ABSTRACT
A conception of history intended to cover the totality of human affairs must take in the future. This was the case with the Christian view of world history as running from the Creation to the Last Judgement. The objectivity of a history that deals merely with that which is past, and remains withdrawn from the struggle of the day, is no longer appropriate; instead the present itself becomes the origin and goal of historical consciousness as well. Ever since the eighteenth century the future has been the object of conscious meditation and empirically founded vision. From our own time prognostication concerning the future has been a major literary theme. During the eighteenth century, in the process of liberation from authorities that had lost their souls and been misused, at the time of the initial, unprecedented achievements of science and technology, of the increase of wealth, in the jubilation of this success, many men lived as though progress were assured.
