It is not improbable, after the sanguine expectations which have been entertained throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, as to the part which the intellect is destined to play in human evolution, that one of the most remarkable features of the age upon which we are entering will be the disillusionment we are likely to undergo in this respect. There has been for long abroad in the minds of men, an idea, which finds constant expression (although it is not perhaps always clearly and consistently held) that this vast development in the direction of individual, economic, political, and social enfranchisement which has been taking place in our civilisation, is essentially an intellectual movement. Nothing can be more obvious, however, as soon as we begin to understand the nature of the process of evolution in progress around us, than that the moving force behind it is not the intellect, and that the development as a whole is not in any true sense an intellectual movement. Nay more, we may distinguish, with some degree of clearness, the nature of the part taken therein by the intellect. It is an important part certainly, but it is also beyond doubt a subordinate one, strictly limited and circumscribed. The intellect is employed in developing ground which has been won for it by other forces. But it would appear that it has by itself no power to occupy this ground; it has not even any power to continue to hold it after it has been won when these forces have spent and exhausted themselves.