The foregoing paragraphs were written in 1859. Since that time Italy has become a nation, Rome is its capital, Venice belongs to it. In 1870-71 I was an eye-witness of the presence of Italian troops in the Eternal City.
CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION.—THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.
Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental Progress of Europe.
Intellectual Development is the Object of Individual Life.—It is also the Result of social Progress.
Nations arriving at Maturity instinctively attempt their own intellectual Organization.—Example of the Manner in which this has been done in China.—Its Imperfection.—What it has accomplished.
The Organization of public Intellect in the End to which European Civilization is tending.
[392] A Philosophical principle becomes valuable if it can be used as a guide in the practical purposes of life.
General summary of the work.The object of this book is to impress upon its reader a conviction that civilization does not proceed in an arbitrary manner or by chance, but that it passes through a determinate succession of stages, and is a development according to law.
Individual and social life have been considered;For this purpose we considered the relations between individual and social life, and showed that they are physiologically inseparable, and that the course of communities bears an unmistakable resemblance to the progress of an individual, and that man is the archetype or exemplar of society.
in the intellectual history of Greece;We then examined the intellectual history of Greece—a nation offering the best and most complete illustration of the life of humanity. From the beginnings of its mythology in old Indian legends and of its philosophy in Ionia, we saw that it passed through phases like those of the individual to its decrepitude and death in Alexandria.