OassIUlia. Book PRESENTED IIY • b LECTURES UPON TUB PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. BY J6 WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, BROWN PROFESSOR IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. A N D V E R : PUBLISHED BY W. F. DRAPER. BOSTON: JOHN P. JEWETT & CO. NEW YORK : WILEY AND HALSTED. PHILADELPHIA: SMITH, ENGLISH AND CO. 1857. plfc Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by W . F. DRAPER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. «,i \tV t vavb STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BT W . F. DRAPER, ANDOVER. CONTENTS. PAGE. INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 5 LECTURE I. THE ABSTRACT IDEA OF HISTORY, 7 LECTURE II. THE NATURE, AND DEFINITION, OF SECULAR HISTORY, . 52 LECTURE III. THE NATURE, AND DEFINITION, OF CHURCH HISTORY, . 77 LECTURE IV. THE VERIFYING TEST IN CHURCH HISTORY 105 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. The substance of this book was originally written, in the winter of 1853^4, as an introduction to courses of prelections in the department of Ecclesiastical History. This will account for its prevailing reference to this department, as well as for the tone of direct address which occasionally characterizes it. At the same time, it is hoped that the work will be found to have a general reference to all species of historical inquiry, and may contribute to deepen and widen the growing interest in the most comprehensive of the sciences. Theological Seminary, Andover, \ Jan. 2, 1856. j THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. LECTURE I. THE ABSTRACT IDEA OF HISTORY. In order to the successful investigation of any sub- ject, it is necessary, first of all, to form a comprehen- sive and clear conception of its essential nature. — Without such an antecedent general apprehension, the mind is at a loss where to begin, and which way to proceed. The true idea of any object, is a species of preparatory knowledge which throws light over the whole field of inquiry, and introduces an orderly method into the whole course of examination. It is the clue which leads through the labyrinth ; the key to the problem to be solved. It may appear strange and irrational, at first glance, to require a knowledge of the intrinsic nature of that which is to be examined, in order that it may be ex- amined, and before the examination. At first sight, it may seem as if this perception of the true idea of a 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. thing, should be the result, and not the antecedent, of inquiry, and that nothing of an a priori nature should be permitted to enter into the investigations of the human mind in any department of knowledge. To require in the outset a comprehensive idea, of History e. g., and then to use this as an instrument of investi- gation, seems to invert the true order of things, and to convert ignorance into knowledge by some shorter method than that of study and reflection. But what is the matter of fact ? Does the scientific mind start off upon its inquiries in every direction, without any pre-conceived ideas as to where it is going, and what it expects to find ? Is the human understanding such a tabula rasa, that it contributes nothing of its own, towards the discovery of truth, but, like the mirror, servilely reflects all that is brought before it, without regard to reflections and distortions ? We have only to watch the movements of our minds to find that we carry with us into every field of investigation an an- tecedent idea, which gives more or less direction to our studies, and goes far to determine the result to which we come. We are not now concerned with the reasonableness or unreasonableness of this fact; we are now only alluding to it as an actual matter of fact which appears in the history of every studious and reflecting mind. Even if we deem it to be irrational THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 9 and groundless, and for this reason endeavor to do away with it in our studies, we find it to be impossible. If we begin the study of Philosophy, it is with a general conception of its nature ; and one that is con- tinually re-appearing in our philosophizing. If we com- mence the examination of Christianity itself, we find that we already have an idea of its distinctive character as a religion, which exerts a very great influence upon our inquiry into its constituent elements, and particu- larly upon our construction of its doctrines.* The demand therefore so constantly made by the Ration- alist of every century, that the mind must be entirely vacant of a priori ideas and initiating preconceptions ; in his phraseology, must be free from " prejudices ; " in order that it may make a truly scientific examination, is a demand that cannot be complied with, even if there were a disposition to do so on the part of the inquirer, and is not complied with even on the part of him who makes it. "With the origin of such guid- ing ideas we have no concern at this time. It is * This idea contains such pre-judgments as ; that Christianity is a supernatural religion ; that its author is Divine; that its truths are mysteri- ous, i, e are infinite, and therefore cannot be exhausted by the finite intelligence. Notice that these judgments are a priori ; i. e. they flow from the nature of the case. For if Christianity is a religion differing in kind from all natural religions, then the above elements are necessarily involved in the conception and theory of it. 10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. sufficient for our purpose to indicate their actual exist- ence in the human mind, and their actual influence and operation in all departments of its investigation. With the correctness of these ideas, on the contrary, we have a much closer concern ; for if they exist in spite of all efforts to be rid of them, and make them- selves visible in all the investigations of the student, and in all the products of his investigation, it is certainly of the first importance that they be true ideas ; that is, exact correspondents to the real nature of things. What then is the true idea of History with which we should commence our studies and reflections in this department of knowledge, and how may we know that it is the true idea, and therefore entitled to guide our inquiries, and shape our constructions ? The correct answer to these questions will constitute the Philosophy of History. It is now very generally conceded that, in its abstract and essential nature, History is Development, and with this we agree. The idea of an unfolding is identical with that of a history. In thinking of the one, we unavoidably think of the other, and this evinces an inward coincidence between the two conceptions. Unceasing motion, from a given point, through several stadia, to a final terminus, is a characteristic belong- THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 11 ing as inseparably to a historic process as to that of any evolution whatsoever. In bringing before our minds, the passage of an intellectual or a moral princi- ple from one degree of energy and efficiency to another, in the history of a nation, or of mankind, we unavoid- ably construe it as a continuous and connected career. The same law of organic sequence prevails within the sphere of mind and of freedom that works in the kingdom of matter and of necessity, so that terms applied to the connected events and processes of the natural world, have a strict application in the moral, and a far more significant meaning. The phrases, "principles of history," "laws of history," " ideas and germs in history," which occur so frequently in essays and treatises as to become monotonous, and which render the invention of synonymes and cir- cumlocutions one of the most difficult of rhetorical ex- pedients, all go to prove that the spontaneous concep- tion of History is that of a progressive expansion from a primitive involution. If any one doubts whether such phraseology is any- thing more than the play of the fancy, and is inclined to believe that there is no actual correspondent, to these terms, in the truth and fact of the case, let him ask himself the question : " if History has no real and solid substance, of the nature of germs, principles, ideas, 12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. laws and forces, then what substantial matter has it at all ? If these are all unreal, the mere fictions of the fancy, with no objective correspondents in that career of man on the globe which every one concedes to be a reality, and the most solemn of all, then what is the real essence of History ? " For throwing out such deeper and more vital contents as we are speaking of, there remain only the unconnected materials of names, dates, and occurrences ; a multitudinous sea of effects without causes ; an ocean of phenomena without a single supporting ground ; a chaos of atoms with no sort of connection or intermingling. A search after the truth and substance of the department, in this in- stance, as in all others, carries the mind below the surface to constituent elements and principles, so that it perceives the world of Human History to be, after its own kind, as full of germs, laws, and forces, as the globe beneath our feet ; and that the property of reality ; of forceful influential existence ; is as predi- cate of the former as of the latter. This essential substance of History is continually passing through a motive process. The germ is slowly unfolding as it is the nature of all germs to do. Egyptian wheat may sleep in the swathes and foldings of a mummy, through three thousand springs, but the purpose of its creation cannot be thwarted except by THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 13 the destruction of its germinal substance. It was created to grow, and notwithstanding this long interval of slumbering life the development begins the instant the moist earth closes over it. In like manner an idea which originally belongs to the history of humanity may be hindered in its progress, and for ages may seem to be out of existence ; yet it is none the less in existence and a reality. It is all the while a factor in the earthly career of mankind, and the historian who should throw it out of the account would misconceive and misrepresent the entire historic process. An idea of human reason, like popular liberty, e. g., may make no external appearance for whole periods, but its re- appearance, with an energy of operation heightened by its long suppression in the consciousness of nations, is the most impressive of all proofs that it has a necessary existence in human nature, and is destined to be developed. A doctrine of Divine reason, like that of justification by Christ's atonement, is a positive truth which has been lodged in the christian mind by Divine Revelation, and is destined to an universal influence, a complete development, in and through the church ; notwithstanding that some branches and ages of the church have lost it out of their religious experience. — Whatever has been inlaid either in matter or in mind by the Creator of both, is destined by Him and under 2 14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY his own superintendence to be evolved ; and of all such necessary matter, be it in natural or in moral history, we may say, that not a particle of it will be annihilated ; it will pass through the predetermined stages of an expanding process and obtain a full ex- hibition. 1. Proceeding, then, to the analytic definition of this idea of development, which enters so thoroughly into the theory and philosophy of History, the first charac- teristic that strikes our notice is the necessary connec- tion of parts. Isolation is impossible. No single part can stand alone and exist by itself. The principle of connection binds all together, so that the part exists only in and for the whole. Atoms, in the original and strict meaning of the term, are no constituents of a process of evolution, and the atomic theory can throw no light upon such a process. The atom, by the very etymology, is entirely disconnected from all besides itself. Matter has been cut down, ideally, to that infini- tesimal point at which it constitutes the very first element, and, consequently, is now out of all connec- tion, a single independent unit by itself. No such element as this, unassimilated and remaining so, can be a rudimental part in a development. Nothing that asserts an isolated existence, and obstinately refuses to enter into connections, can go into an evolution. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 15 The atomic particles of a heap of sand, e. g., can never be part or particle of a process of growth, because each exists by and for itself. A rope of sand is the symbol of disconnection. If now we test History by this first characteristic of a development, do we not find exact agreement be- tween the two conceptions ? History is a continuous line of connections. "We can no more conceive of a true break or perfect disconnection in it, than in the current of a river. Though it naturally divides into periods and ages, distinguished from each other by epochal points, yet there is no separation at these points. The epoch itself, like a living joint in the human frame, is itself a tie by which the parts are articulated together and constitute one con- tinuous organism. It is as impossible to find a real break and absolute disconnection in History, as in nature. In nature, nothing but a miracle can stop the onward flow of a stream and wall up the waters on each side of a dry space in its channel, and nothing but a new fiat of creative power could now sever the human race into two halves, each of which should be entirely separate from the other, and between which there should be no more reciprocity of connection and influence than there now is between the angelic hosts and the human race. As the Historian follows the 16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. line backwards up toward the point of beginning, he finds the succeeding linked to the preceding, civiliza- tion joining on upon civilization, arts and inven- tions clinging to arts and inventions further up the line, literatures and religions tied to preceding ones ; in short, he never comes to a point where there are no connected antecedents until he reaches the beginning of human history, where the basis for the whole pro- cess was laid by a fiat, supernatural, and creative.