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If the end be not religion, is it morality, humanity, civilisation, knowledge? In the German chapters of 1874 Dr. Flint was severe upon Hegel, and refused his notion that the development of liberty is the soul of history, as crude, one-sided, and misunderstood. He is more lenient now, and affirms that liberty occupies the final summit, that it profits by all the good that is in the world, and suffers by all the evil, that it pervades strife and inspires endeavour, that it is almost, if not altogether, the sign, and the prize, and the motive in the onward and upward advance of the race for which Christ was crucified. As that refined essence which draws sustenance from all good things it is clearly understood as the product of civilisation, with its complex problems and scientific appliances, not as the elementary possession of the noble savage, which has been traced so often to the primeval forest. On the other hand, if sin not only tends to impair, but does inevitably impair and hinder it, providence is excluded from its own mysterious sphere, which, as it is not the suppression of all evil and present punishment of wrong, should be the conversion of evil into an instrument to serve the higher purpose. But although Dr. Flint has come very near to Hegel and Michelet, and seemed about to elevate their teaching to a higher level and a wider view, he ends by treating it coldly, as a partial truth requiring supplement, and bids us wait until many more explorers have recorded their soundings. That, with the trained capacity for misunderstanding and the smouldering dissent proper to critics, I might not mislead any reader, or do less than justice to a profound though indecisive work, I should have wished to piece together the passages in which the author indicates, somewhat faintly, the promised but withheld philosophy which will crown his third or fourth volume. Any one who compares pages 125, 135, 225, 226, 671, will understand better than I can explain it the view which is the master-key to the book.

APPENDIX

By the kindness of the Abbot Gasquet we are enabled to supplement the Bibliography of Acton's writings published by the Royal Historical Society with the following additional items: —

In The Rambler, 1858

April – Burke.

July – [With Simpson] Mr. Buckle's Thesis and Method.

Short Reviews.

August – Mr. Buckle's Philosophy of History.

October – Theiner's Documents inédits relatifs aux affaires religieuses de France 1790-1800, pp. 265-267.

December – The Count de Montalembert, pp. 421-428 and note, 432.

Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great, vols. i. and ii. p. 429.

1859

January – Political Thoughts on the Church.

February – The Catholic Press.

September – Contemporary Events.

1860

September – National Defence.

Irish Education in Current Events.

1862

Correspondence.

The Danger of the Physical Sciences.