt to give any general survey of the course
of the philosophy of history, or even any general estimate of
the chief systems of that philosophy. He simply chooses cer-
tain representative specimens of those historical doctrines which
imply the truth of miracle, chance, or fatalism ; which deny, ex-
684 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN BELGIUM
plicitly or implicitly, the immanence of God, and the progres-
sive, providential, non-miraculous education of man through
the Spirit of God acting on reason and free-will ; and these he
subjects to a severe and hostile criticism. In Bossuet he sees
only an advocate of the miraculous government of Providence ;
in Vico, of ancient fatalism ; in Voltaire and Frederick II., of
chance ; in Montesquieu, of the fatalism of climate ; in Herder,
of that of nature ; in Renan, of that of race ; in Thiers, of
revolutionary fatalism ; in Hegel, of pantheistic fatalism ; in
Comte, of positivist fatalism ; and in Buckle, of the fatalism
of general laws. He regards them only, in other words, as the
teachers of false and mischievous doctrines ; and as such he
assails them earnestly and indignantly. I fully admit that he
had a right so to proceed. I regard the notion, at present
so prevalent, that all criticism ought to be sympathetic, and
occupy itself chiefly in the discovery of merits or excuses as a
superficial conceit of a literary dilettanteism, itself the product
of unbelief in truth and morality. But it is not to be denied
that an exclusively negative and polemic criticism, however
legitimate or even necessary it may sometimes be, has always
its dangers. It is apt to be passionate and extreme; to over-
look conditions and limitations which ought to be taken into
account ; to fancy it finds error where there is none, or at least
more of it than there is. It seems to me that this is to a
considerable extent true of Laurent's criticism of the historical
theories which he examines. At the same time, it is thoroughly
honest and remarkably able criticism.
He proceeds to attempt to prove, by an examination of the
facts of history as a whole, that God has been ever present
therein in wisdom, and justice, and power. Taking up in suc-
cession antiquity, Christianity, and the barbarian invasionst
feudalism, the Reformation, and the Revolution, he strives to
show in each case that what man willed was not what God
willed, and has accomplished, but something lower, something
less, if not even something contrary. Man has been continually
growing in the knowledge of God's will ; but even yet he has
no more than a vague and dim perception of the general plan
of His providence, although in looking back he can clearly
enough see there was a plan underlying events which those
LAURENT 685
who took part in them never dreamt of, being engrossed in far
other plans of their own. Laurent has attempted to establish
this by an examination of the actual facts of history, and by
what is entitled to be regarded as a most minute and searching
examination of these facts, seeing that the argument summed
up in book i. chap. ii. of this eighteenth volume has been
carried through all the previous seventeen volumes. In doing
so he seems to me to have made a most valuable contribution
not only to historical philosophy but also to natural theology ;
to have successfully shown, what professed natural theologians
have so strangely overlooked, that not less than the heavens
and earth — nay, that much more than either — does history
declare the glory of God.
The conclusiveness of his argumentation has been chal-
lenged by Professor Jiirgen Bona Meyer, but on quite in-
sufficient grounds.1 The first of the two objections urged
by the professor is as follows : " The fact that the conse-
quences of human actions are frequently not those which the
agents willed, and that in virtue of this contradiction between
the willed and the accomplished, men obtain against their
wills what is best for them, is capable of explanation from
the natural reaction and counteraction of the appropriately
arranged forces of the physical and moral worlds. The ex-
amination of history enables us only to recognise this natural
antagonism of the forces which it comprehends ; and to refer
their order, their disposition, to a divine power, is an act of
faith not involved in the historical investigation. In order
to help in strengthening faith in a divine government of the
world, the study of history would require to lead to results
which admit of no sufficient explanation from the natural con-
catenation of what has happened, or from the free wills of men.
But such results are just those to which M. Laurent's point
of view does not lead."
It is inexplicable how Professor Meyer — usually a most
careful writer — could have so misunderstood M. Laurent's
argument as he has here done ; and how he could have over-
looked the numerous passages, the pages after pages, in which
M. Laurent had done all that was possible, and far more than
i Von Sybel's HistrfHsche Zeitschrift, Bd. xxv. s. 377.
686 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN BELGIUM
seemed necessary, to make misunderstanding of the kind im-
possible. The argument of M. Laurent is that the examina-
tion of history discloses a plan pervading human affairs
which has been realised through the operation of the forces
of the physical and moral worlds, through the actions of
human beings influenced by their surroundings, but which is
not their plan: a plan which has not originated with man,
which has not originated with matter, which cannot be the
work of chance, which cannot be an effect without a cause,
and which must therefore be ascribed to God. Again and
again he states his argument substantially so ; and yet Pro-
fessor Meyer thinks it relevant to object that the fact that
what is wished is often not what is attained can be explained
from the natural reaction and counteraction of the ap-
propriately arranged historical forces, as if M. Laurent had
failed to raise the question, Who arranged these forces ? and
as if he had never argued that it could not be nothing, could
not be chance, could not be nature, could not be general laws,
could not be man, but must be God. What is the avowed
purpose of the whole 237 pages of introduction and criticism
which precede his examination of the facts? Here is an
abridgment of what he himself says: "We have passed
in review all the theories imagined by philosophers and
historians to explain the mysterious fact that there is in the
life of a man unfolded in history a succession, a plan, a de-
velopment which cannot be referred to man himself. Some,
despairing from the outset to find a solution, make of their
ignorance a blind power which they call hazard. Evidently
that is no solution. Hazard is a word, and nothing more.
Other writers — the majority of writers — say that this
mysterious power is nature, under the form of climate, or
races, or the whole of the physical influences which aot on
the moral world. . But what is nature ? Whence has it this
power, this foresight, this intelligence, which are so con-
spicuous in the course of our destinies? If nature is matter,
and nothing but matter, that too is no answer. Who will
believe that matter acts with wisdom, with intelligence?