* 2. The second characteristic of a development is the natural connection of parts. The sequence is not arbitrary and capricious ; mere juxtaposition without any rational coherence. The two parts that are con- nected have a mutual adaptation to each other. The one was evidently intended to succeed the other, and the other evidently prepares for, and expects, the one. There is, consequently, nothing strange or whimsical in a genuine evolution, either in the sphere of nature or of spirit. Everything advances with a tranquil uniformity that precludes startling and unexpected changes, because each and every part is a preparation * Back of the creative act there is no development. History is in time solely, and pertains solely to the finite and created. It implies succession and evolution, and therefore cannot pertain to a Being who, unlike his works, is not subject to unfolding processes of any kind, but is " the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever." THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 17 for that which is to come. Any movement in nature is always impressive from the perfect serenity with which it proceeds. Be it on a small, or on a large scale, be it the blowing of a rose, or the gorgeous death of the forest after the bloom and fulness of summer, the process is as quiet as Spring, as still as Autumn. Were connection in an evolution unnatural, were it whimsical and capricious, the impression made by it would be very different from what it actually is. — That fortuitous connection of parts, of which atheism in ancient and in modern times makes so much, is incompatible with the doctrine of development. — This latter requires natural and adapted connection, and hence a presiding intelligence that sees and pre- pares the end from the beginning. It is indeed true, that the idea which we are analyzing has been em- ployed in an atheistic manner, and enters largely into all pantheistic methods. Of this we shall speak here- after, and against it, we shall endeavor to guard, when examining the limitations and applications of the idea. But even at this point in the discussion, it is very obvious, that provided the basis and germ of the evolution is not supposed to be self-originated, but is referred to the fiat of a Creator who is entirely above it, and out of it, and the absolute disposer of it ; provided 18 THE PHILOSOPHY O F HISTORY. it is regarded as a pure creation from nothing, then the naturalness of the sequences, from that initial point, furnishes one of the most convincing arguments against the doctrine of chance. Were there merely hap-hazard connection without inward coherence, there would be no evidence of an adaptive power, and an intelligent Author of the process. But seeing, as we do, in every genuine evolution, a prophetic antici- pation of the succeeding in every element of the pre- ceding, beholding, as we do, a calm, and, as it were, semi-intelligent progress from point to point, in this " thing of life," the notion of fortuity is banished at once from the mind. If now we test History by this second characteristic of a development, we again see the coincidence and identity of the two conceptions. Nothing is more- natural in its connections than History. Symmetrical gradations, expected transitions, anticipated termina- tions, appear all along its course. Nothing is abrupt and saltatory in the historic movement, but one thing follows on after another with all the ease and natural- ness of physical growth itself. There are convulsions and revolutions in the process, it is true, but they are always prepared for. They may indeed, and they often do, burst upon the notice of the living actors in them with the suddenness and crash of a thunderbolt THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 1 ! ) from a clear sky, but it is because the living actors are unthinking actors, and give no heed to the significant premonitions. The student of History however, the reflecting mind that is not so caught in this mighty stream of tendency as to be unable to rise above it and see the historic preparation, is never startled in this manner. He sees the awful preparation in the pre- ceding centuries of tyranny, of poverty, of ignorance, of irreligion. Upon his mind it is no sudden shoot- ing of a meteor from the depths of space into the totally black vault of night, but a true sun-rise. For him, " far off its coming shone." Yet the student sees only what really exists. He does not make history, but finds it ; and he finds it, even in its wildest and apparently most capricious sections, a genuine unfold- ing or series of natural connections. 3. The third characteristic of a development is the organic connection of the parts. In this we reach the summit of the series, and arrive at the most signifi- cant and fruitful property. For the connection be- tween two things may be both necessary and natural, and yet not organic. Mechanical connection is such. Take, for example, two cog wheels in a machine. — Here the parts are necessarily connected ; that is, they have no value except in relation to each other. And they are naturally connected ; that is, they are adapted 20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. by their construction to play into each other. But there is no higher bond than this merely external and mechanic one. There is connection, but no inter- connection. The term " organic," consequently, merits fuller examination than either of the others that have been employed in the analysis. (a) Perhaps no better definition of an organism, can be given, than that of Kant. As distinguished from a mechanism, he defines it as " a product in which each and every part is, reciprocally, means and cndP * If we look at the human body, for example, we find that each constituent portion must be regarded, now, as the sole end for which the whole exists, and, then again, as merely the means or instrument by which the whole exists. The flesh in one aspect of it, is the end for which the functions of respiration, circulation, secretion, digestion, and locomotion, are carried on. — In one view of them, all these great processes have for their sole object this clothing of the immortal with its mortality. And yet we see again, that the production of this tissue is itself only a means whereby these systems of respiration, circulation, digestion, and secre- tion, are themselves kept in operation. The whole body exists for the eye, as truly as the eye exists for the whole body ; for if this, or any other, member be * Urtheilskraft, § 65. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 21 maimed or mutilated, the entire vital force of the organism is at once subsidized and set to work to repair the injury. It is this reciprocity in the relation of the parts, that betokens the organic connection. — It is this existence of the part for the whole, and of the whole for the part, that sets an organism so much higher up the scale of existence than a mechanism. An organic development, consequently, be it within the sphere of nature or of mind, is one in which all the elements and agencies mutually relate to each other, and mutually influence each other. Intercom- munication, intermingling, action and re-action ; these and such like, are the terms that set our thoughts upon the trail of such a constantly shifting and changing process as that of an expanding germ. For it is be- cause the conception, which we are endeavoring to define, is so full of pliant, elastic, and interfusing, properties, that it is so difficult to fix it in language. It is because the word " development," is so allied to that other most inexplicable word " life," that a writer has done the best that can be done, if, by his approxi- mate statements, he has merely wakened the mind to an intimation of the meaning, and set it musing upon the suggestive but mysterious thought. (b) Again, this action and re-action, this intercon- nection and intermingling, implies inward and unceas- 22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. ing- motion in an organism. Whenever a development comes to a total stop it comes to a dead stop. — Movement is inseparable from the conception, and hence the adjective " progressive " is always connected with the substantive, either expressly or by ellipsis. — The notion of an incessant flux and reflux of the elements and properties, is as inseparable from the idea of an evolution, as it is incompatible with that of artificial composition. In the instance of mechani- cal production, the motion is all ab extra ; in the mind of the workman. His work, after all that his inven- tive genius has done to it, is as hard, immobile, and internally dead, as it ever was. It has in it nothing of an expansion, because the living principle by which it was originated is not in it, but in the mind of the mechanic. This, it is true, is a living thing, a living soul, but it is unable to breathe itself, as a principle of growth and formation, into its rigid, wooden or metallic product. The story of Pygmalion and his statue is still a fable. The "breathing" marble, and the " glowing " canvas are still, and ever, figures of speech. No product of finite power can be organic ; for there is no pervasive moulding of the elements, no assimilation of the rudiments, no internal stir and fu- sion, in the work of the creature. (c) Again, an organic process implies potentiality, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 23 as the basis of it. It is of importance, at this point, to direct attention to the distinction between a creation and a development, and thereby preclude the panthe- istic employment of the latter idea. A development is simply the unfolding of that which has been previ- ously folded up, and not the origination of entity from non-entity. The growth of a germ is not the creation of it, but is merely the expansion of a substance already existing. All attempts, therefore, to explain the origin of the universe by the doctrine of develop- ment or expansion, like the Indian Cosmogony, drive the mind back from point to point in a series of secon- dary evolutions, still leaving the inquiry after the primary origin and actual beginning of things un- answered. For it is not creation, but only emanation, when the world is regarded as the unfolding of an eternal potency. Such a conception as this latter, is, moreover, metaphysically absurd, for the idea of un- developed being has no rational meaning except in re- ference to the temporal and the finite. Progressive evolution within the Divine nature, would imply a career for the Deity in which He was passing from less to more perfect stages of existence, and would thus bring Him within the realm of the relative and conditioned. Latency is necessarily excluded from the Eternal One, by virtue of that absolute perfection 24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. and metaphysical self-completeness whereby his being is " without variableness or shadow of turning."* His uncreated essence is incapable of self-expanding pro- cesses, and hence the created universe must be of a secondary essence which is the pure make of his sheer fiat. To the question, therefore, which still and ever returns ; " how does this potential basis come into existence ? to what, or to whom, do these germs of future and unceasing processes owe their origin ? " the theist gives but one answer. He applies the doctrine of creation out of nothing, to all germinal substance whatsoever. For the Deity, though self-complete and incapable of development himself, has yet made that which is potential and destined to an unfolding. He has created a universe that is full of latent powers and agencies. The works of his hand not only display excellence in the very first moments of their existence, but reveal a still more marvellous excellence as they unfold and evolve their interior capacities. The whole progress of natural science is a gaze of admi- ration, and should be an anthem of adoration, towards * The whole fabric of modern Pantheism rests upon this petitioprmcipii, viz : that the doctrine of development has the same legitimate applica- tion within the sphere of the Infinite and Eternal, that it has within that of the Finite and Temporal. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 25 an Architect who has inlaid that which is still more wonderful than what appears on the surface ; who has provided in the single, instantaneous, creative, act of his omnipotence, for an evolution which is to run on under his own superintendence * through all coming ages, until stopped by the same miraculous fiat. — In this property of potentiality, thus strictly defined and distinguished, we have one of the most absolute essentials of a development. If this conception is un- real, then is that of evolution. If we cannot conceive of,, and believe in, the previous creation and deposit of a material, in order that it may be used at a future time, of the implanting of a principle which is to mani- fest itself, it may be, ages ahead, of the predetermina- tion of a process and a preparation for it long before it becomes an actuality ; if all such ideas as these are visionary, and all such thinking as this has no corres- pondent in the world of reality ; then the idea of an organic development is inconceivable and absurd. — The best argument in its favor, however, would be to throw it all away, by thinking it all away, and then * It is obvious to remark here, that at no point in its history can a created existence become self-subsistent. Hence all processes of devel- opment muft be regarded as conducted beneath a maintaining energy from God, which, in technical phrase, is Providence in distinction from Creation. The predeterminati m of the process, and the preparation for it, in the same technical phraseology is the Divine Decree. 26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. seriously ask the question, " what solid thing is now left either in the created universe of nature or of mind?" Expel the fact of potency, of latent powers and principles, from the sphere of the Created, in which alone as we have remarked above it has any applica- tion, and nothing is left but the phenomena of the instant, or a world of shadows and spectra. (d) Finally, an organic development implies, identity and sameness of original substance in all the phenomenal changes that accompany the expanding process. Those who have confounded the idea which we are defining, with that of creation, have also misapprehended it at this point. The gradual advance in an evolution from something old to something new, is not a progress to something absolutely new ; i. e., new in the sense of never having had any sort of exist- ence before. A development can never produce any- thing absolutely aboriginal. The Creator alone can do this, and he does it when by his fiat he calls the germ with all its potentiality into being. An evolu- tion cannot add an iota to the sum of created substance. It is confined, by the supernatural and creative power that called its germ into existence, to a predetermined course and task; which is simply, and purely, and exactly, to put forth what has been put in, to evolve just what has been involved. