A LECTURE

ON

THE STUDY OF HISTORY

EX LIBRIS
ST. BASIL'S SCHOLASTICATE

No..

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

A LECTURE

ON

THE STUDY OF HISTORY

DELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE,
JUNE u, 1895

BY

LORD ACTON

LL.D., D.C.L.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1911

JAN 1 1 1954

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,

BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,

AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

First Edition, October, 1895.
Seeind Edition, January, 1896. Reprinted, 1905, 1911.

FELLOW STUDENTS,

I LOOK back to-day to a time before
the middle of the century, when I was
reading at Edinburgh, and fervently wish-
ing to come to this University. At three
colleges I applied for admission, and, as
things then were, I was refused by all.
Here, from the first, I vainly fixed my
hopes, and here, in a happier hour,
after five-and-forty years, they are at last
fulfilled.

I desire first to speak to you of that which
I may reasonably call the Unity of Modern
History, as an easy approach to questions

B

UNITY

necessary to be met on the threshold by
any one occupying this place, which my
predecessor has made so formidable to me
by the reflected lustre of his name.

You have often heard it said that
Modern History is a subject to which
neither beginning nor end can be assigned.
No beginning, because the dense web of
the fortunes of man is woven without a
void ; because, in society as in nature, the
structure is continuous, and we can trace
things back uninterruptedly, until we
dimly descry the Declaration of Indepen-
dence in the forests of Germany. No
end, because, on the same principle,
history made and history making are
scientifically inseparable and separately
unmeaning.

" Politics," said Sir John Seeley, "are
vulgar when they are not liberalised by

OF MODERN HISTORY

history, and history fades into mere lit-
erature when it loses sight of its relation
to practical politics." Everybody perceives
the sense in which this is true. For the
science of politics is the one science that is
deposited by the stream of history, like -
grains of gold in the sand of a river ; and
the knowledge of the past, the record of
truths revealed by experience, is eminently
practical, as an instrument of action, and
a power that goes to the making of the
future. 1 In France, such is the weight
attached to the study of our own time,
that there is an appointed course of con-
temporary history, with appropriate text-
books. 2 That is a chair which, in the
progressive division of labour by which
both science and government prosper, 3
may some day be founded in this country.
Meantime, we do well to acknowledge

B 2

LINK BETWEEN

the points at which the two epochs
diverge. For the contemporary differs
from the modern in this, that many of its
facts cannot by us be definitely ascertained.
The living do not give up their secrets
with the candour of the dead ; one key
is always excepted, and a generation
passes before we can ensure accuracy.
Common report and outward seeming
are bad copies of the reality, as the
initiated know it. Even of a thing
so memorable as the war of 1870, the
true cause is still obscure ; much that
we believed has been scattered to the
.winds in the last six months, and further
revelations by important witnesses are
\ about to appear. The use of history turns
far more on certainty than on abundance
of acquired information.

Beyond the question of certainty is the

HISTORY AND POLITICS

question of detachment. The process by
which principles are discovered and ap-
propriated is other than that by which, in
practice, they are applied ; and our most
sacred and disinterested convictions ought
to take shape in the tranquil regions of
the air, above the tumult and the tempest
of active life. 4 For a man is justly despised
who has one opinion in history and
another in politics, one for abroad and
another at home, one for opposition and
another for office. History compels usj
to fasten on abiding issues, and rescuesj
us from the temporary and transient.
Politics and history are interwoven,
but are not commensurate. Ours is a
domain that reaches farther than affairs of
state, and is not subject to the jurisdiction
of governments. It is our function to
keep in view and to command the move-

NOT GOVERNED

ment of ideas, which are not the effect but
i lie cause of public events ; 5 and even to
allow some priority to ecclesiastical history
over civil, since, by reason of the graver
issues concerned, and the vital conse
quences of error, it opened the way in
research, and was the first to be treated by
close reasoners and scholars of the higher
rank. 6

In the same manner, there is wisdom
and depth in the philosophy which always
considers the origin and the germ, and
glories in history as one consistent epic. 7
Yet every student ought to know that
mastery is acquired by resolved limitation.
And confusion ensues from the theory of
Montesquieu and of his school, who,
adapting the same term to things unlike,
insist that freedom is the primitive con-
dition of the race from which we are

BY NATIONAL CAUSES

sprung. 8 If we are to account mind not
matter, ideas not force, the spiritual
property that gives dignity, and grace, and
intellectual value to history, and its action
on the ascending life of man, then we shall
not be prone to explain the universal by
the national, and civilisation by custom. 9
A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of
Socrates, a few lines that were inscribed on
an Indian rock before the Second Punic
War, the footsteps of a silent yet prophetic
people who dwelt by the Dead Sea, and
perished in the fall of Jerusalem, come
nearer to our lives than the ancestral
wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine
on the Hercynian acorns.

For our present purpose, then, I de-
scribe as modern history that which begins
four hundred years ago, which is marked
off by an evident and intelligible line from

MEDIEVAL LIMIT

the time immediately preceding, and dis-
plays in its course specific and distinctive
characteristics of its own. 10 The modern
age did not proceed from the mediaeval by
normal succession, with outward tokens
of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it
founded a new order of things, under a
law of innovation, sapping the ancient
reign of continuity. In those days
Columbus subverted the notions of the
world, and reversed the conditions of pro-
duction, wealth and power ; in those days,
Machiavelli released government from the
restraint of law ; Erasmus diverted the
current of ancient learning from profane
into Christian channels ; Luther broke the
chain of authority and tradition at the
strongest link ; and Copernicus erected an
invincible power that set for ever the mark
of progress upon the time that was to

OF MODERN HISTORY

come. There is the same unbound origin-
ality and disregard for inherited sanctions
in the rare philosophers as in the discovery
of Divine Right, and the intruding Im-
perialism of Rome. The like effects are
visible everywhere, and one generation
beheld them all. It was an awakening of
new life ; the world revolved in a different
orbit, determined by influences unknown
before. After many ages persuaded of
the headlong decline and impending dis-
solution of society, 11 and governed by usage
and the will of masters who were in their
graves, the sixteenth century went forth
armed for untried experience, and ready
to watch with hopefulness a prospect of
incalculable change.

That forward movement divides it
broadly from the older world ; and the
unity of the new is manifest in the uni-

io INFLUENCE OF KNOWLEDGE

versal spirit of investigation and discovery
which did not cease to operate, and with-
stood the recurring efforts of reaction,
until, by the advent of the reign of general
ideas which we call the Revolution, it at
length prevailed. 12 This successive de-
liverance and gradual passage, for good
and evil, from subordination to inde-
pendence is a phenomenon of primary
import to us, because historical science has
been one of its instruments. 13 If the Past
has been an obstacle and a burden, know-
ledge of the Past is the safest and the
surest emancipation. And the earnest
search for it is one of the signs that dis-
tinguish the four centuries of which I speak
from those that went before. The middle
ages, which possessed good writers of
contemporary narrative, were careless and
impatient of older fact. They became

ON MODERN HISTORY rr

content to be deceived, to live in a twi-
light of fiction, under clouds of false
witness, inventing according to con-
venience, and glad to welcome the forger
and the cheat. 14 As time went on,
the atmosphere of accredited mendacity
thickened, until, in the Renaissance, the
art of exposing falsehood dawned upon
keen Italian minds. It was then that
history as we understand it began to be
understood, and the illustrious dynasty of
scholars arose to whom we still look both
for method and material. Unlike the
dreaming prehistoric world, ours knows the
need and the duty to make itself master of
the earlier times, and to forfeit nothing
of their wisdom or their warnings, 15 and
has devoted its best energy and treasure
to the sovereign purpose of detecting error
and vindicating entrusted truth. 16

12 INTERNATIONAL IDEAS

In this epoch of full-grown history men
have not acquiesced in the given con-
ditions of their lives. Taking little for
granted they have sought to know the
ground they stand on, and the road they
travel, and the reason why. Over them,
therefore, the historian has obtained an in-
creasing ascendancy. 17 The law of stability
was overcome by the power of ideas, con-
stantly varied and rapidly renewed ; 18 ideas
that give life and motion, that take wing
and traverse seas and frontiers, making it
futile to pursue the consecutive order of
events in the seclusion of a separate
nationality. 19 They compel us to share the
existence of societies wider than our own,
to be familiar with distant and exotic
types, to hold our march upon the loftier
summits, along the central range, to live
in the company of heroes, and saints, and

MEMORABLE MEN 13

men of genius, that no single country
could produce. We cannot afford wan-
tonly to lose sight of great men and
memorable lives, and are bound to store up
objects for admiration as far as may be ; 20
for the effect of implacable research is con-
stantly to reduce their number. No intel-
lectual exercise, for instance, can be more
invigorating than to watch the working of
the mind of Napoleon, the most entirely
known as well as the ablest of historic
men. In another sphere, it is the
vision of a higher world to be in-
timate with the character of Fenelon, the
cherished model of politicians, ecclesiastics,
and men of letters, the witness against
one century and precursor of another, the
advocate of the poor against oppres-
sion, of liberty in an age of arbitrary
power, of tolerance in an age of persecu-

14 INDEPENDENT MINDS

tion, of the humane virtues among men
accustomed to sacrifice them to authority,
the man of whom one enemy says that his
cleverness was enough to strike terror,
and another, that genius poured in torrents
from his eyes. For the minds that are
greatest and best alone furnish the in-
structive examples. A man of ordinary
proportion or inferior metal knows not
how to think out the rounded circle of
his thought, how to divest his will of
its surroundings and to rise above the
pressure of time and race and circum-
stance, 21 to choose the star that guides
his course, to correct, and test, and assay
his convictions by the light within, 22 and,
with a resolute conscience and ideal
courage, to re-model and reconstitute the
character which birth and education gave
him. 23

FOREIGN CONSTITUTIONS 15

For ourselves, if it were not the quest of
the higher level and the extended horizon,
international history would be imposed by
the exclusive and insular reason that par-
liamentary reporting is younger than par-
liaments. The foreigner has no mystic
fabric in his government, and no arcanum
imperil. For him, the foundations have
been laid bare ; every motive and function
of the mechanism is accounted for as
distinctly as the works of a watch. But
with our indigenous constitution, not made
with hands or written upon paper, but
claiming to develope -by a law of organic
growth ; with our disbelief in the virtue of
definitions and general principles and our
reliance on relative truths, we can have
nothing equivalent to the vivid and pro-
longed debates in which other communities
have displayed the inmost secrets of

16 RESOURCES

political science to every man who can
read. And the discussions of constituent
assemblies, at Philadelphia, Versailles and
Paris, at Cadiz and Brussels, at Geneva,
Frankfort and Berlin, above nearly all,
those of the most enlightened States in
the American Union, when they have
recast their institutions, are paramount
in the literature of politics, and proffer
treasures which at home we have never
enjoyed.

To historians the later part of their
enormous subject is precious because it is
inexhaustible. It is the best to know
because it is the best known and the most
explicit. Earlier scenes stand out from a
background of obscurity. We soon reach
the sphere of hopeless ignorance and un-
profitable doubt. But hundreds and even
thousands of the moderns have borne

OF MODERN HISTORY

testimony against themselves, and may be
studied in their private correspondence
and sentenced on their own confession.
Their deeds are done in the daylight.
Every country opens its archives and
invites us to penetrate the mysteries of
State. When Hallam wrote his chapter
on James II., France was the only
Power whose reports were available.
Rome followed, and the Hague ; and then
came the stores of the Italian States, and
at last the Prussian and the Austrian
papers, and partly those of Spain. Where
Hallam and Lingard were dependent on
Barillon, their successors consult the
diplomacy of ten governments. The
topics indeed are few on which the re-
sources have been so employed that we
can be content with the work done for us,
and never wish it to be done over again.

c

i8 BEGINNING

Part of the lives of Luther and Frederic,
a little of the Thirty Years' War, much
of the American Revolution and the
French Restoration, the early years of
Richelieu and Mazarin, and a few
volumes of Mr. Gardiner, show here
and there like Pacific islands in
the ocean. I should not even venture
to claim for Ranke, the real origin-
ator of the heroic study of records,
and the most prompt and fortunate of
European pathfinders, that there is one of
his seventy volumes that has not been
overtaken and in part surpassed. It is
through his accelerating influence mainly
that our branch of study has become pro-
gressive, so that the best master is quickly
distanced by the better pupil. 24 The
Vatican archives alone, now made acces-
sible to the world, filled 3,239 cases when

OF THE DOCUMENTARY AGE 19

they were sent to France ; and they are not
the richest. We are still at the beginning
of the documentary age, which will tend
to make history independent of historians,
to develope learning at the expense of
writing, and to accomplish a revolution
in other sciences as well. 25

To men in general I would justify the
stress I am laying on modern history,
neither by urging its varied wealth, nor the
rupture with precedent, nor the perpetuity
of change and increase of pace, nor the
growing predominance of opinion over
belief, and of knowledge over opinion, but
by the argument that it is a narrative told
of ourselves, the record of a life which is
our own, of efforts not yet abandoned to
repose, of problems that still entangle the
feet and vex the hearts of men. Every
part of it is weighty with inestimable

C 2

20 MODERN HISTORY

lessons that we must learn by experience
and at a great price, if we know not how
to profit by the example and teaching of
those who have gone before us, in a
society largely resembling the one we live
in. 26 Its study fulfils its purpose even if
it only makes us wiser, without producing
books, and gives us the gift of his-
torical thinking, which is better than his-
torical learning. 27 It is a most powerful
ingredient in the formation of character
and the training of talent, and our his-
torical judgments have as much to do with
hopes of heaven as public or private con-
duct. Convictions that have been strained
through the instances and the comparisons
of modern times differ immeasurably in
solidity and force from those which every
new fact perturbs, and which are often little
better than illusions or unsifted prejudice. 28

A SCHOOL OF OPINION 21

The first of human concerns is re-
ligion, and it is the salient feature of the
modern centuries. They are signalised as
the scene of Protestant developments.
Starting from a time of extreme indiffer-
ence, ignorance, and decline, they were at
once occupied with that conflict which was
to rage so long, and of which no man
could imagine the infinite consequences.
Dogmatic conviction for I shun to speak
of faith in connection with many characters
of those days dogmatic conviction rose
to be the centre of universal interest, and
remained down to Cromwell the supreme
influence and motive of public policy. A
time came when the intensity of prolonged
conflict, when even the energy of antago-
nistic assurance, abated somewhat, and the
controversial spirit began to make room
for the scientific ; and as the storm sub-

22 INFLUENCE

sided, and the area of settled questions
emerged, much of the dispute was aban-
doned to the serene and soothing touch
of historians, invested as they are with
the prerogative of redeeming the cause
of religion from many unjust reproaches,
and from the graver evil of reproaches
that are just. Ranke used to say that
Church interests prevailed in politics until
the Seven Years' War, and marked a
phase of society that ended when the
hosts of Brandenburg went into action
at Leuthen, chaunting their Lutheran
hymns. 29 That bold proposition would be
disputed even if applied to the present
age. After Sir Robert Peel had broken up
his party, the leaders who followed him de-
clared that no-popery was the only basis
on which it could be reconstructed. 30 On
the other side may be urged that, in July

OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 23

1870, at the outbreak of the French war,
the only government that insisted on the
abolition of the temporal power was
Austria ; and since then we have witnessed
the fall of Castelar, because he attempted
to reconcile Spain with Rome.

