502 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



that the ideas which govern the culture and progress 

 of humanity cannot be logically deduced from some 

 highest conception but that they must be patiently 

 searched for ; that they disclose themselves only to the 

 diligent and painstaking student of historical facts and 

 detail, and that they reveal themselves not so much 

 explicitly as in and through the course of historical 

 narrative and portraiture, refusing to be put into 

 definite terms and language. Other representatives of 

 this view followed Hegel in the main conception, but 

 instead of adopting the abstract and spiritual view 

 which Hegel took, fastened upon certain definite re- 

 stricted historical factors and agencies, the workings 

 of which they attempted to trace in limited periods 

 and narrower regions of historical development. Some 

 of these produced works which likewise, though in a 

 very different direction, acquired European reputation, 

 exerting a far-reaching though one-sided influence. To- 

 these I will revert further on. 



Quite different from the tendency in what we may 

 term the idealistic school of German historians was- 

 that which I have identified with the name of Comte. 

 Comte did not believe that what lay, as it were, behind 

 historical events and facts what we may term the 

 hidden or ideal content could be found out by the 

 human intellect; he did not absolutely deny that such 

 existed, but it constituted, in his opinion, a region 

 inaccessible to the human mind. 



si. In the place, however, of the search for the ideal 



search ior element Comte put another method. This consisted 



the entcmble. 



in the search for the consensus or ensemble of historical 



