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diff --git a/25720-h/25720-h.htm b/25720-h/25720-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1207a51 --- /dev/null +++ b/25720-h/25720-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4352 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Lecture on the Study of History, by Lord Acton + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + text-indent: 1em; + } + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + + h2 {padding-top: 2em; + padding-bottom: 1em;} + + body{margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + } + + p.author {padding-top: 4em; + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + line-height: 180%;} + + p.publisher {margin-top: 4em; + text-align: center; + font-size: smaller; + margin-bottom: 3em; + text-indent: 0em; + } + + p.printer {margin-top: 4em; + margin-bottom: 6em; + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + font-size: 70%; + } + + sup {vertical-align: baseline; + font-size: 90%; + position: relative; + top: -.4em; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + right: 1%; + font-size: x-small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + font-style: normal; + letter-spacing: 0ex; + text-indent: 0em; + } + + a:link {text-decoration: none; + color: #104E8B; + background-color: inherit; + } + + a:visited {text-decoration: none; + color: #8B0000; + background-color: inherit; + } + + a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} + + a:active {text-decoration: underline;} + + .sidenote { position: absolute; left: 83%; width: 15%; + padding-left: 0; text-indent: 0; margin: 0 0 0 0; + font-size: 70%; text-align: left; line-height: 1.0; + font-style: normal; + } + + .center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em;} + + .right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .footnotes {border: dotted 1px; + padding-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 2em; + } + + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: smaller; + } + + .footnote .label {position: absolute; + right: 76%; + text-align: right; + } + + .fnanchor { vertical-align: baseline; + font-size: 80%; + position: relative; + top: -.4em; + } + + .poem {margin-left:10%; + margin-right:10%; + text-align: left; + } + + .poem br {display: none;} + + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + + .poem span.i0 {display: block; + margin-left: 0em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; + } + + .poem span.i2 {display: block; + margin-left: 2em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; + } + + .poem span.i4 {display: block; + margin-left: 4em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; + } + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's A Lecture on the Study of History, by Lord Acton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Lecture on the Study of History + +Author: Lord Acton + +Release Date: June 7, 2008 [EBook #25720] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY *** + + + + +Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<h1>A LECTURE<br /> +<small>ON</small><br /> +THE STUDY OF HISTORY</h1> + +<p class="publisher">MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br /> + +<span style="font-size: 80%">LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA</span><br /> +<span style="font-size: 80%">MELBOURNE</span><br /><br /> + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> + +<span style="font-size: 80%">NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO</span><br /> +<span style="font-size: 80%">ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO</span><br /><br /> + +THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br /> + +<span style="font-size: 80%">TORONTO</span></p> + +<h1>A LECTURE<br /> +<small>ON</small><br /> +THE STUDY OF HISTORY</h1> + +<p class="author"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.15ex; font-style: italic">DELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE,</span><br /> +<span style="letter-spacing: 0.15ex; font-style: italic">JUNE</span> 11, 1895<br /> + +<small>BY</small><br /> + +<big>LORD ACTON</big><br /> +LL.D., D.C.L.<br /> + +<span style="font-size: 80%">REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY</span></p> + + +<p class="publisher" style="letter-spacing: 0.15ex">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> +ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON<br /> +1911</p> + +<p class="printer"><span class="smcap">Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,</span><br /> +BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S. E.,<br /> +AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK<br /><br /> + +<i>First Edition, October, 1895.</i><br /> +<i>Second Edition, January, 1896. Reprinted, 1905, 1911.</i></p> + + + +<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">Fellow Students</span>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">I look</span> back to-day to a time before +the middle of the century, when I was<span class="sidenote">UNITY OF MODERN HISTORY</span> +reading at Edinburgh, and fervently wishing +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.</p> + + + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 Independence +in the forests of Germany. No +end, because, on the same principle, +history made and history making are +scientifically inseparable and separately +unmeaning.</p> + + +<p>“Politics,” said Sir John Seeley, “are +vulgar when they are not liberalised by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +history, and history fades into mere literature<span class="sidenote">LINK BETWEEN HISTORY AND POLITICS</span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In France, such is the weight +attached to the study of our own time, +that there is an appointed course of contemporary +history, with appropriate textbooks.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> +That is a chair which, in the +progressive division of labour by which +both science and government prosper,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +may some day be founded in this country. +Meantime, we do well to acknowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>Beyond the question of certainty is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +question of detachment. The process by +which principles are discovered and appropriated +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.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> 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 us +to fasten on abiding issues, and rescues +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 movement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +of ideas, which are not the effect but +the cause of public events;<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and even to +allow some priority to ecclesiastical history +over civil, since, by reason of the graver +issues concerned, and the vital consequences +of error, it opened the way in +research, and was the first to be treated by +close reasoners and scholars of the higher +rank.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + + +<p>In the same manner, there is wisdom +and depth in the philosophy which always +considers the origin and the germ, and<span class="sidenote">NOT GOVERNED BY NATIONAL CAUSES</span> +glories in history as one consistent epic.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> +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 condition +of the race from which we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +sprung.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> +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.</p> + + +<p>For our present purpose, then, I describe +as modern history that which begins +four hundred years ago, which is marked<span class="sidenote">MEDIÆVAL LIMIT OF MODERN HISTORY</span> +off by an evident and intelligible line from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +the time immediately preceding, and displays +in its course specific and distinctive +characteristics of its own.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The modern +age did not proceed from the mediæval 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 production, +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +come. There is the same unbound originality +and disregard for inherited sanctions +in the rare philosophers as in the discovery +of Divine Right, and the intruding Imperialism +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 dissolution +of society,<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> 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.</p> + +<p>That forward movement divides it +broadly from the older world; and the +unity of the new is manifest in the universal +spirit of investigation and discovery<span class="sidenote">INFLUENCE OF KNOWLEDGE ON MODERN HISTORY</span> +which did not cease to operate, and withstood +the recurring efforts of reaction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +until, by the advent of the reign of general +ideas which we call the Revolution, it at +length prevailed.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> This successive deliverance +and gradual passage, for good +and evil, from subordination to independence +is a phenomenon of primary +import to us, because historical science has +been one of its instruments.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> If the Past +has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge +of the Past is the safest and the +surest emancipation. And the earnest +search for it is one of the signs that distinguish +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +content to be deceived, to live in a twilight +of fiction, under clouds of false +witness, inventing according to convenience, +and glad to welcome the forger +and the cheat.