eneral causes which, under
its guidance, operated upon society. The influence of this great
change in the direction of thought at once appeared when knowledge,
liberated from the cloister and the university, again took its place
among the affairs of men. Machiavel in Italy, and Bacon in England,
for the first time in the annals of knowledge, reasoned upon human
affairs _as a science_. They spoke of the minds of men as permanently
governed by certain causes, and of known principles, always leading to
the same results; they treated of politics as a science in which
certain known laws existed, and could be discovered, as in mechanics
and hydraulics. This was a great step in advance, and demonstrated
that the superior age of the world, and the wide sphere to which
political observation had now been applied, had permitted the
accumulation of such an increased store of facts, as permitted
deductions, founded on experience, to be formed in regard to the
affairs of nations. Still more, it showed that the attention of
writers had been drawn to the general causes of human affairs; that
they reasoned on the actions of men as a subject of abstract thought;
regarded effects formerly produced as _likely to recur_ from a similar
combination of circumstances; and formed conclusions for the
regulation of future conduct, from the results of past experience.
This tendency is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in the _Discorsi_
of Machiavel, where certain general propositions are stated, deduced,
indeed, from the events of Roman story, but announced as lasting
truths, applicable to every future generation and circumstances of
men. In depth of view and justness of observation, these views of the
Florentine statesman never were surpassed. Bacon's essays relate, for
the most part, to subjects of morals, or domestic and private life;
but not unfrequently he touches on the general concerns of nations,
and with the same profound observation of the past, and philosophic
anticipation of the future.

Voltaire professed to elevate history in France from the _jejune_ and
trifling details of genealogy, courts, wars, and negotiations, in
which it had hitherto, in his country, been involved, to the more
general contemplation of arts and philosophy, and the progress of
human affairs; and, in some respects, he certainly effected a great
reformation on the ponderous annalists who had preceded him. But the
foundation of his history was still biography; he