At any rate we recognize in the growing spread of civilization and common moral ideas a gradual progress towards purer and higher forms of life.
It is indeed impossible for us to prove design and purpose in every individual case, because our attitude to the universal whole is too limited and anomalous.

But within the limitations of our knowledge of things and of the inner necessity of events we can at least try to understand in broad outlines the ways of Providence, which we may also term the principles of development.

We shall thus obtain useful guidance for our further investigation and procedure.
The agency and will of Providence are most clearly seen in the history of the growth of species and races, of peoples and States.

"What is true," Goethe once said in a letter to Zelter, "can but be raised and supported by its history; what is false only lowered and dissipated by its history." The formation of peoples and races, the rise and fall of States, the laws which govern the common life, teach us to recognize which forces have a creative, sustaining, and beneficent influence, and which work towards disintegration, and thus produce inevitable downfall.

We are here following the working of universal laws, but we must not forget that States are personalities endowed with very different human attributes, with a peculiar and often very marked character, and that these subjective qualities are distinct factors in the development of States as a whole.