d, was dissipated in imaginative
myths. The Oriental religions, if noticed at all, appeared to be lost
in vain cosmogonies. There was but one body of primitive records which
was worth studying--the early history of the Jews. But resort to this
was prevented by the prejudices of the time. One of the few
characteristics which the school of Rousseau had in common with the
school of Voltaire was an utter disdain of all religious antiquities;
and, more than all, of those of the Hebrew race. It is well known that
it was a point of honour with the reasoners of that day to assume not
merely that the institutions called after Moses were not divinely
dictated, nor even that they were codified at a later date than that
attributed to them, but that they and the entire Pentateuch were a
gratuitous forgery, executed after the return from the Captivity.
Debarred, therefore, from one chief security against speculative
delusion, the philosophers of France, in their eagerness to escape
from what they deemed a superstition of the priests, flung themselves
headlong into a superstition of the lawyers.

But though the philosophy founded on the hypothesis of a state of
nature has fallen low in general esteem, in so far as it is looked
upon under its coarser and more palpable aspect, it does not follow
that in its subtler disguises it has lost plausibility, popularity, or
power. I believe, as I have said, that it is still the great
antagonist of the Historical Method; and whenever (religious
objections apart) any mind is seen to resist or contemn that mode of
investigation, it will generally be found under the influence of a
prejudice or vicious bias traceable to a conscious or unconscious
reliance on a non-historic, natural, condition of society or the
individual. It is chiefly, however, by allying themselves with
political and social tendencies that the doctrines of Nature and her
law have preserved their energy. Some of these tendencies they have
stimulated, others they have actually created, to a great number they
have given expression and form. They visibly enter largely into the
ideas which constantly radiate from France over the civilised world,
and thus become part of the general body of thought by which its
civilisation is modified. The value of the influence which they thus
exercise over the fortunes of the race is of course one of the points
which our age debates most warmly, and it is beside the purpose of
this treatise to discuss