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 27 It follows, consequently, that the progressive advance and unfolding which is to be seen all along the line of a development, is simply the expansion over a wider surface of that which from the instant of its creation has existed in a more invisible and metaphysical form. The progress or gain is formal and not material, external and not internal, visible and not invisible. Whether we take a seed like the acorn, or an entity like the human race, it is evident that development can create no new primary substance, or essential principle, in either. The utmost which the vivific life in each instance can do, is to assimilate already existing ma- terials in order to its own manifestation. The last- individual oak preserves its identity of substance, and sameness of essential principle, with the first acorn, and the generations of individual men are not, so many hundred millions of repetitions of the creative act, but merely a serial exhibition of the result of the single fiat in Eden ; of the one human species, or com- mon substance of humanity, with the origin of which, the creation of man, as distinguished from his propaga- tion, commenced and terminated. For if, on the one hand, there were an annihilation and subtraction of the old aboriginal matter, or, on the other, a creation and addition of a new, there would be a departure from the archetype, and the tree would be another 28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. than the oak, and the individual would not be a true specimen of humanity. But such deviations are pre- cluded ; for this potential basis, from which the organic development starts, is the involution that contains, not only all the essential substance of the process, but also the law by which it is to be evolved and exhibited ; so that while there is unceasinsr change and constant advance in the outward manifestation, there is perfect identity and sameness in the inward essence. Passing, now, from the tangled wilderness of analy- tic definition, into the level and open fields of appli- cation and illustration ; if we test History by this third characteristic of a development, we shall see more plainly than ever, that the two conceptions agree with each other. History is certainly characterized by reciprocal action in its elements. Ideas, principles, laws, forces, events, and men, are constantly acting and reacting upon each other from the beginning to the end of a historic process. Everything influences everything. Everything receives influence from every- thing. It is impossible to make a separation between the factors, so that this interaction and intermingling shall stop at a given point. Take a single feature of Secular History, for illustration the Political Revolu tions, and see how this law of reciprocal action prevails The idea of liberty, promulgated in one nation be- THK PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 29 comes the realized fact in another, and the realized fact, again, becomes the stimulating example which wakes the slumbering idea in a third. A treatise on govern- ment by Sydney in the seventeenth century and in monarchical England, finds its realization in the eighteenth century in the American Constitution. — This concrete example repasses the Atlantic, and be- comes the mightiest of the forces that convulse the old feudal monarchy of France, and the most influen- tial of the agencies at work in Europe for the political elevation of the masses. But that treatise of Sydney itself, was not merely the propagator of influences ; it was the recipient of a most mighty influence coming down from the remote past. The currents of Greek and Roman Republicanism flowed through the Eng- lish Republican. The political brain of Plato and Aristotle, of Brutus the Consul and Brutus the Patriot, was the brain in the heart of Sydney. If we look at any of the processes in the natural world, do we find any more convincing proofs of interaction and reciprocity of agencies, than we find in the world of human society? If the terms action and reaction are not figurative in the former sphere, are they not full of the most solid meaning in the latter? And is it not the true end and aim of the student of history, to make this play of living agencies and influ- 3* 30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. ences as real to his own mind and feelings, as its cor- respondent is to the student of nature ? The modern naturalist cannot for a moment believe that nature is a mechanism, and that organism is a fiction and metaphor in this realm. A thousand treatises, each a thousand times more ingenious than that one in which Des Cartes* attempts to demonstrate that all so-called vital forces in the lower animals are in reality mechan- ical ones, and that the body of the brute is as much an artificial production as a watch, could not for an instant interrupt the sure belief of the natural philoso- pher, that the physical world exhibits in all parts of it a process of organic expansion, and that natural objects are the products of a law of life and growth. The conviction that there is an internal and not merely fanciful analogy between the worlds of nature and of mind, so that the same fundamental law of expansion prevails in both, should firmly possess the mind of the inquirer in the department of human history. — The relation between the subjective principle and the outward stimuli is precisely the same in one instance as in the other. Is there any more real reciprocal relation between the tropical Fauna or Flora, and the temperature, amount of atmospheric moisture, * "He denied the supermaterialism of animal life as many are now denying the supernaturalism of Christianity." Twesten's Dogmatik.I. 318. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 31 elevation of the land above the sea, prevailing winds, amount of sun light, geological formation, and soil, of the tropical regions ; than there is between the Celtic, Gothic, and Roman components of national character, the insular isolating residence, the influence of Greek and Roman literatures, of commerce, of the Christian religion, of the intestine wars of the Roses and the wars for foreign conquest ; between all these historical elements and agencies ; and the historical development of England ? Ought not the analysis and contemplation of this reciprocity of agencies to produce the same sense of organic connections, the same fresh feeling of a living process, and the same enthusiastic wonder, with which the naturalist exam- ines material nature ; with which a Gilbert White minutely surveys physical nature within the limits of his rural parish ; with which a Humboldt surveys the cosmos 9 * *" Those truths are always most valuable which are most historical, that is, which tell us most about the past and future states of the object to which they belong. In a tree, for instance, it is more important to give the appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs which is indi- cative of growth and life, than any particular character of leaf, or texture of bough. It is more important that we should feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping higher and higher into the sky, and be impressed with the current of life and motion which is animating every fibre, than that we should view the exact pitch of relief with which those fibres are 04, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. Again, is not History like any other organic devel- opment, characterized by an inward and unceasing movement ? Is there any stagnation or immobility in it? Seize the process of human life at any point you please, and do you not find it stirring like a force and beating like a pulse? Even the most externally motionless period has its fierce passions and intense emotions. The darkest of the Dark Ages, the more it is studied, the more is it seen to have a human interest. The most stagnant stratum of the Dead Sea undulates. It has been said that the savage has no history; that there is in this form of society only a dead monotony unenlivened by the play of human feelings and the struggle of human passions. But this is not so. — As, according to Dr. Johnson, the biography of the most unimportant individual on the globe, were thrown out against the sky. For the first truths tell us tales ahout the tree, ahout what it has been, and will be, while the last are characteristic of it only in its present state, and are in no way talkative about them- selves. Talkative facts are always more interesting and more import- ant than silent ones. So again the lines in a crag which mark its strati- fication, and how it has been washed and rounded by water, or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, because they tell more than the stains of the lichens which change year by year, and the accidental fissures of frost or decomposition ; not but that both of these are histori- cal, but historical in a less distinct manner and for shorter periods." — Modern Painters, I. chap. vi. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 33 it fully written out so that the life should appear just and fully as it was, would overflow with interest and entertainment for all men, so the real every-day life of even a savage horde would be an addition to Universal History that would waken earnest attention. Who would not eagerly peruse the history of a noma- dic Tartar tribe, if it were written with the simple and minute fidelity of a chronicle of Froissart?* Who would not even spare some of the more outwardly im- posing sections of General History, if in their place he could have a true unvarnished tale of the wanderings of one of those Scythian or Celtic races who were the first to come westward from Central Asia, the birth- place and cradle of mankind ? What a charm and a light would be thrown over the earlier history of Greece and Rome, if a veritable account of one or more branches of that great Pelasgic race ; that savage source of " the Beauty that was Greece and the Grandeur that was Rome" should be discovered among the manuscripts of a cloister? But the secret of the charm, which is thus felt in any and every section of human history, lies in the fact that there is an unceasing movement, an incessant stir and fermentation, in each and every section. The * One of the most unique and thrilling papers of De Quincey is " The flight of a Tartar Tribe." 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. ocean itself is not more unresting than the history of man. The oceanic currents are not more distinct and unmistakable than those streams of tendency which sway eastward and westward, northward and south- ward, in the migration of nations, in the rise and de- cline of civilizations, in the founding and fall of empires, in the alternations of national glory and decay. Motion, both internal and external, is the characteristic which first impresses the historical student. In passing from other domains of inquiry into this, he finds himself to be coming out from quiet vales into the region of storms; from the place of secured results and garnered products, into the place of active preparation and production. In the sphere of Poetry, there is only the still air and golden light of setting suns. In the sphere of Science, the mind is in the serene region of pure thought. But in History, the inquirer comes out into the world of agencies, actors, and actions, where everything is under motion, and, in the Baconian phrase, all "resounds like the mines." Again, does not History, like any other organic process, rest upon a basis of potentiality ? Human life is the Old in the New ; the old being in a new aspect. History does not create its wealth and variety of material as it goes along, but merely expands a THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 35 varied latency that was originated when the morning stars sang together. Potentiality meets us at every point, and accounts for the lights and shadows of the " pictured page." National differences and peculiarities, and consequently all that is unique and distinctive in the career of nations, must be referred to a provision made therefor in the day of man's creation. Compare the Rome of the age of Numa Pompilius with the Rome of the age of Augustus Caesar, and while the latter displays elements and characteristics that had lain so entirely dormant, in preceding sections of this national history,that if Rome had gone out of political existence in the struggle with the Samnite or the Carthaginian the human mind never would have known of their existence, yet would they for this reason not have been real entities ? It is indeed true, that they would not have been manifested, but would they not just as really have been rudiments in that original political germ or basis for a nation, which, whether completely unfolded or not, had a wholeness and rounded capacity of its own, because it was an integral part of the " good " and perfect creation of God, in the day that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ? " A potential existence is by no means an imaginary or fictitious one. A germ may 36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. not be permitted to run its course of evolution, and display all its marvellous inlay of elements and indi- viduals ; but it is none the less a fixed quantity by itself, and must be estimated by what it was primarily endowed with by the Creator. If a race should be stopped short in mid-career, by the same fiat that created it in the beginning, its dignity and standing in the scale of universal being would have to be de- termined by its created capacities; not by what had actually come forth, but by what had been originally put in ; by the amount of life and the quantum of varied latency that had been primarily summed up in it. It is by virtue of this potential basis that History exhibits that union of two opposite properties, perma- nence and progression, which is so baffling to the mind. It has a permanent identity and sameness, because it exhibits the same species of being and the same eternal truth in all its sections. It also presents a constant variety and change, because it shows this same human nature, and this same common verity, in new forms. Each age and period is as fresh and original in its appearance, as if it were the first in the series, and looked upon the new earth for the first time that it was ever looked upon, and lived the first human life that ever was lived. This co-inherence THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 61 and co-working of the two factors, of the Old and the New, of the Conservatism and the Progress, is the very essence of History. It is difficult, we are aware, to seize and hold both conceptions at one and the same time, as the constant debate between the man of Con- servatism and the man of Progress shows. It is easy and natural to separate what God has joined together, and to make choice of the one or of the other charac- teristic, as the key to all History and the foundation of all practical life and action. It is simpler to say that History is permanent without progress, or else that it is progressive without permanence, than to say that it is a true development and therefore both perma- nent and progressive. The extremists upon both sides have a much easier task than the one who occupies the central position between them. A simple idea is much easier to define and manage than a complex one. But it is not so fertile, so prolific, or so com- pletely true. If simplicity and facility of management were all that the philosopher has to care for, the great comprehensive ideas of science would soon disappear ; for they are neither uncomplex nor facile. " The simplest of governments," says Webster while defend- ing the excellent complexity of republicanism, " is a despotism." The simplest of theories is the theory of an extremist. 