I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade,
for there is no darkness—nor death, in the Maker's light,
and nothing that He has wrought shall be lost.
- Canticle of Trials 1:14
What they accomplished was to transpose what took place into the realm of intellectual representation; in this way, what was at first something at hand, something existent and transitory, became something represented intellectually.
These historians bring this primary material, which was transitory and consisted of scattered memories, into a firm and enduring representation; they link together what rushes past fleetingly and set it up in the temple of Mnemosyne so that it may be immortal.
...poems do not belong here because they lack historical truth; they do not have as their content (determinate actuality).
A people first belongs to history when it possesses a determinate consciousness, a personality. The history of a people properly begins with the formation of its consciousness.
The original historians transplant the events that were contemporaneous to them from the soil of the past onto a better soil, that of a stable representation, and such is the distinctive character of their work.
In such a history the cultural formation of the author and his spirit, as well as of the deeds he narrates—[thus the formation] of his spirit and of the actions described by him—are one and the same. Therefore he does not have to reflect on them; he stands and lives in the material itself, does not elevate himeslf above it.
*Here we shall indicate more precisely what also applies to later ages. Only in ages when the cultural formation of a people is more advanced do great differences in culture as well as in political conditions appear, which arise from the differentation of classes. [The writer of the original history must therefore belong to the same class as the one that produced the events and the deeds he intends to recount.]
[The author of an age with a certain culture must be aware of its fundamental principles, for he lives in an age that is (self-aware). The spirit of his age is aware of itself and of the purposes of its actions, the evidence for its principles. Thus the historian must be aware of them.]
...If they do not become living words, if they do not lead to deeds are are [not] likewise heeded, then they remain empty and inconsequential chatter.
...If we want to become acquainted with the spirit of such peoples, to live among the peoples themselves, then we must spend time with these writers, become familiar with them, and obtain a picture of the age at first hand.
Hegel mentions Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, and Caesar as original historians.
It is not enough to have been present at the events; rather one must have been positioned within the spirit of large political operations and world events.
...But these attempts ordinarily fail more or less and come to grief because the whole should convey a single tone, whereas the spirit and culture of diverse times are not uniform; for one always remains a single individual 'mirroring the spirit of one's own time.'
Reflective history by its very nature takes a large body of concrete details and reduces them to abstract representations.
When we have to do with the past, and are concerned with a distant and reflected world, spirit finds itself in need of a present—a present that is produced by its own activity as compensation for its efforts; and this present is found in the [understanding]. The occurences of history are diverse; but what is universal and inward, the relationship between events, the universal spirit of the circumstances, is something enduring and ageless, a perpetual presence that sublates the past and renders the events contemporary.
...But the fate of peoples and the overthrow of states occur on a different plane than that of morality, a higher and broader one.
History and experience teach that peoples generally have not learned from history.
...memory has no power in the new situation of the present. History is formative, but in a wholly different way. The formative power of history is something other than the reflections derived from it. (Orators advocate study of the past; but calling upon the activity and deeds of the Romans or the Greeks with respect to modern political circumstances always led to distortions).
...the intent of the Schweizer Geschichte of Johannes von Müller, for example, is a moral one; to this end he laid out a whole collection of reflections, and consequently his work is boring.
The meaning of the idea as it interprets itself constitutes the true interest.
...They always see the past in terms of the present.
Critical history is not so much history itself but rather a history of the narratives of history and an evaluation of them.
Philosophical world history is closely related to the previous type of history. Its point of view is not a particular universal, nor is it one of many general viewpoints that is singled out abstractly at the neglect of others; rather it is a concrete universal, the spiritual principle of peoples and the history of this principle.
Rather this universal is the guiding soul of events; it is Mercury, the guide of individual souls, of actions and of events. The idea is the guide of peoples and of the world; it is spirit that guides the world, and its guidance is what we wish to learn about.
For spirit is eternally present to itself; the spiritual principle is one and the same, always active and vigorous, whether as it was or will be, and for it there is no past.
...the principles themselves, the spirits of peoples, are themselves the totality of the one world spirit. They complete themselves in it and stand in a necessary succession of stages. They are the offshoots of spirit, and in them spirit completes itself to totality within itself.
...they do not identify the one thing necessary, which is to determine how everything is interrelated. ... (Such reflective expressions are often ventured—filling pages and entire books—but they remain superficial and never address the substance).
