We have not introduced M. Michelet, a distinguished French historical writer, and the translator of Vico's Scienza Nuova, for the purpose of giving an account of his works, nor of attempting an estimate of his merits either as a writer or as an historian; but simply because we find in his Introduction à l'Histoire Universelle, which stands at the head of the edition lying before us, a convenient text for a few observations which we have been for some time desirous of presenting our readers, on the Universal History of Humanity, and also on certain theories in regard to that history, which have gained considerable notoriety and even influence. The conception of a Universal History of Humanity belongs almost to our own times, and is said to be due to the Cartesian school of philosophy; although that school, by taking its point of departure in the pure reason as manifested in the individual consciousness, was and needs must be altogether unhistorical in both its principle and tendency. Nevertheless, by assuming all truth to be geometrically demonstrable, and therefore demanding in every subject of human inquiry geometrical evidence, Ca..esianism necessarily creates the need of a Universal History, and naturally suggests its possibility. If all truth be logically demonstrable from the data furnished by the individual reason, then, whatever has appeared, and whatever may appear, in the history of our race, must be logically inferable, and as it were capable of being reproduced or foreknown by mere reasoning. This school by virtue of its principle taught men to look upon history as realizing or developing a plan, and therefore, as capable of scientific exposition.

By the Universal History of Humanity, we do not understand so much

a complete narration of all the facts or events of the life of humanity in time and space, as their scientific explication. In constructing it, we assume the facts to be known, spread out as it were before us, and we merely ask, as we contemplate them, what mean these facts? What is their principle? What is their law? Do they develope, or realize a plan? Can they be reduced under a general law, and referred to a common origin? If so, what is this origin, this law, or in one word, this plan? By Universal History, then, we understand not what commonly passes for history, but the Philosophy of History.

Universal History, in the sense here taken, is possible only on condition that the various facts and events of the life of mankind, originate in some permanent principle, according to some universal law, in subordination to a general plan or design; and on condition that the plan, the law, and the principle are ascertainable. The Universal Historian assumes that nothing happens by mere chance, or falls out through mere will or arbitrariness; that, in fact, nothing takes place without having been foreseen and provided for. All is subordinated to a plan. What is this plan? What purpose was the life of humanity intended to serve? What grand scheme does it realize or develope? We must be able to answer this question, before we can comprehend the history of our race, or form any tolerable judgment concerning the good or the evil of its various facts and events. The plan or scheme once known, the whole becomes comparatively easy; for that alone is good which facilitates its realization; and that alone is evil, which tends to hinder, retard, or thwart it.

The answer to the question here

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raised, is virtually the answer to the question, what is the final cause of man and of men? For what was man made? For what do individual men and women exist? Why are we here on this globe, with just such natures as we have, and just such environments? Here is the question of questions. All are concerned with this question. Sooner or later it comes up in all hearts. The rustic following his plough, the shepherd tending his flocks, as well as the naturalist in his laboratory, and the philosopher in his painful psychological analysis, alike ask this fearful question, and seek, each in his own way, to wring out from Nature an answer. Many answers have been suggested, many an Edipus has guessed at the riddle of the Sphinx, but she sits as ever at the way-side proposing it anew. The Mystery of the Man-child remains, for all that philosophy has done or can do, yet unexplained. It is the book which Jolin saw in the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne, written all over within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals, and no man is able to open the book or to loose the seals thereof; for in each man the self-same mystery is renewed. Yet the Lion of the tribe of Judah prevails to open the book, and in proportion as we become wedded to Christ, we are able to learn somewhat of its significance, and to cease to weep that man is and always must be a mystery unto himself.

