national quarrels, is an evidence that the change is more than a dream or an aspiration. The only fear for the maintenance of this peace is from any temporary preponderance in France of disastrous systematic movements; and these would be presently put a stop to by the popular antipathy to war, and experience of the terrible effects thus induced. There is nothing inconsistent with this view in the fact that each European nation maintains a vast military apparatus. Armies are now employed in the preservation of public order. This was once a function altogether subordinate to that of foreign warfare; but the functions are reversed, and foreign war is contemplated only as a possible consequence of a certain amount of domestic agitation. While intellectual and moral anarchy render it difficult to preserve material order, the defensive force must equal at all times the insurrectional; and this will be the business of physical force till it is superseded by social reorganization. As for the time when this martial police will cease to be wanted, it is yet, though within view, very distant; for it has only just entered upon its last function, to which old opinions and manners are still so opposed that the truth is not recognized, but hidden under pretences of imminent war, which is made the excuse of a great military apparatus provided, in fact, for service at home. That service will be better performed when it is avowed, and all false pretences are put away; and this might surely be done now that the central power itself is reduced to a similar provisional office. The military system and spirit are thus not doomed to the same decay as the sacerdotal, with which they were so long incorporated. The priesthood shows no disposition and no power to fuse itself in the new social organization; whereas, there has never been a time since the decline of the military system began, when the soldiery were unable to assume the spirit and manners appropriate to their new social destination. In modern times the military mind has shown itself ready for theological emancipation; its habit of discipline is favourable to incorporation, and its employments to scientific researches and professional studies; all which are propitious to the positive spirit. In recent times, consequently, the spirit of the army has been, in France at least, strikingly progressive; while that of the priesthood has been so stationary as to place it actually outside of the modern social action. Thus different are now the character and the fate of the two elements of ancient civilization, which were once so closely connected. The one is now left behind in the march of social improvement, and the other is destined to be gradually absorbed. Here I close my review of the negative progress of the last half-century; and I proceed to review the positive progression under the four heads into which it was divided in the preceding period. RECENT INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS. 377 Recent Indus The Industrial evolution has gone on, as in natural course of prolongation from the preceding period. The revolutionary crisis assisted and confirmed the advance by trial progress. completing the secular destruction of the ancient hierarchy, and raising to the first social rank, even to a degree of extravagance, the civic influence of wealth. Since the peace this process has gone on without interruption, and the technical progress of industry has kept pace with the social. I assigned the grand impetus of the movement to the time when mechanical forces were largely adopted in the place of human industry; and during the last halfcentury the systematic use of machinery, owing to the application of steam, has caused prodigious improvements in artificial locomotion, by land, river, and sea, to the great profit of industry. This progression has been caused by the union of science and industry, though the mental influence of this union has been unfavourable to the philosophy of science, for reasons which I shall explain. In recent times the industrial class, which is, by its superior generality, most capable of entertaining political views, has begun to show its capability, and to regulate its relations with the other branches, by means of the system of public credit which has grown out of the inevitable extension of the national expenditure. In this connection we must take note, unhappily, of the growing seriousness of the deficiencies which I pointed out at the end of the last chapter. Agricultural industry has been further isolated through the stimulus given to manufacturing and commercial industry, and their engrossing interest under such circumstances. A worse and wholly unquestionable mischief is the deeper hostility which has arisen between the interests of employers and employed,—a state of things which shows how far we are from that industrial organization which is illustrated by the very use of those mechanical agencies, without which the practical expansion of industry could not have taken place. There is no doubt that the dissension has been aggravated by the arts of demagogues and sophists, who have alienated the working class from their natural industrial leaders; but I cannot but attribute this severance of the head and the hands much more to the political incapacity, the social indifference, and especially the blind selfishness of the employers than to the unreasonable demands of the employed. The employers have taken no pains to guard the workmen from seduction by the organization of a broad popular education, the extension of which, on the contrary, they appear to dread; and they have evidently yielded to the old tendency to take the place of the feudal chiefs, whose fall they longed for without inheriting their antique generosity towards inferiors. Unlike military superiors, who are bound to consider and protect their humblest brother soldiers, the industrial employers abuse the power of capital to carry their points in opposition to the employed; and they have done so in defiance of equity, while the law authorized or countenanced coalitions among the one party which it forbade to the other. Passing thus briefly over evils which are unquestionable, I must once more point out the pedantic blindness of that political economy which, in the presence of such conflicts, hides its organic helplessness under an irrational declaration of the necessity of delivering over modern industry to its unregulated course. The only consolation which hence arises is the vague but virtual admission of the insufficiency of popular measures, properly so called,— that is, of purely temporal resources, for the solution of this vast difficulty, which can be disposed of by no means short of a true intellectual and moral reorganization. progress. In Art, the main advance has been the exposure of the defect of Recent Esthetic philosophical principle and social destination, in modern Art, and of the hopelessness of imitation of antique types, an exposure which has been brought about by the general direction of minds towards political speculation and regeneration as a whole. Amidst the wildness, the aesthetic vagabondism, to which the negative philosophy gave occasion and encouragement, especially in France, taking the form for the substance, and discussion for construction, and interdicting to Art all large spontaneous exercise and sound general efficacy,-there have been immortal creations which have established in each department the undiminished vigour of the æsthetic faculties of