say that times of ferment produce great thinkers and writers, and the reign of Elizabeth is invariably adduced as a case in point. But why did we produce no poet of quite the first rank in the two centuries between Chaucer and Shakespeare or in the century and a half between Milton and Wordsworth? Have we a Shakespeare, a Pascal, a Goethe to-day? True we have not, but, on the other hand, in our own day we possessed simultaneously a Darwin and a Kelvin, a Poincaré, a Helmholtz. Moreover, the efforts of men of genius in the past were largely confined to their own land. The discovery effected in a laboratory in Cambridge to-day is known throughout the world to-morrow. Pasteur conferred no particular benefit on France, because his ideas at once became common property. This internationalisation of knowledge is a mighty impetus to progress.

The controversy on the merits of the ancients and the moderns was chiefly French, though Italy and England shared in it. In his Miscellaneous Thoughts' Alessandro Tassoni deliberately attacked Homer, Aristotle, and Petrarch. Clearly he thought that the more renowned the names he assailed, the better. In England, George Hakewill shared the opinions of Tassoni, concluding that the moderns are the equal of the ancients in poetry, and that in most of the arts and sciences they excel them. The purpose of the book that Hakewill wrote in 1627 was to criticise the common error touching Nature's perpetual and universal decay.' If only the evil men do live after them, how can men fight against destiny? 'The opinion,' he holds, 'of the world's universal decay quells the hopes and blunts the edge of men's endeavours.' The world has many generations of history before it. The theory of decay, of fatal decay, is sufficient to prevent our discharging our duty by our posterity. In 1668 Glanvill published his 'Plus Ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle.' The Royal Society had recently been founded, and this latitudinarian clergyman was anxious to show that it was not at all hostile to religion. The unknown inventor of the mariner's compass accomplished far more for us than a thousand Alexanders and Cæsars or ten times the number of Aristotles. Though something has been done, still we must seek and gather, observe and examine,

and lay up in bank for the ages that come after.' Nor does he omit to take into account 'that mighty continent and the numerous fruitful isles beyond the Atlantic.' Much was to be hoped from America.

In France, Boisrobert assaulted Homer as savagely as Tassoni. Influenced by Descartes, Saint Sorlin asserted that Christian history offered subjects far more tempting to the Muse than any event of classical times. His age was the old age of the world, and therefore on this ground more mature in knowledge than antiquity, which was, as Bacon had already pointed out, the youth of the world. The time was ripe for such ideas. The 'Siècle de Louis XIV' was obviously a great time, comparable at least to the age of Augustus or Pericles. Molière put the matter forcibly when he wrote, 'The ancients are the ancients; we are the people of to-day.' In 1667 Charles Perrault published his poem on 'The Age of Louis XIV.' He is much more careful not to employ fierce adjectives than either Tassoni or Saint Sorlin. His argument is that the Greeks and Romans were divine for their day, but their day is over. Is not Plato tiresome? The present times undoubtedly surpass the olden days.

'À former les esprits comme à former les corps,
La Nature en tout tems fait les mesmes efforts;
Son être est immuable, et cette force aisée,
Dont elle produit tout, ne s'est point épuisée.
De cette mesme main les forces infinies
Produisent en tout tems de semblables génies.'

Perrault's more elaborate work, his Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes,' expands the ideas contained in these lines. He limits himself to a consideration of the growth in knowledge, and, unlike Glanvill, he has no interest in the future. Our age,' he believes, 'has, in sort, arrived at the height of perfection. And since for some years the rate of progress is much slower and appears almost insensible-as the days seem to cease lengthening when the solstice is near-it is pleasant to think that probably there are not many things for which we need envy future generations.' Another matter

deserves attention. Perrault faces the question whether progress has been continuous or not. His age is greater than that of ancient times, but were the men of (say) the

tenth century in a similar position of superiority? Not at all. There are periods of ignorance due to wars which compel men to neglect the arts and the sciences. When the days of peace return, knowledge once more advances; and this is its normal condition.

