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. iSTo opportunity ^ to do this with full con- 



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



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



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



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



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



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



and Rousseau ; the formul.'e made [ the same direction) seem to affect 



familiar through them being the i most English writers ; even those 



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



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



rate analysis of the English con- 

 stitution played also an important 

 pait. Mr Whittaker refers to the 

 following recent accounts of the 

 subject for fuller information : 

 * Cambridge Modern History ' (vol. 



make light of such ' formulae ' 

 unrealities. Without the formulie, 

 which might be talked by de- 

 claimers but were the result of a 

 long process of thinking, it seems 

 to me that the Revolution must 



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

 177-178); ' Encyclop. Brit.' 11th | void,' — a mere 'general overturn' 