We have no intention of answering this question, which, if we were able to do, we could not do without leaving the field of philosophy, and trenching too far on the field of theology, for our present purpose, and also for the general design of the Journal in which we are writing. We have asked the question before to-day, and have asked it out from the very depths of despair, in the terrible agony of feeling all things giving way beneath us. We have asked it of ourselves, of our brethren, of the heavens and the earth, of the past and the future, of the living and the dead, and that too, when we could wring out no answer but echo repeating in the distance our own question. Whether we have found an answer, whether we have found peace or not, or whence, there is no occasion to say. This much, let it suffice us to

say, that we believe, life taken in its largest sense, as the life both of the individual and of the race, has a plan, a wise and good plan, worthy of the infinite Wisdom and Love in which it originated. So far as our present purpose is concerned, it is enough to say that man was made for progress, for growth. The historian should always assume man's progressiveness as his point of departure, and judge all the facts and events he encounters according to their bearing on this great central truth.

Strictly speaking, progress cannot be the final cause of man's existence; for progress itself unquestionably consists in going to the end, or in realizing the plan in reference to which man was created, and exists. We must determine in some degree the end for which man was made, before ever we can determine what is or is not progress. But through the Lion of the tribe of Judah, through the Gospel, that end, for Christendom at least, is determined, and the solution of the problem is at the bottom of every Christian con science. As Christians we all have an obscure presentiment, if not a clear and distinct perception of it; and do seize it, if not by sight, at least by faith. We also assert, as Christians, man's progressiveness, for we never fail to repeat that it is his duty to labor incessantly to realize the end for which God made him. We may be permit ted, then, in what follows, to assume that there is an end to be realized in and through the life of humanity; that it is man's duty to aspire always to this end; and that his progress, whether regarded as the race, or as an individual, consists in going to it. The practical question, and the question we propose now to consider is, what is going to this end for which man was made, and by what means or agencies do we go to it? In other words, what is human progress, and how is it effected?

I. THE WAR-THEORY.

M. Michelet begins his Introduction to Universal History, by asserting that "with the world commenced a war which must end with the world and not before.—that of man against nature, of Spirit against Matter, of Liber

ty against Necessity. History is nothing else but the recital of this interminable struggle." He further adds in a note on this passage, "I felicitate with all my heart the new apostles who are preaching the gospel of a pacification near at hand; but I fear the treaty will serve only to materialize Spirit. The industrial pantheism which believes that it is about to become a religion, knows not that religion, in order to have the least life, must spring from moral liberty, instead of falling into pantheism, which is the grave of all religions."

This note, written in 1831, was levelled at the Saint-Simonians, then a powerful sect, threatening to gain a complete mastery over the French mind; and so far as intended as a protest against their unquestionably pantheistic tendencies, it was not only excusable but justifiable: and yet we are obliged to pause a moment before we can altogether accede to this doctrine of eternal struggle which M. Michelet assumes as his point of departure. It rests on the assumption of two originally hostile principles or forces between which there is and can be no peace. However disguised, this is nothing but the old Manichæan heresy, the old Persian theory, Oriental Dualism, which divides the universe between Ormuzd and Ahriman, two eternal and indestructible principles, one good, the other evil. It assumes Spirit to be good and holy, Matter to be evil and unholy; man to be free, nature to be bound "fast in fate;" and finally, nature to be inherently hostile to man, always in the way of his perfection, and needing always to be combated, overcome, subdued, as the condition of his progress.

This theory M. Michelet appears to have put forth as the means of escape from Saint-Simonian Pantheism, and the Rationalist Fatalism of the Hegelian School, introduced into France by M. Cousin, and incorporated substantially in his Course on the History of Philosophy, in 1828. The motive has been to save human freedom, which the prevailing theories threatened to annihilate, as an element that must count for something in the history of humanity. So far we applaud the motive, and accept the statement. But is this theory of two antagonist forces, of the necessary, the invincible and

eternal hostility of Spirit and Matter, well founded? Is there in reality any ground for assuming it?