Soon after 1850 several of the most
intelligent men in France, struck by the
arrested increase of their own popula-
tion and by the telling statistics from
Further Britain, foretold the coming pre-
ponderance of the English race. They
did not foretell, what none could then
foresee, the still more sudden growth
of Prussia, or that the three most
important countries of the globe would,
by the end of the century, be those
that chiefly belonged to the conquests of
the Reformation. So that in Religion, as
in so many things, the product of these

24 RELIGION

centuries has favoured the new elements ;
and the centre of gravity, moving from the
Mediterranean nations to the Oceanic, from
the Latin to the Teuton, has also passed
from the Catholic to the Protestant. 31

Out of these controversies proceeded
political as well as historical science. It
was in the Puritan phase, before the restor-
ation of the Stuarts, that theology, blend-
ing with politics, effected a fundamental
change. The essentially English reform-
ation of the seventeenth century was less
a struggle between churches than between
sects, often subdivided by questions of
discipline and self-regulation rather than
by dogma. The sectaries cherished no
purpose or prospect of prevailing over the
nations ; and they were concerned with
the individual more than with the con-
gregation, with conventicles, not with

THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY 25

state-churches. Their view was narrowed,
but their sight was sharpened. It ap-
peared to them that governments and
institutions are made to pass away, like
things of earth, whilst souls are immortal ;
that there is no more proportion between
liberty and power than between eternity
and time ; that, therefore, the sphere of
enforced command ought to be restricted
within fixed limits, and that which had
been done by authority, and outward dis-
cipline, and organised violence, should
be attempted by division of power, and
committed to the intellect and the con-
science of free men. 32 Thus was exchanged
the dominion of will over will for the
dominion of reason over reason. The
true apostles of toleration are not those
who sought protection for their own be-
liefs, or who had none to protect ; but men

26 REVOLUTION

to whom, irrespective of their cause, it
was a political, a moral, and a theological
dogma, a question of conscience, involving
both religion and policy. 33 Such a man
was Socinus ; and others arose in the
smaller sects the Independent founder of
the colony of Rhode Island, and the
Quaker patriarch of Pennsylvania. Much
of the energy and zeal which had laboured
for authority of doctrine was employed for
liberty of prophesying. The air was filled
with the enthusiasm of a new cry ; but the
cause was still the same. It became a
boast that religion was the mother of
freedom, that freedom was the lawful off
spring of religion ; and this transmutation,
this subversion of established forms of
political life by the development of religious
thought, brings us to the heart of my
subject, to the significant and central

THE MODE OF LIBERTY 27

feature of the historic cycle before us.
Beginning with the strongest religious
movement and the most refined despotism
ever known, it has led to the superiority
of politics over divinity in the life of
nations, and terminates in the equal claim
of every man to be unhindered by man in
the fulfilment of duty to God 34 a doctrine
laden with storm and havoc, which is
the secret essence of the Rights of Man,
and the indestructible soul of Revolution.

When we consider what the adverse
forces were, their sustained resistance,
their frequent recovery, the critical mo-
ments when the struggle seemed for ever
desperate, in 1685, in 1772, in 1808, it is no
hyperbole to say that the progress of the
world towards self-government would have
been arrested but for the strength afforded
by the religious motive in the seven-

28 PROGRESS

teenth century. And this constancy of
progress, of progress in the direction
of organised and assured freedom, is
the characteristic fact of modern his-
tory, and its tribute to the theory of
Providence. 35 Many persons, I am well
assured, would detect that this is a
very old story, and a trivial common-
place, and would challenge proof that
the world is making progress in aught
but intellect, that it is gaining in freedom,
or that increase in freedom is either a
progress or a gain. Ranke, who was my
own master, rejected the view that I
have stated ; 36 Comte, the master of better
men, believed that we drag a lengthening
chain under the gathered weight of the
dead hand ; 37 and many of our recent
classics, Carlyle, Newman, Froude, were
persuaded that there is no progress

THE MARK O'F PROVIDENCE 29

justifying the ways of God to man, and
that the mere consolidation of liberty is
like the motion of creatures whose advance
is in the direction of their tails. They
deem that anxious precaution against bad
government is an obstruction to good,
and degrades morality and mind by
placing the capable at the mercy of the
incapable, dethroning enlightened virtue
for the benefit of the average man. They
hold that great and salutary things are
done for mankind by power concentrated,
not by power balanced and cancelled
and dispersed, and that the whig theory,
sprung from decomposing sects, the theory
that authority is legitimate only by virtue
of its checks, and that the sovereign
is dependent on the subject, is rebellion
against the divine will manifested all
down the stream of time.

30 CERTAINTY

I state the objection not that we may
plunge into the crucial controversy of a
science that is not identical with ours,
but in order to make my drift clear by
the defining aid of express contradiction.
No political dogma is as serviceable to
my purpose here as the historian's maxim
to do the best he can for the other side,
and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his
own. Like the economic precept Laissez-
faire^ which the eighteenth century
derived from Colbert, it nas been an
important, if not a final step in the making
of method. The strongest and most
impressive personalities, it is true, like
Macaulay, Thiers, and the two greatest of
living writers, Mommsen and Treitschke,
project their own broad shadow upon their
pages. This is a practice proper to great
men, and a great man may be worth several

DEPENDENT ON RESERVE 31

immaculate historians. Otherwise there is
virtue in the saying that a historian is seen
at his best when he does not appear. 39
Better for us is the example of the Bishop
of Oxford, who never lets us know what
he thinks of anything but the matter
before him ; and of his illustrious French
rival, Fustel de Coulanges, who said to
an excited audience : " Do not imagine
you are listening to me ; it is history
itself that speaks." 40 We can found no
philosophy on the observation of four
hundred years, excluding three thousand.
It would be an imperfect and a fallacious
induction. But I hope that even this
narrow and disedifying section of history
will aid you to see that the action of
Christ who is risen on mankind whom he
redeemed fails not, but increases ; 41 that
the wisdom of divine rule appears not in

34 MEANING

the perfection but in the improvement
of the world ; 42 and that achieved liberty
is the one ethical result that rests on
the converging and combined conditions
of advancing civilisation. 43 Then you will
understand what a famous philosopher said,
that History is the true demonstration of
Religion. 44

But what do people mean who proclaim
that liberty is the palm, and the prize,
and the crown, seeing that it is an idea of
which there are two hundred definitions,
and that this wealth of interpretation has
caused more bloodshed than anything,
except theology? Is it Democracy as in
France, or Federalism as in America, or
the national independence which bounds
the Italian view, or the reign of the fittest,
which is the ideal of Germans ? 45 I know
not whether it will ever fall within my

OF LIBERTY 33

sphere of duty to trace the slow progress
of that idea through the chequered scenes
of our history, and to describe how subtle
speculations touching the nature of con-
science promoted a nobler and more
spiritual conception of the liberty that
protects it, 46 until the guardian of rights
developed into the guardian of duties
which are the cause of rights, 47 and that
which had been prized as the material
safeguard for treasures of earth became
sacred as security for things that are divine.
All that we require is a workday key to
history, and our present need can be
supplied without pausing to satisfy philo-
sophers. Without inquiring how far
Sarasa or Butler, Kant or Vinet, is right
as to the infallible voice of God in man,
we may easily agree in this, that where
absolutism reigned, by irresistible arms, con-

D

34 THE GROWTH

centrated possessions, auxiliary churches,
and inhuman laws, it reigns no more ; that
commerce having risen against land,
labour against wealth, the state against the
forces dominant in society, 48 the division
of power against the state, the thought of
individuals against the practice of ages,
neither authorities, nor minorities, nor
majorities can command implicit obedi-
ence ; and, where there has been long and
arduous experience, a rampart of tried
conviction and accumulated knowledge, 49
where there is a fair level of general
morality, education, courage, and self-
restraint, there, if there only, a society
may be found that exhibits the condition
of life towards which, by elimination of
failures, the world has been moving
through the allotted space. 50 You will
know it by outward signs : Representa-

OF REVOLUTION 35

tion, the extinction of slavery, the reign of
opinion, and the like ; better still by less
apparent evidences : the security of the
weaker groups 51 and the liberty of con-
science, which, effectually secured, secures
the rest.

Here we reach a point at which my
argument threatens to abut on a contra-
diction. If the supreme conquests of
society are won more often by violence
than by lenient arts, if the trend and
drift of things is towards convulsions and
catastrophes, 52 if the world owes religious
liberty to the Dutch Revolution, con-
stitutional government to the English,
federal republicanism to the American,
political equality to the French and its
successors, 53 what is to become of us,
docile and attentive students of the ab
sorbing Past ? The triumph of the Revo-

D 2

36 RENOVATION OF HISTORY

lutionist annuls the historian. 54 By its
authentic exponents, Jefferson and Sieyes,
the Revolution of the last century repudi-
ates history. Their followers renounced
acquaintance with it, and were ready to
destroy its records and to abolish its in-
offensive professors. But the unexpected
truth, stranger than fiction, is that this was
not the ruin but the renovation of history.
Directly and indirectly, by process of de-
velopment and by process of reaction,
an impulse was given which made it
infinitely more effectual as a factor of
civilisation than ever before, and a move-
ment began in the world of minds which
was deeper and more serious than the
revival of ancient learning. 55 The dis-
pensation under which we live and labour
consists first in the recoil from the
negative spirit that rejected the law of

BY REVOLUTION 37

growth, and partly in the endeavour to
classify and adjust the revolution, and to
account for it by the natural working
of historic causes. The Conservative
line of writers, under the name of the
Romantic or Historical School, had its
seat in Germany, looked upon the Re-
volution as an alien episode, the error of
an age, a disease to be treated by the in-
vestigation of its origin, and strove to
unite the broken threads and to restore the
normal conditions of organic evolution.
The Liberal School, whose home was
France, explained and justified the Revolu-
tion as a true development, and the ripened
fruit of all history. 56 These are the two
main arguments of the generation to
which we owe the notion and the
scientific methods that make history so
unlike what it was to the survivors of the

38 USE OF UNPUBLISHED SOURCES

last century. Severally, the innovators
were not superior to the men of old.
Muratori was as widely read, Tillemont as
accurate, Leibniz as able, Freret as acute,
Gibbon as masterly in the craft of com-
posite construction. Nevertheless, in the
second quarter of this century, a new era
began for historians.

I would point to three things in par-
ticular, out of many, which constitute the
amended order. Of the incessant deluge
of new and unsuspected matter I need
say little, j For some years, the secret
archives of the papacy were accessible
at Paris ; but the time was not ripe,
and almost the only man whom they
availed was the archivist himself. 57
Towards 1830 the documentary studies
began on a large scale, Austria leading the
way. Michelet, who claims, towards 1836,

INSUFFICIENCY OF BOOKS 39

to have been the pioneer, 58 was preceded
by such rivals as Mackintosh, Bucholtz,
and Mignet. A new and more productive
period began thirty years later, when the
war of 1859 laid open the spoils of Italy.
Every country in succession has now
allowed the exploration of its records, and
there is more fear of drowning than of
drought. The result has been that a
lifetime spent in the largest collection
of printed books would not suffice to train
a real master of modern history. After he
had turned from literature to sources, from
Burnet to Pocock, from Macaulay to
Madame Campana, from Thiers to the
interminable correspondence of the Bona-
partes, he would still feel instant need of
inquiry at Venice or Naples, in the Ossuna
library or at the Hermitage. 59

These matters do not now concern us.

40 HISTORY RENEWED

For our purpose, the main thing to iearn
is not the art of accumulating material,
but the sublimer art of investigating it,
of discerning truth from falsehood, and
certainty from doubt. It is by solidity
of criticism more than by the plenitude
of erudition, that the study of history
strengthens, and straightens, and extends
the mind. 60 And the accession of the
critic in the place of the indefatigable com-
piler, of the artist in coloured narrative,
the skilled limner of character, the per-
suasive advocate of good, or other, causes,
amounts to a transfer of government, to a
change of dynasty, in the historic realm.
For the critic is one who, when he lights
on an interesting statement, begins by
suspecting it. He remains in suspense
until he has subjected his authority to
three operatioH^fI^^t, N he asks whether

BY CRITICISM 41

he has read the passage as the author
wrote it. For the transcriber, and the
editor, and the official or officious censor
on the top of the editor, have played
strange tricks, and have much to answer
for. And if they are not to blame, it may
turn out that the author wrote his book
twice over, that you can discover the first
jet, the progressive variations, things
added, and things struck out. Next is the
question where the writer got his inform-
ation. If from a previous writer, it can be
ascertained, and the inquiry has to be re-
peated. If from unpublished papers, they
must be traced, and when the fountain
head is reached, or the track disappears,
the question of veracity arises. The re-
sponsible writer's character, his position,
antecedents, and probable motives have
to be examined into ; and this is what,

42 CRITICAL STUDY

in a different and adapted sense of the
word, may be called the higher criticism,
in comparison with the servile and often
mechanical work of pursuing statements
to their root. For a historian has to be
treated as a witness, and not believed unless
his sincerity is established. 61 The maxim
that a man must be presumed to be innocent
until his guilt is proved, was not made
for him.

For us then the estimate of authori-
ties, the weighing of testimony, is more
meritorious than the potential discovery
of new matter. 62 And modern history,
which is the widest field of application,
is not the best to learn our business in ;
for it is too wide, and the harvest has
not been winnowed as in antiquity, and
further on to the Crusades. It is better
to examine what has been done for ques-

OF EARLIER TIMES 43

tions that are compact and circumscribed,
such as the sources of Plutarch's Pericles,
the two tracts on Athenian government,
the origin of the epistle to Diognetus, the
date of the life of St. Antony ; and to
learn from Schwegler how this analytical
work began. More satisfying because
more decisive has been the critical treat-
ment of the mediaeval writers, parallel
with the new editions, on which incredible
labour has been lavished, and of which we
have no better examples than the prefaces
of Bishop Stubbs. An important event in
this series was the attack on Dino Com-
pagni, which, for the sake of Dante,
roused the best Italian scholars to a not
unequal contest. When we are told that
England is behind the Continent in
critical faculty, we must admit that this is
true as to quantity, not as to quality of

44 DEGREES

work. As they are no longer living, I will
say of two Cambridge professors, Lightfoot
and Hort, that they were critical scholars
whom neither Frenchman nor German has
surpassed.

