(logo)
(navigation image)
Home American Libraries | Canadian Libraries | Universal Library | Open Source Books | Project Gutenberg | Biodiversity Heritage Library | Children's Library | Additional Collections

Search: Advanced Search

Anonymous User (login or join us)Upload
See other formats

Full text of "A lecture on the study of history delivered at cambridge, June 11, 1895"

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 all modes alike, 
and in all professions, the two sole component parts, 
even of genius, are good sense and method. COLE- 
RIDGE, June, 1814, Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 172. Si 
1'exercice d'un art nous empeche d'en apprendre un 



NOTES 117 



autre, il n'en est pas ainsi dans les sciences : la con- 
noissance d'une ve'rite nous aide a en decouvrir une 
autre. Toutes les sciences sont tellement lie'es 
ensemble qu'il est bien plus facile de les apprendre 
toutes a la fois que d'en apprendre une seule en la 
de'tachant des autres. II ne doit songer qu'a augmenter 
les lumieres naturelles de sa raison, non pour resoudre 
telle ou telle difficulte de 1'e'cole, mais pour que dans 
chaque circonstance de la vie son intelligence montre 
d'avance a sa volonte le parti qu'elle doit prendre. 
DESCARTES, (Euvres Choistes, 300, 301. Regies pour 
la Direction de r Esprit. La connaissance de la me'thode 
qui a guide' 1'homme de ge'nie n'est pas moins utile au 
progres de la science et meme a sa propre gloire, que 
ses de'couvertes. LAPLACE, Systemedu Monde, ii. 371. 
Oh ne fait rien sans ide'es pre'conc.ues, il faut avoir 
seulement la sagesse de ne croire a leurs deductions 
qu'autant que 1'experience les confirme. Les idees 
pre'congues, soumises au controle severe de 1'expe'ri- 
mentation, sont la flamme vivante des sciences d'obser- 
vation ; les ide'es fixes en sont le danger. PASTEUR, 
in Histoire d'un Savant, 284. Douter des ve'rite's 
humaines, c'est ouvrir la porte aux de'couvertes ; en 
faire des articles de foi, c'est la fermer. DUMAS, 
Discours, i. 123. 

71 We should not only become familiar with the laws 
of phenomena within our own pursuit, but also with 
the modes of thought of men engaged in other dis- 
cussions and researches, and even with the laws of 
knowledge itself, that highest philosophy. Above all 
things, know that we call you not here to run your minds 



ii8 NOTES 



into our moulds. We call you here on an excursion, 
on an adventure, on a voyage of discovery into space 
as yet uncharted. ALLBUTT, Introductory Address at 
St, George 's, October 1889. Consistency in regard to 
opinions is the slow poison of intellectual life. DAVY, 
Memoirs, 68. 

72 Ce sont vous autres physiologistes des corps 
vivants, qui avez appris a nous autres physiologistes 
de la socie'te (qui est aussi un corps vivant) la maniere 
de 1'observer et de tirer des conse'quences de nos 
observations. J. B. SAY to DE CANDOLLE, June i, 
1827. DE CANDOLLE, Me moires, 567. 

73 Success is certain to the pure and true : success 
to falsehood and corruption, tyranny and aggression, 
is only the prelude to a greater and an irremediable 
fall. STUBBS, Seventeen Lectures, 20. The Carlylean 
faith, that the cause we fight for, so far as it is true, is 
sure of victory, is the necessary basis of all effective 
activity for good. CAIRD, Evolution of Religion, ii. 43. 
It is the property of truth to be fearless, and to 
prove victorious over every adversary. Sound reason- 
ing and truth, when adequately communicated, must 
always be victorious over error. GODWIN, Political 
Justice (Conclusion). Vice was obliged to retire and 
give place to virtue. This will always be the con- 
sequence when truth has fair play. Falsehood only 
dreads the attack, and cries out for auxiliaries. Truth 
never fears the encounter ; she scorns the aid of the 
secular arm, and triumphs by her natural strength. 
FRANKLIN, Works, ii. 292. It is a condition of our race 
that we must ever wade through error in our advance 









NOTES 119 



towards truth : and it may even be said that in many 
cases we exhaust almost every variety of error before 
we attain the desired goal. BABBAGE, Bridgewater 
Treatise, 27. Les hommes ne peuvent, en quelque 
genre que ce soit, arriver a quelque chose de raison- 
nable qu'apres avoir, en ce meme genre, epuise toutes 
les sottises imaginables. Que de sottises ne dirions- 
nous pas maintenant, si les anciens ne les avaient pas 
de'jk dites avant nous, et ne nous les avaient, pour 
ainsi dire, enleve'es ! FONTENELLE. Without pre- 
mature generalisations the true generalisation would 
never be arrived at. H. SPENCER, Essays, ii. 57. 
The more important the subject of difference, the 
greater, not the less, will be the indulgence of him 
who has learned to trace the sources of human error, 
of error, that has its origin not in our weakness and 
imperfection merely, but often in the most virtuous 
affections of the heart. BROWN, Philosophy of the 
Human Mind, i. 48, 1824. Parmi les chatiments du 
crime qui ne lui manquent jamais, k cote de celui que 
lui inflige la conscience, 1'histoire lui en inflige un 
autre encore, eclatant et manifeste, 1'impuissance. 
COUSIN, Phil. Mod. ii. 24. L'avenir de la science est 
garanti; car dans le grand livre scientifique tout 
s'ajoute et rien ne se perd. L'erreur ne fonde pas ; 
aucune erreur ne dure tres longtemps. RENAN, 
Feuilles Detachees, xiii. Toutes les fois que deux 
hommes sont d'un avis contraire sur la meme chose, a 
coup sur, Fun ou Fautre se trompe ; bien plus, aucun 
ne semble posse'der la ve'rite ; car si les raisons de 
Tun dtoient certaines et e'videntes, il pourroit les 



120 NOTES 



exposer a 1'autre de telle maniere qu'il finiroit par le 
convaincre egalement. DESCARTES, Regies : CEuvres 
Choisies, 302. Le premier principe de la critique est 
qu'une doctrine ne captive ses adherents que par ce 
qu'elle a de legitime. RENAN, Essais de Morale, 184. 
Was dem Wahn solche Macht giebt ist wirklich nicht 
er selbst, sondern die ihm zu Grunde liegende und 
darin nur verzerrte Wahrheit. FRANTZ, Schellings 
Philosophie, i. 62. Quand les hommes ont vu une fois la 
ve'rite dans son eclat, ils ne peuvent plus 1'oublier. Elle 
reste debout, et tot ou tard elle triomphe, parce 
qu'elle est la pensee de Dieu et le besoin du monde. 
MIGNET, Portraits, ii. 295. C'est toujours le sens 
commun ii,apergu qui fait la fortune des hypotheses 
auxquelles il se mele. COUSIN, Fragments P/iil.i. 51. 
Preface of 1826. Wer da sieht wie der Irrthum selbst 
ein Trager mannigfaltigen und bleibenden Fortschritts 
wird, der wird auch nicht so leicht aus dem that- 
sachlichen Fortschritt der Gegenwart auf Unumstoss- 
lichkeit unserer Hypothesen schliessen. Das 
richtigste Resultat der geschichtlichen Betrachtung 
ist die akademische Ruhe, mit welcher unsere Hypo- 
thesen und Theorieen ohne Feindschaft und ohne 
Glauben als das betrachtet werden was sie sind ; als 
Stufen in jener unendlichen Annaherung an die 
Wahrheit, welche die Bestimmung unserer in- 
tellectuellen Entwickelung zu sein scheint. 
LANGE, Geschichte des Materialismus, 502, 503. 
Hominum errores divina providentia reguntur, ita ut 
saepe male jacta bene cadant. LEIBNIZ, ed. Klopp, i., 
p. Hi. Sainte-Beuve n'etait meme pas de la race des 



