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all nations , by education , laws , and political constitutions ; and indeed , when will the time for such a project arrive ? Meanwhile ,, reason and industry pursue their ceaseless course ; and we may even consider it as a good sign , when the best fruits of humanity do not ripen too soon . ' *
Three distinguished authors , Voltaire , Herder , and Condorcet , f have each written on the philosophy of history , have each exercised a powerful influence on the opinions of their contemporaries , and gave their respective works to the world at a time when the public mind was intensely exercised on those vital questions , the discussion of which they involved . The similarity , we may say , the identity , of the subject , handled by these
celebrated men , only serves to place in stronger contrast the characteristic differences of their genius and character . They traverse the same regions ,, and their attention is fixed on the same objects ; but the feelings which they experience , and the conclusions which they draw , are widely at variance . Some of our modern theorists , with that rage for sweeping generalization which distinguishes them , have pretended to discover in the
history of the world an alternation of periods , which they designate respectively organiq ues and critiques yj that is , of periods , in which the human mind is built up and established in some firm system of opinion and belief ; and of others , in which the process is reversed , the social edifice is taken to pieces , and all
those doctrines , on which men ' s minds have hitherto reposed in peace , are shattered by a fearless scepticism and resolved into their elements . What such speculators have failed to establish concerning the regular and decisive influence of successive periods , undoubtedly is true of the diverse and conflicting action of individual minds , which are cast in various moulds , and are fitted
for opposite functions , and have different stations assigned them in the world , that the glorious task of exterminating error and establishing ( ruth , to which no single mind , however mighty , is equal , may be gradually and irregularly achieved by the concurring agency of all . Certainly , if we look back on the history of human opinions , we find the greatest names arranged on opposite sides ; Lucien , Bayle , and Hume , among the destroyers of error , Socrates , Plato , Locke , and Mendelsohn , among the
conservators of truth . It is in the former of these classes that we must place Voltaire . The whole tendency of his historical writings is destructive . He traversed the past , reckless and contemptuous , without seeking to derive from it the materials of a better and happier
* Book XX . ch . vi . p . 306 . J- See Voltaire ' s Essai sur lea Mceurs , before referred to , and Condorcet's Eaquisse des Progrt * de V Esprit Humctine . \ Such are the terms adapted in the historical nomenclature of the new sect of St . Simoniena in France .
Untitled Article
The Philosophy of the History of Mankind . 229 '
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 229, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/13/
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