72 PROLEGOMENA 



the black arts and count the physician a mischievous 

 preserver of the unfit; on whose matrimonial under- 

 takings the principles of the stud have the chief influ- 

 ence; whose whole lives, therefore, are an education 

 in the noble art of suppressing natural affection and 

 sympathy, are not likely to have any large stock of these 

 commodities left. But, without them, there is no con- 

 science, nor any restraint on the conduct of men, except 

 the calculation of self-interest, the balancing of certain 

 present gratifications against doubtful future pains; and 

 experience tells us how much that is worth. Every day, 

 we see firm believers in the hell of the theologians com- 

 mit acts by which, as they believe when cool, they risk 

 eternal punishment; while they hold back from those 

 which are opposed to the sympathies of their associates. 



XIII. 



That progressive modification of civilization which 

 passes by the name of the "evolution of society," is, in 

 fact, a process of an essentially different character, both 

 from that which brings about the evolution of species, in 

 the state of nature, and from that which gives rise to the 

 evolution of varieties, in the state of art. 



There can be no doubt that vast changes have taken 

 place in English civilization since the reign of the Tudors. 

 But I am not aware of a particle of evidence in favour 

 of the conclusion that this evolutionary process has been 

 accompanied by any modification of the physical, or the 

 mental, characters of the men who have been the sub- 

 jects of it. I have not met with any grounds for sus- 

 pecting that the average Englishmen of today are sen- 

 sibly different from those that Shakespeare knew and 

 drew. We look into his magic mirror of the Elizabethan 