NOTES 121 



libe'raux, c'est-a-dire de ceux qui croient que, tout 
compte fait, et dans un etat de civilisation donne, le 
bien triomphe du mal a armes egales, et la veritd de 
1'erreur. D'HAUSSONVILLE, Revue des Deux Mondes, 
I ^75> i' 567. In the progress of the human mind, 
a period of controversy amongst the cultivators of any 
branch of science must necessarily precede the period 
of unanimity. TORRENS, Essay on the Production of 
Wealth, 1821, p. xiii. Even the spread of an error is 
part of the wide-world process by which we stumble 
into mere approximations to truth. L. STEPHEN, 
Apology of an Agnostic, 81. Errors, to be dangerous, 
must have a great deal of truth mingled with them ; 
it is only from this alliance that they can ever obtain 
an extensive circulation. S. SMITH, Moral Philosophy, 
7. The admission of the few errors of Newton himself 
is at least of as much importance to his followers in 
science as the history of the progress of his real dis- 
coveries. YOUNG, Works, iii. 621. Error is almost 
always partial truth, and so consists in the exaggera- 
tion or distortion of one verity by the suppression of 
another, which qualifies and modifies the former. 
MIVART, Genesis of Species, 3. The attainment of 
scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, 
by the help of scientific errors. HUXLEY : WARD? 
Reign of Victoria, ii. 337. Jede neue tief eingreifende 
Wahrheit hat meiner Ansicht nach erst das Stadium 
der Einseitigkeit durchzumachen. IHERING, Geist des 
R. Rechts, ii. 22. The more readily we admit the 
possibility of our own cherished convictions being 
mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever 



122 NOTES 



is right in them will become. RUSK IN, Ethics of the 
Dust, 225. They hardly grasp the plain truth un- 
less they examine the error which it cancels. CORY, 
Modern English History, 1880, i. 109. Nur durch 
Irrthum kommen wir, der eine kiirzeren und gliick- 
licheren Schrittes, als der andere, zur Wahrheit; 
und die Geschichte darf nirgends diese Verirrungen 
iibergehen, wenn sie Lehrerin und Warnerin fur die 
nachfolgenden Geschlechter werden will. Miinchen 
Gel. Anzeigen, 1840, i. 737. 

74 Wie die Weltgeschichte das Weltgericht ist, so 
kann in noch allgemeinerem Sinne gesagt werden, dass 
das gerechte Gericht, d.h. die wahre Kritik einer Sache, 
nur in ihrer Geschichte liegen kann. Insbesondere 
in der Hinsicht lehrt die Geschichte denjenigen, der 
ihr folgt, ihre eigene Methode, dass ihr Fortschritt 
niemals ein reines Vernichten, sondern nur ein Auf- 
heben im philosophischen Sinne ist. STRAUSS, Hal- 
lische Jahrbiicher, 1839, 120. 

75 Dans tous les livres qu'il lit, et il en devore des 
quantites, Darwin ne note que les passages qui con- 
trarient ses idees syste'matiques. II collectionne les 
difficulte's, les cas e'pineux, les critiques possibles. 
VERNIER, Le Temps, 6 De'cembre, 1887. Je deman- 
dais a un savant celebre ou il en etait de ses recherches. 
" Cela ne marche plus," me dit-il, " je ne trouve plus 
de faits contradictoires." Ainsi le savant cherche a se 
contredire lui-meme pour faire avancer sa pense'e. 
JANET, Journal des Savants, 1892, 20. Ein Umstand, 
der uns die Selbstandigkeit des Ganges der Wissen- 
schaft anschaulich machen kann, ist auch der : dass 



NOTES 123 



der Irrthum, wenn er nur griindlich behandelt wird, 
fast ebenso fordernd ist als das Finden der Wahrheit, 
denn er erzeugt fortgesetzten Widerspruch. BAER, 
Blicke auf die Entwickhmg der Wisscnschaft, 120. It 
is only by virtue of the opposition which it has sur- 
mounted that any truth can stand in the human mind. 
BISHOP TEMPLE ; KINGLAKE, Crimea, Winter Troubles, 
app. 104. I have for many years found it expedient 
to lay down a rule for my own practice, to confine my 
reading mainly to those journals the general line of 
opinions in which is adverse to my own. HARE, 
Means of Unity, i. 19. Kant had a harder struggle 
with himself than he could possibly have had with any 
critic or opponent of his philosophy. CAIRD, Philoso- 
phy of Kant, 1889, i. p. ix. 

7(5 The social body is no more liable to arbitrary 
changes than the individual body. A full perception 
of the truth that society is not a mere aggregate, but 
an organic growth, that it forms a whole the laws of 
whose growth can be studied apart from those of the 
individual atom, supplies the most characteristic pos- 
tulate of modern speculation. L. STEPHEN, Science of 
Ethics, 31. Wie in dem Leben des Einzelnen Men- 
schen kein Augenblick einesvollkommenen Stillstandes 
wahrgenommen wird, sondern stete organische Ent- 
wicklung, so verhalt es sich auch in dem Leben 
der Volker, und in jedem einzelnen Element, woraus 
dieses Gesammtleben besteht. So finden wir in der 
Sprache stete Fortbildung und Entwicklung, und auf 
gleiche Weise in dem Recht. Und auch diese 
Fortbildung steht unter demselben Gesetz der 



124 NOTES 



Erzeugung aus innerer Kraft und Nothwendigkeit, 
unabhiingig von Zufall und inclividueller Willklir, 
wie die urspriingliche Entstehung. SAVIGNY, System, 
i. 1 6, 17. Seine eigene Entdeckung, dass auch die 
geistige Produktion, bis in einem gewissen Punkte 
wenigstens, unter dem Gesetze der Kausalitat steht, 
dass jedeiner nur geben kann was er hat, nur hat was 
er irgendwoher bekommen, muss auch fur ihn selber 
gelten. BEKKER, Das Recht des Besitzes bei den 
Romern, 3, 1880. Die geschichtliche Wandlung des 
Rechts, in welcher vergangene Jahrhunderte halb ein 
Spiel des Zufalls und halb ein Werk vernunftelndcr 
Willkiir sahen, als gesetzmassige Entwickelung zu be- 
greifen, war das unsterbliche Verdienst der von Man- 
nern wie Savigny, Eichhorn und Jacob Grimm gefiihr- 
ten historischen Rechtsschule. GIERKE, Rundschau^ 
xviii. 205. 

77 The only effective way of studying what is called 
the philosophy of religion, or the philosophical criti- 
cism of religion, is to study the history of religion. 
The true science of war is the history of war, the true 
science of religion is, I believe, the history of religion. 
M. MULLER, Theosophy, 3,4. La theologie nedoit 
plus etre que 1'histoire des efforts spontane's tente's 
pour resoudre le probleme divin. L'histoire, en effet, 
est la forme necessaire de la science de tout ce qui 
est soumis aux lois de la vie changeante et successive. 
La science de 1'esprit humain, c'est de meme, 1'histoire 
de 1'esprit humain. RENAN, Averroes, Pref. vi. 