For ourselves, we confess that we regard this theory as the fundamental heresy of ancient and modern times. Disguise the matter as we may, we shall be obliged, in the last resort, as we have intimated, in order to maintain it, to adopt the old theory of Oriental Dualism, against which the Church struggled, and almost in vain, during the first six hundred years of its existence. It loses sight of the profound significance of the doctrine of the Trinity, which lies alike at the basis of Christian theology, and of all sound philosophy whether of man or of nature. With mere duality, we admit, that we have and must have war, and war only; but when we have apprehended the profound mystery of the doctrine of the Trinity, we have learned that the mediator or middle term, the reconciler of the two extremes, is integral in the original ground and cause of creation; that is to say, in the Origin, or rather in the Original of all things, there is an indissoluble synthesis, not secondary but primitive, of the two forces which we have called hostile, by virtue of the fact that the Origi nal is not, as the theory we are considering teaches, a Duality, but a TRINITY. The two terms are reconciled, or made one, by the presence of the third. In the Original of things, then, there is, and there can be, no absolute and invincible necessity for the hostility assumed.

In all mystical philosophy and theology, the number three has been called the holy number, and the perfect number, and not without reason; for it brings together always the two extremes, and makes them one, a perfect whole. This number which we find in the Original of all things, that is to say, in the infinite and ineffable God himself, we find repeated throughout the universe in each order of creation, and in each individual creature. "Mundus universus," says an old writer, "nihil aliud est, quàm Deus explicatus." The universe is nothing else but God expressed. The original type, pattern, model, or exemplar of all creatures, after which all were made, and without reference to which was nothing made that was made, was eternal with God, in his own infinite Logos

or Reason, in the very beginning with him, in his own ineffable Essence. The Trinity which we find to be essential in God, must then of necessity be repeated through all his works. Consequently the conditions of peace, harmony, unanimity, must be always present in all parts of his universe, and within the reach of every individual creature, so long as that creature is found in its normal state.

Nor are we satisfied with the representation of our relation with nature as a relation of hostility, and therefore assuming progress to consist in overcoming and subduing it. We see nowhere the evidences of this hostility. In their origin man and nature are nearly related; and man is so made that he is incapable of living, of exhibiting the least sign of vitality, save in and through the most intimate and friendly union with nature. Cut off from communion with nature, deprived of light, air, heat, moisture, from the various, necessary, and appropriate food which he derives from the outward world, and assimilates to himself, man would instantly cease to be a living man, lose all actual exist ence, and become at best a mere potentiality or possibility. Nature then is not unfriendly to man, is not his enemy, which he must fight, subdue, and if possible annihilate; but she is a genial friend, his generous assistant, the chief minister to his life and pleasure. Man unquestionably acts on nature, as nature acts on him; there is a mutual action and re-action of one upon the other, as the condition of life; this action and re-action is from opposite directions, and therefore man and nature may be said to stand opposed one to the other; but after all there is no hostility in the mutual opposition. The two forces, the moment they meet, embrace, and are henceforth one.

Still more objectionable, in our view, is it to assert a necessary and eternal hostility between Spirit and Matter. This is the oriental dualism in its worst form. But spirit and matter are never -no, never-in nature, providence, or grace, encountered as hostile forces. In no point of view we can take-moral, social, religious, philosophical--is there ever the radical distinction between spirit and matter this theory supposes; and nowhere do we ever find two orders of existences, one spiritual,

the other material. Matter is utterly inconceivable without a spiritual basis; and spirit is equally inconceivable without a body. The assertion, not unfrequently made, that man is a soulmeaning by soul, spirit, as distinguished from a material body-is as false as it would be to say that man is a bodymeaning by body, matter, as distinguished from spirit. Man is not spirit; man is not matter; nor is he spirit and matter; but, as we have said in our synthetic philosophy, spirit in and through matter. Man disembodied would be no more man, than the body is man when deprived of the spirit. We here assert the inseparability of spirit and matter-not by any means their identity. To assert the identity of spirit and matter is to fall either into spiritualism or into materialism, either of which were no better than the dualism we are condemning, and both of which we as studiously eschew as the saint does Satan.

