Social forces

"The historical problems which preoccupied the philosophic historian had, by the time Gibbon composed The Decline and Fall, resolved themselves into three distinct, if interrelated, areas. The first concerned civil society. What were the forces which built it up, and what were the forces which undermined it? [...] The second concerned barbarism. Was barbarism simply the antagonist of civil society, or were there points of contact and continuity between the two? [...] The third concerned religion. What were the social and political consequences of religious belief? To what causes could the rise of any particular religion be ascribed? Which human passions, appetites and faculties were nourished by religious belief, and which did it pervert and stifle?" [D.W., xxiii-xxiv]