Excerpt from On the Law of History

This general type of objection, however, only makes against the absolute validity of such laws as the sociologist is inclined to formulate. Unless one carries it farther, to the point of saying that it is the destiny of conscious life to become aware of every law which has been true of it at any time, and so to rise step by step above every such type of regular process, it does not make against the possibility that some entirely valid law of historv may exist, which we are destined never to realize.1 Or if the discovery which must invalidate that ultimate law of history were deferred to infinite time, we should have a position sim ilar to that which the religious consciousness in all ages has been prone to take up. There is a law, a plan of historical existence. Which God alone knows, and which man shall never see. To see the law would be equivalent to looking upon the mind of God; and no man seeth God at any time. Indeed, in the spirit of the type of piety which Hegel had especially to encounter, it is a sacrilege even to seek to know this plan of destiny. The true religious attitude, it was felt, was one of acquiescence in a state of ignorance. In this respect the temper of piety has had much in common with the anti-speculative temper of nineteenth century naturalism.

It is indeed time to lav aside this bondage; and to claim for the human spirit the right to enter, at least, upon a knowledge of its own destiny. The prevalent feelings which we have reviewed and analyzed, to the effect that there are no laws of history, or that they are unascertainable if they exist, rest on more or less plausible conjectures, more or less important relative truths, which must play a part in every circumspect effort in this direc tion. But such conjectures close no door. They therefore do not need to be explicitly refuted. The important thing is to consider positively what type of law it may be within our reach to discover.

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