nd,
it has an interesting and even original side. The main idea of the
little book, so far as it has one, was excellent, and really above the
general thought of the age, namely, the vindication of classical
literature and history generally from the narrow and singular
prejudice which prevailed against them, especially in France. When
Gibbon ascribes the design of his first work to a "refinement of
vanity, the desire of justifying and praising the object of a
favourite pursuit," he does himself less than justice. This first
utterance of his historic genius was prompted by an unconscious but
deep reaction against that contempt for the past, which was the
greatest blot in the speculative movement of the eighteenth century.
He resists the temper of his time rather from instinct than reason,
and pleads the cause of learning with the hesitation of a man who has
not fully seen round his subject, or even mastered his own thoughts
upon it. Still there is his protest against the proposal of
D'Alembert, who recommended that after a selection of facts had been
made at the end of every century the remainder should be delivered to
the flames. "Let us preserve them all," he says, "most carefully. A
Montesquieu will detect in the most insignificant, relations which the
vulgar overlook." He resented the haughty pretensions of the
mathematical sciences to universal dominion, with sufficient vigour to
have satisfied Auguste Comte. "Physics and mathematics are at present
on the throne. They see their sister sciences prostrate before them,
chained to their chariot, or at most occupied in adorning their
triumph. Perhaps their downfall is not far off." To speak of a
positive downfall of exact sciences was a mistake. But we may fairly
suppose that Gibbon did not contemplate anything beyond a relative
change of position in the hierarchy of the sciences, by which history
and politics would recover or attain to a dignity which was denied
them in his day. In one passage Gibbon shows that he had dimly
foreseen the possibility of the modern inquiries into the conditions
of savage life and prehistoric man. "An Iroquois book, even were it
full of absurdities, would be an invaluable treasure. It would offer a
unique example of the nature of the human mind placed in circumstances
which we have never known, and influenced by manners and religious
opinions, the complete opposite of ours." In this sentence Gibbon
seems to call in anticipation for the resea