ABSTRACT
in the preceding section I paraphrased and analysed the conception of Providence or the Idea or Reason in its relation to human passions. Such an analysis may sadden or shock and antagonise, since it gives a sordid picture of the way in which men’s highest ideals, beauty, truth and morality, in spreading themselves through human society, popularise their institutions, establish them, defend them, and thus realise historical progress. The historian must, indeed, concentrate on these ideals and their original character, on their mutual oppositions and reconciliations, and on the spiritual progress they achieve, which is called culture or civilisation. He may omit or take for granted the obstacles to their recognition and success, the accidents, often strange enough, that befall them; or he may mention all these merely to accentuate the power of the ideals which overcome them. But he must never deny the way in which, as we have said, these ideals realise themselves in the historical process, for what is necessary cannot be denied.
