nsciousness has attained, and these are the
principal phases of that form in which the principle of freedom has
realised itself, for the history of the world is nothing but the
development of the idea of freedom. But objective freedom--the laws of
"real" freedom--demands the subjugation of the mere contingent will, for
this is in its nature formal. If the objective is in itself rational,
human insight and conviction must correspond with the reason which it
embodies, and then we have the other essential element--subjective
freedom--also realised. We have confined ourselves to the consideration
of that progress of the idea which has led to this consummation.
Philosophy concerns itself only with the glory of the idea mirroring
itself in the history of the world, and with the development which the
idea has passed through in realising itself--_i.e._, the idea of
freedom, whose reality is the consciousness of freedom and nothing short
of it.

That the history of the world, with all the changing scenes which its
annals present, is this true process of development and the realisation
of spirit--this is the true _Theodikaia_, the justification of God in
history. The spirit of man may be reconciled with the course of
universal history only by perception of this truth--that all which has
happened, all that happens daily, is not only not without God, but is
essentially His work.

DAVID HUME

Essays, Moral and Political

David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and historian, was born at
Edinburgh, April 26, 1711, and was educated at the college there.
He tried law and business without liking either, and at the age of
23 went to France, where he wandered about for a while occupied
with dreams of philosophy. In 1739 he published the first part of
his "Treatise on Human Nature." The book set an army of
philosophers at work trying either to refute what he had said or
continue lines that he had suggested, and out of them were created
both the Scotch and German schools of metaphysicians. Hume's
"Essays, Moral and Political," appeared in 1741-42, and followed
closely upon what he described as the "dead-born" "Treatise on
Human Nature," the success of the former going a long way towards
compensating him for the failure of the latter. In the
advertisement to a posthumous edition Hume complains that
controversialists had confined their attacks to the crude, ear