Authority will be Written Records. But these will now be Literature, in the widest sense of the term, as a Record of the facts of Nature and of Humanity. Still, there must be a definite and accepted objective Method of interpreting our authoritative Record. But this will now be, not the method deducible from the traditions of a certain Church, and the dicta of its Popes, but the method deducible from the principles of a complete scientific Logic. And still there will be a general historical theory, as at once result and means of interpreting our Records. For-as we find in Literature an immense diversity of contradictory representations of the facts of Nature and of Humanity-how are these contradictory representations to be judged except a Law of Thought, and hence, of Representation, except, in other words, an Ultimate Law of History is discoverable? 1

9. Not merely, then, to discover a new Theory, nor only to discover a more true basis for the Ideal, but to discover a Law that shall give to Polity an acknowledgable Authority, and hence, to Policy an

As to such a principle of authority as that supplied' by Mr. Matthew Arnold's 'Culture,' (see his Anarchy and Authority,) it would appear impossible to show in what important respect it is, as he proclaims it, a 'new principle;' how our 'best self' or 'light' differs essentially from the principle of authority of every mystic since philosophising began; how 'best selfs' are to be kept from perpetually falling out with each other on the most important points; how such a principle is anything better than a slight refinement of the mere subjective 'private judgment' of Protestantism; or, finally, in what manner it can possibly be adequate to bring order into an anarchy which, consisting essentially in the negation of a hitherto accepted external objective authority, can only, as it should seem, have order brought into it by such a new external objective authority as, in an Ultimate Law of History, Science aims at discovering.

authoritative guide in the attempt at a more just reorganisation of Society, this is the sublime task now laid on the scientific student of History. And I trust that, in pointing out what the moral basis is of the existing Social System of Christendom, and what the causes are of the revolutionary change in the temper of the Christian populations, I have made it clear how urgent a practical need there is of such a discovery as is required to complete the New Philosophy of History. It is, indeed, true that almost every age is inclined to exaggerate its own historical importance. But those who adequately reflect on those presently-working causes of revolution above so inadequately indicated, will, I venture to think, probably be of opinion that the scope of the changes now in operation is more likely to be unduly limited by narrowness of vision, than overextended by illusions of fancy. Wild may often, indeed, be popular expression, and anarchic, popular demand. But the fact that, to almost all historical students and thinkers, the Religion of Christendom is but an Ideal System founded on an unscientific Philosophy of History, and the Polity of Christendom but a Social System of which the moral basis is derived from this unscientific Philosophy, such a fact as this gives to popular turbulence, and even passionate revolt, a strength, against which hysterical outcry, or even, save for a moment, the cowardly fury of Versaillaise butcheries can nothing avail. To what, then, can all that fair-seeming plain, in the ancient structures of which the upper classes of Christian Society, with but individual exceptions, rejoice-to what can it be

G

fitly compared but to a Fools' Paradise resting on but a crust, of which the once-solid pillars, and supporting vaults have become molten with volcanic heat, and in vast lava-floods roll tumultuous? Immense, no doubt, nay, if you will, incalculable, is the repressive force of the menaced selfish interests of a whole Social System combined with, at least, some measure still of genuine belief in the Dogmas which are its intellectual basis, and genuine enthusiasm for the Ideal which has been its historical coexistent. But still more incalculable is the upheaving, and allrenewing might of those Moral Forces which, rising with the scornful thunders of that sublime, but, to oppression, appalling cry, 'If JUSTICE be with us, what can be against us?"-have marked the history of Humanity with revolutions, comparable only to the geological eras of the Earth. And such, however immense the force of repression, such will be the resistless upheaving, and allrenewing might given to the, as yet, chaotic swayings of revolutionary passion by statesmen who, with a general verifiable Law of History as the guide of their Policy, are able thus, not only to quicken men with the fire of those who know themselves in accord with unvanquishable world-forces, but are thus also able truly to forecast, and rightly to direct the action of these forces. And, in gubernanda republica, prospicere res impendentes, moderantem cursum, atque in sua potestate retinentem, magni cujusdam civis, et divini pæne est viri.”2

1 Compare Rom. VIII. 31.

2 I cannot recall where I read this passage.

SECTION II.

THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD.

Qui tractaverunt scientias aut Empirici aut Dogmatici fuerunt. Empirici, formica more, congerunt tantum et utuntur; Rationales, aranearum more telas ex se conficiunt; apis vero ratio media est, quæ materiam ex floribus horti et agri elicit, sed tamen cum propria facultate vertit et digerit. Itaque ex harum facultatum (experimentalis scilicet et rationalis) arctiore et sanctiore fœdere (quod adhuc factum non est) bene sperandum est. BACON, Novum Organum, Aph. xcv. Works, vol. 1. p. 201.

SUBSECTION I.

The Proximate Principles of Philosophical Investigation.

1. LET me now, briefly summarising the arguments of the foregoing section, recall the most important of the conclusions to which we have been conducted. The following, then, are the main facts that have, in their connection, constituted our argument. Reflection on History-on the Past and Future of Mankind—which seems to have originated but little before the Sixth Century B.C., gave to Christianity, as intellectual basis, a Philosophy of History. But this Philosophy, viewed in its essential aspect as a theory of Causation, belongs to that class of Philosophies which we find current in, and characteristic of, the lower stages of Culture, and distinguish as Spiritist. And this distinction we are led to make by considering this theory of Causation in relation to that other theory of it which we find originating in the first outlines of the

Natural Sciences, and, so far as we are specially concerned, in the first outlines of the Natural Sciences of the Greeks, about the Sixth Century before the Christian Era. Now this latter Theory of Causation has gradually extended the sphere of its application till— though, as we have seen, but little more than a century ago1-it attempted to view in its characteristic manner the most complex of all phenomena-those of the history of Man. Of this, the result has been utterly to destroy, for the great mass of educated and reflecting persons, the credibility of the Christian Philosophy of History. For this is now seen to be but a survival, and-considering how complex are the phenomena of Human History-a natural and necessary survival of the earliest mode of explaining, or giving a reason for things. In the course, however, of the Christian Period, this Spiritist Philosophy of History has become the basis of ideal emotion, or of Religion; has given to Morality what are believed to be its most effective sanctions; and has importantly determined the form of social organisation, or of Polity. Manifestly, then, that New Philosophy of History which has arisen from the fuller development and wider application of the scientific conception of Causation, has imposed on itself an immense reconstructive task by its destruction of the Christian Philosophy of History. But we have found that the New Philosophy of History, though adequate enough to destroy, is inadequate as yet to reconstruct. And this, because its achievements hitherto

1 See the above sketch of the history of the New Philosophy of History, Sect. 1. Subsect. ii.