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THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF

EUROPE.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE BY LAW.

The subject of this Work proposed.-Its difficulty.

Gradual Acquisition of the Idea of Natural Government by LawEventually sustained by Astronom cal, Meteorological, and Physi logical Discoreries.—Illustrations from Kepler's Laws, the Trade winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of Vegetable and Animal Life Variation of Species and their Permanence.

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Individual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and Universal Humanity. They exhibit Epochs of Life like his, and, like him, ar under the Control of Physical Conditions, and therefore of Law. Plan of this Work. -The Intellectual History of Greece.--Its Five character stic Ages.-European Intellectual History.

Grandeur of the Doctrine that the World is governed by Law.

I INTEND, in this work, to consider in what manner the advancement of Europe in civilization has taken The subject place, to ascertain how far its progress has been proposed. 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 political history of nations, an answer to these questions is to be found. But how difficult it is to master the mass of facts necessary to be collected, to handle so great an accumulation, to place it in the clearest point of view; VOL -2

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