till at last, at the close of the eighteenth century, its flame was seen from afar. To England we seem little indebted; and yet, when I think of Lord Bacon, I am disposed to say that we are much indebted. This law inspired his great work on the "Advancement of Learning," and is expressed in its very title. It entered into his aspiration to deliver man from present weakness by extending his power over Nature. It is foreshadowed in his great declaration, antedating Pascal, that Antiquity was the youth of the world,—"Antiquitas sæculi, juventus mundi."[259] For a time Bacon had no successors in England. At a later day this law was cordially embraced by Dr. Price,[260] the friend and correspondent of Turgot. Dr. Johnson, who surely did not accept it, shows an unconscious sympathy with it, when he says of life in pastoral countries, that it "knows nothing of progression or advancement."[261] Unhappy people, thus without visible Future on earth!
To the eighteenth century belongs the honor—signal honor I venture to call it—of first distinctly acknowledging and enunciating that Law of Human Progress, which, though preached in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, failed to be received by men,—nay, still fails to be received by men. Writers in our own age, of much ability and unexampled hardihood, while adopting this fundamental law, proceed to arraign existing institutions of society. My present purpose does not require me to consider these, whether for censure or praise,—abounding as they do in evil, abounding as they do in good. It is my single aim to trace the gradual development and final establishment of that great law which teaches that "there is a good time coming,"—a Future even on earth, to arouse the hopes, the aspirations, and the energies of Man.
II.
The way is now prepared to consider the character, conditions, and limitations of this law, the duties it enjoins, and the encouragements it affords.
Let me state the law as I understand it. Man, as an individual, is capable of indefinite improvement. Societies and nations, which are but aggregations of men, and, finally, the Human Family, or collective Humanity, are capable of indefinite improvement. And this is the destiny of man, of societies, of nations, and of the Human Family.
Restricting the proposition to the capacity for indefinite improvement, I believe I commend it to the candor and intelligence of all who have meditated upon this subject. And this brings me to the remarkable words of Leibnitz. He boldly says, as we have already seen, that man seems able to arrive at perfection. Turgot and Condorcet also speak of his "perfectibility,"—a term adopted by recent French writers. If by this is meant simply that man is capable of indefinite improvement, then it will not be questioned. But whatever the heights of virtue and intelligence to which he may attain in future ages, who can doubt that to his grander vision new summits will ever present themselves, provoking him to still grander aspirations? God only is perfect. Knowledge and goodness, his attributes, are infinite; nor can man hope, in any lapse of time, to comprehend this immensity. In the infinitude of the universe, he will seem, like Newton, with all his acquisitions, only to have gathered a few pebbles by the seaside. In a similar strain Leibnitz elsewhere says that the place which God assigns to man in space and time necessarily limits the perfections he is able to acquire. As in Geometry the asymptote constantly approaches its curve, so that the distance between them is constantly diminishing, and yet, though prolonged indefinitely, they never meet, so, according to him, are infinite souls the asymptotes of God.
There are revolutions in history seeming on a superficial view inconsistent with this law. From early childhood attention is directed to Greece and Rome; and we are sometimes taught that these two powers reached heights which subsequent nations cannot hope to equal, much less surpass. I would not disparage the triumphs of the ancient mind. The eloquence, the poetry, the philosophy, the art, of Athens still survive, and bear no mean sway upon earth. Rome, too, yet lives in her jurisprudence, which, next after Christianity, has exerted a paramount influence over the laws of modern communities.
But exalted as these productions may be, it is impossible not to perceive that something of their present importance is derived from the early period when they appeared, something from the unquestioning and high-flown admiration of them transmitted through successive generations until it became a habit, and something also from the disposition, still prevalent, to elevate Antiquity at the expense of subsequent ages. Without undertaking to decide if the genius of Antiquity, as displayed by individuals, can justly claim supremacy, it would be easy to show that the ancient plane of civilization never reached our common level. The people were ignorant, vicious, and poor, or degraded to abject slavery,—itself the sum of all injustice and all vice. Even the most illustrious characters, whose names still shine from that distant night, were little more than splendid barbarians. Architecture, sculpture, painting, and vases of exquisite perfection attest an appreciation of beauty in form; but our masters in these things were strangers to the useful arts, as to the comforts and virtues of home. Abounding in what to us are luxuries, they had not what to us are necessaries.