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> 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,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and +has devoted its best energy and treasure +to the sovereign purpose of detecting error +and vindicating entrusted truth.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> + +<p>In this epoch of full-grown history men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +have not acquiesced in the given conditions +of their lives. Taking little for<span class="sidenote">INTERNATIONAL IDEAS</span> +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 increasing +ascendancy.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> The law of stability +was overcome by the power of ideas, constantly +varied and rapidly renewed;<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +men of genius, that no single country +could produce. We cannot afford wantonly<span class="sidenote">MEMORABLE MEN</span> +to lose sight of great men and +memorable lives, and are bound to store up +objects for admiration as far as may be;<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> +for the effect of implacable research is constantly +to reduce their number. No intellectual +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 intimate +with the character of Fénelon, 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 oppression, +of liberty in an age of arbitrary +power, of tolerance in an age of persecution,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +of the humane virtues among men +accustomed to sacrifice them to authority,<span class="sidenote">INDEPENDENT MINDS</span> +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 instructive +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 circumstance,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> +to choose the star that guides +his course, to correct, and test, and assay +his convictions by the light within,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> and, +with a resolute conscience and ideal +courage, to re-model and reconstitute the +character which birth and education gave +him.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p> + +<p>For ourselves, if it were not the quest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +the higher level and the extended horizon, +international history would be imposed by<span class="sidenote">FOREIGN CONSTITUTIONS</span> +the exclusive and insular reason that parliamentary +reporting is younger than parliaments. +The foreigner has no mystic +fabric in his government, and no <i>arcanum +imperii</i>. 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 prolonged +debates in which other communities +have displayed the inmost secrets of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>To historians the later part of their +enormous subject is precious because it is +inexhaustible. It is the best to know<span class="sidenote">RESOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY</span> +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 unprofitable +doubt. But hundreds and even +thousands of the moderns have borne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +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 resources +have been so employed that we +can be content with the work done for us, +and never wish it to be done over again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +Part of the lives of Luther and Frederic, +a little of the Thirty Years' War, much +of the American Revolution and the<span class="sidenote">BEGINNING OF THE DOCUMENTARY AGE</span> +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 originator +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 progressive, +so that the best master is quickly +distanced by the better pupil.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> The +Vatican archives alone, now made accessible +to the world, filled 3,239 cases when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p> + +<p>To men in general I would justify the +stress I am laying on modern history, +neither by urging its varied wealth, nor the<span class="sidenote">MODERN HISTORY</span> +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> Its study fulfils its purpose even if +it only makes us wiser, without producing +books, and gives us the gift of historical +thinking, which is better than historical +learning.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> It is a most powerful +ingredient in the formation of character +and the training of talent, and our historical +judgments have as much to do with +hopes of heaven as public or private conduct. +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.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p> + +<p>The first of human concerns is religion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +and it is the salient feature of the +modern centuries. They are signalised as<span class="sidenote">A SCHOOL OF OPINION</span> +the scene of Protestant developments. +Starting from a time of extreme indifference, +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 antagonistic +assurance, abated somewhat, and the +controversial spirit began to make room +for the scientific; and as the storm subsided,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +and the area of settled questions +emerged, much of the dispute was abandoned +to the serene and soothing touch<span class="sidenote">INFLUENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT</span> +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, chanting their Lutheran +hymns.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> 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 declared +that no-popery was the only basis +on which it could be reconstructed.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> On +the other side may be urged that, in July<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>Soon after 1850 several of the most +intelligent men in France, struck by the +arrested increase of their own population<span class="sidenote">RELIGION</span> +and by the telling statistics from +Further Britain, foretold the coming preponderance +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p> + +<p>Out of these controversies proceeded +political as well as historical science. It +was in the Puritan phase, before the restoration<span class="sidenote">THE CAUSE OF LIBERTY</span> +of the Stuarts, that theology, blending +with politics, effected a fundamental +change. The essentially English reformation +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 congregation, +with conventicles, not with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +state-churches. Their view was narrowed, +but their sight was sharpened. It appeared +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 discipline, +and organised violence, should +be attempted by division of power, and +committed to the intellect and the conscience +of free men.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> 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 beliefs, +or who had none to protect; but men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +to whom, irrespective of their cause, it +was a political, a moral, and a theological<span class="sidenote">REVOLUTION</span> +dogma, a question of conscience, involving +both religion and policy.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +feature of the historic cycle before us. +Beginning with the strongest religious<span class="sidenote">THE MODE OF LIBERTY</span> +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<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>—a doctrine +laden with storm and havoc, which is +the secret essence of the Rights of Man, +and the indestructible soul of Revolution.</p> + +<p>When we consider what the adverse +forces were, their sustained resistance, +their frequent recovery, the critical moments +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 seventeenth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +century. And this constancy of<span class="sidenote">PROGRESS</span> +progress, of progress in the direction +of organised and assured freedom, is +the characteristic fact of modern history, +and its tribute to the theory, of +Providence.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Many persons, I am well +assured, would detect that this is a +very old story, and a trivial commonplace, +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;<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Comte, the master of better +men, believed that we drag a lengthening +chain under the gathered weight of the +dead hand;<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> and many of our recent +classics, Carlyle, Newman, Froude, were +persuaded that there is no progress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +justifying the ways of God to man, and +that the mere consolidation of liberty is<span class="sidenote">THE MARK OF PROVIDENCE</span> +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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> + +<p>I state the objection not that we may +plunge into the crucial controversy of a +science that is not identical with ours,<span class="sidenote">CERTAINTY</span> +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 <i>Laissez-faire</i><a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> +which the eighteenth century +derived from Colbert, it has 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +immaculate historians. Otherwise there is +virtue in the saying that a historian is seen +at his best when he does not appear.