[It was said in 1881 by an American writer (who strongly dissented from Spencer's theory) that the current view was "fatalistic." See Henry George, Progress and Poverty. But it may be doubted whether those of the general public who optimistically accepted evolution without going very deeply into the question really believed that the future of man is taken entirely out of his hands and is determined exclusively by the nature of the cosmic process. Bagehot was a writer who had a good deal of influence in his day; and in Physics and Politics (1872), where he discusses Progress, there is no suggestion of fatalism. In France, the chief philosophical writers who accepted Progress as a fact protested against a fatalistic interpretation (Renouvier, Cournot, Caro; and cf. L. Carrau's article on Progress in the Revue des deux Mondes (Oct. 1875)). Progress was discussed by Fiske in his Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874), vol. ii. 192 sqq. For him (p. 201) "the fundamental characteristic of social progress is the continuous weakening of selfishness and the continuous strengthening of sympathy."] Thus in the seventies and eighties of the last century the idea of Progress was becoming a general article of faith. Some might hold it in the fatalistic form that humanity moves in a desirable direction, whatever men do or may leave undone; others might believe that the future will depend largely on our own conscious efforts, but that there is nothing in the nature of things to disappoint the prospect of steady and indefinite advance. The majority did not inquire too curiously into such points of doctrine, but received it in a vague sense as a comfortable addition to their convictions. But it became a part of the general mental outlook of educated people. When Mr. Frederic Harrison delivered in 1889 at Manchester an eloquent discourse on the "New Era," in which the dominant note is "the faith in human progress in lieu of celestial rewards of the separate soul," his general argument could appeal to immensely wider circles than the Positivists whom he was specially addressing.