200 CONTEMPLATION OP THE UNIVERSE. 



interwoven from the first with Christian doctrines, the iJea 

 of humanity has nevertheless only slowly obtained its just 

 recognition. At the time when, from political motives, the 

 new faith was established at Byzantium as the religion of 

 the state, its adherents were already involved in miserable 

 party strife, whilst intercourse with distant nations had been 

 checked, and the foundations of the empire had been shaken 

 by external assaults. Even the personal freedom of entire 

 classes of men long found no protection in Christian states, 

 and even among ecclesiastical proprietors and corporations. 

 Such unnatural impediments, and many others which still 

 stand in the way of the intellectual and social advancement 

 and ennoblement of mankind, will gradually vanish. The 

 principle of individual and political freedom is rooted in the 

 indestructible conviction of the equal rights of the whole 

 human race. Thus, as I have already said in another 

 place, ( 312 ) mankind, as one great brotherhood, advance 

 together towards the attainment of one common object, the 

 free development of their moral faculties. This view of 

 humanity, or at least the tendency towards the formation of 

 this view, sometimes checked, sometimes advancing with 

 powerful and rapid steps, and by no means a discovery of 

 modern times by the universality of its direction, belongs 

 most properly to our subject, as elevating and animating 

 cosmical life. In depicting a great epoch in the history of 

 the world, that of the Empire of the Eomans and the laws 

 which they originated, and of the beginning of the Christian 

 religion, it was fitting that I should, before all things, recal 

 the manner in which Christianity enlarged the views of man- 

 kind, and exercised a mild and enduring, although slowly 

 operating, influence on Intelligence and Civilization, 