78 Political economy is not a science, in any strict 
sense, but a body of systematic knowledge gathered 



NOTES 125 



from the study of common processes, which have 
been practised all down the history of the human 
race in the production and distribution of wealth. 
BONAMY PRICE, Social Science Congress, 1878. Such 
a study is in harmony with the best intellectual 
tendencies of our age, which is, more than anything 
else, characterized by the universal supremacy of the 
historical spirit. To such a degree has this spirit 
permeated all our modes of thinking, that with respect 
to every branch of knowledge, no less than with 
respect to every institution and every form of human 
activity, we almost instinctively ask, not merely what 
is its existing condition, but what were its earliest 
discoverable germs, and what has been the course 
of its development. INGRAM, History of Political 
Economy, 2. Wir dagegen stehen keinenAugenblick an, 
die National okonomie fur eine reine Erfahrungswis- 
senschaft zu erklaren, und die Geschichte ist uns 
daher nicht Hiilfsmittel, sondern Gegenstand selber. 
ROSCHER, Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, 1849, i. 182. 
Der bei weitem grosste Theil menschlicher Irrthiimer 
beruhet darauf, dass man zeitlich und ortlich Wahres 
oder Heilsames fur absolut wahr oder heilsam aus- 
giebt. Fur jede Stufe der Volksentwickelung passt 
eine besondere Staatsverfassung, die mit alien iibrigen 
Verhaltnissen des Volks als Ursache und Wirkung aufs 
Innigste verbunden ist; so passt auch fur jede 
Entwickelungsstufe eine besondere Landwirthschafts- 
verfassung. ROSCHER, Archiv f. p. Oek., viii., 2 Heft 
1845. Seitdem vor alien Roscher, Hildebrand und 
Knies den Werth, die Berechtigung und die Nothwen- 



126 NOTES 



digkeit derselben unwiderleglich dargethan, hat sich 
immer allgemeiner der Gedanke Bahn gebrochen 
dass diese Wissenschaft, die bis dahin nur auf die 
Gegenwart, auf die Erkenntniss der bestehenden 
Verhaltnisse und die in ihnen sichtbaren Gesetze den 
Blick gerichtet hatte, auch in die Vergangenheit, in die 
Erforschungder bereitshinteruns liegenden wirthschaft- 
lichen Entwicklung der Volker sich vertiefen miisse. 
SCHONBERG, Jahrbucher f. Nationalokonomie und Sta- 
tistik, Neue Folge, 1867, i. i. Schmoller, moins dog- 
matique et mettant comme une sorte de coquetterie a 
etre incertain, demontre, par les faits, la faussete ou 
Parbitraire de tous ces postulats, et laisse 1'economie 
politique se dissoudre dans 1'histoire. BRETON, R. de 
Part's, ix. 67. Wer die politische Oekonomie Feuer- 
lands unter dieselben Gesetze bringen wollte mit der 
des heutigen Englands, wiirde damit augenscheinlich 
nichts zu Tage fordern als den allerbanalsten Gemein- 
platz. Die politische Oekonomie ist somit wesentlich 
eine historische Wissenschaft. Sie behandelt einen 
geschichtlichen, das heisst einen stets wechselnden 
Stoff. Sie untersucht zunachst die besondern Gesetze 
jeder einzelnen Entwicklungsstufe der Produktion und 
des Austausches, und wird erst am Schluss dieser 
Untersuchung die wenigen, fur Produktion und 
Austausch iiberhaupt geltenden, ganz allgemeinen 
Gesetze aufstellen konnen. ENGELS, Diihrings 
Umwalzung der Wissenschaft, 1878, 121. 

79 History preserves the student from being led 
astray by a too servile adherence to any system. 
WOLOWSKI. No system can be anything more than a 



NOTES 127 



history, not in the order of impression, but in the order 
of arrangement by analogy. DAVY, Memoirs, 68. 
Avec des materiaux si nombreux et si importants, il 
fallait bien du courage pour resister a la tentation de 
faire un systeme. De Saussure eut ce courage, et 
nous en ferons le dernier trait et le trait principal de 
son eloge. CUVIER, Eloge de Saussure, 1810. 

80 C'e'tait, en 1804, une ide'e heureuse et nouvelle, 
d'appeler 1'histoire au secours de la science, d'inter- 
roger les deux grandes ecoles rivales au profit de 
la verite'. COUSIN, Fragments Litteraires, 1843, 95, 
on De'gerando. No branch of philosophical doctrine, 
indeed, can be fairly investigated or apprehended 
apart from its history. All our systems of politics, 
morals, and metaphysics would be different if we knew 
exactly how they grew up, and what transformations 
they have undergone ; if we knew, in short, the true 
history of human ideas. CLIFFE LESLIE, Essays in 
Political and Moral Philosophy, 1879, 149. The 
history of philosophy must be rational and philosophic. 
It must be philosophy itself, with all its elements, in 
all their relations, and under all their laws represented 
in striking characters by the hands of time and of his- 
tory, in the manifested progress of the human mind. 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, Edin. Rev. 1. 200, 1829. 
II n'est point d'e'tude plus instructive, plus utile que 
1'e'tude de 1'histoire de la philosophic; car on y 
apprend a se de'sabuser des philosophies, et 1'on y de's- 
apprend la fausse science de leurs systemes. ROYER 
COLLARD, (Euvres de Reid, iv. 426. On ne peut 
guere e'chapper a la conviction que toutes les solutions 



128 NOTES 



des questions philosophiques n'aient ete developpees 
ou indiquees avant le commencement du dix-neuvieme 
siecle, et que par consequent il ne soit tres difficile, pour 
ne pas dire impossible,de tomber,en pareille matiere,sur 
une ide'e neuve de quelque importance. Or si cette con- 
viction est fonde'e, il s'ensuit que la science est faite. 
JouFFROY,in T)A3AiBJOJX,Philosophte du XIX* Sthle t 363. 
Le but dernier de tous mes efforts, Tame de mes ecrits et 
de tout mon enseignement, c'est 1'identite de la philo- 
sophic et de son histoire. COUSIN, Cours de 1829. 
Ma route est historique, il est vrai, mais mon but est 
dogmatique ; je tends a une theorie, et cette theorie je 
la demande a 1'histoire. COUSIN, Ph. du XV IIP 
Siecle, 15. L'histoire de la philosophic est contrainte 
d'emprunter d'abord a la philosophic la lumiere qu'elle 
doit lui rendre un jour avec usure. COUSIN, Du Vrai, 
1855, 14. M. Cousin, durant tout son professorat 
de 1816 a 1829, a pense que 1'histoire de la philoso- 
phic etait la source de la philosophic meme. Nous 
ne croyons pas exage'rer en lui pretant cette opinion. 
B. ST. HILAIRE, Victor Cousin, i. 302. II se hata de 
convertir le fait en loi, et proclama que la philosophic, 
etant identique a son histoire, ne pouvait avoir une loi 
differente, et etait voue'e a jamais a 1'e'volution fatale 
des quatre systemes, se contredisant toujours, mais se 
limitant, et se mode'rant, par cela meme de maniere a 
maintenir Tequilibre, sinon 1'harmonie de la pensee 
humaine. VACHEROT, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1868, 
iii. 957. Er hat iiberhaupt das unvergangliche Verdienst, 
zuerst in Frankreich zu der Erkenntniss gelangt zu 
sein, dass die menschliche Vernunft nur durch das 