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> +Better for us is the example of the Bishop<span class="sidenote">DEPENDENT ON RESERVE</span> +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.”<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> 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;<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> that +the wisdom of divine rule appears not in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +the perfection but in the improvement +of the world;<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> and that achieved liberty +is the one ethical result that rests on +the converging and combined conditions +of advancing civilisation.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Then you will +understand what a famous philosopher said, +that History is the true demonstration of +Religion.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class="sidenote">MEANING OF LIBERTY</span> +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?<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> I know +not whether it will ever fall within my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +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 conscience +promoted a nobler and more +spiritual conception of the liberty that +protects it,<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> until the guardian of rights +developed into the guardian of duties +which are the cause of rights,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> 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 philosophers. +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, concentrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +possessions, auxiliary churches,<span class="sidenote">THE GROWTH OF REVOLUTION</span> +and inhuman laws, it reigns no more; that +commerce having risen against land, +labour against wealth, the state against the +forces dominant in society,<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> 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 obedience; +and, where there has been long and +arduous experience, a rampart of tried +conviction and accumulated knowledge,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> +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.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> You will +know it by outward signs: Representation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +the extinction of slavery, the reign of +opinion, and the like; better still by less +apparent evidences: the security of the +weaker groups<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> and the liberty of conscience, +which, effectually secured, secures +the rest.</p> + + + + + +<p>Here we reach a point at which my +argument threatens to abut on a contradiction. +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,<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> if the world owes religious +liberty to the Dutch Revolution, constitutional +government to the English, +federal republicanism to the American, +political equality to the French and its +successors,<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> what is to become of us, +docile and attentive students of the absorbing +Past? The triumph of the Revolutionist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +annuls the historian.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> By its +authentic exponents, Jefferson and Sieyès, +the Revolution of the last century repudiates<span class="sidenote">RENOVATION OF HISTORY BY REVOLUTION</span> +history. Their followers renounced +acquaintance with it, and were ready to +destroy its records and to abolish its inoffensive +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 development +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 movement +began in the world of minds which +was deeper and more serious than the +revival of ancient learning.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> The dispensation +under which we live and labour +consists first in the recoil from the +negative spirit that rejected the law of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +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 Revolution +as an alien episode, the error of +an age, a disease to be treated by the investigation +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 Revolution +as a true development, and the ripened +fruit of all history.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +last century. Severally, the innovators<span class="sidenote">USE OF UNPUBLISHED SOURCES</span> +were not superior to the men of old. +Muratori was as widely read, Tillemont as +accurate, Leibniz as able, Fréret as acute, +Gibbon as masterly in the craft of composite +construction. Nevertheless, in the +second quarter of this century, a new era +began for historians.</p> + +<p>I would point to three things in particular, +out of many, which constitute the +amended order. Of the incessant deluge<span class="sidenote">INSUFFICIENCY OF BOOKS</span> +of new and unsuspected matter I need +say little. 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.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> +Towards 1830 the documentary studies +began on a large scale, Austria leading the +way. Michelet, who claims, towards 1836,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +to have been the pioneer,<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> 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 Bonapartes, +he would still feel instant need of +inquiry at Venice or Naples, in the Ossuna +library or at the Hermitage.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p> + +<p>These matters do not now concern us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +For our purpose, the main thing to learn +is not the art of accumulating material,<span class="sidenote">HISTORY RENEWED BY CRITICISM</span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> And the accession of the +critic in the place of the indefatigable compiler, +of the artist in coloured narrative, +the skilled limner of character, the persuasive +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 operations. First, he asks whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +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 information. +If from a previous writer, it can be +ascertained, and the inquiry has to be repeated. +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 responsible +writer's character, his position, +antecedents, and probable motives have +to be examined into; and this is what,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +in a different and adapted sense of the +word, may be called the higher criticism,<span class="sidenote">CRITICAL STUDY OF EARLIER TIMES</span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> The maxim +that a man must be presumed to be innocent +until his guilt is proved, was not made +for him.</p> + +<p>For us then the estimate of authorities, +the weighing of testimony, is more +meritorious than the potential discovery +of new matter.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> 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 questions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +that are compact and circumscribed, +such as the sources of Plutarch's <i>Pericles</i>, +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 treatment +of the mediæval 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 Compagni, +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +work. As they are no longer living, I will<span class="sidenote">DEGREES OF IMPARTIALITY</span> +say of two Cambridge professors, Lightfoot +and Hort, that they were critical scholars +whom neither Frenchman nor German has +surpassed.</p> + +<p>The third distinctive note of the generation +of writers who dug so deep a trench +between history as known to our grandfathers +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 proclaim +the merits of his own religion, of +his prosperous and enlightened country, of +his political persuasion, whether democracy, +or liberal monarchy, or historic conservatism, +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +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. History, +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> +If men were truly sincere, and delivered<span class="sidenote">MORALITY THE SOLE RULE OF JUDGMENT</span> +judgment by no canons but those of +evident morality, then Julian would be described +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.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p> + +<p>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 discipline +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +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 profitable +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 principle, +not to rest until, by excluding the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +fallacies, the prejudices, the exaggerations +which perpetual contention and the consequent<span class="sidenote">EXAMPLE OF RANKE</span> +precautions breed, we have made out +for our opponents a stronger and more +impressive case than they present themselves.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> +Excepting one to which we are +coming before I release you, there is +no precept less faithfully observed by +historians.</p> + +<p>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, elevation, +and depth of thought; but by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +extent of important work well executed, by<span class="sidenote">SUPPRESSION OF OPINION</span> +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.