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PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.

LECTURE I.

INTRODUCTION.

"And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; but the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." GEN., i. 2.

By philosophy of history must not be understood a series of remarks or ideas upon history, formed according to any concerted system, or train of arbitrary hypotheses attached to facts. History cannot be separated from facts, and depends entirely on reality; and thus the Philosophy of history, as it) is the spirit or idea of history, must be deduced from real historical events, from the faithful record and lively narration of facts-it must be the pure emanation of the great whole-the one connected whole of history, and for the right understanding of this connexion a clear arrangement is an essential condition and an important aid. For although this great edifice of universal history, where the conclusion at least is still wanting, is in this respect incomplete, and appears but a mighty fragment of which even particular parts are less known to us than others; yet is this edifice sufficiently advanced, and many of its great wings and members are sufficiently unfolded to our view, to enable us, by a lucid arrangement of the different periods of history, to gain a clear insight into the general plan of the whole.

It is thus my intention to render as intelligible as I possibly can, the general results and the connexion of all the past transactions in the history of the human race; to form a true judgment on the particular portions or sections of history, accord

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ing to their intrinsic nature and real value in reference to the general progress of mankind, carefully distinguishing what was injurious, what advantageous, and what indifferent; and thereby, as far as is possible to the limited perceptions of man, to comprehend in some degree that mighty whole. This perception-this comprehension-this right discernment of the great events and general results of universal history, is what might be termed a science of history; and I would have here preferred that term, were it not liable to much misconception, and might have been understood as referring more to special and learned inquiries, than the other name I have adopted to denote the nature of the present work.

If we would seize and comprehend the general outline of history, we must keep our eye steadily upon it; and must not suffer our attentions to be confused by details, or drawn off by the objects immediately surrounding us. Judging from the feelings of the present, nothing so nearly concerns our interests as the matter of peace or war; and this is natural, as, in a practical point of view they are both affairs of the highest moment; while the courageous and successful conduct of the one insures the highest degree of glory, and the solid establishment and lasting maintenance of the other, may be considered as the greatest problem of political art and human wisdom. But it is otherwise in universal history, when this is conceived in a comprehensive and enlarged spirit. Then the remotest Past, the highest antiquity, is as much entitled to our attention as the passing events of the day, or the nearest concerns of our own time.

When a war, indeed, carried on more than two thousand years ago, in which the belligerent parties have long ceased to exist, when every thing has been since changed-when a long series of historical catastrophes has intervened between that period and our own; when such a warfare, offering as it does but at best a remote analogy to the circumstances of nearer times, and consequently possessing no immediate interest, has been investigated by the mighty intellect of a Thucydides, portrayed by him in the highest style of eloquence, and unfolded to our view with the most consummate knowledge of mankind, of public life, and of the most intimate relations of Government; such a warfare then retains a permanent interest, and is a lasting source of instruction. We love to dive into

the minutest details of an event so widely removed from usand such a study is to be regarded and prized as highly useful, were it only as an exercise of historical reflection, and a school of political science. This remark will equally hold good, when the internal feuds of a less powerful state have been analysed and laid open by the acute perspicacity and delicate discrimination of a Machiavelli. And still more, perhaps, when a great system of pacification, like that which Augustus gave, or promised to give to the whole civilised world, and established for a certain period at least, has been fathomed by the searching eye of a Tacitus, and by his masterly hand delineated in its ulterior progress and remote effects; showing, as he does, how that surface, apparently so calm, concealed numberless sources of disquiet-an abyss of crime and destruction-how that evil principle in the degenerate government of Rome became more and more apparent, and under a succession of wicked rulers, broke out into paroxysms more and more fearful.

As a school of political science and historical reflection, the study of these and similar classical historical works is of inestimable advantage. But independently of this, and considered merely in themselves, all those countless battles-those endless, and even, for the greater part, useless wars, of which the long succession fills up for so many thousand years the annals of all nations, are but little atoms compared with the great whole of human destiny. The same, with a slight distinction, will hold good of so many celebrated treaties of peace in past ages, when these have lost all interest for real life and the present order of things;-treaties, which though brought about by great labour, and upheld by consummate art, were yet internally defective, and sooner or later, and often quickly enough, fell to pieces and were destroyed.

