It is somewhat paradoxical, but strictly true, to say that the greatest and most important revolution which ever took place upon earth is that to which least attention has hitherto been paid, and concerning which least is known—the substitution of "Christendom" for the heathen world. Before our own day no historian, no philosopher of modern times has felt any interest in this vast theme, and whatever information with regard to it is attainable must be sought in the fragmentary remains of ancient writers, or in works very recently published on the continent. In the volume before us Mr. Allies has taken ground not yet occupied by any English author. He has availed himself of two works—Döllinger's "Christenthum und Kirche" and Champagny's Histories—and he acknowledges in the most liberal and loyal manner his obligation to them; but, in the main, he has been left to find his way for himself, and no man could well be more highly qualified for the task, whether by the gifts of nature or by the acquirements of many years. We infer from the work itself that his attention was immediately turned to the subject by his appointment as professor of the "Philosophy of History" in the Catholic university of Dublin, under the rectorship of Dr. Newman. The duties of his post obliged him to weigh the question, "what is the philosophy of history?" and the inaugural lecture with which the volume before us commences, although it gives no formal definition of the phrase (which is to be regretted), supplies abundant considerations by the aid of which we may arrive at it. History, in its origin, was far more akin to poetry than to philosophy, and even when it passes into prose it is in the half-legendary form, which makes the narrative of Herodotus and of the annalists of the middle ages so charming to all readers. They are ballads without metre. Next came that style of which Thucydides is the model, and which Mr. Allies calls "political history." "Its limit is the nation, and it deals with all that interests the nation." "Great, indeed, is the charm where the writer can describe with the pencil of a poet and analyze with the mental grasp of a philosopher. Such is the double merit of Thucydides. And so it has happened that the deepest students of human nature have searched for two thousand years the records of a war wherein the territory of the chief belligerents was not larger than a modern English or Irish county. What should we say if a quarrel between Kent and Essex, between Cork and Kerry, had kept the world at gaze ever since? Yet Attica and Laconia were no larger."
And yet it needed something more than territorial greatness in the states of which he wrote to enable even Thucydides himself to realize the idea of a philosophical history. For the five hundred years which followed the Peloponnesian war brought to maturity the greatest empire which has ever existed among men, and although, at the close of that period, one of the ablest and most thoughtful of writers devoted himself especially to its history, yet, says our author, "I do not know that in reading the pages of Polybius, of Livy, or even of Tacitus, we are conscious of a wider grasp of thought, a more enlarged experience of political interests, a higher idea of [{357}] man, and of all that concerns his personal and public life, than in those of Thucydides." Great, indeed, was the genius of those ancient historians, magnificent were the two languages which they made their instruments—languages "very different in their capacity, but both of them superior in originality, beauty, and expressiveness to any which have fallen to the lot of modern nations. It may be that the marbles of Pentelicus and Carrara insure good sculptors." "In the narrative—that is, the poetic and pictorial part of history—they have equal merit. Their history is a drama in which the actors and the events speak for themselves. What was wanting was the bearing of events on each other, the apprehension of great first principles—the generalization of facts." And this no mere lapse of time could give. It is wanting in the works of the greatest ancient masters. It is found in moderns in all other respects immeasurably their inferiors. "What, then, had happened in the interval?" Christianity had happened—Christendom had been formed. '"There was a voice in the world greater, more potent, thrilling, and universal, than the last cry of the old society, Civis sum Romanus, and this voice was Sum Christianus. From the time of the great sacrifice it was impossible to sever the history of man's temporal destiny from that of his eternal; and when the virtue of that sacrifice had thoroughly leavened the nations, history is found to assume a larger basis, to have lost its partial and national cast, to have grown with the growth of man, and to demand for its completeness a perfect alliance with philosophy."
Thus, then, the "philosophy of history" is the comparison and arrangement of its great events by one whose mind is stored with the facts which it records, and who at the same time possesses the great first principles which qualify him to judge of it. We may, therefore, lay it down as an absolute rule, that without Christianity no really philosophical history could have been written.
