end to political and theological strife, in order to liberate energies for the exciting enterprises of
commerce and science, such as the East India Company and the Bank of England, the theory of
gravitation and the discovery of the circulation of the blood. Throughout the Western world
bigotry was giving place to enlightenment, the fear of Spanish power was ending, all classes were
increasing in prosperity, and the highest hopes appeared to be warranted by the most sober
judgement. For a hundred years, nothing occurred to dim these hopes; then, at last, they
themselves generated the French Revolution, which led directly to Napoleon and thence to the
Holy Alliance. After these events, liberalism had to acquire its second wind before the renewed
optimism of the nineteenth century became possible.
Before embarking upon any detail, it will be well to consider the general pattern of the liberal
movements from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. This pattern is at first simple, but
grows gradually more and more complex. The distinctive character of the whole movement is, in a
certain wide sense, individualism; but this is a vague term until further defined. The philosophers
of Greece, down to and including Aristotle, were not individualists in the sense in which I wish to
use the term. They thought of a man as essentially a member of a community; Plato Republic, for
example, is concerned to define the good community, not the good individual. With the loss of
political liberty from the time of Alexander onwards, individualism developed, and was
represented by the Cynics and Stoics. According to the Stoic philosophy, a man could live a good
life in no matter what social circumstances. This was also the view of Christianity, especially
before it acquired control of the State. But in the Middle Ages, while mystics kept alive the
original individualistic trends in Christian ethics, the outlook of most men, including the majority
of philosophers, was dominated by a firm synthesis of dogma, law, and custom, which caused
men's theoretical beliefs and practical morality to be controlled by a social institution, namely the
Catholic Church: what was true and what was good was to be ascertained, not by solitary thought,
but by the collective wisdom of Councils.
The first important breach in this system was made by Protestantism, which asserted that General
Councils may err. To determine the truth thus became no longer a social but an individual
enterprise.