THE CAUSES OF PERSECUTION 



the pigs or chickens of a non-combatant enemy 

 without at least professing to pay for them. 

 These phenomena are happy symptoms of a 

 general improvement in the way men think and 

 feel ; and they give one some reason for hoping 

 that in due course of time such ugly things as 

 war and persecution will cease to be numbered 

 among the actual difficulties which beset human 

 life. 



This general improvement in opinion and 

 temper, when stated with proper limitations as 

 to time and place, is admitted by every one; 

 and it has become an interesting task to analyze 

 it and determine the various circumstances to 

 which it is due. How does it happen that 

 while the representatives of the current ortho- 

 doxy would once have roasted you with pious 

 exultation, they are now fain to content them- 

 selves with turning you out of an office, and 

 with an apologetic air at that ? 



This question was incidentally treated by the 

 late Mr. Buckle, in the book which, twenty 

 years ago, was so stimulating to many youth- 

 ful minds. Mr. Buckle laid it down as one of 

 the cardinal points of his theory of history that 

 civilized men have not improved morally but 

 only intellectually. That on the whole civilized 

 men manage to live in a more peaceable and 

 becoming manner than barbarians, he did not 

 deny ; but he thought it necessary for the gen- 

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