PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The first question that arises when publishing a new Philosophy of History is why, out of all the branches of so-called Practical Philosophy Practical Philosophy: The branch of philosophy concerned with human action, including ethics, politics, and law., this has been the most recently developed and the least thoroughly discussed. It was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that Vico Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), an Italian philosopher who was among the first to argue that history follows structured patterns and laws. made the first attempt to change our view of history. Previously, history was seen either as a series of accidental events or as the unrecognized work of God. Vico instead proposed that history is an embodiment of fundamental original: "primordial" laws and a product of Reason. This theory, rather than going against the moral freedom of humanity, actually establishes the only conditions in which that freedom can be developed.

This delay in developing the field can be explained by a few brief observations. The laws of Existence and Thought, the systems of Nature, the phenomena of the human soul, and even legal and political organisms have always been seen as stable and unchanging realities—at least in their objective nature, if not always in how we perceive them. This is also true for the forms of Art and the ways God is revealed in other modes.

However, it is different with the movements of History. External chance original: "extrinsic contingency" seems to dominate the rise and fall of empires and individuals, and vice often triumphs over virtue. We are sometimes forced to admit that there have been instances where crimes have resulted in the greatest advantages for mankind. This constant instability, which must be seen as the inseparable companion of human fortunes, tends to support the belief that History is built on a foundation of shifting whims—on a dangerous, "fire-vomiting volcano." Because of this, every attempt to discover rules, ideas, or the Divine and Eternal here in the past might be dismissed as an attempt to force in outside complexities original: "adventitious subtleties", or as the empty daydreaming of theoretical original: à priori; reasoning based on theory rather than observation construction, or a vain—