eliminated whatever has
been damaged by contemporary criticism or by subsequent advance, and
have assimilated all that has survived through the ages, we shall find
in our possession not only a record of growth, but the full-grown fruit
itself. This is not the way in which Dr. Flint understands the building
up of his department of knowledge. Instead of showing how far France has
made a way towards the untrodden crest, he describes the many flowery
paths, discovered by the French, which lead elsewhere, and I expect that
in coming volumes it will appear that Hegel and Buckle, Vico and
Ferrari, are scarcely better guides than Laurent or Littre. Fatalism and
retribution, race and nationality, the test of success and of duration,
heredity and the reign of the invincible dead, the widening circle, the
emancipation of the individual, the gradual triumph of the soul over the
body, of mind over matter, reason over will, knowledge over ignorance,
truth over error, right over might, liberty over authority, the law of
progress and perfectibility, the constant intervention of providence,
the sovereignty of the developed conscience--neither these nor other
alluring theories are accepted as more than illusions or half-truths.
Dr. Flint scarcely avails himself of them even for his foundations or
his skeleton framework. His critical faculty, stronger than his gift of
adaptation, levels obstructions and marks the earth with ruin. He is
more anxious to expose the strange unreason of former writers, the
inadequacy of their knowledge, their want of aptitude in induction, than
their services in storing material for the use of successors. The result
is not to be the sifted and verified wisdom of two centuries, but a
future system, to be produced when the rest have failed by an exhaustive
series of vain experiments. We may regret to abandon many brilliant laws
and attractive generalisations that have given light and clearness and
simplicity and symmetry to our thought; but it is certain that Dr. Flint
is a close and powerful reasoner, equipped with satisfying information,
and he establishes his contention that France has not produced a classic
philosophy of history, and is still waiting for its Adam Smith or Jacob
Grimm.

The kindred topic of development recurs repeatedly, as an important
factor in modern science. It is still a confused and unsettled chapter,
and in one place Dr. Flint seems to attribute the idea to Bossuet; in
another he says