INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPEMENT
ON THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE BY LAW.
INTEND, in this work, to consider in what manner the The subject advancement of Europe in civilization has taken place,
to ascertain how far its progress has been fortuitous, and how far determined by primordial law.
Does the procession of nations in time, like the erratic phantasm of a dream, go forward without reason or order? or, is there a predetermined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of events?
In a philosophical examination of the intellectual and poli- Its difficultical history of nations, an answer to these questions is to be grandeur. found. But how difficult it is to master the mass of facts necessary to be collected, to handle so great an accumulation, to arrange it in the clearest point of view! how difficult it is to select correctly the representative men, to produce them in the proper scenes, and to conduct successfully so grand and complicated a drama as that of European life! Though in one sense the subject offers itself as a scientific problem, and in that manner alone I have to deal with it, in another it swells into a noble epic,—the life of humanity, its warfare and repose, its object and its end.