mankind, even amidst the most unfavourable environment. The kind of Art in the form. of literature which appears most suitable to modern civilization is that in which private is historically connected with public life, which in every age necessarily modifies its character. The Protestant civilization of times sufficiently remote and well chosen is represented, amidst the deep interest of all Europe, by the immortal author of Ivanhoe,' Quentin Durward,' 'Old Mortality,' and Peveril of the Peak;' while the Catholic civilization is charmingly represented by the author of 'I Promessi Sposi,' who is one of the chief ornaments of Art in modern times. This epic form probably indicates the mode of renovation of Art generally when our civilization shall have become solid, energetic, and settled enough to constitute the subject of aesthetic representation. The other fine arts have well sustained their power, during this recent period, without having achieved any remarkable advancement, unless it be in the case of music, and especially dramatic music, the general character of which has risen, in Italy and Germany, to higher elevation and finish. A striking instance of the aesthetic power proper to every great social movement is afforded by the sudden production, in a nation so unmusical as the French, of the most perfect type of political music in the Revolutionary hymn which was so animating to the patriotism of the citizen-soldiery of France. RECENT SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 379 The progress of Science was, at the same time, steady and effective, without any extraordinary brilliancy. On Recent Scientific account of that progress, and of the supreme impor- progress. tance of science as the basis of social reorganization, and again, of the serious faults and errors involved in its pursuit, we must look a little more closely into its condition during this recent period. In mathematical science, besides the labours necessary for the completion of Celestial Mechanics, we have Fourier's great creation, extending analysis to a new order of general phenomena by the study of the abstract laws of the equilibrium and motion of temperatures. He also gave us, in regard to pure analysis, his original conception on the resolution of equations, carried forward, and in some collateral respects improved, by various geometers who have not duly acknowledged the source whence they derived the master idea. Geometry has been enlarged by Monge's conception of the general theory of the family of surfaces, a view still unappreciated by ordinary mathematicians, and perhaps even by Monge himself, Lagrange alone appearing to have perceived its full bearings. Lagrange at the same time perfected Rational Mechanics as a whole, by giving it entire rationality and unity. This great feat must not however be considered by itself, but must be connected with Lagrange's effort to constitute a true mathematical philosophy, founded on a prior renovation of transcendental analysis, a purpose which is illustrated by that incomparable work in which he undertook to regenerate in the same spirit all the great conceptions, first of analysis, then of geometry, and finally of mechanics. Though this premature project could not be wholly successful, it will be, in the eyes of posterity, the pre-eminent honour of this mathematical period, even leaving out of the account the philosophical genius of Lagrange, the only geometer who has duly appreciated that ulterior alliance between the historical spirit and the scientific, which must signalize the highest perfection of positive speculation. Pure astronomy, or celestial geometry, must always advance in an inferior way, in comparison with celestial mechanics; but there have been some interesting discoveries, as of Uranus, the small planets between Mars and Jupiter, and some others. In Physics, in the midst of some hypothetical extravagance, many valuable experimental ideas have arisen in all the principal departments, and especially in Optics and Electrology, by means of the successive labours of Malus, Fresnel, and Young, on the one hand, and of Volta, Oersted, and Ampère on the other. We have seen how Chemistry has been advanced, in the midst of the necessary demolition of Lavoisier's beautiful theory, by the gradual formation of its numerical doctrine, and by the general series of electrical researches. But the great glory of the period in the eyes of future generations will be the creation of biological philosophy, which completes the positive character of the mental evolution, while it carries modern science forward to its highest social destination. I have said enough, in the former volume, to show the importance of Bichat's conceptions of vital dualism, and especially of the theory of tissues; and of the successive labours of Vicq-d'Azyr, Lamarck, and the German school, to constitute the animal hierarchy, since rendered systematic by the philosophical genius of Blainville; and, finally, of the all-important discoveries of Gall, by which the whole of science, with the exception of social speculations, is withdrawn from the cognizance of the theologico-metaphysical philosophy. We ought not to overlook the important though premature attempt of Broussais to found a true pathological philosophy. His deficiency of materials and imperfect biological conceptions should not render us insensible to the merit and the utility of this great effort, which, after having excited an undue enthusiasm, has fallen into temporary neglect. The biological evolution has certainly contributed, more than any other part of the scientific movement, to the progress of the human mind, not only in a scientific view, by affording a basis for the philosophical study of Man, preparatory to that of Society, but far more in a logical view, by establishing that part of natural philosophy in which the synthetical spirit must finally prevail over the analytical, so as to develop the intellectual condition most necessary to sociological speculation. In this way, but without being suspected, the scientific movement was closely connected with the vast political crisis, through which social regeneration was sought before its true basis was ascertained. Meantime, the scientific element was becoming more and more incorporated with the modern social system. In the midst of the fiercest political storms, scientific educational institutions were rising up, which were less devoted to specialities than they are now, though still too much so. Throughout civilized Europe there was a striking increase in the amount of scientific conditions imposed at the entrance on any of a multitude of professions and employments, by which means authorities who are most averse to reorganization are led to regard real knowledge more and more as a practical safeguard of social order. Among the special services. of science to the time is the institution of an admirable system of universal measures, which was begun by revolutionary France, and thence slowly spread among other nations. This introduction of the true speculative spirit among the most familiar transactions of daily life is a fine example and suggestion of the improvements that must ensue whenever a generalized scientific influence shall have penetrated the elementary economy of society. These are the favourable features of the scientific movement. The vicious tendencies have grown in an over-proportion, and consist of that abuse of special research which I have so often had occasion to denounce and lament. In Abuses. |