men, who can estimate none but immediate material consequences; but it is impossible to suppose that the political genius of Frederick the Great was blind to the bearings of the intellectual movement. The constant protection afforded by so competent a judge to the propagation of the movement could arise only from a strong conviction of the provisional necessity of a negative phase like that of his time, in preparation for the natural organization of a rational and pacific philosophy, such as had ever been, from the time of the Roman conquest, the object of aspiration of all superior men, of all castes and conditions.

action.

It only remains for me now to notice very briefly the political Its political action of the negative philosophy, the preparation for the great revolutionary outburst which was sure to occur whenever the spiritual disorganization should have gone so far as to turn attention upon the temporal. The new philosophical school had appealed to the intellect of men, however feebly and frivolously. The new political school appealed to the passions of men, and thence derived such strength as it obtained. I need not say that its advent and its action were inevitable. Hobbes had favoured the temporal dictatorship so far as to advocate its being left intact,-provisionally, of course, and as long as there was work to do in the spiritual department; and when the critical spirit had finished the work of destruction there, it was so far exhausted, or alarmed at the prospect of total anarchy, that it passed on somewhat feebly to the attack on temporal institutions, and showed little firmness against serious resistance. As philosophy extended to the multitude, the philosophical class consisted of minds more and more ordinary, united to characters less and less lofty, and fully inclined to reconcile, each in his own case, the honours of an easy mental emancipation with the profit of an indulgent political approbation, according to the example set by many of their Protestant precursors. At the same time, the temporal rule was becoming more and more retrograde and corrupt, through the growing incapacity of royalty and the progressive demoralization of the aristocracy, which had abdicated its original and honourable function. In this state of things the critical philosophy would have been of less social School of use, as it was more urgently needed, if Rousseau had Rousseau. not roused men by convincing them that moral and political regeneration was the true end of the philosophical movement, which would otherwise end in mere fruitless intellectual agitation. Rousseau brought to the task only his sophisms and his passions, which closely belonged to each other. His nature was more that of the artist than the philosopher; and the work of framing the revolutionary philosophy into a political system was left to another order of minds. This had been partly done before, and some sober-minded men were employed upon it now; but the audacious outbreak of Rousseau, with his great paradox, was neces

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sary to direct social indignation upon the general vices of the old social organization, while it not the less involved the principle of all possible social disturbance by the barbarous negation of Society itself. To understand the service rendered, amidst fearful mischiefs, we must consider that political philosophy was then so imperfect that the best minds conceived of no other improvement than by means of modifications of the old system, whose very conditions of existence were extinct. Thus all chance of reorganization seemed to be thrown away, and the movement to be abortive in its last stage, when the anarchical school of Rousseau intervened, to open an issue to the great negative process which had been carried on for so long, and must now be brought to its revolutionary crisis. Such is the sad necessity which condemns social conceptions to gain ground only through the antagonism of empirical errors, till the ascendency of the positive philosophy shall have rationalized this last great order of human speculations.

One noticeable feature in this temporal application of the negative philosophy is its retrograde tendency in spiritual matters, which connected it rather with the Protestant than with the philosophical movement, though it took its origin from the latter. In the philosophical school, systematic deism was merely a provisional concession, preparatory to entire theological emancipation; whereas, in the political school, deism was the basis of the social Utopia, and the only security against total anarchy. The growing tendency of this natural disposition was to bring back the school to Socinianism, or even to Calvinism, in its strict sense, in proportion to the sense of the social inanity of a religion without a worship and a priesthood. Thus we see how the two chief schools of the last century were led by their respective opposite instincts to regard deism as a temporary station, whence the one may go forward and the other backward, amidst the ruin of the old religious system; and here we find the explanation of the different impression made by the two schools on the sacerdotal instinct of our time, notwithstanding the apparent conformity of their theological dogmas.

The Econo

The political school of the negative doctrine is usually supposed to be represented by Rousseau; but we must not overlook the participation in it of the political sect of the mists. Economists, who bore a large share in the disorganization of the ancient social system. Without repeating what I have said before, or anticipating what I shall have to say in the next chapter, I must just observe here that the revolutionary action of the Economists consisted in the proof that they offered to rulers themselves that governments cannot direct industrial progress, an all-important point, because, military activity having declined, governments were thus deprived of their chief temporal prerogative, and, with it, of the last habitual pretext for war, which had by that time become essentially commercial in character. Notwithstanding its absurdi

ties and exaggerations, this school rendered, in this way, unquestionable services to the task of the last century. Its chief influence is attributable to the work of Adam Smith; and it was the offspring of Protestantism, through the industrial superiority of Protestant nations; but its chief development took place, together with the rest of the negative philosophy, in France. It is curious that the first professorships of this pretended science were established in Spain, and in the least advanced parts of Italy; so curiously were its revolutionary origin and tendency concealed under special forms which made it acceptable to the existing powers, which it in fact regarded only as a useful administrative instrumentality. Yet it sanctioned the spirit of individualism and the state of no-government: and some of its professors deduce from it the superfluousness of all regular moral instruction, and all official encouragement of science and the fine arts; and, as I before remarked, the latest attacks on the institution of property itself have arisen out of the metaphysics of political economy,-now that its proper office is accomplished, and that it tends, like other parts of the negative philosophy, to the anarchy which succeeds.

evils.