NOTES 129 



Studium des Gesetzes ihrer Entwickelungen begriff- 
en werden kann. LAUSER, Unsere Zeit, 1868, i. 
459. Le philosophe en quete du vrai en soi, 
n'est plus re'duit a ses conceptions individuelles ; 
il est riche du tresor amasse par 1'humanite. 
BOUTROUX, Revue Politique, xxxvii. 802. L'histoire, 
je veux dire 1'histoire de 1'esprit humain, est en 
ce sens la vraie philosophic de notre temps. 
REN AN, Etudes de Morale, 83. Die Philosophic wurde 
eine hochst bedeutende Hiilfswissenschaft der Ge- 
schichte,sie hatihre Richtung auf das Allgemeine gefor- 
dert, ihren Blick fiir dasselbe gescharft, und sie, wen- 
igstens durch ihre Vermittlung, mit Gesichtspuncten, 
Ideen, bereichert die sie aus ihrem eigenen Schoosse 
sobald noch nicht erzeugt haben wiirde. Weit die 
fruchtbarste darunter war die aus der Naturwissenschaft 
geschopfte Idee des organischen Lebens, dieselbe auf 
der die neueste Philosophic selbst beruht. Die seit zwei 
bis drei Jahrzehnten in der Behandlung der Geschichte 
eingetretene durchgreifende Veranderung, wie die 
vollige Umgestaltung so mancher anderen Wissenschaft 
. . . ist der Hauptsache nach ihr Werk. HAUG, Allge- 
meine Geschichte, 1841,1. 22. Eine Geschichte der Philo- 
sophic in eigentlichen Sinne wurde erst moglich als 
man an die Stelle der Philosophen deren Systeme 
setzte, den inneren Zusammenhang zwischen diesen 
feststellte und wie Dilthey sagt mitten in 
Wechsel der Philosophien ein siegreiches Fortschrei- 
ten zur Wahrheit nachwies. Die Gesammtheit 
der Philosophic stellt sich also dar als eine geschicht- 
liche Einheit. SAUL, Rundschau, Feb. 1894, 307. 

K 



1-30 NOTES 



Warum die Philosophic eine Geschichte habe und 
haben miisse, blieb unerortert, ja ungeahnt, dass die 
Philosophic am meisten von alien Wissenschaften 
historisch sei, denn man hatte in der Geschichte den 
Begriffder Entwicklung nicht entdeckt. MARBACH, 
Griechische Philosophic^ 15. Was bei oberflachlicher 
Betrachtung nur ein Gewirre einzelner Personen und 
Meinungen zu sein schien, zeigt sich bei genauerer 
und griindlicherer Untersuchung als eine geschicht- 
liche Entwicklung, in der alles, bald na'her, bald 
entfernter, mit allem anderen zusammenhangt. 
ZELLER, Rundschau, Feb. 1894, 307. Nur die 
Philosophic, die an die geschichtliche Entwickelung 
ankniipft kann auf bleibenden Erfolg auch fur die 
Zukunft rechnen und fortschreiten zu dem, was in der 
bisherigen philosophischen Entwickelung nur erst 
unvollkommen erreicht oder angestrebt worden ist. 
Kann sich doch die Philosophic iiberhaupt und 
insbesondere die Metaphysik ihrer eigenen gsschicht- 
lichen Entwickelung nicht entschlagen, sondern hat 
eine Geschichte der Philosophic als eigene und zwar 
zugleich historische und spekulative Disziplin, in deren 
geschichtlichen Entwickelungsphasen und geschicht- 
lich aufeinanderfolgenden Systemen der Philosophen 
die neuere Spekulation seit Schelling and Hegel zu- 
gleich die Philosophic selbst als ein die verschiedenen 
geschichtlichen Systeme umfassendes ganzes in seiner 
dialektischen Gliederung erkannt hat. GLOATZ, 
Spekulative Theologie, i. 23. Die heutige Philosophic 
fuhrt uns auf einen Standpunkt von dem aus die 
philosophische Idee dls das innere Wesen der Ge- 



NOTES 131 



schichte selbst erscheint. So trat an die Stelle einer 
abstrakt philosophischen Richtung, welche das Ge- 
schichtliche verneinte, eine abstrakt geschichtliche 
Richtung welche das Philosophische verlaugnete. 
Beide Richtungen sind als iiberschrittene und besiegte 
zu betrachten. BERNER, Strafrecht, 75. DieGeschichte 
der Philosophie hat uns fast schon die Wissenschaft 
der Philosophie selbst ersetzt. HERMANN, Phil. 
Monatshefte, ii. 198, 1889. 

81 Le siecle actuel sera principalement caracterise 
par Tirrevocable preponderance de Fhistoire, en philo- 
sophic, en politique, et meme en poe'sie. COMTE, 
Politique Positive, iii. i. 

82 The historical or comparative method has revolu- 
tionized not only the sciences of law, mythology, and 
language, of anthropology and sociology, but it has 
forced its way even into the domain of philosophy 
and natural science. For what is the theory of evolu- 
tion itself, with all its far-reaching consequences, 
but the achievement of the historical method ? 
PROTHERO, Inaugural. National Review, Dec. 1894, 
461. To facilitate the advancement of all the 
branches of useful science, two things seem to be 
principally requisite. The first is, an historical 
account of their rise, progress, and present state. 
Without the former of these helps, a person every 
way qualified for extending the bounds of science 
labours under great disadvantages ; wanting the lights 
which have been struck out by others, and perpetually 
running the risk of losing his labour, and finding him- 
self anticipated. PRIESTLEY, History of Vision, 1772, 

K 2 



132 NOTES 



i. Pref. i. Cuvier se proposait de montrer 1'enchaine- 
ment scientifique des decouvertes, leurs relations avec 
les grands evenements historiques, et leur influence 
sur les progres et le de'veloppement de la civilisa- 
tion. DARESTE, Biographie Generale, xii. 685. 
Dans ses dloquentes legons, 1'histoire des sciences est 
devenue 1'histoire meme de I'esprit humain; car, 
remontant aux causes de leurs progres et de leurs 
erreurs, c'est toujours dans les bonnes ou mauvaises 
routes suivies par I'esprit humain, qu'il trouve ces 
causes. FLOURENS, Aloge de Cuvier, xxxi. Wie 
keine fortlaufende Entwickelungsreihe von nur Einem 
Punkte aus vollkommen aufzufassen ist, so wird auch 
keine lebendige Wissenschaft nur aus der Gegenwart 
begriffen werden konnen. Deswegen ist aber eine 
solche Darstellung doch noch nicht der gesammten 
Wissenschaft adaquat, und sie birgt, wenn sie damit 
verwechselt wird, starke Gefahren der Einseitigkeit, des 
Dogmatismus und damit der Stagnation in sich. 
Diesen Gefahren kann wirksam nur begegnet werden 
durch die verstandige Betrachtung der Geschichte der 
Wissenschaften, welche diese selbst in stetem Flusse 
zeigt und die Tendenz ihres Fortschreitens in offen- 
barer und sicherer Weise klarlegt. ROSENBERGER, 
Geschichte der Phystk, iii., p. vi. Die Continuitat in 
der Ausbildung aller Auffassungen tritt um sodeutlicher 
hervor, je vollstandiger man sich damit, wie sie zu 
verschiedenen Zeiten waren, vertraut macht. KOPP, 
Entwickelung der Chemie, 814. 

