he
head. He takes no pains to commend it as an advance in point of truth
upon the old faith, and does not once even avow his own intellectual
identification with it. In short, he is not the retained attorney of the
new faith, but its disinterested annalist, treating it simply as an
historic change wrought in the texture of men's thought, promoted by
such and such causes, attested by such and such effects, but independent
of all partisan judgment and clamor either favorable or adverse. Still
there is no doubt of the historian's own private bias. He applauds _ex
animo_ the change he records; and his book would have gained greatly in
interest, if he could only have written it a little more from the heart
and a little less from the head. For then, apart from the incidental
advantage which would accrue to it, to the reader's imagination, as
being a revelation of the author's living personality, we think the
author himself could hardly fail to have seen, before he had finished
his task, that there is no essential contradiction between the world's
earlier and later faiths; that these faiths differ not as good and evil
or true and false differ, but only and at most as root and stem and
flower differ in the plant, or birth, growth, and maturity in the
animal.

The lesson which Mr. Lecky inculcates upon his reader is this: that
civilization and miracle are fatally opposed; that the former waxes or
wanes precisely as the latter is discredited or accredited. History
shows civilization to have thriven precisely as men have outgrown their
belief in miracle, or the possibility of any outward Divine intervention
in Nature, and have learned to insist upon strictly natural causes for
all natural effects. The fruits of Mr. Lecky's research on this subject
are varied and interesting, and we cordially commend his volumes to the
reader as an inviting storehouse of materials for reflection; but we
very much doubt whether the school of thought he represents has, on the
whole, mastered the problem of civilization any more thoroughly than its
rival. The difference between the two schools is, indeed, one of
principle more than of words; but we cannot help thinking, nevertheless,
that the controversy is needlessly protracted on both sides, for want of
a sufficiently definite and comprehensive statement of the point in
dispute. Let us see whether we cannot make at least an approximation to
such a statement.

What is agitated, then, between the tw