shments.--They
materialize Religion, and impress their Ideas on Europe._ 413

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
Law.--Eventually sustained by Astronomical, Meteorological,
and Physiological Discoveries.--Illustrations from Kepler's
Laws, the Trade-winds, Migrations of Birds, Balancing of
Vegetable and Animal Life, Variation of Species and their
Permanence._

_Individual Man is an Emblem of Communities, Nations, and
Universal Humanity.--They exhibit Epochs of Life like his,
and, like him are under the Control of Physical Conditions,
and therefore of Law._

_Plan of this Work.--The Intellectual History of Greece.--Its
Five characteristic Ages.--European Intellectual History._

_Grandeur of the Doctrine that the World is governed by Law._

[Sidenote: The subject proposed.]

I intend, in this work, to consider in what manner the 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?

[Sidenote: Its difficulty and grandeur.]

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; 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.

Man is the archetype of society. Individual development is the model of
social progress.

Some have asserted that human affairs are altogether determined by