REVIEWS 833
thought was less influenced by foreign ideas than at any time in its history. Yet we are astonished that a book dealing with the develop- ment of English thought should confine itself to periods after Bacon and Shakespeare, and should practically ignore the work of the literary man if expressed in any other than economic or philosophic form. With the exception of Wordsworth and his contemporaries, Dr. Pat- ten ignores the English "litterateur" as a shaper of the thought of his age. The popular writer receives no credit for his influence in the formation of public opinion, in the molding of national character, or in the dissemination of the great truths of science. When we consider the tremendous influence of Tennyson since the middle of the century upon public thought, to say nothing of the effect of the social novel since Dickens' innovation of the same, in creating ideals, we can but conclude that Dr. Patten's treatment of his subject is not as broad as it might have been. We know how responsible the popular writer is for the public sentiment prevailing on any topic of the hour. We must all agree with Mr. Stead, for instance, that Kipling, through his works, is a shaper of the destiny of the race. In the English Review of Reviews for March, Mr. Stead comments thus on "The White Man's Burden":
It is an international document of the first importance. It is a direct appeal to the United States to take up the policy of expansion. The poet has idealized and transfigured imperialism. He has shown its essence to be,
not lordship, but service It will be strange if these seven stanzas do
not prove more than a match for all the millions and all the eloquence of anti-expansionists like Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Bryan.
And, again, it seems passing strange that no weight is given to the effect upon English national character of chivalry, that great institu- tion of the Middle Age. Its contributions to thought and character were permanent, for we can trace the ideals of self-sacrifice and self- assertion — two important traits in English character — back to this very period. And these ideals were fixed in English literature for all time by Sir Thomas Malory in his great epic, Morte Arthure, at a time when the institution which had produced them was about to yield to other forms of organization for which society, owing to the revolution- izing economic progress of the fifteenth century, was then more fit.
After the psychological preliminaries discussed above by Dr. Angell there follow the statements that the history of thought passes through four stages — the economic, the aesthetic, the moral, and the religious ; that the study of any epoch involves, first, the consideration
