PART FIRST. The Past. I. Progress of Society. II. Opinions of the Ancients. III. Defect of Materials. IV. Early Condition of Mankind. V. First Monarchies. VI. Grecian Republics. VII. Rome. VIII. Saracens. IX. Gothic Race. X. Modern Europe. XI. Summary. XII. Defect of Terms. XIII. Complex Movement of Society. XIV. Advancement not Necessary but Provi dential. XV. Ancient and Modern Action of Society. XVI. Removal of Impediments. XVII. New Social Order in America. XVIII. Conclusion. ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIETY. I. "ONE generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever." Is the change in its generations the only change in society? Are the actors alone renewed, and the same drama of life for ever repeated? Or does each succeeding generation, standing on the grave of their forefathers, rise to a higher vantage ground, as the oaks of the wilderness in succession strike deeper roots, and grow more flourishing, over the dust of their predecessors ? It is not many ages since Hakewell wrote his learned Apology, to show that the moderns were not left so destitute either of hope or of providence, as utterly to despair of emulating the ancients. Still shorter is the interval, since Milton had his misgivings as to the coldness of the climate, and lateness of the age for an epic poem, though in this there is more than meets the general ear. Now, the tide has set in with an opposite current, and "the present enlightened age" regards itself with as much self-complacency, and the past with as much contempt, as if, like Love in Aristophanes, it had been hatched from the egg of Night, and all of a sudden had spread its radient wings over the primeval darkness. II. The ancients, as they are before hand with the moderns in most of their disputes, rival them also in the discrepancy of their tenets upon this head; for of the three opinions respecting society, that it is progressive, stationary, or retrograde, each was defended and illustrated by some powerful sect of philosophy. That society is retrograde was always the favourite and most prevalent side of the question; the creeds of all nations teem with recollections of men having fallen from a higher state of felicity, of earth being blended with heaven, and of that golden age, when humanity lived near to the gods, and held frequent and familiar converse with the immortals. This opinion may be styled the mythological, since it is interwoven with the recollections of the remotest antiquity, blended with the light of the heroic and fabulous ages, and wrought into all the various fictions which diversify the legends of polytheism. It is carried to the greatest height in the Hindoo writings, but more or less it has prevailed among all nations, and has been handed down with an increase of conviction and fresh arguments, from the respect which learners bear to their teachers,-stamped with the reverence which the Grecians paid to their Egyptian masters, the Romans to the Grecians,-and the middle ages to the Romans. The opinion which advocates the advancement of society, received its origin, or its strength, from the recorded rise of the Grecian States, and the broken traces of their ancient history, and may therefore be termed the historical; it rests on the tradition of the ancient inhabitants having been tamed by Orpheus, and the other tuneful legislators of Greece, and reclaimed from the condition of savages among the woods, and from a subsistence upon acorns, to a social existence, under laws, and in cities; this opinion received new sup |