the others and the general front continue to advance. Theory does not
profess to be certainty. It is only tentative, and subject necessarily
to frequent errors, for the elimination of which the severely
skeptical spirit of the laws to which it is now held furnishes the
best appliance. Modern science possesses an internal _vis
medicatrix_ which prevents its suffering seriously from excesses
or irregularities. When it ventures to touch the shield of the
Unknowable, it is only with the butt of its lance, and the inevitable
overthrow is accepted with the least modicum of humiliation.

In that science which assumes to marshal all the others, philosophic
and judicial history, ours ought to be the foremost age, if only
because it has the aid of all the others. It does more, however, than
they can be said to have contemplated. It widens the scope of history,
and more precisely formalizes its functions. It makes of the old
chroniclers so many moral statisticians, fully utilizing at the same
time their services as collectors of material facts. The deductions
thus arrived at it aims to test by the methods of the exact sciences.
It invites, in a certain degree, moral philosophy to don the trammels
of mathematics and decorate its shadowy shoulders with the substantial
yoke of the calculus. Such is the programme of a school too young as
yet to have matured its shape, but full of vigor and confidence, and
a very promising outgrowth from the elder and more stately academy
of abstract historical inquiry and generalization. The latter has
redeveloped and freshened up for us the pictures of the ancient
story-tellers, and has furthermore had them, so to speak, engraved and
scattered among the people, until we have come to live in the midst of
their times and enjoy an intimate knowledge of the actual condition
of human polity and intelligence at any given period. Through the long
gallery or the thick portfolio thus presented to our eye we may trace