The interrelation of cultural aspects is not to be understood to mean that each aspect must be developed to the same degree.
Each aspect relates to the others, and the various aspects of culture comrpise the spirit of a people, which ties all connections together, unifying all aspects. This spirit is something concrete; we have to become acquainted with it, and we can only recognize this connection to the extent that we know it. For a spiritual principle can be grasped only spiritually, only through thought, and we are the ones who grasp thought.
Thinking is the profoundest aspect of spirit and its highest activity is to comprehend itself.
Thus the highest goal of spirit, its truth, is to know itself, to bring to fruition the thought of itself: this it shall do and has done.
...as the world advances to its consummation.
The first general concept that tenders itself is the abstract category of change or alteration—the supplanting of individuals, peoples, and states that arise, linger for a while, attracting our interest, gaining, losing, or sharing it with others, and then vanish.
*This aspect, (viewed negatively), can arouse profound sadness that is evoked particularly when observing the ruins of ancient splendor, of past grandeur; everything seems to pass away, nothing endures. Every traveler has experienced this melancholy. This is not melancholy that attends the demise of individual, personal aims, nor grief at the tomb of renowned persons, but rather the general sadness of a spectator over the decline and destruction of peoples, of a cultured past. Each new stage is built on the ruins of the past.
A feature closely linked to this category is the other side of the coin, namely that alteration and decline at the same time entail the creation and emergence of new life—new life arises out of death.
...not to spirit, which indeed passes over into a new sphere but does not rise out of its ashes in the same shape. The Western conception is that the spirit comes forth not merely rejuvinated but rather elevated and transfigured. Indeed, spirit acts in opposition to itself and consumes the forms of its configuration, its structure; its previous structure becomes its new material—the material that by its labor it elevates to a new and higher shape. The alterations undergone do not merely return it to the same shape but rather reconstitute, purify, and elaborate it—a process whereby, through the completion of its task, it creates new tasks and multiplies the material for its labor.
Thus under this category of change we see in history the most diverse human activities, events, fortunes; we see ourselves in all this. Human doing and suffering everywhere attract our interest as our own experience. ... But it is always human interests that move us, human interests above all.
...and arrive at the question: What is the purpose of all these singular events, which interest us all? There is more to them than their particular aims. This enormous cost must be for some ultimate purpose. Is that beyond imagining?
This is the third category, that of reason, the conception of a final end within itself. ... It is a truth that such a final end is what governs and alone consummates itself in the events that occur to peoples, and that therefore there is reason in world history. This affirmative answer to the question is presupposed here; the proof of its truth can be found in the treatment of world history itself (because history is the image and deed of reason). ... The actual proof resides in the cognition of reason itself; the proof consists in what is cognized, reason itself, which is the stuff of all spiritual life. [In world history reason simply proves itself. World history itself is but one mode of appearance of this one reason, one of the particular shapes in which reason discloses itself].
But history is empty; nothing is to be learned from it if we do not bring reason and spirit with us.
The distinctive quality of old age is that it lives only in the memory of what has been, the past, not in the present; this is a sign of our senility.
What then is the plan of providence in world history? Can this plan be comprehended? Has the time arrived to examine it?
...world history is the unfolding of God's nature in one particular element.
God's will is not distinguished from God, and philosophically we call it the idea.
[The first and purest form distinctive to it [the true] through which the idea reveals itself is pure thought itself, and thus the idea considered in terms of logic. Another form is the one in which the idea immerses itself, that of physical nature. Finally, the third form is that of spirit in general.] Among the forms of spirit, however, we shall emphasize one in particular, namely, the element of human freedom and human will—the element in which the idea utters and externalizes iteslf in such a way that human will ultimately becomes the abstract basis of freedom, and the entire ethical existence of a people becomes its product. This is its more proximate soil; but we must consider not only the ethical world abstractly but also how the idea begets itself in time.
Freedom is simply the way in which the idea brings itself forth, becoming what it is for the first time in accord with its concept. This bringing forth is displayed in a series of (ethical shapes) whose sequence constitutes the course of history.
Thus we have here the idea as the totality of ethical freedom. Two elements are salient: first, the idea itself as abstract; and second, the human passions. The two together form the weft and the warp of the fabric that world history spreads before us.