another century the tables may well be turned again, and the
realization of this is one benefit of studying theories that at first
sight appear to be so passé.

The period covered is from very roughly 1100 B.C. to exactly
A.D. 1823. There is no problem about the earlier date for a
starting-point; the end does pose some problems. It was chosen
because after Hegel a group of new attitudes became dominant
in historiography, notably positivism and the Rankian brand of
historicism: both stressed the scientific side of history, although
they meant different things by it. This increased the already pre-
vailing tendency to study history as process, without reference to
any intrinsic meaning. Part of the reason was an intense secular-
ization of the intellectuals (as opposed to the pseudo-seculariza-
tion of the 18th century) which led them to discard metaphysical
explanations in history as in any other subject. Ultimate purpose
was all very well in its way, but its way was not that of scientific
history. And as historical technique was refined, the canons of
what was and was not admissible as historical evidence became
more and more rigorous. Earlier historians could take the whole
of world civilization for their province; the generation of Ranke
could not.

Within these broad time-limits, no attempt has been made to
cover all the significant philosophers of history: among the omis-
sions are Joachim of Flore, Otto of Freising, Machiavelli, Bossuet,
Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fichte, and Schlegel. The men included
were put there because each one, or group, represented some
particular outlook, or series of outlooks, toward historical meaning.
No clear line is apparent in their writing from the Greeks to
Hegel, except that each reflects a somewhat different cultural con-
text, and that they all believed that past events demonstrated
some sort of ultimate purpose.

The introductions are not intended so much to serve as explica-
tions de texte as to introduce the reader to the total context within
which the selections were written. If a pattern emerges, it will be
from the reader's mind more than from the material itself; but
then that is where historical patterns have always come from in
any case.

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