Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1912. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... DIVISION III THE STRUGGLE Your high-engender'd battles.--Shakespeare. INTRODUCTORY Leading Principles WITH this division we enter a new field--the purely historical. Although the legacy of antiquity and its heirs were manifestations of history, it was possible to free these manifestations from their surroundings and so to consider them under the light of history, and yet not quite as history. Henceforth we have to deal with a succession of events and processes of development, that is to say, with history pure and simple. But there will be a certain sameness in the method, because, just as we formerly noted -what remains constant in the stream of time, we shall now choose out only individual points in the incalcula/ble crowd of events that hurry past our mental eye, points which have permanent significance and are, so to speak, "constant." The philosopher might offer the objection that every impulse, even the smallest, exercises perpetual influence; the answer is that in history almost every individual force very soon loses its separate importance and possesses only the value of one component among countless others which are only present as ideas, while one single great "resultant" remains behind as the perceptible issue of many manifestations of contradictory powers. But now--to maintain the mechanical comparison--these resulting lines unite again to form new parallelograms of forces and produce new, greater, more evident events, which have a deeper influence upon history and more enduring importance-- and that goes on until certain heights of power-manifestation are reached, which cannot be surpassed. Only the highest of these must be dealt with here. I shall take it for granted that the historical facts are known; and my task consists merely in proper...