al method of explanation consists in the assumption that a
transcendental cause, Providence, guides the whole course of events
towards an end which is known to God.[209] This explanation can be but a
metaphysical doctrine, crowning the work of science; for the
distinguishing feature of science is that it only studies efficient
causes. The historian is not called upon to investigate the first cause
or final causes any more than the chemist or the naturalist. And, in
fact, few writers on history nowadays stop to discuss the theory of
Providence in its theological form.

But the tendency to explain historical facts by transcendental causes
survives in more modern theories in which metaphysic is disguised under
scientific forms. The historians of the nineteenth century have been so
strongly influenced by their philosophical education that most of them,
sometimes unconsciously, introduce metaphysical formulae into the
construction of history. It will be enough to enumerate these systems,
and point out their metaphysical character, so that reflecting
historians may be warned to distrust them.

The theory of the rational character of history rests on the notion that
every real historical fact is at the same time "rational"--that is, in
conformity with an intelligible comprehensive plan; ordinarily it is
tacitly assumed that every social fact has its _raison d'etre_ in the
development of society--that is, that it ends by turning to the
advantage of society; hence the cause of every institution is sought for
in the social need it was originally meant to supply.[210] This is the
fundamental idea of Hegelianism, if not with Hegel, at least with the
historians who have been his disciples (Ranke, Mommsen, Droysen, in
France Cousin, Taine, and Michelet). This is a lay disguise of the old
theological theory of final causes which assumes the existence of a
Providence occupied in guiding humanity in the direction of its
interests. This is a consoling, but not a scientific _a priori_
hypothesis; for the observation of historical facts does not indicate
that things have always happened in the most rational way, or in the way
most advantageous to men, nor that institutions have had any other cause
than the interest of those who established them; the facts, indeed,
point rather to the opposite conclusion.

From the same metaphysical source has also sprung the Hegelian theory of
the _ideas_ which are successively realised in history throug