4 38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. We have now given a theoretic answer to the first of the two questions which met us in the outset, viz., What is the abstract idea of History ? by specifying the chief characteristics of a process of development, and pointing out their identity with those of an his- torical process. It is not pretended that this analysis and comparison is a complete one, and that nothing more could be said upon the subject ; that it js a perfectly clear one and could not be made more lucid. Yet no one who has ever made the attempt ; an attempt much more common now, than it was in the last century when a different intellectual method prevailed ; to treat a subject physiologically * will be hasty to complain of the lack of thoroughness, or especially of plainness. — Let any one peruse the tracts and treatises, composed by many able minds within the last twenty years, upon this general subject of progressive development, and observe their comparative vagueness, and he will be convinced that it is, intrinsically, one of the most difficult subjects to discuss, in the whole philosophical catalogue. For it implies the idea of life ; one of the most familiar, and at the same time most mysterious and baffling, of all ideas. It necessitates a physiologi- * The term is employed in its etymological meaning; to denote a method which proceeds from the doctrine, or rationale, of the intrinsic nature of an object. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 39 cal or dynamic method of treating the 'subject; a method which compels the mind, if we may so say, to a subterranean labor and examination ; a method therefore that precludes that liveliness of mental move- ment, that perfect distinctness of statement, and es- pecially that opulence of illustration and bright spark- ling diction and style, which are characteristic of a more outward mode of investigation. To trace a law of life, is a far more difficult and arduous attempt for authorship, than to draw a beautiful picture. To work the mind slowly, pertinaciously, and thoroughly, into a deep central process of development, running like a magnetic current through ages of time, winding here, thwarted there, uprearing itself and coming forth in reformations and revolutions, and then retiring down into such depths of dormancy and slumber that its re-awakening seems almost an impossibility; to treat History in this profound and dynamic manner, is far more difficult, than by the aid of a versatile mind and a lively fancy to cause a series of brilliant pictures, of dazzling dissolving views, to pass with rapidity before the mind of a rapid reader. But which method is the most fruitful and fertilizing ? Which is most sugges- tive? Which is best adapted for the foundation of a course of study and investigation ? Which is capable of an unlimited expansion, and influence upon the 40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. mind of a student? Grant that, in the beginning, both the writer and the reader feel the need of fur- ther reflection and still plainer statements, so that there is a sort of unsatisfaction in both ; yet is not this very unrest, a thorn and spur to still more pro- found and clear intuitions ? This is one great ben- efit to be derived from the adoption, and reception into the mind, of an idea like that of development. — Its meaning is not so entirely upon the surface, and so level to the most thoughtless comprehension, that he who runs may read it, and exhaust its whole sig- nificance in a twinkling. There is ever something in reserve, something still to be pondered over, something still to be more distinctly elucidated and stated. The idea is itself a seed sown in the mind, having an end- less power of germination and fructification. A seed is not so striking or so sparkling an object as a dia- mond ; it does not make such an instantaneous im- pression, and it is a thousandfold more full of mystery. But while the gem merely flickers its cold glittering flashes, generation after generation, upon the single brow of beauty or of pride, the seed is repeating itself in the harvests of a continent, in the physical comfort and thereby the general weal of a race. Easiness of immediate apprehension, distinctness and vivacity of first statement, facility of being managed, ought all THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 41 to be set second to depth, comprehensiveness of scope, richness and variety of contents, and fertility of influ- ence, when selecting an idea that is to constitute the basis of a department of knowledge, and guide the in- vestigations of a student through its whole long and wide domain. It is for this reason, and not because a more perspicacious and facile method could not be selected, that we desire in the beginning to explain so far as is possible, and to recommend, what has been termed the theory of genetic development, as the one which has most affinity with the real nature of History, and which consequently is the best organon or instrument for its investigation. The great change that has taken place, within the present century, in the way of conceiving and constructing History, is owing to the adoption, and use, of a method that was foreign to the mind and the intellectual tendencies of the eighteenth century. One only needs to compare history like that of Dr. Robertson with history like that of Dr. Arnold, or history like that of Gibbon with history like that of Niebuhr, to see that from some cause or other, a great change has come over the de- partment within fifty years. There is no improve- ment in respect to style. For who has excelled the clean purity of Robertson's diction, the elegant sim- plicity of Hume's narrative, the harmonious yet ener- 4* 42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. getic pomp of Gibbon's description ? Perhaps there is, in general, a falling off in respect to formal properties. But, on the other hand, is there not a vast improve- ment in all the material properties of historical com- position ? Is not the point from which men and events are now contemplated, far more central and commanding? Is not much more made of prevailing ideas, general tendencies, prominent individualities, in short of the germs and dynamic forces of History, than was made during the last century ? Are not the lessons of this science far more impressive and solemn now, than they were as taught in 1750 ? Is not the de- partment itself exerting an influence upon other departments, far more modifying and transforming than formerly ? In short, if History may have lost something of that elegance and transparency which characterizes a product of art, has it not gained far more of that vitality, and power of influential impres- sion, which belongs to a product of nature? The cause of this change, in the spirit and influence of the department, is traceable directly to a growing disposi- tion to regard the history of Man. as well as that of Nature, as an organic process, and consequently as subject to a law of life and growth. Indeed it is noticeable, that this change has come in contempora- neously with a corresponding change in the method THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 43 of contemplating Nature itself. As Natural Science has become more dynamic, so has History. The nat- uralist of the present day is not willing, like his pre- decessor a century ago, to regard life as the result of organization, and then to explain organization into a very curious and recondite arrangement of atomic matter. Mysterious as the principle itself may be, the modern investigator now prefers to assume a vital prin- ciple, as the origin and cause of all organization, and of all those external phenomena which were once ex- plained according to the mechanical view and theory of nature. For though he starts with a mystery which pro- bably he can never clear up, yet he thereby introduces a clearness, a consistency, a naturalness and vitality, into all the facts and phenomena of his science, which were never attained by the elder naturalists. His intellectual selfdenial in the beginning, is rewarded richly in the end. In like manner, the historian, by taking upon himself the severer task of regarding History as a process of living moral development, and of penetrating into its intricate organic connections, is in the end rewarded for his disposition to be thorough and profound, by finding the subject of his investiga- tions far more prolific and impressive than it ever was before. He is also rewarded by finding that this philosophic method, exacting as it is, in the beginning, 44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. upon the closest reflection and strictest discipline of the mind, in the end throws a clear light upon those deeper and darker portions of History, upon which not a ray of light is cast by a more superficial and easy mode of examination. Inasmuch, as the department of Church History has felt the influence of the dynamic method, much more thoroughly than other portions of the history of Man have as yet, and the Church Historian been the most successful in applying the doctrine of develop- ment to historical materials, we shall, in the remainder of this lecture, draw our illustrations from this branch of the general subject. One of the most valuable results, of the application of the idea of an organic process, is seen in that part of Ecclesiastical History which is denominated the History of Doctrine. This may be said to have come into existence since the adoption of the physiological method. It is indeed true that the more thoughtful of the ecclesiastical historians of the eighteenth cen- tury, such as Mosheim and the elder Planck, recog- nize the influence of particular doctrines, upon that course of external events to which they gave most attention ; but they usually connect the doctrine, or the truth, with some individual of strong or passionate character, from whom, more than from the truth or THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 45 doctrine, the influence upon men and things proceeds. Hence in treating of the Reformation, for example, a disproportionate weight is attached to the personal religious force and wants of a single individual like Luther, or to the personal intellectual culture and aspirations of an Erasmus ; to the undervaluation of that great scripture doctrine of justification by faith, which, together with the general religious craving of the age, in which a Luther shared so strongly and an Erasmus so feebly, was the true historic ground of the movement, the real central historic force. It is not enough to trace the processes of history to individual influence. This pragmatic method, as it has been termed, must rest upon that genetic one of which we are speaking ; for the individual is rooted in the general, and all this influence of historical char- acters has a deeper ground in historic ideas, truths, and doctrines. But this was not seen and acted upon, until the mind of the historian was led down to the doctrines themselves, as the ultimate sources and causes. The step taken by writers like Mosheim, Walch, and Planck, in sacred history, and Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, in secular, was one in advance, but was not the ultimate one. It was something valuable, to connect the external series of events and phenomena with the characters, opin- 46 T II K PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. ions, and acts of prominent individuals, but it was something invaluable, because indispensable to a truly philosophic history, to connect events, phenomena, prominent individuals themselves, together with tlie ages and great tendencies which they represented, with the great standing truths of reason and revela- tion, and the plans and purposes of that Supreme Being who is the author and revealer of all. This step was taken, when the historian began to conceive and construct the facts of history, on the method of a genetic development. He then began, as this term denotes, to trace the genesis of the process ; to seize it in its very deepest source and lowest place of origin. This necessarily compelled him to go beyond not merely the external events themselves, but also their connection with leading individuals, down to the first springs of history in the plans and pur- poses of God, and, in Church History especially, to the truths and doctrines which God has revealed in his written word, as the germ and measure of all true development. For it is plain that, so long as the historian confined himself to the external occurrences, and their comparatively superficial relation to individ- ual men, he was still at a great distance from the real causes and forces of history ; from the absolute centre and origin of its processes. Notwithstanding all THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 47 his pretensions to a philosophic treatment of the sub- ject, he was still at work in an upper stratum, and busied with secondary agencies. He could reach the ultimate foundation of the whole historic superstruc- ture, only by sinking a deeper shaft, and getting below events, and individual actions, to the revealed ideas and designs of God." For here is the origin, and this is the genesis. There is no source more ultimate than this. The historian who starts from this point, starts from the final centre. We cannot, perhaps, more appropriately conclude this enunciation of the abstract idea of development, than by directing attention, for a moment, to that Church Historian who has employed it more persist- ently, and successfully, than any other investigator, secular or ecclesiastical. The Church History of Neander,is an embodiment of the idea of development. It is organized throughout by this single thought. — And the organization is most thorough. It pervades each