83 Die Geschichte und die Politik sind Ein und 
derselbe Janus mit dem Doppelgesicht, das in der 



NOTES 133 



Geschichte in die Vergangenheit, in der Politik in die 
Zukunft hinschaut. GUGLEU'S Leben, ii. 59. 

84 The papers inclosed, which give an account of 
the killing of two men in the county of Londonderry ; 
if they prove to be Tories, 'tis very well they are gone. 
I think it will not only be necessary to grant those a 
pardon who killed them, but also that they have some 
reward for their own and others' encouragement. 
ESSEX, Letters, 10, Jan. 10, 1675. The author of 
this happened to be present. There was a meeting 
of some honest people in the city, upon the occasion 
of the discovery of some attempt to stifle the evidence 
of the witnesses. Bedloe said he had letters from 
Ireland, that there were some Tories to be brought 
over hither, who were privately to murder Dr. Gates 
and the said Bedloe. The doctor, whose zeal was 
very hot, could never after this hear any man talk 
against the plot, or against the witnesses, but he 
thought he was one of these Tories, and called almost 
every man a Tory that opposed him in discourse ; till 
at last the word Tory became popular. DEFOE, 
Edinburgh Review, 1. 403. 

85 La Espana serd el primer pueblo en donde se 
encendera esta guerra patriotica que solo puede 
libertar a" Europa. Hemos oido esto en Inglaterra a* 
varios de los que estaban alii presentes. Muchas 
veces ha oido lo mismo al duque de Wellington el 
general Don Miguel de Alava, y dicho duque renrio 
el suceso en una comida diplomatica que did en Paris 
el duque de Richelieu en 1816. TORENO, Historia 
del Levantamiento de Espaiia^ 1838, i. 508. 



134 NOTES 

86 Nunquam propter auctoritatem illorum, quamvis 
magni sint nominis (supponimus scilicet semper nos 
cum eo agere qui scientiam historicam vult consequi), 
sententias quas secuti sunt ipse tamquam certas 
admittet, sed solummodo ob vim testimoniorum et 
argumentorum quibus eas confirmarunt. DE SMEDT, 
Introductio ad historiam critice tractandam, 1866, i. 5. 

87 Hundert schwere Verbrechen wiegen nicht so 
schwer in der Schale der Unsittlichkeit, als ein 
unsittliches Princip. Hallische Jahrbilcher, 1839, 308. 
II faut fle'trir les crimes ; mais il faut aussi, et 
surtout, fle'trir les doctrines et les systemes qui tendent 
a les justifier. MORTIMER TERNAUX, Histoire de la 
Terreur. 

88 We see how good and evil mingle in the best of 
men and in the best of causes ; we learn to see with 
patience the men whom we like best often in the 
wrong, and the repulsive men often in the right ; we 
learn to bear with patience the knowledge that the 
cause which we love best has suffered, from the 
awkwardness of its defenders, so great disparagement, 
as in strict equity to justify the men who were assault- 
ing it. STUBBS, Seventeen Lectures, 97. 

89 Caeteris paribus, on trouvera tousjours que ceux 
qui ont plus de puissance sont sujets a pecher 
davantage ; et il n'y a point de the'oreme de ge'ome'trie 
qui soit plus asseure' que cette proposition. LEIBNIZ, 
1688, ed. Rommel, ii. 197. II y a toujours eu de la 
malignite dans la grandeur, et de 1'opposition a 1'esprit 
de 1'Evangile ; mais maintenant il y en a plus que 
jamais, et il semble que comme le monde va a sa fin, 



NOTES 135 



celui qui est dans 1'elevation fait tous ses efforts pour 
dominer avec plus de tyrannic, et pour etouffer les 
maximes du Christianisme et le regne de Je'sus-Christ, 
voiant qu'il s'approche. GODEAU, Lettres, 423, 
March 27, r66y. There is, in fact, an unconquerable 
tendency in all power, save that of knowledge, acting 
by and through knowledge, to injure the mind of him 
by whom that power is exercised. WORDSWORTH, 
June 22, 1817. Letters of Lake Poets, 369. 

90 I cieli han messo sulla terra due giudici delle 
umane azioni, la coscienza e la storia. COLLETTA. 
Wenn gerade die edelsten Manner um des Nachruhmes 
willen gearbeitet haben, so soil die Geschichte ihre 
Belohnung sein, sie auch die Strafe fur die Schlechten. 
LASAULX, Philosophic der Kunste, 211. Pour juger 
ce qui est bon et juste dans la vie actuelle ou passe'e, 
il faut posseder un criterium, qui ne soit pas tird du 
passe ou du pre'sent, mais de la nature humaine.- 
AHRENS, Cours de Droit Nature I, i. 67. 

91 L'homme de notre temps ! La conscience 
moderne ! Voila encore de ces termes qui nous 
ramenent la pre'tendue philosophic de 1'histoire et la 
d'octrine du progres, quand il s'agit de la justice, c'est- 
a-dire de la conscience pure et de rhomme rationnel, 
que d'autres siecles encore que le notre ont connu. 
RENOUVIER, Crit. Phil. 1873, ii. 55. 

93 II faut pardonner aux grands hommes le marche- 
pied de lenr grandeur. COUSIN, in J. SIMON, Nos 
Hommes JEtat, 1887, 55. L'esprit du XVIIP siecle 
n'a pas besoin d'apologie : Tapologie d'un siecle est 
dans son existence. COUSIN, Fragments, iii. 1826. 



136 NOTES 



Suspendus aux levres eloquentes de M. Cousin, nous 
1'entendimes s'ecrier que la meilleure cause 1'emportait 
toujours, que c'e'tait la loi de 1'histoire, le rhythme 
immuable du progres. GASPARIN, La Libert'e Morale^ 
ii. 63. Cousin verurtheilen heisst darum nichts 
Anderes als jenen Geist historischer Betrachtung 
verdammen, durch welchen das 19 Jahrhundert die 
revolutionare Kritik des 18 Jahrhunderts erganzt, 
durch welchen insbesondere Deutschland die geistigen 
Wohlthaten vergolten hat, welche es im Zeitalter der 
Aufklarung von seinen westlichen Nachbarn empfan- 
gen. IODL, Gesch. der Ethik, ii. 295. Der Gang der 
Weltgeschichte steht ausserhalb der Tugend, des 
Lasters, und der Gerechtigkeit. HEGEL, Werke, viii. 
425. Die Vermischung des Zufalligen im Indivi- 
duum mit dem an ihm Historischen fiihrt zu 
unzahligen falschen Ansichten und Urtheilen. Hierzu 
gehort namentlich alles Absprechen iiber die moralische 
Tiichtigkeit der Individuen, und die Verwunderung, 
welche bis zur Verzweiflung an gottlicher Gerechtigkeit 
sich steigert, dass historisch grosse Individuen 
moralisch nichtswiirdig erscheinen konnen. Die 
moralische Tiichtigkeit besteht in der Unterordnung 
alles dessen was zufallig am Einzelnen unter das an 
ihm dem Allgemeinen Angehorige. MARBACH, 
Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophic, 7. DasSittliche 
der Neuseelander, der Mexikaner ist vielmehr ebenso 
sittlich, wie das der Griechen, der Romer; und das 
Sittliche der Christen des Mittelalters ist ebenso 
sittlich, wie das der Gegenwart. KIRCHMANN, 
Grundbegriffe des Rechts, 194. Die Geschichtswissen- 



