implies necessary causation, but history and progress are effectuated through causes which are not necessary,-through free agents, free wills. I shall make only a very few observations on the views thus indicated. The description given of progress as constituted by the transmission and accumulation of truths, experiences, and acquisitions is clear and accurate. The criticism of Buckle's glorification of intellect and of progress, and of his depreciation of the function and significance of morality in history, is incisive and conclusive. That there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the affirmation that the men of the present day are more virtuous than those of early times is probably to be admitted, if by virtue be meant fidelity to the law of duty so far as it is apprehended, conscientiousness, meritoriousness. Thus far M. Bouillier seems to me to establish what he maintains. Yet he has failed, I think, to draw the true distinction between what is progressive and unprogressive in the species. That distinction is not the distinction between intellect and virtue, but the more general distinction between the powers or internal principles of the mind and their products or external results. There is insufficient evidence for holding that any of the former, whether intellectual or moral, are capable of being transmitted and accumulated. We can no more prove that the Europeans of to-day surpass the primitive Aryans in power of reason or imagination than we can prove that they surpass them in force of will, virtue of character. We can no more show that the great men of ancient Greece and Rome were not intellectually, than we can show that they were not morally, the equals of the great men of modern France and England. It seems to me irrelevant to discuss in connection with history the question whether or not there has been a growth of virtue in a sense of which history can tell us nothing. Such a discussion may be necessary in ethics and theology, but it cannot in the least decide whether or not there has been moral progress. It is obvious that moral gains, in the form of thoughts, sentiments, examples, influences, customs, and institutions, not to age. only can be, but are constantly being transmitted; and that in consequence the moral wealth of mankind is increased from age The fundamental principles of morality are few, and may have all been discovered in very early times, but their applications are innumerable, and no limit can be set to their development. Justice and charity are as capable of an endless and ever-varying evolution in conduct and institutions as truth and beauty are in the sciences and fine arts. The poets have contributed immensely to enrich and refine the moral feelings of mankind. Grand moral examples can be as effectively perpetuated as great scientific discoveries or important mechanical inventions. Socrates lives for ever in the pages of Plato and Xenophon, and Jesus in those of the Evangelists. The children of the earliest fetish-worshippers may have been born with as honest and good hearts as those of Christian parents in the nineteenth century, but they were certainly born to a far poorer moral heritage; and, relatively to their lights, means. and opportunities, they may have lived as faithfully and virtuously, but their lights, means, and opportunities were vastly different and vastly inferior. The reality of free agency is not a sufficient reason for denying that progress can have a law. Progress implies law, inasmuch as it implies order and development. But it implies only such law as is involved in order and development, not a law of mere mechanical causation; only such law as can be discovered by observation and analysis, not such law as can be dealt with by deduction and calculation. There is, however, no fact in history which is of such a nature that it cannot be traced to a cause, or even which is not necessarily just what it was caused to be. The freedom of the human will does not imply that the connection between the actions and the effects, which are the only components of history, has not been a necessary connection, but only that there might have been other actions which would necessarily have had quite other effects. If free-will be admitted, we must infer that there might have been a very different human history than the actual one; but not that the actual one is other than the result of all the causes which really acted. Free agency transcends history; only realities, not possibilities,-only actual volitions and their effects,-compose history, and the connection between them must be acknowledged to be a necessary connection.1 Spiritualistic philosophy has had no more accomplished expositor and defender in France during the present generation than the late M. Caro. The greatest problems of thought, those which lie at the very foundation of theodicy, ethics, and sociology-of belief in God, the soul, duty, and immortality— were those on which his interest was especially concentrated. He was brilliant alike as a lecturer and a writer. Hardly in any age has there appeared so consummate a master of the art of philosophical polemic. The lucidity and grace, the exquisite blending of naturalness and refinement, and the perfect accordance of thought and feeling with their expression, which characterise all his compositions, are reflections of the harmony and beauty of his personality, expressions of the light and sweetness of a most lovable character. 