STATEMENT OF THE RESOURCES FOR INVESTIGATING HISTORY, AND PROOFS OF THE REGULARITY OF HUMAN ACTIONS. THESE ACTIONS ARE GOVERNED BY MENTAL AND PHYSICAL LAWS: THEREFORE BOTH SETS OF LAWS MUST BE STUDIED, AND THERE CAN BE NO HISTORY WITHOUT THE NATURAL SCIENCES.
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Materials for writing history 1–3
Narrow range of knowledge possessed by historians 4–5
Object of the present work 6
Human actions, if not the result of fixed laws, must be due to chance or to supernatural interference 8
Probable origin of free-will and predestination 9–12
Theological basis of predestination, and metaphysical basis of free-will 12–16
The actions of men are caused by their antecedents, which exist either in the human mind or in the external world 18–20
Therefore history is the modification of man by nature, and of nature by man 20–21
Statistics prove the regularity of actions in regard to murder and other crimes 22–26
Similar proof respecting suicides 27–29
Also respecting the number of marriages annually contracted 31–32
And respecting the number of letters sent undirected 32
The historian must ascertain whether mind or nature has most influenced human actions; and therefore there can be no history without physical science 33–35
Note A. Passages from Kant on free-will and necessity 35–38
