appeal to the western world, preparatory to a reconstruction of religious statement upon simpler world-wide lines. It may have been merely a cleansing of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth from theological and ceremonial accretions. Upon such "may have beens" we can speculate here, but we cannot decide. History can deal with the small beginnings in the past of the great things of the present, but in the present only with what is plain and obvious. We cannot tell what seeds of the future may not be germinating already amidst our present confusions.
§ 7
The vast changes we have been recording in the range of human power and intercourse constitute the fundamental realities of nineteenth-century history. But the atlas and political history of a time do not show what is being made, but what has been made, and what is still going on. The formal history of the latter half of the nineteenth century is not so much concerned with these permanent changes in human affairs, as with the schemes of Foreign Offices and the continuing exploits of the Great Powers. The men who were discovering, inventing, developing inventions and working out ideas were far too busy and far too few for effective interference in public affairs. The diplomatists, politicians, and statesmen, on the other hand, were far too occupied with their established interplay of nations and parties to heed what the contemporary mind was doing. The Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-81), a leading British statesman, remarked (of the Darwinian controversy) that it seemed to be a dispute whether men were descended from apes or angels, and that for his part, he was "on the side of the angels"—a sprightly saying which added greatly to his reputation. His rival, Gladstone (1809-98), was of a more serious quality, and in the habit of plunging during his vacations heavily and conspicuously into intellectual affairs; among other such exploits he joined in public controversy with Huxley upon Huxley's own subject. He revealed ideas derived from Buffon (died 1788) uncontaminated by any later influence. The whole field of modern discovery, says Lecky in his Democracy and Liberty was outside his range.
When this Mr. Gladstone was taken by Sir John Lubbock to