NOTES 137 



schaft als solche kennt nur ein zeitliches und mithin 
auch nur ein relatives Maass der Dinge. Alle Werth- 
beurtheilung der Geschichte kann daher nur relativ 
und aus zeitlichen Momenten fliessen, und wer sich 
nicht selbst tauschen und den Dingen nicht Gewalt 
anthun will, muss ein fur allemal in dieser Wissen- 
schaft auf absolute Werthe verzichten. LORENZ, 
Schlosser^ 80. Only according to his faith is each man 
judged. Committed as this deed has been by a pure- 
minded, pious youth, it is a beautiful sign of the time. 
DE WETTE to Sand's Mother, CHEYNE, Founders of 
Criticism, 44. The men of each age must be judged 
by the ideal of their own age and country, and not 
by the ideal of ours. LECKY, Value of History , 50. 

93 La duree ici-bas, c'est le droit, c'est la sanction de 
Dieu. GUIRAUD, Philosophie Catholique de FHistoire. 

94 Ceux qui ne sont pas contens de 1'ordre des 
choses ne sgauroient se vanter d'aimer Dieu comme 
il faut. II faut toujours estre content de 1'ordre du 
passe, parce qu'il est conforme \ la volonte' de Dieu 
absolue, qu'on connoit par I'eVenement. II faut 
tacher de rendre 1'avenir, autant qu'il depend de nous, 
conforme a la volonte de Dieu presomptive. LEIBNIZ, 
Werke, ed. Gerhardt, ii. 136. Ich habe damals be- 
kannt und bekenne jetzt, dass die politische Wahrheit 
aus denselbenQuellen zu schopfen ist, wie alle anderen, 
aus dem gottlichen Willen und dessen Kundgebung 
in der Geschichte des Menschengeschlechts. RADO- 
WITZ, Neue Gesprdche^ 65. 

95 A man is great as he contends best with the 
circumstances of his age. FROUDE, Short Studies L 



138 NOTES 



388. La persuasion que Thomme est avant tout une 
personne morale et libre, et qu'ayant conc.u seul, dans 
sa conscience et devant Dieu, la regie de sa conduite, 
il doit s'employer tout entier a 1'appliquer en lui, hors 
de lui, absolument, obstine / ment,inflexiblement, par une 
resistance perpetuelle opposee aux autres ; et par une 
contrainte perpetuelle exercee sur soi, voila la grande 
idee anglaise. TAINE ; SOREL, Discours de Reception, 
24. In jeder Zeit des Christenthums hat es einzelne 
Manner gegeben, die iiber ihrer Zeit standen und von 
ihrenGegensatzen nicht beriihrt wurden. BACHMANN, 
Hengstenbergi i. 160. Eorum enim qui de iisdem 
rebus mecum aliquid ediderunt, aut solus insanio ego, 
aut solus non insanio ; tertium enim non est, nisi 
(quod dicet forte aliquis) insaniamus omnes. HOBBES, 
quoted by DE MORGAN, June 3, 1858, Life of Sir 
W, R. Hamilton, iii. 552. 

96 * I have now to exhibit a rare combination of good 
qualities, and a steady perseverance in good conduct, 
which raised an individual to be an object of admira- 
tion and love to all his contemporaries, and have 
made him to be regarded by succeeding generations as 
a model of public and private virtue. The evidence 
shows that upon this occasion he was not only under 
the influence of the most vulgar credulity, but that 
he violated the plainest rules of justice, and that 
he really was the murderer of two innocent women. 
Hale's motives were most laudable. CAMPBELL'S 
Lives of the Chief Justices, i. 512, 561, 566. It was 
not to be expected of the colonists of New England 
that they should be the first to see through a delusion 



NOTES 139 



which befooled the whole civilized world, and the 
gravest and most knowing persons in it. The people 
of New England believed what the wisest men of the 
world believed at the end of the seventeenth century. 
PALFREY, New England, iv. 127, 129 (also speaking 
of witchcraft). II est done bien dtrange que sa 
sevdrite' tardive s'exerce aujourd'hui sur un homme 
auquel elle n'a d'autre reproche a faire que d'avoir 
trop bien servi 1'etat par des mesures politiques, 
injustes peut-etre, violentes, mais qui, en aucune 
maniere, n'avaient 1'inte'ret personnel du coupable 
pour objet. M. Hastings peut sans doute paraitre 
reprehensible aux yeux des etrangers, des particuliers 
meme, mais il est assez extraordinaire qu'une nation 
usurpatrice d'une partie de 1'Indostan veuille meler 
les regies de la morale a celles d'une administration 
forcee, injuste et violente par essence, et a laquelle il 
faudrait renoncer a jamais pour etre consequent. 
MALLET DU PAN, Memories, ed. Sayous, i. 102. 

97 On parle volontiers de la stabilite de la constitu- 
tion anglaise. La verite est que cette constitution est 
toujours en mouvement et en oscillation et qu'elle se 
prete merveilleusement au jeu de ses diffe'rentes parties. 
Sa solidite vient de sa souplesse ; elle plie et ne rompt 
pas. BOUTMY, Nouvelle Revue, 1878, 49. 

98 This is not an age for a man to follow the strict 
morality of better times, yet sure mankind is not yet 
so debased but that there will ever be found some few 
men who will scorn to join concert with the public 
voice when it is not well grounded. Savile Cor- 
respondence, 173. 



140 NOTES 



99 Cette proposition : L'homme est incomparable- 
ment plus porte au mal qu'au bien, et il se fait dans 
le monde incomparablement plus de mauvaises actions 
que de bonnes est aussi certaine qu'aucun principe de 
metaphysique. II est done incomparablement plus 
probable qu'une action faite par un homme, est 
mauvaise, qu'il n'est probable qu'elle soit bonne. 
II est incomparablement plus probable que ces 
secrets ressorts qui 1'ont produite sont cor- 
rompus, qu'il n'est probable qu'ils soient honnetes. 
Je vous avertis que je parle d'une action qui n'est 
point mauvaise exte'rieurement. BAYLE, (Euvres, 
ii. 248. 

100 A Christian is bound by his very creed to sus- 
pect evil, and cannot release himself. His religion 
has brought evil to light in a way in which it never 
was before ; it has shown its depth, subtlety, ubiquity ; 
and a revelation, full of mercy on the one hand, is 
terrible in its exposure of the world's real state on the 
other. The Gospel fastens the sense of evil upon the 
mind ; a Christian is enlightened, hardened, sharpened, 
as to evil ; he sees it where others do not. MOZLEY, 
Assays, i. 308. All satirists, of course, work in the 
direction of Christian doctrine, by the support they 
give to the doctrine of original sin, making a sort of 
meanness and badness a law of society. MOZLEY, 
Letters, 333. Les critiques, meme malveillants, sont 
plus pres de la ve'rite derniere que les admirateurs. 
NISARD, Lit.fr., Conclusion. Les homines supe'rieurs 
doivent necessairement passer pour me'chants. Oil 
les autres ne voient ni un defaut, ni un ridicule, 



NOTES 141 



ni tin vice, leur implacable ceil 1'apergoit. BARBEY 
D'AUREVILLV, Figaro, March 31, 1888. 

