68 COSMOS. 



Such unnatural impediments, and many others which stand 

 in the way of the intellectual advance of mankind and the 

 ennoblement of social institutions, will all gradually disappear. 

 The principle of individual and political freedom is implanted 

 in the ineradicable conviction of the equal rights of one sole 

 human race. Thus, as I have already remarked,* mankind 

 presents itself to our contemplation as one great fraternity, 

 and as one independent unity, striving for the attainment of 

 one aim the free development of moral vigour. This consi- 

 deration of humanity, or rather of the tendency towards it, 

 which sometimes checked, and sometimes advancing with a 

 rapid and powerful progressive movement, and by no means 

 a discovery of recent times, belongs, by the generalising influ- 

 ence of its direction, most specially to that which elevates and 

 animates cosmical life. In delineating the great epoch of 

 the history of the universe, which includes the dominion of 

 the Romans and the laws which they promulgated, together 

 with the beginning of Christianity, it would have been impos- 

 sible not to direct special attention to the manner in which 

 the religion of Christ enlarged these views of mankind, and to 

 the mild and long-enduring, although slowly operating, influ- 

 ence which it exercised 011 general, intellectual, moral, and 

 social development. 



* See p. 368, and compare also Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber die 

 Kawi-Sprache, bd. i. s. xxxviii. 