From all these descriptions of ancient wars, and treaties of peace, no longer applicable or of interest to the present world, or present order of things, historical philosophy can deduce but one, though by no means unimportant, result. It is this-that the internal discord, innate in man and in the human race, may easily and at every moment, break out into real and open strife nay, that peace itself that immutable object of high political art, when regarded from this point of view, appears to be nothing else than a war retarded or kept under by human dexte

rity; for some secret disposition-some diseased political matter, is almost ever at hand to call it into existence. In the same

way as a scientific physician regards the health of the body, or its right temperature, as a happy equipoise-a middle line not easy to be observed between two contending evils—we must ever expect in such an organic imperfection a tendency to, or the seeds of, disease in one shape or another.

Political events form but one part, and not the whole, of human history. A knowledge of details, however great and various it may be, constitutes no science in the philosophic sense of the word, for it is in the right and comprehensive conception of the whole that science consists.

As the greater part of the nine hundred millions of men on the whole surface of the earth, according to the highest estimate of a hazardous calculation, are born, live, and die, without a history of them being possible, or without their reckoning a fraction in the general history--so that the extremely small number of those called historical men, forms but a rare exception-so there are nations and countries, which in a general comparative survey of nations, serve but as a mark or evidence of some particular stage of civilisation, without of themselves holding any place in the general history of our species, or conducing to the social progress of mankind, or possessing any weight or importance in the scale of humanity.

There is a point of view, indeed, from which the matter appears under a different aspect, and is really different. To the all-seeing eye of Providence, every human life, however brief its duration, however apparently insignificant, presents a point of internal development and crisis, consequently a species of history, cognisable and visible to that Eye only, and, therefore, not entirely without an object. But this point of view belongs to another order of things, and is no longer historical-it has reference to the immortal destinies of the human soul, and the connexion of the present life with another world invisible to us. But our historical science is limited to the department of man's present existence; and in our historical inquiries we must not lose sight of this principle.

But the internal development of mind, so far as it is historical, belongs as much as the external events of politics to the department of human history, and must by no means be excluded from it. Among these rare exceptions of historical men

must be named that ancient master of human acuteness, who was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and who perhaps holds not an humbler or less important place in this exalted sphere than the conqueror himself, although this philosopher, whose genius embraced nature, the world, and life, was by his own contemporaries less honoured and celebrated than by a remote posterity. Here in our western world, and long after the kingdoms founded by the Macedonian conqueror had disappeared, and were forgotten, Aristotle for many centuries reigned the absolute lord of the Christian schools, and directed the march of human science and human speculation in the middle age. Whether he were always rightly understood and studied in the right way is another question, for here we are speaking of his overruling influence and historical importance. Nay, in later times, he has materially served the cause of the better natural philosophy founded on experience, in which he himself accomplished things so extraordinary for his age, and was originally, and for a long while, the guide and master.

The first fundamental rule of historical science and research, when by these is sought a knowledge of the general destinies of mankind, is to keep these, and every object connected with them, steadily in view, without losing ourselves in the details of special inquiries and particular facts, for the multitude and variety of these subjects is absolutely boundless; and on the ocean of historical science the main subject easily vanishes from the eye. In history, as in every brauch of mental culture, the first elementary school-instruction is not merely an important, but an essential, condition to a higher and more scientific knowledge. At first, indeed, it is merely a nomenclature of celebrated personages and events-a sketch of the great historical eras, divided according to chronological dates, or a geographical plan-which must be impressed on the memory, and which serves as a basis preparatory to that more vivid and comprehensive knowledge to be obtained in riper years. Thus this first knowledge stored up in the memory, and necessary for methodising and arranging the mass of historical learning to be afterwards acquired, is more a preparation for the study of history, than the real science of history itself. In the higher grades of academic instruction, the lessons on history must vary with each one's calling and pursuits-one course of historical reading is necessary for the theologian, another for the lawyer

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