The conclusions I hope to clarify, I may here anticipate. There is discoverable in history no purpose, if we mean by purpose some future event towards which the whole creation moves and which past and present events portend; but there is purpose in history, if we mean that the past is utilized as material for the progressive realization, at least by man, of what we call spiritual ends. More generally, history is itself essentially the utilization of the past for ends, ends not necessarily foreseen, but ends to come, so that every historical thing, when we view it retrospectively, has the appearance of a result which has been selected, and to which its antecedents are exclusively appropriate. In that sense purpose is discoverable in history. But this purpose is not single. History is pluralistic and implies a pluralistic philosophy. There are many histories, but no one of them exists to the prejudice of any other. And, finally, progress is not aptly conceived as an evolution from the past into the future. Evolution is, rather, only a name for historical continuity, and this continuity itself is a fact to be investigated and not a theory which explains anything, or affords a standard of value. The past is not the cause or beginning of the present, but the effect and result of history; so that every historical thing leaves, as it were, its past behind it as the record of its life in time. Progress may mean material progress when we have in mind the improvement in efficiency of the instruments man uses to promote his well-being; it may mean rational progress when we have in mind the idealization of his natural impulses. Then he frames in his imagination ideal ends which he can intelligently pursue and which, through the attempt to realize them, justify his labors. Such are the conclusions I hope to clarify, and I shall begin by considering the purpose men entertain when they write histories.