Where there is intelligent action there must be an intelligent
being ; therefore nature leads us to God. Finally, there are
LAURENT 687
those who substitute for nature general laws. But do not
laws suppose a legislator? And who can this legislator be
if not God?"1 These are the conclusions, I repeat, which
M. Laurent devotes the first 237 pages of his work to en-
force,— partly by expounding his own views, and partly
by assailing those of others. And then he occupies the 134
pages which follow with an examination of the facts of history
as a whole, undertaken expressly and exclusively to show
that they necessitate the same conclusions. In these circum-
stances, Professor Meyer's objection must be held quite
unreasonable. And indeed it seems to me, no objection can
possibly apply to M. Laurent's reasoning which would not
equally apply to every form of theistical argument from effect
to cause, from plan to designer, from course of procedure to
character of the agent. He does not pretend that history
proves to us the presence of God as it proves to us that a cer-
tain battle took place, or that a certain law was passed, but
that it proves it as clearly as nature does. He takes no notice
of objections, like those formulated by Kant, against all theo-
logical reasonings which are based on empirical facts, and
assume the validity, beyond the bounds of experience, of the
principles either of efficient or final causes ; but against all
less sweeping and radical objections he has made his position
quite secure.
Professor Meyer proceeds : " Laurent's point of view is like-
wise suspicious, since it leads to misinterpretation of the will
of men, in order thereby to exalt so much the more the will of
God. He has fallen into this error, for example, when he
maintains that Christ had not the intention of founding a new
religion, but of preparing men for the near end of all things.
Indeed he has been misled throughout by his false point of
view to follow the course of the human will mainly in the
direction of perversity and evil."
Now it is true that M. Laurent has maintained that Christ
in preaching the gospel of the kingdom willed what God did
not will, and has accomplished not what He Himself willed,
but what God willed. The cause of that, however, was not
the general point of view from which he argued for the pres-
1 Pp. 239, 240.
688 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN BELGIUM
ence of God in history, but simply the fact that for the reasons
which he gives in the fourth volume of his work, that entitled
' fitude sur le Christianisme,' he rejected Christianity as a spe-
cial divine revelation. "We may regret that a man who in every
page of his work shows so profound and living a sense of the
presence and providence of God, should not have had a deeper
insight into the character and mission of Christ ; but there are
no grounds for attributing his defective vision to his historical
" point of view."
The general assertion of Professor Meyer, that M. Laurent's
point of view has led him throughout to seek chiefly the evi-
dences of perversity and evil in the motives of men, is utterly
baseless. What M. Laurent really seeks chiefly throughout his
work are the evidences of man's progressive apprehension of
the plan and purposes of God in human life, of his own rights
to liberty and equality, of religious truth and moral duty. His
argument requires him to lay no undue stress on the perver-
sity and wickedness of men's wills. It is enough for it that
men's wills have not been coincident with God's will; that
their purposes have been narrower and meaner than His plans ;
that high as are the heavens above the earth, so high have
been His thoughts above their thoughts.
The second and last book of M. Laurent's ' Philosophy of
History ' treats of progress in history. It is, in fact, an induc-
tive proof of the reality of the progress of man, individually
and nationally, in all ethical directions. In a chapter on " The
Individual and his Rights," the author traces the growth of
liberty and equality in the oriental theocracies, in the classical
nations, in the Christian Church, in Germanic and feudal
society ; and concludes by warning against the individualism
which denies the rights of the State, and the socialism which
denies the rights of the person. In the second chapter — " The
Individual and his Duties " — he argues that the facts of his-
tory viewed along its whole course indubitably establish that
there has been both a religious and a moral progress in the
personal lives of men, — a growth in spiritual truth and an
emancipation from spiritual errors, a growth in purity and
delicacy of feeling as to relations between the sexes, a decrease
of cruelty, &c. From individuals with their rights and duties
LAURENT 689
he passes to nations and their relations. The third chapter
dwells on the significance of nationality, and gives an historical
exposition of the formation of nationalities in humanity, or
of the differentiation of humanity into nationalities. Here
Laurent shows how the variety of nations in the unity of hu-
manity contributes to the profound and exhaustive development
of the soul, and to the advancement of the race in knowledge
and morality ; how different from true national feeling were
the sentiments which united the subjects of Asiatic despotisms
and the inhabitants of Greek cities, and which impelled the
Romans to constant aggression on their neighbours ; how the
principle of nationality was affected by Christianity and the
Papacy; how it was furthered by the Renaissance and the
Reformation ; how its course was modified by the Monarchy,
the Revolution, and Napoleon ; and how, in still more recent
times, it has made itself known and felt in all directions as
never before, seeing that in peace and war the peoples are
everywhere appearing with the assertion of their right to decide
for themselves, to be themselves the central and conspicuous
figures in whatever drama Providence composes for them. t
^Along with the idea of nationality itself there gradually grows
up this other, that nation is bound to nation by ties of justice
and nature ; that they have rights and responsibilities, mutual
obligations and interests ; that they are members of humanity,
a brotherhood, a family, and that a wrong done by one to
another, by the strongest to the weakest, is fratricidal and un-
holy. The growth of this idea, or, in other words, the growth
of a true recognition of the moral relations in which nations
stand to one another, of how they ought to feel and act towards
one another, is traced from the earliest to the latest times
in the last chapter of M. Laurent's work, and certain specula-
tions connected therewith bearing on the future prospects of
humanity are discussed. A hopeful, yet not Utopian, spirit
characterises all his speculations as to the future.