The third distinctive note of the genera-
tion of writers who dug so deep a trench
between history as known to our grand-
fathers and as it appears to us, is their
dogma of impartiality. To an ordinary
man the word means no more than
justice. He considers that he may pro-
claim the merits of his own religion, of
his prosperous and enlightened country, of
his political persuasion, whether democracy,
or liberal monarchy, or historic conser-
vatism, without transgression or offence,
so long as he is fair to the relative, though
inferior merits of others, and never treats
men as saints or as rogues for the side they

OF IMPARTIALITY 45

take. There is no impartiality, he would
say, like that of a hanging judge. The men
who, with the compass of criticism in their
hands, sailed the uncharted sea of original
research, proposed a different view. H istory,
to be above evasion or dispute, must stand
on documents, not on opinions. They had
their own notion of truthfulness, based on
the exceeding difficulty of finding truth,
and the still greater difficulty of impressing
it when found. They thought it possible
to write, with so much scruple, and
simplicity, and insight, as to carry along
with them every man of good will, and,
whatever his feelings, to compel his assent.
Ideas which, in religion and in politics,
are truths, in history are forces. They
must be respected ; they must not be
affirmed. By dint of a supreme reserve,
by much self-control, by a timely and

46 MORALITY THE SOLE

discreet indifference, by secrecy in the
matter of the black cap, history might be
lifted above contention, and made an
accepted tribunal, and the same for all. 63
If men were truly sincere, and delivered
judgment by no canons but those of
evident morality, then Julian would be de-
scribed in the same terms by Christian and
pagan, Luther by Catholic and Protestant,
Washington by Whig and Tory, Napoleon
by patriotic Frenchman and patriotic
German. 64

I speak of this school with reverence, for
the good it has done, by the assertion of
historic truth and of its legitimate authority
over the minds of men. It provides a dis-
cipline which every one of us does well to
undergo, and perhaps also well to relinquish.
For it is not the whole truth. Lanfrey's
essay on Carnot, Chuquet's wars of the

RULE OF JUDGMENT 47

Revolution, Ropes's military histories,
Roget's Geneva in the time of Calvin, will
supply you with examples of a more robust
impartiality than I have described. Renan
calls it the luxury of an opulent and
aristocratic society, doomed to vanish in
an age of fierce and sordid striving. In
our universities it has a magnificent and
appointed refuge ; and to serve its cause,
which is sacred, because it is the cause of
truth and honour, we may import a profit-
able lesson from the highly unscientific
region of public life. There a man does
not take long to find out that he is
opposed by some who are abler and
better than himself. And, in order to
understand the cosmic force and the
true connection of ideas, it is a source
of power, and an excellent school of prin-
ciple, not to rest until, by excluding the

48 EXAMPLE

fallacies, the prejudices, the exaggerations
which perpetual contention and the conse-
quent precautions breed, we have made out
for our opponents a stronger and more
impressive case than they present them-
selves. 65 Excepting one to which we are
coming before I release you, there is
no precept less faithfully observed by
historians.

Ranke is the representative of the age
which instituted the modern study of
history. He taught it to be critical, to be
colourless, and to be new. We meet him
at every step, and he has done more for us
than any other man. There are stronger
books than any one of his, and some may
have surpassed him in political, religious,
philosophic insight, in vividness of the
creative imagination, in originality, eleva-
tion, and depth of thought ; but by the

OF RANKE 49

extent of important work well executed, by
his influence on able men, and by the
amount of knowledge which mankind
receives and employs with the stamp
of his mind upon it, he stands without a
rival. I saw him last in 1877, when he
was feeble, sunken, and almost blind, and
scarcely able to read or write. He uttered
his farewell with kindly emotion, and I
feared that the next I should hear of him
would be the news of his death. Two
years later he began a Universal History
which is not without traces of weakness,
but which, composed after the age of
eighty-three, and carried, in seventeen
volumes, far into the Middle Ages, brings
to a close the most astonishing career in
literature.

His course had been determined, in
early life, by Quentin Durward. The

E

50 SUPPRESSION

shock of the discovery that Scott's Lewis
the Eleventh was inconsistent with the
original in Commynes made him resolve
that his object thenceforth should be above
all things to follow, without swerving, and
in stern subordination and surrender, the
lead of his authorities. He decided
effectually to repress the poet, the patriot,
the religious or political partisan, to
sustain no cause, to banish himself from
his books, and to write nothing that would
gratify his own feelings or disclose his
private convictions. 66 When a strenuous
divine who, like him, had written on the
Reformation, hailed him as a comrade,
Ranke repelled his advances. " You," he
said, " are in the first place a Christian : I am
in the first place a historian. There is a
gulf between us." 67 He was the first emi-
nent writer who exhibited what Michelet

OF OPINION 51

calls le ddsinttressement des morts. It
was a moral triumph for him when he
could refrain from judging, show that
much might be said on both sides, and
leave the rest to Providence. 68 He would
have felt sympathy with the two famous
London physicians of our day, of whom
it is told that they could not make up
their minds on a case and reported
dubiously. The head of the family in-
sisted on a positive opinion. They
answered that they were unable to give
one, but he might easily find fifty doctors
who could.

Niebuhr had pointed out that chroni-
clers who wrote before the invention
of printing generally copied one pre-
decessor at a time, and knew little
about sifting or combining authorities.
The suggestion became luminous in

E 2

CRITICISM

Ranke's hands, and with his light and dex-
terous touch he scrutinised and dissected
the principal historians, from Machiavelli
to the Mtmoires d'un Homme d 1 tat, with
a rigour never before applied to moderns.
But whilst Niebuhr dismissed the tradi-
tional story, replacing it with a construc-
tion of his own, it was Ranke's mission to
preserve, not to undermine, and to set up
masters whom, in their proper sphere, he
could obey. The many excellent disser-
tations in which he displayed this art,
though his successors in the next gener-
ation matched his skill and did still more
thorough work, are the best introduction
from which we can learn the technical
process by which within living memory
the study of modern history has been
renewed. Ranke's contemporaries, weary
of his neutrality and suspense, and of

OF MODERN SOURCES 53

the useful but subordinate work that
was done by beginners who borrowed his
wand, thought that too much was made
of these obscure preliminaries which a
man may accomplish for himself, in the
silence cf his chamber, with less demand
on the attention of the public. 69 That may
be reasonable in men who are practised in
these fundamental technicalities. We who
have to learn them, must immerse our-
selves in the study of the great examples.

Apart from what is technical, method is
only the reduplication of common sense,
and is best acquired by observing its use
by the ablest men in every variety of intel-
lectual employment. 70 Bentham acknow-
ledged that he learned less from his own
profession than from writers like Linnaeus
and Cullen ; and Brougham advised the
student of Law to begin with Dante.

54 METHOD TO BE LEARNT

Liebig described his Organic Chemistry
as an application of ideas found in Mill's
Logic, and a distinguished physician, not
to be named lest he should overhear me,
read three books to enlarge his medical
mind ; and they were Gibbon, Grote, and
Mill. He goes on to say, " An educated
man cannot become so on one study alone,
but must be brought under the influence
of natural, civil, and moral modes of
thought." 71 I quote my colleague's golden
words in order to reciprocate them. If men
of science owe anything to us, we may learn
much from them that is essential. 72 For
they can show how to test proof, how to
secure fulness and soundness in induction,
how to restrain and to employ with safety
hypothesis and analogy. It is they who
hold the secret of the mysterious property
of the mind by which error ministers to

FROM SCIENCES 55

truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably pre-
vails. 73 Theirs is the logic of discovery, 74
the demonstration of the advance of know-
ledge and the development of ideas, which
as the earthly wants and passions of men
remain almost unchanged, are the charter
of progress, and the vital spark in history.
And they often give us invaluable counsel
when they attend to their own subjects
and address their own people. Remember
Darwin, taking note only of those passages
that raised difficulties in his way ; the
French philosopher complaining that his
work stood still, because he found no more
contradicting facts ; Baer, who thinks error
treated thoroughly, nearly as remunerative
as truth, by the discovery of new objec-
tions ; for, as Sir Robert Ball warns us,
it is by considering objections that we
often learn. 75 Faraday declares that " in

56 ALL ADOPT THE

knowledge, that man only is to be con-
demned and despised who is not in a
state of transition." And John Hunter
spoke for all of us, when he said : " Never
ask me what I have said or what I have
written ; but if you will ask me what my
present opinions are, I will tell you."

From the first years of the century we
have been quickened and enriched by
contributors from every quarter. The
jurists brought us that law of continuous
growth which has transformed history
from a chronicle of casual occurrences
into the likeness of something organic. 76
Towards 1820 divines began to recast
their doctrines on the lines of develop-
ment, of which Newman said, long after,
that evolution had come to confirm it. 77
Even the Economists, who were practical
men, dissolved their science into liquid

HISTORIC METHOD 57

history, affirming that it is not an auxiliary,
but the actual subject-matter of their in-
quiry. 78 Philosophers claim that, as early
as 1804, they began to bow the meta-
physical neck beneath the historical yoke.
They taught that philosophy is only the
amended sum of all philosophies, that
systems pass with the age whose impress
they bear, 79 that the problem is to focus
the rays of wandering but extant truth,
and that history is the source of philo-
sophy, if not quite a substitute for it. 80
Comte begins a volume with the words
that the preponderance of history over
philosophy was the characteristic of the
time he lived in. 81 Since- Cuvier first
recognised the conjunction between the
course of inductive discovery and the
course of civilization, 82 science had its share
in saturating the age with historic ways

58 DANGER

of thought, and subjecting all things to
that influence for which the depressing
names historicism and historical-minded-
ness have been devised.

There are certain faults which are cor-
rigible mental defects on which I ought
to say a few denouncing words, because
they are common to us all. First : the
want of an energetic understanding of
the sequence and real significance of
events, which would be fatal to a practical
politician, is ruin to a student of history
who is the politician with his face turned
backwards. 83 It is playing at study, to
see nothing but the unmeaning and un-
suggestive surface, as we generally do.
Then we have a curious proclivity to
neglect, and by degrees to forget, what
has been certainly known. An instance
or two will explain my idea. The

OF OBLIVION 59

most popular English writer relates how
it happened in his presence that the title
of Tory was conferred upon the Conser-
vative party. For it was an opprobrious
name at the time, applied to men for whom
the Irish Government offered head-money ;
so that if I have made too sure of pro-
gress, I may at least complacently point
to this instance of our mended manners.
One day, Titus Gates lost his temper
with the men who refused to believe
him, and after looking about for a scorch-
ing imprecation, he began to call them
Tories. 84 The name remained ; but its
origin, attested by Defoe, dropped out
of common memory, as if one party were
ashamed of their godfather, and the other
did not care to be identified with his cause
and character. You all know, I am sure,
the story of the news of Trafalgar, and

60 PROPHECY

how, two days after it had arrived, Mr.
Pitt, drawn by an enthusiastic crowd, went
to dine in the city. When they drank the
health of the minister who had saved his
country, he declined the praise. " Eng-
land," he said, "has saved herself by her
own energy; and I hope that after having
saved herself by her energy, she will save
Europe by her example." In 1814, when
this hope had been realised, the last speech
of the great orator was remembered, and
a medal was struck upon which the
whole sentence was engraved, in four
words of compressed Latin : " Seipsam
virtute, Europam exemplo." Now it
was just at the time of his last appear-
ance in public that Mr. Pitt heard of the
overwhelming success of the French in
Germany, and of the Austrian surrender
at Ulm. His friends concluded that the

OF PITT 6l

contest on land was hopeless, and that
it was time to abandon the Continent to
the conqueror, and to fall back upon our
new empire of the sea. Pitt did not
agree with them. He said that Napoleon
would meet with a check whenever he
encountered a national resistance ; and
he declared that Spain was the place for
it, and that then England would inter-
vene. 85 General Wellesley, fresh from
India, was present. Ten years later,
when he had accomplished that which
Pitt had seen in the lucid prescience of
his last days, he related at Paris what
I scarcely hesitate to call the most as-
tounding and profound prediction in all
political history, where such things have
not been rare.

I shall never again enjoy the oppor-
tunity of speaking my thoughts to such an

RULES FOR THE

audience as this, and on so privileged an
occasion a lecturer may well be tempted to
bethink himself whether he knows of any
neglected truth, any cardinal proposition,
that might serve as his selected epigraph,
as a last signal, perhaps even as a target.
I am not thinking of those shining pre-
cepts which are the registered property
of every school ; that is to say Learn
as much by writing as by reading ; be
not content with the best book ; seek side-
lights from the others ; have no favour-
ites ; keep men and things apart ; guard
against the prestige of great names ; 86
see that your judgments are your own,
and do not shrink from disagreement ;
no trusting without testing ; be more
severe to ideas than to actions ; 87 do not
overlook the strength of the bad cause
or the weakness of the good ; 88 never be

STUDY OF HISTORY 63

surprised by the crumbling of an idol or
the disclosure of a skeleton ; judge talent
at its best and character at its worst ;
suspect power more than vice, 89 and study
problems in preference to periods ; for
instance : the derivation of Luther, the
scientific influence of Bacon, the prede-
cessors of Adam Smith, the mediaeval
masters of Rousseau, the consistency of
Burke, the identity of the first Whig.
Most of this, I suppose, is undisputed, and
calls for no enlargement. But the weight
of opinion is against me when I exhort
you never to debase the moral currency or
to lower the standard of rectitude, but to
try others by the final maxim that governs
your own lives, and to suffer no man and no
cause to escape the undying penalty which
history has the power to inflict on wrong. 90
The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitiga-

64 JUSTIFICATION

tion of punishment is perpetual. At every
step we are met by arguments which go to
excuse, to palliate, to confound right and
wrong, and reduce the just man to the
level of the reprobate. The men who plot
to baffle and resist us are, first of all,
those who made history what it has be-
come. They set up the principle that
only a foolish Conservative judges the
present time with the ideas of the Past ;
that only a foolish Liberal judges the
Past with the ideas of the Present. 91

The mission of that school was to
make distant times, and especially the
middle ages, then most distant of all,
intelligible and acceptable to a society
issuing from the eighteenth century.
There were difficulties in the way ; and
among others this, that, in the first
fervour of the Crusades, the men who

OF THE PAST 65

took the Cross, after receiving communion,
heartily devoted the day to the exter-
mination of Jews. To judge them by a
fixed standard, to call them sacrilegious
fanatics or furious hypocrites, was to
yield a gratuitous victory to Voltaire.
It became a rule of policy to praise the
spirit when you could not defend the deed.
So that we have no common code ;
our moral notions are always fluid ; and
you must consider the times, the class
from which men sprang, the surrounding
influences, the masters in their schools,
the preachers in their pulpits, the
movement they obscurely obeyed, and
so on, until responsibility is merged in
numbers, and not a culprit is left for
execution. 92 A murderer was no criminal
if he followed local custom, if neighbours
approved, if he was encouraged by official

F

66 PHILOSOPHIES

advisers or prompted by just authority, if
he acted for the reason of state or the pure
love of religion, or if he sheltered himself
behind the complicity of the Law. The
depression of morality was flagrant ; but
the motives were those which have
enabled us to contemplate with distress-
ing complacency the secret of unhallowed
lives. The code that is greatly modified
by time and place, will vary according to
the cause. The amnesty is an artifice that
enables us to make exceptions, to tamper
with weights and measures, to deal un-
equal justice to friends and enemies.

