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to certain final causes , which we have arbitrarily assumed ; it is merely looking back on the wide field of the past , and with an exclusive reference to the evidence of facts , tracing the undeniable evolution of consequences , that are beneficial , from causes , which , in their immediate agency ^ involved tyranny , oppression , and wretchedness ; acknowledging , in fact , the operation of that great law of God ' s moral government , by which evil perpetually works out a final result of good .
The doctrine of final causes has been greatly abused in the philosophy of history , as well as in that of nature ; nor is there any speculation more seductive , and , to most inquirers , less profitable . Nevertheless , if we admit the existence of a supreme and independent mind in the universe , we cannot reasonably exclude the supposition of final causes , although , in many cases ,
it would be presumptuous to say beforehand what they are . The developement of a plan in the moral economy of the universe appears to us to involve the necessity of final causes . It is one thing to say , with certain fanatical theorists , that such and such an event was ordained with a special view to some particular result which we have chosen to select as exclusively important , — just as Victor Cousin , in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy , with a national vanity that is truly ridiculous , has taken upon him to determine , that the mission , as he calls it , of the long series of ages which have elapsed since the promulgation of Christianity , was to prepare the way for the final establishment of * La Charte * ; ' but it is quite another thing to retrace the course of events with a discriminating and historical respect for facts , and from those facts to dedvice the evidence of a plan in the moral world , —of the concurrence of infinitely diversified causes to the production of g rand and general results , —of the gradual progress and improvement of the collective race , —and of grounds for hope and trust in the onward march of humanity , and in the inexhaustible resources of divine benevolence . For our
parts , we cannot separate the recognition of at least the most general final causes from any intelligible acknowledgment of the being of a God . Herder ' s views , as exhibited in the following passage , appear to us to require considerable restriction and qualification : — * Nothing stands more in the way of an impartial consideration of this period of history , than the supposition that the bloody course of Roman conquests was overruled by the secret influence of a particular providence ; as though Rome had been exalted to her pitch of greatness for the special purpose that there might be poets and orators , —that the Roman law and the Latin tongue might spread to the limits of her dominion , —and that roads might
* Unfortunately for the theory of the learned Professor , this charte , whose advent such a long series of events foretold and prepared , has undergone , and is still likely to undergo , vory considerable modifications , since the revolution of 1830 .
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The Philosophy of the History of Mankind . 219
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 219, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/3/
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