</p> + +<p>His course had been determined, in +early life, by <i>Quentin Durward</i>. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +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.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> 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.”<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> He was the first eminent +writer who exhibited what Michelet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +calls <i>le désintéressement des morts</i>. 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.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> He would +have felt sympathy with the two famous +London physicians of our day, of whom<span class="sidenote">CRITICISM OF MODERN SOURCES</span> +it is told that they could not make up +their minds on a case and reported +dubiously. The head of the family insisted +on a positive opinion. They +answered that they were unable to give +one, but he might easily find fifty doctors +who could.</p> + +<p>Niebuhr had pointed out that chroniclers +who wrote before the invention +of printing generally copied one predecessor +at a time, and knew little +about sifting or combining authorities. +The suggestion became luminous in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +Ranke's hands, and with his light and dexterous +touch he scrutinised and dissected +the principal historians, from Machiavelli +to the <i>Mémoires d'un Homme d'État</i>, with +a rigour never before applied to moderns. +But whilst Niebuhr dismissed the traditional +story, replacing it with a construction +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 dissertations +in which he displayed this art, +though his successors in the next generation +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +the useful but subordinate work that +was done by beginners who borrowed his<span class="sidenote">METHOD TO BE LEARNT FROM SCIENCES</span> +wand, thought that too much was made +of these obscure preliminaries which a +man may accomplish for himself, in the +silence of his chamber, with less demand +on the attention of the public.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> That may +be reasonable in men who are practised in +these fundamental technicalities. We who +have to learn them, must immerse ourselves +in the study of the great examples.</p> + +<p>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 intellectual +employment.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Bentham acknowledged +that he learned less from his own +profession than from writers like Linnæus +and Cullen; and Brougham advised the +student of Law to begin with Dante.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +Liebig described his <i>Organic Chemistry</i> +as an application of ideas found in Mill's +<i>Logic</i>, 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.”<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> +Theirs is the logic of discovery,<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> +the demonstration of the advance of knowledge +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 objections; +for, as Sir Robert Ball warns us, +it is by considering objections that we +often learn.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> Faraday declares that “in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +knowledge, that man only is to be condemned +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.”</p> + +<p>From the first years of the century we +have been quickened and enriched by +contributors from every quarter. The<span class="sidenote">ALL ADOPT THE HISTORIC METHOD</span> +jurists brought us that law of continuous +growth which has transformed history +from a chronicle of casual occurrences +into the likeness of something organic.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> +Towards 1820 divines began to recast +their doctrines on the lines of development, +of which Newman said, long after, +that evolution had come to confirm it.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> +Even the Economists, who were practical +men, dissolved their science into liquid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +history, affirming that it is not an auxiliary, +but the actual subject-matter of their inquiry.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> +Philosophers claim that, as early +as 1804, they began to bow the metaphysical +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,<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> that the problem is to focus +the rays of wandering but extant truth, +and that history is the source of philosophy, +if not quite a substitute for it.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> +Comte begins a volume with the words +that the preponderance of history over +philosophy was the characteristic of the +time he lived in.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> Since Cuvier first +recognised the conjunction between the +course of inductive discovery and the +course of civilization,<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> science had its share +in saturating the age with historic ways<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +of thought, and subjecting all things to +that influence for which the depressing<span class="sidenote">DANGER OF OBLIVION</span> +names historicism and historical-mindedness +have been devised.</p> + +<p>There are certain faults which are corrigible +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.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> It is playing at study, to +see nothing but the unmeaning and unsuggestive +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +most popular English writer relates how +it happened in his presence that the title +of Tory was conferred upon the Conservative +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 progress, +I may at least complacently point +to this instance of our mended manners. +One day, Titus Oates lost his temper +with the men who refused to believe +him, and after looking about for a scorching +imprecation, he began to call them +Tories.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +how, two days after it had arrived, Mr. +Pitt, drawn by an enthusiastic crowd, went<span class="sidenote">PROPHECY OF PITT</span> +to dine in the city. When they drank the +health of the minister who had saved his +country, he declined the praise. “England,” +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: “<i>Seipsam +virtute, Europam exemplo.</i>” Now it +was just at the time of his last appearance +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +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 intervene.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> +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 astounding +and profound prediction in all +political history, where such things have +not been rare.</p> + + + +<p>I shall never again enjoy the opportunity +of speaking my thoughts to such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +audience as this, and on so privileged an +occasion a lecturer may well be tempted to +bethink himself whether he knows of any<span class="sidenote">RULES FOR THE STUDY OF HISTORY</span> +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 precepts +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 sidelights +from the others; have no favourites; +keep men and things apart; guard +against the prestige of great names;<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> +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;<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> do not +overlook the strength of the bad cause +or the weakness of the good;<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> never be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +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,<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> and study +problems in preference to periods; for +instance: the derivation of Luther, the +scientific influence of Bacon, the predecessors +of Adam Smith, the mediæval +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.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> +The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +of punishment is perpetual. At every +step we are met by arguments which go to<span class="sidenote">JUSTIFICATION OF THE PAST</span> +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 become. +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.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> +took the Cross, after receiving communion, +heartily devoted the day to the extermination +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.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> A murderer was no criminal +if he followed local custom, if neighbours +approved, if he was encouraged by official<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +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 distressing<span class="sidenote">PHILOSOPHIES OF HISTORY</span> +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 unequal +justice to friends and enemies.</p> + +<p>It is associated with that philosophy +which Cato attributes to the gods. For +we have a theory which justifies Providence +by the event, and holds nothing so +deserving as success, to which there +can be no victory in a bad cause, prescription<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +and duration legitimate,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> and +whatever exists is right and reasonable; +and as God manifests His will by +that which He tolerates, we must conform +to the divine decree by living to +shape the Future after the ratified image +of the Past.