Not unnaturally, then, the first example of the philosophy of history was given by a man whose mind, if not the greatest ever informed by Christianity, was at least among a very few in the first class, was moreover so thoroughly penetrated by Christian principles, that to review the events of the world in any other aspect, or through any other medium, would have been to him as impossible as to examine in detail without the light of the sun the expanse of plains and hills, rivers and forests, which lay under him as he stood on some predominant mountain peak. God, the Almighty Creator—God incarnate, who had once lived and suffered on earth, and now reigned on high until he should put all enemies under his feet, and who was coming again to judge the world which he had redeemed—the Church founded by him to enlighten and govern all generations throughout all nations, and in which dwelt the infallible guidance of God the Holy Ghost—the evil spirits, powerless against the divine presence in the Church, but irresistible by mere human power—the saints, no longer seen by man, but whose intercession influenced and moulded all the events of his life,—all these were ever before the mind of St. Augustine, not merely as articles of faith which he confessed, but as practical realities. To trace the events of the world without continually referring to all these, would have been to him not merely irreligious, but as unreal, unmeaning, and fallacious as it would be to a natural philosopher of our own day to investigate the phenomena of the material world without taking into consideration the attraction of the earth and the resistance of the air. This should be noticed, because we have all met men who, while professing to believe most, if not all, of these things, would consider it bad taste to introduce such considerations into any practical affair. They are, in short, part of that very [{358}] remarkable phenomenon, the "Sunday religion" of a respectable English gentleman, which he holds as an inseparable part of his respectability, but which is well understood to have no bearing at all upon the business of the week. Living as St. Augustine did at the crisis at which the civilization of the ancient world was finally breaking up, his eye was cast back in review over the whole gorgeous line of ancient history, which swept by him like a Roman triumph. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, each had its day; the last and greatest of them all he saw tottering to its fall. But far more important than this comprehensive survey, which the circumstances of his times made natural to so great an intellect, was his possession of fixed and certain principles, the truth of which he knew beyond the possibility of doubt, and which were wide enough to solve every question which the history of the world brought before him. Great men there had been before him, but the deeper their thoughts, the more had they found that the world itself and their own position in it were but a hopeless enigma without an answer, a cypher without a key. A flood of light had been poured upon the piercing mental eye of St. Augustine when the waters of baptism fell from the hand of the holy Ambrose upon his outward frame. Every part of the Old Testament history glowed before him, as when from behind a cloud which covers all the earth the light of the sun falls concentrated upon some mountain-peak; and the man who reverences and ponders as divine that inspired history has learned to read the inner meaning of the whole history of the world as no one else can. In every age, no doubt, Almighty God rules and directs in justice and mercy the world which he has created; but in general he hides himself behind an impenetrable veil. "Clouds and darkness are round about him, justice and judgment the establishment of his throne." To many an ordinary spectator, the world seems only the theatre of man's labor and suffering. He passes through it as he might through one of the arsenals of ancient Greece or Rome, where indeed great works were wrought, but where the hand of the workman was always as visible as the result produced. A more thoughtful man might see proofs of some unknown power, just as in an arsenal of our day works, compared to which the fabled labors of giants and cyclops were as child's play, are hourly performed by the stroke of huge hammers welding vast masses of glowing metal, while nothing is seen to cause or explain their motion. All this is understood by one who has once been allowed to see at work the engine itself which sets all in motion. So does the Old Testament history unveil to the eye of faith the hidden causes, not only of the Jewish history, but of the great events of secular history. All that seemed before only results without cause, is seen to be fully accounted for; not that we can always understand the ends which the Almighty Worker designs to accomplish, or the means by which he is accomplishing them, but everywhere faith sees the operation of Almighty power directed by infinite wisdom and love, and, while able to understand much, it is willing to await in reverent adoration the development of that which as yet is beyond its comprehension. It sees that the history of other nations is distinguished from that of the children of Israel, not so much by the character of the events which it records (for the extraordinary manifestations of divine power were chiefly confined to a few special periods), as to the principle and spirit in which it has been written, and that secular history viewed by eyes supernaturally enlightened assumes the same appearance.
In fact, it is not difficult to write a history of the reigns of David and Solomon and their successors down to the fall of the Hebrew monarchy which sounds very much like that of any other Oriental kingdom. The [{359}] thing has been done of late years, both in Germany and in England. It was by this that Dean Milman, many years ago, so greatly shocked the more religious portion of English readers. Nor were they shocked without cause; for his was a history of the Jews from which, as far as possible, Almighty God was left out, while the characteristic of the inspired narrative is, that it is a record not so much of the doings of men as of the great acts of God by man and among men. Only Dean Milman was more consistent than those who condemned him. He was right in perceiving that the greater part of the history of the Jews is not materially different from that of other nations. But he went on to infer that, therefore, we may leave God out of sight in judging of Jewish history, as we do in that of other nations, instead of learning from the example of the Jews that in every age God is as certainly working among every nation. That by which he offended religious Protestants was the application of their own ordinary principles to the one history in which they had been taught from childhood to see and acknowledge with exceptional reverence the working of Almighty God in the affairs of the world.
