THE TRANSITION OF INSTITUTIONS. 135 



And as he elsewhere writes respecting the attitude of the Greek mind 

 in general : 



41 In his " (the early Greek's) " view, the description of the sun, as given in 

 a modern astronomical treatise, would have appeared not merely absurd, but 

 repulsive and impious: even in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry 

 had made considerable progress, Anaxagoras and other astronomers incurred 

 the charge of blasphemy for dispersonifying Helios, and trying to assign in- 

 variable laws to the solar phenomena." 1 



That a likeness exists between the feeling then displayed respect- 

 ing phenomena of inorganic Nature and the feeling now displayed re- 

 specting phenomena of Life and Society, is manifest. The ascription 

 of social actions and political events entirely to natural causes, thus 

 leaving out Providence as a factor, seems, to the religious mind of our 

 day, as seemed to the mind of the pious Greek the dis personification 

 of Helios and the interpretation of the celestial motions otherwise 

 than by immediate divine agency. As was said by Mr. Gladstone, in 

 a speech made shortly after the publication of the second chapter of 

 this volume : 



44 1 lately read a discussion on the manner in which the raising up of par- 

 ticular individuals occasionally occurs in great crises of human history, as if 

 some sacred, invisible power had raised them up and placed them in particular 

 positions for special purposes. The writer says that they are not uniform, but 

 admits that they are common — so common and so remarkable that men would 

 be liable to term them providential in a pre-scientific age. And this was said 

 without the smallest notion apparently in the writer's mind that he was giving 

 utterance to anything that could startle or alarm — it was said as a kind of com- 

 monplace. It would seem that in his view there was a time when mankind, 

 lost in ignorance, might, without forfeiting entirely their title to the name of 

 rational creatures, believe in a Providence, but that since that period another 

 and greater power has arisen under the name of science, and this power has 

 gone to war with Providence, and Providence is driven from the field — and we 

 have now the happiness of living in the scientific age, when Providence is no 

 longer to be treated as otherwise than an idle dream." a 



Of the mental attitude, very general beyond the limits of the sci- 

 entific world, which these utterances of Mr. Gladstone exemplify, he 

 has since given further illustration ; and, in his anxiety to check a 

 movement he thinks mischievous, has so conspicuously made himself 

 the exponent of the anti-scientific view, that we may fitly regard his 

 thoughts on the matter as typical. In an address delivered by him at 

 the Liverpool College, and since republished with additions, he says : 



"Upon the ground of what is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labor 

 of creation ; in the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from govern- 

 ing the world." 



This passage proves the kinship between Mr. Gladstone's conception 



of things and that entertained by the Greeks to be even closer than 



1 "History of Greece," vol. i., p. 406. 3 Morning Post, May 15, 1872. 