The conclusions relative to progress, which have their evi-
dence summarily stated in these four chapters, and presented in
the seventeen volumes of the ' fitudes ' with a fulness never
before equalled, are far from composing a complete philosophy
of history, or even of historical progress ; but they are most
690 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOKY IN BELGIUM
important conclusions, which every philosophy of history must
undoubtedly recognise. Laurent is entitled to be remembered
with all gratitude for the enormous labour he bestowed on
their demonstration.
While Altmeyer and Laurent treated history in the manner
described, the Churchly or Catholic theory also found exposi-
tors and defenders in Belgium.
The first Professor of General History in the Catholic Uni-
versity of Lou vain was J. Moeller, a Danish convert, who had
studied under Niebuhr and Walter at Bonn, and under Boeckh
and Hegel at Berlin. The notes of his lectures, published by
his son, the present occupant of the same chair, in the ' Traite"
des Etudes Historiques,' 1892, enables us to form a fairly
adequate conception of what his teaching must have been.
Obviously it was comprehensive, systematic, solid, and useful
teaching. The 'Conferences sur la synthase de l'histoire,'
with which the work closes, present to us in a general way his
views as to the philosophy of history. The definition given of
history is one afterwards made popular by Dr. Arnold — viz.,
" the biography of humanity." The two great factors of history
are maintained to be Providence and Free Agency ; its end is
said to be the divine glory ; its chief work is represented as
consisting in the preparation for, and the conservation of, the
Church of the true God. Moeller's philosophy of history is,
in the main, a theodicy based on history. He obviously believed
that the Church had not been seriously at fault in any contro-
versy or conjuncture ; but none of his utterances, so far as
published, give evidence of intolerance or fanaticism.
Mgr. Laforet (1823-72), who was for a time Rector of the
University of Louvain, wrote an ' Histoire de la Philosophie,'
which led up to the conclusion that what philosophy seeks is
only to be found in the teaching of the Church ; also an elabo-
rate defence of that teaching in its historical and practical as
well as speculative relations, — ' Les Dogmes Catholiques,' &c,
4 vols. ; and a treatise of which the special object is to prove
that Christianity has been the chief source of all that is best in
European culture and life, — ' Etudes sur la Civilisation Euro-
pe"enne conside're'e dans ses rapports avec le Christianisme,'
THONISSEN 691
1852. MM. Dechamps and Lefebre replied to and attacked
the ' Etudes ' of Laurent.
The late M. Thonissen (1817-91) was a very liberal and
estimable representative of the Catholic School. He was a man
of varied knowledge, who occupied himself much with history,
and was especially distinguished as a jurist. He held during
forty years the Chair of Criminal Law at Louvain, and was in
1844 Minister of the Interior and of Public Instruction. His
interest in social questions led him to a serious study of Social-
ism, and in 1850 he published a critical account of the system
in his ' Socialisme et ses promesses ' (2 vols.), and somewhat
later a history of it, — ' Le Socialisme depuis 1'antiquite" jusqu'a
la constitution franchise de 1852 ' (2 vols., 1852). The most
valuable of his works is generally admitted to be his ' History
of Criminal Law among ancient peoples.' It displays exten-
sive research, sound judgment, and a humane and generous
spirit. It has very considerable philosophical interest, and it
has been much commended by those who have made a special
study of its subject.
The question of progress was submitted by Thonissen to a
special examination in his ' Considerations sur la Thdorie du
Progress inde'fmi dans ses rapports avec l'histoire de la civilisa-
tion et les dogmes du Christianisme.' L The treatise is not
marked by originality or profundity, but it is learned and
judicious. It is mainly a sketch of the course and a history of
the doctrine of progress ; but the author has always in view
the refutation of those who represent progress as necessary and
unlimited, — Schelling, Hegel, Leroux, Reynaud, Laurent,
and especially Pelletan, whom he regards as the most brilliant
and persuasive advocate of the theory which he combats. He
rejects the opinion that man's primitive condition was one
of barbarism, simply on the ground that it is contrary to
Scripture and tradition. He points out the weaknesses in
the civilisations of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and
cites express or implied denials of progress made by their
chief thinkers. He refers all that is true in the theory of
progress to the first preaching of the Gospel, and traces the
1 First published in ' Memoires de la Acad. Roy. de Belgique,' t. x., 1859, and
afterwards as a separate volume in 1867.
692 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN BELGIUM
development of the theory in the middle age and in modern
times. He admits that during the historical period progress
has been on the whole continuous as a matter of fact, al-
though not of necessity. God wills it; and it is a law of
history. There is no incompatibility, he maintains, between
Christianity and progress. Those who affirm that there is, on
the ground that Christianity teaches immutable dogmas them-
selves profess, he reminds them, immutable principles. The
real question is, Are the dogmas of Christianity in their own
nature inconsistent with progress ? This question he answers
in the negative, and represents the views of rationalists to the
contrary as mere prejudices, due to ignorance of what the
spirit and teaching of Christianity actually are.
The,socialists of Belgium have taken their historical philos-
ophy for the most part from the founders of French socialism
and the leaders of German socialism. The historical theories
of the former I have already described; those of the latter will
be examined in the next volume. The only Belgian socialist
to whom it is necessary here to refer is, I think, Baron de
Colins (1783-1859), the originator of a form of collectivism
called by his disciples " rational socialism." Considered simply
as a socialist, the author of a scheme of comprehensive and
detailed social reorganisation, he must be acknowledged to
rank among the most ingenious and perspicacious of the class.
But he has little claim to notice in any other connection.
