What I have said thus provisionally, and what I shall have further to say, is, even in reference to our branch of science, not to be regarded as hypothetical, but as a summary view of the whole, the result of the investigation we are about to pursue—­a result which happens to be known to me, because I have traversed the entire field.  It is only an inference from the history of the world that its development has been a rational process, that the history in question has constituted the rational necessary course of the World-Spirit—­that Spirit whose nature is always one and the same, but which unfolds this, its one nature, in the phenomena of the world’s existence.  This must, as before stated, present itself as the ultimate result of history; but we have to take the latter as it is.  We must proceed historically—­empirically.  Among other precautions we must take care not to be misled by professed historians who (especially among the Germans, and those enjoying a considerable authority) are chargeable with the very procedure of which they accuse the philosopher—­introducing a priori inventions of their own into the records of the past.  It is, for example, a widely current fiction that there was an original primeval people, taught directly by God, endowed with perfect insight and wisdom, possessing a thorough knowledge of all natural laws and spiritual truth; that there have been such or such sacerdotal peoples; or, to mention a more specific claim, that there was a Roman Epos, from which the Roman historians derived the early annals of their city, etc....

I will mention only two phases and points of view that concern the generally diffused conviction that Reason has ruled, and is still ruling in the world, and consequently in the world’s history; because they give us, at the same time, an opportunity for more closely investigating the question that presents the greatest difficulty, and for indicating a branch of the subject which will have to be enlarged on in the sequel.

1.  One of these points is that passage in history which informs us that the Greek Anaxagoras was the first to enunciate the doctrine that [GREEK:  nous],—­Understanding in general, or Reason, governs the world.  It is not intelligence as self-conscious Reason—­not a spirit as such that is meant; and we must clearly distinguish these from each other.  The movement of the solar system takes place according to unchangeable laws.  These laws are Reason, implicit in the phenomena in question; but neither the sun nor the planets which revolve around it according to these laws can be said to have any consciousness of them.