It is associated with that philosophy
which Cato attributes to the gods. For
we have a theory which justifies Provi-
dence by the event, and holds nothing so
deserving as success, to which there
can be no victory in a bad cause, pre-

OF HISTORY 67

scription and duration legitimate, 93 and
whatever exists is right and reasonable ;
and as God manifests His will by
that which He tolerates, we must con-
form to the divine decree by living to
shape the Future after the ratified image
of the Past. 94 Another theory, less con-
fidently urged, regards History as our
guide, as much by showing errors to evade
as examples to pursue. It is suspicious
of illusions in success, and, though there
may be hope of ultimate triumph for what
is true, if not by its own attraction, by the
gradual exhaustion of error, it admits no
corresponding promise for what is ethically
right. It deems the canonisation of the
historic Past more perilous than ignorance
or denial, because it would perpetuate the
reign of sin and acknowledge the sove-
reignty of wrong, and conceives it the

F 2

68 DEBASING

part of real greatness to know how to
stand and fall alone, stemming, for a life-
time, the contemporary flood. 95

Ranke relates, without adornment, that
William III. ordered the extirpation of a
Catholic clan, and scouts the faltering
excuse of his defenders. But when he
comes to the death and character of the
'nternational deliverer, Glencoe is for-
gotten, the imputation of murder drops, like
a thing unworthy of notice. 96 Johannes
Mueller, a great Swiss celebrity, writes
that the British Constitution occurred to
somebody, perhaps to Halifax. This art-
less statement might not be approved
by rigid lawyers as a faithful and
felicitous indication of the manner of
that mysterious growth of ages, from
occult beginnings, that was never pro-
faned by the invading wit of man ; 97 but

THE CURRENCY 69

it is less grotesque than it appears. Lord
Halifax was the most original writer of
political tracts in the pamphleteering crowd
between Harrington and Bolingbroke ; and
in the Exclusion struggle he produced
a scheme of limitations which, in substance,
if not in form, foreshadowed the position
of the monarchy in the later Hanoverian
reigns. Although Halifax did not believe
in the Plot, 98 he insisted that innocent
victims should be sacrificed to content the
multitude. Sir William Temple writes :
" We only disagreed in one point, which
was the leaving some priests to the law
upon the accusation of being priests only,
as the House of Commons had desired ;
which I thought wholly unjust. Upon this
point Lord Halifax and I had so sharp
a debate at Lord Sunderland's lodgings,
that he told me, if I would not concur in

70 SINFULNESS

points which were so necessary for the
people's satisfaction, he would tell every-
body I was a Papist. And upon his
affirming that the plot must be handled as
if it were true, whether it were so or no,
in those points that were so generally be-
lieved." In spite of this accusing passage
Macaulay, who prefers Halifax to all the
statesmen of his age, praises him for his
mercy : " His dislike of extremes, and a
forgiving and compassionate temper which
seems to have been natural to him, pre-
served him from all participation in the
worst crimes of his time."

If, in our uncertainty, we must often err,
it may be sometimes better to risk excess in
rigour than in indulgence, for then at least
we do no injury by loss of principle. As
Bayle has said, it is more probable that the
secret motives of an indifferent action are

OF HISTORY 71

bad than good ; " and this discouraging
conclusion does not depend upon theology,
for James Mozley supports the sceptic
from the other flank, with all the artillery
of Tractarian Oxford. " A Christian," he
says, " is bound by his very creed to sus-
pect evil, and cannot release himself. . . .
He sees it where others do not ; his instinct
is divinely strengthened ; his eye is super-
naturally keen ; he has a spiritual insight,
and senses exercised to discern. . . He
owns the doctrine of original sin ; that doc-
trine puts him necessarily on his guard
against appearances, sustains his appre-
hension under perplexity, and prepares
him for recognising anywhere what he
knows to be everywhere." 10 There is
a popular saying of Madame de Stae'l,
that we forgive whatever we really
understand. The paradox has been

72 SOVEREIGNTY

judiciously pruned by her descendant,
the Duke de Broglie, in the words :
" Beware of too much explaining, lest we
end by too much excusing." 101 History,
says Froude, does teach that right and
wrong are real distinctions. Opinions
alter, manners change, creeds rise and
fall, but the moral law is written on the
tablets of eternity. 102 And if there are
moments when we may resist the teaching
of Froude, we have seldom the chance of
resisting when he is supported by Mr.
Goldwin Smith : " A sound historical
morality will sanction strong measures in
evil times ; selfish ambition, treachery,
murder, perjury, it will never sanction in
the worst of times, for these are the things
that make times evil. Justice has been
justice, mercy has been mercy, honour
has been honour, good faith has been

OF THE MORAL CODE 73

good faith, truthfulness has been truth-
fulness from the beginning." The
doctrine that, as Sir Thomas Browne
says, morality is not ambulatory, 103 is ex-
pressed as follows by Burke, who, when
true to himself, is the most intelligent of our
instructors : " My principles enable me to
form my judgment upon men and actions
in history, just as they do in common life ;
and are not formed out of events and
characters, either present or past. History
is a preceptor of prudence, not of principles.
The principles of true politics are those
of morality enlarged ; and I neither now
do, nor ever will admit of any other." 104

Whatever a man's notions of these later
centuries are, such, in the main, the man
himself will be. Under the name of His-
tory, they cover the articles of his philo-
sophic, his religious, and his political

74 HISTORY AND CHARACTER

creed. 105 They give his measure ; they
denote his character : and, as praise is the
shipwreck of historians, his preferences
betray him more than his aversions.
Modern history touches us so nearly, it
is so deep a question of life and death,
that we are bound to find our own way
through it, and to owe our insight to
ourselves. The historians of former ages,
unapproachable for us in knowledge and
in talent, cannot be our limit. We have
the power to be more rigidly impersonal,
disinterested and just than they ; and to
learn from undisguised and genuine re-
cords to look with remorse upon the past,
and to the future with assured hope of
better things ; bearing this in mind, that
if we lower our standard in history, we
cannot uphold it in Church or State.

NOTES

1 No political conclusions of any value for practice
can be arrived at by direct experience. All true
political science is, in one sense of the phrase, a priori,
being deduced from the tendencies of things, ten-
dencies known either through our general experience
of human nature, or as the result of an analysis of the
course of history, considered as a progressive evolu-
tion. MILL, Inaugural Address, 51.

2 Contemporary history is, in Dr. Arnold's opinion,
more important than either ancient or modern ; and
in fact superior to it by all the superiority of the end
to the means. SEELEY, Lectures and Essays, 306.

3 The law of all progress is one and the same, the
evolution of the simple into the complex by successive
differentiations. Edinburgh Review, clvii. 428. Die
Entwickelung der Volker vollzieht sich nach zwei
Gesetzen. Das erste Gesetz ist das der Differenzierung.
Die primitiven Einrichtungen sind einfach und ein-
heitlich, die der Civilisation zusammengesetzt und
geteilt, und die Arbeitsteilung nimmt bestandig zu.
SICKEL, Goettingen Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1890, 563.

4 Nous risquons toujours d'etre influences par les

76 NOTES

prejuges de notre epoque ; mais nous sommes libres
des prejuges particuliers aux epoques anterieures.
E. NAVILLE, Christianisme de Fenelon, 9.

5 La nature n'est qu'un e'cho de 1'esprit. L'ide'e
est la mere du fait, elle fac_onne graduellement le
monde k son image. FEUCHTERSLEBEN, in CARD,
Nouvelles Etudes Morales, 132. II n'est pas d'e'tude
morale qui vaille 1'histoire d'une idee. LABOULAYE,
Liber te Religieuse, 25.

6 II y a des savants qui raillent le sentiment reli-
gieux. Us ne savent pas que c'est a ce sentiment, et
par son moyen, que la science historique doit d'avoir
pu sortir de 1'enfance. . . . Depuis des siecles les ames
inde'pendantes discutaient les textes et les traditions
de 1'eglise, quand les lettres n'avaient pas encore eu
1'idee de porter un regard critique sur les textes de
1'antiquite mondaine. La France Protestante, ii. 17.

7 In our own history, above all, every step in ad-
vance has been at the same time a step backwards.
It has often been shown how our latest constitution
is, amidst all external differences, essentially the same
as our earliest, how every struggle for right and free-
dom, from the thirteenth century onwards, has simply
been a struggle for recovering something old.
FREEMAN, Historical Essays, iv. 253. Nothing but a
thorough knowledge of the social system, based
upon a regular study of its growth, can give us the
power we require to affect it. HARRISON, Meaning of
History, 19. Eine Sache wird nur vollig auf dem
Wege verstanden, wie sie selbst entsteht. In dem
genetischen Verfahren sind die Griinde der Sache,

NOTES 77

auch die Griinde des Erkennens. TRENDELENBURG,
Logische Untersuchungen, ii. 395, 388.

8 Une telle liberte . . . . n'a rien de commtm avec
le savant systeme de garanties qui fait libres les peuples
modernes. BOUTMY, Annales des Sciences Politiques,
i. 157. Les trois grandes reformes qui ont renouvele
1'Angleterre, la liberte religieuse, la reforme parle-
mentaire, et la liberte economique, ont ete obtenues
sous la pression des organisations extra-constitution-
nelles. OSTROGORSKI, Revue Historique, Hi. 272.

9 The question which is at the bottom of all
constitutional struggles, the question between the
national will and the national law. GARDINER,
Documents, xviii. Religion, considered simply as the
principle which balances the power of human opinion,
which takes man out of the grasp of custom and
fashion, and teaches him to refer himself to a higher
tribunal, is an infinite aid to moral strength and
elevation. CHANNING, Works, iv. 83. Je tiens que
le passe ne suffit jamais au pre'sent. Personne n'est
plus dispose que moi a profiter de ses leQons ; mais
en meme temps, je le demande, le present ne fournit-il
pas toujours les indications qui lui sont propres?
MOLE, in ^ ^LLQ\^^, ^Etudes et Souvenirs, 130. Admirons
la sagesse de nos peres, et tachons de 1'imiter, en
faisant ce qui convient a notre siecle. GALIANI,
Dialogues, 40.

10 Ceterum in legendis Historiis malim te ductum
animi, quam anxias leges sequi. Nullae sunt, quae
non magnas habeant utilitates; et melius haerent,
quae libenter legimus. In universum tamen, non
incipere ab antiquissimis, sed ab his, quae nostris

78 NOTES

temporibus nostraeque notitiae propius cohaerent, ac
paulatim deinde in remotiora eniti, magis e re arbitror.
GROTIUS, Epistolce, 18.

11 The older idea of a law of degeneracy, of a " fatal
drift towards the worse," is as obsolete as astrology or
the belief in witchcraft. The human race has become
hopeful, sanguine. SEELEY, Rede Lecture, 1887.
Fortnightly Review, July, 1887, 124.

12 Formuler des idees generates, c'est changer le
salpetre en poudre. A. DE MUSSET, Confessions d'un
Enfant du Siede, 15. Les revolutions c'est 1'avenement
des idees liberales. C'est presque toujours par les
re'volutions qu'elles prevalent et se fondent, et quand
les idees liberales en sont veritablement le principe et
le but, quand elles leur ont donne' naissance, et quand
elles les couronnent a leur dernier jour, alors ces
re'volutions sont legitimes REMUSAT, 1839, in
Revue des Deux Mondes, 1875, vi. 335. II y a meme
des personnes de pie'te' qui prouvent par raison
qu'il faut renoncer a la raison ; que ce n'est point
la lumiere, mais la foi seule qui doit nous conduire,
et que 1'obe'issance aveugle est la principale vertu des
chretiens. La paresse des inferieurs et leur esprit
flatteur s'accommode souvent de cette vertu pre-
tendue, et 1'orgueil de ceux qui commandant en est
toujours tres content. De sorte qu'il se trouvera peut-
etre des gens qui seront scandalises que je fasse cet
honneur a la raison, de 1'e'lever au-dessus detoutes les
puissances, et qui s'imagineront queje me revoke centre
lesautorites legitimes a cause queje prends son parti et
que je soutiens que c'est a elle a de'cider et a regner.
MALEBRANCHE, Morale, i. 2, 13. That great statesman

NOTES 79

(Mr. Pitt) distinctly avowed that the application of
philosophy to politics was at that time an innovation,
and that it was an innovation worthy to be adopted.
He was ready to make the same avowal in the present
day which Mr. Pitt had made in 1792. CANNING,
June i, 1827. Parliamentary Review, 1828, 71.
American history knows but one avenue of success in
American legislation, freedom from ancient prejudice.
The best lawgivers in our colonies first became as
little children. BANCROFT, History of the United
States, i. 494. Every American, from Jefferson and
Gallatin down to the poorest squatter, seemed to
nourish an idea that he was doing what he could to
overthrow the tyranny which the past had fastened
on the human mind. ADAMS, History of the United
'States, i. 175.

13 The greatest changes of which we have had
experience as yet are due to our increasing knowledge
of history and nature. They have been produced by
a few minds appearing in three or four favoured
nations, in comparatively a short period of time.
May we be allowed to imagine the minds of men
everywhere working together during many ages for the
completion of our knowledge ? May not the increase
of knowledge transfigure the world ? JOWETT,
Plato, i. 414. Nothing, I believe, is so likely to beget
in us a spirit of enlightened liberality, of Christian
forbearance, of large-hearted moderation, as the
careful study of the history of doctrine and the
history of interpretation. PEROWNE, Psalms, i. p. xxxi.

14 Ce n'est guere avant la seconde moitie du XVIP

8o NOTES

siecle qu'il devint impossible de soutenir 1'authenticite
des fausses decretales, des Constitutions apostoliques,
des Recognitions Clementines, du faux Ignace, du
pseudo-Dionys, et de 1'immense fatras d'oeuvres
anonymes ou pseudonymes qui grossissait souvent
du tiers ou de la moitie' 1'heritage litte'raire des
auteurs les plus considerables. DUCHESNE, Tcmoins
anteniceens de la Trinite, 1883, 36.

15 A man who does not know what has been thought
by those who have gone before him is sure to set an
undue value upon his own ideas. M. PATTISON,
Memoirs, 78.

16 Travailler a discerner, dans cette discipline, le
solide d'avec le frivole, le vrai d'avec le vraisemblable,
la science d'avec 1'opinion, ce qui forme le jugement
d'avec ce qui ne fait que charger la me'moire. LAMY,
Connoissance de soi-meme, v. 459.

17 All our hopes of the future depend on a sound
understanding of the past. HARRISON, The Meaning
of History, 6.

18 The real history of mankind is that of the slow
advance of resolved deed following laboriously just
thought ; and all the greatest men live in their pur-
pose and effort more than it is possible for them to
live in reality. The things that actually happened
were of small consequence the thoughts that were
developed are of infinite consequence. RUSKIN.
Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the
abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies
latent among them like gold in the ore, that the
mass derives its value. MACAULAY, Works, v. 131.