What he propounded as his philosophy centres in such dogmas
as that there is no personal God, no other God than the uni-
versal, impersonal Reason; that men possess, however, "im-
material sensibilities " or " souls " which are eternal, and pass
through endless series of lives in other worlds; that these
souls carry with them into each new life original sin and
original merit; that the lower animals are insentient auto-
mata, &c. His historical philosophy is not of a kind which it
would be justifiable to present otherwise than briefly. I shall
content myself with quoting the summary account of it given
by M. de Laveleye : —
" At the first, the supremacy of brute force is established : the father
of the family rules, the strongest of the tribe commands. But in a
colins 693
tolerably large community, this kind of supremacy can never long
endure, for he who is at one time the strongest cannot always remain
such. What does he do, then? In order to continue master, he con-
verts, as Rousseau says, his strength into a right, and obedience to him
into a duty. With this object in view, he asserts that there exists an
anthropomorphic almighty being, called God; that God has revealed
rules of action, and has appointed him the infallible lawgiver and
interpreter of this revelation; that God has endowed every man with
an immortal soul ; and, finally, that man will be rewarded or punished
in a future life, according as he has or has not regulated his conduct by
the revealed law. ■
" It is not enough, however, for the legislator to assert these dogmas ;
he must further preserve them from examination, and this is done by
maintaining ignorance and repressing thought. Theocratic sovereignty,
or the divine right of kings, is thus established, and a feudal aristocracy
arises. This is the historic period called by Rational Socialism 'the
period of social ignorance and of compressibility of examination.'
"After a longer or shorter interval, in consequence of the growth
of intelligence, the discoveries thereby made, and the increasing facility
of communications between nations, it becomes impossible to repress
all examination entirely. Then the superhuman basis of society is
disputed, and its authority falls to the ground. The divine right of
kings loses its theocratic mask, and the government is transformed into
a mere supremacy of force — that is to say, of the majority of the people.
Aristocratic society becomes bourgeois, and enters upon the historic period
of ' ignorance and incompressibility of examination.'
" Society, then, becomes profoundly agitated and disorganised. The
principles which used to insure the obedience of the masses lose their
sway. Everything is examined, and scepticism prevails. This unfettered
examination ends in the denial of all supernatural sanctions, of the
personality of the Deity, and of the immortality of the soul (to mention
only these points), and leads to the affirmation of materialism. Then,
personal interest becomes a stronger force, with an ever-increasing num-
ber of individuals than ideas of order and of devotion to principle, and
a situation is brought about thus defined by Colins : ' An epoch of social
ignorance, in which immortality increases in proportion to the growth
of intelligence.'
"As pauperism simultaneously increases in the same proportions, it
follows that the bourgeois form of society cannot last. In one way or
another it soon falls to pieces, and the supremacy of divine right is
restored, until a new revolution ushers in once more the triumph of
the bourgeoisie. Society cannot escape from this vicious circle in which
it has revolved from the first, until, as the result of the invention and
development of the press, and of the absolute impossibility of restricting
the examination of old beliefs consequent thereon, all reversion to the
theocratic form of government has become radically impossible. When
694 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN BELGIUM
that time comes, humanity must either perish in anarchy, or organise
itself conformably to scientific reason. It is then that humanity will
enter on the last period of its historical development, the period of
' knowledge,' which will endure as long as the human race can exist on the
globe. According to Colins, then, a theocratic regime is order founded
on despotism, a democratic regime is liberty engendering anarchy, while
the rational or ' logocratic ' regime would secure, at the same time, both
liberty and order.
"Hereafter, according to the Belgian socialist, society will be defini-
tively organised as follows : All men being by right equal, they ought
all to be placed in the same position with regard to labour. Man is
free, and his labour should be free also. To effect this, matter should
be subordinated to intelligence, labour should own both land and capital,
and wages would be at a maximum. All men are brothers, for they
have a common origin; hence, if any are unable to provide for them-
selves, society should take care of them. In the intellectual world there
should be a social distribution of knowledge to all, and in the material
world a social appropriation of the land and of a large portiou of the
wealth acquired by past generations, and transformed into capital." 1
In M. Quetelet (1796-1874) Belgium had the most re-
nowned statistician of his time. He has unquestionably done
more than any one else to render statistics auxiliary to histor-
ical science. He was the first to reveal how wonderful in
their comprehensiveness and definiteness are the regularities
which prevail among moral and social phenomena. These
regularities themselves, the real discoveries of his laborious
and brilliant researches, are now universally acknowledged,
and are too well known to require to be stated here. But as
regards the precise interpretation to be put on them, the place
to be assigned them in historical philosophy, their compati-
bility or incompatibility with free will, and their right to
be regarded or not as properly laws, there is great room for
difference and variety of opinion. On these points Quetelet
can only be credited with raising questions which will come
before us in connection with German historical thought after
they had been under searching discussion, and when they can
be more fully and conveniently considered by us.2
1 Socialism of To-day, pp. 249, 250.
2 The most important of Quetelet's sociological works are, ' Sur l'Homme et le
developpement de ses faculty's,' 2 torn., 1835; 'Lettres sur la theorie des proba-
bilities,' 1846 ; " La Statistique Morale " in ' Me'n. de l'Acad. Roy. de Belgique,'
t. xxi., 1848 ; ' Du Systfeme Sociale,' 1848 ; and ' De la Statistique considered sous
BRUCK 695
A Belgian physicist, Captain Brack, who devoted himself
specially to the study of magnetism, believed that he had found
the key of history in his favourite science. In a work enti-
tled ' L'humanit^, son deVeloppement, et sa dure'e,' he attempts
to establish a parallelism between magnetical and historical
periods, which, in his opinion, reveals the law of history. An
** exclusively historical investigation proves, he maintains, that
there has been a continuous succession of peoples on the earth
throughout historical time, and that each of them has exer-
cised during a certain period a maximum of action, and then
yielded up the supremacy to another. Each of these chief
peoples gives its character to an historical period. Hence the
world's great historical periods have been — 1. the Assyrian ;
2. the Egyptian ; 3. the Jewish-Phoenician ; 4. the Greek ;
5. the Roman; 6. the Frankish; 7. the Catholic; and 8. the
French. Each of the peoples corresponding to these periods
successively and gradually asserted itself, passed through a
phase of intellectual or material maximum of power, and then
grew feeble in transmitting its acquisitions to its successor.
