In the contests of opinion, which embrace the general relations of society, it is far less those dogmas in which each individual seeks light, aid, strength and repose for his feelings and his conscience, his inward struggles and his final hopes--than the single article of faith respecting man, and what constitutes his essential being, his internal nature, and his higher destiny, which determines the Christian or unchristian view--the religion or irreligion of history, if I may be allowed the expression. This principle of the endless perfectibility of man has something in it very accordant with reason; and if this perfectibility be considered as a mere possible disposition of the human mind, there is doubtless much truth in the theory, but it must be borne in mind that the _corruptibility_ of man is quite as great as his perfectibility. But when this system is applied to the general course of history, it is destitute of any real beginning; for this vague notion of an animal capable of infinite improvement is not a beginning of any series of terms; and in philosophy, as in life and history, there is no true and solid beginning for any thing out of God. And this principle is equally destitute of any right end; for a mere interminable progress is not a fixed term nor positive object. But history presents a mass of stubborn facts, which agree not always with this abstract law of an infinitely progressive perfection, and, on the contrary, the annals not only of particular nations, but of whole periods of the world, would prove that the natural march of humanity lay rather in a circuitous course. This disagreeable fact is utterly inexplicable according to the rationalist system of history--or if it be susceptible of explanation, it certainly is not reconcileable with the liberal view. As often as from the path of endless perfectibility, thus mathematically traced out for them, man and mankind swerve in eccentric deviations; or even should their course, like that of the planets of our heaven at stated periods, be in appearance once retrogressive; the historical enquirer, who starts from this principle, is immediately disconcerted by such a course of events so contrary to his theory; and, in his blind indignation in which he involves alike the present and future, as well as the past, and by the false light of the passionate spirit of time, he pronounces on these a judgment most iniquitous, or at best extremely partial, certainly at least most repugnant to the dictates of truth.