NOTES 8 i

19 Die Gesetze der Geschichte sind eben die
Gesetze der ganzen Menschheit, gehen nicht in die
Geschicke eines Volkes, einer Generation oder gar
eines Einzelnen auf. Individuen und Geschlechter,
Staaten und Nationen, konnen zerstauben, die Mensch-
heit' bleibt. A. SCHMIDT, Zilricher Monatschrift.

i. 45-

20 Le grand peril des ages democratiques, soyez-en
sur, c'est la destruction ou raffaiblissement excessif
des parties du corps social en presence du tout.
Tout ce qui releve de nos jours 1'ide'e de 1'individu est
sain. TOCQUEVILLE, Jan. 3, 1840, (Enures, vii. 97.
En France, il n'y a plus d'hommes. On a systema-
tiquement tue 1'homme au profit du peuple, des masses,
comme disent nos legislateurs ecervele's. Puis un
beau jour, on s'est apergu que ce peuple n'avait
jamais existe qu'en projet, que ces masses etaient un
troupeau mi-partie de moutons et de tigres. C'est une
triste histoire. Nous avons a relever Tame humaine
centre 1'aveugle et brutale tyrannic des multitudes.
LANFREY, March 23,1855. M. DU CAMP, Souvenirs
Litteraires, ii. 273. C'est le propre de la vertu d'etre
invisible, meme dans 1'histoire, a tout autre ceil que
celui de la conscience. VACHEROT, Comptes Retidus
de Vlnstitut, Ixix. 319. Dans 1'histoire ou la bonte
est la perle rare, qui a ete bon passe presque avant
qui a ete grand. V. HUGO, Les Miserable*, vii.
46. Grosser Maenner Leben und Tod der Wahrheit
gemaess mit Liebe zu schildern, ist zu alien Zeiten
herzerhebend ; am meisten aber dann, wenn im
Kreislauf der irdischen Dinge die Sterne wieder

G

82 NOTES

aehnlich stehen wie damals als sie unter uns lebten.
LASAULX, Sokrates, 3. Instead of saying that the
history of mankind is the history of the masses, it
would be much more true to say that the history of
mankind is the history of its great men. KINGSLEY,
Lectures, 329.

21 Le genie n'est que la plus complete Emancipation
de toutes les influences de temps, de mceurs et de
pays. NISARD, Souvenirs, ii. 43.

22 Meine kritische Richtung zieht mich in der
Wissenschaft durchaus zur Kritik meiner eigenen
Gedanken hin, nicht zu der der Gedanken Anderer.
ROTHE, Ethik, i., p. xi.

23 When you are in young years the whole mind is,
as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into
any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to order it
to form itself into. CARLYLE, On the Choice of Books,
131. Nach allem erscheint es somit unzweifelhaft
als eine der psychologischen Voraussetzungen des
Strafrechts, ohne welche der Zurechnungsbegriff nicht
haltbar ware, dass der Mensch fiir seinen Charakter
verantwortlich ist und ihn muss abandern konnen.
RUMELIN, Reden und Aufsdtze, ii., 60. An der tiefen
und verborgenen Quelle, woraus der Wille entspringt,
an diesem Punkt, nur hier steht die Freiheit, und
fiihrt das Steuer und lenkt den Willen. Wer nicht
bis zu dieser Tiefe in sich einkehren und seinen
natiirlichen Charakter von hier aus bemcistern kann,
der hat nicht den Gebrauch seiner Freiheit, der ist
nicht frei, sondern unterworfen dem Triebwerk seiner
Interessen, und dadurch in der Gewalt des Weltlaufs,

NOTES 83

worin jede Begebenheit und jede Handlung eine
nothwendige Folge ist aller vorhergehenden.
FISCHER, Problem der Freiheit, 27.

24 I must regard the main duty of a Professor to
consist, not simply in communicating information, but
in doing this in such a manner, and with such an
accompaniment of subsidiary means, that the in-
formation he conveys may be the occasion of awaken-
ing his pupils to a vigorous and varied exertion of
their faculties. SIR W. HAMILTON, Lectures, i. 14.
No great man really does his work by imposing his
maxims on his disciples, he evokes their life. The
pupil may become much wiser than his instructor, he
may not accept his conclusions, but he will own, " You
awakened me to be myself, for that I thank you."
MAURICE, The Conscience, 7, 8.

25 Ich sehe die Zeit kommen, wo wir die neuere
Geschichte nicht mehr auf die Berichte selbst nicht
der gleichzeitigen Historiker, ausser in so weit
ihnen neue originale Kenntniss beiwohnte, geschweige
denn auf die weiter abgeleiteten Bearbeitungen zu
griinden haben, sondern aus den Relationen der
Augenzeugen und der a'chten und unmittelbarsten Ur-
kunden aufbauen werden. RANKE, Reformation,
Preface, 1838. Ce qu'on a trouve et mis en ceuvre est
considerable en soi : c'est peu de chose au prix de ce
qui reste a trouver et a mettre en ceuvre. AULARD,
Etudes stir la Revolution, 21.

26 N'attendez done pas les legons de 1'expe'rience ;
elles coutent trop cher aux nations. O. BAR ROT,
Memoires ii. 435. II y a des lecons dans tous les temps,

G 2

84 NOTES

I/

pour tous les temps ; et celles qu'on emprunte a des
ennemis ne sont pas les moins precieuses. LANFREY,
Napoleon , v. p. ii. Old facts may always be fresh,
and may give out a fresh meaning for each generation,
MAURICE, Lectures, 62. The object is to lead the
student to attend to them; to make him take interest in
history not as a mere narrative, but as a chain of causes
and effects still unwinding itself before our eyes, and full
of momentous consequences to himself and his
descendants an unremitting conflict between good
and evil powers, of which every act done by any one of
us, insignificant as we are, forms one of the incidents ;
a conflict in which even the smallest of us cannot
escape from taking part, in which whoever does
not help the right side is helping the wrong. MILL,
Inaugural Address, 59.

27 I hold that the degree in which Poets dwell in
sympathy with the Past, marks exactly the degree of
their poetical faculty. WORDSWORTH in C. Fox,
Memoirs, June, 1842. In all political, all social, all
human questions whatever, history is the main resource
of the inquirer. HARRISON, Meaning of History, 15.
There are no truths which more readily gain the assent
of mankind, or are more firmly retained by them, than
those of an historical nature, depending upon the
testimony of others. PRIESTLEY, Letters to French
Philosophers, 9. Improvement consists in bringing our
opinions into nearer agreement with facts; and we
shall not be likely to do this while we look at facts
only through glasses coloured by those very opinions.
MILL, Inaugural Address, 25.

NOTES 85

28 He who has learnt to understand the true charac-
ter and tendency of many succeeding ages is not likely
to go very far wrong in estimating his own. LECKY,
Value of History, 21. C'est a 1'histoire qu'il faut se
prendre, c'est le fait que nous devons interroger, quand
1'ide'e vacille et fuit a nos yeux. MICHELET, Disc.
d'Ouverture, 263. C'est la loi des faits telle qu'elle
se manifeste dans leur succession. C'est la regie de
conduite donne'e par la nature humaine et indique'e par
1'histoire. C'est la logique, mais cette logique qui ne
fait qu'un avec 1'enchainement des choses. C'est
1'enseignement de 1'experience. SCHERER, Melanges
558. Wer seine Vergangenheit nicht als sekie
Geschichte hat und weiss wird und ist characterlos
Wein ein Ereigniss sein Sonst plotzlich abreisst v; on
seinem Jetzt wird leicht wurzellos. KLIEFOTH,
Rheinwalds Repertorium, xliv. 20. La politique
est une des meilleures ecoles pour 1'esprit. Elle force
a chercher la raison de toutes choses, et ne permet pas
cependant de la chercher hors des faits. REMUSAT,
Le Temps Passe, i. 31. It is an unsafe partition that
divides opinions without principle from unprincipled
opinions. COLERIDGE, Lay Sermon, 373.

Wer nicht von drei tausend Jahren sich weiss Rechenschaft

zu geben,
Bleib' im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tagzu Tage leben !

GOETHE.

What can be rationally required of the student of
philosophy is not a preliminary and absolute, but a
gradual and progressive, abrogation of prejudices.
SIR W. HAMILTON, Lectures^ iv. 92.

86 NOTES

29 Die Schlacht bei Leuthen ist wohl die letzte, in
welcher diese religiosen Gegensatzeentscheidend einge-
vvirkt haben. RANKE, Allgemeint Deutsche Biographic,
vii. 70.

30 The only real cry in the country is the proper
and just old No Popery cry. Major Beresford, July,
1847. Unfortunately the strongest bond of union
amongst them is an apprehension of Popery. Stanley,
September 12, 1847. The great Protectionist party
having degenerated into a No Popery, No Jew Party,
I am still more unfit now than I was in 1846 to lead
it. G. Bentinck, December 26, 1847. Croker's
Memoirs, iii. no, 132, 157.

31 In the case of Protestantism, this constitutional
instability is now a simple matter of fact, which has
become too plain to be denied. The system is not
fixed, but in motion ; and the motion is for the time in
the direction of complete self-dissolution. We take it
for a transitory scheme, whose breaking up is to make
room in due time for another and far more perfect
state of the Church. The new order in which Pro-
testantism is to become thus complete cannot be
reached without the co-operation and help of
Romanism. NEVIN, Mercersburg Review, iv. 48.

32 Diese Heiligen waren es, die aus dem unmittel-
baren Glaubensleben und den Grundgedanken der
christlichen Freiheit zuerst die Idee allgemeiner
Menschenrechte abgeleitet und rein von Selbstsucht
vertheidigt haben. WEINGARTEN, Revolutionskirchcn,
447. Wie selbst die Idee allgemeiner Menschenrechte,
die in dem gemeinsameii Character der Ebenbildlich-

NOTES 87

keit Gottes gegriindet sind, erst durch das Christen-
thum zum Bewusstsein gebracht werden, wahrend jeder
andere Eifer fiir politische Freiheit als ein mehr oder
weniger selbstsiichtiger und beschrankter sich erwiesen
hat. NEANDER, Pref. to Uhderis Wilberforce, p. v.
The rights of individuals and the justice due to them
are as dear and precious as those of states ; indeed
the latter are founded on the former, and the great
end and object of them must be to secure and support
the rights of individuals, or else vain is government.
GUSHING in CONWAY, Life of Paine, i. 217. As it
is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet
understood ; so, if it ever comes to be understood,
before the restitution of all things, and without miracu-
lous interpositions, it must be in the same way as
natural knowledge is come at by the continuance
and progress of learning and liberty. BUTLER,
Analogy, ii. 3.

33 Comme lesloiselles-memes sont faillibles, etqu'il
peut y avoir une autre justice que la justice ecrite,
les societe's modernes ont voulu garantir les droits de
la conscience a la poursuite d'une justice meilleure que
celle qui existe ; et la est le fondement de ce qu'on
appelle liberte de conscience, liberte' d'e'crire, liberte
de pensee. JANET, Philosophic Contemporaine, 308.
Si la force materielle a toujours fini par ceder a
1'opinion, combien plus ne sera-t-elle pas contrainte de
ceder a la conscience ? Car la conscience, c'est 1'opinion
renforcee par le sentiment de 1'obligation. VINET,
Liberte Religieuse, 3.

34 Apres la volonte d'un homme, la raison d'e'tat ;

NOTES

apres la raison d'etat, la religion ; apres la religion, la
liberte. Voila toute la philosophic de 1'histoire.
FLOTTES, La Souverainete du Peuple, 1851, 192. La
repartition plus e'gale des biens et des droits dans ce
monde est le plus grand objet que doivent se proposer
ceux qui menent les affaires humaines. Je veux seule-
ment que Tegalite en politique consiste a etre egalement
libre. TOCQUEVILLE, September 10, 1856. M""-
Swetchine, i. 455. On peut concevoir une Idgisla-
tion tres simple, lorsqu'on voudra en ecarter tout ce
qui est arbitraire, ne consulter que les deux premieres
lois de la liberte et de la proprie'te, et ne point ad-
mettre de lois positives qui ne tirent leur raison de
ces deux lois souveraines de la justice essentielle et
absolue. LETROSNE, Vues sur la Justice Criminelle, 16.
Summa enim libertas est, ad optimum recta ratione
cogi. Nemo optat sibi hanc libertatem, volendi quae
velit, sed potius volendi optima. LEIBNIZ, De Fato.
TRENDELENBURG, Beitrdge zur Philosophic, ii. 190.

35 All the world is, by the very law of its creation,
in eternal progress ; and the cause of all the evils of
the world may be traced to that natural, but most
deadly error of human indolence and corruption, that
our business is to preserve and not to improve.
ARNOLD, Life, i. 259. In whatever state of know-
ledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress
towards a yet higher state need never fear a check,
but must continue till the last existence of society.
HERSCHEL, PreL Dis., 360. It is in the develop-
ment of thought as in every other development ; the
present suffers from the past, and the future struggles

NOTES 89

hard in escaping from the present. MAX MULLER,
Science of Thought, 617. Most of the great positive
evils of the world are in themselves removable, and
will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the
end reduced within narrow limits. Poverty in any
sense implying suffering may be completely extin-
guished by the wisdom of society combined with the
good sense and providence of individuals. All the
grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a
great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquer-
able by human care and effort. J. S. MILL, Utilitari-
anism, 21, 22. The ultimate standard of worth is
personal worth, and the only progress that is worth
striving after, the only acquisition that is truly good
and enduring, is the growth of the soul. BIXBY,
Crisis of Morals, 210. La science, et 1'industrie
qu'elle produit, ont, parmi tous les autres enfants du
ge'nie de 1'homme, ce privilege particulier, que leur vol
non-seulement ne peut pas s'interrompre, mais qu'il
s'accelere sans cesse. CUVIER, Discours sur la Marche
des Sciences, 24Avril, 1816. Aucune idee parmi celles
qui se referent a 1'ordre des faits naturels, ne tient de
plus pres a la famille des ide'es religieuses que 1'ide'e
du progres, et n'est plus propre a devenir le principe
d'une sorte de foi religieuse pour ceux qui n'en ont
pas d'autres. Elle a, comme la foi religieuse, la
vertu de relever les ames et les caracteres. COURNOT,
Marche des Idces, ii. 425. Dans le spectacle de
1'humanite errante, souffrante et travaillant toujours
a mieux voir, a mieux penser, a mieux agir, a
diminuer Pinfirmite de Petre humain, a apaiser

90 NOTES

Pinquietude de son coeur, la science decouvre une
direction et un progres. A. SOREL, Discours de
Reception, 14. Le jeime homme qui commence son
education quinze ans apres son pere, a une e'poque
oh celui-ci, engage dans une profession spe'ciale et
active, ne peut que suivre les anciens principes,
acquiert une supe'riorite' the'orique dont on doit
tenir compte dans la hierarchic sociale. Le plus
souvent le pere n'est-il pas pe'netre' de 1'esprit de
routine, tandis que le fils repre'sente et de'fend la
science progressive ? En diminuant 1'ecart qui existait
entre 1'influence des jeunes ge'ne'rations et celle de la
vieillesse ou de Page mur, les peuples modernes
n'auraient done fait que reproduire dans leur ordre
social un changement de rapports qui s'etait deja
accompli dans la nature intime des choses.
BOUTMY, Revue Nationale, xxi. 393. II y a dans
Phomme individuel des principes de progres viager ;
il y a, en toute societe, des causes constantes qui
transforment ce progres viager en progres hereditaire.
Une socie'te quelconque tend a progresser tant que
les circonstances ne touchent pas aux causes de
progres que nous avons reconnues, 1'imitation des
devanciers par les successeurs, des etrangers par les
indigenes. LACOMBE, LHistoire comme Science, 292.
Veram creatae mentis beatitudinem consistere in non
impedito progressu ad bona majora. LEIBNIZ to WOLF,
February 21, 1705. In cumulum etiam pulchritudinis
perfectionisque universalis operum divinorum pro-
gressus quidam perpetuus liberrimusque totius uni-
versi est agnoscendus, ita ut ad majorem semper cultum

