 original history. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction to The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Translated by J. Sibri. Introduction. The subject of this course of lectures is the philosophical history of the world. And by this must be understood not a collection of general observations respecting it suggested by the study of its records and proposed to be illustrated by its facts, but universal history itself. To gain a clear idea of the outset of the nature of our task, it seems necessary to begin with an examination of the other methods of treating history. The various methods may be ranged under three heads. First, original history. Second, reflective history. And third, philosophical history. One. Of the first kind, the mention of one or two distinguished names will furnish a definite type. To this category belong Herodotus, Thucydides, and other historians of the same order, whose descriptions are for the most part limited to deeds, events, and states of society, which they had before their eyes and whose spirit they shared. They simply transferred what was passing in the world around them to the realm of representative intellect. An external phenomenon is thus translated into an internal conception. In the same way the poet operates upon the material supplied him by his emotions, projecting it into an image for the concept of faculty. These historians did, it is true, find statements and narratives of other men ready to hand. One person cannot be an eye and ear witness of everything, but they make use of such aids only as the poet does of that heritage of an already formed language, to which he owes so much. Merely as an ingredient. Historiographers bind together the fleeting elements of story and treasure them up for immortality in the temple of Namasini. Legends, ballad stories, traditions must be excluded from such original history. These are but dim and hazy forms of historical apprehension, and therefore belong to nations whose intelligence is but half-awakened. Here, on the contrary, we have to do with people fully conscious of what they were and what they were about. The domain of reality, actually seen or capable of being so, affords a very different basis in point of firmness from that fugitive and shadowy element in which were engendered those legends and poetic dreams whose historical prestige vanishes as soon as nations have attained a mature individuality. Such original historians then change the events, the deeds and the states of society with which they are conversant into an object for the concept of faculty. The narratives they leave us cannot therefore be very comprehensive in their range. Herodotus, Thucydides, Guiciardini may be taken as fairer samples of the class in this respect. What is present and living in their environment is their proper material. The influences that have formed the writer are identical with those which have molded the events that constitute the matter of his history. The author's spirit and that of the actions he narrates is one and the same. He describes scenes in which he himself has been an actor, or at any rate an interested spectator. It is short periods of time, individual shapes of persons and occurrences, single unreflected traits of which he makes his picture. And his aim is nothing more than a presentation to posterity and image of events, as clear as that which he himself possessed in virtue of personal observation or lifelike descriptions. Reflections are none of his business, for he lives in the spirit of his subject. He has not attained an elevation above it. If, as in Caesar's case, he belongs to the exalted rank of generals or statesmen, it is the prosecution of his own aims that constitutes the history. Such speeches as we find in Thucydides, for example, of which we can positively assert that they are not Bonafide reports. It would seem to make against our statement that a historian of his class presents us no reflected picture, that persons and people appear in his works in propria persona. Speeches that must be allowed are veritable transactions in the human common wealth, in fact very gravely influential transactions. It is indeed often said such and such things are only talk by way of demonstrating their harmlessness. That for which this excuse is brought may be mere talk, and talk enjoys the important privilege of being harmless. But addresses of peoples to peoples, or orations directed to nations and to princes, are integrant constituents of history, granted such orations as those of Pericles, the most profoundly accomplished genuine noble statesmen, were elaborated by Thucydides. It must yet be maintained that they were not foreign to the character of the speaker. In the oration and question these men proclaimed the maxims adopted by their countrymen, and which formed their own character. They record their views of their political relations, and of their moral and spiritual nature, and the principle of their designs and conduct. What the historian puts into their mouths is no superstitious system of ideas, but an uncorrupted transcript of their intellectual and moral habitudes. Of these historians, whom we must make thoroughly our own, with whom we must linger long if we would live with their respective nations, and enter deeply into their spirit. Of these historians, to whose pages we may turn not for the purpose of erudition merely, but view to deep and genuine enjoyment, there are fewer than might be imagined. Herodotus the father, that is, the founder of history, and Thucydides have been already mentioned. Xenophon's retreat of the Ten Thousand is a work equally original. Caesar's commentaries are the simple masterpiece of a mighty spirit. Among the ancients these analysts were necessarily great captains and statesmen. In the