Page:History of Freedom.djvu/640

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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

18 74 Dr. Flint was severe upon Hegel, and refused his notion that the development of liberty is the soul of history, as crude, one-sided, and misunderstood. He is more lenient no\v, and affirms that liberty occupies the final summit, that it profits by all the good that is in the world, and suffers by all the evil, that it pervades strife and inspires endeavour, that it is almost, if not altogether, the sign, and the prize, and the motive in the onward and upward advance of the race for which Christ ,vas crucified. As that refined essence which draws sustenance from all good things it is clearly understood as the product of civilisation, with its complex problems and scientific appliances, not as the elementary possession of the noble savage, \vhich has been traced so often to the primeval forest. On the other hand, if sin not only tends to impair, but does inevitably impair and hinder it, providence is excluded from its own mysterious sphere, which, as it is not the suppression of all evil and present punishment of wrong, should be the conversion of evil into an instrument to serve the higher purpose. But although Dr. Flint has come very near to Hegel and Michelet, and seemed about to elevate their teaching to a higher level and a wider view, he ends by treating it coldly, as a partial truth requiring supplement, and bids us wait until many more explorers have recorded their soundings, That, \vith the trained capacity for misunderstanding and the smouldering dissent proper to critics, I might not mislead any reader, or do less than justice to a profound though indecisive work, I should have wished to piece together the passages in which the author indicates, some\vhat faintly, the promised but withheld philosophy \vhich will crown his third or fourth volume. Anyone who compares pages 12 5, 135, 225, 226, 67 I, will understand better than I can explain it the view which is the master-key to the book.