78 POSTSCRIPT TO DUTY OF CONCEDING CATHOLIC CLAIMS. chievous; and as such I have done my best to answer him. Whatever he may think of the force of the answer, I trust that he will allow my sentiments to be as consistent with a sincere affection for Christianity as his own; and that a man may advocate the Catholic claims with other arguments than those founded on his interests or his fears. [ON THE SOCIAL PROGRESS OF STATES.] Thucyd. I. 13. Τυραννίδες ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι καθίσταντο, τῶν προσόδων μειζόνων γιγνομένων· πρότερον δὲ ἦσαν ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι. THE change described in these words is so important, and bears so much on the right understanding of the history, ods or divisions in the of the natural peri- not only of Greece, but of all other nations, history of nations. that I have thought it deserving of a fuller consideration than it could receive in a note. Its importance consists in this, that it is a natural period in history, marking the transition of every country from what I may call a state of childhood to manhood. Now states, like individuals, go through certain changes in a certain order, and are subject at different stages of their course to cer- i tain peculiar disorders. But they differ from individuals in this, that though the order of the periods is regular, their duration is not so; and their features are more liable to be mistaken, as they can only be distinguished by the presence of their characteristic phenomena. One state may have existed a thousand years, and its history may be full of striking events, and yet it may be still in its childhood: another may not be a century old, and its history may contain nothing remarkable to a careless reader, and yet it may be verging to old age. The knowledge of these periods furnishes us with a clue to the study of history, which the continuous succession of events related in chronological order seems particularly to re * First Appendix to the first volume of the Edition of Thucydides, 1830. quire. For instance, in our own history we are apt to take certain artificial divisions, such as the accession of the different lines of kings, or an event like the restoration, which is rather a subdivision of one particular period, than the beginning or termination of a period in itself. And in this manner we get no distinct notions of the beginning, middle, and end of the history of a people, and often appeal to examples which are nothing to the purpose, because they are taken from a different stage of a nation's existence from that to which they are applied. here to be noticed. I take, then, the words which I have quoted at the beginning of this essay, and shall proceed to notice the One of these periods critical period described in them, the peThe transition from riod, namely, when wealth begins to posbirth to that of pro- sess the ascendancy formerly enjoyed by nobility; and the contending parties in the state assume the form of rich and poor, the few and the many, instead of the old distinction of nobles and commons, of a conquering race and a conquered. perty. This subject ably treated by Giov. Bat Principi di Scienza пиоса. а This ascendancy, enjoyed in the earliest state of society by noble birth, has been traced in various countries, and its phenomena most successfully investitista Vico, in his gated by Giovanni Battista Vico in his Principi di Scienza nuova; a work disfigured, indeed, by some strange extravagancies, but in its substance so profound and so striking, that the little celebrity which it has obtained out of Italy is one of the most remarkable facts in literary history. Vico's work was published in 1725, yet I scarcely remember ever to have seen it noticed by any subsequent writers who have touched upon the same subject even down to our own times. a I mention Vico, particularly, because his work is not generally known. My obligations to the great writers of Germany, to Niebuhr, Müller, Wachsmuth, &c., it is almost unnecessary to mention, as, since the publication of their works, it would imply strange presumption or strange ignorance to write upon ancient history without having studied them. |