THE QUESTION RESTATED 



ened and strengthened this tendency. In no 

 other respect is the present age so widely distin- 

 guished from past ages as in this habit of look- 

 ing at all things dynamically. It is shown in 

 the literary criticism of Sainte-Beuve, and the 

 art criticism of Taine, and in the historical crit- 

 icism of Mommsen or Baur, no less than in 

 Mr. Darwin's science, or Mr. Spencer's phi- 

 losophy. In our concluding chapter we shall 

 observe some of the practical bearings of this 

 great difference in mental habit between the 

 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with espe- 

 cial reference to the political Utopias of Rous- 

 seau, and to the attempts of the Encyclopedistes 

 to overthrow Christianity. It is enough for us 

 now to bear in mind that this immense widen- 

 ing of the mental horizon which modern times 

 have witnessed, this power of criticising sym- 

 pathetically the relatively rude theories, cus- 

 toms, and prejudices of bygone generations, this 

 ability to realize in imagination a time when 

 forms of life now wholly distinct were repre- 

 sented by a common ancestral type, or a time 

 when the material universe existed in a shape 

 very different from that in which it is presented 

 to our senses, this growing tendency to inter- 

 pret groups of phenomena by reference to other 

 groups of phenomena long preceding, are all 

 alike explicable, in an ultimate analysis, as a 

 prodigious extension in time of the correspond- 



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