Middle Ages, if we accept the bishops who were placed in the very center of the political world, the monks monopolized this category as naive chroniclers who were as decidedly isolated from active life as those elder analysts had been connected with it. In modern times the relations are entirely altered. Our culture is essentially comprehensive and immediately changes all events into historical representations. Belonging to the class in question, we have vivid, simple, clear narrations, especially of military transactions, which might fairly take their place with those of Caesar. Enrichness of matter and fullness of detail as regards strategic appliances and attendant circumstances they are even more instructive. The French memoirs also fall under this category. In many cases these are written by Man of Mark, though relating to affairs of little note. They not infrequently contain a large proportion of anecdotal matter, so that the ground they occupy is narrow and trivial. Yet they are often veritable masterpieces in history as those of Cardinal Retz, which in fact trench on a larger historical field. In Germany such masters are rare. Frederick the Great, Histoire des Montons, is an illustrious exception. Writers of this order must occupy an elevated position, only from such a position is it possible to take an extensive view of affairs to see everything. This is out of the question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world through a miserable cranny. And original history. This recording is in the public domain. Reflective history. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction to The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Two. Reflective history. The second kind of history we may call the reflective. It is history whose mode of representation is not really confined by the limits of the time to which it relates, but whose spirit transcends the present. In this second order strongly marked variety of species may be distinguished. First. It is the aim of the investigator to gain a view of the entire history of a people or of a country or of the world. In short, what we call universal history. In this case the working up of the historical material is the main point. The workman approaches his task with his own spirit. A spirit distinct from that of the element he is to manipulate. Here a very important consideration will be the principles to which the author refers, the bearing and motives of the actions and events which he describes and those which determine the form of his narrative. Among us Germans this reflective treatment and the display of ingenuity which it occasions assume a manifold variety of phases. Every writer of history proposes to himself an original method. The English and French confess to general principles of historical composition. Their standpoint is more that of cosmopolitan or of national culture. Among us each labor is to invent a purely individual point of view. Instead of writing history we are always beating our brains to discover how history ought to be written. This first kind of reflective history is most nearly akin to the preceding when it has no farther aim than to present the annals of a country complete. Such compilations, among which may be reckoned the works of Livy, Theodorus Johannes von Müller's History of Switzerland are, if well performed, highly meritorious. Among the best of the kind may be reckoned such analysts as approach those of the first class who give so vivid a transcript of events that the reader may well fancy himself listening to contemporaries and eyewitnesses. But it often happens that the individuality of tone which must characterize a writer belonging to a different culture is not modified in accordance with the periods such a record must traverse. The spirit of the writer is quite other than that of the times of which he treats. Thus Livy puts into the mouths of the old Roman kings, consuls and generals such orations as would be delivered by an accomplished advocate of the Livyian era and which strikingly contrast with the genuine traditions of Roman antiquity. For example, the fable of Menenius Agrippa. In the same way he gives us descriptions of battles as if he had been an actual spectator but whose features would serve well enough for battles in any period and whose distinctness contrasts on the other hand with the want of connection and the inconsistency that prevail elsewhere even in his treatment of chief points of interest. The difference between such a compiler and an original historian may be best seen by comparing Polybius himself with the style in which Livy uses expands and abridges his annals in those period of which Polybius's account has been preserved. Johann von Miller has given a stiff, formal, pedantic aspect of history in the endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he describes. We much prefer the narratives we find in old Trudy. All is more naive and natural than it appears in the garb of a fictitious and affected archaism. A history which aspires to traverse long periods of time or to be universal must indeed forego the attempt to give individual representations of the past as it actually existed. It must foreshorten its pictures by abstractions, and this includes not merely the omission of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that thought is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a great victory, a siege no longer maintains its original proportions, but is put off with a bare mention. When Livy, for example, tells us of the wars with the Volsky, we sometimes have the brief announcement. This year, war was carried on with the Volsky. Second, a second species of reflective history is what we might call the pragmatical. When we have to deal with the past and occupy ourselves with a