lighted with the sentiment,"
Plato makes Socrates say, "and hoped I had found a teacher who would
show me Nature in harmony with Reason, who would demonstrate in each
particular phenomenon its specific aim, and, in the whole, the grand
object of the universe. I would not have surrendered this hope for a
great deal. But how very much was I disappointed, when, having zealously
applied myself to the writings of Anaxagoras, I found that he adduces
only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like."
It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting
Anaxagoras' doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the
shortcoming of the propounder in applying it to nature in the concrete.
Nature is not deduced from that principle; the latter remains, in fact,
a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and
exhibited as a development of it--an organization produced by and from
Reason. I wish, at the very outset, to call your attention to the
important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth limited
to an abstract form, and its determinate application and concrete
development. This distinction affects the whole fabric of philosophy;
and among other bearings of it there is one to which we shall have to
revert at the close of our view of universal history, in investigating
the aspect of political affairs in the most recent period.

We have next to notice the rise of this idea that Reason directs the
world, in connection with a further application of it well known to
us--in the form, viz., of the religious truth that the world is not
abandoned to chance and external contingent causes, but that a
Providence controls it. I stated above that I would not make a demand on
your faith in regard to the principle announced. Yet I might appeal to
your belief in it, in this religious aspect, if as a general rule, the
nature of philosophical science allowed it to attach authority to
presuppositions. To put it in another shape--this appeal is forbidden,
because the science of which we have to treat proposes itself to furnish
the proof, not indeed of the abstract truth of the doctrine, but of its
correctness as compared with facts. The truth, then, that a Providence
(that of God) presides over the events of the world consorts with the
proposition in question; for Divine Providence is wisdom, endowed with
an infinite power, which realizes its aim, viz., the absolute rational
de