101 Prenons garde de ne pas trop expliquer, pour 
ne pas fournir des arguments a ceux qui veulent tout 
excuser. BROGLIE, Reception de Sorel, 46. 

102 The eternal truths and rights of things exist, 
fortunately, independent of our thoughts or wishes, 
fixed as mathematics, inherent in the nature of man 
and the world. They are no more to be trifled 
with than gravitation. FROUDE, Inaugural Lecture at 
St. Andrews, 1869, 41. What have men to do with 
interests? There is a right way and a wrong way. 
That is all we need think about. CARLYLE to 
FROUDE, Longman's Magazine, Dec. 1892, 151. As 
to History, it is full of indirect but very effective 
moral teaching. It is not only, as Bolingbroke called 
it, " Philosophy teaching by examples," but it is 
morality teaching by examples. It is essentially the 
study which best helps the student to conceive large 
thoughts. It is impossible to overvalue the moral 
teaching of History. FITCH, Lectures on Teaching, 
432. Judging from the past history of our race, in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, war is a folly and 
a crime. Where it is so, it is the saddest and the 
wildest of all follies, and the most heinous of all 
crimes. GREG, Essays on Political and Social Science, 
1853, i. 562. La volonte de tout un peuple ne peut 
rendre juste ce qui est injuste : les representants 
d'une nation n'ont pas le droit de faire ce que la 
nation n'a pas le droit de faire elle-meme. B. 
CONSTANT, Prindpes de Politique, i. 15. 



142 NOTES 



103 Think not that morality is ambulatory; that 
vices in one age are not vices in another, or that 
virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of right 
reason, may be stamped by opinion. SIR THOMAS 
BROWNE, Works, iv. 64. 

104 Osons croire qu'il seroit plus a propos de mettre 
de cote ces traditions, ces usages, et ces coutumes 
souvent si imparfaites, si contradictoires, si incohe- 
rentes, ou de ne les consulter que pour saisir les in- 
conveniens et les eviter; et qu'il faudroit chercher 
non-seulement les elements d'une nouvelle legislation, 
mais meme ses derniers de'tails dans une e'tude ap- 
profondie de la morale. LETROSNE, Reflexions sur la 
Legislation Criminelle, 137. M. Renan appartient \ 
cette famille d'esprits qui ne croient pas en re'alite la 
raison, la conscience, le droit applicables a la direction 
des societes humaines, et qui demandent a 1'histoire, 
a la tradition, non a la morale, les regies de la poli- 
tique. Ces esprits sont atteints de la maladie du 
siecle, le scepticisme moral. PILLON, Critique Philo- 
sophiqne, i. 49. 

105 The subject of modern history is of all others, 
to my mind, the most interesting, inasmuch as it 
includes all questions of the deepest interest relating 
not to human things only, but to divine. ARNOLD, 
Modern History, 311. 



RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, 

BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., 

AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. 



The Eversley Series 

Globe Svo. Cloth. 4s. net per volume. 



The Works of Matthew 

Arnold. 8 Vols. 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 1st Series. 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 2nd Series. 
EARLY AND NARRATIVE POEMS. 
LYRIC AND ELEGIAC POEMS. 
DRAMATIC AND LATER POEMS. 
AMERICAN DISCOURSES. 
LETTERS. Edited by G. W. E. 
RUSSELL. 2 Vols. 

A Memoir of Jane Austen. 
By her Nephew, J. E. AUSTEN 
LEIGH. To which is added 
" Lady Susan," and Fragments 
of two other Unfinished Tales 
by Miss AUSTEN. 

The Holy Bible. 

Arranged in paragraphs, with an 
Introduction by J. W. MAC- 
KAIL, M.A. 

Vol. 2. DEUTERONOMY 2 SAMUEL. 

Vol. 3. 1 KINGS ESTHER. 

Vel. 4. JOB SONG OF SOLOMON. 

Vol. 5. ISAIAH LAMENTATIONS. 

Vol. 6. EZEKIEL MALACHI. 

Vol. 7. MATTHEW JOHN. 

Vol. 8. ACTS REVELATION. 

Essays by George Brimley. 

Third Edition. 

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. 
Edited by A. W. POLLARD. 2 Vols. 

Miscellaneous Writings of 
Dean Church. 

Collected Edition. 9 Vols. 
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
DANTE : and other Essays. 
ST. ANSELM. 
SPENSER. 
BACON. 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. Twelve 

Years, 1833-1845. 



I THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLS 
AGES. (Included in this Seriea 
by permission of Messrs. LONG- 
MANS & Co.) 

OCCASIONAL PAPERS. Selected 
from The Guardian, The Times, 
and The Saturday Review, 
1846-1890. 2 Vols. 

Life and Letters of Dean 
Church. 

Edited by his Daughter, MART 
C. CHURCH. 

Lectures and Essays by W 
K. Clifford, F.R.S. 

Edited by Sir LESLIE STEPHEN 
and Sir F. POLLOCK. 2 Vols. 

Letters of William Cowper. 
Chosen and Edited, with Memoir 
and Notes by J. G. FRAZER, 
D.C.L. 2 Vols. 

The Collected Works of 
Emerson. 6 Vols. 

With Introduction by JOHW 

MORLEY. 

MISCELLANIES. 

ESSAYS. 

POEMS. 

ENGLISH TRAITS AND REPRB- 

SENTATIVE MEN. 
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE, AND. 

SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 
LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS. 

Letters, etc., of Edward 
FitzGerald. 

LETTERS OFEDWARD FITZGERALD. 

Edited by W. A. WBISHT. 

2 Vols. 
MORE LETTERS or EDWARD Frw- 

GERALD. 



MACM1LLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. 



The Eversley Seriescontinued. 

Globe Svo. Cloth. 4s. net per volume. 



Edward FitzGerald contd. 

LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD 

TO FANNY KEMBLE, 1871-1883 

Edited by W. A. WRIGHT. 

EIGHT DRAMAS OF CALDERON 

Translated by EDWARD FITS 

GERALD. 

Pausanias and other Greek 

Sketches. 
By J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L. 

Goethe's Maxims and 
Reflections. 

Translated, with Introduction 
by T. B. SAUNDERS. 

%* The Scientific and Artistic 
Maxims were selected by Professor 
Huxley and Lord Leighton respect 
ively. 

Collected Works of Thomas 
Gray in Prose and 
Verse. 4 Vols. 

Edited by EDMUND GOSSE. 

Vol. 1. POEMS, JOURNALS, AND 

ESSAYS. 

Vols. 2 and 3. LETTERS. 
Vol. 4. NOTES ON ARISTOPHANES 

AND PLATO. 

"Works of John Richard 
Green. 16 Vols. 

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 

8 Vols. 
THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. With 

Maps. In 2 Vols. 
THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

With Maps. In 2 Vols. 
STRAY STUDIES FROM ENGLAND 

AND ITALY. 

STRAY STUDIES. Second Series. 
OXFORD STUDIES. 
HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

Guesses at Truth. 
By Two BROTHERS. 



