must accept, with all its consequences, the dictum of universal consciousness that man is free. He is not absolutely subject to, and moulded by nature. He has the power to control the circumstances by which he is surrounded--to originate new social and physical conditions--to determine his own individual and responsible character--and he can wield a mighty influence over the character of his fellow-men. Individual men, as Lycurgus, Solon, Pericles, Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon have left the impress of their own mind and character upon the political institutions of nations, and, in indirect manner, upon the character of succeeding generations of men. Homer, Plato, Cicero, Bacon, Kant, Locke, Newton, Shakspeare, Milton have left a deep and permanent impression upon the forms of thought and speech, the language and literature, the science and philosophy of nations. And inasmuch as a nation is the aggregate of individual beings endowed with spontaneity and freedom, we must grant that exterior conditions are not omnipotent in the formation of national character. Still the free causality of man is exercised within a narrow field. "There is a strictly necessitative limitation drawing an impassable boundary-line around the area of volitional freedom." The human will "however subjectively free" is often "objectively unfree;" thus a large "uniformity of volitions" is the natural consequence. ⁷ The child born in the heart of China, whilst he may, in his personal freedom, develop such traits of character as constitute his individuality, must necessarily be conformed in his language, habits, modes of thought, and religious sentiments to the spirit of his country and age. We no more expect a development of Christian thought and character in the centre of Africa, unvisited by Christian teaching, than we expect to find the climate and vegetation of New England. And we no more expect that a New England child shall be a Mohammedan, a Parsee, or a Buddhist, than that he shall have an Oriental physiognomy, and speak an Oriental language. Indeed it is impossible for a man to exist in human society without partaking in the spirit and manners of his country and his age. Thus all the individuals of a nation represent, in a greater or less degree, the spirit of the nation. They who do this most perfectly are the great men of that nation, because they are at once both the product and the impersonation of their country and their age. "We allow ourselves to think of Shakspeare, or of Raphael, or of Phidias as having accomplished their work by the power of their individual genius, but greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree of perfection which prevails widely around it, and forms the environment in which it grows. No such single mind in single contact with the facts of nature could have created a Pallas, a Madonna, or a Lear; such vast conceptions are the growth of ages, the creation of a nation's spirit; and the artist and poet, filled full with the power of that spirit, but gave it form, and nothing but form. Nor would the form itself have been attained by any isolated talent. No genius can dispense with experience.... Noble conceptions already existing, and a noble school of execution which will launch mind and hand upon their true courses, are indispensable to transcendent excellence. Shakspeare's plays were as much the offspring of the long generations who had pioneered the road for him, as the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of those of Copernicus." ⁸ The principles here enounced apply with equal force to philosophers and men of science. The philosophy of Plato was but the ripened fruit of the pregnant thoughts and seminal utterances of his predecessors,--Socrates, Anaxagoras, and Pythagoras; whilst all of them do but represent the general tendency and spirit of their country and their times. The principles of Lord Bacon's "Instauratio Magna" were incipient in the "Opus Majus" of Roger Bacon, the Franciscan friar. The sixteenth century matured the thought of the thirteenth century. The inductive method in scientific inquiry was immanent in the British mind, and the latter Bacon only gave to it a permanent form. It is true that great men have occasionally appeared on the stage of history who, like the reformers Luther and Wesley, have seemed to be in conflict with the prevailing spirit of their age and nation, but these men were the creations of a providence--that providence which, from time to time, has supernaturally interposed in the moral history of our race by corrective and remedial measures. These men were inspired and led by a spirit which descended from on high. And yet even they had their precursors and harbingers. Wyckliffe and John Huss, and Jerome of Prague are but the representatives of numbers whose names do not grace the historic page, who pioneered the way for Luther and the Reformation. And no one can read the history of that great movement of the sixteenth century without being persuaded there were thousands of Luther's predecessors and contemporaries who, like Staupitz and Erasmus, lamented the corruptions of the Church of Rome, and only needed the heroic courage of Luther to make them reformers also. Whilst, therefore, we recognize a free causal power in man, by which he determines his individual and responsible character, we are compelled to recognize the general law, that national character is mainly the result of those geographical and ethological, and political and religious conditions in which the nations have been placed in the providence of God.

Footnote 7: (return) See Dr. Wheedon's "Freedom of the Will," pp. 164, 165.

Footnote 8: (return) Froude, "Hist. of England," pp. 73, 74.

Nations, like persons, have an Individuality. They present certain characteristic marks which constitute their proper identity, and separate them from the surrounding nations of the earth; such, for example, as complexion, physiognomy, language, pursuits, customs, institutions, sentiments, ideas. The individuality of a nation is determined mainly from without, and not, like human individuality, from within. The laws of a man's personal character have their home in the soul; and the peculiarities and habits, and that conduct of life, which constitute his responsible character are, in a great degree, the consequence of his own free choice. But dwelling, as he does, in society, where he is continually influenced by the example and opinions of his neighbors; subject, as he is, to the ceaseless influence of climate, scenery, and other terrestrial conditions, the characteristics which result from these relations, and which are common to all who dwell in the same regions, and under the same institutions, constitute a national individuality. Individual character is variable under the same general conditions, national character is uniform, because it results from causes which operate alike upon all individuals.

Now, that man's complexion, his pursuits, his habits, his ideas are greatly modified by his