It was David Hume who said that “a man acquainted with history may in some respect be said to have lived from the beginning of the world”. At the present juncture of time, when various civilizations are in the process of being more and more closely interlinked, it certainly seems desirable for all of us to “have lived from the beginning of the world”. From this springs the necessity for having a theory of universal history which is applicable to the main historical processes in our world. For without such a theory the facts become unmanageable in their complexity and enormous volume; no sort of intellectual comprehension is possible. A theory or philosophy of history has, of course, to be applicable in the same manner as a scientific hypothesis. That is to say, if it cannot explain important processes, it has to be discarded, either entirely, or partially. Unfortunately, this attitude has not prevailed among philosophers of history, who have thought of their theories in the spirit of quasi-religious revelations. The term “philosophy of history” is a fairly recent one, having apparently been introduced by Voltaire in 1756. But there have been philosophers of history of some sort or other from very much earlier times. In this essay one cannot consider all of them, of course.