HISTORICAL METHOD. 609 



being mainly an emanation not from the practical 

 life of the period, but from the state of belief and 

 thought during some time previous. The weakness 

 of the speculative propensity has not, therefore, pre- 

 vented the progress of speculation from governing that 

 of society at large; it has only, and too often, pre- 

 vented progress altogether, where the intellectual pro- 

 gression has come to an early stand for want of 

 sufficiently favourable circumstances. 



From this accumulated evidence, we are justified 

 in concluding, that the order of human progression in 

 all respects will be a corollary deducible from the 

 order of progression in the intellectual convictions of 

 mankind, that is, from the law of the successive trans- 

 formations of religion and science. The question 

 remains, whether this law can be determined ; at first 

 from history as an empirical law, then converted 

 into a scientific theorem by deducing it a priori from 

 the principles of human nature. As the progress of 

 knowledge and the changes in the opinions of man- 

 kind are very slow, and manifest themselves in a well- 

 defined manner only at long intervals ; it cannot be 

 expected that the general order of sequence should be 

 discoverable from the examination of less than a very 

 considerable part of the duration of the social progress. 

 It is necessary to take into consideration the whole of 

 past time, from the first recorded condition of the 

 human race; and it is probable that all the terms of 

 the series already past were indispensable to the ope- 

 ration; that the memorable phenomena of the last 

 generation, and even those of the present, were neces- 

 sary to manifest the law, and that consequently the 

 Science of History has only become possible in our 

 own time. 



VOL. II. 2 R 



