a 'latent process,' due to a 'latent schematism,' and a 'form' or principle of organisation. Classification does not cease: but it ceases to be an end in itself, and becomes only subordinate or auxiliary to a higher scientific end. The main theme is to construe the complete cycle of life-change and the complete organisation of life-state from the evidence pieced out and put together from the various orders, classes, and species of living creatures. And on the other side the mere tale or narrative of history, with its gossip of personalities, and its accidents of war and intrigue, tends to become insignificant in the presence of the great popular life, in its deep and subtle connexion with agencies of nature hitherto unsurmised, in its dependence upon necessities and uniformities which envelope or rather permeate and constitute the human will. It is not indeed that the force of great personalities has come to be treated as a quantity we may neglect. The force of the great leader, of the genius, of the hero, is not less admirable to the wise philosophical historian to-day than it ever was to his story-telling predecessor. But he flatters himself that he understands better, and can better take account of, the conditions which make the genius and the hero possible. Achilles still counts for more than a thousand common soldiers, and Homer himself is not merely the composite image by which a long tradition has fused into a dim pictorial unity the countless bards who sang for ages on the isles of Greece and the coasts of Ionia. Yet we feel sure that Achilles did what he did, because of the race he sprang from, the inspiration he felt around him, the companionship in body and spirit of his peers. We feel that the hero derives his strength from earth and air, from the spiritual and material substance in which he draws his breath. True, we cannot explain him, as if he and his heroisms were a mere product of mathematical and mechanical forces. But where we once recognise that behind the single visible deed and agent there is a spiritual nature--an underlying agency--which, unperceived, keeps the hearth-fire of public life burning in the celestial temple of Vesta, we can at least see that though genius is a marvel and a mystery, yet it is according to law, and no mere will-o'-the-wisp.