sign of the world. Reason is thought conditioning itself with perfect
freedom. But a difference--rather a contradiction--will manifest itself
between this belief and our principle, just as was the case in reference
to the demand made by Socrates in the case of Anaxagoras' dictum. For
that belief is similarly indefinite; it is what is called a belief in a
general providence, and is not followed out into definite application,
or displayed in its bearing on the grand total--the entire course of
human history. But to explain history is to depict the passions of
mankind, the genius, the active powers, that play their part on the
great stage; and the providentially determined process which these
exhibit constitutes what is generally called the "plan" of Providence.
Yet it is this very plan which is supposed to be concealed from our
view, which it is deemed presumption even to wish to recognize. The
ignorance of Anaxagoras as to how intelligence reveals itself in actual
existence was ingenuous. Neither in his consciousness, nor in that of
Greece at large, had that thought been further expanded. He had not
attained the power to apply his general principle to the concrete, so as
to deduce the latter from the former; it was Socrates who took the first
step in comprehending the union of the concrete with the universal.
Anaxagoras, then, did not take up a hostile position toward such an
application; the common belief in Providence does; at least it opposes
the use of the principle on a large scale, and denies the possibility of
discerning the plan of Providence. In isolated cases this plan is
supposed to be manifest. Pious persons are encouraged to recognize in
particular circumstances something more than mere chance, to acknowledge
the guiding hand of God; for instance, when help has unexpectedly come
to an individual in great perplexity and need. But these instances of
providential design are of a limited kind, and concern the
accomplishment of nothing more than the desires of the individual in
question. But in the history of the world, the individuals we have to do
with are peoples, totalities that are States. We cannot, therefore, be
satisfied with what we may call this "peddling" view of Providence, to
which the belief alluded to limits itself. Equally unsatisfactory is the
merely abstract, undefined belief in a Providence, when that belief is
not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts.
On the contrary