s in the region of self-produced
ideas, without reference to actuality. Approaching history thus
prepossessed, speculation might be supposed to treat it as a mere
passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to
force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it, as
the phrase is, _a priori_. But as it is the business of history simply
to adopt into its records what is and has been-actual occurrences and
transactions; and since it remains true to its character in proportion
as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in philosophy a
process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer. This
contradiction, and the charge consequently brought against speculation,
shall be explained and confuted. We do not, however, propose to correct
the innumerable special misrepresentations, whether trite or novel, that
are current respecting the aims, the interests, and the modes of
treating history and its relation to philosophy.

The only thought which philosophy brings with it to the contemplation
of history, is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the
sovereign of the world; that the history of the world, therefore,
presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is a
hypothesis in the domain of history as such; in that of philosophy it is
no hypothesis. It is there proved by speculative cognition that
Reason--and this term may here suffice us, without investigating the
relation sustained by the universe to the Divine Being--is substance, as
well as Infinite Power; its own Infinite Material is that underlying all
the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the Infinite
Form--that which sets this material in motion. On the one hand, Reason
is the substance of the universe--viz., that by which and in which all
reality has its being and subsistence. On the other hand, it is the
infinite energy of the universe; since Reason is not so powerless as to
be incapable of producing anything but a mere ideal, a mere
intention--having its place outside reality, nobody knows where;
something separate and abstract in the heads of certain human beings. It
is the _infinite complex of things_, their entire essence and truth. It
is its own material which it commits to its own active energy to work
up--not needing, as finite action does, the conditions of an external
material of given means from which it may obtain its support and the
objects of its acti