remote world, a present rises into being for the mind, produced by its own activity as the reward of its labor. The occurrences are indeed various, but the idea which pervades them, their deeper import and connection, is one. This takes the occurrence out of the category of the past and makes it virtually present. Pragmatical or didactic reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and indefeasibly of the present, and quicken the annals of the dead past with the life of today. Whether indeed such reflections are truly interesting and enlivening depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral reflections must here be specially noted. The moral teaching expected from history, which latter has not infrequently been treated with a direct view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate the soul and are applicable in the moral instructions of children for impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of peoples and states, their interests, relations, and the complicated issue of their affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, statesmen, nations, are want to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the present. Looked at in this light nothing can be shallower than the oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French Revolution. Nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and that of our times. Johannes von Müller in his universal history as also in his history of Switzerland had such moral aims in view. He designed to prepare a body of political doctrines for the instruction of princes, governments, and peoples. He formed a special collection of doctrines and reflections frequently giving us, in his correspondence, the exact number of apathems which he had compiled in a week. But he cannot reckon this part of his labor as among the best that he accomplished. It is only a thorough liberal comprehensive view of historical relations, such for example as we find in Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, that can give truth and interest to reflections of this order. One reflective history therefore supersedes another. The materials are patent to every writer. Each is likely enough to believe himself capable of arranging and manipulating them, and we may expect that each will insist upon his own spirit as that of the age in question. Disgusted by such reflective histories, readers have often returned with pleasure to a narrative adopting no particular point of view. These certainly have their value, but for the most part they offer only material for history. We Germans are content with such. The French, on the other hand, display great genius in reanimating bygone times and in bringing the past to bear upon the present conditions of things. Third, the third form of reflective history is the critical. This deserves mention as preeminently the mode of treating history now current in Germany. It is not history itself that is here presented. We might more properly designate it as a history of history, a criticism of historical narratives and an investigation of their truth and credibility. Its peculiarity and point of fact and of intention consists in the acuteness with which the writer exhorts something from the records which was not in the matters recorded. The French have given as much that is profound and judicious in this class of composition, but they have not endeavored to pass a merely critical procedure for substantial history. They have duly presented their judgments in the form of critical treatises. Among us the so-called higher criticism which reigns supreme in the domain of philology has also taken possession of our historical literature. This higher criticism has been the pretext for introducing all the anti-historical monstrosities that a vain imagination could suggest. Here we have the other method of making the past a living reality, putting subjective fancies in the place of historical data, fancies whose merits is measured by their boldness, that is, the scantiness of the particulars on which they are based, and the peremptoriness with which they contravene the best established facts of history. Fourth, the last species of reflective history announces its fragmentary character on the very face of it. It adopts an abstract position, yet since it takes general points of view, for example, as the history of art, of law, of religion, it forms a transition to the philosophical history of the world. In our time this form of the history of ideas has been more developed and brought into notice. Such branches of national life stand in close relation to the entire complex of a people's annals, and the question of chief importance in relation to our subject is whether the connection of the whole is exhibited in its truth and reality, or referred to merely external relations. In the latter case, these important phenomena, art, law, religion, etc., appear as purely accidental national peculiarities. It must be remarked that when reflective history has advanced to the adoption of general points of view, if the position taken is a true one, these are found to constitute, not merely external thread, a superficial series, but are the inward guiding soul of the occurrences and actions that occupy a nation's annals. Four, like the soul conductor Mercury, the idea is in truth the leader of peoples and of the world, and spirit. The rational and necessitated will of that conductor is and has been the director of the events of the world's history. To become acquainted with spirit in this, its office of guidance, is the object of our present undertaking. This brings us to three. The third kind of history, the philosophical and reflective history. This recording is in the public domain. Philosophical history. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction to The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Three, philosophical history. No explanation was needed of the two previous classes. Their nature was self-evident. It is otherwise with this last, which certainly seems to require an exposition or a justification. The most general definition that can be given is that the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it. Thought is indeed essential to humanity. It is this that distinguishes us from the brutes. In sensations, cognition, and intellect, in our instincts and volitions, as far as they are truly human, thought is an invariable element. To insist upon thought in this connection with history may, however, appear unsatisfactory. In this science it would seem as if thought must be subordinate to what is given to the realities of fact, that this is its basis and guide, while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas without reference to actuality. Approaching history thus prepossessed. Speculation might be expected to treat it as a mere passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it as the phrase is a priori. But as it is the business of history simply to adopt into its records what is and has been, actual occurrences and transactions, and since it remains true to its character and proportion as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in philosophy a process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer. This contradiction and the charge consequent brought against speculation shall be explained and confuted. We do not, however, propose to correct the innumerable special misrepresentations, trite or novel, that are current, respecting the aims, the interests, and the modes of treating history in its relation to philosophy. The only thought which philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of history is the simple conception of reason. That reason is the sovereign of the world, that the history of the world therefore presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is a hypothesis in the domain of history as such, in that of philosophy it is no hypothesis. It is there approved by speculative cognition that reason, and this term may here suffice us without investigating the relations sustained by the universe to the Divine Being, is substance, as well as infinite power. Its own infinite material underlying all the natural and spiritual life which it originates as also the infinite form, that which sets this material in motion. On the one hand reason is the substance of the universe, namely, that by which and in which all reality has its Being and subsistence. On the other hand, it is the infinite energy of the universe, since reason is not so powerless as to be incapable of producing anything but a mere ideal, a mere intention, having its place outside reality nobody knows where, something separate and abstract in the heads of certain human beings. It is the infinite complex of things, their entire essence and truth. It is its own material which it commits to its own active energy to work up, not needing as finite action does the conditions of an external material of given means from which it may obtain its support and the objects of its activity. It supplies its own nourishment and is the object of its own operations. While it is exclusively its own basis of existence and absolute final aim, it is also the energizing power realizing this aim, developing it not only in the phenomena of the world but also of the spiritual universe, the history of the world, that this idea or reason is the true, the eternal, the absolutely powerful essence, that it reveals itself in the world and that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honor and glory is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in philosophy and is here regarded as demonstrated. In those of my heroes who are not acquainted with philosophy I may fairly presume at least the existence of a belief in reason, a desire, a thirst for acquaintance with it in entering upon this course of lectures. It is in fact the wish for rational insight, not the ambition to amass a mere heap of acquirements that should be presupposed in every case as possessing the mind of the mind in the study of science. If the clear idea of reason is not already developed in our minds in beginning the study of universal history we should at least have the firm unconquerable faith that reason does exist there and that the world of intelligence and conscious volition is not abandoned to chance but must show itself in the light of the self-cognizant idea yet I am not obliged to make any such preliminary demand upon your faith. What I have said thus provisionally and what I shall have further to say is, even in reference to our branch of science, not to be regarded as hypothetical, but as a summary view of the whole, the result of the investigation we are about to pursue, a result which happens to be known to me because I have traversed the entire field. It is only an inference from the history of the world that its development has been a rational process, that the history in question has constituted the rational necessary course of the world spirit, that spirit whose nature is always one in the same but which unfolds this, its one nature, in the phenomena of the world's existence. This must, as before stated, present itself as the ultimate result of history, but we have to take the latter as it is. We must proceed historically, empirically. Among other precautions, we must take care not to be misled by professed historians who, especially among the Germans and enjoying a considerable authority, are chargeable with the very procedure of which they accuse the philosopher, introducing a priori inventions of their own into the records of the past. It is, for example, a