The Philosophy of History--that is to say, the right comprehension of its wonderful course, the solution and illustration of its mighty problems, and of the complex enigmas of humanity, and its destiny in the lapse of ages--is not to be found in isolated events, or detached historical facts, but in the principles of social progress. Historical particulars can only serve to characterize the inward motives, the prevailing opinions, the decisive moments, the critical points in the progress of human society; and thus place more vividly before our eyes the peculiar character of every age--each step of mankind in intellectual refinement and moral improvement. To this end, historical details are indispensable; for the ruling principles of social developement are of a more exalted kind, and not mere organic laws of nature, from which as in physiology, when the first principle of the disorder is well understood, we can accurately deduce and partly at least determine beforehand, the nature of the different phenomena and symptoms, the rule of health, the diagnostic of the disease, as well as the method of cure, the approach of the crisis, and its natural declension, without being obliged to go through the labyrinth of all the different cases that may have ever existed. Again, it is not in the history of man, as in natural history, where the structure of the various plants and animals forms by close analogy one connected system of species and genera; and where the growth, bloom, decay and extinction of individuals follow in an uniform order, like day and night, or like the change of the seasons. But in the sphere of human freedom; as man is a natural creature, but a natural creature endowed with free-will, that is to say, with the faculty of moral determination between the good or heavenly impulse, and the wicked or hostile principle; all these organic laws of nature form only the physical basis of his progress and history. And hardly do they form this--but rather a mere disposition of which the direction depends on man, or on the use he makes of his own freedom. It is only when that higher principle of man's free-will has been weakened, debased, obscured, extinguished, and utterly confounded, that those laws of nature can hold good in history. Then indeed the symptoms of a diseased age, the organic vices of a nation, the prognostics of a general crisis of the world may be determined to a certain extent with the precision of medical science. Though the general feelings of mankind clearly declare the soul to be endowed with the faculty of free-will; yet to reason, this freedom is an almost inextricable enigma, the solution of which must be furnished by faith. Or rather this is a mystery, of which the key and explanation must be sought for in God and his Revelation; and the same will apply to every higher principle, that transcends nature, and nature's laws.