to ascertain, by
psychological analysis, what are the fundamental ideas and laws of
humanity; to grasp the exterior conditions which are, on all hands,
recognized as exerting a powerful influence upon national character; to
watch, under these lights, the manifestations of human nature on the
theatre of history, and then apply the principles of a sound historic
criticism to the recorded opinions of contemporaneous historians and
their immediate successors. In this manner we may expect, at least, to
approximate to a true judgment of history.

There are unquestionably fundamental powers and laws in human nature
which have their development in the course of history. There are certain
primitive ideas, imbedded in the constitution of each individual mind,
which are revealed in the universal consciousness of our race, under the
conditions of experience--the exterior conditions of physical nature and
human society. Such are the ideas of cause and substance; of unity and
infinity, which govern all the processes of discursive thought, and lead
us to the recognition of Being _in se_;--such the ideas of right, of
duty, of accountability, and of retribution, which regulate all the
conceptions we form of our relations to all other moral beings, and
constitute _morality_;--such the ideas of order, of proportion, and of
harmony, which preside in the realms of art, and constitute the
beau-ideal of _esthetics_;--such the ideas of God, the soul, and
immortality, which rule in the domains of _religion_, and determine man
a religious being. These constitute the identity of human nature under
all circumstances; these characterize humanity in all conditions. Like
permanent germs in vegetable life, always producing the same species of
plants; or like fundamental types in the animal kingdom, securing the
same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these
fundamental ideas in human nature constitute its sameness and unity,
under all the varying conditions of life and society. The acorn must
produce an oak, and nothing else. The grain of wheat must always produce
its kind. The offspring of man must always bear his image, and always
exhibit the same fundamental characteristics, not only in his corporeal
nature, but also in his mental constitution.

But the germination of every seed depends on conditions _ab extra_, and
all germs are modified, in their development, by geographical and
climatal surroundings. The development of the acorn