ABSTRACT
When in the romantic and realistic era the idea was formulated that the history of humanity is nothing but the story of liberty, there was thus established both a criterion for interpreting the history of humanity and the ideal or religion immanent in it. Criticism was directed against the conception of the history of thought as a sequence of closed systems, each with a principle superior to that of the preceding one; and the conception was modified so as to regard history as a perpetual germination of new problems, which are born of its own movement and of the movement of life as a whole. It is commonly admitted that events which took place in 1870 and after shook the faith in liberty, considered as a means of checking, satisfying and harmonizing new needs, and of gradually solving the difficulties inherent in preserving the social order and promoting progress.
