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begets it in its new birth. Just this process of the individual of his epoch Biography is to set forth, when it gets to performing its highest function.

History (political) gives the evolution of Nations into the world-historical process, as they appear going through a long line of rise and fall in Space and down Time. But the Nation has to be functioned by an individual or individuals, directing it so as to make it realize the WorldSpirit in its career. Thus we have the salient historic phenomenon of a world-historical Nation and a world-historical Man uniting to produce events which must also be called world-historical. Now History puts its stress upon the side of the Nation and its world-historical events, while the Man is subordinate, though present and active. But Biography puts its stress upon the Man, as the pivotal agent who is the mediator between the Nation and the World-Spirit.

There is no doubt that Abraham Lincoln more completely than any other man represents the epoch of the Ten Years' War in its worldhistorical significance. Purely the product of the American People, and trained by their institutions, he becomes in turn their supreme trainer and leader to a new institutional order. Step by step he breathes into the Folk-Soul when ready the World-Spirit giving its ultimate command through his voice. With it he com

munes till he is schooled to speak its speech to the people, who feel the utterance as their own, as that of their highest selves, and at once obey, knowing this, as old Homer would say, to be the word of the God, who appears and appears only to those who are ultimately ready to hear the divine voice.

7. The great pivotal events of History are, accordingly, to be seen and to be portrayed as revealing three spiritual elements in gradation. Primarily they take place in a given Nation, they are national; secondly they are also world-historical, being of the World-Spirit, which is above Nations yet embraces and rules them; finally they are to be carried up to the highest source, higher than the World-Spirit, to the Absolute Ego or Self (Pampsychosis), of which they must be seen to be one form of revelation in the world of Space and Time. Thus the events of History are a manifestation of the Universe as Self (pampsychical), as well as national and world-historical.

It has been often recognized that History is a manifestation of something higher than itself as a simple succession of events. We have had many a Philosophy of History, which term at least indicates that History has its Philosophy, whatever that may be. But Philosophy itself with its line of systems is seen to be in its turn a manifestation of something lying beyond itself,

of some deeper Discipline which is completely self-defining and therein self-revealing. History likewise must be carried back to its profounder sources in such a Discipline, which is surely dawning.

8. The foregoing are some of the general principles underlying this present History in common with all History. Ultimately we have to see the American Ten Years' War, taking its place in the grand march of the supreme historic events of the Nations. The spiritual Totality of History must be viewed at last as that which is determinining each of its Parts. But now we shall pass to the last sweep of the present theme.

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PART THIRD. THE UNION RE-UNITED.

THE GREAT WAR (1861-1865).

If the previous Part Second had as its leading theme the Union Disunited, and if it kept moving more and more deeply toward separation and disintegration till the shot at Sumter, with the call of Lincoln the current sets in strongly the other way, namely toward Union, or rather toward Re-union and Redintegration. So it comes that a new fundamental chord is struck which runs through and holds together this Part Third, as it moves with many an up and down slowly but persistently toward the Union re-united.

The statement may be made here at the start that this cannot be the old Union, or, in the speech of the time the Union as it was." The prodigious travail of the World-Spirit is for a new birth of the Union, a veritable palingenesis or regeneration of it which will no longer per

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mit it to remain half-slave and half-free, productive equally of Slave-States and Free-States. This is the rending contradiction which it must now slough off through the fierce ordeal of bloody war, just about the bloodiest in the World's History. That cleft Folk-Soul, whose cleavage has been always getting wider and more threatening through the cancerous growth of slavery, is to undergo a long and painful surgical operation that the Nation be once more healed and whole. And the Northern conflict between the two duties, the moral and the constitutional, is to be solved by getting rid not only of the Fugitive Slave Law, but of the slave himself seemingly for all time in our country. Also the Classism of the South with its minority rule will be shivered to fragments in the earthquake. And the decision of Judge Taney meets with a tremendous reversal through another and higher Justiciary who instead of confirming the decree making slavery national and universal, makes it zero. Thus arises a homogeneous Union as regards freedom, having gotten rid of the ever fighting dualism with which it came into being. The last compromise between the two incompatible sides has been made, seeking to reconcile that which is at bottom irreconcilable. The transformation of the Slave-State into the Free State begins, of course with fierce resistance and mighty uproar, yet there is a new harmony rising

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