A thought of this kind—­that nature is an embodiment of Reason, that is, unchangeably subordinate to universal laws—­appears nowise striking or strange to us.  We are accustomed to such conceptions and find nothing extraordinary in them; and I have mentioned this extraordinary occurrence partly to show how history teaches that ideas of this kind, which may seem trivial to us, have not always been in the world; that, on the contrary, such a thought makes an epoch in the annals of human intelligence.  Aristotle says of Anaxagoras, as the originator of the thought in question, that he appeared as a sober man among the drunken.  Socrates adopted the doctrine from Anaxagoras, and it forthwith became the ruling idea in philosophy—­except in the school of Epicurus, who ascribed all events to chance.  “I was delighted with the sentiment,” Plato makes Socrates say, “and hoped I had found a teacher who would show me Nature in harmony with Reason, who would demonstrate in each particular phenomenon its specific aim, and, in the whole, the grand object of the universe.  I would not have surrendered this hope for a great deal.  But how very much was I disappointed, when, having zealously applied myself to the writings of Anaxagoras, I found that he adduces only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like.”  It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting Anaxagoras’ doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the shortcoming of the propounder in applying it to nature in the concrete.  Nature is not deduced from that principle; the latter remains, in fact, a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and exhibited as a development of it—­an organization produced by and from Reason.  I wish, at the very outset, to call your attention to the important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth limited to an abstract form, and its determinate application and concrete development.  This distinction affects the whole fabric of philosophy; and among other bearings of it there is one to which we shall have to revert at the close of our view of universal history, in investigating the aspect of political affairs in the most recent period.

We have next to notice the rise of this idea that Reason directs the world, in connection with a further application of it well known to us—­in the form, viz., of the religious truth that the world is not abandoned to chance and external contingent causes, but that a Providence controls it.  I stated above that I would not make a demand on your faith in regard to the principle announced.  Yet I might appeal to your belief in it, in this religious aspect, if as a general rule, the nature of philosophical science allowed it to attach authority to presuppositions.  To put it in another shape—­this appeal is forbidden, because the science of which we have to treat proposes itself to furnish the proof, not indeed of the abstract truth of the doctrine, but of its