In this brief review of the triumphs of reason in the nineteenth century, we have been considering the discoveries of science and criticism which made the old orthodoxy logically untenable.  But the advance in freedom of thought, the marked difference in the general attitude of men in all lands towards theological authority to-day from the attitude of a hundred years ago, cannot altogether be explained by the power of logic.  It is not so much criticism of old ideas as the appearance of new ideas and interests that changes the views of men at large.  It is not logical demonstrations but new social conceptions that bring about a general transformation of attitude towards ultimate problems.  Now the idea of the progress of the human race must, I think, be held largely answerable for this change of attitude.  It must, I think, be held to have operated powerfully as a solvent of theological beliefs.  I have spoken of the teaching of Diderot and his friends that man’s energies should be devoted to making the earth pleasant.  A

[227] new ideal was substituted for the old ideal based on theological propositions.  It inspired the English Utilitarian philosophers (Bentham, James Mill, J. S. Mill, Grote) who preached the greatest happiness of the greatest number as the supreme object of action and the basis of morality.  This ideal was powerfully reinforced by the doctrine of historical progress, which was started in France (1750) by Turgot, who made progress the organic principle of history.  It was developed by Condorcet (1793), and put forward by Priestley in England.  The idea was seized upon by the French socialistic philosophers, Saint-Simon and Fourier.  The optimism of Fourier went so far as to anticipate the time when the sea would be turned by man’s ingenuity into lemonade, when there would be 37 million poets as great as Homer, 37 million writers as great as Moliere, 37 million men of science equal to Newton.  But it was Comte who gave the doctrine weight and power.  His social philosophy and his religion of Humanity are based upon it.  The triumphs of science endorsed it; it has been associated with, though it is not necessarily implied in, the scientific theory of evolution; and it is perhaps fair to say that it has been the guiding spiritual force of the nineteenth century.  It has introduced

[228] the new ethical principle of duty to posterity.  We shall hardly be far wrong if we say that the new interest in the future and the progress of the race has done a great deal to undermine unconsciously the old interest in a life beyond the grave; and it has dissolved the blighting doctrine of the radical corruption of man.