146 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE 



tory into his iron bed. His scheme implies that the modern period 

 represents the completion of historical development, is part of the 

 last act in the drama of the human spirit. This implication is pre- 

 posterous. What we know about the future is that man has an 

 indefinite time in front of him, and it is absurd to suppose that in 

 the course of that time new phases of thought will not be realized, 

 though it is quite impossible for us to predetermine them. This error 

 alone is sufficient to cast suspicion on the whole edifice. For the 

 stages of history, as a revelation of spirit, correspond ex hypothesi 

 to the dialectical stages in the logical evolution of the idea; and if 

 Hegel fixes the terminus of the historical evolution at a point im- 

 measurably distant from the true term, it evidently follows that the 

 correspondences which he has established for the preceding stages 

 with stages in the logical evolution must be wholly or partly wrong, 

 and his interpretation breaks down. The keys are in the wrong locks. 

 Krause's system, which has had considerable influence in Belgium, 

 avoids the absurdity of not allowing for progress in the future, 

 a consideration which there was no excuse for ignoring, since it had 

 been recognized and emphasized by Condorcet. He divides the whole 

 of human history, including that which is yet to come, into three 

 great periods, the ages of unity, of variety, and of harmony, 

 and pronounces that mankind is now in the third and last stage of 

 the second period. This theory, you perceive, has an advantage 

 over Hegel's in that it gives the indefinite future something to do. 

 But, although this Procrustes is more merciful, the Procrustean 

 principle is the same; there is an a priori system into which human 

 development has to be constrained. I am not concerned here to 

 criticise the method on which Krause proceeds; I only want to illus- 

 trate by two notable examples, that of Hegel who ignores the future, 

 and that of Krause who presumes to draw its horoscope, how the 

 philosophy of history has moved on false lines, through the illusion 

 that it could construct the development of reason in history from 

 any other source than history itself. By the one example we are 

 taught that, in attempting to interpret history, we must remember 

 there is no such thing as finality within measurable distance: 



His ego nee metas rerum nee tempora pono; 



while the other example warns us that in considering the past it is 

 idle to seek to explain it by any synthesis involving speculations on 

 the inscrutable content of the future. 



It is, indeed, curious to note how the authors of the numerous 

 attempts to present a philosophical construction of history, which 

 appeared during the nineteenth century, assume, so naively, that 

 their own interpretations are final, and that the ideas which are 

 within the horizon of their minds are the ultimate ideas to be sighted 