2 He has devoted four chapters of his 'Problèmes de la Morale Sociale,' 1876, to the consideration of social progress. He first gives a general view of the history of the idea, and dwells particularly on its transformations in the nineteenth century. He had studied closely the growth of the theory of evolution, or of physiological determinism, as applied to history, and his observations on the forms which it had assumed under the hands of Comte and Littré, of Buckle, Bagehot, and Spencer, are of special interest. He further treats of the laws and limits of progress in science, industry, institutions, morality, and art. The discussion is throughout marked by comprehensiveness and penetration of view, by caution and sureness of judgment, by ingenuity and eloquence. All its main conclusions seem to me sound. In the portion of it relating to 1 There is a valuable essay by M. Bouillier on an important historical theme, La justice historique, in the 'Compte Rendu de l'Acad. d. Sc. mor. et pol.,' t xxv., 1886; and a sagacious discussion of the question Ya-t-il une philosophie de l'histoire? in 'Rev. phil.,' t. xxi., pp. 329-347. 2 Regarding the life and writings of M. Caro, see the Notices of M. Constant Martha (in vol. i. of 'Mélanges et Portraits'), of M. Ch. Waddington (in 'Compte Rendu de l'Acad. d. Sci. mor. et pol.,' Mai-Juin 1889), and of M. Jules Simon (in January No., 1890, of same publication). Also Art. of M. Brunetière in 'Rev. d. Deux Mondes,' 1 Juin 1888. moral progress the criticism of the theory of M. Bouillier deserves to be noted. Two other chapters of the same volume concern historical philosophy. The first (chap. vi.) is an examination of the evolutionist hypothesis of the origin and future of societies. The relevancy and the gravity of the objections which he urges against it are only too obvious; but it is, perhaps, to be desired that he had more distinctly indicated what is true or probable in it, as he might quite consistently have done. The other chapter (xv.) is that with which the work closes. Its subject is "human destiny according to the scientific schools." The conception of human destiny implied in those positivist, evolutionist, and pessimist systems, which represent faith in the Divine as incompatible with the findings of science, is strikingly exhibited, and it is maintained to be such as of itself renders these systems very doubtful. In the working out of this argument, skilful use is made of the painfully interesting volume ('Poésies philosophiques') in which a woman of genius (Madame Ackermann) has made apparent how terribly the science, falsely so called, at present prevalent, may darken and disorder even a vigorous mind. I pass to another author whose memory is also dear to me, the late M. Ludovic Carrau. His life was brief but fruitful. He early made himself known to the philosophical world by his important work Morale utilitaire,' which was followed by Études sur l'évolution' and 'Philosophie religieuse en Angleterre.' The works testify to the thoroughness of his studies, the amplitude and accuracy of his information, and the clearness, strength, and acuteness of his understanding.1 While engaged on the translation of my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' he wrote, partly with reference to it, an interesting and able article on the subject of progress in the Revue des Deux Mondes' (Oct. 1875). In this essay he indicates and characterises the various ways in which progress has been conceived of, and in which it has been attempted to reach and formulate its law. He fully recognises the difficulties of determining with sufficient precision its law, or even See M. Fr. Picavet's 'M. Ludovic Carrau,' 1889. its conditions and end. But he holds that the reality of progress is certain. Evolution, as a mass of evidence shows, has been a feature of all nature, "the universal formula of existence;" and historical progress is a variety or department of evolution. The course of evolution, although for countless ages mainly physical and animal, was always upwards, and issued at length in the appearance of man; its interest since has been chiefly spiritual, and its direction, so far as it has yet gone, has been still more clearly that of elevation and improvement. It is true, however, that man is not borne upward and forward by any fatalistic or physically necessary law; he is a rational and free being, and his progress is just the triumph of reason and moral liberty over nature and necessity. Man has been so constituted in intellect and in heart that he cannot but form ideals of truth, beauty, happiness, and perfection which he feels drawn and bound to strive to reach and to realise. It is through the general yielding of mankind to this sense of attraction and of obligation that the history of humanity is a movement of growing approximation towards a goal which will never be completely reached, but every step towards which means fuller knowledge, greater reasonableness, a richer enjoyment of beauty, a more perfect righteousness, a purer and more diffused happiness. There is no evidence that the course of nature and of history will be reversed, so as to tend towards unreason, unrighteousness, and misery, towards death, darkness, and chaos. If the power which made and rules the world and humanity be rational and righteous such a reversal is incredible. The main conclusion, in short, reached by M. Carrau is one to which an English poetess has given magnificent expression; the conclusion that we may well "Rest in faith That man's perfection is the crowning flower, Is pressing,—seen in puny blossoms now, But in the world's great morrows to expand 1 George Eliot, 'The Spanish Gypsy.' All M. Carrau's 'Études sur la théorie de l'évolution' bear on historical philosophy, and are eminently judicious and instructive. They treat of the following subjects: (1) the origin of instinct and of thought; (2) the origin of man ; (3) the origin of belief in a future life; (4) |