widely current fiction that there was an original primeval people taught immediately by God, endowed with perfect insight and wisdom, possessing a thorough knowledge of all natural laws and spiritual truth, that there have been such or such sacrodotal peoples, or to mention a more specific averament, that there was a Roman epos, from which the Roman historians derive the early annals of their city, etc. Authorities of this kind, we leave to those talented historians by profession, among whom, in Germany at least, their use is not uncommon. We might then announce it as the first condition to be observed that we should faithfully adopt all that is historical, but in such general expressions themselves as faithfully and adopt lies the ambiguity, even the ordinary, the impartial historiographer, who believes and professes that he maintains a simply receptive attitude, surrounding himself only to the data supplied him, is by no means passive as regards the exercise of his thinking powers. He brings his categories with him and sees the phenomena presented to his mental vision exclusively through these media, and especially in all that pretends to the name of science, it is indispensable that reason should not sleep, that reflection should be in full play. To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual, but the various exercises of reflection, the different points of view, the modes of deciding the simple question of the relative importance of events, the first category that occupies the attention of the historian, do not belong to this place, and philosophical history. This recording is in the public domain. Reason governs the world. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction to The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Section three, philosophical history, part one, reason governs the world. I will only mention two phases and points of view that concern the generally diffused conviction that reason has ruled and is still ruling in the world, and consequently, in the world's history. Because they give us at the same time an opportunity for more closely investigating the question that presents the greatest difficulty, and for indicating a branch of the subject which will have to be enlarged on in the sequel. One of these points is that passage in history which informs us that the Greek and Axegoras was the first to enunciate the doctrine that noose, understanding generally, or reason, governs the world. It is not intelligence as self-conscious reason, not a spirit as such, that is meant, and we must clearly distinguish these from each other. The movement of the solar system takes place according to unchangeable laws. These laws are reason implicit in the phenomena in question, but neither the sun nor the planets which revolve around it according to these laws can be said to have any consciousness of them. A thought of this kind, that nature is an embodiment of reason, that it is unchangeably subordinate to universal laws, appears no wise striking or strange to us. We are accustomed to such conceptions, and find nothing extraordinary in them, and I've mentioned this extraordinary occurrence partly to show how history teaches that ideas of this kind, which may seem trivial to us, have not always been in the world, that on the contrary such a thought makes an epoch in the annals of human intelligence. Aristotle says of Anachsagoras, as the originator of the thought in question, that he appeared as a sober man among the drunken. Socrates adopted the doctrine from Anachsagoras, and at forthwith became the ruling idea in philosophy, except in the school of Epicurus, who ascribed all events to chance. I was delighted with the sentiment, Plato makes Socrates say, and hoped I had found a teacher who would show me nature in harmony with reason, who would demonstrate in each particular phenomenon its specific aim and in the whole the grand object of the universe. I would not have surrendered this hope for a great deal. But how very much was I disappointed when, having zealously applied myself to the writings of Anachsagoras, I found that he adduces only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like. It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting Anachsagoras' doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the shortcoming of the prepounder in applying it to nature in the concrete. Nature is not deduced from that principle. The latter remains in fact a mere abstraction in as much as the former is not comprehended and exhibited as a development of it. An organization produced by, and from, reason. I wish, at the very outset, to call your attention to the important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth, limited to an abstract form, and its determinant application and concrete development. This distinction affects the whole fabric of philosophy, and among other bearings of it there is one to which we shall have to revert at the close of our view of universal history, in investigating the aspect of political affairs in the most recent period. We have next to notice the rise of this idea, that reason directs the world, in connection with a further application of it well known to us, in the form namely of the religious truth, that the world is not abandoned to chance and external contingent causes, but that a providence controls it. I stated above that I would not make a demand on your faith in regard to the principle announced, yet I might appeal to your belief in it in this religious aspect if, as a general rule, the nature of philosophical science allowed it to attach authority to presuppositions. To put it in another shape, this appeal is forbidden because the science of which we have to treat proposes itself to furnish the proof, not indeed of the abstract truth of the