40 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART i 



which, are plainly growing obsolete. And it may be 

 urged that, under due restrictions, there is high wisdom, 

 not ignoble policy, in bowing to the declared and 

 inevitable forces of history. Burke has given classical 

 utterance to this position in well-known words. " If a 

 great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds 

 of men will be fitted to it ; the general opinions and 

 feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope 

 will forward it, and then they who persist in opposing 

 this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather 

 to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere 

 designs of men." It is this master current of tendency 

 which we are to think of as the Zeitgeist. The name is 

 not to be profaned, as one may say, by applying it to 

 every little ripple upon the surface of events. Mr. 

 Disraeli, presenting himself before the students of 

 Glasgow University as a wise and good old man, felt all 

 his wonted dramatic relish of the game of life in his 

 new part of Lord Rector, when he told his young hearers 

 that they must clearly understand the spirit of their 

 age ; perhaps they would feel themselves called to serve 

 it, perhaps to thwart it ; but in any case it must be 

 understood. Such counsels assume that we mean by 

 the Zeitgeist paltry and sectional movements of mind. 

 But if we define the Zeitgeist in a limited and honorific 

 sense, resistance to the master principle of an age 

 comes perilously near to fighting against God. 



In this sense some younger students of sociology 

 have deliberately suggested that one ought to learn from 

 history in what line things are moving, and then to help 

 the movement with all one's powers. 



But here very grave difficulties suggest themselves. 

 If the unconscious reason of things knows in which 

 direction to move, presumably it also knows where to 



