In its extreme expressions this trend of thought reduced social-historical changes to the effects of the geographical theatre and its climatic conditioning. Not only do social formations and their specific dominant principles change from one stage to the next but so do the specific laws of development. To do otherwise would flout the mandate of its own method which teaches that every school of thought, every stage of scientific knowledge, is an outgrowth of the past work of men modified and sometimes revolutionised by the prevailing conditions and concepts of their existence.

That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. In accord with this principle, they turned to the objective realities of nature and society to explain the historical process. The cyclical character of human affairs was closely affiliated with the conception of an all-powerful, inscrutable, inflexible Destiny which came to replace the gods as the sovereign of history. What bourgeois nation has not proclaimed in time of war that “God is on our side”, guiding its destiny? The straightforward theological view of history is too crude and naive, too close to primitive animism, too much in conflict with civilised enlightenment to persist without criticism or change except among the most ignorant and devout.

It is not elites but the many-membered body of the people who have sustained history, switched it in new directions at critical turning points, and lifted humanity upward step by step. So long as the ascending bourgeoisie was on its way to supremacy, its most enlightened ideologists had a passionate and persistent interest in boring deeply into economic, social and political realities. Plato in his Republic, L aws and other writings, and Aristotle in his Politics, collected specimens of different forms of state rule.

This was the Great God, or theological version of history which asserted that divine beings directed human affairs together with the rest of the cosmos.

The first synthetic conception of history arose from the fusion of elements taken over from the old creation myths with a review of these records. He opined that historical materialism and the theory of modes of production were being used as an excuse for not studying history. Marxism builds on this insight that history is the result of the collective actions of multitudes, of mass effort extending over prolonged periods within the framework of the powers of production they have received and extended and the modes of production they have created, built up and revolutionised. At certain decisive moments in history, during periods of great conflict, the actions of 'great historical men' can align with the 'spirit of the age' to bring about a fundamental advance in freedom.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The Atomists, the Sophists and the Hippocratic school of medicine put forward the idea that the natural environment was the decisive factor in the moulding of mankind. And these spiritual creations are always born in the hearts and minds of men of genius, artists, thinkers, men of action, moral and religious reformers.