historic section ; the external history, the history of polity, of worship, of morality, of doctrine. Each of these sections exhibits an expanding process of evolution, either upward or downward. Each of these is reciprocally related to all the others, so that the whole, eventually, are lightly but firmly bound together into a greater organism. "VVe do not assert that the 48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. idea of the Christian Religion, as Neander conceives it in his own mind, is so exactly conformed to the New Testament representation, that the constructing principle of his history is entirely free from defective qualities. This would be saying more than can be of any uninspired mind. The most reverent admirer of this devout historian, must acknowledge that his construction of Church History is affected by sub- jective elements, that his apprehension of Christianity is sometimes unfavorably modified by the age and country in which he lived, and especially by the type of culture into which he was born and bred. But all this can be said, and should be as we believe, with- out denying the substantial correctness of the idea which impelled and guided his mind in the composi- tion of his work, or imputing to him any more material errors, than the scientific mind is always liable to. Without, therefore, entering upon any detailed criticism of Neander's conception of Christianity, which would involve a criticism of the whole work, we wish merely to allude to the remarkable perseverance, and tenacity, with which it is employed in the detec- tion, analysis, and synthesis, of the historic processes themselves. That monotony, which is complained of by a class of critics whose aesthetic feeling is stronger THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 49 than their philosophic, is the monotony of organization. The types of organic life are necessarily few. Nature herself, is but slightly varied and variegated within this sphere. It is only in the clothing of her few archety- pal forms, that she exhibits the pomp, and prodigality, of her luxuriance. It is true that Neander's method is uniform. We know beforehand what the treat- ment of each section will be. We know that each subject will be handled under the same fixed number of topics and categories ; that each mass of material, like iron in a rolling mill, will be run through the same number and sequence of grooves. But this very rigor in the use of one idea, and the prosecution of one plan, imparts, to the product result- ing from it, an interest for the thinking mind, far higher than any merely aesthetic interest can ever be, and what is still more, renders it a far more instructive and influential work for the intellect of a student, than can be originated on the other method of his- torical composition. It is for this reason, therefore, that while the history of Neander has less interest for him who is attracted chiefly by the secular aspects of Christianity, it has all the more for him who knows that its spiritual aspects are its distinguishing and essential ones. He who sees in Christianity, merely or mainly, a religion or an institute that has exerted a most 5 50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HIS TORY. favorable influence upon literature, science, and art; upon civilization, government, and the physical im- provement of mankind ; will be dissatisfied with this author's account of it. For Neander was but little, too little, interested in these civilizing, and intellectual, influences. But he who sees in Christianity, first of all and last of all, a moral and spiritual power, des- tined by its Divine Author to regenerate the inmost heart of humanity, and hence intended to affect pri- marily the eternal interests of mankind, will find this stern aesthetic indifference, and naked but lofty spirit- ualism, of the Historian, all the more imposing and impressive. For he passes through the pomps and splendors that thicken and trail along the march of Christianity, as St. Paul did through the temples and sculptures of Athens, or the porticos and triumphal arches of Rome ; with an eye too intently fixed upon more unutterable realities and more awful splendors, to be attracted, much less dazzled, by things seen and temporal. To one who seeks to know Christianity in its own living moral nature, with few or none of its secular adjuncts, the close and powerful method of Neander is exceedingly welcome, and exceedingly suggestive and fertile. And while the student of Church History is never to be a servile recipient of all the views of any mind, however learned or con- THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 51 templative, we think it may safely be said, that, from the existing literature in this department, no single work can be selected, which so well deserves as does this, to be made both a resort, and a point of departure, for his mind. While examining and pon- dering its contents, the inquirer will find himself, all along, in the very heart of Christianity, because the history is constructed out of the very idea of Chris- tianity itself; that is, in its spirit and by its light. LECTURE II. THE NATURE, AND DEFINITION, OF SECULAR HISTORY. In the previous lecture, we have confined ourselves to an analysis of the abstract idea of development, in order to reach the abstract nature of History. As a consequence, we have brought into view only the uni- versal characteristics of an expanding process, paying no regard to those particular qualities, which are dis- covered as soon as we begin to examine the several species of history that fall under the generic concep- tion. For here, as everywhere, the concrete applica- tion of a metaphysical idea, is of equal importance with its analytic enunciation. An a priori statement requires to be completed by an a posteriori verification, in order to obtain the highest scientific value and cur- rency* The principal reason why the department of * An a priori theory is worthless whenever the thought, in the mind, is not found to correspond with the thing, in nature. In this instance the theory is no S-ecopia, no seeing through and seeing around, but re- mains what it was in the start, an hypothesis or conjecture. For the THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 53 metaphysics is in such ill repute with the popular mind, on the ground of both real and imaginary defi- ciences, lies in the fact that it has not in all instances been thoroughly treated. The philosopher has been too content with conceptions in their abstract and univer- sal forms. He has been too averse to take the second step, and do the last work ; which is, after the idea has been sufficiently enucleated by logical analysis, to bring it forth from this speculative shape, and exhibit it as a concrete and working truth, or, in the phrase of Bacon, " to temper the rigor of the abstrac- tion by the softening explanation." This is in reality more difficult to accomplish, than to merely follow the laws of logical thinking, without any regard to the refractions, and reflections, and modifications, of actual processes. To follow a pure logical sequence, is no greater task for a logical mind, than it is for a vigor- Newtonian theory of gravitation, in the moment of its first conception in the mind of the thinker, was purely hypothetical, and, had not the whole subsequent course of astronomical science been a verification of it, would have been an hypothesis still, only an exploded one. The difference between the Alchemist's theory of occult qualities, and that of a true natural philosophy, does not lie in the employment of a dif- ferent mode of formation in one instance, from that used in the other, but in the fact that the first does not stand the tests of observation and application, while the last docs. Both are formed on the a priori method, but the a posteriori verification destroys in one case, and confirms in the other. _„ 54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. ous body to walk up a flight of stairs. The steps themselves, in both instances, perform most of the labor. The walker needs only to lift up his limbs and put them down, to be lifted upward, fifty or a hundred feet, into space, and the logician needs merely to follow the con- nections of an idea, to be carried through a very wide and long range of speculation. Hence the facility with which a mere logician analyzes ideas into their consti- tuent elements, and constructs systems out of them. It is more difficult, as we have remarked, to be entirely thorough, and follow an idea out into the sphere of historical reality, and thus know it in the concrete. Had this been done more often, by the metaphysical philosopher, he would have subjected truth to a more exhaustive examination, that would have precluded those misconceptions, which so often come in sub- sequently to an accurate a priori analysis and viti- ate it. The doctrine of development, in particular, has oftentimes undergone deterioration, and lost scientific properties, by being contemplated too long and exclu- sively in its abstract form. Neglecting to test and clarify it by observation, some theorists in Natural Science, come to employ the idea in a sense that is contrary to the strict results of logical analysis itself, as well as contradicted by the whole course of nature. T II B P II I L O S O P II Y OF II I S T O R Y . i )'■ ) Fastening their gaze upon the continuity of the pro- cess, they lose sight of its origin, and slide uncon- sciously into the notion of an eternal potentiality. — This necessitates the second absurd notion, of poten- tiality within potentiality, or evolution of heteroge- neous germs out of homogeneous ones. The process has now lost its primitive logical simplicity, and unity, and becomes a complex and fanciful scheme of emanations. The germ is no longer a transparent and pure, creation from nothing, but an obscure and mixed evolution from antecedent germs, and these, again, from their antecedents, and so backward end- lessly, with ever increasing vagueness and mixture, into the abyss of chaotic being. Now setting aside the valid objections that spring out of Ethics and Religion,* it is plain that an actual questioning of * That the ancient Oriental systems of Emanation, and their modern counterparts the pantheistic systems, are destructive of the first principles and distinctions of Ethics and Religion, is notorious. But that these same schemes are ruinous to true Science, is not so often considered. — Let any one, however, examine the stupendous system of Gnosticism, that sprung up in the 2d and 3d centuries, and he will be convinced, that such a conglomerate is incompatible with logical coherence and scientific 6elf-consistence. Starting from a false fundamental principle, and sub- stituting emanation for creation, every new step must be an attempt at adjustment. This introduces still more troublesome and unmanageable matter, which, again, calls for new attempts at arrangement, until an 5fi THE PHILOSOPHV OF HISTORY. Nature, for the facts in the ease, would have preserved these theorists from this corruption of the true con- ception of a development, and kept them upon the truly scientific position. Nature never exhibits the evo- lution of one specific germ from another, and the simple observation, and remembrance, of this matter of fact, would have led the wandering theorist to retrace his steps. A verification of the abstract conception itself, by an actual reference to the organic processes actually going on in nature before his eyes, would have reminded him of the scientific truth, he was beginning to forget, that mere development cannot account for the origin of any new thing ; that a germ can only protrude its own latency, and cannot inlay a foreign one. The very significant matter of fact, that one species never expands into another,* would have reminded him of the truth, which is also reached by the " high priori road " of rigorous analysis, that though a process of development can be accounted for amorphous mass of speculation is aggregated, that is totally destitute of the homogeneity, concinnity, clearness, and nicety, of Science. * The baffled anxiety with which a theorist, like the author of" The Vestiges of Creation," ransacks the history of Natural Science, to dis- cover a well authenticated instance in which a higher species is developed from a lower, is instructive, as evincing his sense of the inestimable value of such a fact, for his purposes, if such an one could be found. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 57 out of the latent potentiality at its base, this latter can be accounted for, only by recurring to the creative power of God. The careful recognition of the fact, that in rerum natura the expansion of a vegetable seed, even if carried on through all the aeons upon aeons of the Gnostic scheme, or the cycles upon cycles of the geological system, never transmutes it into the egg of animal life, would recall the attention of the speculatist to the self-evident proposition, that noth- ing can come forth, that has never been put in. The seen, and acknowledged, failure to discover any instance in which the passage from the animal to the rational soul, from the brute to the man, has been effected by the pure development of the former, would correct the vitiating metaphysics of the theorizer, and restore it to the strictly scientific and necessary state- ment, that a latency of an animal kind, cannot by mere expansion be converted into one entirely hetero- geneous, so as to become the basis of a moral and spiritual, as distinguished from an animal, history. This same vitiation of true metaphysics, and mis- apprehension of an abstract conception, is seen also within the sphere of mind, and of human history. — Theorizers here, forgetting the fact of self-will, con- found the idea of development, with that of improve- ment. There is nothing in the logical conception oi 58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. an evolving process, that warrants their assertion, that all movement in the history of a moral agent must, of necessity, be normal and upward. All that is required by the a priori definition is, that the process shall be an expanding one, but of what species, or from what basis, is still undetermined. Forgetting the fact of free will, and the possibility of defection from law attached to it by the Creator, they deal with man, as they do with the crystal or the flower, and suppose that to say he is passing through a process of devel- opment, necessarily implies that he is advancing, like " the splendor of the grass and the glory of the flower," from one degree of excellence to another.