Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
About this book
Whatever concept one may hold from a metaphysical point of view concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, & that what seems chaotically complex in the single individual may be seen from the human standpoint to be a steady & progressive tho slow evolution of its original endowment. Since the free will has obvious influence upon marriages, births & deaths, they seem to be subject to no rule by which the number of them could be reckoned in advance.