t which is vital, and organizes
itself, develops itself, and arrives at an historical existence.
"Therefore as human nature is the matter and basis of history, history
is, so to speak, the judge of human nature, and historical analysis is
the counter-proof of psychological analysis."[874]

[Footnote 874: Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i.
p. 31.] Nature, individual mind, and collective humanity, all obey the
law of progressive development; otherwise there could be no history, for
history is only of that which has movement and progress. Now, all
progress is from the indefinite to the definite, from the inorganic to
the organic and vital, from the instinctive to the rational, from a dim,
nebulous self-feeling to a high reflective consciousness, from sensuous
images to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. This progressive
development of nature and humanity has not been a series of creations
_de novo_, without any relation, in matter or form, to that which
preceded. All of the present was contained in embryonic infoldment in
the past, and the past has contributed its results to the present.[875]
The present, both in nature, and history, and civilization, is, so to
speak, the aggregate and sum-total of the past. As the natural history
of the earth may now be read in the successive strata and deposits which
form its crust, so the history of humanity may be read in the successive
deposits of thought and language, of philosophy and art, which register
its gradual progression. As the paleontological remains imbedded in the
rocks present a succession of organic types which gradually improve in
form and function, from the first sea-weed to the palm-tree, and from
the protozoa to the highest vertebrate, so the history of ancient
philosophy presents a gradual progress in metaphysical, ethical, and
theistic conceptions, from the unreflective consciousness of the Homeric
age, to the high reflective consciousness of the Platonic period. And as
all the successive forms of life in pre-Adamic ages were a preparation
for and a prophecy of the coming of man, so the advancing forms of
philosophic thought, during the grand ages of Grecian civilization, were
a preparation and a prophecy of the coming of the Son of God.

[Footnote 875: The writer would not be understood as favoring the idea
that this development is simply the result of "natural law." The
connection between the past and the present is not a material,