of theological mysticism this conception which we call the
Philosophy of History was raised to a scientific principle,
according to which the past was explained and the future predicted
by reference to general laws.

Now, just as the earliest account of the nature of the progress of
humanity is to be found in Plato, so in him we find the first
explicit attempt to found a universal philosophy of history upon
wide rational grounds. Having created an ideally perfect state,
the philosopher proceeds to give an elaborate theory of the complex
causes which produce revolutions, of the moral effects of various
forms of government and education, of the rise of the criminal
classes and their connection with pauperism, and, in a word, to
create history by the deductive method and to proceed from A PRIORI
psychological principles to discover the governing laws of the
apparent chaos of political life.

There have been many attempts since Plato to deduce from a single
philosophical principle all the phenomena which experience
subsequently verifies for us. Fichte thought he could predict the
world-plan from the idea of universal time. Hegel dreamed he had
found the key to the mysteries of life in the development of
freedom, and Krause in the categories of being. But the one
scientific basis on which the true philosophy of history must rest
is the complete knowledge of the laws of human nature in all its
wants, its aspirations, its powers and its tendencies: and this
great truth, which Thucydides may be said in some measure to have
apprehended, was given to us first by Plato.

Now, it cannot be accurately said of this philosopher that either