mes as material has been
offered for it through the increase of knowledge or the activity of
speculation; varying in name, in form, in degree, but referable to similar
causes, and teaching similar lessons.

It is the chief of these movements of free thought in Europe which it is
my purpose to describe, in their historic succession and their connection
with intellectual causes.

We must ascertain the facts; discover the causes; and read the moral.
These three inquiries, though distinct in idea, cannot be disjoined in a
critical history. The facts must first be presented in place and time: the
history is thus far a mere chronicle. They must next be combined with a
view to interpretation. Yet in making this first combination, taste guides
more than hypothesis. The classification is artistic rather than logical,
and merely presents the facts with as much individual vividness as is
compatible with the preservation of the perspective requisite in the
general historic picture. At this point the artistic sphere of history
ceases, and the scientific commences as soon as the mind searches for any
regularity or periodicity in the occurrence of the facts, such as may be
the effect of fixed causes. If an empirical law be by this means
ascertained to exist, an explanation of it must then be sought in the
higher science which investigates mind. Analysis traces out the ultimate
typical forms of thought which are manifested in it; and if it does not
aspire to arbitrate on their truth, it explains how they have become
grounds on which particular views have been assumed to be true. The
intellect is then satisfied, and the science of history ends. But the
heart still craves a further investigation. It demands to view the moral
and theological aspects of the subject, to harmonize faith and discovery,
or at least to introduce the question of human responsibility, and
reverently to search for the final cause which the events subserve in the
moral purposes of providence. The drama of history must not develope
itself without the chorus to interpret its purpose. The artistic,--the
scientific,--the ethical,--these are the three phases of history. (1)

The chief portion of the present lecture will be devoted to explain the
mode of applying the plan just indicated; more especially to develop the
second of these three branches, by stating the law which has marked the
struggle of free thought with Christianity, and illustrating the
intellectual cau