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attempted purification of religion, which of the Holy City, and held in its own
cost Christianity large provinces and the firm material grasp the tomb where the
seats of its earliest possession, led ulti- Saviour had lain, and the mount whence
mately to reprisals on the part of West- he ascended visibly to heaven; and was
ern Christendom, which reäcted, in their at hand to welcome him with its own
final consequences, on Christendom itself, mortal voice at his expected reäppearance
and were among the remoter causes of on the scene of his earthly ministry.
the Reformation.
These events were the consummation of
Meanwhile a new popular influence in the progressive synthesis of the time,
various tribes of Teutonic origin had carrying with them the occasions of a new
swept over the provinces of the Western and wider antithesis. For the result of
Empire. Attached by a loose and feeble the Crusades was deep and bitter disap-
bond to their old hereditary faith, the pointment, issuing in incurable skepticism
Germans, with that open susceptibility to and distrust. Where men had hoped to
first impressions which has in all ages dis- seize the earnest of heavenly blessedness,
tinguished their race, became the ready they encountered disaster, disease, and
converts of a religion which brought with death. And these negative, disorganizing
it in the first instance the recommenda- influences, separating men's wishes and
tions of a higher civilization. Their an- convictions daily further and further from
cient worship was dissolved by the supe- the actualities around them, were con-
rior attraction of Christianity, which took firmed by other events which now oc-
up into it the disengaged elements, and curred in rapid and startling succession-
in the strong fermentation that ensued the overthrow of the Eastern Empire by
engendered a new antithesis-that con- a Mohammedan power, the mental excite-
flict between the secular and spiritual ment resulting from the cultivation of
powers which endured, in one form or Arab and the revival of Greek learning,
another, through the whole of the Middle and the stimulating prospects opened by
Ages. Its synthesis was first attempted maritime discovery; all forced into hos-
by Charlemagne in the secular sense, tile action by the shameless venality and
when he would fain have erected a new dissoluteness of the Church, affecting
empire of the West, and used the clergy separation from the world, as alone pos-
as his artificers in its erection. It was a sessed of God, and yet in all its tastes, its
scheme the success of which depended interests, and its aims, the very type of
altogether on the personal character of the grossest worldliness. The great mon-
the sovereign; and it fell to pieces on the archies of Europe, emerging out of feud-
death of Charlemagne. A dark and alism, were unavoidably brought into col-
troubled period of entire social decom- lision, at various points, with the priest-
position followed, which righted itself at hood, and were anxious to fence in their
length in a sort of crystallized aggrega- national churches against the encroach-
tion round various centers of military ments of the Papal usurpation. All things
authority, held together by the graduated announced inevitable change; but the
dependencies of the feudal system. Ten- immediate cause of open revolt was the
dencies towards a new social synthesis outrage offered by Rome and its emis-
now became apparent. The overpower-saries to the public sense of moral de-
ing religious awe which seized men's cency. The circumstances of its origin
minds at the close of the first millennium had a powerful effect on the character of
from the birth of Christ, in the all-per- early Protestantism. It was an indignant
vading belief that the world's last hour recoil from stupendous wickedness and
was at hand, afforded the Church an un- hypocrisy; and its sense of human sinful-
paralleled opportunity of asserting its in-ness was deep and penetrating. Its spirit
fluence and establishing its dominion;
which was used with consummate energy
and skill by Hildebrand and his successors
for more than a century. Of this theo-
cratic ascendency in Europe the Crusades
were the marked historical expression.
The carnal piety of the age, incapable of
the consolations of a spiritual faith, could
not rest till it had dispossessed the infidels

became earnestly introspective; it took
up with renovated conviction the unflinch-
ing sternness of the old Augustinism,
searched the inward man with severe and
jealous eye, and saw no hope for him but
in the renovation of divine grace. Hegel
has well traced the influence of these re-
actionary views. The devout Protestant
saw an immense antithesis between the

