The history of any people will become more valuable for ascertaining the laws by which past events were governed in proportion as their movements have been least disturbed by external agencies. During the last three centuries these conditions have applied to England more than to any other country; since the action of the people has there been the least restricted by government, and has been allowed the greatest freedom of play. Government intervention is habitually restrictive, and the best legislation has been that which abrogated former restrictive legislation. Government, religion, and literature are not the causes of civilisation, but its effects. The higher religion enters only where the mind is intellectually prepared for its acceptance; elsewhere the forms may be adopted, but not the essence, as mediæval Christianity was merely an adapted paganism. Similarly, a religion imposed by authority is accepted in its form, but not necessarily in its essence. In the same way literature is valuable to a country in proportion as the population is capable of criticising and discriminating; that is, as it is intellectually prepared to select and sift the good from the bad. _II.---Civilisation in England_ It was the revival of the critical or sceptical spirit which remedied the three fundamental errors of the olden time. Where the spirit of doubt was quenched civilisation continued to be stationary. Where it was allowed comparatively free play, as in England and France, there has arisen that constantly progressive knowledge to which these two great nations owe their prosperity. In England its primary and most important consequence is the growth of religious toleration. From the time of Elizabeth it became impossible to profess religion as the avowed warrant for persecution. Hooker, at the end of her reign, rests the argument of his "Ecclesiastical Polit" on reason; and this is still more decisively the case with Chillingworth's "Religion of Protestants" not fifty years later. The double movement of scepticism had overthrown its controlling authority. In precisely the same way Boyle--perhaps the greatest of our men of science between Bacon and Newton--perpetually insists on the importance of individual experiments and the comparative unimportance of what we have received from antiquity. The clergy had lost ground; their temporary alliance with James II. was ended by the Declaration of Indulgence. But they were half-hearted in their support of the Revolution, and scepticism received a fresh encouragement from the hostility between them and the new government; and the brief rally under Queen Anne was overwhelmed by the rise of Wesleyanism. Theology was finally severed from the department both of ethics and of government.