The error of this dualism is in assuming spirit and matter to be two distinct and independent existences, or, more scholastically, SUBSTANCES. We have regarded them as ultimate. But neither of them is ultimate, or substance in itself. Back of both spirit and matter is the ro y of the Greeks-being itself, or absolute SUBSTANCE. Substance

that which stands under, in, the language of the schools, supports accidents -is ultimate, and in the highest sense is God-rò v vrs, Substance of substance, Being of being, and as we have learned from his revelations, not only Being of being, but essentially wise, powerful, and good; whence we learn again that absolute Being, Being in itself, is Absolute Wisdom, Power, and Love, the ineffable and ever-blessed Three in One, and One in Three.

If we have found the Original of all things to be a Trinity, as we are taught by Christian Theology, so do we find also a corresponding Trinity in the manifestation. When we ascend to God, we find him a Trinity, the three terms of which are

1. Power; 2. Wisdom; 3. Love.

These three, in their absolute unity and triplicity, are absolute Being, regarded as being in itself. Starting now from being in itself, proceeding, so to speak,

3. The Actual. Now, according to the doctrine laid down, that the Original Type of all things is eternal in God, this second Trinity, as well as the first, must be repeated throughout the universe, in each order of creation, and in each individual existence. Every being, every subject, whether of discourse or of thought even, must in its degree represent the Absolute, and be capable of being contemplated under the threefold point of view of the Essential, the Ideal, and the Actual. We say represents. We do by no means affirm, whatever some may at first sight suppose, that because each being or subject necessarily represents the Absolute, therefore each being or subject is absolute, therefore the infinite God; nor a part of God, nor an emanation of God, as pantheism impiously teaches. The particular being or subject represents the Absolute, and is the Absolute only under the point of view of subject of its own phenomena, or cause of its own effects; but it is itself finite and phenomenal in relation to a higher subject. Man, if we contemplate him solely in relation to his own phenomena, stands for the Absolute; he in this relation represents God, is, as it has been said, the Shekinah of God; but he represents him only in a finite and relative manner, for there is a subject which transcends man, and of which he is but a faint image, a dim shadow.

Taking these three distinctions, the first, the Essential, is in itself inapproachable and ineffable; the second, the Ideal, which is the Word of the first, is what we call SPIRIT; the third, the Actual, that is, the incarnation, so to speak, of the word, is what we understand by matter.* In our technology

we should substitute Ideal and Actual for Spiritual and Material. In every subject we should recognize, nay, in fact, we do recognize, both the Ideal and the Actual. The Actual necessarily implies the Ideal; for if there were no Ideal, what would there be to be Actualized? The Ideal necessarily demands the Actual; for without the Actual, it would be to us precisely as if it were not, for only so far as Actualized is it ever cognizable.

In the order of existence, the Essential precedes the Ideal, and the Ideal the Actual. This order, Schelling, Hegel, and the American Transcendentalists, boast that they reproduce in their systems of philosophy. They boast of being able to begin with the Essential, and from that to proceed to the Ideal, and thence to the Actual. Thus, from their knowledge of God as Absolute being, they can tell à priori what will be his Word; and from their knowledge of the Word, foretell what is and must be the Actual. This, if it were possible, would place philosophy on the same basis with geometry, and make all concrete existences in time and space logically demonstrable from the data obtained from our knowledge of absolute being in itself. Hence Hegel contends that the system of the universe is only a system of logic, and hence he asserts the identity of the Ideal and the Essential, of idea and being. But all this boast is vain. It claims for man the power of knowing the Absolute in itself, and therefore claims for man confessedly finite, absolute knowledge, which would imply that he himself is absolute, and therefore not finite, but infinite. The boast is also vain, for in the order of knowledge we are obliged to reverse the order of existence; we rise through nature up to nature's God, instead of descending from God through man to nature. None but God himself can know ac