NOTES 91

procedat. LEIBNIZ ed. Erdmann, 1500. DerCreaturen
und also auch unsere Vollkommenheit bestehet in
einem ungehinderten starken Forttrieb zu neuen und
neuen Vollkommenheiten. LEIBNIZ, Deutsche Schrift-
en, ii. 36. Hegel, welcher annahm, der Fortschritt
der Neuzeit gegen das Mittelalter sei dieser, dass die
Principien der Tugend und des Christenthums,
welche im Mittelalter sich allein im Privatleben und
der Kirche zur Geltung gebracht batten, nun auch
anfingen, das politische Leben zu durchdringen.
FORTLAGE, Allg. Monatschrift, 1853, 777. Wir
Slawen wissen, dass die Geister einzelner Menschen
und ganzer Volker sich nur durch die Stufe ihrer
Entwicklung unterscheiden. MICKIEWICZ, Slawische
Literatitr, ii. 436. Le progres ne disparait jamais,
mais il.se deplace souvent. II va des gouvernants
aux gouvernes. La tendance des revolutions est de
le ramener toujours parmi les gouvernants. Lorsqu'il
est a la tete des societe's, il marche hardiment, car il
conduit. Lorsqu'il est dans la masse, il marche a
pas lents, car il lutte. NAPOLEON III., Des Idees
Napoleoniennes. La loi du progres avait jadis
1'inexorable rigueur du destin ; elle prend maintenant
de jour en jour la douce puissance de la Providence.
C'est 1'erreur, c'est 1'iniquite, c'est le vice, que la
civilisation tend a emporter dans sa marche irresis-
tible ; mais la vie des individus et des peuples est
devenue pour elle une chose sacre'e. Elle transforme
plutot qu'elle ne de'truit les choses qui s'opposent a
son de'veloppement ; elle precede par absorption
graduelle plutot que par brusque execution ; elle aime

92 NOTES

a conqudrir par 1'influence des idees plutot que par la
force des armes, un peuple, tine classe, une institu-
tion qui resiste au progres. VACHEROT, Essais de
Philosophic Critique, 443. Peu a peu 1'homme in-
tellectuel finit par effacer 1'homme physique.
QUETELET, De VHomme, ii. 285. In dem Fortschritt
der ethischen Anschauungen liegt daher der Kern des
geschichtlichen Fortschritts iiberhaupt. SCHAFER,
Arbeitsgebiet der Geschichte, 24. Si 1'homme a plus
de devoirs a mesure qu'il avance en age, ce qui est
melancolique, mais ce qui est vrai, de meme aussi
rhumanite est tenue d'avoir une morale plus seVere a
mesure qu'elle prend plus de siecles. FAGUET, Revue
des Deux Mondes, 1894, iii. 871. Si done il y a une loi
de progres, elle se confond avec la loi morale, et la
condition fondamentale du progres, c'est la pratique
de cette loi. CARRAU, /., 1875, v. 585. L'idee du
progres, du deVeloppement, me parait etre 1'idee
fondamentale contenue sous le mot de civilisation.
GUIZOT, Cours d" 1 Histoire, 1828, 15. Le progres n'est
sous un autre nom, que la liberte en action. BROGLIE,
Journal des Debats, January 28, 1869. Le progres
social est continu. II a ses periodes de fievre ou
d'atonie, de surexcitation ou de lethargic; il a ses
soubresauts et ses haltes, mais il avance toujours.
DE DECKER, La Providence, 174. Ce n'est pas au
bonheur seul, c'est au perfectionnement que notre
destin nous appelle ; et la liberte' politique est le plus
puissant, le plus energique moyen de perfectionne-
ment que le ciel nous ait donne. B. CONSTANT,
Cours de Politique r \\. 559. To explode error, on

NOTES 93

whichever side it lies, is certainly to secure progress.
MARTINEAU, Essays, i. 114. Die sammtlichen
Freiheitsrechte, welche der heutigen Menschheit so
theuer sind, sind im Grunde nur Anwendungen des
Rechts der Entwickelung. BLUNTSCHLI, Kleine
Schriften, i. 51. Geistiges Leben ist auf Freiheit be-
ruhende Entwicklung,mit Freiheit vollzogene That und
geschichtlicher Fortschritt. Miinchner Gel. Anzeigen
1849^1.83. Wiedas Denkenerst nachund nach reift,so
wird auch der freie Wille nicht fertig geboren, sondern
in der Entwickelung erworben. TRENDELENBURG,
Logische Untersuchungen, ii. 94. Das Liberum Arbi-
trium im vollen Sinne (die vollstandig aktuelle Macht
der Selbstbestimmung) lasst sich seinem Begriff
zufolge schlechterdings nicht unmittelbar geben ; es
kann nur erworben werden durch das Subjekt selbst,
in sich moralisch hervorgebracht werden kraft seiner
eigenen Entwickelung. ROTHE, Ethik, i. 360. So
gewaltig sei der Andrang der Erfindungen und
Entdeckungen, dass " Entwicklungsperioden, die in
friiheren Zeiten erst in Jahrhunderten durchlaufen
wurden, die im Beginn unserer Zeitperiode noch der
Jahrzehnte bedurften, sich heute in Jahren volienden,
haufig schon in voller Ausbildung ins Dasein treten."
PHILIPPOVICH, Fortschritt und Kulturentwicklung,
1892, i. quoting SIEMENS, 1886. Wir erkennen dass
dem Menschen die schwere korperliche Arbeit, von
der er in seinem Kampfe urn's Dasein stets schwer
niedergedriickt war und grossenteils noch ist, mehr
und mehr durch die wachsende Benutzung der
Naturkrafte zur mechanischen Arbeitsleistung abge-

94, NOTES

nommen wird, dass die ihm zufallende Arbeit immer
mehr eine intellektuelle wird. SIEMENS, 1886, Ib. 6.

36 Once, however, he wrote : Darin konnte man
den idealen Kern der Geschichte des menschlichen
Geschlechtes iiberhaupt sehen, dass in den Kampfen,
die sich in den gegenseitigen Interessen der Staaten
und Volker vollziehen, doch immer hohere Potenzen
emporkommen, die das Allgemeine demgemass um-
gestalten und ihm wieder einen anderen Charakter
verleihen. RANKE, Weltgeschichte, iii. i, 6.

37 Toujours et partout, les hommes furent de plus
en plus domines par 1'ensemble de leurs prede'cesseurs,
dont ils purent seulement modifier 1'empire ne'cessaire.
COMTE, Politique Positive, iii. 621.

38 La liberte est Tame du commerce. II faut
laisser faire les hommes qui s'appliquent sans peine
& ce qui convient le mieux ; c'est ce qui apporte le
plus d'avantage. COLBERT, in Comptes Rendus de
f Institut^ xxxix. 93.

39 II n'y a que les choses humaines exposees dans
leur verite, c'est-a-dire avec leur grandeur, leur
variete, leur inepuisable fecondite, qui aient le droit
de retenir le lecteur et qui le retiennent en effet. Si
Fecrivain parait une fois, il ennuie ou fait sourire de
pitie les lecteurs serieux. THIERS to STE. BEUVE,
Lundis, iii. 195. Comme Fa dit Taine, la disparition
du style, c'est la perfection du style. FAGUET, Revue
Politique, Hi. 67.

40 Ne m'applaudissez pas; ce n'est pas moi qui
vous parle ; c'est Fhistoire qui parle par ma bouche.
Revue Historique^ xli. 278.

NOTES 95

41 Das Evangelium trat als Geschichte in die Welt,
nicht als Dogma wurde als Geschichte in der christ-
lichen Kirche deponirt. ROTHE, Kirchengcschichte,
ii. p. x. Das Christenthum ist nicht der Herr
Christus, sondern dieser macht es. Es ist sein Werk,
und zwar ein Werk das er stets imter der Arbeit hat.
Er selbst, Christus der Herr, bleibt der er ist in alle
Zukunft, dagegen liegt es ausdriicklich im Begriffe
seines Werks, des Christenthums,dass es nicht so bleibt
wie es anhebt. ROTHE, Allgemeine kirchliche Zeit-
schrift, 1864, 299. Diess Werk, weil es dem Wesen
der Geschichte zufolge eine Entwickelung ist, muss
iiber Stufen hinweggehen, die einander ablosen, und
von denen jede folgende neue immer nur unter der
Zertriimmerung der ihr vorangehenden Platz greifen
kann. ROTHE, Ib. April 19, 1865. Je grosser ein
geschichtliches Princip ist, desto langsamer und iiber
mehr Stufen hinweg entfaltet es seinen Gehalt ; desto
langlebiger ist es aber ebendeshalb auch in diesen
seinen unaufhorlichen Abwandelungen. ROTHE,
Stille Stunden, 301. Der christliche Glaube geht nicht
von der Anerkennung abstracter Lehrwahrheiten aus,
sondern von der Anerkennung einer Reihe von
Thatsachen, die in der Erscheinung Jesu ihren Mittel-
punkt haben. NITZSCH, Dogmengeschichte, i. 17.
Der Gedankengang der evangelischen Erzahlung gibt
darum auch eine vollstandige Darstellung der christ-
lichen Lehre in ihren wesentlichen Grundziigen ; aber
er gibt sie im allseitigen lebendigen Zusammenhange
mit der Geschichte der christlichen Offenbarung, und
nicht in einer theoretisch zusammenhangenden Folgen-

96 NOTES

reihe von ethischen und dogmatischen Lehrsatzen.-
DEUTINGER, Reich Gottes, i. p. v.

42 L'Univers ne doit pas estre consider^ seulement
dans ce qu'il est ; pour le bien connoitre, il faut le
voir aussi dans ce qu'il doit estre. C'est cet avenir
surtout qui a dte' le grand objet de Dieu dans la
creation, et c'est pour cet avenir seul que le pre'sent
existe. D'HOUTEVILLE, Essai sur la Providence, 273.
La Providence emploie les siecles a clever toujours un
plus grand nombre de families et d'individus a ces
biens de la liberte et de 1'e'galite legitimes que, dans
1'enfance des societes, la force avait rendus le privilege
de quelques-uns. GUIZOT, Gouvernement de la France,
1820, 9. La marche de la Providence n'est pas
assujettie a d'etroites limites ; elle ne s'inquiete pas de
tirer aujourd'hui la conse'quence du principe qu'elle a
pose hier ; elle la tirera dans des siecles, quand 1'heure
sera venue; et pour raisonner lentement selon nous, sa
logique n'est pas moins sure. GUIZOT, Histoire de la
Civilisation, 2.Q. DerKeim fortschreitenderEntwicklung
ist, auch auf gottlichem Geheisse, der Menschheit
eingepflanzt. Die Weltgeschichte ist der blosse
Ausdruck einer vorbestimmten Entwicklung. A.
HUMBOLDT, January 2, 1842, Im Neuen Reich, 1872,
i. 197. Das historisch grosse ist religios gross ; es ist
die Gottheit selbst, die sich orTenbart. RAUMER,
April 1807, Erinnerungen, i. 85.

43 Je suis arrive a 1'age ou je suis, a travers bien
des evenements differents, mais avec une seule cause,
celle de la liberte reguliere. TOCQUEVILLE, May i,
1852, (Euvres In'edites, ii. 185. Me trouvant dans un

NOTES 97

pays ou la religion et le liberalisme sont d'accord,
j'avais respire. J'exprimais ce sentiment, il y a plus
de vingt ans, dans 1'avant-propos de la Dhnocratie.
Je 1'e'prouve aujourd'hui aussi vivement que si j'e'tais
encore jeune, et je ne sais s'il y a une seule pense'e
qui ait ete plus constamment pre'sente k mon esprit.
August 5, 1857, (Euvres, vi. 395. II n'y a que la
liberte (j'entends la moderee et la reguliere) et la
religion, qui, par un effort combine', puissent soulever
les homines au-dessus du bourbier oil 1'egalite demo-
cratique les plonge naturellement. December i, 1852,
CEuvres, vii. 295. L'un de mes reves, le principal en
entrant dans la vie politique, etait de travailler a
concilier 1'esprit liberal et 1'esprit de religion, la
societe nouvelle et 1'eglise. November 15, 1843,
(Euvres Inedites>\\. 121. La veritable grandeur de
rhomme n'est que dans 1'accord du sentiment liberal
et du sentiment religieux. September 17, 1853,
CEuvres Inedites, ii. 228. Qui cherche dans la liberte
autre chose qu'elle-meme est fait pour servir. Anden
Regime^ 248. Je regarde, ainsi que je 1'ai toujours
fait, la liberte comme le premier des biens ; je vois
toujours en elle 1'une des sources les plus fecondes
des vertus males et des actions grandes. II n'y a pas
de tranquillite ni de bien-etre qui puisse me tenir
lieu d'elle. January 7, 1856, M me - Swetchine, i. 452.
La liberte a un faux air d'aristocratie ; en donnant
pleine carriere aux facultes humaines, en encou-
rageant le travail et 1'economie, elle fait ressortir les
supe'riorites naturelles ou acquises LABOULAYE, LE-
tat et ses Limites, 154. Dire que la libertd n'est point

H

98 NOTES

par elle-meme, qu'elle depend d'une situation, d'une
opportunite, c'est lui assigner une valeur negative. La
liberte n'est pas des qu'on la subordonne. Elle n'est
pas un principe purement negatif, un simple element de
controle et de critique. Elle est le principe actif,
createur organisateur par excellence. Elle est le
moteur et la regie, la source de toute vie, et le principe
de 1'ordre. Elle est, en un mot, le nom que prend
la conscience souveraine, lorsque, se posant en face
du monde social et politique, elle e'merge du moi pour
modeler les societes sur les donnees de la raison.
BRISSON, Revue Nationale, xxiii. 214. Le droit, dans
1'histoire, est le de'veloppement progressif de la liberte,
sous la loi de la raison. LERMINIER, Philosophic du
Droit, i. 211. En prouvant par les legons de 1'his-
toire que la libertd fait vivre les peuples et que le
despotisme les tue, en montrant que 1'expiation suit
la faute et que la fortune fmit d'ordinaire par se
ranger du cote de la vertu, Montesquieu n'est ni
moins moral ni moins religieux que Bossuet. LABOU-
LAYE, CEuvres de Montesquieu, ii. 109. Je ne com-
prendrais pas qu'une nation ne plagat pas les liberte's
politiques au premier rang, parce que c'est des libertes
politiques que doivent de'couler toutes les autres.
THIERS, Discours, x. 8, March 28, 1865. Nous
sommes arrives a une epoque oil la liberte' est
le but serieux de tous, oil le reste n'est plus
qu'une question de moyens. J. LEBEAU, Obser-
vations sur le Pouvoir Royal: Liege, 1830, p. 10.
Le liberalisine, ayant la prevention de se fonder
uniquement sur les principes de la raison, croit