The period of supremacy of each dominant people has hith-
erto, according to Briick, been constant, the same for all, last-
ing about five centuries, a half of the people's entire life.
Tables are given designed to show that the principle life-
epochs of the peoples which have reappeared in succession on
our continent — those of their foundation, organisation, apo-
gee, and end or renewal — reproduce themselves periodically
at a distance of a little more than five centuries. But purely
physical investigation, Briick maintains, shows, besides an
extremely slow magnetic displacement from East to West,
due to the precession of the equinoxes, a quinquasecular
movement, fixed by him at 516 years. And these two periods,
he argues, have their analogues in the slow displacement of
the centre of civilisation from East to West, and especially
in the quinquasecular evolution found by analysis to be char-
acteristic of the course of history itself.1
le rapport du physique, de la morale, et d'intelligence de l'homme,' 1860. As re-
gards Quetelet himself, see the Notice by Ed. Mailly in the Annuaire of the Acad.
Roy. de Belgique for 1875.
1 Any knowledge which I possess of Captain Briick and his treatise has been
696 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN BELGIUM
The learned Bollandist, Father Charles de Smedt, S.J.
(1794-1887), did honour to his country and his order by his
historical labours. He began his literary career with a His-
tory of Belgium, 1821, and afterwards edited the important
'Corpus Chronicorum Flandriae.' He is the author of a justly
famed ' Introduction to Ecclesiastical History,' 1 almost indis-
pensible to students of that branch of historical knowledge. *
It indicates, classifies, and appreciates the sources, auxiliaries,
and literature, with great learning and sound judgment. I
mention Father de Smedt here, however, especially on account
of his ' Principes de la Critique Historique,' published in 1883,
and composed, for the most part, of articles which had ap-
peared in a French religious periodical in 1869 and 1870. It
is one of the best books on its subject ; attractive in style ;
manifestly inspired by a conscientious and liberal spirit ; and
the fruit of thorough learning and of long experience. In a
manner always sensible and useful it treats of the utility of
studying the rules of criticism, of the dispositions required in
the critic, of the nature of historical certainty, of the authen-
ticity, interpretation, and authority of the texts, of oral and
popular tradition, of the negative argument, of conjecture, of
unwritten testimony, and of arguments a priori. Besides, it
touches on a number of particular disputed points luminously,
although briefly. At the same time, it is far from adequate to
its subject or sufficient for the wants of students. It is in no
way a systematic treatise, and does not at all penetrate into
the psychology or even the logic of historical processes. It is
only just to describe it as still one of the best books on the
principles of historical criticism; but it is little to the credit
of historians that we should require or be able so to de-
scribe it.2
derived entirely from the ' History of the Physical and Mathematical Sciences in
Belgium,' by MM. Ch. and E. Lagrange — see ' Cinquante Ans de Liberte,' t. 11,
pp. 171-195. My failure to procure his work is probably not much to be regretted.
I could certainly not have formed an intelligent opinion regarding his magnetic
periods of 516 years, and would have been most sceptical as to his historical
periods of 518 years. MM. Lagrange speaks in the highest terms of the scientific
genius and the self-sacrificing labours of Captain Briick.
1 Introductio generalis ad historian ecclesiasticam critice tract andam. Oandavi,
1876.
3 There is an interesting sketch of the life of Father de Smedt by Father de
Decker in the Annuaire for 1888 of the Royal Academy of Belgium.
VINET 69T
II
French-speaking Switzerland is not, as some suppose, intel-
lectually a mere province of France. It has a character of its
own; one which has been developed under peculiar political
conditions, and profoundly modified by the action of religion.
It lies open, however, to all French influences ; and what is said
and done at Paris is immediately known and felt at Geneva and
Lausanne. At the same time it readily receives and assimilates
German ideas, owing partly to its Protestantism and partly to
its close connection with German-speaking Switzerland. As
regards literature and science it will bear honourable compar-
ison, relatively to its extent and population, with any other
portion of Europe. It is characterised by great intellectual,
as well as industrial and commercial activity. It has pro-
duced a large number of historians, although none, perhaps,
of the highest rank. Among the best-known names are those of
Beza, Theodore Agrippa D Aubigne", Mallet-Dupan, Sismondi,
B. Constant, Merle DAubigne", De Felice, Chastel, Sayous,
Roget, &c. As regards its historical theorists there is not
much now to tell. Rousseau, Madame de Stael, and Benjamin
Constant, have already been under our notice.1
Alexander Vinet (1797-1847) has been the most influen-
tial of the Swiss Protestant writers of this century; and
deservedly, being the man of most original individuality, of
purest genius, of intensest conviction, of most striking and
searching eloquence. He has nowhere specially treated of
the philosophy of history, but he has often touched upon it ;
and M. Asti^ has diligently collected the thoughts expressed
on these occasions, and skilfully composed of them a chapter
. of a book widely known to English readers as Vinet's ' Out-
lines of Philosophy.' From that chapter I shall make a few
quotations.
1 M. Virgile Rossel's ' Histoire Litteraire de la Suisse Eomande des origines a
nos jours,' 2 torn., 1889, seems, so far as I can judge, to fulfil its promise of pre-
senting " a faithful and complete picture of the intellectual life of all the French-
speaking cantons from its commencement to the present time."