true Church filled with the Spirit of God, | nearer to that absolute freedom of spirit and the world filled with the power and which is the result of perfect coalescence working of the devil. Hence he sus- with the Divine Idea. The first French pected every where the presence and Revolution failed from its reckless deoperation of the devil; and the burning struction of all that had previously existof witches, and even of heretics, was only ed, and its fanatical attempt to realize at too natural an expression of early Pro- a stroke the abstract ideal of philosophers testant feeling. Various were the at- and theorists. For it is an error to suptempts of Protestants in different parts of pose that there is one absolute type of sothe world to reconcile this antithesis, and cial condition, which should be universally realize a kingdom of God in the civil con- adopted. What was often mistaken for stitutions of men as among the Anabap- the only possible form of freedom in the tists in Munster, the Calvinists in Geneva, last century, was a social tyranny exerthe Presbyterians in Scotland, the Puri- cised by majorities; as if wisdom could tans under Cromwell in England, and the be obtained by a simple show of hands. Pilgrim Fathers in the wilds of North- Freedom does not consist in allowing each America. All these aims, often originating individual mind to take its own arbitrary in high and earnest purpose, failed from their way unchecked, but in the free acceptance impracticable narrowness; and after a few and loyal recognition by all minds of the years of intolerable constraint, men escap- law which they perceive is essential to ed from their tyranny, and relapsed into their living together in organic harmony, the ordinary course of human citizenship. and which must vary in its provisions acIn the midst of these religious ferments, cording to a thousand undefinable requirethought sprang up in another direction, ments of historical tradition or geographi intellectual and scientific, and developed a cal position. Hence the form of freedom new antithesis. It was the period of Des- must be modified by national peculiarities; cartes, Bacon, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz. and nations are then in their happiest To the age of religious enthusiasm suc- state-at the very acme of their prospericeeded that of enlightenment and free- ty-when the ideas by which they are thinking; what the Germans call Auf- most strongly possessed, and which conklärung, and what Mr. Buckle means, in stitute their peculiar genius, are expressed his recent work on civilization by Skepti- and embodied the most completely in their cism. In France, this spirit was repre- external existence; when their subjective sented by the Encyclopedistes; in Ger- and objective life are in the most entire many it was patronized by Frederic II. harmony; when they have a sense of perIt involved that collision between the ideal fect freedom in yielding perfect obedience and the actual, which leads to the effort to the law, and obedience is not conto harmonize them, and is the condition strained but spontaneous. The great deof all progress. It was fortunate for sideratum in working out the problem of England and Northern Germany that, in society is, to furnish constant stimulus consequence of their adoption of the and ample space for the ceaseless growth Reformation, religion participated in the and expansion of mind; and to let it have general movement of ideas, and assumed such gentle, but steady and effective, ina form which disarmed hostility, by its fluence on things without, that they may greater accordance with the knowledge continually widen and adapt themselves and intellect of the times; whereas in to its needs antitheses and syntheses France, religion, shut up in a sphere of quietly succeeding and supplementing its own, and not allowed to benefit by the each other without any violent change or influences of the general culture, became, sudden disruption-society peacefully dewhen the hour of reaction arrived, an obveloping itself towards the ultimatum of ject of intense hatred and destructive attack. All the revolutions that have taken place in the world are nothing more, from the Hegelian point of view, than so many endeavors, often spasmodic and unavailing, to harmonize the disparities, reconcile the antagonisms, and close up the antitheses between men's ideas and the actual stato of the world, so as to get a step

absolute freedom, when the Finite shall lose itself in the Infinite, and the Human and Divine be one.

We fear we may have exhausted the patience of our readers in this lengthened, but still very imperfect, exposition of the Hegelian theory of history; but it would have been quite impossible to convey any idea of it, without following it in its ap

plications to the successive phases of social | history is the record; and to recognize development, and indicating the practical the law of progress which pervades it is conclusion drawn from this survey by the the Philosophy of History. author himself. In reviewing the different periods of history, we have not limited ourselves in every instance to the particular applications which Hegal has made of his theory; but we have ventured on none that did not seem to us a legitimate and obvious inference from it, as we understand it. We now crave a small space for a few observations on the principle of this theory.

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in their appointed time and place, and the world lapses into chaos. Take away human free agency, and moral imputation in any intelligible sense becomes impossible. We have long, therefore, felt that there is an element of the infinite in this question, which must ever prevent its complete solution by a finite mind. All that can be said about it, is condensed with wonderful force and depth in that sublime antithesis of Scripture, Luke 22: 22.

Moral deserts, argues Hegel, are a distinct question, and rest on a perfectly independent basis. Virtue always carries its compensation with itself, as all vice draws its inevitable and appropriate penalty after it; but the deepest sense of this eternal distinction need not and ought not to distort the grand and salient features in which the physiognomy of universal history is expressed. Hegel has As a literary production, Hegel's work here touched on one of those insoluble has great merit. It handles the great problems, which history more than any mass of learning which it pre-supposes other human study continually suggests. with the case and lightness of a com- He has attempted to trace the dim, mysmanding intellect. His style, notwith- terious limits, where the divine order and standing some strange peculiarities of the freedom of man come into contact. diction, is forcible and expressive, and Neither can be denied: but how are they considering the abstract nature of his to be reconciled? Take away the unertheme, is for the most part clear and flow-ring certainty of the divine order, which ing. He marshals the grand historic foresees, provides for, and fulfills all things groupings of events with a sort of pictorial effect before the mental eye, and draws out their connections in unbroken sequence from age to age with the continuity of deductions from a fundamental principle. Yet it must be admitted that his generalizations are sometimes arbitrary and sometimes superficial, and the reader is beguiled with a show of scientific precision which is not warranted by facts themselves. A certain tone of fatalism pervades his interpretation of history, as Nevertheless, in spite of great spiritual if men by seizing its seminal idea at the deficiencies, the theory of Hegel seems to root of all things could predict its future us to possess a decided superiority over course. In the primitive germ of exist- the more recent ones of M. Comte and ence, when it first arose out of nothing- Mr. Buckle, in ascribing the progress of ness, he assumes a latent wealth of im- society not so exclusively to the results plicit power, which must ever, by the of positive science and the more expansion working of an inherent law, press outward of the intellect, but rather to a general into expression and embodiment, as the development of the whole interior nature acorn expands organically into the oak; of man, including his affections, his sense the incipient activity of an indwelling idea, of the beautiful, and his moral and reliwhich it is the destined function of history gious sentiments. The chief means of to evolve and realize to its utmost full- social advancement insisted on by Hegel, ness. The progressive liberation of this is, in his peculiar phraseology, the objectidea from the fetters that hinder its ex-ive embodiment of the subjective elepansion-in other words, the emancipation of Spirit from the animalism, the ignorance, the prejudice, as well as the outward oppressions, which clog its earlier career, so that humanity may attain its complete development and fulfill the task for which it has been preordained-is the process, according to Hegel, which is accomplishing itself in that continuous change and movement of society of which

ment in man-the outward realizing of the idea according to its actual degree of expansion; and this includes art, poetry, religion, and the usages of social and domestic intercourse, as well as law, government, science, and philosophy, as the constituents of a national life. It is absurd to speak of the progress of human wellbeing, and overlook the intimate relation to it of the moral and emotional part of