NOTES 99

d'ordinaire n'avoir pas besoin de tradition. La est son
erreur. L'erreur de 1'ecole liberale est d'avoir trop
cru qu'il est facile de cre'er la liberte par la reflexion,
et de n'avoir pas vu qu'un etablissement n'est solide
que quand il a des racines historiques. RENAN,
1858, Nouvelle Revue, Ixxix. 596. Le respect des
individus et des droits existants est autant au-dessus
du bonheur de tous, qu'un interet moral surpasse
un interet purement temporel. RENAN, 1858,
Ib. Ixxix. 597. Die Rechte gelten nichts, wo
es sich handelt um das Recht, und das Recht der
Freiheit kann nie verjahren, weil es die Quelle alles
Rechtes selbst ist. C. FRANTZ, Ueber die Freiheit,
1 10. Wir erfahren hienieden nie die ganze Wahr-
heit : wir geniessen nie die ganze Freiheit. REUSS,
Reden, 56. Le gouvernement constitutional, comme
tout gouvernement libre, pre'sente et doit pre'senter
un e'tat de lutte permanent. La liberte' est la per-
petuite de la lutte. DE SERRE. BROGLIE, Nouvelles
Etudes, 243. The experiment of free government is
not one which can be tried once for all. Every genera-
tion must try it for itself. As each new generation
starts up to the responsibilities of manhood, there is,
as it were, a new launch of Liberty, and its voyage
of experiment begins afresh. WINTHROP, Addresses,
163. L'histoire perd son veritable caractere du
moment que la liberte' en a disparu ; elle devient
une sorte de physique sociale. C'est 1'e'le'ment per-
sonnel de 1'histoire qui en fait la re'alite. VACHEROT,
Revue des Deux Mondes, 1869, iv. 215. Demander la
liberte pour soi et la refuser aux autres, c'est la definition

II 2

loo NOTES

du despotisme. LABOULAYE, December 4, 1874. Les
causes justes profitent de tout, des bonnes intentions
comme des mauvaises, des calculs personnels comme
des devouemens courageux, de la demence, ehfin,
comme de la raison. B. CONSTANT, Les Cent Jours,
ii. 29. Sie ist die Kunst, das Gute der schon weit
gediehenen Civilisation zu sichern. BALTISCH, Poli-
tische Freiheit, 9. In einem Volke, welches sich zur
burgerlichen Gesellschaft, iiberhaupt zum Bewusstseyn
der Unendlichkeit des Freien entwickelt hat, ist
nur die constitutionelle Monarchic moglich. HEGEL'S
Philosophic des Rechts, 137, Hegel und Preussen,
1841, 31. Freiheit ist das hochste Gut. Alles
andere ist nur das Mittel dazu : gut falls es ein
Mittel dazu ist, iibel falls es dieselbe hemmt.
FICHTE. Werke, iv. 403. You are not to inquire
how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to
become a great and powerful people, but how your
liberties can be secured. For liberty ought to be the
direct end of your government. PATRICK HENRY,
1788. WIRT, Life of Henry, 272.

44 Historic ipsius praeter delectationem utilitas
nulla est, quam ut religionis Christianse veritas demon-
stretur, quod aliter quam per historiam fieri non
potest. LEIBNIZ, Opera, ed. Dutens, vi. 297. The
study of Modern History is, next to Theology itself,
and only next in so far as Theology rests on a divine
revelation, the most thoroughly religious training that
the mind can receive. It is no paradox to say that
Modern History, including Medieval History in the
term, is co-extensive in its field of view, in its habits

NOTES 101

of criticism, in the persons of its most famous stu-
dents, with Ecclesiastical History. STUBBS, Lectures,
9. Je regarde done 1'etude de 1'histoire comme 1'e'tude
de la providence. L'histoire est vraiment une seconde
philosophic. Si Dieu ne parle pas toujours, il agit
toujours en Dieu. D'AGUESSEAU, CEuvres, xv. 34, 31,
35. Fur diejenigen, welche das Wesen der menschlichen
Freiheit erkannt haben, bildet die denkende Betracht-
ung der Weltgeschichte, besonders des christlichen
Weltalters, die hochste, und umfassendste Theodicee.
VATKE, Die Menschliche Freiheit, 1841, 516. La
the'ologie, que Ton regarde volontiers comme la plus
etroite et la plus ste'rile des sciences, en est, au con-
traire, la plus etendue et la plus feconde. Elle confine
k toutes les etudes et touche a toutes les questions.
Elle renferme tous les elements d'une instruction
liberate. SCHERER, Melanges, 522. The belief that
the course of events and the agency of man are sub-
ject to the laws of a divine order, which it is alike
impossible for any one either fully to comprehend or
effectually to resist this belief is the ground of all
our hope for the future destinies of mankind. r
THIRLWALL, Remains, iii. 282. A true religion must
consist of ideas and facts both ; not of ideas alone
without facts, for then it would be mere philosophy ;
nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts
are the symbols, or out of which they are grounded;
for then it would be mere history. COLERIDGE, Table
Talk, 144. It certainly appears strange that the men
most conversant with the order of the visible uni-
verse should soonest suspect it empty of directing

102 NOTES

mind ; and, on the other hand, that humanistic, moral
and historical studies which first open the terrible
problems of suffering and grief, and contain all the
reputed provocatives of denial and despair should
confirm, and enlarge rather than disturb, the preposses-
sions of natural piety. MARTINEAU, Essays, i. 122.
Die Religion hat nur dann eine Bedeutung fur den
Menschen, wenn er in der Geschichte einen Punkt
findet, dem er sich vollig unbedingt hingeben kann.
STEFFENS, Christ liche Religionsphilosophie, 440, 1839.
Wir erkennen darin nur eine Thatigkeit des zu seinem
achten und wahren Leben, zu seinem verlornen,
objectiven Selbstverstandnisse sich zuriicksehnenden
christlichen Geistes unserer Zeit, einen Ausdruck ftir
das Bediirfniss desselben, sich aus den unwahren
und unachten Verkleidungen, womit ihn der moderne,
subjective Geschmack der letzten Entwicklungsphase
des theologischen Bewusstseyns umhiillt hat, zu seiner
historischen allein wahren und urspriinglichen Gestalt
wiederzugebaren, zu derjenigen Bedeutung zuriickzu-
kehren, die ihm in dem Bewusstseyn der Geschichte
allein zukommt und deren Verstandniss in dem
wogenden luxuriosen Leben der modernen Theologie
langst untergegangen ist.- GEORGII, Zeitschrift fur
Hist. Theologie, ix. 5, 1839.

45 Liberty, in fact, means just so far as it is realised,
the right man in the right pla< e. SEELEY, Lectures
and Essays, 109.

46 In diesem Sinne ist Freiheit und sich entwickelnde
moralische Vernunft und Gewissen gleichbedeutend.
In diesem Sinne ist der Mensch frei, sobald sich das

NOTES 103

Gewissen in ihm entwickelt. SCHEIDLER, Ersch und
Gruber, xlix. 20. Aus der unendlichen und ewigen
Geltung der menschlichen Personlichkeit vor Gott,
aus der Vorstellung von der in Gott freien Person-
lichkeit, folgt auch der Anspruch auf das Recht
derselben in der weltlichen Sphare, auf biirgerliche
und politische Freiheit, auf Gewissen und Religions-
freiheit, auf freie wissenschaftliche Forschung u.s.w.,
und namentlich die Forderung dass niemand lediglich
zum Mittel fur andere diene. MARTENSEN, Christ-
liche Ethik, i. 50.

' 47 Es giebt angeborne Menschenrechte, weil es
angeborne Menschenpflichten giebt. WOLFF, Natur-
recht ; LCEPER, Einleitung zu Faust, Ivii.

48 La constitution de 1'e'tat reste jusqu'a un certain
point a notre discre'tion. La constitution de la socie'te'
ne depend pas de nous; elle est donnee par la force
des choses, et si Ton veut elever le langage, elle
est 1'ceuvre de la Providence. REMUSAT, Revue des
Deux Mondes, 1861, v. 795.

49 Die Freiheit ist bekanntlich kein Geschenk der
Cotter, sondern ein Gut das jedes Volk sich selbst
verdankt und das nur bei dem erforderlichen Mass
moralischer Kraft und Wiirdigkeit gedeiht. IHERING,
Geist des Romischen Rechts, ii. 290. Liberty, in the
very nature of it, absolutely requires and even sup-
poses, that people be able to govern themselves in
those respects in which they are free ; otherwise their
wickedness will be in proportion to their liberty, and
this greatest of blessings will become a curse.
BUTLER, Sermons, 331. In each degree and each

104 NOTES

variety of public development there are correspond-
ing institutions, best answering the public needs ; and
what is meat to one is poison to another. Freedom
is for those who are fit for it. PARKMAN, Canada,
396. Die Freiheit ist die Wurzel einer neuen Schop-
fung in der Schopfung. SEDERHOLM, Die ewigen
Thatsachen, 86.

50 La liberte politique, qui n'est qu'une complexite
plus grande, de plus en plus grande, dans le gouverne-
ment d'un peuple, a mesure que le peuple lui-meme
contient 'i*i plus grand nombre de forces diverses
ayant aroi et de vivre et de participer a la chose
publique, est un fait de civilisation qui s'impose lente-
ment a une societe organisee, mais qui n'apparait point
comme un principe a une societd qui s'organise.
FAGUET, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1889, ii. 942.

51 II y a bien un droit du plus sage, mais non pas
un droit du plus fort. La justice est le droit du plus
faible. JOUBERT, Pensees, i. 355, 358.

52 Nicht durch ein pflanzenahnliches Wachsthum,
nicht aus den dunklen Griinden der Volksempfindung,
sondern durch den mannlichen Willen, durch die
Ueberzeugung, durch die That, durch den Kampf
entsteht, behauptet, entwickelt sich das Recht. Sein
historisches Werden ist ein bewusstes, im hellen
Mittagslicht der Erkenntniss und der Gesetzgebung. -
Rundschau, Nov. 1893, 313. Nicht das Normale,
Zahme, sondern das Abnorme, Wilde, bildet iiberall die
Grundlage und den Anfang einer neuen Ordnung.
LASAULX, Philosophic der Geschichte, 143.

63 Um den Sieg zu vervollstandigen, eriibrigte das

NOTES 105

zweite Stadium oder die Aufgabe : die Berechtigung
der Mehrheit nach alien Seiten bin zur gleichen
Berechtigung aller zu erweitern, d.h. bis zur Gleichstel-
lung aller Bekenntnisse im Kirchenrecht, aller Volker
im Vb'lkerrecht, aller Staatsbiirger im Staatsrecht und
aller socialen Interessen im Gesellschaftsrecht fortzu-
fiihren. A. SCHMIDT, Zuricher Monatschrift, i. 68.

54 Notre histoire ne nous enseignait nullement la
liberte. Le jour oil la France voulut etre libre, elle
eut tout k creer, tout a inventer dans cet ordre de
faits. Cependant il faut marcher, 1'avenir appelle les
peuples. Quand on n'a point pour cela 1'impulsion
du passe, il faut bien se confier a la raison. DUPONT
WHITE, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1861, vi. 191. Le
peuple frangais a peu de gout pour le developpement
graduel des institutions. II ignore son histoire, il
ne s'y reconnait pas, elle n'a pas laisse de trace dans
sa conscience. SCHERER, Etudes Critiques, i. 100.
Durch die Revolution befreiten sich die Franzosen
von ihrer Geschichte. ROSENKRANZ, Aus einem
Tagebuch, 199.

55 The discovery of the comparative method in
philology, in mythology let me add in politics and
history and the whole range of human thought marks
a stage in the progress of the human mind at least
as great and memorable as the revival of Greek and
Latin learning. FREEMAN, Historical Essays, iv. 301.
The diffusion of a critical spirit in history and literature
is affecting the criticism of the Bible in our own day
in a manner not unlike the burst of intellectual life in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. JOWETT, Essays

io6 NOTES

and Reviews, 346. As the revival of literature in the
sixteenth century produced the Reformation, so the
growth of the critical spirit, and the change that has
come over mental science, and the mere increase of
knowledge of all kinds, threaten now a revolution less
external but not less profound. HADDAN, Replies^
348.

56 In his just contempt and detestation of the
crimes and follies of the Revolutionists, he suffers
himself to forget that the revolution itself is a process
of the Divine Providence, and that as the folly of men
is the wisdom of God, so are their iniquities instru-
ments of His goodness. COLERIDGE, Biographia
Literaria, ii. 240. In other parts of the world, the
idea of revolutions in government is, by a mournful
and indissoluble association, connected with the idea
of wars, and all the calamities attendant on wars.
But happy experience teaches us to view such re-
volutions in a very different light to consider them
only as progressive steps in improving the knowledge
of government, and increasing the happiness of
society and mankind. J. WILSON, November 26,
1787, Works, iii. 293. La Revolution, c'est-a-dire
1'oeuvre des siecles, ou, si vous voulez,le renouvellement
progressif de la societe, ou encore, sa nouvelle consti-
tution. REMUSAT, Corrcspondance, October n, 1818.
A ses yeux loin d'avoir rompu le cours naturel des
evenements, ni la Revolution d'Angleterre, ni lanotre,
n'ont rien dit, rien fait, qui n'eut ete dit, souhaite, fait,
ou tente cent fois avant leur explosion. " II faut en
ceci, ' dit-il, "tout accorder a leurs adversaires, lessur-

NOTES 107

passer meme en se'verite, ne regarder a leurs accusations
que pour y ajouter, s'ils en. oublient ; et puis les sommer
de dresser, a leur tour, le compte des erreurs, des crimes,
et des maux de ces temps et de ces pouvoirs qu'ils ont
pris sous leur garde." Revue de Pan's, xvi. 303, on
Guizot. Quant aux nouveaute's mises en oeuvre par
la Revolution Frangaise on les retrouve une a une,
en remontant d'age en age, chez les philosophes du
XVIIP siecle, chez les grands penseurs du XVP, chez
certains Peres d'Eglise et jusque dans la Republique de
Platon. En presence de cette belle continuite de
1'histoire, qui ne fait pas plus de sauts que la nature,
devant cette solidarite ne'cessaire des revolutions avec
le passe qu'elles brisent. KRANTZ, Revue Politique,
xxxiii. 264. L'esprit du XIX e siecle est de comprendre et
de juger les choses du passe. Notre ceuvre est d'ex-
pliquer ce que le XVIIP siecle avait mission de nier.
VACHEROT, De la Democratic, pref., 28.

57 La commission recherchera, dans toutes les parties
des archives pontificales, les pieces relatives a Tabus
que les papes ont fait de leur ministere spirituel centre
1'autorite des souverains et la tranquillite des peuples.
DAUNOU, Instructions, Jan. 3, 1811. LABORDE,
Inventaires, p. cxii.

58 Aucun des historiens remarquables de cette
e'poque n'avait senti encore le besoin de chercher les
faits hors des livres imprimes, aux sources primitives,
la plupart ine'dites alors, aux manuscrits de nos
bibliotheques, aux documents de nos archives.
MICHELET, Histoire de France, 1869, i. 2.