G98 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN SWITZERLAND
" History in its highest signification is but the manifestation of the
idea of progress, whether we refer that progress to the nature of things
and the course of time, or whether we seek it in what Bossuet calls the
development of religion, or lastly, whether we view it as a result of these
two causes combined. In all these cases, progress can only be the
advance of the intelligent world towards truth, which exclusively and
infallibly contains goodness. If the law of progress do not exist, there
is no meaning in history, nor in the world either, and each alike is only
fit to be thrown aside as mere rubbish."
"There is one sense in which truth knows no laws except its own, is
never overcome, never retarded, and always triumphs. It always realises
itself, either in the free submission of the moral being or in his chastise-
ment. The believing and the unbelieving, the saints and the ungodly,
equally do it honour. Error, which combats it, affords it at the same
time, at its own cost, a striking confirmation ; it is its natural counter-
proof."
" The fall of heavy bodies is not subject to more rigorous laws than
the course of the idea in the human mind and in society. A principle
bears all its consequences within itself, as a plant does all its posterity.
Men may choose the time to agitate a question; they may defer pro-
posing it; but, once proposed, they cannot prevent the questions it
contains proposing themselves one after the other. . . . Truth and
necessity only make one, and the logic of the ideas lay beforehand
in the facts. God has granted us no nobler spectacle than that of
times when these two logics reunite. Nothing is so indefatigable,
obstinate, and powerful, as a principle. It gradually brings all thoughts
into captivity to its obedience ; and even before it has subjected
thoughts, it has subjected facts. As everything is connected in a true
system, as the whole truth is included in each particular truth, one
point gained, the whole is gained."
" If in the destinies of humanity as a whole, or even of a single
nation, the weight of individualities is but little felt; if in so vast
a calculation their value is hardly appreciable; they do for all that
tell in the limits of a given century ; and the historians of the fatalist
school, who are very right in an extended horizon only to take count
of general causes, and to refer results immediately to laws, are wrong
when they transport their system within narrower bounds. Nothing
prevents them, or rather nothing excuses them from assigning to human
liberty, to diversity of character, and to special providence, a part, and
a considerable part too, in the production of events. Let them abstract
these on a less limited scale ; they may do so without endangering the
dogma of divine liberty, while in dealing with the annals of one or of
a few centuries, their method compromises at one blow, together with
the liberty of man, the liberty of God."
" It seems written in the book of national destiny that, in the advance
VINET 699
of social facts, thought and action shall never move with equal step;
thought invariably limps breathlessly after action, or action after thought
— each is alternately too slow or too precipitate. This incurable disease
of society, springing as it does from an incurable disease of human
nature, is a fertile principle of political disturbances.''
" Although a social truth lies at the bottom of all struggles, yet this
truth, under its general and absolute form, only manifests itself to the
generation that comes when the struggle is over. Posterity alone knows
why the conflict took place, and would tell it, were that possible, to those
by whom the conflict was carried on ; for no theory has appeared in the
world anterior to facts ; it is the facts that have engendered the theory :
thus it is that all social truths, created one by one both by necessity and
opportunity, have come down to us; thus it is that our children will
know better than we what it was we really aimed at. It is only God
who knows beforehand what He wills and what He does."
" Influenced by the recollections of a thousand generous revolts which
have asserted in our world the rights of God over the pretensions of
men, the rights of truth over the pretensions of error, in short those of
virtue over vice, I have said, and I still say, that it is from revolt to
revolt that societies go on to perfection, that justice reigns, and truth
flourishes. Yet, although history teaches that almost all the great ques-
tions that have agitated society have had a violent solution, it is the
duty of social man to start from an opposite hope, to spare society too
sudden transformations, and to smooth the incline by which humanity
advances to new destinies."
"All progress leads to discontent; it is not misery that plants the
standard of revolutions. What ! is progress, then, to be always a sub-
ject of alarm? Will it always rouse some confused idea of crime and
impiety? Will it always find a great number of the most honourable
members of society distrustful of and almost in league against it ? Yes ;
so long as the progress of the human heart — that heart which, according
to Scripture, is desperately wicked, and whose wickedness taints all
things — does not correspond with the progress of laws, arts, and even
morals. Humanity seems to forget that the first inventions, the first
progress, occurred in the family of Cain."
" Nothing in God's eyes is progress in humanity except what restores
in humanity the image of God. The Christian, too, who sees all with
God's eyes, iii God's light, gives the name of progress to nothing else ;
for society, being neither external to humanity nor to the plan of God,
must tend towards the same end to which man is summoned to aim :
we may very easily deduce from this that equality is, in the eyes of
the Christian, neither the whole of progress, nor even an essential part
of the true progress, but at most (and this remains to be discussed) one
of the consequences, or one of the signs of true progress. For a man
who has become the equal of all other men is not for that reason more
700 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN SWITZERLAND
like to God ; and a society where the most absolute equality was estab-
lished would not by that alone correspond any better with the divine
idea."
M. Charles Secre"tan felt the influence of Vinet, but he also,
when a student at Munich, came under the spell of Schelling ;
and his chief work, ' La Philosophie de la LiberteY reminds
us on every page of the religious earnestness of the former,
and of the speculative venturesomeness of the latter. The
system expounded in it, however, is based on Kant's doctrine
of the supremacy of the practical reason. Its central idea is
that of Absolute Liberty. He protests against its being
described as an a priori metaphysical deduction ; but it is,
at least, a boldly constructive philosophy, very ambitious in
its aim, and all-comprehensive in its range, — " a synthesis,"
as its author himself avers, " of theism and pantheism, of
monism and of monadology, of dogmatism and of criticism,
of history and of reason, under the sovereign direction of the
moral idea." Its themes are God, nature, and man ; and it
comprehends a kind of philosophy of history, which claims to
be essentially Christian, inasmuch as it discovers in Chris-
tianity the only true satisfaction, and the only adequate
explanation of the condition and course of human affairs.
