"Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke are the inaugurators of the English school [of philosophy]. … It led to Adam Smith, who discovers the sanction of morality in altruism or public approbation; to Bentham, who sees it in interest rationally understood; to Hume and the Scottish school, and finally to the existing school of J. S. Mill, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer."[1] This is but a typical instance of the historical interpretation of thought in every field today.
Moreover, we cannot agree with many of Dr. Patten's conclusions—statements which are utterly at variance with our accepted beliefs. Perhaps the most startling of these is his decision regarding English political development. The claim of the English that they have a peculiar aptitude for the development of political institutions is, he tells us, without basis. Since Locke there has been no development of political thought. The English have been too conservative to develop institutional life beyond the needs of primitive society. For the past two centuries there has been no dominant class, and so the race has prospered under conditions that would otherwise have demanded a development of its institutions. The peace and security which have prevailed far more in England than in any other European country, he declares, are due, not to Anglo-American institutions, but to instincts inculcated during the supremacy of the church, favorable economic conditions, and the spirit of compromise from opposing types. Given these conditions, and any institution would be successful. Quite a different valuation does Andrew D. White give to the influence of political institutions on the progress of civilization. In his preface to Müller's Political History of Modern Times he recommends the work "to all who desire a clear idea of that political development in modern Europe which has brought on the amazing events of these latter years."
Nor can we accept Dr. Patten's unique explanation of the transformations of social life in England from communal to domestic as due mainly to woman's initiative. Nor yet his statement that women are becoming more and more domestic and less and less economic. And, again, we are sure that loud cries of dissent will greet his assertion that there has been little or no literary development in England. Who will not resent as a reflection upon our culture the following: "Fathers and mothers have not yet become artistic and are too active to indulge much in novel-reading. The taste of the average mother seldom rises
- ↑ P. Topinard, "Man as a Member of Society," translated by T. J. McCormack, the Monist, October, 1898, p. 68.
