limit--that is to say, the falling back into the abstract and pragmatic form of explanation--is also shown in the doctrine of the 'single event,' which was believed to determine at a stroke the new epoch of barbarism or of civilization. Thus at this time it was customary to assign enormous importance to the Crusades or to the Turkish occupation of Constantinople, as Fueter records, with special reference to Richardson's history. Another consequence of the same embarrassment was the slight degree of fusion attained in the various histories of culture, of customs, and of the arts that were composed it this time. The various manifestations of life were set down one after the other without any success, or even any attempt at developing them organically. Doubtless the new and vigorous historiographical tendencies of the enlightenment were then attacking other barriers opposed to them by the already mentioned lay-theological dualism, in addition to those of pragmatism and of naturalism. This lay-theology ended by negating the principle of development itself, because the judgment of the past as consisting of darkness and errors precluded any serious conception of religion, poetry, philosophy, or of primitive and bygone institutions. What did an institution of the great importance of 'divination' in primitive civilizations amount to for Voltaire in the formative process of observation and scientific deduction? The invention _du premier fripon qui rencontra un imbécile._ Or oracles, also of such importance in the life of antiquity? _Des fourberies._ To what amounted the theological struggles between Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists in connexion with the Eucharist? To the ridiculous spectacle of the Papists _who mangeaient Dieu pour pain, les luthériens du pain et Dieu, les calvinistes mangèrent le pain et ne mangèrent point Dieu._ What was the only end that could be attained by the Jansenists? Boredom: a sequence of tiresome _querelles théologiques_ and of petty querelles de plume, so that nothing remains of the writers of that time who took part in them but geometry, reasoned grammar, logic--that is to say, only what _appartient à la raison; the querelles théologiques were une maladie de plus dans l'esprit humain._ Nor does the philosophy of earlier times receive better treatment. That of Plato was nothing but _une mauvaise métaphysique,_ a tissue of arguments so bad that it seems impossible they could have been admired and added to by others yet more extravagant from century to century, until Locke was reached: Locke, _qui seul a développé l'entendement humain dans un livre où il n'y a que des vérités, et, ce qui rend l'ouvrage parfait, toutes les vérités sont claires._ In poetry, modern work was placed above ancient, the Gerusalemme above the Iliad, the Orlando above the Odyssey, Dante seems obscure and awkward, Shakespeare a barbarian not without talent. Medieval literature was beneath consideration: _On a