Note (return) — Chapter XIV

In previous chapters we have endeavored to sketch the history of the development of metaphysical thought, of moral feeling and idea, and of religious sentiment and want, which characterized Grecian civilization. In now offering a brief résumé of the history of that development, with the design of more fully exhibiting the preparatory office it fulfilled for Christianity, we shall assume that the mind of the reader has already been furnished and disciplined by preparatory principles. He can scarce have failed to recognize that this development obeyed a general law, however modified by exterior and geographical conditions; the same law, in fact, which governs the development of all individual finite minds, and which law may be formulated thus:--All finite mind develops itself, first, in instinctive determinations and spontaneous faiths; then in rising doubt, and earnest questioning, and ill-directed inquiry; and, finally, in systematic philosophic thought, and rational belief. These different stages succeed each other in the individual mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood; secondly, the undirected and unsettled force of youth; and, thirdly, the wisdom of mature age. And these different stages have also succeeded each other in the universal mind of humanity. There has been, 1st. The era of spontaneous beliefs--of popular and semi-conscious theism, morality, and religion, 2d. The transitional age--the age of doubt, of inquiry, and of ill-directed mental effort, ending in fruitless sophism, or in skepticism. 3d. The philosophic or conscious age--the age of reflective consciousness, in which, by the analysis of thought, the first principles of knowledge are attained, the necessary laws of thought are discovered, and man arrives at positive convictions, and rational beliefs. In the history of Grecian civilization, the first is the Homeric age; the second is the pre-Socratic age, ending with the Sophists; and the third is the grand Socratic period. History is thus the development of the fundamental elements of humanity, according to an established law, and under conditions which are ordained and supervised by the providence of God. "The unity of civilization is in the unity of human nature; its varieties, in the variety of the elements of humanity," which elements have been successively developed in the course of history. All that is fundamental in human nature passes into the movement of civilization. "I say all that is fundamental; for it is the excellency of history to take out, and throw away all that is not necessary and essential. That which is individual shines for a day, and is extinguished forever, or stops at biography." Nothing endures, except that which is fundamental and true--that which is vital, and organizes itself, develops itself, and arrives at an historical existence. "Therefore as human nature is the matter and basis of history, history is, so to speak, the judge of human nature, and historical analysis is the counter-proof of psychological analysis." 874