ill so little conceived by us, that
we suppose the laws of charity and of self-sacrifice bear upon
individuals in all their social relations, and yet do not bear upon
nations in any of their political relations;--when, I say, we thus
review the depth of simplicity in which the human race are still
plunged with respect to all that it most profoundly concerns them to
know, and which might, by them, with most ease have been ascertained, we
can hardly determine how far back on the narrow path of human progress
we ought to place the generation to which we belong, how far the
swaddling clothes are unwound from us, and childish things beginning to
be put away.

On the other hand, a power of obtaining veracity in the representation
of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and
conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all
men,[48] almost without labor. The foundation of every natural science
is now at last firmly laid, not a day passing without some addition of
buttress and pinnacle to their already magnificent fabric. Social
theorems, if fiercely agitated, are therefore the more likely to be at
last determined, so that they never can be matters of question more.
Human life has been in some sense prolonged by the increased powers of
locomotion, and an almost limitless power of converse. Finally, there is
hardly any serious mind in Europe but is occupied, more or less, in the
investigation of the questions which have so long paralyzed the strength
of religious feeling, and shortened the dominion of religious faith. And
we may therefore at least look upon ourselves as so far in a definite
state of progress, as to justify our caution in guarding against the
dangers incident to every period of change, and especially to that from
childhood into youth.

Sec. IV. Those dangers appear, in the main, to be twofold; consisting
partly in the pride of vain knowledge, partly in the pursuit of vain
pleasure. A few points are still to be noticed with respect to each of
these heads.

Enough, it might be thought, had been said already, touching the pride
of knowledge; but I have not yet applied the principles, at which we
arrived in the third chapter, to the practical questions of modern art.
And I think those principles, together with what were deduced from the
consideration of the nature of Gothic in the second volume, so necessary
and vital, not only with respect to the progress of art, but even