throughout the nineteenth century, would be quite inexplicable in other
than modern times. In fact the whole political history of the last four
centuries is in essence a series of compromises between the conflicting
results of the modern exaltation of the state and the modern exaltation
of the individual.

(4) _Replacement of the idea of the necessity of uniformity in a
definite faith and religion by toleration of many faiths or even of no
faith_. A great state religion, professed publicly, and financially
supported by all the citizens, has been a distinguishing mark of every
earlier age. Whatever else may be thought of the Protestant movement of
the sixteenth century, of the rise of deism and skepticism in the
seventeenth and eighteenth, and of the existence of scientific
rationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth, there can be little doubt
that each of them has contributed its share to the prevalence of the
idea that religion is essentially a private, not a public, affair and
that friendly rivalry in good works is preferable to uniformity in
faith.

(5) _Diffusion of learning_. The invention of printing towards the
close of the fifteenth century gradually revolutionized the pursuit of
knowledge and created a real democracy of letters. What learning might
have lost in depth through its marvelous broadening has perhaps been
compensated for by the application of the keenest minds in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to experimental science and in our
own day to applied science.

(6) _Spirit of progress and decline of conservatism_. For better
or for worse the modern man is intellectually more self-reliant than
his ancestors, more prone to try new inventions and to profit by new