Overpassing the present as a research-limit, and predetermining the spiritual form, duration, rhythm, meaning and product of the still unaccomplished stages of our western history; and
Reconstructing long-vanished and unknown epochs, even whole Cultures of the past, by means of morphological connexions, in much the same way as modern palæontology deduces far-reaching and trustworthy conclusions as to skeletal structure and species from a single unearthed skull-fragment.
It is possible, given the physiognomic rhythm, to recover from scattered details of ornament, building, script, or from odd political, economic and religious data, the organic characters of whole centuries of history, and from known elements on the scale of art-expression, to find corresponding elements on the scale of political forms, or from that of mathematical forms to read that of economic. This is a truly Goethian method—rooted in fact in Goethe’s conception of the prime phenomenon—which is already to a limited extent current in comparative zoology, but can be extended, to a degree hitherto undreamed of, over the whole field of history.
CHAPTER IV
THE PROBLEM OF WORLD-HISTORY
II
THE IDEA OF DESTINY AND THE PRINCIPLE
OF CAUSALITY