188 PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN. 



men such as Alfred, Bede, Anselm, Abelard, Eoger 

 Bacon, Aquinas, Dante, and Wickliffe who rose above 

 their time in moral and intellectual power. But the 

 dark picture of so many centuries is little illumined by 

 these flitting lights. Its true colouring is that of bar- 

 barian inroads on a tottering and vicious Empire of 

 feudal tyrannies of ecclesiastical superstitions or frauds 

 of the selfish austerities or more secret evils of the 

 monastic life of persecution in its worst shapes 

 and of a general ignorance and credulity offering itself 

 an easy prey to these incumbent evils. The fictions of 

 an age of chivalry and of mediaeval learning have 

 passed away, and we can happily bring these thousand 

 years of darkness into strong contrast with the social 

 as well as intellectual state since attained. I willingly 

 employ the word Humanity, in its largest sense, to de- 

 note that which has been the subject and substance of 

 the change which has thus supervened. And one chief 

 mark or test of this change among civilised nations is 

 the more zealous effort, on principle, to reform old 

 errors and abuses by annulling or mitigating the laws, 

 customs, and creeds in which they have come down to 

 us. There is cause for some pride in affirming that 

 England furnishes the fairest example of efforts thus 

 directed to the abolition of old abuses and towards a 

 higher future. 



The actual moral evils in the world are such, how- 

 ever, and so many, that time must be taken largely 

 into our calculations of this future. Some of these 

 evils can hardly be detached from the necessities of 

 existence, as they affect the bulk of mankind ; but 