The intellectual and moral evils attendant on this phase of the Attendant negative philosophy will come under consideration hereafter. Here I need merely notify what they were, for the sake of historical completeness. The intellectual guides of the time were wanting in depth of conviction, and accordingly in rational. consistency. The most important and difficult questions were delivered over to the minds the least qualified to treat of them; the social movement was in the hands of sophists and orators, and the passions were appealed to to settle difficulties which required the most careful intellectual management. The Catholic system became the subject of an undue hatred; and the Protestants longed to restore the early Christian times, and others, the polytheistic system,-a curious evidence of the last desire being an actual series of attempts to revive the reputation of Julian the Apostate. Again, there was a reproduction of the old Greek notion of a kind of metaphysical theocracy, under the form, in Protestant minds, of a reign of Saints, and in others, of a reign of Sages. There was, again, a decided aggravation of the tendency to set practice above theory,-to prefer immediate expedients to general principles, and to refer all social difficulties to temporal institutions for their cure; and hence arbitrary regulations, which were dignified with the name of laws, encroached upon the domain of morals and opinions. Such were the intellectual errors and extravagances of the time, in some of which the philosophical, and in others the political, school was most deeply involved, while neither school was irreproachable in regard to any one error. The moral errors are obvious enough. All the ancient bases of morality,

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public and private, were destroyed, and principles of conduct were delivered over to the estimate of individual consciences, which were but too apt to involve moral ideas in their hatred of the corresponding theological conceptions. Wise as were the moral prepossessions imparted by Catholicism, they could not withstand the dissolving action of such metaphysical discussion as that of the last century; and that we possess any morality at all beyond the simplest rules applicable to the most obvious positions, and comprehensible by the rudest minds, is owing to the natural instinct of morality in Man, and the increasing influence of modern civilization. Between the moral impotence of a negative doctrine and the active vitiating influence of a sophistical doctrine, the philosophical schools of the last century exhibited a moral deterioration very like that of Epicurus, which indeed it was the fashion of the time to extol. We can see how the deistical movement developed the moral evils which grew out of the Protestant movement, by urging to its ultimate limit the spiritual disorganization which was its universal principle. In such a result we see the proof of the temporary character of this pretended philosophy, formed as it was to destroy, while it was utterly unable to organize even the simplest human relations; and the more it triumphed in its political direction, the more conspicuous was its organic imbecility. Looking at the two philosophies, and seeing how the theological could not preserve the morality that the metaphysical destroyed, and how the process was hastened by the old morality being disgraced by the intellectual discredit of theology, we cannot but see that the only resource is in the positive philosophy, which alone can satisfy the needs at once of order and of progress, in which the two former philosophies,' taking them under their respective charge, have, when it became necessary to unite them, signally failed.

We have now contemplated the dissolution of the old system under the action of the revolutionary movement. In the next chapter we shall see how the elements of a new system had been forming and silently arising in the midst of the destruction; and we must endeavour to form that estimate of these materials of social reorganization which has hitherto been impracticable, for want of the doctrine which should guide the process, and to which we must look for the full termination of the transition stage, which was virtually fulfilled in the eighteenth century.

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CHAPTER XI.

RISE OF THE ELEMENTS OF THE POSITIVE STATE.-PREPARATION FOR SOCIAL REORGANIZATION.

WE have finished the irksome task of observing the process of dissolution of the old system of society during the last five centuries; and we may now turn to the pleasanter consideration of the reorganizing movement which was going on at the same time.

ern history.

In fixing the date of the beginning of the new social formation, Date of mod- we must remember that there is an interval between the generation of new social classes and the first manifestation of their tendencies. Considered in this way, it is the opening of the fourteenth century that we must fix upon as the time when the organic industry of modern society began to assume a characteristic quality. All the chief tokens of civilization indeed concur in marking that era as the true origin of modern history. The industrial expansion was then signalized by the universal legal admission of communities as general and permanent elements of the political system, not only in Italy, where it had happened some time before, but throughout Western Europe, where the event was sanctioned by various titles in England, France, Germany, and Spain; and the fact is marked and confirmed by the vast insurrections which, in almost every country, and especially in France and England, testified, during the second half of the century, to the nascent force of the labouring classes against the powers which were, in the respective cases, specially opposed to them. At the same period the great institution of paid armies was established in Italy; and they, marking a phase of industrial life among modern peoples, are as important in the organic as in the critical connection. Such innovations as the use of the compass and of firearms coincide with other tokens of commercial activity. And the same impulsion is traceable in the department of the arts, which we can hardly carry back, in their modern aspect, further than Dante and Petrarch in poetry, and the works of their time in painting and music. The scientific movement is somewhat less evident; but this was the time when natural philosophy became a special study, under forms corresponding with prevailing opinions,