* * " Evil," says Emerson, (Essay on Swedenborg), "is good in the making. That pure malignity can exist, is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent ; it is atheism ; it is the last profanation. The divine effort is never relaxed ; the car- rion in the sun, will convert itself to grass and flowers ; and the man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on the way to all that is good and true." Extremes meet. The denial of the doctrine of human apostasy, on the ground that it is dishonorable to man, conducts very naturally to the denial of man's distinguishing and highest endowment, viz : his free will, and results in degrading human nature to the level of " carrion," and " flowers." It is sometimes asked, why God permitted sin ? Perhaps it was to show, that man is a will, and has a will. Cer- tain it is, that wherever the fact of the free and guilty fall of man is acknowledged, materializing views of man's nature do not prevail. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 59 Here, again, as in the instance of the natural philoso- pher, a single observation of a fact, staring every inquirer in the face, of an abuse of freedom, and a consequent false unfolding in human nature, would have re-impressed upon these minds the lesson which a rigorous analysis also teaches, viz : that an organic process may be downwards, as well as upwards ; one of decline and slow death, as well as of rise and bloom. The stubborn fact, of an illegitimate devel- opment going on in the very heart of humanity, and covering the whole period of human history, compels the theorizer to notice an aspect of the doctrine, he had lost sight of amidst the abstraction of Science, which is concerned with what ought to be, more than what may be, and actually is. The application of the metaphysical conception of development, to what he finds to be a stern matter of fact, preserves its scientific purity, and precision, by preventing him from surrepti- tiously throwing out its universality, and impartiality, whereby it is capable of an application to any process, legitimate or illegitimate, so it be an organic sequence, and surreptitiously narrowing it down to a particular species of process, viz : a normal one. For there is no more reason for regarding evolution as synonymous with improvement alone, than with degeneracy alone. Scientific universals are wide, and impartial. No 60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. particular truth is told, or intended to be, when it is asserted that there is a process of development going on in the world. This is granted upon all sides. On coming within the sphere of free agency, it is neces- sary, in order to any definite and valuable statement, to determine, by actual observation, w hat it is that is being expanded ; whether a primitive potentiality originated by the Creator, or a secondary one origi- nated by the creature, to either of which, the abstract conception of expansion is alike applicable. Hence, on coming down into the sphere of the con- crete, we are obliged to notice the varieties of devel- opment. In endeavoring to apply the idea, whose nature we have analyzed, to the actual career of man on the globe, we must take into account the pecu- liarity of this career. In specifying this, we exhibit the distinctive nature of Secular History, and give its definition. The ordinary, and common, history of mankind, as the observer in every age sees it going on before his eyes, differs from all other histories, of which he knows anything, by being contrary to the primary law of creation. All other existences, so far as he knows, are conformed to the law of their being, and their devel- opment is, consequently, legitimate and normal. Throughout all material nature, there is no possibility THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 61 of the contrary, and, consequently, there is an inevi- table obedience to the creative idea, and an unvary- ing expansion of the original germ. The few mon- sters, lusus natures as we call them, are very few, and do not affect the genus, or species, to which they belong. A mal-formed crystal is an isolated thing, and its formation has no effect upon the law and pro- cess, of crystallization. A body with two heads is entirely anomalous, and uncommon, and does not, in the least, modify the operation of the general law of production. Material nature proceeds undeviatingly, because, within this sphere, there is no possibility of self-will. Development here, is both ideal and uni- form. Hence, the moralist and theologian point to the perfect unfolding of the natural world, as an example, to be imitated by the voluntary spirit of man. The highest authority has set the lilies of the field before us, for our deliberate imitation ; and the poet, in his distich, has briefly repeated the same truth : " Seekest thou the highest, and the greatest ? the plants can teach it to thee. What they are involun- tarily, that be thou voluntarily." * And if we pass from nature into the realm of spirit- ual existence, we find that, with the exception of * Schiller. Das Hochste. 6 62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. man, and a portion of the angelic hosts, all voluntary beings are in allegiance to law, and their develop- ment is legitimate, and normal. For that catastrophe and fall in heaven, was scarcely a speck upon the infi- nite expanse of eternity. The idea of race does not apply to the angel, as it does to the man. We speak of the angelic hos. , but never of the angelic race. Hence the apostasy of the Son of the Morning and his followers, like the mal-formation of a crystal in the material world, was an isolated occurrence, whose effects did not extend beyond itself. Each angelic will fell for, and by, itself. Hence the general allegi- ance of the hierarchies continued, and continues,* so that we may say, notwithstanding this instance of deviation from the Divine law, that in the heavenly world, as in the natural, the development and the his- tory are legitimate, and normal. Man then stands alone ; the only unloyal race in the universe ; the only species of being which, as a unity, and a whole, has thrown itself out of the line of its true destination, and is running a false career. * * * far the greater part have kept, I see, Their station ; heaven yet populous, retains Number sufficient to possess her realms, Though wide, and this high temple to frequent With ministeries due, and solemn rites. Paradise Lost, vii. 145-149 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 63 With the possibility, and necessary conditions of such a catastrophe, we have in this discussion no concern. It is sufficient, for the purposes of the phi- losophy of Secular History, to postulate its occurrence through the abuse of human freedom, by the permis- sive will, and decree, of God. Had, then, the devel- opment of man proceeded from the primary germ, and original inlay, it would have been ideal, and per- fect. All that some theorists now say respecting the actual history of man, w r ould then have been exact, y descriptive of that normal process. Human nature would then have unfolded in all the beauty, and per- fect conformity to the creative idea, which we have seen to be characteristic of the crystal, or the flower. The spontaneous, and the natural, in human history, would then have been the ideal, and the perfect. But we know, not by an a priori method but as matter of fact, that the development of humanity did not proceed from this first, and proper, point of de- parture. The creative idea, by the Creator's permis- sion, was not realized by the free agent. The law of man's creation was not obeyed. The original, and true, historic germ was crowded out, by a second false one. The first potential basis of human history, which provided for a purer progress, and a grander evolution, than man now can conceive of, was dis- 64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. placed by a second basis, which likewise provided for a false development, and an awful history, :f not mper- naturally hindered, all along through the same endless duration. The origination of moral evil by the self-will of man, consequently, brings to view another aspect of the idea of development, and a different application of the doctrine of genetic evolution. This stubborn fact compels the speculating mind to acknowledge, what it is prone to lose sight of, viz: that so far as the abstract definition is concerned, development may be synonymous with corruption, and decline, as well as with improvement ; that the organic sequences of history may be those of decay, and death, as well as those of bloom, and life. For it displays-, for his exam- ination, another sort of germ, besides that one cre- ated by the Creator, and which He pronounced "good." It shows him a very different potentialty, from that original moral perfection with which humanity was once endowed. It enables him to understand some- thing of the meaning of free-will, and, yet more, some- thing of the mystery of self-will. For that misappre- hension of the abstract idea of development, whereby it is contracted down from its wide universality of meaning, and applicability to all organic processes whatsoever, and limited to the single part cular pro- THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 65 cess of improvement, arises from overlooking the functions and operations of free agency, which play such a part in the history of Man, and introduce such changes and varieties into it. The philosopher, at this point, as at many others, needs the instruction of the theologian. He needs to be reminded by his scientific co-laborer, that the moral power of self- determination causes alterations, and catastrophes, within the moral world, such as never appear in the world of material nature, and hence that when the theorist comes into this sphere, he must not be sur- prised if he finds archetypes departed from, and glo- rious ideals unrealized. Theology reminds philoso- phy of the fact, that although the natural and secular man is mentally rational, he is not morally so ; that though the eternal truths of right, have been inlaid in his reason, by the act of his Creator, they have been expelled from his will, by an act of his own. The theorist, contemplating man's mental constitution, finds him to be possessed of all the truths of reason. These truths are necessary, and, in their own nature, entitled to an universal dominion. Hence he hastily concludes, that they must, of themselves, prevail in the history of any being, in whose very mental struc- ture they are so thoroughly inwoven. The specu- lative maxim, " truth is mighty, and must prevail," 6* 66 T H E PHILOSO P II Y OF HISTORY. carries him to the practical conclusion, "a rational being must inevitably act out his rationality, and be rational in all respects." But the theorist for- gets, that the realization of a truth, in life and con- duct, can go forth only from the active, and emotive, side of man. The heart and will, are the vitality of the human soul, and, hence, the proper seat of growth and evolution within it.* We have already, by a rigorous definition, evinced, that a process of development, is an organic, and consequently a thoroughly vital, one. Of whichever species it may be ; be it growth in perfec- tion, or growth in corruption, be it a living life, or a living death ; as a connected and organic process, it must go on in the faculties of feeling and will, or not at all. Development, be it true or false, is the result of an active principle. If, therefore, the truths of reason and righteousness are not wrought into this part of the man, it matters not how thoroughly they may have been elaborated, by the Creator's act, into * It is a maxim of the lynx-eyed Aristotle, that " mere intellect moves nothing ; " Ziavota 5' avrrj ovSeu Kivei . Ethics, vi. 5. That radical movement and transformation must proceed from the prac- tical, in distinction from the theoretic, side of human nature, is the teach- ing of this whole paragraph, as well as of others, in this system of ethics. The theological doctrine, that no real moral change can be brought about in humanity, but by the renewal of the mil, will suggest it- self to the reader in this connection. T UK PHILOSOPHY O F II I S T R Y . 67 the stationary intellectual part of him. For there can be no flexile expansion of a truth of reason or reve- lation, unless it has been assimilated, and absorbed, into the moral and voluntary nature of man. Re- maining in its rigid intellectual form, in the pure the- oretic reason of man, a doctrine of natural, or of revealed, religion, has no more power of pliantly un- folding into feeling and conduct, than a stone has of turning into vegetable matter, merely because it has been caught, and held, in the fork of a rapidly grow- ing tree. The error of the theorist, who argues from the ideal to the real, and affirms the necessary normal development of human nature, merely because it con- tains within itself the rule and law by which it ought to unfold; this error, of regarding development as the synonyme of improvement, arises from overlooking the difference between the legislative and the execu- tive, the constitutive and the voluntary, the mental and the moral. A very considerable degree of moral light may exist, without the least degree of moral life. The rise of a respectable system of natural theology in pagan Greece and Rome, is no more a proof of a normal, or even an improving, evolution of human nature in that age and clime, than the clearest con- victions of reason, and the most poignant reproaches of conscience, in an individual, are proofs that his in- 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. ward moral life is heavenly and heaven-ward. Indeed, it is only a very loose, and inadequate, apprehension of the idea of development, that can find in that wholly speculative movement of the ancient philosophic mind, and which, moreover, even in this form, was con- fined to a very few of the more thoughtful sages, and never exerted any influence upon the individual and social life of the Greek and Roman populations ; it is, we say, a very meagre and narrow conception of a very pregnant and fertile idea, that can find, in such a restricted phenomenon, the characteristics of a great diffusive organic process, which moulds human society internally, and from the centre. Can any can- did mind say, that that " moral philosophy," which, as Bacon says, " was the heathen divinity," sustained the same inward relation to heathendom, that Chris- tianity does to Christendom ; that the system of Soc- rates was the principle of moral life for any portion of antiquity, as the system of Christ has been for the church in all ages ? On the contrary, was not the truth, as St. Paul affirms, held down in unrighteous- ness, and was not the actual spontaneous develop- ment of the old world, as contrary to the doctrines of natural, as of revealed, religion ? And, so far as the individual examples of pagan virtue are