In the exposition of his historical doctrine, as of his system
in general, M. Secre"tan displays a vigorous and original
intelligence, and gives expression to many fine and striking
thoughts. But the doctrine itself need not detain us. It
consists not of properly historical theses, but of essentially
theological hypotheses, mostly incapable either of rational
proof or of inductive verification. It contains very disputable
views regarding God conceived of as absolute and infinite
liberty ; the origination of the universe and of humanity in
a perfect ideal unity; the disruption of that unity into an
indefinite number of individualities ; a primordial fall, or
original sin, before time and development, anterior to nature,
exterior to history, and the source alike of physical and of
moral evil; the struggling and suffering of the Restorative
Will of God in conflict with matter ; the tending of the
humanity-species to incarnation; the Word becoming an
SECKETAN — TBOTTET 701
individual in Christ, expiating sin, and sanctifying the race ;
the return of mankind to the absolute unity through the
Church ; and similar themes.
In M. Secre"tan's latest book, ' Mon Utopie,' 1892, he has
delineated his ideal of the future. It is one which includes
the solution of the economic problem by the collectivisation
of property in land ; of the social question by the complete
enfranchisement of women, the equalisation of the sexes ; and
of the religious problem by the severance of religion from
theology, the organisation of a Church without dogma or
confession.
Another pupil of Vinet was J. P. Trottet (1818-62). He
studied four years in Germany, and was for a long time
pastor at Stockholm, and for a shorter period at the Hague.
He was warmly religious, while free and vague as regards
his theology. His chief work, ' Le Ge"nie des Civilisations,'
2 vols., appeared in 1862, shortly before his death. It treats
only of antiquity ; bears marks of having been brought hur-
riedly to a close; and gives no indications of how it was
intended to be worked out. It testifies to wide reading and
prolonged reflection, but is often more ingenious than clear
or convincing. Its arrangement is rather loose : for example,
the note regarding " the first cause of the formation of races "
at the end of the first volume, and the last chapter of the
second volume as to " the natural relations between human
civilisations and the configuration of the places which have
served as their theatre," should have been included in the
introduction. It proceeds on the conviction that the entire
development of each people springs from its distinctive
spiritual principle, and is only to be understood through a
study of its religion ; that the destinies of nations are deter-
mined by their modes of representing and revering the Divine.
It treats especially of the constitutive period of each of -the
societies brought under consideration. The patriarchal fam-
ily, the patriarchal tribe, patriarchal humanity as represented
by China, the city-empires of Babylon, Nineveh, and Carthage,
the sacerdotal realm of India, the pagan monarchies of Egypt
and Iran, the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, and the
702 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN SWITZERLAND
Jewish theocracy, are successively passed in review, with the
purpose of showing that the whole history of humanity has
been the necessary preparation for Christianity ; that the
mythological religions were stages of education suited to the
wants of the human mind at each epoch of its development ;
that Christian consciousness is the final and perfect form of
humanitarian consciousness. But the conclusion is not fully
reached. The work is a fragment, and we are not enabled
to form any satisfactory conception of the whole in which it
was meant to be included.
The late M. Frederick de Rougemont (1807-76) of Neu-
chatel was a layman, but of far more rigid orthodoxy than
Vinet or Trottet ; a most vigorous theological polemic ; a
man widely acquainted with science, of immense learning, of
indefatigable activity, of unswerving conscientiousness, and
of unfaltering courage. He never hesitated to call to strict
account the most eminent of his fellow-countrymen, such as
Agassiz, Vinet, and M. de Gasparin, when they seemed to
him to fall into heresies. His absolute faith in the inerrancy
of the Scriptures was accompanied by a faith almost as strong
in the inerrancy of his own deductions from them. At one
period of his life he was a disciple of Hegel, and although he
abandoned Hegelianism when, to use his own words, "he
took his seat at the feet of Christ," he retained to the last
some Hegelian peculiarities of thought and speech. He
regarded Germany as " his intellectual fatherland."
Among Rougemont's numerous works are two very erudite
treatises — the one intended to establish his views regarding
" the primitive people," a and the other to prove his hypothesis
of the Semitic origin of Western civilisation.2 With these
are closely connected ' Les Deux Cite"s — La Philosophic de
l'Histoire aux differents ages de l'HumaniteY 2 torn., 1874.3
This last is much the more important. The second volume
is especially valuable. The account which it gives of the
1 LeJ'euple Primitif, sa religion, son histoire, et sa civilisation, 3 vols., 1885-87.
2 L'Age du bronze, ou les Semites en Occident, 1866.
8 It was published a month or two later than my ' Philosophy of History in
France and Germany.'
KOUGEMONT 703
doctrine of historical theorists from the Renaissance to our
own day is the fruit of enormous and conscientious reading.
So far as the historical narrative is concerned, there is much
that is excellent in the first volume also, although there is
likewise a good deal that is irrelevant or erroneous. But
while ' Les Deux Cit6s ' is a very remarkable and meritorious
work, it has at least two serious defects.
The first obtrudes itself on us in almost every page. M.
