178 PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN. 



moral conditions into the question at all, seeing how 

 large and vague is the term. But the intellectual re- 

 lations may be better defined and understood; and 

 taking this phrase in its widest sense, the comparison 

 comes to an instant issue. It cannot be doubted that 

 the powers as well as attainments of certain European 

 peoples in our own age have reached a higher grade 

 than those of any other time or people in the anterior 

 history of the world. We may hesitate in giving pre- 

 cise dates to the periods of progress. Hallam has called 

 the seventh century the nadir of European civilisation, 

 while Leibnitz has noted the thirteenth as singularly 

 barren of intellectual culture. But all doubt ceases 

 when we come to the intellectual history of the last 

 three centuries, and especially of the century now in 

 progress one marked by rapid achievements of dis- 

 covery, invention, thought, and action which will 

 designate it to all posterity. The advancement of 

 physical science stands foremost in the picture, at- 

 tested by the wonderful discoveries of our own time, 

 and in the nature as well as number of these discoveries 

 denoting those higher qualities of intellect to which they 

 are due. The logic of every branch of knowledge has 

 become more strict, the demand for truth and exactness 

 in all results more absolute. Together with a greater 

 perfection of methods, more profound thoughts and 

 higher generalisations have been applied to those mys- 

 teries of the universe, the power of apprehending 

 which, even partially, is the especial faculty and glory 

 of man. It is impossible to read the writings of the 

 ancient philosophers, even of those who saw farthest 