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> Another theory, less confidently +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 sovereignty +of wrong, and conceives it the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +part of real greatness to know how to +stand and fall alone, stemming, for a lifetime, +the contemporary flood.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a></p> + +<p>Ranke relates, without adornment, that +William III. ordered the extirpation of a +Catholic clan, and scouts the faltering<span class="sidenote">DEBASING THE CURRENCY</span> +excuse of his defenders. But when he +comes to the death and character of the +international deliverer, Glencoe is forgotten, +the imputation of murder drops, like +a thing unworthy of notice.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> Johannes +Mueller, a great Swiss celebrity, writes +that the British Constitution occurred to +somebody, perhaps to Halifax. This artless +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 profaned +by the invading wit of man;<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +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,<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +points which were so necessary for the +people's satisfaction, he would tell everybody +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 believed.” +In spite of this accusing passage<span class="sidenote">SINFULNESS OF HISTORY</span> +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, preserved +him from all participation in the +worst crimes of his time.”</p> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +bad than good;<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> 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 suspect +evil, and cannot release himself.... +He sees it where others do not; his instinct +is divinely strengthened; his eye is supernaturally +keen; he has a spiritual insight, +and senses exercised to discern.... He +owns the doctrine of original sin; that doctrine +puts him necessarily on his guard +against appearances, sustains his apprehension +under perplexity, and prepares +him for recognising anywhere what he +knows to be everywhere.”<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> There is +a popular saying of Madame de Staël, +that we forgive whatever we really +understand. The paradox has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +judiciously pruned by her descendant, +the Duke de Broglie, in the words:<span class="sidenote">SOVEREIGNTY OF THE MORAL CODE</span> +“Beware of too much explaining, lest we +end by too much excusing.”<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> 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.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> +good faith, truthfulness has been truthfulness +from the beginning.” The +doctrine that, as Sir Thomas Browne +says, morality is not ambulatory,<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> is expressed +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.”<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p> + +<p>Whatever a man's notions of these later +centuries are, such, in the main, the man +himself will be. Under the name of History, +they cover the articles of his philosophic, +his religious, and his political<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +creed.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> They give his measure; they +denote his character: and, as praise is the +shipwreck of historians, his preferences<span class="sidenote">HISTORY AND CHARACTER</span> +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 records +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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"></a>NOTES</h2> + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 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, <i>a priori</i>, +being deduced from the tendencies of things, tendencies +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 evolution.—<span class="smcap">Mill</span>, +<i>Inaugural Address</i>, 51.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Seeley</span>, <i>Lectures and Essays</i>, 306.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The law of all progress is one and the same, the +evolution of the simple into the complex by successive +differentiations.—<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, clvii. 428. Die +Entwickelung der Völker vollzieht sich nach zwei +Gesetzen. Das erste Gesetz ist das der Differenzierung. +Die primitiven Einrichtungen sind einfach und einheitlich, +die der Civilisation zusammengesetzt und +geteilt, und die Arbeitsteilung nimmt beständig zu.—<span class="smcap">Sickel</span>, +<i>Goettingen Gelehrte Anzeigen</i>, 1890, 563.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Nous risquons toujours d'être influencés par les<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +préjugés de notre époque; mais nous sommes libres +des préjugés particuliers aux époques antérieures.—<span class="smcap">E. +Naville</span>, <i>Christianisme de Fénelon</i>, 9.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> La nature n'est qu'un écho de l'esprit. L'idée +est la mère du fait, elle façonne graduellement le +monde à son image.—<span class="smcap">Feuchtersleben</span>, <i>in</i> <span class="smcap">Caro</span>, +<i>Nouvelles Études Morales</i>, 132. Il n'est pas d'étude +morale qui vaille l'histoire d'une idée.—<span class="smcap">Laboulaye</span>, +<i>Liberté Religieuse</i>, 25.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Il y a des savants qui raillent le sentiment religieux. +Ils ne savent pas que c'est à ce sentiment, et +par son moyen, que la science historique doit d'avoir +pu sortir de l'enfance.... Depuis des siècles les âmes +indépendantes discutaient les textes et les traditions +de l'église, quand les lettrés n'avaient pas encore eu +l'idée de porter un regard critique sur les textes de +l'antiquité mondaine.—<i>La France Protestante</i>, ii. 17.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> In our own history, above all, every step in advance +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 freedom, +from the thirteenth century onwards, has simply +been a struggle for recovering something old.—<span class="smcap">Freeman</span>, +<i>Historical Essays</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Harrison</span>, <i>Meaning of +History</i>, 19. Eine Sache wird nur völlig auf dem +Wege verstanden, wie sie selbst entsteht.—In dem +genetischen Verfahren sind die Gründe der Sache, +auch die Gründe des Erkennens.—<span class="smcap">Trendelenburg</span>, +<i>Logische Untersuchungen</i>, ii. 395, 388.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Une telle liberté ... n'a rien de commun avec +le savant système de garanties qui fait libres les peuples +modernes.—<span class="smcap">Boutmy</span>, <i>Annales des Sciences Politiques</i>, +i. 157. Les trois grandes réformes qui ont renouvelé +l'Angleterre, la liberté religieuse, la réforme parlementaire, +et la liberté économique, ont été obtenues +sous la pression des organisations extra-constitutionnelles.—<span class="smcap">Ostrogorski</span>, +<i>Revue Historique</i>, lii. 272.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The question which is at the bottom of all +constitutional struggles, the question between the +national will and the national law.—<span class="smcap">Gardiner</span>, +<i>Documents</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Channing</span>, <i>Works</i>, iv. 83. Je tiens que +le passé ne suffit jamais au présent. Personne n'est +plus disposé que moi à profiter de ses leçons; mais +en même temps, je le demande, le présent ne fournit-il +pas toujours les indications qui lui sont propres?—<span class="smcap">Molé</span>, +<i>in</i> <span class="smcap">Falloux</span>, <i>Études et Souvenirs</i>, 130. Admirons +la sagesse de nos pères, et tachons de l'imiter, en +faisant ce qui convient à notre siècle.—<span class="smcap">Galiani</span>, +<i>Dialogues</i>, 40.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> 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 +temporibus nostraeque notitiae propius cohaerent, ac +paulatim deinde in remotiora eniti, magis è re arbitror.—<span class="smcap">Grotius</span>, +<i>Epistolæ</i>, 18.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Seeley</span>, <i>Rede Lecture</i>, 1887. +<i>Fortnightly Review</i>, July, 1887, 124.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Formuler des idées générales, c'est changer le +salpêtre en poudre.—<span class="smcap">A. de Musset</span>, <i>Confessions d'un +Enfant du Siècle</i>, 15. Les révolutions c'est l'avènement +des idées libérales. C'est presque toujours par les +révolutions qu'elles prévalent et se fondent, et quand +les idées libérales en sont véritablement le principe et +le but, quand elles leur ont donné naissance, et quand +elles les couronnent à leur dernier jour, alors ces +révolutions sont légitimes.—<span class="smcap">Rémusat</span>, 1839, in +<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 1875, vi. 335. Il y a même +des personnes de piété qui prouvent par raison +qu'il faut renoncer à la raison; que ce n'est point +la lumière, mais la foi seule qui doit nous conduire, +et que l'obéissance aveugle est la principale vertu des +chrétiens. La paresse des inférieurs et leur esprit +flatteur s'accommode souvent de cette vertu prétendue, +et l'orgueil de ceux qui commandent en est +toujours très content. De sorte qu'il se trouvera peut-être +des gens qui seront scandalisés que je fasse cet +honneur à la raison, de l'élever au-dessus de toutes les +puissances, et qui s'imagineront que je me révolte contre +les autorités légitimes à cause que je prends son parti et +que je soutiens que c'est à elle à décider et à regner.