was
enforced by some of the ablest and most independent intellects of
Christendom. Pascal tells us that if Cleopatra's nose had been
shorter, the whole face of the world might have been changed, and
Voltaire is never tired of dwelling on the small springs on which the
greatest events of history turn. Frederick the Great, who was probably
the keenest practical intellect of his age, constantly insisted on the
same view. In the vast field of politics, he maintained, casual events
which no human sagacity can predict play by far the largest part. We
are in most cases groping our way blindly in the dark. Occasionally,
when favourable circumstances occur, there is a gleam of light of
which the skilful avail themselves. All the rest is uncertainty. The
world is mainly governed by a multitude of secondary, obscure, or
impenetrable causes. It is a game of chance in which the most skilful
may lose like the most ignorant. 'The older one becomes the more
clearly one sees that King Hazard fashions three-fourths of the events
in this miserable world.'

My own view of this question is that though there are certain streams
of tendency, though there is a certain steady and orderly evolution
that it is impossible in the long run to resist, yet individual action
and even mere accident have borne a very great part in modifying the
direction of history. It is with History as with the general laws of
Nature. We can none of us escape the all-pervading force of
gravitation, or the influence of the climate under which we live, or
the succession of the seasons, or the laws of growth and of decay; yet
man is not a mere passive weed drifting helplessly upon the sea of
life, and human wisdom and human folly can do and have done much to
modify the conditions of his being.

It is quite true that religions depend largely for their continued
vitality upon the knowledge and intellectual atmosphere of their time;
but there are periods when the human mind is in such a state of
pliancy that a small pressure can give it a bent which will last for
generations. If Mohammed had been killed in one of the first
skirmishes of his career, I know no reason for believing that a great
monotheistic religion would have arisen in Arabia, capable of moulding
for more than twelve hundred years not only the beliefs, laws, and
governments, but also the inmost moral and mental character of a vast
section of the human race. Gibbon was probably right in his conjecture
that i