OF SOCIETY. 421 



conceptions, in the interest of government, of civil or 

 religious legislation, of political, commercial, or industrial 

 progress, sometimes only with a view of opposing conven- 

 tional theories and bringing about much-needed reforms. 

 But impartially to gather together data descriptive of 

 the origin, the organisation, and the development of the 

 collective life of man, to analyse his dependence on 

 natural environment, on the growing complexity of his 

 inner life, to understand the stages of historical develop- 

 ment, the rise, culmination, and decline of nationalities 

 and races, to forecast the future and to form some idea 

 of the constitution of what has been termed the liberal 

 state, and of the larger international and social organ- 

 isation of mankind the civitas humana, all these vari- 

 ous problems seem to have received conscious recognition 

 only in the course of the last hundred and fifty years, 

 and this again only since original thinkers have ventured 

 to discard altogether existing conditions and to build 

 a fresh fabric of human society upon rational and moral 

 principles. No opportunity l to do this with full con- 



1 See, however, infra, p. 428 n. ; ed. (vol. xiv. ; ' Declaration of In- 

 The philosophical writers who had j dependence '), and remarks: "What 

 most direct influence upon the , Rousseau had to give was compact 

 drawing up both of the American < form and a certain emotional 

 and the French constitution seem to [ effect. Carlyle's and Burke's pre- 

 be Locke (following upon Hobbes) judices (not the same but telling in 

 and Rousseau ; the formulae made the same direction) seem to affect 

 familiar through them being the most English writers ; even those 

 ' Rights of Man ' and the ' Social who see that the Revolution was 

 Contract.' Montesquieu's inaccu- inevitable think they are bound to 

 rate analysis of the English con- make light of such 'formulae' as 

 stitution played also an important unrealities. Without the formulas, 

 part. Mr Whittaker refers to the j which might be talked by de- 

 following recent accounts of the claimers but were the result of a 

 subject for fuller information : long process of thinking, it seems 

 ' Cambridge Modern History ' (vol. to me that the Revolution must 

 vii. p. 174; vol. viii. pp. 19, 20, have remained 'without form and 

 177-178); ' Encyclop. Brit.' llth j void,' a mere 'general overturn' 



