gn of any moral agent in the universe, except man; you may
believe, if you like it, in the old theory of the wisdom of antiquity;
you may speak, as was the fashion in the fifteenth century, of 'our
fathers, who had more wit and wisdom than we;' or you may talk of 'our
barbarian ancestors,' and describe their wars as the scuffling of kites
and crows.

You may maintain that the evolution of humanity has been an unbroken
progress towards perfection; you may maintain that there has been no
progress at all, and that man remains the same poor creature that he
ever was; or, lastly, you may say with the author of the 'Contrat
Social,' that men were purest and best in primeval simplicity--

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

In all, or any of these views, history will stand your friend. History,
in its passive irony, will make no objection. Like Jarno, in Goethe's
novel, it will not condescend to argue with you, and will provide you
with abundant illustrations of anything which you may wish to believe.

'What is history,' said Napoleon, 'but a fiction agreed upon?' 'My
friend,' said Faust to the student, who was growing enthusiastic about
the spirit of past ages; 'my friend, the times which are gone are a book
with seven seals; and what you call the spirit of past ages is but the
spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those ages are
reflected.'

One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with
distinctness; that the world is built somehow on moral foundations;
that, in the long run, it is well with the good; in the long run, it is
ill with the wicked. But this is no science; it is no more than the old
doctrine taught long ago by the Hebrew prophets. The theories of M.
Comte and his disciples advance us, after all, not a step beyond the
trodden and familiar ground. If men are not entirely animals, they are
at least half animals, and are subject in this aspect of them to the
conditions of animals. So far as those parts of man's doings are
concerned, which neither have, nor need have, anything moral about them,
so far the laws of him are calculable. There are laws for his digestion,
and laws of the means by which his digestive organs are supplied with
matter. But pass beyond them, and where are we? In a world where it
would be as easy to calculate men's actions by laws like those of
positive philosophy as to measure the orbit of Neptune with a foot-rule,
or weigh Sirius in a grocer's scale