The value of his work does not lie in the philosophical principles which he applied.

Nor was it a useful contribution to history; of him it has been said, as of Bossuet, that facts bent like grass under his feet.

[Footnote: Jouffroy, Melanges, p.

81.] But it was a notable attempt to do for human phenomena what Leibnitz in his Theodicy sought to do for the cosmos, and it pointed the way to the rationalistic philosophies of history which were to be a feature of the speculations of the following century.
2.
The short essay of Kant, which he clumsily called the Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan, [Footnote: 1784.

This work of Kant was translated by De Quincey (Works, vol.ix.428 sqq., ed.
Masson), who is responsible for cosmopolitical as the rendering of weltburgerlich.] approaches the problems raised by the history of civilisation from a new point of view.
He starts with the principle of invariable law.