In this famous work, in which we can mark the influence of French thinkers, especially Montesquieu, as well as of Leibnitz, he attempted, though on very different lines, the same task which Turgot and Condorcet planned, a universal history of civilisation.
The Deity designed the world but never interferes in its process, either in the physical cosmos or in human history.

Human history itself, civilisation, is a purely natural phenomenon.

Events are strictly enchained; continuity is unbroken; what happened at any given time could have happened only then, and nothing else could have happened.
Herder's rigid determinism not only excludes Voltaire's chance but also suppresses the free play of man's intelligent will.

Man cannot guide his own destinies; his actions and fortunes are determined by the nature of things, his physical organisation and physical environment.

The fact that God exists in inactive ease hardly affects the fatalistic complexion of this philosophy; but it is perhaps a mitigation that the world was made for man; humanity is its final cause.
The variety of the phases of civilisation that have appeared on earth is due to the fact that the possible manifestations of human nature are very numerous and that they must all be realised.