280 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



When we transport this question into the field of 

 history, we are struck with the phenomenon of the 

 breakdown of ancient civilisation. The defeat of the 

 Eoman Empire as a fighting force was the least of its 

 failures. Intellectually, too, it was exhausted ; it was 

 the transmitter rather than the possessor and enjoy er of 

 the great classical culture. The barbarian inroads, Sir 

 Henry Maine tells us, may have saved Europe from the 

 fate of China. Intellect was enfeebled, and morality, 

 as in all protracted civilisations hitherto, had suffered 

 deep perversion. What will guarantee us against a 

 recurrence of such failure ? A recurrence would be 

 decisive. There are no unspoiled barbarian races to 

 take up the torch once more and carry it onwards. 



Now there are two advantages on the side of the 

 modern world. We have a better method in physical 

 science, and we have a better religion, or the religion we 

 share with the Christianised empire is better acclimatised 

 in our soil. Either the intellectual or the moral revival ; 

 either the Renaissance or the Reformation. In hoc 

 signo vincemus. 



Physical science is no doubt a great and a lasting 

 boon. Discoveries large and small are made, and will 

 be made ; they pay so well. Bacon was right in his 

 enthusiastic eulogies on the " fruitfulness " of the science 

 which he dimly foresaw. But that is hardly the question. 

 Even without much physical science the humane culture 

 of the great ancient world had vast powers for intel- 

 lectual progress. In spite of this it broke down. 

 Can science as applied to physical nature really guarantee 

 the world against moral paralysis ? 



Others will hold with Mr. Lecky that the decisive 

 factors in progress are moral, and not perhaps with Mr. 

 Lecky that in Christianity, or, as Christians prefer to 



