We have next to notice the rise of this idea that Reason directs the world, in connection with a further application of it well known to us--in the form, viz., of the religious truth that the world is not abandoned to chance and external contingent causes, but that a Providence controls it. I stated above that I would not make a demand on your faith in regard to the principle announced. Yet I might appeal to your belief in it, in this religious aspect, if as a general rule, the nature of philosophical science allowed it to attach authority to presuppositions. To put it in another shape--this appeal is forbidden, because the science of which we have to treat proposes itself to furnish the proof, not indeed of the abstract truth of the doctrine, but of its correctness as compared with facts. The truth, then, that a Providence (that of God) presides over the events of the world consorts with the proposition in question; for Divine Providence is wisdom, endowed with an infinite power, which realizes its aim, viz., the absolute rational design of the world. Reason is thought conditioning itself with perfect freedom. But a difference--rather a contradiction--will manifest itself between this belief and our principle, just as was the case in reference to the demand made by Socrates in the case of Anaxagoras' dictum. For that belief is similarly indefinite; it is what is called a belief in a general providence, and is not followed out into definite application, or displayed in its bearing on the grand total--the entire course of human history. But to explain history is to depict the passions of mankind, the genius, the active powers, that play their part on the great stage; and the providentially determined process which these exhibit constitutes what is generally called the "plan" of Providence. Yet it is this very plan which is supposed to be concealed from our view, which it is deemed presumption even to wish to recognize. The ignorance of Anaxagoras as to how intelligence reveals itself in actual existence was ingenuous. Neither in his consciousness, nor in that of Greece at large, had that thought been further expanded. He had not attained the power to apply his general principle to the concrete, so as to deduce the latter from the former; it was Socrates who took the first step in comprehending the union of the concrete with the universal. Anaxagoras, then, did not take up a hostile position toward such an application; the common belief in Providence does; at least it opposes the use of the principle on a large scale, and denies the possibility of discerning the plan of Providence. In isolated cases this plan is supposed to be manifest. Pious persons are encouraged to recognize in particular circumstances something more than mere chance, to acknowledge the guiding hand of God; for instance, when help has unexpectedly come to an individual in great perplexity and need. But these instances of