It is the nemesis of a cliche-ridden prose that a term may become trite yet stay ambiguous. The phrase philosophy of history covers four distinct approaches to three subjects, and before its relation to a Thomist scheme of thought can be considered it will be necessary to analyze the contrasted senses of the adjective “historical” and to determine the meaning of “Thomist” and of “philosophy.” Thomism may be conveniently defined as the application of the principles of act and potency to the study of the necessary and of the contingent. Philosophy may be restricted to a consummated human study in an ultimate causality: “consummated,” for as a science it implies the achievement of a certitude, not a content with an opinion; “human” since it is achieved through reason, not through the supernatural; “ultimate causality” since it is a search for origin, not for occasion, for undeviating principle rather than for contingent event. Such concepts are relatively simple, the complexity of history has commonly been expressed through a consistent use of analogy.

The three primary divisions of modern historical writing, the Chronicle, the Myth, the Culture Study, seem contrasted rather by their perspective than by their object. Each is in intention a form of record of the past; the first in terms of the past, the second as an explanation of the present, the third often primarily as a premature reflection of the future.