concerned, we are willing to leave the de- THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 69 cision of the question, to themselves, whether the nat- ural religion, which they apprehended in their reason and conscience, had so passed into their affections and will, and had such a vital control over their heart and character, as to constitute a normal development of human nature in their case. Read Plato, and find as full a confession, prompted by a personal conscious- ness, of the corruption and degeneracy of human nature, as ever came from uninstructed lips. Ask the wisest of heathen, if the principles of reason and righteousness, which lay in such clear outline before his mind's eye, constituted the life of his soul ; and hear the answer, that however it may have been with him in a pre-existence of which he dreamed, and however it might be with him in a future world of which he knew nothing with certainty, the existing in- ward life, the present character, and the actual on-going development, was certainly contrary to the Beautiful, the True, and the Good. The result, then, of the investigation in this lec- ture, is the further distinction of the idea of develop- ment from that of improvement, and the definition of Secular History as an abnormal but organic pro- cess. We had previously distinguished it from crea- tion, and, now, this second limitation brings us round to an exhaustive definition of an idea which is probably 70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. more potent, than any other, in forming and fixing the intellectual methods of the present generation of educated men. The history of the word is instruc- tive. The loose, and unscientific, use of this single term, has done as much as any other single cause, to introduce error into current theories of nature, of man, and of human history. The remedy is not to be found in the rejection of either the conception or the term, but in a rigorous and scientific treatment of the idea itself, by which it is made to yield up its true and exact meaning ; whereby it shall be fitted to apply equally to Heavenly and to Profane History, to pare and to corrupt evolutions, to organic processes of bloom and beauty and perfection, and to organic processes of decline, decay, and ruin. The downward tenden- cies of human nature, which constitute the substance of Secular, as distinguished from Saored, History ; the acknowledged deterioration of languages, literatures, religions, arts, sciences, and civilizations; the slow and sure decay of national vigor, and return to barbar- ism ; the unvarying decline, from public virtue to pub- lic voluptuousness ; in short, the entire history of man, so far as he is outside of supernatural influences, and unaffected by the intervention of his original Creator, though it is a self-determined and responsible process, is yet, in every part and particle, as organically con- THE PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. 71 nected, and as strict an evolution, as is that other up- ward tendency, started in the Christian Church, and ended in the eternal state, by which this same hu- manity is being restored to the heights whence it fell. But while the course of development in Secular or Profane History, presupposes a potential basis from which it proceeds, the all-important fact must be noticed, and remembered, that this is a secondary basis, and not a primary one, and that the originating author is the finite, and not the infinite, will. Under and within the permissive decree of God, sin is mail's creation ; he makes it out of nothing. For the origin of moral evil cannot be accounted for, by the expan- sion of something already in existence, any more than the origin of matter can be. Original righteousness, unfolded never so long, and intensely, will never be transmuted into original sin. The passage, from one to the other, must be by an absolutely originant act of self-will, which act, subject only to the limitation and condition, above-mentioned, of the permission of the Supreme Being, is strictly creative from nothing. The origin of sin, is the origination of a new historic germ, and not the unfolding, or modification, of an old one, and hence the necessity of a creating, in distinc- tion from a developing, energy; such as is denoted by 72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. the possibilitas peccandi attributed by the theologian to the will of the unfallen Adam. Supposing, then, the beginning of moral evil to be carefully referred to the abuse of human freedom, and keeping the process of its evolution within the same sphere of self-will in which it took its first start, we may then say, that it undergoes a development, as truly as any thing else that belongs to the history of man. If any one doubts whether this term, so often applied only in a good sense, as to be for the popular mind the synonyme of normal progress, is properly applicable to a process like that of human sinfulness, he needs only to try this process by the tests that are discriminated in the meta- physical analysis of the conception. He will find that the corruption of humanity has been as organic a sequence, from an original centre, as is to be found either in the realm of Nature, or of Spirit; that it exhibits all the characteristics of an evolution ; the necessary and natural connection of elements and prop- erties, their action and reaction, the sameness of gen- eric principle in all the individual varieties, and the unceasing motion of a constant expansion. The same rigorous application of the doctrine of development, moreover, compels us to the further po- sition, that the reversal of this illegitimate, and false, process which is going on in humanity, also necessi- THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 73 tates a creative power. For no process of mere, and strict, evolution can go behind itself, and alter the base from which it proceeds. Radical changes can- not be produced in this manner. There must be an originant energy, in order to these. The passage from holiness to sin, we have already noticed, cannot be accounted for by the doctrine of development, and neither can the passage from sin to holiness be ex- plained by the theory of education. The expulsion of a false germ, and the re-introduction of the true one, must, therefore, be accomplished by an agency that is creative, in distinction from one that is merely ex- pansive. An organic process is, by its very nature and definition, self-perpetuating, until an agency, spe- cifically different from its own, interferes. A germ of one kind cannot originate a germ of a different one, and consequently there is no natural and germhiant passage, from an illegitimate to a legitimate poten- tiality in human history, any more than there is from a vegetable to an animal species. The passage, if there be one, must be supernatural; i. e. the work of a creative, in distinction from an educing, agency, and by an instantaneous act, in distinction from a gradual process. Secular history is therefore separated from Sacred, by a chasm over which it cannot pass, except by the 7 74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. intervention of the Creator.* The abuse of human freedom, allows of no self-remedy. The Christian Religion, and the new historic process resting upon it, cannot, from the very nature of the case, and the * The query may arise in this connection, whether this creativo energy may not be in the fallen finite will itself, and thus there be no absolute necessity of the intervention of the infinite Spirit, and employ- ment of special Divine efficiency. If the human will was possessed, before its defection from Law, of a power to create moral evil, why is it not possessed, since its fall, of a power to create moral good 1 The objections to this are the following. (1) The affirmation of such a power rests, solely, upon an a priori foundation. There is no a posteriori test, and verification, that corroborates it. Fallen man is not conscious of such an originant energy to good, though he is at times conscious of its lack ; and that he never exerted it, is a well-established fact. T^his power then to originate, in distinction from develop and cultivate, holiness, if attributed to the sinful will at all, must be attributed upon other grounds than psychological and practical ones. But metaphysics unsupported by psychology, we have seen, must be conjectural merely, and consequently of a spurious order. An abstract theory, which is destitute of its concrete correspondent in the world of actual experi- ence, like the Alchemists' hypothesis of occult qualities, is destitute of scientific value. Science demands a matching of the one half, with its other half; of the a priori, with the a jiosteriori. If such be the real i elation of these two intellectual methods to each other, it follows that a position, like the one in question, which can get its support from only one of them, and this, the least practical of the two, should be rejected. (2) But in the second place, even if the position in question be held as a pure abstraction, by a dead lift of the intellect, and without any experimental corroboration, it then follows from it, that the finite will THE PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. 75 very terms of the statement, be an evolution of the apostate man. To affirm this, would be to confound development with creation. A clear and distinct con- ception, consequently, of the nature of Secular His- tory, guides the mind inevitably to the doctrine, and fact, of Revelation, if a radical change is to be intro- can be the absolute, and sole, author of holiness, as it is of sin, and that, consequently, it can establish for itself an absolute meritoriousness before God, as it can and has an absolute guiltiness. It confessedly has the power of creating moral evil out of nothing, without the influence and co-operation of the Divine Spirit, so that its demerit is absolute, and its damnation eternal, in case it uses this power; and if it is capable of originating moral good, in the same unassisted manner, then a cor- respondent absoluteness of merit would be established upon this side. But no finite will, not even that of the unfallen angels, can take the total merit of holiness to itself, as the fallen will must take the total demerit of sinfulness. It is only on the side of moral evil, that the will of the creature can act without influence and assistance from the Creator, because it is only on this side, that it can act in opposition to Him. — While, therefore, man by the permission of the Supreme, and not with- out it, can abuse his free agency, and establish a self-derived, and there- fore absolute, criminality, he can never, by the use of free agency, establish a self-derived, and therefore absolute, worthiness. If then, the very relationship of all moral good to the Holy Spirit, is that of depen- dence, to such a degree that the doctrine of its absolute origination, 01 creation from nothing, is inapplicable even to the unfallen finite spirit, much more must this doctrine be excluded, in the instance of the apostate will. The theory of a strictly originant energy in the soul of man, can, consequently, apply only to moral evil. 76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. duced. No new order of history can possibly begin, if the existing movement and expansion are simply left to themselves. An absolutely originant and cre- ative power must be called in, to reverse the process, and give it an upward instead of a downward, direction. LECTURE III. THE NATURE, AND DEFINITION, OF CHURCH HISTORY. In explaining and applying the idea of development, we have arrived at the nature of History in the abstract, and of that specific concrete form which is denominated Profane, or Secular. We have now to make a third application of the idea to the history of Christianity. Church History we define to be, the restoring of the true development of the human spirit, by the supernatural agency of its Creator. The doctrine of evolution is now to be applied to that gradual process of recovery from the apostasy of his will, which regenerated man is passing through, here on earth, as a member of the spiritual kingdom of Christ. We shall find this to be a series, and sequence, as organic as any that have passed before our review, or that we can conceive of. The founder of Christianity Him- self, so describes it, when He says that " The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field ; which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown it is the V 78 THE PHILOSOPHY "OF HISTORY. greatest among herbs, and becoraeth a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof ;" when He says, again, that "the kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." * In these parables, two of the most tho- rough and inward processes in nature, viz : those of germination and fermentation, are chosen by our Lord to indicate the real nature of his religion. And no one can study the illustrations, which He so frequently employs, in order to give a clear conception of his religion as it works in the individual soul, and in the world at large, without being convinced that it is, in its own sphere and kind, as much of the nature of a living principle, as the breath of life in the nostrils. — For these illustrations are almost entirely drawn from the world of animated nature, and thereby evince that the Author of nature and of grace knows, that the vitality of the one best symbolizes and explains the vitality of the other. But if it was of the first importance, in the previous lectures, to direct attention to the fact, that the power which originates the basis of any living process is a creative one, it is certainly so in the present instance. This free, and fresh, unfolding of the Christian life, in * Matthew xin. 31—33. T II M PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. 