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ESSAYS ON MODERN HISTORY

torical one,"[1] to break with the system altogether. Thirty years later, when the supremacy of Kant had long passed away, and Hegel was reigning in his stead, he too set up his philosophy of history as the crown and end of his own philosophy, and as the test of its absolute truth.[2] "It is for historical science," says his latest biographer, "to enjoy the inheritance of Hegel's philosophy."[3] In like manner, the transcendental system of Schelling resulted in a Christian philosophy of history, of which a late able writer says that by it " the antagonism of philosophy and history, proceeding from a defective notion of the first, and an utterly inadequate view of the latter, was removed."[4] So, again, the system of Krause presents a combination of philosophy and history in which their respective methods are blended together.[5] Especially since the publication of Hegel's Lectures, history has been generally considered by philosophers as belonging to their legitimate domain. And their dominion is such, that even a moderate acquaintance with the events of the past has ceased to be deemed a necessary or even a useful ingredient in the preparation of a philosophy of history. No system will confess itself so poor that it cannot reconstruct the history of the world without the help of empirical knowledge. A Pole, Cieszkowski (Prolegomena zur Historiosophie, 1838), has a physical scheme for the arrangement of historical phenomena. According to him, light is the type of Persia, mechanism of China, Athens represents dynamic electricity, Sparta static electricity. The electro-magnetic system answers to Macedon, the expansive force of heat to the Roman Empire. The

  1. Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit, p. 45.
  2. "Gewissermassen, die Probe des ganzen Systems" (Michelet, Entwickelungsgeschichte der neuesten dcutschen Philos., p. 304). "Die Wahrhafte Theodicee, die Probe von der Wahrheit des ganzen Systems" (Huber, Deutsche Vierteljahrs Schrift, 1853, ii. 50). "Die unwidersprichlichste Bewahrung des Systems" (Haym, Allgem. Encyclop., art. "Philosophic," sect. iii. vol. xxiv. 176).
  3. Haym, Hegel, etc, 466.
  4. Schaarschmidt, Entwickelungsgang der neuesten Speculation, p. 194 ; and Schelling, Werke, i. 480, 481.
  5. According to his disciples, "der harmonische Haupttheil," "die Bluthenknospe," of the system (Erdmann, Entwickelung der Speculation seit Kant, ii. 676).