—<span class="smcap">Malebranche</span>, +<i>Morale</i>, i. 2, 13. That great statesman +(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.—<span class="smcap">Canning</span>, +June 1, 1827. <i>Parliamentary Review</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Bancroft</span>, <i>History of the United +States</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Adams</span>, <i>History of the United +States</i>, i. 175.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> 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?—<span class="smcap">Jowett</span>, +<i>Plato</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Perowne</span>, <i>Psalms</i>, i. p. xxxi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Ce n'est guère avant la seconde moitié du XVII<sup>e</sup> +siècle qu'il devint impossible de soutenir l'authenticité +des fausses décrétales, des Constitutions apostoliques, +des Récognitions Clémentines, du faux Ignace, du +pseudo-Dionys, et de l'immense fatras d'œuvres +anonymes ou pseudonymes qui grossissait souvent +du tiers ou de la moitié l'héritage littéraire des +auteurs les plus considérables.—<span class="smcap">Duchesne</span>, <i>Témoins +anténicéens de la Trinité</i>, 1883, 36.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">M. Pattison</span>, +<i>Memoirs</i>, 78.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Travailler à discerner, dans cette discipline, le +solide d'avec le frivole, le vrai d'avec le vraisemblable, +la science d'avec l'opinion, ce qui forme le jugement +d'avec ce qui ne fait que charger la mémoire.—<span class="smcap">Lamy</span>, +<i>Connoissance de soi-même</i>, v. 459.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> All our hopes of the future depend on a sound +understanding of the past.—<span class="smcap">Harrison</span>, <i>The Meaning +of History</i>, 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> 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 purpose +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.—<span class="smcap">Ruskin</span>. +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.—<span class="smcap">Macaulay</span>, <i>Works</i>, v. 131.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> 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, können zerstäuben, die Menschheit +bleibt.—<span class="smcap">A. Schmidt</span>, <i>Züricher Monatschrift</i>. +i. 45.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Le grand péril des âges démocratiques, soyez-en +sûr, c'est la destruction ou l'affaiblissement excessif +des parties du corps social en présence du tout. +Tout ce qui relève de nos jours l'idée de l'individu est +sain.—<span class="smcap">Tocqueville</span>, Jan. 3, 1840, <i>Œuvres</i>, vii. 97. +En France, il n'y a plus d'hommes. On a systématiquement +tué l'homme au profit du peuple, des masses, +comme disent nos législateurs écervelés. Puis un +beau jour, on s'est aperçu que ce peuple n'avait +jamais existé qu'en projet, que ces masses étaient un +troupeau mi-partie de moutons et de tigres. C'est une +triste histoire. Nous avons à relever l'âme humaine +contre l'aveugle et brutale tyrannie des multitudes.—<span class="smcap">Lanfrey</span>, +March 23, 1855. <span class="smcap">M. du Camp</span>, <i>Souvenirs +Littéraires</i>, ii. 273. C'est le propre de la vertu d'être +invisible, même dans l'histoire, à tout autre œil que +celui de la conscience.—<span class="smcap">Vacherot</span>, <i>Comptes Rendus +de l'Institut</i>, lxix. 319. Dans l'histoire où la bonté +est la perle rare, qui a été bon passe presque avant +qui a été grand.—<span class="smcap">V. Hugo</span>, <i>Les Misérables</i>, vii. +46. Grosser Maenner Leben und Tod der Wahrheit +gemaess mit Liebe zu schildern, ist zu allen Zeiten +herzerhebend; am meisten aber dann, wenn im +Kreislauf der irdischen Dinge die Sterne wieder +aehnlich stehen wie damals als sie unter uns lebten.—<span class="smcap">Lasaulx</span>, +<i>Sokrates</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Kingsley</span>, +<i>Lectures</i>, 329.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Le génie n'est que la plus complète émancipation +de toutes les influences de temps, de mœurs, et de +pays.—<span class="smcap">Nisard</span>, <i>Souvenirs</i>, ii. 43.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Meine kritische Richtung zieht mich in der +Wissenschaft durchaus zur Kritik meiner eigenen +Gedanken hin, nicht zu der der Gedanken Anderer.—<span class="smcap">Rothe</span>, +<i>Ethik</i>, i., p. xi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Carlyle</span>, <i>On the Choice of Books</i>, +131. Nach allem erscheint es somit unzweifelhaft +als eine der psychologischen Voraussetzungen des +Strafrechts, ohne welche der Zurechnungsbegriff nicht +haltbar wäre, dass der Mensch für seinen Charakter +verantwortlich ist und ihn muss abändern können.—<span class="smcap">Rümelin</span>, +<i>Reden und Aufsätze</i>, ii., 60. An der tiefen +und verborgenen Quelle, woraus der Wille entspringt, +an diesem Punkt, nur hier steht die Freiheit, und +führt das Steuer und lenkt den Willen. Wer nicht +bis zu dieser Tiefe in sich einkehren und seinen +natürlichen Charakter von hier aus bemeistern 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, +worin jede Begebenheit und jede Handlung eine +nothwendige Folge ist aller vorhergehenden.—<span class="smcap">Fischer</span>, +<i>Problem der Freiheit</i>, 27.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> 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 information +he conveys may be the occasion of awakening +his pupils to a vigorous and varied exertion of +their faculties.—<span class="smcap">Sir W. Hamilton</span>, <i>Lectures</i>, 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.”—<span class="smcap">Maurice</span>, +<i>The Conscience</i>, 7, 8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> 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 +gründen haben, sondern aus den Relationen der +Augenzeugen und der ächten und unmittelbarsten Urkunden +aufbauen werden.—<span class="smcap">Ranke</span>, <i>Reformation</i>, +<i>Preface</i>, 1838. Ce qu'on a trouvé et mis en œuvre est +considérable en soi: c'est peu de chose au prix de ce +qui reste à trouver et à mettre en œuvre.—<span class="smcap">Aulard</span>, +<i>Études sur la Révolution</i>, 21.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> N'attendez donc pas les leçons de l'expérience; +elles coûtent trop cher aux nations.—<span class="smcap">O. Barrot</span>, +<i>Mémoires</i>, ii. 435. Il y a des leçons dans tous les temps, +pour tous les temps; et celles qu'on emprunte à des +ennemis ne sont pas les moins précieuses.—<span class="smcap">Lanfrey</span>, +<i>Napoléon</i>, v. p. ii. Old facts may always be fresh, +and may give out a fresh meaning for each generation.—<span class="smcap">Maurice</span>, +<i>Lectures</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Mill</span>, +<i>Inaugural Address</i>, 59.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> I hold that the degree in which Poets dwell in +sympathy with the Past, marks exactly the degree of +their poetical faculty.—<span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> in <span class="smcap">C. Fox</span>, +<i>Memoirs</i>, June, 1842. In all political, all social, all +human questions whatever, history is the main resource +of the inquirer.—<span class="smcap">Harrison</span>, <i>Meaning of History</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Priestley</span>, <i>Letters to French +Philosophers</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Mill</span>, +<i>Inaugural Address</i>, 25.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> He who has learnt to understand the true character +and tendency of many succeeding ages is not likely +to go very far wrong in estimating his own.—<span class="smcap">Lecky</span>, +<i>Value of History</i>, 21. C'est à l'histoire qu'il faut se +prendre, c'est le fait que nous devons interroger, quand +l'idée vacille et fuit à nos yeux.—<span class="smcap">Michelet</span>, <i>Disc. +d'Ouverture</i>, 263. C'est la loi des faits telle qu'elle +se manifeste dans leur succession. C'est la règle de +conduite donnée par la nature humaine et indiquée par +l'histoire. C'est la logique, mais cette logique qui ne +fait qu'un avec l'enchaînement des choses. C'est +l'enseignement de l'expérience.—<span class="smcap">Scherer</span>, <i>Mélanges</i>, +558. Wer seine Vergangenheit nicht als seine +Geschichte hat und weiss wird und ist characterlos +Wem ein Ereigniss sein Sonst plötzlich abreisst von +seinem Jetzt wird leicht wurzellos.—<span class="smcap">Kliefoth</span>, +<i>Rheinwalds Repertorium</i>, xliv. 20. La politique +est une des meilleures écoles pour l'esprit. Elle force +à chercher la raison de toutes choses, et ne permet pas +cependant de la chercher hors des faits.—<span class="smcap">Rémusat</span>, +<i>Le Temps Passé</i>, i. 31. It is an unsafe partition that +divides opinions without principle from unprincipled +opinions.—<span class="smcap">Coleridge</span>, <i>Lay Sermon</i>, 373. +</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Wer nicht von drei tausend Jahren sich weiss Rechenschaft zu geben,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bleib' im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tag zu Tage leben!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Goethe</span>.</p> + +<p>What can be rationally required of the student of +philosophy is not a preliminary and absolute, but a +gradual and progressive, abrogation of prejudices.