79 the midst of the declining processes of Secular History, as was indicated in the close of the last lecture, can- not be accounted for, by any germs or forces lying undeveloped in the heart of the secular man. Mere expansion, forever and forevermore, would only display a more thoroughly intense, and concentrated, corrup- tion of human nature. We are, consequently, once more driven to the Supernatural and Divine, if any radical change in humanity, and any new species of history, is to be introduced. As Secular History is the unfolding of the fallen nature of man, left to its own spontaneity, so Sacred History is the develop- ment of his regenerated nature, under the continued influence of the power that first, and instantaneously, effected the change. The»first question, consequently, that is to be answered here, relates to this power itself. What, then, is that supernatural Power, which begins, carries forward, and perfects, that new process of development in human nature, which constitutes the sum and substance of Church History ? In answering this question, we necessarily describe, by implication, the nature of this species, and obtain a clue to the whole process itself. Speaking generally, the power which begins, per- petuates, and completes, the restoration of the true unfolding of humanity, is Divine Revelation. The 80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. term is taken in its most comprehensive moaning, to denote the entire special communication which God has made to man. In this generic form, it subdivides into two main branches ; (1) The revelation of Truth : (2) The dispensation of the Spirit. From the fall in Eden, down to the death of the last of the Apostles, God, through the medium of inspiration, at sundry times and in divers manners, has imparted to the mind of man a body of knowledge, the purpose of which is to enlighten his darkened understanding respecting his origin, fall, actual char- acter, religious necessities and the divine method of meeting them. This revealed truth has been pre- served by special Providence, and is now, an out- ward, fixed, written revelation. Again, parallel with this species of Divine commu- nication, another has been made, viz : a dispensation of direct spiritual influence. The purpose of this second form of the Divine manifestation, is to renew and sanctify the human soul. The function of the first, is to enlighten, as that of the second, is to enliven. These two forms of God's supernatural self-revelation are co-ordinate, and necessary to each other's success; and hence the dispensation of spiritual influence has accompanied that of truth, in all ages of the Church from the very beginning. For although the degree THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 81 and e entof this influence, was greatly augmented after the ascension of Christ, yet it would be as incor- rect to affirm that the kind, the fact itself of direct divine efficiency upon the human soul, did not exist in the Patriarchal and Jewish churches, as it would to assert that there was no revelation of truth from God, previous to the New Testament economy, because the disclosures of this latter were so much fuller than those of its antecedent. Revelation, then, in this generic sense, is a unity and a continuity. So far as it is a communication of Truth, it began with the promise in Eden, and ended with the glowing invitation of the beloved disciple of the Incarnate Word, who was also the Jehovah of the Patriarchs and Prophets, addressed to all men without distinction, to take the water of life freely. So far as it is a communication of the Spirit, it commenced with the regeneration of the fallen pair, and has continued, through all ages, to be the efficient agency in applying the written revelation. Unlike the communication of the Word, that of the Spirit must continue to the end of the world ; and yet the permanent co-ordination, and mutual necessity, of each, will be seen in the fact, that the finished revela- tion of Truth, the concluded canon of Scripture, will be employed to the end of time, by the Holy Ghost, 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY. as his own, and only, instrument of human renova- tion. We have, then, in this total, generic, Revelation from God, the originant power in Church History. — The foundation of Secular History, is the human mind and human power, under the merely ordinary, maintaining, agency of Divine Providence; that of Sacred History, is the Divine mind and Divine power, exerting themselves with an extraordinary and creative energy. Supernatural communication from the Deity, is the great objective force in this species of human history; the foundation and principle of the restored normal development of humanity. This revelation of Himself on the part of God, entering into the midst and mass of mankind, selects out a portion by a sovereign act,* regenerates, and moulds, it into a body by Itself, separate from the world though existing in it. This body is therefore as truly organized, and * The fall of man is generic, and hence all men are fallen ; the redemption of man is individual, and electing, and consequently only a portion are saved. A catastrophe, like spiritual apostasy, occurring at a point in human history when humanity was a unit, and a unity, affects the whole, indiscriminately, and without exception; but when man has passed out of this form of existence, into that of a series, and succession, of individuals, it is plain that the principle of individualism must govern his restoration, and that redemption, consequently, cannot be generic and universal. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. S3 organic, as that still larger body which is denominated the race, or that still smaller body which is denomi- nated the state. It exhibits a process possessing all the properties of an expanding germ, and has a his- tory which is vitally connected, and reciprocally related, from beginning to end. We pass, now, to consider the characteristics of this process of restoring the true development of human nature, in order to obtain a yet fuller appre- hension of the distinctive peculiarities of Church History. 1. Observe, first, that the development of regenerate man, here upon earth, is only imperfectly normal. It differs from what it would have been, had human nature unfolded from the original germ, without any fall, or deviation from the prescribed career, by exhibit- ing a mixture of true and false elements. The church on earth, is not perfect. Its career contains sections of corruption, decay, decline ; characteristics that can- not belong to a perfect process ; elements that do nol belong to Church History in its narrower sense, of denoting only what ought to be the process, consider- ing the perfection of the germ from which it proceeds. For inasmuch as the potential basis, in this instance, is the perfect Revelation of God, the development that proceeds should upon abstract principles be an entirely 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. perfect one also. Since the inward life is supernat- ural and divine, the manifestation ought to be so likewise, and entirely unmixed with foreign and false elements. But the actual history of the Church, does not thus exactly conform to this its ideal. It only approximates to it, and hence the restoring of the true development of humanity, is not that pure and spotless process, which the history of man was originally intended to exhibit, and which it would have, presented, had the first divinely designed unfolding taken place. The history of the Christian Church, though vastly different from that of the secular world, though different in kind from it, is by no means that perfectly serene and beautiful evolution which is going on in the heavenly world. Church History, consequently, as we actually find it, exhibits a complex appearance, a double move- ment. It is both the expansion of a true, and the de- struction of a false, evolution. As, in the instance of the individual Christian, the career consists of a double activity, the living unto righteousness and the dying unto sin, so in the instance of the Church, the entire history consists of the growth of the spiritual and holy, and the resistance of the natural and sinful. The fight between the flesh and the spirit, in the sin- THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 85 gle believer, is both a part, and a symbol, of that great contest between two opposing principles, which constitutes the charm of Church History, and renders it, for the contemplative mind, by far the most inter- esting, as it is the most important, part of the Univer- sal History of man on the globe. Hence, although we pass into the sphere of the Su- pernatural, into the midst of supernatural ideas, germs, and forces, on passing from Secular to Sacred History, we yet by no means go into a world of calm. We enter a world of thicker moral storm, and of hot- ter mental conflict, than is to be found in any sec- tion, or in the whole range, of Secular History. But there is this great difference : the storm is destined to become an eternal calm, and the conflict to end in an eternal triumph. This complexity, in the process, is destined to become a simple unity, and this antago- nism a perfect harmony. The dualism, in the now imperfectly normal history, is ultimately to vanish, and God is to be all in all. But so long as the church is militant, and until it enters upon its eternal heavenly career, it cannot exhibit that unmixed, and pure, pro- cess of holy life and growth, which the history of man was originally intended to be. The secondary restor- ing of a normal development is not, like the primary unfolding, a tranquil and unhindered process ; and this 8 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. is the difference between the history of an unfallen, and that of a regenerate, spirit. 2. Notice, in the second place, that the develop- ment in Church History is not symmetrical. We see the same lack of entire harmony, in the life of the church, that we do in that of the individual believer. No christian biography exhibits a perfect proportion in the features of the religious character, or a perfect blending of all the elements of the christian expe- rience. The man is either too contemplative, or too practical, too vehement, or too tranquil. There is but one individual religious life, that is completely symmetrical, and that is the life of the Divine found- er, and exemplar, of Christianity. There are, indeed, different degrees of approximation to this ideal sym- metry. Some characters are much more proportion- ate, and beautiful, than others, but there is not a sin- gle one of them all, that is so exactly conformed to the Divine model, as to be an exact reproduction of it. Ullmann speaks of a point in religion, beyond which any further improvement is, not only impossi- ble but, inconceivable. He describes it, as being that completed oneness of the human soul with God, in which the former is determined in all its movements, and moulded in all its experiences, by the latter, and yet feels that this determination, and moulding by the THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 87 Divine, is no pantheistic absorption, nor external com- pulsion, but its own most free, and personal, self-de- termination, and self-formation.* But no christian biography discloses such a perfect christian conscious- ness as this. The holiest saints oit earth complain of inward conflict and an interest separate from God, mourn over a part of their experience, as that of in- dwelling sin, and confess, that even on the holy side, there is too much that is ill-balanced, and dispropor- tionate. Not one of them can apply to himself, in their highest unqualified sense, these words of St. Paul, " I live, and yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Not one of them has been a perfect representative, in his earthly life, as he will be in his heavenly, of the symmetrical holiness of Jesus Christ. Precisely the same is seen in the larger sphere of the Church ; for the individual life is the miniature of the general, the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm. As we trace the historic development along down the ages and generations of believers, we rind the same, greater or less, appoximation to symmetry, but never absolute proportion. If we look at the history of Christianity upon its practical side, we find it an imperfectly symmetrical * Studien und Kritiken, 1840. p. 48. 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. process. There are indications in the Apostolic epis- tles, themselves, that the gushing love, and glowing zeal, of the Apostolic church, sometimes passed over into an extreme, that injured the experience. The strong side of the character of the early Christians is their vivid life and feeling, and not a discriminating knowledge of the christian system, or of human nature at large. They apprehended truth chiefly in the way of feeling and experience, and expected to find their own warm affection for it, in every one who professed dis- cipleship. Hence their liability to be deceived by false teachers, and their readiness to be led astray by false doctrine ; traits to which the Apostolic epistles often allude, and against which they seek to guard, by a more thorough instruction of this glowing love, and cautious guidance of this ardent zeal. Paul, speaking to the Roman church, of those who by good words and fair speeches would deceive the hearts of the sim- ple, (afcatccov, the artless and guileless good), adds, " I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil."* In writing to the Corinthian church, he enjoins it upon them not to be children in understanding ; in malice they might be children, utterly unacquainted with any such thing, but in un- * Romans, xvi. 18, 19. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 89 derstanding they must be men.* The frequent warn- ings, against false teachers and doctrine, in the epis- tles of John, we need not specify. So liable was the guileless simplicity, and pure love, of the Apostolic church, to be imposed upon ; so defective was this first form of the christian experience, on the side of knowledge ; that the Head of the church, made up for the deficiency, and protected his people by a special Charism, or miraculous gift, viz : the power of discern- ing spirits, of reading the inward and real character of pretended teachers of Christianity. When we pass from this first age, to a succeeding one, like that between Constantine and Hildebrand, or, still more, like that between Hildebrand and the Reformation, we find the christian character defec- tive in just the opposite respect. Speaking compara- tively, as we always must when comparing historic periods with each other, we may say, that the sim- plicity and love have been lost in the extreme of knowledge and discrimination. The adoption of Christianity by the temporal power, secularized it, and while the first Christians were too ignorant of men and things, the Grecian-Roman, and the Roman- Catholic, church knew them too well, for the guile- * 1 Corinthians, xiv. 20. 00 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOftV. lessness and simple love of a symmetrical christian character. They obeyed the first half of our Lord's injunction, but not the last. They were wise as serpents, but were not harmless as doves. If again we look at the historical development of Christianity, on the theoretic side, as a system of doctrines, we find the same defect in the process. — Some ages undervalue knowledge altogether, and exhibit little or no scientific interest of any kind. - — Others are almost exclusively speculative. It is as impossible to find an age, as it is an individual, in whom