Rougemont is far from being as considerate and fair in judg-
ing of the theories and systems which he brings before us as
he is in simply presenting them. The secret of this fact is
not only an open one, but one which he has taken care that
we shall learn from himself. In bringing his work to a close,
he tells us that " he has weighed the historical philosophers
of all times in the balance of the sanctuary, and put on his
left hand those who are light ; that no one has a right to pro-
test against this balance, seeing that every one has his own ;
and that the only difference between himself and the philoso-
phers is that their balances are of earthly fabrication, and have
been adopted without due consideration, whereas his is that
of Christ, and has been carefully selected." There may be
Helvetian candour in this declaration, but there is neither
modesty nor reasonableness in it. Criticism conducted on
such a plan is a continuous petitio principii in the critic's own
favour. Without any disrespect to " the balance of the sanc-
tuary," its fitness for weighing philosophical theories and his-
torical generalisations may be doubted. "What other balance
for weighing these things can there be than reason taking fair
and full account of all the relevant facts ? There is no other
instrument, no other method, of dealing justly with the
opinions and systems either of those " deists, pantheists, ma-
terialists, positivists, and sceptics," whom Rougemont so dicta-
torially waives to the left, or of those " believing theologians "
to whom, as arbitrarily, he assigns a place of honour on his
right. Then, is it really " the balance of the sanctuary " which
he employs ? That is very doubtful. What he certainly does
employ as a balance is just his own historical philosophy.
True, he fathers that philosophy on the prophets Isaiah,
704 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN SWITZERLAND
Ezekiel, Nahum, and Daniel, and on the apostles St. Paul and
St. John ; but, then, he founds the claim on the most arbitrary
and improbable interpretations of their writings. His so-
called " balance of the sanctuary " is largely of his own fabri-
cation ; it is his own private theory of history.
The unsatisfactoriness of that theory is the second of the
two defects referred to as lessening the value of ' Les Deux
Citfe.' It consists to a large extent of hypotheses associated
with rather than founded on the Bible, and of Biblical doc-
trines or declarations misapplied. It is not necessary, I think,
to subject it to a critical examination. The following quota-
tion will give some general idea of it, and of the plan of M.
de Rougemont's work : —
" Knowing the problems of historiosophy, all the false solutions
which reason can give them, and the only true one, that which is
taught us in Holy Scripture, we shall exhibit the order of succession
of the revelations of God and of the errors of man from age to age.
The revelations are three in number : that of God the Creator, Elohiui,
to the psychical humanity sprung from Adam ; that of Jehovah to the
Hebrew people born of Sem ; that of Jesus Christ to the spiritual
humanity which is His issue by faith. The errors are of two oppo-
site natures, and of two epochs separated by thousands of years; the
myths of the ancient East and the philosophical systems of the modern
West. Between these systems and these historiosophic myths there
intervenes in time and space the science of the biology of nations
created by the human mind among the Hellenes. The division of
our work is thus very simple. The first book has for its subject the
traditions which primitive humanity has transmitted to us regarding
its origins and the revelations of God. There are there the founda-
tions of historiosophy. The two books which follow comprehend the
pagan peoples of the East and the Hebrews. The pagans wander
astray among myths which have no value for our science, but which
all proceed from, and thereby bear witness to, the primordial truths of
humanity. The most curious of these myths are the cyclical histories
of the universe. The Hebrews receive from God a second revelation
which confirms the first, and which is summed up in the promise of
the Messiah. Then come Greece and Rome, which, while losing sight
of the history of humanity, discover the formulae of the succession
of governments in the different ages of their republican cities. The
following books, which comprise the historiosophy of the Christian
world, show us : first, Jesus Christ and His apostles completing the
MALAN 705
divine revelations ; then on one side, the believing thinkers explain-
ing by the great principles of the faith, and by the prophecies the
history of humanity; and on another side, the rationalistic philoso-
phers striving in vain to comprehend its course and plan, and, by
the very vanity of their efforts, as well as by their studies in histori-
cal biology, coming slowly to confess that the revealed historiosophy
is the most rational of philosophies. Primitive humanity is the thesis ;
Israel of the race of Sem and the Japhetic Hellenes form the anti-
thesis of the divine revelations and of human science; the Christian
world is called to accomplish or at least to prepare for the definitive
synthesis of faith and of reason." l
The work of Csesar Malan, entitled ' Les Grands Traits de
THistoire religieuse de l'HumaniteY 1883, will please and in-
terest its readers by its eloquence, its sincerity of tone, and the
truth and worth of many of the thoughts and facts which it
conveys. But, I imagine, it will find few disposed to accept
its formula of historical development, its distribution of
historical time. It represents humanity as passing through
three stages, or Divine Economies, — the Economy of the
presence of God on earth, the Economy of revelation, and
the Economy of palingSnesie, or of the redemption of man
and the restoration of the kingdom of God. Thus to force
the matter of history into the mould of an antiquated the-
ology is surely imprudent. M. Malan's work is derived in a
considerable measure from the ' Humanitat und Christen-
thum ' of the Danish theologian, Dr. Scharling, which will
come before us in our next volume.
Secre"tan, Rougemont, and Malan seem to me to have one
fault in common, that of fancying themselves to know a great
deal more about the beginning and end of history than they
really do, or even than it has been given to man in his
present state to know. All three might have sat with advan-
tage at the feet of that gifted Swiss maiden — Mile. Alice de
Chambrier — whose thoughts incessantly tended to the immor-
tality to which she was so early called away, and who felt so
deeply that the life of man on earth is but a slender gleam
of light between immensities of darkness.
i Pp. 32, 33.
706 PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY IN SWITZERLAND
" Ou done la vie humaine a-telle pris sa source?
Vers quel but inconnu son cours est-il pousse?
Vers d'autres univers portons-nous notre course ?
L'avenir sera-t-il l'image du passe?
Mystere de la vie, 6 grand pourquoi des choses !
Arche immense d'un pont sur les siecles construit,
Et dont les deux piliers, les effets et les causes,
Plongent, l'un dans le vague et l'autre dans la nuit ! "
THE END
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