The Choice of Books and 

other Literary Pieces. 
By FREDERIC HARRISON. 

The Meaning of History and 
other Historical Pieces. 

By FREDERIC HARRISON. 

Earthwork out of Tus^ 
cany. Third Edition. 
By MAURICE HEWLETT. 

Poems of Thomas Hood. 

Edited, with Prefatory Memoir, 
by Canon AINGER. In 2 Vols. 

Vol. 1. SERIOUS POEMS. 

Vol. 2. POEMS OF WIT AND 
HUMOUR. With Vignettes and 
Portraits. 

Collected Essays of R. H. 
Hutton. 7 Vols. 

LITERARY ESSAYS. 

ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE MODERN 
GUIDES OF ENGLISH THOUGHT 
IN MATTERS OF FAITH. 

THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. 

CRITICISMS ON CONTEMPORARY 
THOUGHT AND THINKERS. 2Vols. 

ASPECTS OF RELIGIOUS AND 
SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. Selected 
from The Spectator, and Edited 
by his Niece, E. M. EOSCOE. 
With Portrait. 

BRIEF LITERARY CRITICISMS. 
Selected from The Spectator, 
and Edited by his Niece, 
ELIZABETH M. ROSCOE. 

!-ife and Works of Thomas 
Henry Huxley. 12 Vols. 

Vol. 1. METHOD AND RESULTS. 
Vol. 2. DARWINIANA. 
Vol. 3. SCIENCE AND EDUCATION. 
Vol. 4. SCIENCE AND HEBREW 
TRADITION. 



MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON, 



The Eversley Series continued. 

Globe Svo. Cloth. 4s. net per volume. 



"Vol. 5. SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN j 

TRADITION. 
"Vol. 6. HUME. With Helps to i 

the Study of Berkeley. 
Tol. 7. MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE ; 



TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. By 
CHARLES and MARY LAMB. 

THE LETTERS OF CHAFLES 
LAMB. Newly arranged, with 
additions (1904). 2 Vols. 

Umb ' 



Vol. 9. EVOLUTION AND ETHICS, ' Historical Essays. 

AND OTHER ESSAYS. I By J. B. LlGHTFOOT, D.D. 



Vols. 10, 11, and 12. LIFE AND 
LETTERS OF T. H. HUXLEY. 
By LEONARD HUXLEY. 



The Poetical Works of 



John Milton. 






IStS. By HENRY JAMES. 

Partial Portraits. 

By HENRY JAMES. 

Modern Greece. 

Two Lectures. By Sir BICHARD , 

Letters of John Keats to his ; 



^. c 

Edited by Sir SIDNEY COLVIN. 

Epic and Romance. 
By Prof. W. P. KER. 

Tt tvr 1 f /~*i t 

The Works of Charles! 

Kingsley. lo Vols. 
WESTWARD Ho ! 2 Vols. 
HYPATIA. 2 Vols. 
YEAST. 1 Vol. 

Kr Lo 2 TV;,, : 

The Works or Charles j 

Lamb. 

Edited, with Introduction and j 
Notes.byCanon AINGER. 6Vols. 
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 
POEMS, PLAYS, AND MISCELLANE- 
ous ESSAYS. j 

MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL, and j 
. other writings. 



MASSON, M.A. 3 Vols. 
7!' l - JHE MINOR POEMS. 
Jd. 2. PARADISE LOST. 
Vol. 3. PARADISE BEGAINED, AND 

SAMSON AGONISTES. 
Collectcd Works Q f John 

_ Morley. 14 Vols. 

VOLTAIRE. 1 Vol. 

ROUSSEAU. 2 Vols. 

DIDEROT AND THE ENCYCLO- 

PJSDISTS. 2 Vols. 
ON COMPROMISE. 1 Vol. 
MISCELLANIES. 3 Vols. 
BuRKE . 1 Vol . 

STUDIES IN LITERATURE. 1 Vol. 
OLIVER CROMWELL. 1 Vol. 
THE LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
2 Vols. 

y F. W. H. Myers. 



SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE, AND 

OTHER ESSAYS. 
CLASSICAL ESSAYS. 
MODERN ESSAYS. 

Shakespeare. 

By sir WALTER RALEIGH. 
-,- f , _ 

Kecords of Tennyson, Rus- 

kin, and Browning. 
By ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE. 



MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. 



The Eversley Series continued. 

Globe Svo. Cloth. 4$. net per volume. 



The Works of Sir John 
R. Seeley, K.C.M.G., 
Litt.D. 5Vols. 

THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. 

Two Courses of Lectures. 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
ECCE HOMO. A Survey of the 

Life and Work of Jesus Christ. 
NATURAL BELIOION. 
INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL 

SCIENCE. 

The Works of Shake- 
speare. 10 Vols. 

With short Introductions and 
Footnotes by Professor C. H. 
HERFORD. 

Vol. 1. LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 
COMEDY OF ERRORS Two 
GENTLEMEN OF VERONA MID- 
SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 

Vol. 2. TAMING OF THE SHREW 
MERCHANT OF VENICE MERRY 
WIVES OF WINDSOR TWELFTH 
NIGHT As You LIKE IT. 

Vol. 3. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS 
WELL MEASURE FOR MEASURE 
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 

Vol. 4. PERICLES CYMBELINE 
THE WINTER'S TALE THE 
TEMPEST. 

Vol. 5. HENRY VI. : First Part 
HENRY VI. : Second Part 
HENRY VI. : Third Part 
RICHARD III. 

Vol. 6. KING JOHN KICHARD II. 
HENRY IV. : First Part 
HENRY IV. : Second Part. 

Vol. 7. HENRY V. HENRY VIII. 
TITUS ANDRONICUS ROMEO AND 
JULIET. 

Vol. 8. JULIUS C&SAR HAMLET 
OTHELLO. 



Vol. 9. KING LEAR MACBETH 
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 

Vol. 10. CORIOLANTJS TlMON 9F 

ATHENS POEMS. 
The Works of James 

Smetham. 

LETTERS. With an Introductory 
Memoir. Edited by SARAHS 
SMETHAM and WILLIAM DA VIES. 
With a Portrait. 

LITERARY WORKS. Edited by 
WILLIAM DA VIES. 

The Works of Alfred, Lord 
Tennyson. 

Annotated by the AUTHOR. Edited 
by HALLAM, Lord TENNYSON, 
In 9 Vols. (Sold separately.) 

Vol. 1. POEMS. 

Vol. 2. POEMS. 

Vol. 3. ENOCH ARDEN and Iw 
MEMORIAM. 

Vol. 4. THE PRINCESS and MAUD, 

Vol. 5. IDYLLS OF THE KING. 

Vol. 6. BALLADS AND OTHB*. 
POEMS. 

Vol. 7. DEMETER AND OTHER. 
POEMS. 

Vol. 8. QUEJIN MARY and HAROLD 

Vol.9. BECKET AND OTHER PLAYS 

Selections from the Writ- 
ings of Thoreau. 

Edited by H. S. SALT. 

Essays in the History of 
Religious Thought in. 
the West. 

By Bishop WESTCOTT, D.D. 

The Poetical Works of 
William Wordsworth. 

Edited by Prof. KNIGHT. 8 VoU. 

The Journals of Dorothy 
Wordsworth. 2 Vola. 



MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. 

S. 



ACTON, Lord D 

The study of History. 

A2