ABSTRACT
the great influence exercised by the idea of Providence in fostering a just conception of history deserves emphasis, and should never be forgotten. Its earliest form was the theological doctrine of a God who shapes the plans of men to his own ends; Vico subtilised this transcendent, personal God into an ‘immanent providence’, and Hegel into the ‘cunning of reason’, or of the ‘Idea’. The thought common to all these forms prepared the way for a more ‘objective’ consideration of actions and events, refusing to regard them merely as they appeared to those who participated in them, as bound up with their personal interests and passions. Men’s private motives were degraded, from this new point of view, into mere accidents of the essential and necessary process.
