circle in which it has revolved from the first, until, as the result of the invention and development of the press, and of the absolute impossibility of restricting the examination of old beliefs consequent thereon, all reversion to the theocratic form of government has become radically impossible. When that time comes, humanity must either perish in anarchy, or organise itself conformably to scientific reason. It is then that humanity will enter on the last period of its historical development, the period of knowledge,' which will endure as long as the human race can exist on the globe. According to Colins, then, a theocratic régime is order founded on despotism, a democratic régime is liberty engendering anarchy, while the rational or 'logocratic' régime would secure, at the same time, both liberty and order.

Hereafter, according to the Belgian socialist, society will be definitively organised as follows: All men being by right equal, they ought all to be placed in the same position with regard to labour. Man is free, and his labour should be free also. To effect this, matter should be subordinated to intelligence, labour should own both land and capital, and wages would be at a maximum. All men are brothers, for they have a common origin; hence, if any are unable to provide for themselves, society should take care of them. In the intellectual world there should be a social distribution of knowledge to all, and in the material world a social appropriation of the land and of a large portion of the wealth acquired by past generations, and transformed into capital."1

In M. Quetelet (1796-1874) Belgium had the most renowned statistician of his time. He has unquestionably done more than any one else to render statistics auxiliary to historical science. He was the first to reveal how wonderful in their comprehensiveness and definiteness are the regularities which prevail among moral and social phenomena. These regularities themselves, the real discoveries of his laborious and brilliant researches, are now universally acknowledged, and are too well known to require to be stated here. But as regards the precise interpretation to be put on them, the place to be assigned them in historical philosophy, their compatibility or incompatibility with free will, and their right to be regarded or not as properly laws, there is great room for difference and variety of opinion. On these points Quetelet can only be credited with raising questions which will come before us in

1 Socialism of To-day, pp. 249, 250.

connection with German historical thought after they had been under searching discussion, and when they can be more fully and conveniently considered by us.1

A Belgian physicist, Captain Brück, who devoted himself specially to the study of magnetism, believed that he had found the key of history in his favourite science. In a work entitled 'L'humanité, son développement, et sa durée,' he attempts to establish a parallelism between magnetical and historical periods, which, in his opinion, reveals the law of history. An exclusively historical investigation proves, he maintains, that there has been a continuous succession of peoples on the earth throughout historical time, and that each of them has exercised during a certain period a maximum of action, and then yielded up the supremacy to another. Each of these chief peoples gives its character to an historical period. Hence the world's great historical periods have been-1. the Assyrian; 2. the Egyptian; 3. the Jewish-Phoenician; 4. the Greek; 5. the Roman; 6. the Frankish; 7. the Catholic; and 8. the French. Each of the peoples corresponding to these periods successively and gradually asserted itself, passed through a phase of intellectual or material maximum of power, and then grew feeble in transmitting its acquisitions to its successor. The period of supremacy of each dominant people has hitherto, according to Brück, been constant, the same for all, lasting about five centuries, a half of the people's entire life. Tables are given designed to show that the principal life-epochs of the peoples which have reappeared in succession on our continent -those of their foundation, organisation, apogee, and end or renewal reproduce themselves periodically at a distance of a little more than five centuries. But purely physical investigation, Brück maintains, shows, besides an extremely slow magnetic displacement from East to West, due to the precession

1 The most important of Quetelet's sociological works are, 'Sur l'Homme et le développement de ses facultés,' 2 tom., 1835; 'Lettres sur la théorie des probabilités,' 1846; "La Statistique Morale in Mém. de l'Acad. Roy. de Belgique,' t. xxi., 1848; 'Du Système Sociale,' 1848; and 'De la Statistique considerée sous le rapport du physique, de la morale, et d'intelligence de l'homme,' 1860. As regards Quetelet himself, see the Notice by Ed. Mailly in the Annuaire of the Acad. Roy. de Belgique for 1875.

of the equinoxes, a quinquasecular movement, fixed by him at 516 years. And these two periods, he argues, have their analogues in the slow displacement of the centre of civilisation from East to West, and especially in the quinquasecular evolution found by analysis to be characteristic of the course of history itself.1

2

The learned Bollandist, Father Charles de Smedt, S.J. (17941887), did honour to his country and his order by his historical labours. He began his literary career with a History of Belgium, 1821, and afterwards edited the important Corpus Chronicorum Flandriæ.' He is the author of a justly famed 'Introduction to Ecclesiastical History,' almost indispensable to students of that branch of historical knowledge. It indicates, classifies, and appreciates the sources, auxiliaries, and literature, with great learning and sound judgment. I mention Father de Smedt here, however, especially on account of his 'Principes de la Critique Historique,' published in 1883, and composed, for the most part, of articles which had appeared in a French religious periodical in 1869 and 1870. It is one of the best books on its subject; attractive in style; manifestly inspired by a conscientious and liberal spirit; and the fruit of thorough learning and of long experience. In a manner always sensible and useful it treats of the utility of studying the rules of criticism, of the dispositions required in the critic, of the nature of historical certainty, of the authenticity, interpretation, and authority of the texts, of oral and popular tradition, of the negative argument, of conjecture, of unwritten testimony, and of arguments a priori. Besides, it touches on a number of particular disputed points luminously, although briefly. At the same time, it is far from adequate to its sub

