4.  The last species of Reflective history announces its fragmentary character on its very face.  It adopts an abstract position; yet, since it takes general points of view (such, for instance, as the History of Art, of Law, of Religion), it forms a transition to the Philosophical History of the World.  In our time this form of the history of ideas has been especially developed and made prominent.  Such branches of national life stand in close relation to the entire complex of a people’s annals; and the question of chief importance in relation to our subject is, whether the connection of the whole is exhibited in its truth and reality, or is referred to merely external relations.  In the latter case, these important phenomena (art, law, religion, etc.), appear as purely accidental national peculiarities.  It must be remarked, if the position taken is a true one, that when Reflective history has advanced to the adoption of general points of view, these are found to constitute not a merely external thread, a superficial series, but are the inward guiding soul of the occurrences and actions that occupy a nation’s annals.  For, like the soul-conductor, Mercury, the Idea is, in truth, the leader of peoples and of the world; and Spirit, the rational and necessitated will of that conductor, is and has been the director of the events of the world’s history.  To become acquainted with Spirit in this, its office of guidance, is the object of our present undertaking.

III.  The third kind of history is the Philosophical.  No explanation was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident.  It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an exposition or justification.  The most general definition that can be given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it.  Thought is, indeed, essential to humanity.  It is this that distinguishes us from the brutes.  In sensation, cognition, and intellection, in our instincts and volitions, as far as they are truly human, thought is a constant element.  To insist upon thought in this connection with history may, however, appear unsatisfactory.  In this science it would seem as if thought must be subordinate to what is given, to the realities of fact—­that this is its basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas, without reference to actuality.  Approaching history thus prepossessed, speculation might be supposed to treat it as a mere passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it, as the phrase is, a priori.  But as it is the business of history simply to adopt into its records what is and has been-actual occurrences and transactions; and since it remains true to its character in proportion as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in philosophy a process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer.  This contradiction, and the charge consequently brought against speculation, shall be explained and confuted.  We do not, however, propose to correct the innumerable special misrepresentations, whether trite or novel, that are current respecting the aims, the interests, and the modes of treating history and its relation to philosophy.