—<span class="smcap">Sir +W. Hamilton</span>, <i>Lectures</i>, iv. 92.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Die Schlacht bei Leuthen ist wohl die letzte, in +welcher diese religiösen Gegensätze entscheidend eingewirkt +haben.—<span class="smcap">Ranke</span>, <i>Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie</i>, +vii. 70.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The only real cry in the country is the proper +and just old No Popery cry.—<i>Major Beresford</i>, July, +1847. Unfortunately the strongest bond of union +amongst them is an apprehension of Popery.—<i>Stanley</i>, +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.—<i>G. Bentinck</i>, December 26, 1847. <i>Croker's +Memoirs</i>, iii. 116, 132, 157.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> 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 Protestantism +is to become thus complete cannot be +reached without the co-operation and help of +Romanism.—<span class="smcap">Nevin</span>, <i>Mercersburg Review</i>, iv. 48.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Diese Heiligen waren es, die aus dem unmittelbaren +Glaubensleben und den Grundgedanken der +christlichen Freiheit zuerst die Idee allgemeiner +Menschenrechte abgeleitet und rein von Selbstsucht +vertheidigt haben.—<span class="smcap">Weingarten</span>, <i>Revolutionskirchen</i>, +447. Wie selbst die Idee allgemeiner Menschenrechte, +die in dem gemeinsamen Character der Ebenbildlichkeit +Gottes gegründet sind, erst durch das Christenthum +zum Bewusstsein gebracht werden, während jeder +andere Eifer für politische Freiheit als ein mehr oder +weniger selbstsüchtiger und beschränkter sich erwiesen +hat.—<span class="smcap">Neander</span>, <i>Pref. to Uhden's Wilberforce</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Cushing</span> +in <span class="smcap">Conway</span>, <i>Life of Paine</i>, 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 miraculous +interpositions, it must be in the same way as +natural knowledge is come at—by the continuance +and progress of learning and liberty.—<span class="smcap">Butler</span>, +<i>Analogy</i>, ii. 3.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Comme les lois elles-mêmes sont faillibles, et qu'il +peut y avoir une autre justice que la justice écrite, +les sociétés modernes ont voulu garantir les droits de +la conscience à la poursuite d'une justice meilleure que +celle qui existe; et là est le fondement de ce qu'on +appelle liberté de conscience, liberté d'écrire, liberté +de pensée.—<span class="smcap">Janet</span>, <i>Philosophie Contemporaine</i>, 308. +Si la force matérielle a toujours fini par céder à +l'opinion, combien plus ne sera-t-elle pas contrainte de +céder à la conscience? Car la conscience, c'est l'opinion +renforcée par le sentiment de l'obligation.—<span class="smcap">Vinet</span>, +<i>Liberté Religieuse</i>, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Après la volonté d'un homme, la raison d'état; +après la raison d'état, la religion; après la religion, la +liberté. Voilà toute la philosophie de l'histoire.—<span class="smcap">Flottes</span>, +<i>La Souveraineté du Peuple</i>, 1851, 192. La +répartition plus égale des biens et des droits dans ce +monde est le plus grand objet que doivent se proposer +ceux qui mènent les affaires humaines. Je veux seulement +que l'égalité en politique consiste à être également +libre.—<span class="smcap">Tocqueville</span>, September 10, 1856. <i>M<sup>me</sup>. +Swetchine</i>, i. 455. On peut concevoir une législation +très simple, lorsqu'on voudra en écarter tout ce +qui est arbitraire, ne consulter que les deux premières +lois de la liberté et de la propriété, et ne point admettre +de lois positives qui ne tirent leur raison de +ces deux lois souveraines de la justice essentielle et +absolue.—<span class="smcap">Letrosne</span>, <i>Vues sur la Justice Criminelle</i>, 16. +Summa enim libertas est, ad optimum recta ratione +cogi.—Nemo optat sibi hanc libertatem, volendi quae +velit, sed potius volendi optima.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span>, <i>De Fato</i>. +<span class="smcap">Trendelenburg</span>, <i>Beiträge zur Philosophie</i>, ii. 190.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Arnold</span>, +<i>Life</i>, i. 259. In whatever state of knowledge +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.—<span class="smcap">Herschel</span>, +<i>Prel. Dis.</i>, 360. It is in the development +of thought as in every other development; the +present suffers from the past, and the future struggles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +hard in escaping from the present.—<span class="smcap">Max Müller</span>, +<i>Science of Thought</i>, 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 extinguished +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, conquerable +by human care and effort.—<span class="smcap">J. S. Mill</span>, <i>Utilitarianism</i>, +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.—<span class="smcap">Bixby</span>, +<i>Crisis of Morals</i>, 210. La science, et l'industrie +qu'elle produit, ont, parmi tous les autres enfants du +génie de l'homme, ce privilège particulier, que leur vol +non-seulement ne peut pas s'interrompre, mais qu'il +s'accélère sans cesse.—<span class="smcap">Cuvier</span>, <i>Discours sur la Marche +des Sciences</i>, 24 Avril, 1816. Aucune idée parmi celles +qui se réfèrent à l'ordre des faits naturels, ne tient de +plus près à la famille des idées religieuses que l'idée +du progrès, et n'est plus propre à 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 âmes et les caractères.—<span class="smcap">Cournot</span>, +<i>Marche des Idées</i>, ii. 425. Dans le spectacle de +l'humanité errante, souffrante et travaillant toujours +à mieux voir, à mieux penser, à mieux agir, à +diminuer l'infirmité de l'être humain, à apaiser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +l'inquiétude de son cœur, la science découvre une +direction et un progrès.—<span class="smcap">A. Sorel</span>, <i>Discours de +Réception</i>, 14. Le jeune homme qui commence son +éducation quinze ans après son père, à une époque +où celui-ci, engagé dans une profession spéciale et +active, ne peut que suivre les anciens principes, +acquiert une supériorité théorique dont on doit +tenir compte dans la hiérarchie sociale. Le plus +souvent le père n'est-il pas pénétré de l'esprit de +routine, tandis que le fils représente et défend la +science progressive? En diminuant l'écart qui existait +entre l'influence des jeunes générations et celle de la +vieillesse ou de l'âge mûr, les peuples modernes +n'auraient donc fait que reproduire dans leur ordre +social un changement de rapports qui s'était déjà +accompli dans la nature intime des choses.—<span class="smcap">Boutmy</span>, +<i>Revue Nationale</i>, xxi. 393. Il y a dans +l'homme individuel des principes de progrès viager; +il y a, en toute société, des causes constantes qui +transforment ce progrès viager en progrès héréditaire. +Une société quelconque tend à progresser tant que +les circonstances ne touchent pas aux causes de +progrès que nous avons reconnues, l'imitation des +dévanciers par les successeurs, des étrangers par les +indigènes.—<span class="smcap">Lacombe</span>, <i>L'Histoire comme Science</i>, 292. +Veram creatæ mentis beatitudinem consistere in non +impedito progressu ad bona majora.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span> to <span class="smcap">Wolf</span>, +February 21, 1705. In cumulum etiam pulchritudinis +perfectionisque universalis operum divinorum progressus +quidam perpetuus liberrimusque totius universi +est agnoscendus, ita ut ad majorem semper cultum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +procedat.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span> ed. Erdmann, 150<i>a</i>. Der Creaturen +und also auch unsere Vollkommenheit bestehet in +einem ungehinderten starken Forttrieb zu neuen und +neuen Vollkommenheiten.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span>, <i>Deutsche Schriften</i>, +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 hätten, nun auch +anfingen, das politische Leben zu durchdringen.—<span class="smcap">Fortlage</span>, +<i>Allg. Monatschrift</i>, 1853, 777. Wir +Slawen wissen, dass die Geister einzelner Menschen +und ganzer Völker sich nur durch die Stufe ihrer +Entwicklung unterscheiden.—<span class="smcap">Mickiewicz</span>, <i>Slawische +Literatur</i>, ii. 436. Le progrès ne disparait jamais, +mais il se déplace souvent. Il va des gouvernants +aux gouvernés. La tendance des révolutions est de +le ramener toujours parmi les gouvernants. Lorsqu'il +est à la tête des sociétés, il marche hardiment, car il +conduit. Lorsqu'il est dans la masse, il marche à +pas lents, car il lutte.—<span class="smcap">Napoleon III.</span>, <i>Des Idées +Napoléoniennes</i>. La loi du progrès avait jadis +l'inexorable rigueur du destin; elle prend maintenant +de jour en jour la douce puissance de la Providence. +C'est l'erreur, c'est l'iniquité, c'est le vice, que la +civilisation tend à emporter dans sa marche irrésistible; +mais la vie des individus et des peuples est +devenue pour elle une chose sacrée. Elle transforme +plutôt qu'elle ne détruit les choses qui s'opposent à +son développement; elle procède par absorption +graduelle plutôt que par brusque exécution; elle aime<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +à conquérir par l'influence des idées plutôt que par la +force des armes, un peuple, une classe, une institution +qui résiste au progrès.—<span class="smcap">Vacherot</span>, <i>Essais de +Philosophie Critique</i>, 443. Peu à peu l'homme intellectuel +finit par effacer l'homme physique.