Journal of Social Science (Volume 36) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1898 Excerpt: ... If I were to name the characteristic of that century in the world at large, I should say that it was or gradually hardened into an age of formalism. Bacon and Shakspere could not stand up against it to stem the tide. They spoke, indeed, for the century before, out of which they passed with their reputation won. The li'terature of the seventeenth century became one of creeds and catechisms. There was a conventional language of courts, to which the very Prayer Book stooped in its petitions for " our most religious king." The lawyers were busy in inventing writs instead of explaining rights. The work best esteemed was that which put in shape what earlier times had thought out. Rigidity of form in human society cannot last long. There is sure to come an explosion from within. The mine may be laid by some hand, like Pascal's, and fired by a spark of irony, or by one more daring and more reckless of what may come, like that of Voltaire or Rousseau. The eighteenth century was a long attack of scepticism upon formalism, and formalism fell. There fell with it that spirit of reverence for institutions which is the supreme safeguard of national morality. Men easily obey customary and established rules of conduct, so long as they do not ask how they came to arise and what purpose they really serve. But he who stops to debate with himself whether it is right to steal or lie, as each occasion presents itself, will often find the stronger arguments on the side of what seems immediate self-interest. Scepticism conquered, and the divinity that had hedged about the kings of Europe fled before it. The French Revolution brought in a new order of things for the world. It set before it, as Carlyle has described it, "truth clad in hell-fire." The fire was gradually quenched: the ...