Outline of Universal History | Page 5

progress of the race, and of the different portions of it, through
extended periods. It brings to light the thread which unites each
particular stage in the career of a people, or of mankind as a whole,
with what went before, and with what came after.
NATIONS.--History has been called "the biography of a society."
Biography has to do with the career of an individual. History is
concerned with the successive actions and fortunes of a community; in
its broadest extent, with the experiences of the human family. It is only
when men are connected by the social bond, and remain so united for a
greater or less period, that there is room for history. It is, therefore, with
nations, in their internal progress and in their mutual relations, that
history especially deals. Of mere clans, or loosely organized tribes, it
can have little to say. History can go no farther than to explore their
genealogy, and state what were their journeyings and habits. The nation
is a form of society that rests on the same basis--a basis at once natural
and part of a divine system--as the family. By a nation is meant a
people dwelling in a definite territory, living under the same
government, and bound together by such ties as a common language, a
common religion, the same institutions and customs. The elements that
enter into that national spirit which is the bond of unity, are multiple.
They vary to a degree in different peoples. As individuals are not alike,
and as the history of any particular community is modified and molded
by these individual differences, so the course of the history of mankind
is shaped by the peculiar characteristics of the various nations, and by

their interaction upon one another. In like manner, groups of nations,
each characterized by distinctive traits derived from affinities of race or
of religion, or from other sources, act on each other, and thus help to
determine the course of the historic stream.
SCOPE OF HISTORY.--The rise and progress of culture and
civilization in their various constituents is the theme of history. It does
not limit its attention to a particular fraction of a people, to the
exclusion of the rest. Governments and rulers, and the public doings of
states,--such as foreign wars, and the struggles of rival
dynasties,--naturally form a prominent topic in historical writings. But
this is only one department in the records of the past. More and more
history interests itself in the character of society at large, and in the
phases through which it has passed. How men lived from day to day,
what their occupations were, their comforts and discomforts, their ideas,
sentiments, and modes of intercourse, their state as regards art, letters,
invention, religious enlightenment,--these are points on which history,
as at present studied and written, undertakes to shed light.
POINTS OF VIEW.--An eminent German philosopher of our day,
Hermann Lotze, intimates that there are five phases of human
development, and hence five points of view from which the course of
history is to be surveyed. These are the intellectual (embracing the
progress of truth and knowledge), the industrial, the aesthetic
(including art in all its higher ramifications), the religious, and the
political. An able English scholar, Goldwin Smith, resolves the
elements of human progress, and thus the most general topics of history,
into three, "the moral, the intellectual, and the productive; or, virtue,
knowledge, and industry." "But these three elements," he adds, "though
distinct, are not separate, but closely connected with each other."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.--That there is, in some sense, a
"reign of law" in the succession of human events, is a conviction
warranted by observed facts, as well as inspired by religion. Events do
not spring into being, disjoined from antecedents leading to them. Even
turning-points in history, which seem, at the first glance, abrupt, are
found to be dependent on previous conditions. They are perceived to be

the natural issue of the times that have gone before. Preceding events
have foreshadowed them. There are laws of historical progress which
have their root in the characteristics of human nature. Ends are wrought
out, which bear on them evident marks of design. History, as a whole,
is the carrying out of a plan:
"... through the ages one increasing purpose runs."
Augustine long ago argued, that he who has not left "even the entrails
of the smallest and most insignificant animal, or the feather of a bird, or
the little flower of a plant, or the leaf of a tree, without a harmony, and,
as it were, a mutual peace among all its parts,--that God can never be
believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their dominations and
servitudes, outside of the laws of his providence."
To discern the plan of history, and