between things
will remain material. Physical causes traverse the moral units at which
history stops, determining their force and duration, and the order, so
irrelevant to intent, in which they succeed one another. Even the single
man's life and character have subterranean sources; how should the outer
expression and influence of that character have sources more
superficial than its own? Yet we cannot trace mechanical necessity down
to the more stable units composing a personal mechanism, and much less,
therefore, to those composing a complex social evolution. We accordingly
translate the necessity, obviously lurking under life's commonplace yet
unaccountable shocks, into verbal principles, names for general
impressive results, that play some role in our ideal philosophy. Each of
these idols of the theatre is visible only on a single stage and to duly
predisposed spectators. The next passion affected will throw a
differently coloured calcium light on the same pageant, and there will
be no end of rival evolutions and incompatible ideal principles crossing
one another at every interesting event.

Such a manipulation of history, when made by persons who underestimate
their imaginative powers, ends in asserting that events have directed
themselves prophetically upon the interests which they arouse. Apart
from the magic involved and the mockery of all science, there is a
difficulty here which even a dramatic idealist ought to feel. The
interests affected are themselves many and contrary. If history is to be
understood teleologically, which of all the possible ends it might be
pursuing shall we think really endowed with regressive influence and
responsible for the movement that is going to realise it? Did Columbus,
for instance, discover America so that George Washington might exist and
that some day football and the Church of England may prevail throughout
the world? Or was it (as has been seriously maintained) in order that
the converted Indians of South America might console Saint Peter for the
defection of the British and Germans? Or was America, as Hegel believed,
ideally superfluous, the absolute having become self-conscious enough
already in Prussia? Or shall we say that the real goal is at an infinite
distance and unimaginable by us, and useless, therefore, for
understanding anything?

In truth, whatever plausibility the providential view of a given
occurrence may have is dependent on the curious limitation and
sel