306 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



it has led to the creation of innumerable beneficent institu- 

 tions and associations, of friendly societies, all of them 

 regardless of creed ; it has induced the wealthy to consider it 

 a duty to use part of their wealth in benefactions ; it has 

 killed indifference to the misery of the disinherited, drawn 

 every one of us nearer to the lonely, elicited help from all to 

 all ; it has led to the abolition of slavery the shame of 

 modern times ; it is being extended to subjected races ; it 

 has, in short, given new features to Europe and America. It 

 is not too much to say that the XlXth century laws pro- 

 tecting the weak and the laborious are the living embodi- 

 ment of UNIVERSAL SYMPATHY. To this great work many 

 simultaneous causes may again be assigned ; but the para- 

 mount cause was intellectual elevation born of science, and 

 this embraces several of the concurrent elements. The 

 movement was made decisive and irresistible by the descrip- 

 tions of the appalling miseries of the poor classes and the 

 impetuous torrent of splendid eloquence of Rousseau, the 

 father of the poor and of democracy. 



The ideas which SWEPT away RELIGIOUS TERRORISM: 

 and PERSECUTION, TORTURE, MENDACITY, and BROUGHT 

 in PHILANTHROPY, were exceedingly slow to germinate. 

 They took over two hundred years to have practical 

 effects. They were at first opposed by an aggravation of 

 the evils they were intended to destroy ; they were com- 

 bated by men-of-tradition, by scholars, by princes and 

 law-makers ; they were anathematised by the churches 

 of all denominations ; they were checked by fire and 

 sword, exile, confiscations, expulsion, law, by the whole 

 "panoply of brute force;" but they were triumphant in the end, 

 just as the Christian idea had been against the might of the 

 Roman Empire fifteen hundred years before. And they 

 conquered because they were supported by advocates of 

 intellect and eloquence, who devoted their lives and energies 

 to their propagation, fearless of prison and gibbet. These 

 benefactors of the human race are to this day denounced by 

 those who were stripped of their sway and who cannot brook 

 their defeat. The weapon used by the vanquished to revile 



