Lecture on the Philosophy of History and Some of the Popular Errors Which Are Founded on It, Delivered Before the Calvert Institute, January 24th, 1844 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Lecture on the Philosophy of History and Some of the Popular Errors Which Are Founded on It, Delivered Before the Calvert Institute, January 24th, 1844

The poet who told us, that the proper study of mankind is man, would surely have been frightened from his propriety, had it entered into his imagination to conceive the extent to which, in a single century; the application of his maxim was to carry us. Few men there are, in these days, who have not a notion of their own, as to the going of things gone, and the coming of things future, and the bearing of all things past, pre sent, and to come, upon the fortunes of the human family. To almost' every one, the day in which We live affords a kind of platform, upon which a mystic thing, denominated the spirit of the age, comes forward, and like the chorus of an ancient tra gedy, pronounces a mingled strain of chronicle and prophecy. Different as may be the garb this spirit wears, according to the fancy which has clothed it, there is one point upon which it seems to Speak, in the same tones, to all; a point which displays the actual Spirit of the age in perhaps the least equivocal of its phases - I mean its self-glorification. It is astonishing to see the comparative unanimity with which the framers of current philosophy and the guides of popular Opinion unite in teaching their disciples, that the present age is the consummation of all the past, and that the Spirit of progress which chiefly marks it, is destined, inevitably, to lead our race to the consummation of its perfection. I propose to examine these notions with a little closeness; to test the accuracy of the premises Upon which they rest, and to see how far their promulgation is consistent with just social views, and the interest of our country, Whose citizens are so often favored with them, from press and lecture room.

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