‘Circuitus illi jam explosi sunt’, exclaimed St. Augustine, referring to ‘the crushing monotony of endless cycles, period succeeding period and recommencing period, without anything ever advancing,’ that theory of everlasting rebirth, and re-death, which the Indians call samsâra, and of which St. Augustine elsewhere says, ‘qua opinione quid horribilius cogitari possit, nescio.’ With the coming of Christ ‘that infernal cycle explodes. Something new incessantly takes place. The Universe has come into being, it really grows and reaches maturity. The world has also an end, thus has a meaning, a direction, a significance.’ With Christianity, thus for the first time, History becomes something to be explained and understood, and not merely something to be described and remembered; and with History proper there is also born the possibility of the new discipline of a Philosophy of History.

When the well-known Catholic publishing firm of Herder, in 1931, started its great series of a History of the Leading Nations (interrupted, of course, by the advent of Nazidom), the first volume bore the title The Meaning of History. In a profound and masterly manner its author there treated of all the problems falling under a Philosophy of History, without naturally attempting to give a concrete exposition of human history in the light of such ‘meaning.’ But this latter task has never ceased to fascinate, and frequent attempts at it have been made. That non-Christians and even atheists should have made it—vide Mr. H. G. Wells’ Outline—is amusing, and shows to what extent the whole world since the coming of Christ stands under the empire of Christian ideas, whether men are aware of it or not.