ABSTRACT
A philosophical attempt to work out the Universal History of the world according to plan of Nature in its aiming at perfect Civil Union, must be regarded as possible, and as even capable of helping forward the purpose of Nature. The Idea of a Universal History is no doubt to a certain extent of an a priori character, but it would be a misunderstanding of object were it imagined that the author have any wish to supplant the empirical cultivation of History. Only a learned public which has existed without break from its beginning up to the present can accredit ancient history. Beyond such a society everything is terra incognita; and the history of peoples who live outside it can only begin from the moment they came into contact with it. This happened to the Jewish people at the time of the Ptolemies when the Bible was translated into Greek.
