The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Cecchi - Filosofia della storia
Both in the history of individual peoples and in that of civilization at large we find every new outgrowth of thought and activity to be the result of the emergence of some new social order. The dynamic principle on which advance in culture depends is found in new men, who, free from the cramping influence of the old schools, throw themselves, fresh and untrammelled, into the work to be done. The traditions which had become to the men of the old ways of thinking ends in themselves are to the new men of value only as means. In the history of Greece we find each city bringing in turn some new element to enrich the Greek ideal. In Rome progress was always owing to new self-made men. Christianity grew up as a new society formed out of elements despised by both Jew and Gentile. The struggle of old with new and the triumph of the latter are shown in mediæval history and especially in the rise of Florence to greatness and influence. In England successive conquering races mixed with the conquered, the old order is not superseded but modified by the new. The national tendency is exhibited in the character of English speculative thought, as shown in the philosophy of Bacon, of Hartley, and of Spencer. The formation of the French nation was very different. The tendency here is to absorb all the old elements and form from them something wholly new. In Paris, which is ever rejuvenated by rural blood, the whole life of France is taken up and reconstituted. In philosophy Descartes pulls to pieces all old beliefs to build them up again on the basis of his Cogito, ergo sum. Voltaire tears down all religion with a laugh; all has to be made over again. The Gallic genius is a protest against continuity; it destroys and creates with equal facility. In ancient countries the political life was restricted to small cities and limited castes. Each city and each dominant caste regarded itself as born to rule all others. Christianity brought in more universal notions, yet even here the limit is that of the Church. As the Greek could not conceive of the slave having rights, neither could the churchman grant them to the heretic. At the time of the Renaissance, the force of the Church being exhausted in political intrigues, a new spirit of inquiry was manifested. The artists and scientists were new men, who studied in their own way in defiance of the rules of the schools. Great men are always markedly individual, while yet they exhibit the peculiar character of the nation from which they spring.