INTRODUCTION. 79 



most European countries the work of national unification 

 and consolidation, and the struggle for political indepen- 

 dence, have retarded internal reforms ; nor have theorists 

 been able to agree in what form of social organisation 

 liberty and equality could consistently live side by side. 

 Their teachino- must indeed command special attention 33. 



o ^ Revolution- 



as one of the many forms of the philosophic thought of ^o^ p'J.acti!^ 

 the age ; but a wide gap separates theory from practical '^^'" 

 politics, which have been largely occupied with wars and 

 diplomatic feats, or, when they really dealt with social prob- 

 lems, have had to be content with awkward compromises 

 between prejudices and institutions of bygone ages on the 

 one side, and legitimate demands for freedom on the other, y' 



Though much practical thought and much labour have 

 been spent in achieving even these moderate results, I feel 

 that they really fall outside of my programme. Wherever 

 either science or philosophy steps out of the quiet regions 

 of the study, the lecture-room, and the laboratory, or 

 wherever religious faith leaves the secret recesses of the 

 believing soul to solve the problems of life or to perform 

 the work of the day, the line is crossed which I have felt 

 obliged to draw around the following sketch. Not that I 

 do not recognise this borderland, where the spirit subdues 

 matter, where thought becomes useful, where the idea 

 attains reality, this field of strife and endeavour, of patient 

 toil and slow victory, as by far the most important subject 

 of history, and as that in which our age has probably ex- 

 celled every earlier period. But an account of this side of 

 nineteenth-century life could ill afford to limit its view to 

 the three principal countries of the Old World. For where 

 are discovery and invention at this moment more at home 