This it is which gives its peculiar character to many of the chronicles of the middle ages. It is impossible not to feel that the writers see no broad distinction between the history of the nations and times of which they are writing and that of the ancient people of God. And hence in their annals we have far more of the philosophy of history, in the true sense of the word, than was possible to any ancient author. For with all their ignorance of physical causes, which led them into many mistakes, their main principles were both true and vitally important, and were wholly unknown to Thucydides and Tacitus. But the circumstances of their times made it impossible that they should survey the extensive range of facts which lies before a modern historian. In many instances, also, they were led by the imperfect state of physical science to attribute to a supernatural interference of God in the world things which we are now able to refer to natural causes. That God has before now interfered with the course of nature which he has established in the world, and may whenever he pleases so interfere again, these were to them first principles. And so far they reasoned truly and justly, although their imperfect acquaintance with other branches of human knowledge sometimes led them to apply amiss their true principle. Their minds were so much accustomed to dwell upon the thought of God, and upon his acts in the world, that they were always prepared to see and hear him everywhere, and in every event. When they heard of any event supposed to be supernatural, they might be awestruck and impressed, but could not be said to be surprised; and hence, no doubt, they sometimes accepted as supernatural events which, if examined by a shrewd man who starts with the first principle that nothing supernatural can really have taken place, could have been otherwise explained. Beside, their comparative unacquaintance with physical science led them into errors in accounting for and even in observing those which they themselves did not imagine to be supernatural. But their first principles were true. And the modern who assumes, whether explicitly or implicitly, that the course of the world is modified and governed only by the passions and deeds of man, is in his first principles fundamentally wrong. They fell into accidental error; he cannot be more than accidentally right.
Our author says:
"In the middle ages, and notably in the thirteenth century, there were minds which have left us imperishable memorials of themselves, and which would have taken the largest and most philosophical view of history had the materials existed ready to their hand. [{360}] Conceive, for instance, a history from the luminous mind of St. Thomas with the stores of modern knowledge at his command. But the invention of printing, one of the turning points of the human race, was first to take place, and then on that soil of the middle ages, so long prepared and fertilized by so patient a toil, a mighty harvest was to spring up. Among the first-fruits of labors so often depreciated by those who have profited by them, and in the land of children who despise their sires, we find the proper alliance of philosophy with history. Then at length the province of the historian is seen to consist, not merely in the just, accurate, and lively narrative of facts, but in the exhibition of cause and effect. 'What do we now expect in history?' says M. de Barante; and he replies, 'Solid instruction and complete knowledge of things; moral lessons, political counsels; comparison with the present, and the general knowledge of facts.' Even in the age of Tacitus, the most philosophic of ancient historians, no individual ability could secure all such powers" (p. 12).
Thus philosophical history is one of the results of Christianity. Professor Max Müller makes a similar remark with regard to his own favorite study of ethnology. Before the day of Pentecost, he says, no man, not even the greatest minds, ever thought of tracing the genealogy of nations by their languages, because they did not know the unity of the human race. The unity of mankind is naturally connected in the order of ideas with the unity of God. Those who worshipped many gods, and believed that each race and nation had its own tutelary divinity, not unnaturally regarded each nation as a separate race. So far was this feeling carried by the most civilized races of the old world, that they thought it a profanation that the worship of the gods of one race should be offered by a priest not sprung from that race. The most moderate and popular of the Roman patricians rejected the demand of the plebs to be admitted to the highest offices of the state, not as politically dangerous, but as profane. The Roman consul, in virtue of his office, was the priest of the Capitoline Jove, to whom, on certain solemn occasions, he had to offer sacrifice. It would be a pollution that a plebeian, not sprung from any of the tribes of Romulus, should presume to offer that sacrifice. In fact, the consulship would hardly have been thrown open to the plebs until the long continued habit of intermarriage had welded the two portions of the Roman people so completely into one that the plebeian began, at last, to be regarded as of the same blood with the Furii, the Cornelii, and the Julii. The first measure by which the tribunes commenced their attack upon the exclusive privilege of the great houses was wisely chosen; it was the Canuleian law, by which marriages between the two orders were made legal and valid. Before that, patricians and plebeians were two nations living in one city, and, according to the universal opinion of the ancient world, this implied that they had different gods, different priests, a different ritual, and different temples. But the day of Pentecost blended all nations into a new unity—the unity of the body of Christ; and its first effect was, that the preachers of the new law proclaimed everywhere, that "God had made of one blood all nations of men, to dwell upon the face of the whole earth." The professor points out what curiously completes the analogy between the two cases, that while Christianity, by collecting into one church all the nations of the world, and by teaching their original unity, naturally suggested the idea that all their different languages had some common origin, any satisfactory investigation of the subject was long delayed by the unfounded notion that the Hebrew must needs be the root from which they all sprang. Thus, in both cases, the germ of studies, whose development was delayed for ages by the [{361}] imperfection of human knowledge, appears to have been contained in the revelation of the gospel of Christ.
It is important to bring these considerations into prominence, because the knowledge which would never have existed without Christianity, is, in many cases, retained by men who forget or deny the faith to which they are indebted for it. Our author draws comparison between Tacitus and Gibbon (page 14):