SCOPE OF HISTORY.--The rise and progress of _culture_ and _civilization_ in their various constituents is the theme of history. It does not limit its attention to a particular fraction of a people, to the exclusion of the rest. Governments and rulers, and the public doings of states,--such as foreign wars, and the struggles of rival dynasties,--naturally form a prominent topic in historical writings. But this is only one department in the records of the past. More and more history interests itself in the character of society at large, and in the phases through which it has passed. How men lived from day to day, what their occupations were, their comforts and discomforts, their ideas, sentiments, and modes of intercourse, their state as regards art, letters, invention, religious enlightenment,--these are points on which history, as at present studied and written, undertakes to shed light. POINTS OF VIEW.--An eminent German philosopher of our day, _Hermann Lotze_, intimates that there are five phases of human development, and hence five points of view from which the course of history is to be surveyed. These are the _intellectual_ (embracing the progress of truth and knowledge), the _industrial_, the _aesthetic_ (including art in all its higher ramifications), the _religious_, and the political. An able English scholar, _Goldwin Smith_, resolves the elements of human progress, and thus the most general topics of history, into three, "the moral, the intellectual, and the productive; or, _virtue_, _knowledge_, and _industry_." "But these three elements," he adds, "though distinct, are not separate, but closely connected with each other." THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.--That there is, in some sense, a "reign of law" in the succession of human events, is a conviction warranted by observed facts, as well as inspired by religion. Events do not spring into being, disjoined from antecedents leading to them. Even turning-points in history, which seem, at the first glance, abrupt, are found to be dependent on previous conditions. They are perceived to be the natural issue of the times that have gone before. Preceding events have foreshadowed them. There are laws of historical progress which have their root in the characteristics of human nature. Ends are wrought out, which bear on them evident marks of design. History, as a whole, is the carrying out of a plan: "... through the ages one increasing purpose runs." _Augustine_ long ago argued, that he who has not left "even the entrails of the smallest and most insignificant animal, or the feather of a bird, or the little flower of a plant, or the leaf of a tree, without a harmony, and, as it were, a mutual peace among all its parts,--that God can never be believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of his providence."