ñ 
*•1 TENDENCY IN ENGLISH HISTORY. 
and had a hidden cause, which was the working of the 
spirit of civilisation. 
AVe might no doubt take this theory in hand, and give 
it a more coherent appearance. We might start with the 
one principle of freedom of thought, and trace all the 
consequences that will follow from that. Scientific dis 
coveries and mechanical inventions may flow from it, if 
certain other conditions are present ; such discoveries 
and inventions coming into general use will change the 
appearance of human life, give it a complicated, modern 
aspect, Ş this change then we might call the advance of 
civi isation. But political liberty has no connexion with 
all. this. There was liberty at Athens before Plato and 
Aristotle, but afterwards it died out ; liberty at Rome when 
t ought was rude and ignorant, but servitude after it 
ecame enlightened. And poetical genius has nothing to 
o with it, for poetry declined at Athens just as philosophy 
began, and there was a Dante in Italy before the Renais 
sance, but no Dante after it. 
If we analyse this vague sum-total which we call civili 
sation, we shall find that a large part of it is what might 
e expected from the name, that is, the result of the union 
ot men in civil communities or states, but that another 
part is only indirectly connected with this and is more 
mmediately due to other causes. The progress of science, 
or example, might be held to be the principal factor in 
civi isation, yet, as I have just pointed out, it by no means 
varies regularly with civil well-being, though for the most 
par it requires a certain modicum of civil well-being. 
a part of the human lot ‘which laws or kings can cause 
or cure is strictly limited. Now history may assume a 
arger or a narrower function. It may investigate all the 
causes of human well-being alike ; on the other hand