Introductory. 



This falsification of such benevolent hopes, as also of 

 the pontifical vaticinations of Auguste Comte, is a de- 

 monstration that the current Liberal conception of social 

 philosophy as applied to recent and contemporaneous 

 phenomena was inadequate, just as the philosophy 

 accepted at the period of the great French Revolution 

 was proved by the event to have been superficial and 

 delusory, and as the ideas which found expression in 

 that most fascinating period the early Renaissance, 

 gave no warning of dire events to come like the Thirty 

 Years' War and the bloody and prolonged struggle of 

 the League. 



Social and political events being as they are the 

 ultimate outcome of the involved interaction of most 

 numerous, complex, and remote causes, it is evident that 

 such causes must be sought in conditions antedating by 

 many centuries the events we would seek to explain. 

 This truth has been perceived and acted on by all who 

 of late have occupied themselves with the Philosophy of 

 History, and have, like De Tocqueville, sought to trace 

 out such hidden connections. No writer would any longer 

 venture to explain the crisis of 1789 exclusively by the 

 reigns of the fifteenth and sixteenth Louis, or that of 

 1688 only by the corruption and errors of the Restor- 

 ation. 



The great prominence which religious questions have 

 of late assumed is, as has just been remarked, strangely 