In 1772 the Chevalier de Chastellux published his book 'On Public Felicity, or Considerations on the lot of Men in the various epochs of History.' Gibbon at this very time was plunged in a similar speculation. We may remember that he declared that, if a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name the period between the death of Domitian and the accession of Commodus. If the angel of the Lord,' according to Mommsen, 'were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus Antoninus was governed with the greater intelligence and the greater humanity then or now, whether civilisation and general prosperity have since then advanced or retrograded, it is very doubtful whether the decision would favour the present.' Doubts akin to Mommsen's did not cross the mind of Chastellux. There is no Arcadia such as Rousseau once conceived. Slavery lay at the bottom of ancient civilisation. The pictures drawn by pagan and Christian alike demonstrate the pain and torture which was the lot of the majority. Like Perrault, he admits breaches in the continuity of advance in knowledge, which he dates from the Renaissance. Peace permits progress; war forbids it. It is not enough to possess intellectual enlightenment; there must also be better government. The combination of enlightenment and sound rule increases the happiness of mankind. This happiness is on the whole equally distributed throughout the different classes of society. Now Chastellux could urge that there is as intimate a connexion between political and industrial conditions as between religious and political liberty. The improvements in political institutions are closely connected with the rise of industry. Democracy is the child of the age of machinery. There comes, however, another consideration to ourselves. If we take liberty as a test of progress, is there more to-day than fifty years ago? A movement

like prohibition in the United States or the promised activities of the Socialist State threatens us with serious encroachments on our freedom.

One of the outstanding names in what M. Delvaille calls the 'théoriciens du progrès' is Condorcet's. All the ardour of a Mazzini inspires his 'Sketch of a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.' The triumph of mind over body was never more conspicuously shown than when he wrote this optimistic account in 1793, as he was hiding from Robespierre. From the revolutions of the past he seeks guidance for the Zeitgeist of that under which he was living. Turgot believed in evolution, while Condorcet believed in revolution. The latter endeavours to forecast 'the successive changes in human society, the influence which each instant exerts on the succeeding instant, and thus, in its successive modifications, the advance of the human species towards truth or happiness.'

There are, in Condorcet's opinion, ten ages in the growth of civilisation. Nine of them he describes, and the tenth concerns the future. He was not fair to the past, especially to the past history of institutions. In spite of this, he holds that there are no limits to the possibilities of progress. No one can understand the future who has not a firm grasp of the past. He observes that slavery has disappeared, and he concludes that war must follow in its train. He manifests grave anxiety for the plight of the rank and file. There is to be equality of the sexes, and there are to be facilities for the multitude. Turgot is concerned to point out that, brilliant as the official society of the classical world was, the masses were barbarously treated. He rightly brings out the point that it was reserved for Christianity to render practical the Ciceronian conception of the equality of men by teaching the sons of gentle and simple in its schools. When the lord of the manor and his serf knelt at the same altar to receive the consecrated bread, the seeds of emancipation were sown. Progress had been regarded as largely intellectual, whereas Condorcet and Turgot emphasise the fact that it is social. All schemes for the amelioration of the people go back to these two thinkers. The belief in the current notion of the perfectibility of human nature is evident in Condorcet's view

that the backward peoples will attain to the condition of France and the United States, for no people is condemned never to exercise its reason.

In his illuminating volume Prof. Bury characterises the two distinct types of theories of progress.

'The one type is that of the constructive idealists and socialists, who can name all the streets and towers of "the city of gold," which they imagine as situated just round a promontory. The development of man is a closed system; its term is known and within reach. The other type is that of those who, surveying the gradual ascent of man, believe that by the same interplay of forces which have conducted him so far, and by a further development of the liberty which he has fought to win, he will move slowly towards conditions of increasing harmony and happiness. Here the development is indefinite; its term is unknown and lies in the remote future. Individual liberty is the motive force, and the corresponding theory is liberalism; whereas the first doctrine naturally leads to a symmetrical system in which the authority of the State is preponderant, and the individual has little more liberty than a cog in a well-oiled wheel; it is not his right to go his own way.'

Though Fourier, Saint Simon, and Comte attempted to ascertain the causes of the laws of progress, they signally failed. Fourier and Saint Simon dreamt of industrial socialism. It is a dream, an impressive dream, of the importance of Labour in the world. The two types of theories of progress still remain, and we are all familiar with them. There is no need to point out that Darwinism increases the value of the second type.

Evolution discredits all attempts to assign to the future a fixed form. Is not progress confined by the limitations of the human faculty? Is the boundary to which this faculty extends capable of indefinite approach? Lave at Munich, De Broglie at Paris, and Bragg in England have been passing X-rays through crystals and getting effects by reflexion from planes of molecules in the crystals which very nearly reveal to us the individual molecule in its fixed position in the crystal. The X-rays appear to be of exceeding small wave-length-perhaps 18,600 times less than that of light-and we have already a further instrument which shows that no finality in this direction need be expected. We may realise the