You may have your Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may have your
Schlegel's philosophy of history; you may prove from history that the
world is governed in detail by a special Providence; you may prove that
there is no sign of any moral agent in the universe, except man; you may
believe, if you like it, in the old theory of the wisdom of antiquity;
you may speak, as was the fashion in the fifteenth century, of "our
fathers, who had more wit and wisdom than we"; or you may talk of "our
barbarian ancestors," and describe their wars as the scuffling of kites
and crows.
You may maintain that the evolution of humanity has been an unbroken
progress toward perfection; you may maintain that there has been no
progress at all, and that man remains the same poor creature that he
ever was; or, lastly, you may say, with the author of the "Contract
Social," that men were purest and best in primeval simplicity,--
"When wild in woods the noble savage ran."
In all or any of these views, history will stand your friend. History,
in its passive irony, will make no objection.
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