xvi Historical Progress. 



spread of the European races over remote continents. 

 If visibility were the true measure of importance, the 

 century which is now drawing to its close would be, 

 beyond all comparison, the richest in change and 

 progress of all the centuries that have passed since 

 history began to be written. 



But if we look deeper ; if we endeavour to esti- 

 mate the changes which have occurred, not only in 

 the surroundings of men, but in the men them- 

 selves ; the increase of knowledge, and the changes 

 in those beliefs, sentiments, and ideals, which con- 

 stitute character ; we shall arrive at a different 

 result ; we shall see that these profounder changes 

 have been proceeding, with no manifest difference 

 in rapidity, ever since the beginning of the modern 

 history of Europe four hundred years ago. 



I do not assert that this is a general fact, or any- 

 thing approaching to a law of nature. Sir Henry 

 Maine may probably be right in saying that with 

 mankind on the whole, stagnation is the rule and 

 progress the exception. The common idea about 

 the changelessness of the East may be true, although 

 the rise of Mohammedanism was one of the greatest 

 and most rapid revolutions that history records ; and 

 it may also be true that the mind of man stood still 

 during what were formerly called the dark ages that 

 is to say, the period from the close of the barbarian 

 invasions which destroyed the .Roman Empire, to the 

 rise of medieval civilisation. But what are properly 

 called the middle ages were a period of change and 