1 Any knowledge which I possess of Captain Brück and his treatise has been derived entirely from the 'History of the Physical and Mathematical Sciences in Belgium,' by MM. Ch. and E. Lagrange-see 'Cinquante Ans de Liberté,' t. 11, pp. 171-195. My failure to procure his work is probably not much to be regretted. I could certainly not have formed an intelligent opinion regarding his magnetic periods of 516 years, and would have been most sceptical as to his historical periods of 518 years. MM. Lagrange speak in the highest terms of

the scientific genius and the self-sacrificing labours of Captain Brück.

2 Introductio generalis ad historiam ecclesiasticam critice tractandam. Gandavi, 1876.

ject or sufficient for the wants of students. It is in no way a systematic treatise, and does not at all penetrate into the psychology or even the logic of historical processes. It is only just to describe it as still one of the best books on the principles of historical criticism; but it is little to the credit of historians that we should require or be able so to describe it.1

II.

French-speaking Switzerland is not, as some suppose, intellectually a mere province of France. It has a character of its own; one which has been developed under peculiar political conditions, and profoundly modified by the action of religion. It lies open, however, to all French influences; and what is said and done at Paris is immediately known and felt at Geneva and Lausanne. At the same time it readily receives and assimilates German ideas, owing partly to its Protestantism and partly to its close connection with German-speaking Switzerland. regards literature and science it will bear honourable comparison, relatively to its extent and population, with any other portion of Europe. It is characterised by great intellectual, as well as industrial and commercial activity. It has produced a large number of historians, although none, perhaps, of the highest rank. Among the best-known names are those of Beza, Theodore Agrippa D'Aubigné, Mallet-Dupan, Sismondi, B. Constant, Merle D'Aubigné, De Felice, Chastel, Sayous, Roget, &c. As regards its historical theorists there is not much now to tell. Rousseau, Madame de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, have already been under our notice.2

Alexander Vinet (1797-1847) has been the most influential of the Swiss Protestant writers of this century; and deservedly, being the man of most original individuality, of purest genius,

1 There is an interesting sketch of the life of Father de Smedt by Father de Decker in the Annuaire for 1888 of the Royal Academy of Belgium.

2 M. Virgile Rossel's 'Histoire Littéraire de la Suisse Romande des origines à nos jours,' 2 tom., 1889, seems, so far as I can judge, to fulfil its promise of presenting "a faithful and complete picture of the intellectual life of all the French-speaking cantons from its commencement to the present time."

of intensest conviction, of most striking and searching eloquence. He has nowhere specially treated of the philosophy of history, but he has often touched upon it; and M. Astié has diligently collected the thoughts expressed on these occasions, and skilfully composed of them a chapter of a book widely known to English readers as Vinet's 'Outlines of Philosophy.' From that chapter I shall make a few quotations.

"History in its highest signification is but the manifestation of the idea of progress, whether we refer that progress to the nature of things and the course of time, or whether we seek it in what Bossuet calls the development of religion, or lastly, whether we view it as a result of these two causes combined. In all these cases, progress can only be the advance of the intelligent world towards truth, which exclusively and infallibly contains goodness. If the law of progress do not exist, there is no meaning in history, nor in the world either, and each alike is only fit to be thrown aside as mere rubbish."

"There is one sense in which truth knows no laws except its own, is never overcome, never retarded, and always triumphs. It always realises itself, either in the free submission of the moral being or in his chastisement. The believing and the unbelieving, the saints and the ungodly, equally do it honour. Error, which combats it, affords it at the same time, at its own cost, a striking confirmation; it is its natural counter-proof."

"The fall of heavy bodies is not subject to more rigorous laws than the course of the idea in the human mind and in society. A principle bears all its consequences within itself, as a plant does all its posterity. Men may choose the time to agitate a question; they may defer proposing it; but, once proposed, they cannot prevent the questions it contains proposing themselves one after the other. . . . Truth and necessity only make one, and the logic of the ideas lay beforehand in the facts. God has granted us no nobler spectacle than that of times when these two logics reunite. Nothing is so indefatigable, obstinate, and powerful, as a principle. It gradually brings all thoughts into captivity to its obedience; and even before it has subjected thoughts, it has subjected facts. As everything is connected in a true system, as the whole truth is included in each particular truth, one point gained, the whole is gained."

"If in the destinies of humanity as a whole, or even of a single nation, the weight of individualities is but little felt; if in so vast a calculation their value is hardly appreciable; they do for all that tell in the limits of a given century; and the historians of the fatalist school, who are very right in an extended horizon only to take count of general causes, and to refer results immediately to laws, are wrong