e mean something which can
foresee as well as explain; and, thus looked at, to state the problem is
to show its absurdity. As little could the wisest man have foreseen this
mighty revolution, as thirty years ago such a thing as Mormonism could
have been anticipated in America; as little as it could have been
foreseen that table-turning and spirit-rapping would have been an
outcome of the scientific culture of England in the nineteenth century.

The greatest of Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething mass
of moral putrefaction round him, detected and deigned to notice among
its elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it, rising
up amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named Christianity.
Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory
VII., could he have beheld the representative of the majesty of the
Caesars holding the stirrup of the Pontiff of that vile and execrated
sect, the spectacle would scarcely have appeared to him the fulfilment
of a rational expectation, or an intelligible result of the causes in
operation round him. Tacitus, indeed, was born before the science of
history; but would M. Comte have seen any more clearly?

Nor is the case much better if we are less hard upon our philosophy; if
we content ourselves with the past, and require only a scientific
explanation of that.

First, for the facts themselves. They come to us through the minds of
those who recorded them, neither machines nor angels, but fallible
creatures, with human passions and prejudices. Tacitus and Thucydides
were perhaps the ablest men who ever gave themselves to writing history;
the ablest, and also the most incapable of conscious falsehood. Yet even
now, after all these centuries, the truth of what they relate is called
in question. Good reasons can be given to show that neither of them can
be confidently trusted. If we doubt with these, whom are we to believe?

Or again, let the facts be granted. To revert to my simile of the box of
letters, you have but to select such facts as suit you, you have but to
leave alone those which do not suit you, and let your theory of history
be what it will, you can find no difficulty in providing facts to prove
it.

You may have your Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may have your
Schlegel's philosophy of history; you may prove from history that the
world is governed in detail by a special Providence; you may prove that
there is no si