being dangerous to truth itself, or to the general interests of society, is most favourable to them.1

Religious superstition and bigotry have originated numerous 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 part, political histories; and of all the kinds of special history the political is by far the most numerous. It is needless, 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 development 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

1 Bluntschli, Geschichte der religiösen Bekentnissfreiheit, 1867. The article on "Religious Liberty" in Schaff's 'Encyclopædia' gives a good general view of the history of the subject, and references to sources of information.

progress towards full spiritual freedom. 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 manifold 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 mailèd hand

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 expe

rience 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 Ibn 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 classical 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. 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 abundant 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 advantages 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 generalisations 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 expected to give some brief account.

I. The philosophy of Plato undoubtedly failed to do justice to historical reality. It even tended to depreciate and discourage historical study, inasmuch as it relegated perceptions, 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. 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 R. 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 beautiful 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 any 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, 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 illustrate 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