most terrible of all.

Nearly coincident with the political divisions there are important
landmarks in the history of thought. During the 'sixties, while the
power of Prussia was rising to its culmination in the Franco-Prussian
War, the Darwinian theory of development was gaining command in biology.
To many thinkers there has appeared a clear connexion between that
biological doctrine and the 'imperialism', Teutonic and other, which was
so marked a feature of the time. In any case 'post-Darwinian' might well
describe the scientific thought of the age we have in view.

Industrially the epoch is as clearly defined as it is in politics and
science. For in 1871, the year of the Treaty of Frankfort, an act was
passed after a long working-class agitation, assisted by certain eminent
members of the middle class, legalizing strikes and Trade Unions. And
now at the end of the war, all over the world, society is faced by the
problem of reconciling the full rights, and in some cases the extreme
demands, of 'labour', with democratic government and the prosperity and
social union of the whole community. This is the situation discussed in
our seventh and eighth chapters.

In philosophy and literature a similar dividing line appears. In the
'sixties Herbert Spencer was publishing the capital works of his system.
The _Principles of Psychology_ was published in 1872. This 'Synthetic
Philosophy' has proved up to the present the last attempt of its kind,
and with the vast increase of knowledge since Spencer's day it might
well prove the last of all such syntheses carried out by a single mind.
Specialism and criticism have gained the upper hand, and the fresh turn
to harmony, which we shall notice later on, is rather a harmony of
spirit than an encyclopaedic unity such as the great masters of system
from Descartes to Comte and Spencer had attempted before.

In literature also the dates agree. Dickens, most typical of all early
Victorians, died in 1870. George Eliot's last great novel, _Daniel
Deronda_, was published in 1876. Victor Hugo's greatest poem, _La
Legende des Siecles_, the imaginative synthesis of all the ages,
appeared in the 'seventies. There have been many writers since, with
Tolstoi perhaps at their head, in whom the fire of moral enthusiasm has
burnt as keenly, nor have the borders of human sympathy been narrowed.
Yet one cannot fail to note a less pervading and ready confidence in
human nature, a less fervent belief tha