Perhaps we may say that with him the philosophy of history is
partly in the metaphysical stage, and see, in the progress of this
idea from Herodotus to Polybius, the exemplification of the Comtian
Law of the three stages of thought, the theological, the
metaphysical, and the scientific: for truly out of the vagueness
of theological mysticism this conception which we call the
Philosophy of History was raised to a scientific principle,
according to which the past was explained and the future predicted
by reference to general laws.
Now, just as the earliest account of the nature of the progress of
humanity is to be found in Plato, so in him we find the first
explicit attempt to found a universal philosophy of history upon
wide rational grounds. Having created an ideally perfect state,
the philosopher proceeds to give an elaborate theory of the complex
causes which produce revolutions, of the moral effects of various
forms of government and education, of the rise of the criminal
classes and their connection with pauperism, and, in a word, to
create history by the deductive method and to proceed from A PRIORI
psychological principles to discover the governing laws of the
apparent chaos of political life.
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