peat their revolutions
in human thought, that the philosophy of history is at all possible.
Philosophy, in its ideal pretensions, frequently forgets its material
conditions: it claims for itself the power of constructing wholes in
thought where only parts have been given in reality, as if, dispensing
with material supports, it could bridge over a chasm in Nature. And so
it seems to do, but so in fact it never does; it never builds but on
models; it never in any system gives ideal completeness, until a real
completeness is furnished, either through this system or some other that
is analogous. There can, therefore, be no speculative anticipation in
history, save as it makes its way into the blank future along the line
of diagrams furnished by the past; the splendid composition, in our
thoughts, of realities as yet undeveloped, is set up in the skeleton
types left us of realities that not only have themselves been
accomplished, but which belong to a system that is concluded.

Else,--if the philosophy of history does not thus depend upon some sort
of _real_ conclusions for its _notional_ ones,--why is it that no such
philosophy existed, even in name, among the ancients? It may be said
that some prevailing practical motive is necessary to the existence of
philosophy in any field, and that no such motive was present to the
ancient mind in this particular field of history. Admitted; yet this
does not at all disturb our position. No motive would have sufficed for
so grand an aim, short of a sublime consciousness regarding the destiny
of the human race. But whence was this consciousness to be derived?
To the ancient mind, the development of the human drama, considered
strictly as human, moved within narrow boundaries; traced backward
through a number of generations so limited that they might be counted on
one's fingers, the human _personae_, did not absolutely disappear, but
they emerged again, and in a precedent cycle, only as divinities. The
consciousness of human destiny was thus elevated by infinite grades, but
not of this destiny _as_ human, as depending for its splendors upon the
human will. It was an exaltation that consisted in the sacrifice of
humanity. No definite records existed through which any previous cycle
of human events could be translated into thought; and in default of a
human, there was substituted a divine cycle. From this mythologic past
of the ancients was reflected upon their present every-day existence a