This selection of one market for detailed examination does not rob our sketch of generality, as might at first be thought, since broadly the history of the development of one market is the history of the development of all, and on the whole the economic explanation of the evolution that has taken place may be universalized.
Eschatology was universalized (God was recognized as the creator and moral governor of all tic the world), individualized (God's judgment was directed, not to nations in a future age, but to individuals in a future life), transcendentalized (the future age was more and more contrasted with the present, and the transition from the one to the other was not expected as the result of historical movements, but of miraculous divine acts), and dogmatized (the attempt was made to systematize in some measure the vague and varied prophetic anticipations).
When all is said, however, the geometric method as universalized in philosophy is rather used by Spinoza than expounded.
This influence, so far as it has affected moral as distinct from political speculation, has been exercised primarily through the general conception of human progress; which, in Comte's view, consists in the ever growing preponderance of the distinctively human attributes over the purely animal, social feelings being ranked highest among human attributes, and highest of all the most universalized phase of human affection, the devotion to humanity as a whole.
Some offences, such as making promises with the intention of breaking them, we cannot even conceive universalized; as soon as every one broke promises no one would care to have promises made to him.
