The variety of the phases of civilisation that have appeared on earth is due to the fact that the possible manifestations of human nature are very numerous and that they must all be realised.  The lower forms are those in which the best, which means the most human, faculties of our nature are undeveloped.  The highest has not yet been realised.  “The flower of humanity, captive still in its germ, will blossom out one day into the true form of man like unto God, in a state of which no terrestrial man can imagine the greatness and the majesty.” [Footnote:  Ideen, v. 5.]

Herder is not a systematic thinker—­indeed his work abounds in contradictions—­and he has not made it clear how far this full epiphany results from the experiences of mankind in preceding phases.  He believes that life is an education for humanity (he has taken the phrase of Lessing), that good progressively develops, that reason and justice become more powerful.  This is a doctrine of Progress, but he distinctly opposes the hypothesis of a final and unique state of perfection as the goal of history, which would imply that earlier generations exist for the sake of the later and suffer in order to ensure the felicity of remote posterity—­a theory which offends his sense of justice and fitness.  On the contrary, man can realise happiness equally in every stage of civilisation.  All forms of society are equally legitimate, the imperfect as well as the perfect; all are ends in themselves, not mere stages on the way to something better.  And a people which is happy in one of these inferior states has a perfect right to remain in it.

Thus the Progress which Herder sees is, to use his own geometrical illustration, a sequence of unequal and broken curves, corresponding to different maxima and minima.  Each curve has its own equation, the history of each people is subject to the laws of its own environment; but there is no general law controlling the whole career of humanity. [Footnote:  Ib. xv. 3.  The power of ideas in history, which Herder failed to appreciate, was recognised by a contemporary savant from whom he might have learned.  Jakob Wegelin, a Swiss, had, at the invitation of Frederick the Great, settled in Berlin, where he spent the last years of his life and devoted his study to the theory of history.  His merit was to have perceived that “external facts are penetrated and governed by spiritual forces and guiding ideas, and that the essential and permanent in history is conditioned by the nature and development of ideas.” (Dierauer, quoted by Bock, op. cit. p. 13.) He believed in the progressive development of mankind as a whole, but as his learned brochures seem to have exerted no influence, it would be useless here to examine more closely his views, which are buried in the transactions of the Prussian Academy of Science.  In Switzerland he came under the influence of Rousseau and d’Alembert.  After he moved to Berlin (1765) he fell under that of Leibnitz.  It may be noted (1) that he deprecated