o industrialism.

7. The idea of development assumed another form in the speculations of
German idealism. Hegel conceived the successive periods of history as
corresponding to the ascending phases or ideas in the self-evolution
of his Absolute Being. His _Lectures on the Philosophy of History_
were published in 1837 after his death. His philosophy had a
considerable effect, direct and indirect, on the treatment of history
by historians, and although he was superficial and unscientific
himself in dealing with historical phenomena, he contributed much
towards making the idea of historical development familiar. Ranke was
influenced, if not by Hegel himself, at least by the Idealistic
philosophies of which Hegel's was the greatest. He was inclined to
conceive the stages in the process of history as marked by
incarnations, as it were, of ideas, and sometimes speaks as if the
ideas were independent forces, with hands and feet. But while Hegel
determined his ideas by _a priori_ logic, Ranke obtained his by
induction--by a strict investigation of the phenomena; so that he was
scientific in his method and work, and was influenced by Hegelian
prepossessions only in the kind of significance which he was disposed
to ascribe to his results. It is to be noted that the theory of Hegel
implied a judgment of value; the movement was a progress towards
perfection.

8. In France, Comte approached the subject from a different side, and
exercised, outside Germany, a far wider influence than Hegel. The 4th
volume of his _Cours de philosophie positive_, which appeared in 1839,
created sociology and treated history as a part of this new science,
namely as "social dynamics." Comte sought the key for unfolding
historical development, in what he called the social-psychological
point of view, and he worked out the two ideas which had been
enunciated by Condorcet: that the historian's attention should be
directed not, as hitherto, principally to eminent individuals, but to
the collective behaviour of the masses, as being the most important
element in the process; and that, as in nature, so in history, there
are general laws, necessary and constant, which condition the
development. The two points are intimately connected, for it is only
when the masses are moved into the foreground that regularity,
uniformity, and law can be conceived as applicable. To determine the
social-psychological laws which have controlled the development is,
according to C