From inquiry into religious matters and inquiry into the phenomena of nature, it was but a short and a natural step to inquiry into the nature and functions of government. This led to a critical questioning of the old established order, the rise of new types of intellectual inquiry, the growth of a consciousness of national problems, and the bringing to the front of questions of political interest to a degree unknown since the days of ancient Rome. The eighteenth century marks, in these directions, a sharp turning-point in human thinking, and the end of mediaevalism and the ushering in of modern forms of intellectual liberty. The eighteenth century, too, witnessed a culmination of a long series of progressive changes which had been under way for centuries, and the flood time of a slowly but steadily rising tide of protest against the enslavement of the intellect and the limitation of natural human liberties by either Church or State. The flood of individualism which characterized the second half of the eighteenth century demanded outlet, and, denied, it rose and swept away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers--religious, intellectual, social, and political--and opened the way for the marked progress in all lines which characterized the nineteenth century. Out of this new spirit was to come the American and the French Revolutions, the establishment of constitutional liberty and religious freedom, the beginnings of the abolition of privilege, the rise of democracy, a great extension of educational advantages, and the transfer of the control of the school from the Church to the State that the national welfare might be better promoted thereby. Now arose the modern conception of the school as the great constructive instrument of the State, and a new individual and national theory as to both the nature and the purpose of education was advanced. Schools were declared to be essentially civil affairs; their purpose was asserted to be to promote the common welfare and advance the interests of the political State; ministers of education began to be appointed by the State to take over and exercise control; the citizen supplanted the ecclesiastic in the organization of education and the supervision of classroom teaching; the instruction in the school was changed in direction, and in time vastly broadened in scope; and the education of all now came to be conceived of as a birthright of the child of every citizen.