59 Doch besteht cine Grenze, wo die Geschichte

io8 NOTES

aufhort und das Archiv anfangt, und die von der
Geschichtschreibung nicht iiberschritten werden sollte.
Unsere Zeit, 1866, ii. 635. II faut avertir nos jeunes
historiens a la fois de la necessite ineluctable du
document et, d'autre part, du danger qu'il pre'sente.
M. HANOTAUX.

60 This process consists in determining with docu-
mentary proofs, and by minute investigations duly set
forth, the literal, precise, and positive inferences to
be drawn at the present day from every authentic
statement, without regard to commonly received
notions, to sweeping generalities, or to possible con-
sequences. HARRISSE, Discovery of America, 1892,
p. vi. Perhaps the time has not yet come for synthetic
labours in- the sphere of History. It may be that the
student of the Past must still content himself with criti-
cal inquiries. Ib. p. v. Few scholars are critics, few
critics are philosophers, and few philosophers look with
equal care on both sides of a question. W. S. LANDOR
in HOLYOAKE'S Agitator's Life, ii. 15. Introduire dans
1'histoire, et sans tenir compte des passions politiques
et religieuses, le doute methodique que Descartes, le
premier, appliqua a Petude de la philosophic, n'est-ce
pas la une excellente me'thode ? n'est-ce pas meme
lameilleure? CHANTELAUZE, Correspondant, 1883, i.
129. La critique historique ne sera jamais populaire.
Comme elle est de toutes les sciences la plus delicate,
la plus delie'e, elle n'a de credit qu'aupres des esprits
cultive's. CHERBULIEZ, Revue des Deux Mondes, xcvii.
517. Nun liefert aber die Kritik, wenn sie rechter
Art ist, immer nur einzelnc Data, gleichsam die Atome

NOTES 109

des.Thatbestandes, und jede Kombination, jede Zu-
sammenfassung und Schlussfolgerung, ohne die es
doch einmal nicht abgeht, ist ein subjektiver Akt des
Forschers. Demnach blieb Waitz, bei der eigenen
Arbeit wie bei jener der anderen, immer hochst mis-
trauisch gegen jedes Re'sume, jede Definition, jedes
abschliessende Wort. SYBEL, Historische Zeitschrift,
Ivi. 484. Mit blosser Kritik wird darin nichts aus-
gerichtet, denn die ist nur eine Vorarbeit, welche da
aufhort wo die echte historische Kimst anfangt.
LASAULX, Philosophic der Kiinste, 212.

61 The only case in which such extraneous matters
can be fairly called in is when facts are stated resting
on testimony; then it is not only just, but it is
necessary for the sake of truth, to inquire into the
habits of mind of him by whom they are adduced.
BABBAGE, Bridgewater Treatise, p. xiv.

62 There is no part of our knowledge which it is
more useful to obtain at first hand to go to the
fountain-head for than our knowledge of History.
J. S. MILL, Inaugural Address, 34. The only sound
intellects are those which, in the first instance, set their
standard of proof high. J. S. MILL, Examination of
Hamilton's Philosophy, 525.

03 There are so few men mentally capable of seeing
both sides of a question ; so few with consciences
sensitively alive to the obligation of seeing both sides;
so few placed under conditions either of circumstance
or temper, which admit of their seeing both sides.
GREG, Political Problems, 1870, 173. II n'y a queles
Allemands qui sachent etre aussi completement objec-

no NOTES

tifs. Us se dedoublent, pour ainsi dire, en deux hommes,
1'un qui a des principes tres arrete's et des passions tres
vives, 1'autre qui sait voir et observer com me s'il n'en
avait point. LAVELEYE, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 868,
i. 431. L'ecrivain qui penche trop dans le sens ou
il incline, et qui ne se defie pas de ses qualites
presque autant que ses de'fauts, cet ecrivain tourne a la
maniere. SCHERER, Melanges, 484. II faut faire volte-
face, et vivement, franchement, tourner le dos au
moyen age, a ce passe morbide, qui, meme quand il
n'agit pas, influe terriblement par la contagion de la
inert. II ne faut ni combattre, ni critiquer, mais
oublier. Oublions et marchons ! MICHELET, La
Bible de PHumanite^ 483. It has excited surprise
that Thucydides should speak of Antiphon, the traitor
to the democracy, and the employer of assassins, as " a
man inferior in virtue to none of his contemporaries."
But neither here nor elsewhere does Thucydides pass
moral judgments. JOWETT, Thucydides, ii. 501.

64 Non theologi provinciam suscepimus ; scimus
enim quantum hoc ingenii nostri tenuitatem superet :
ideo sufficit nobis TO OTL fideliter ex antiquis auctoribus
retulisse. MORINUS, De Pcenitentia, ix. 10. II
faut avouer que la religion chre'tienne a quelque chose
d'e'tonnant ! C'est parce que vous y etes ne, dira-t-
on. Tant s'en faut, je me roidis contre par cette
raison-la meme, de peur que cette pre'vention ne me
suborne. PASCAL, Pens'ees, XVI., 7. I was fond of
Fleury for a reason which I express in the advertise-
ment ; because it presented a sort of photograph of
ecclesiastical history without any comment upon it.

NOTES in

In the event, that simple representation of the early
centuries had a good deal to do with unsettling me.
NEWMAN, Apologia, 152. Nur was sich vor dem
Richterstuhl einer a'chten, unbefangenen, nicht durch
die Brille einer philosophischen oder dogmatischen
Schule stehenden Wissenschaft als wahr bewahrt, kann
zur Erbauung, Belehrung und Warnung tiichtig seyn.
NEANDER, Kirchcngeschichte^ i. p. vii. Wie weit bei
katholischen Publicisten bei der Annahme der Ansicht
von der Staatsanstalt apologetische Gesichtspunkte
massgebend gewesen sind, mag dahingestellt bleiben.
Der Historiker darf sich jedoch nie durch apolo-
getische Zwecke leiten lassen ; sein einziges Ziel soil
die Ergriindungder Wahrheit sein. PASTOR, f 5$/V>&/*
der Pdbste, ii. 545. Church history falsely written is
a school of vainglory, hatred, and uncharitableness ;
truly written, it is a discipline of humility, of charity,
of mutual love. SmW. HAMILTON, Discussions, 506.
The more trophies and crowns of honour the Church
of former ages can be shown to have won in the ser-
vice of her adorable head, the more tokens her history
can be brought to furnish of his powerful presence in
her midst, the more will we be pleased and rejoice,
Protestant though we be. NEVIN, Mercersburg Review,
1851, 1 68. S'il est une chose k laquelle j'ai donnd
tous mes soins, c'est a ne pas laisser influencer mes
jugements par les opinions politiques ou religieuses ;
que si j'ai quelquefois pe'che par quelque exces, c'est
par la bienveillance pour les oeuvres de ceux qui
pensent autrement que moi. MONOD, R. Hist., xvi.
184. Nous n'avons nul inte'ret a faire parler 1'histoire

ii2 NOTES

en faveur de nos propres opinions. C'est son droit
imprescriptible que le narrateur reproduise tous les
faits sans aucune reticence et range toutes les Evolu-
tions dans leur ordre naturel. Notre re'cit restera
completement en dehors des pre'occupations de la dog-
matique et des declamations de la polemique. Plus
les questions auxquelles nous aurons a toucher agitent
et passionnent de oos jours les esprits, plus il est du
devoir de 1'historien de s'effacer devant les faits qu'il
veut faire connaitre. REUSS, Nonvelle Revue de T/ieo-
logie, vi. 193, 1860. To love truth for truth's sake is
the principal part of human perfection in this world,
and the seed plot of all other virtues. LOCKE, Letter to
Collins. II n'est plus possible aujourd'hui a 1'historien
d'etre national dans le sens e'troit du mot. Son patrio-
tisme a lui c'est 1'amour de la ve'rite. II n'est pas
1'homme d'une race ou d'un pays, il est 1'homme de
tous les pays, il parle au nom de la civilisation ge'ne'rale.
LANFREY, Hist, de Nap., iii. 2, 1870. Juger avec
les parties de soi-merne qui sont le moins des formes du
temperament, et le plus des faculte's pe'netre'es et mode-
lees par 1'experience, par 1'etude, par 1'investigation,
par le non-moi. FAGUET, R. de Paris, i. 151. Aucun
critique n'est aussi impersonnel que lui, aussi libre
de parti pris et d'opinions preconc,ues, aussi objectif.
II ne mele ou parait meler a ses appreciations ni inclina-
tions personnelles de gout oud'humeur,ou the'oriesd'au-
cune sorte. G. MONOD, of Faguet, Revue Historique,
xlii. 417. On dirait qu'il a peur, en ge'neralisant ses
observations, en systematisant ses connaissances, de
meler de lui-meme aux choses. Je lis tout un volume

NOTES 113

de M. Faguet, sans penser une fois k M. Faguet : je
ne vois que les originaux qu'il montre. J'envisage
toujours une realite objective, jarnais 1'idee de M.
Faguet, jamais la doctrine de M. Faguet. LANSON,
Revue Politique, 1894, i. 98.

65 It should teach us to disentangle principles first
from parties, and again from one another ; first of all
as showing how imperfectly all parties represent their
own principles, and then how the principles them-
selves are a mingled tissue. ARNOLD, Modern His-
tory, 184. I find it a good rule, when I am con-
templating a person from whom I want to learn,
always to look out for his strength, being confident
that the weakness will discover itself. MAURICE,
Essays, 305. We may seek for agreement some-
where with our neighbours, using that as a point of
departure for the sake of argument. It is this latter
course that I wish here to explain and defend. The
method is simple enough, though not yet very familiar.
It aims at conciliation ; it proceeds by making the
best of our opponent's case, instead of taking him at
his worst. The most interesting part of every disputed
question only begins to appear when the rival ideals
admit each other's right to exist. A. SIDGWICK,Z>/V//<:-
tion and the Criticism of Beliefs, 1892, 211. That cruel
reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them
always hide their deeper thought. R.USKIN, Sesame and
Lilies, i. 16. Je offener wir die einzelnen Wahrheiten
desSozialismus anerkennen, desto erfolgreicher konnen
wir seine fundamentalen Unwahrheiten widerlegen.
ROSCHER, Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, 1849, i. 177.

I

114 NOTES

66 Dann habe ihn die Wahrnehmung, dass manche
Angaben in den historischen Romanen Walter Scott's,
mit den gleichzeitigen Quellen im Widerspruch
standen, "mit Erstaunen" erfiillt, und ihn zu dem
Entschlusse gebracht, auf das Gewissenhafteste an
der Ueberlieferung der Quellen festzuhalten. SYBEL,
Geddchtnissrede auf Ranke. Akad. der Wissenschaften,
1887, p. 6. Sich frei zu halten von allem Wider-
schein der Gegenwart, sogar, soweit das menschen-
moglich, von dem der eignen subjectiven Meinung
in den Dingen des Staates, der Kirche und der
Gesellschaft. A. DOVE, Im Neuen Reich, 1875, ii.
967. Wir sind durchaus nicht fur die leblose und
schemenartige Darstellungsweise der Ranke'schen
Schule eingenommen ; es wird uns immer kiihl bis
ans Herz heran, wenn wir derartige Schilderungen
der Reformation und der Revolution lesen, welche
so ganz im kiihlen Element des Pragmatismus sich
bewegen und dabei so ganz Undinenhaft sind und
keine Seele haben. Wir lassen es uns lieber gefallen,
dass die Manner der Geschichte hier und dort gehof-
meistert werden, als dass sie uns mit Glasaugen
ansehen, so meisterhaft immer die Kunst sein mag
die sie ihnen eingesetzt hat. GOTTSCHALL, Unsere
Zeit, 1866, ii. 636, 637. A vivre avec des diplomates,
il leur a pris des qualite's qui sont un defaut chez
un historien. L'historien n'est pas un temoin, c'est
un juge; c'est a lui d'accuser et de condamner au
nom du passe opprime et dans 1'interet de 1'avenir.
LABOULAYE on RANKE. Debats, January 12,
1852.

NOTES 115

67 Un theologien qui a compose une doquente
histoire de la Reformation, rencontrant a Berlin un
illustre historien qui, lui aussi, a raconte Luther et le
XVP siecle, 1'embrassa avec effusion en le traitant
de confrere. "Ah! permettez," lui repondit 1'autre
en se degageant, " il y a une grande difference entre
nous : vous etes avant tout chretien, et je suis avant
tout historien." CHERBULIEZ, Revue des Deux Mondes,
1872, i- 537-

68 Nackte Wahrheit ohne alien Schmuck ; griindliche
Erforschung des Einzelnen ; dasUebrige, Gott befohlen.
Werke, xxxiv. 24. Ce ne sont pas les theories qui
doivent nous servir de base dans la recherche des
faits, mais ce sont les faits qui doivent nous servir de
base pour la composition des theories. VINCENT,
Nouvelle Revue de Theologie, 1859, ii. 252.

69 Die zwanglose Anordnungs die leichte und
leise Andeutungskunst des grossen Historikers voll
zu wiirdigen, hinderte ihn in friiherer Zeit sein
Bediirfniss nach scharfer begrifflicher Ordnung und
Ausfiihrung, spater, und in immer zunehmenden
Grade, sein Sinn fiir strenge Sachlichkeit, und genaue
Erforschung der ursachlichen Zusammenhange, noch
mehr aber regte sich seine geradherzige Qffenheit
seine mannliche Ehrlichkeit, wenn er hinter den fein
verstrichenen Farben der Rankeschen Erzahlungs-
bilder die gedeckte Haltung des klugen Diplomaten
zu entdecken glaubte. HAYM, Duncker's Leben, 437.
The ground of criticism is indeed, in my opinion,
nothing else but distinct attention, which every reader
should endeavour to be master of. HARE, Dec., 1736,

I 2

ii6 NOTES

Warburtorfs Works, xiv. 98. Wenn die Quellenkritik
so verstanden wird, als sei sie der Nachweis, wie ein
Autor den andern benutzt hat, so ist das nur ein
gelegentliches Mittel eins unter anderen ihre
Aufgabe, den Nachweis der Richtigkeit zu losen oder
vorzubereiten. DROYSEN, Historik, 18.

70 L'esprit scientifique n'est autre en soi que 1'instinct
du travail et de la patience, le sentiment de 1'ordre,
de la realite et de la mesure. PAPILLON, R. des Deux
Mondes, 1873, v. 704. Non seulement les sciences,
mais toutes les institutions humaines s'organisent de
meme, et sous 1'empire des memes idees regulatrices.
COURNOT, Idees Fondamentales, i. 4. There is no
branch of human work whose constant laws have not
close analogy with those which govern every other
mode of man's exertion. But more than this, exactly
as we reduce to greater simplicity and surety any one
group of these practical laws, we shall find them
passing the mere condition of connection or analogy,
and becoming the actual expression of some ultimate
nerve or fibre of the mighty laws which govern the
moral world. RUSKIN, Seven Lamps, 4. The sum
total of all intellectual excellence is good sense and
method. When these have passed into the instinc-
tive readiness of habit, when the wheel revolves so
rapidly that we cannot see it revolve at all, then we
call the combination genius. But in