r epigram:
"Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht." Lacordaire, though he spoke so
well of "L'empire et les ruses de la duree," recorded his experience in
these words: "J'ai toujours vu Dieu se justifier a la longue." Reuss, a
teacher of opposite tendency and greater name, is equally consoling:
"Les destinees de l'homme s'accomplissent ici-bas; la justice de Dieu
s'exerce et se manifeste sur cette terre." In the infancy of exact
observation Massillon could safely preach that wickedness ends in
ignominy: "Dieu aura son tour." The indecisive Providentialism of
Bossuet's countrymen is shared by English divines.

"Contemporaries," says Hare, "look at the agents, at their motives and
characters; history looks rather at the acts and their consequences."
Thirlwall hesitates to say that whatever is, is best; "but I have a
strong faith that it is for the best, and that the general stream of
tendency is toward good." And Sedgwick, combining induction with
theology, writes: "If there be a superintending Providence, and if His
will be manifested by general laws, operating both on the physical and
moral world, then must a violation of those laws be a violation of His
will, and be pregnant with inevitable misery."

Apart from the language of Religion, an optimism ranging to the bounds
of fatalism is the philosophy of many, especially of historians: "Le
vrai, c'est, en toutes choses, le fait." Sainte-Beuve says: "Il y a dans
tout fait general et prolonge une puissance de demonstration
insensible"; and Scherer describes progress as "une espece de logique
objective et impersonelle qui resout les questions sans appel." Ranke
has written: "Der beste Pruefstein ist die Zeit"; and Sybel explains that
this was not a short way out of confusion and incertitude, but a
profound generalisation: "Ein Geschlecht, ein Volk loest das andere ab,
und der Lebende hat Recht." A scholar of a different school and fibre,
Stahr the Aristotelian, expresses the same idea: "Die Geschichte soll
die Richtigkeit des Denkens bewaehren." Richelieu's maxim: "Les grands
desseins et notables entreprises ne se verifient jamais autrement que
par le succes"; and Napoleon's: "Je ne juge les hommes que par les
resultats," are seriously appropriated by Fustel de Coulanges: "Ce qui
caracterise le veritable homme d'etat, c'est le succes, on le reconnait
surtout a ce signe, qu'il reussit." One of Machiavelli's gravest critics
applied it to him: "Die ewige Aufgabe der Politik