that
outworn institutions fetter and dwarf the mind of man. It is also a
truth that institutions have moulded and formed that mind. To condemn
the past is in the same breath to blast the future. The true basis for
that piety towards our venerable inheritance which Burke preached, is
that it has made for us the possibility of advance.

But our strivings would be languid, our march would be slow, were it not
for the revolutionary leaven which Godwin's generation set fermenting.
They taught how malleable and plastic is the human mind. They saw that
by a resolute effort to change the environment of institutions and
customs which educate us, we can change ourselves. They liberated us not
so much from "priests and kings" as from the deadlier tyranny of the
belief that human nature, with all its imperfections, is an innate
character which it were vain to hope to reform. Their teaching is a
tonic to the will, a reminder still eloquent, still bracing, that among
the forces which make history the chief is the persuasion of the
understanding, the conscious following of a rational ideal. From much
that is iconoclastic and destructive in their ideal we may turn away
unconvinced. There remain its ardent statement of the duty of humanity,
which shames our practice after a century of progress, and its faith in
the efficacy of unregimented opinion to supersede brute force. They
taught a lesson which posterity has but half learned. We shall be the
richer for returning to them, as much by what we reject as by what we
embrace.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GENERAL

LECKY. _History of England in the 18th Century._

LESLIE STEPHEN.--_History of English Thought in the 18th Century._

OLIVER ELTON..--_A Survey of English Literature._

EDWARD DOWDEN--_The French Revolution and English Literature._

The most vivid impression of the period from the standpoint of Godwin's
Circle is conveyed in the _Memoirs_ of Thomas Holcroft edited by
Hazlitt, and in Hazlitt's portraits of Godwin, Malthus and Mackintosh in
_The Spirit of the Age_ (Everyman's Library).

Of the opposite way of thinking the one immortal record is Burke's
_Reflections on the French Revolution_. Lord Morley's _Burke_ (English
Men of Letters) should be read, and the eloquent exposition by Lord Hugh
Cecil (_Conservatism_) in this (H.U.L.) series.

The main works of the French revolutionary thinkers have been issued in
Dent's series of French classics. For study and pleasure consul