There have been many attempts since Plato to deduce from a single
philosophical principle all the phenomena which experience
subsequently verifies for us. Fichte thought he could predict the
world-plan from the idea of universal time. Hegel dreamed he had
found the key to the mysteries of life in the development of
freedom, and Krause in the categories of being. But the one
scientific basis on which the true philosophy of history must rest
is the complete knowledge of the laws of human nature in all its
wants, its aspirations, its powers and its tendencies: and this
great truth, which Thucydides may be said in some measure to have
apprehended, was given to us first by Plato.
Now, it cannot be accurately said of this philosopher that either
his philosophy or his history is entirely and simply A PRIORI. ON
EST DE SON SIECLE MEME QUAND ON Y PROTESTE, and so we find in him
continual references to the Spartan mode of life, the Pythagorean
system, the general characteristics of Greek tyrannies and Greek
democracies. For while, in his account of the method of forming an
ideal state, he says that the political artist is indeed to fix his
gaze on the sun of abstract truth in the heavens of the pure
reason, but is sometimes to turn to the realisation of the ideals
on earth: yet, after all, the general character of the Platonic
method, which is what we are specially concerned with, is
essentially deductive and A PRIORI.
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