doctrine, but of its correctness as compared with facts. The truth then, that a providence, that of God, presides over the events of the world, consorts with the proposition in question, for divine providence is wisdom endowed with an infinite power which realizes its aim, namely the absolute rational design of the world. Reason is thought conditioning itself with perfect freedom, but a difference, rather a contradiction, will manifest itself between this belief and our principle, just as was the case in reference to the demand made by Socrates in the case of Anachsagoras' dictum, for that belief is similarly indefinite. It is what is called a belief in a general providence, and is not followed out into definite application or displayed in its bearing on the grand total, the entire course of human history. But to explain history is to depict the passions of mankind, the genius, the active powers that play their part on the grand stage, and the providentially determined process which these exhibit constitutes what is generally called the plan of providence. Yet it is this very plan which is supposed to be concealed from our view, which it is deemed presumption even to wish to recognize. The ignorance of Anachsagoras as to how intelligence reveals itself in actual existence was ingenuous. Neither in his consciousness nor in that of Greece at large had that thought been further expanded. He had not attained the power to apply his general principle to the concrete so as to deduce the latter from the former. It was Socrates who took the first step in comprehending the union of the concrete with the universal. Anachsagoras then did not take up a hostile position towards such an application. The common belief in providence does. At least it opposes the use of the principle on the large scale and denies the possibility of discerning the plan of providence. In isolated cases this plan is supposed to be manifest. Pious persons are encouraged to recognize in particular circumstances something more than mere chance to acknowledge the guiding hand of God. For example, when help has unexpectedly come to an individual in great perplexity and need, but these instances of providential design are of a limited kind and concern the accomplishment of nothing more than the desires of the individual in question. But in the history of the world the individuals we have to do with are peoples, totalities that are states. We cannot therefore be satisfied with what we may call this peddling view of providence. To which the belief alluded to limits itself. Equally unsatisfactory is the merely abstract undefined belief in a providence. When that belief is not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts. On the contrary, our earnest endeavor must be directed to the recognition of the ways of providence, the means it uses, and the historical phenomena in which it manifests itself. And we must show their connection with the general principle above mentioned. But in noticing the recognition of the plan of divine providence generally, I have implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day, namely that of the possibility of knowing God, or rather, since public opinion has ceased to allow it to be a matter of question, the doctrine that it is impossible to know God. In direct contravention of what is commanded in Holy Scripture as the highest duty, that we should not merely love but know God, the prevalent dogma involves the denial of what is there said, namely that it is the spirit that leads into truth, knows all things, penetrates even into the deep things of the Godhead. While the divine being is thus placed beyond our knowledge and outside the limit of all human things, we have the convenient license of wandering as far as we list in the direction of our own fancies. We are freed from the obligation to refer our knowledge to the divine and true. On the other hand, the vanity and egotism which characterize it find in this false position ample justification. And the pious modesty which puts far from it the knowledge of God can well estimate how much furtherance thereby accrues to its own wayward and vain strivings. I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the connection between our thesis, that reason governs and has governed the world. And the question of the possibility of a knowledge of God, chiefly, that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the imputation against philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths, or of having occasion to be so, in which is insinuated the suspicion that it has anything but a clear conscience in the presence of these truths. So far from this being the case the fact is that in recent times philosophy has been obliged to defend the domain of religion against the attacks of several theological systems. In the Christian religion God has revealed himself, that is, he has given us to understand what he is so that he is no longer a concealed or secret existence. And this possibility of knowing him thus afforded us renders such knowledge a duty. God wishes no narrow hearted souls or empty heads for his children but those whose spirit is of itself indeed poor but rich in the knowledge of him, and who regard this knowledge of God as the only valuable possession. That development of the thinking spirit which has resulted from the revelation of the divine being as its original basis must ultimately advance to the intellectual comprehension of what was presented in the first instance to feeling and imagination. The time must eventually come for understanding that rich product of active reason which the history of the world offers to us. It was for a while the fashion to profess admiration for the wisdom of God as displayed in animals, plants, and isolated occurrences. But if it be allowed that providence manifests itself in such objects and forms of existence, why not also in universal history? This is deemed too great a matter to be thus regarded. But divine wisdom, that is reason, is one and the same in the great as in the little. And we must not imagine God to be too weak to exercise his wisdom on the grand scale. Our intellectual striving aims at realizing the conviction that what was intended by eternal wisdom is actually accomplished in the domain of existent, active spirit, as well as in that of mere nature. Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a theodicy, a justification of the ways of God which Leibniz attempted metaphysically in his method, that is, in indefinite abstract categories, so that the ill that is found in the world may be comprehended and the thinking spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil. Indeed, nowhere is such a harmonizing view more pressingly demanded than in universal history. And it can be attained only by recognizing the positive existence, in which that negative element is a subordinate and vanquished nullity. On the one hand, the ultimate design of the world must be perceived, and on the other hand, the fact that this design has been actually realized in it and that evil has not been able permanently to assert a competing position. But this conviction involves much more than the mere belief in a superintending noose or in providence. Reason, whose sovereignty over the world has been maintained, is as indefinite a term as providence, supposing the term to be used by those who are unable to characterize it distinctly to show wherein it consists, so as to enable us to decide whether a thing is rational or irrational. An adequate definition of reason is the first desideratum, and whatever boast may be made of strict adherence to it in explaining phenomena, without such a definition we can get no farther than mere words. With these observations, we may proceed to the second point of view that has to be considered in this introduction, and reason governs the world. This recording is in the public domain. The Essential Destiny of Reason, subsection one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction to The Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Essential Destiny of Reason. The inquiry into the Essential Destiny of Reason, as far as it is considered in reference to the world, is identical with the question, what is the ultimate design of the world? And the expression implies that that design is destined to be realized. Two points of consideration suggest themselves. First, the import of this design, its abstract definition, and secondly, its realization. It must be observed at the outset that the phenomenon we investigate, universal history, belongs to the realm of spirit. The term world includes both physical and psychical nature. Physical nature also plays its part in the world's history, and attention will have to be paid to the fundamental natural relations thus involved. But spirit, and the course of its development, is our substantial object. Our task does not require us to contemplate nature as a rational system in itself, though in its own proper domain it proves itself such, but simply in its relation to spirit. On the stage on which we are observing it, universal history, spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality. Notwithstanding this, or rather for the very purpose of comprehending the general principles which this, its form of concrete reality, embodies, we must premise some abstract characteristics of the nature of spirit. Such an explanation however cannot be given here under any other form than that of bare assertion. The present is not the occasion for unfolding the idea of spirit speculatively. For whatever has a place in an introduction must, as already observed, be taken as simply historical, something assumed as having been explained and proved elsewhere, or whose demonstration awaits the sequel of the science of history itself. We have therefore to mention here, first, the abstract characteristics of the nature of spirit. Second, what means spirit uses in order to realize its idea. And third, lastly we must consider the shape which the perfect embodiment of spirit assumes. The state. First, the nature of spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct opposite, matter. As the essence of matter is gravity, so on the other hand we may affirm that the substance, the essence of spirit, is freedom. All will readily assent to the doctrine that spirit, among other properties, is also endowed with freedom. But philosophy teaches that all the qualities of spirit exist only through freedom, that all are but means for attaining freedom, that all seek and produce this and this alone. It is a result of speculative philosophy that freedom is the sole truth of spirit. Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite, consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its unity, and therefore exhibits itself as self-destructive, as verging towards its opposite, an indivisible point. If it could attain this it would be matter no longer, it would have perished. It strives after the realization of its idea, for in unity it exists ideally. Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its center in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it. It exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself. Spirit is self-contained existence. Now, this is freedom exactly. For if I am dependent my being is referred to something else which I am not. I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free on the contrary when my existence depends upon myself. This self-contained existence of spirit is none other than self- consciousness. Consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be distinguished in consciousness. First, the fact that I know. Secondly, what I know. In self-consciousness these are merged in one, for spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realize itself, to make itself actually that which it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of universal history that it is the exhibition of spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of spirit virtually contain the whole of that history. The orientals have not attained the knowledge that spirit, man as such, is free. And because they do not know this they are not free. They only know that one is free. But on this very account the freedom of that one is only caprice, ferocity, brutal recklessness of passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires which is itself only an accident of nature, mere caprice like the former. That one is therefore only a despot, not a free man. The consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they were free, but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that some are free, not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The Greeks therefore had slaves, and their whole life and the maintenance of their splendid liberty was implicated with the institution of slavery, a fact moreover, which made that liberty on the one hand only an accidental transient and limited growth, on the other hand constituted it a rigorous thralldom of our common nature of the human. The German nations under the influence of Christianity were the first to attain the consciousness that man as man is free. That it is the freedom of spirit which constitutes its essence. This consciousness arose first in religion, the inmost region of spirit, but to introduce the principle into the various relations of the actual world involves a more extensive problem than its simple implantation. A problem whose solution and application require a severe and lengthened process of culture. In proof of this, we may note that slavery did not cease immediately on the reception of Christianity. Still less did liberty predominate in states, or governments and constitutions adopt a rational organization, or recognize freedom as their basis. That application of the principle to political relations, the thorough molding and interpenetration of the constitution of society by it is a process identical with history itself. I have already directed attention to the distinction here involved between a principle as such and its application. That is, its introduction and carrying out in the actual phenomena of spirit and life. This is a point of fundamental importance in our science and one which must be constantly respected as essential. And in the same way as this distinction has attracted attention in view of the Christian principle of self-consciousness, freedom. It also shows itself as an essential one in view of the principle of freedom generally. The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. A progress whose development according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate. The general statement given above of the various grades in the consciousness of freedom and which we applied in the first instance to the fact that the eastern nations knew only that one is free, the Greek and Roman world only that some are free, whilst we know that all men absolutely, man as man, are free, supplies us with the natural division of universal history and suggests the mode of its discussion. This is remarked however only incidentally and anticipatively. Some other ideas must be first explained. The destiny of the spiritual world and since this is the substantial world while the physical remains subordinate to it or in the language of speculation has no truth as against the spiritual the final cause of the world at large we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of spirit and ipso facto the reality of that freedom but that this term freedom without further qualification is an indefinite and incalculable ambiguous term and that while that which it represents is the neplos ultra of attainment it is liable to an infinity of misunderstandings confusions and errors and to become the occasion for all imaginable excesses has never been more clearly known and felt than in modern times yet for the present we must content ourselves with the term itself without further definition attention was also directed to the importance of the infinite difference between a principle in the abstract and its realization in the concrete in the process before us the essential nature of freedom which involves in it absolute necessity is to be displayed as coming to a consciousness of itself for it is in its very nature self-consciousness and thereby realizing its existence itself is its own object of attainment and the soul aim of spirit this result it is at which the process of the world's history has been continually aiming and to which the sacrifices that have ever and anon been laid on the vast altar of the earth through the long lapse of ages have been offered this is the only aim that sees itself realized and fulfilled the only pole of repose amid the ceaseless change of events and conditions and the sole efficient principle that pervades them this final aim is God's purpose with the world but God is the absolutely perfect being and can therefore will nothing other than himself his own will the nature of his will that is his nature itself is what we here call the idea of freedom translating the language of religion into that of thought the question then which we may next put is what means does this principle of freedom use for its realization this is the second point we have to consider and the essential destiny of reason subsection one the abstract characteristics of the nature of spirit this recording is in the public domain