Chapter II: Preface: To the Revised Edition

Many reprints of this work having been issued, and translations published in various foreign languages, French, German, Russian, Polish, Servian, &c., I have been induced to revise it carefully, and to make additions wherever they seemed to be desirable. I therefore hope that it will commend itself to the continued approval of the public.

_November, 1875._

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE BY LAW.

_The subject of this Work proposed.--Its difficulty._

_Gradual Acquisition of the Idea of Natural Government by
Law.--Eventually sustained by Astronomical, Meteorological,
and Physiological Discoveries.--Illustrations from Kepler's
Laws, the Trade-winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of
Vegetable and Animal Life, Variation of Species and their
Permanence._

_Individual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and
Universal Humanity.--They exhibit Epochs of Life like his,
and, like him, are under the Control of Physical Conditions,
and therefore of Law._

_Plan of this Work.--The Intellectual History of Greece.--Its
Five characteristic Ages.--European Intellectual History._

_Grandeur of the Doctrine that the World is governed by Law._
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CHAPTER II.

OF EUROPE: ITS TOPOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY.

ITS PRIMITIVE MODES OF THOUGHT, AND THEIR PROGRESSIVE VARIATIONS,
MANIFESTED IN THE GREEK AGE OF CREDULITY.

_Description of Europe: its Topography, Meteorology, and
secular Geological Movements.--Their Effect on its
Inhabitants._

_Its Ethnology determined through its Vocabularies._

_Comparative Theology of Greece; the Stage of Sorcery, the
Anthropocentric Stage.--Becomes connected with false Geography
and Astronomy.--Heaven, the Earth, the Under World.--Origin,
continuous Variation and Progress of Greek Theology.--It
introduces Ionic Philosophy._

_Decline of Greek Theology, occasioned by the Advance of
Geography and Philosophical Criticism.--Secession of Poets,
Philosophers, Historians.--Abortive public Attempts to sustain
it.--Duration of its Decline.--Its Fall._ 23