CHAPTER II. 

 POLITICAL EVOLUTION. 



T N the first chapter of this essay an endeavour was 

 made to investigate the meaning and tendency of 

 that great process of social change which has been going 

 on since the thirteenth century, and which still con- 

 tinues. 



This process was explained as a prolonged struggle 

 between the mediaeval theocracy and a reviving pagan- 

 ism,* the latter succeeding in more and more thoroughly 

 rejecting the domination which at an early period the 



* In the valuable and interesting essay by the Rev. A. M. Fair- 

 bairn, which appeared in the number of the Contemporary Review 

 for October, 1873, views are put forward singularly harmonising with 

 those above referred to. The religious belief prevailing in Europe is 

 represented by him as being a synthesis of Hebraistic and Hellenistic 

 elements (p. 806), and it is shown how the old, pre-Christian " Indo- 

 European mode of conceiving and expressing Deity is in almost every 

 respect a contrast to the Semitic. The general terms" in Indo- 

 European religions " were primarily expressive of physical qualities " 

 (p. 797), and " all the Indo-European religions bear the stamp of this 

 primitive naturalism " (p. 799). By the pagan revival spoken of in the 

 first chapter was meant an increasing action expulsive of the Hebra- 

 istic elements, and the " paganism " referred to is equivalent to the 

 Indo-European " naturalism " of Mr. Fairbairn, with its degraded con- 

 ceptions of God, its divorce between religion and ethics, its state 

 absolutism, and the slavery of the individual conscience. 



