Perhaps their downfall is not far off." To speak of a positive downfall of exact sciences was a mistake.

But we may fairly suppose that Gibbon did not contemplate anything beyond a relative change of position in the hierarchy of the sciences, by which history and politics would recover or attain to a dignity which was denied them in his day.

In one passage Gibbon shows that he had dimly foreseen the possibility of the modern inquiries into the conditions of savage life and prehistoric man.

"An Iroquois book, even were it full of absurdities, would be an invaluable treasure.

It would offer a unique example of the nature of the human mind placed in circumstances which we have never known, and influenced by manners and religious opinions, the complete opposite of ours." In this sentence Gibbon seems to call in anticipation for the researches which have since been prosecuted with so much success by eminent writers among ourselves, not to mention similar inquirers on the Continent.
But in the meantime Gibbon had entered on a career which removed him for long months from books and study.