d development of human
societies, for the formation, conflict, and direction of ideas, passions
and determinations of human individuals.[3114] In all this, Man is bound
up with nature; hence, if we would comprehend him, we must observe him
in her, after her, and like her, with the same independence, the same
precautions, and in the same spirit. Through this remark alone the
method of the moral sciences is fixed. In history, in psychology, in
morals, in politics, the thinkers of the preceding century, Pascal,
Bossuet, Descartes, Fenelon, Malebrance, and La Bruyere, all based their
thoughts on dogma; It is plain to every one qualified to read them that
their base is predetermined. Religion provided them with a complete
theory of the moral order of things; according to this theory, latent or
exposed, they described Man and accommodated their observations to the
preconceived model. The writers of the eighteenth century rejected
this method: they dwell on Man, on the observable Man, and on his
surroundings; in their eyes, conclusions about the soul, its origin, and
its destiny, must come afterwards and depend wholly, not on that which
the Revelation provided, but on that which observation does and will
provide. The moral sciences are now divorced from theology and attach
themselves, as if a prolongation of them, to the physical sciences.

III. The Transformation Of History.

Voltaire.--Criticism and conceptions of unity.--
Montesquieu.--An outline of social laws.

Through the separation from theology and the attachment to natural
science the humanities become science. In history, every foundation on
which we now build, is laid. Compare Bossuet's "Discours sur l'histoire
universelle," with Voltaire's "Essai sur les moeurs," and we at once see
how new and profound these foundations were.--The critics of religious
dogma here establish their fundamental principle: in view of the fact
that the laws of nature are universal and permanent it follows that,
in the moral world, as in the physical world, there can be no exception
from them, and that no arbitrary or foreign force intervenes to disturb
the regular scientific procedures, which will provide a sure means of
discerning myth from truth.[3115] Biblical exegesis is born out of this
maxim, and not alone that of Voltaire, but also the critical explanatory
methods of the future. [3116] Meanwhile they skeptically examine the
annals of all people, carelessly cutting