iod. And "the plan of
this divine drama is opening more and more." In the future, Knowledge
will increase and accumulate and diffuse itself to the lower ranks of
society, who, by degrees, will find leisure for speculation; and looking
beyond their immediate employment, they will consider the complex
machine of society, and in time understand it better than those who now
write about it.

See his Lectures, pp. 371, 388 sqq., 528-53.

The English thinker did not share all the views of his French masters.
As a Unitarian, he regarded Christianity as a "great remedy of vice and
ignorance," part of the divine plan; and he ascribed to government
a lesser role than they in the improvement of humanity. He held, for
instance, that the state should not interfere in education, arguing that
this art was still in the experimental stage, and that the intervention
of the civil power might stereotype a bad system.

Not less significant, though less influential, than the writings of
Priestley and Ferguson was the work of James Dunbar, Professor of
Philosophy at Aberdeen, entitled Essays on the History of Mankind
in Rude and Cultivated Ages (2nd ed., 1781). He conceived history as
progressive, and inquired into the general causes which determine
the gradual improvements of civilisation. He dealt at length with
the effects of climate and local circumstances, but unlike the French
philosophers did not ignore heredity. While he did not enter upon any
discussion of future developments, he threw out incidentally the idea
that the world may be united in a league of nations.

Posterity, he wrote, "may contemplate, from a concurrence of various
causes and events, some of which are hastening into light, the greater
part, or even the whole habitable globe, divided among nations free and
independent in all the interior functions of government, forming one
political and commercial system" (p. 287).

Dunbar's was an optimistic book, but his optimism was more cautious than
Priestley's. These are his final words:

If human nature is liable to degenerate, it is capable of proportionable
improvement from the collected wisdom of ages. It is pleasant to infer
from the actual progress of society, the glorious possibilities of human
excellence. And, if the principles can be assembled into view, which
most directly tend to diversify the genius and character of nations,
some theory may be raised on these foundations that shall account
more systematically