—<span class="smcap">Quetelet</span>, +<i>De l'Homme</i>, ii. 285. In dem Fortschritt +der ethischen Anschauungen liegt daher der Kern des +geschichtlichen Fortschritts überhaupt.—<span class="smcap">Schäfer</span>, +<i>Arbeitsgebiet der Geschichte</i>, 24. Si l'homme a plus +de devoirs à mesure qu'il avance en âge, ce qui est +mélancolique, mais ce qui est vrai, de même aussi +l'humanité est tenue d'avoir une morale plus sévère à +mesure qu'elle prend plus de siècles.—<span class="smcap">Faguet</span>, <i>Revue +des Deux Mondes</i>, 1894, iii. 871. Si donc il y a une loi +de progrès, elle se confond avec la loi morale, et la +condition fondamentale du progrès, c'est la pratique +de cette loi.—<span class="smcap">Carrau</span>, <i>Ib.</i>, 1875, v. 585. L'idée du +progrès, du développement, me paraît être l'idée +fondamentale contenue sous le mot de civilisation.—<span class="smcap">Guizot</span>, +<i>Cours d'Histoire</i>, 1828, 15. Le progrès n'est +sous un autre nom, que la liberté en action.—<span class="smcap">Broglie</span>, +<i>Journal des Débats</i>, January 28, 1869. Le progrès +social est continu. Il a ses périodes de fièvre ou +d'atonie, de surexcitation ou de léthargie; il a ses +soubresauts et ses haltes, mais il avance toujours.—<span class="smcap">De +Decker</span>, <i>La Providence</i>, 174. Ce n'est pas au +bonheur seul, c'est au perfectionnement que notre +destin nous appelle; et la liberté politique est le plus +puissant, le plus énergique moyen de perfectionnement +que le ciel nous ait donné.—<span class="smcap">B. Constant</span>, +<i>Cours de Politique</i>, ii. 559. To explode error, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +whichever side it lies, is certainly to secure progress.—<span class="smcap">Martineau</span>, +<i>Essays</i>, i. 114. Die sämmtlichen +Freiheitsrechte, welche der heutigen Menschheit so +theuer sind, sind im Grunde nur Anwendungen des +Rechts der Entwickelung.—<span class="smcap">Bluntschli</span>, <i>Kleine +Schriften</i>, i. 51. Geistiges Leben ist auf Freiheit beruhende +Entwicklung, mit Freiheit vollzogene That und +geschichtlicher Fortschritt.—<i>Münchner Gel. Anzeigen</i> +1849, ii. 83. Wie das Denken erst nach und nach reift, so +wird auch der freie Wille nicht fertig geboren, sondern +in der Entwickelung erworben.—<span class="smcap">Trendelenburg</span>, +<i>Logische Untersuchungen</i>, ii. 94. Das Liberum Arbitrium +im vollen Sinne (die vollständig aktuelle Macht +der Selbstbestimmung) lässt 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.—<span class="smcap">Rothe</span>, <i>Ethik</i>, i. 360. So +gewaltig sei der Andrang der Erfindungen und +Entdeckungen, dass “Entwicklungsperioden, die in +früheren Zeiten erst in Jahrhunderten durchlaufen +wurden, die im Beginn unserer Zeitperiode noch der +Jahrzehnte bedurften, sich heute in Jahren volienden, +häufig schon in voller Ausbildung ins Dasein treten.”—<span class="smcap">Philippovich</span>, +<i>Fortschritt und Kulturentwicklung</i>, +1892, i. quoting <span class="smcap">Siemens</span>, 1886. Wir erkennen dass +dem Menschen die schwere körperliche Arbeit, von +der er in seinem Kampfe um's Dasein stets schwer +niedergedrückt war und grossenteils noch ist, mehr +und mehr durch die wachsende Benutzung der +Naturkräfte zur mechanischen Arbeitsleistung abgenommen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +wird, dass die ihm zufallende Arbeit immer +mehr eine intellektuelle wird.—<span class="smcap">Siemens</span>, 1886, <i>Ib.</i> 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Once, however, he wrote:—Darin könnte man +den idealen Kern der Geschichte des menschlichen +Geschlechtes überhaupt sehen, dass in den Kämpfen, +die sich in den gegenseitigen Interessen der Staaten +und Völker vollziehen, doch immer höhere Potenzen +emporkommen, die das Allgemeine demgemäss umgestalten +und ihm wieder einen anderen Charakter +verleihen.—<span class="smcap">Ranke</span>, <i>Weltgeschichte</i>, iii. 1, 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Toujours et partout, les hommes furent de plus +en plus dominés par l'ensemble de leurs prédécesseurs, +dont ils purent seulement modifier l'empire nécessaire.—<span class="smcap">Comte</span>, +<i>Politique Positive</i>, iii. 621.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> La liberté est l'âme du commerce.—Il faut +laisser faire les hommes qui s'appliquent sans peine +à ce qui convient le mieux; c'est ce qui apporte le +plus d'avantage.—<span class="smcap">Colbert</span>, in <i>Comptes Rendus de +l'Institut</i>, xxxix. 93.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Il n'y a que les choses humaines exposées dans +leur vérité, c'est-à-dire avec leur grandeur, leur +variété, leur inépuisable fécondité, qui aient le droit +de retenir le lecteur et qui le retiennent en effet. Si +l'écrivain paraît une fois, il ennuie ou fait sourire de +pitié les lecteurs sérieux.—<span class="smcap">Thiers</span> to <span class="smcap">Ste. Beuve</span>, +<i>Lundis</i>, iii. 195. Comme l'a dit Taine, la disparition +du style, c'est la perfection du style.—<span class="smcap">Faguet</span>, <i>Revue +Politique</i>, lii. 67.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Ne m'applaudissez pas; ce n'est pas moi qui +vous parle; c'est l'histoire qui parle par ma bouche.—<i>Revue +Historique</i>, xli. 278.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Das Evangelium trat als Geschichte in die Welt, +nicht als Dogma—wurde als Geschichte in der christlichen +Kirche deponirt.—<span class="smcap">Rothe</span>, <i>Kirchengeschichte</i>, +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 unter der Arbeit hat.—Er +selbst, Christus der Herr, bleibt der er ist in alle +Zukunft, dagegen liegt es ausdrücklich im Begriffe +seines Werks, des Christenthums, dass es nicht so bleibt +wie es anhebt.—<span class="smcap">Rothe</span>, <i>Allgemeine kirchliche Zeitschrift</i>, +1864, 299. Diess Werk, weil es dem Wesen +der Geschichte zufolge eine Entwickelung ist, muss +über Stufen hinweggehen, die einander ablösen, und +von denen jede folgende neue immer nur unter der +Zertrümmerung der ihr vorangehenden Platz greifen +kann.—<span class="smcap">Rothe</span>, <i>Ib.</i> April 19, 1865. Je grösser ein +geschichtliches Princip ist, desto langsamer und über +mehr Stufen hinweg entfaltet es seinen Gehalt; desto +langlebiger ist es aber ebendeshalb auch in diesen +seinen unaufhörlichen Abwandelungen.—<span class="smcap">Rothe</span>, +<i>Stille Stunden</i>, 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 Mittelpunkt +haben.—<span class="smcap">Nitzsch</span>, <i>Dogmengeschichte</i>, i. 17. +Der Gedankengang der evangelischen Erzählung gibt +darum auch eine vollständige Darstellung der christlichen +Lehre in ihren wesentlichen Grundzügen; aber +er gibt sie im allseitigen lebendigen Zusammenhange +mit der Geschichte der christlichen Offenbarung, und +nicht in einer theoretisch zusammenhängenden Folgenreihe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +von ethischen und dogmatischen Lehrsätzen.—<span class="smcap">Deutinger</span>, +<i>Reich Gottes</i>, i. p. v.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> L'Univers ne doit pas estre considéré seulement +dans ce qu'il est; pour le bien connoître, il faut le +voir aussi dans ce qu'il doit estre. C'est cet avenir +surtout qui a été le grand objet de Dieu dans la +création, et c'est pour cet avenir seul que le présent +existe.—<span class="smcap">D'Houteville</span>, <i>Essai sur la Providence</i>, 273. +La Providence emploie les siècles à élever toujours un +plus grand nombre de familles et d'individus à ces +biens de la liberté et de l'égalité légitimes que, dans +l'enfance des sociétés, la force avait rendus le privilège +de quelques-uns.—<span class="smcap">Guizot</span>, <i>Gouvernement de la France</i>, +1820, 9. La marche de la Providence n'est pas +assujettie à d'étroites limites; elle ne s'inquiète pas de +tirer aujourd'hui la conséquence du principe qu'elle a +posé hier; elle la tirera dans des siècles, quand l'heure +sera venue; et pour raisonner lentement selon nous, sa +logique n'est pas moins sûre.—<span class="smcap">Guizot</span>, <i>Histoire de la +Civilisation</i>, 20. Der Keim fortschreitender Entwicklung +ist, auch auf göttlichem Geheisse, der Menschheit +eingepflanzt. Die Weltgeschichte ist der blosse +Ausdruck einer vorbestimmten Entwicklung.—<span class="smcap">A. +Humboldt</span>, January 2, 1842, <i>Im Neuen Reich</i>, 1872, +i. 197. Das historisch grosse ist religiös gross; es ist +die Gottheit selbst, die sich offenbart.—<span class="smcap">Raumer</span>, +April 1807, <i>Erinnerungen</i>, i. 85.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Je suis arrivé à l'âge où je suis, à travers bien +des évènements différents, mais avec une seule cause, +celle de la liberté régulière.—<span class="smcap">Tocqueville</span>, May 1, +1852, <i>Œuvres Inédites</i>, ii. 185. Me trouvant dans un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +pays où la religion et le libéralisme sont d'accord, +j'avais respiré.—J'exprimais ce sentiment, il y a plus +de vingt ans, dans l'avant-propos de la <i>Démocratie</i>. +Je l'éprouve aujourd'hui aussi vivement que si j'étais +encore jeune, et je ne sais s'il y a une seule pensée +qui ait été plus constamment présente à mon esprit.—August +5, 1857, <i>Œuvres</i>, vi. 395. Il n'y a que la +liberté (j'entends la modérée et la régulière) et la +religion, qui, par un effort combiné, puissent soulever +les hommes au-dessus du bourbier où l'égalité démocratique +les plonge naturellement.—December 1, 1852, +<i>Œuvres</i>, vii. 295. L'un de mes rêves, le principal en +entrant dans la vie politique, était de travailler à +concilier l'esprit libéral et l'esprit de religion, la +société nouvelle et l'église.—November 15, 1843, +<i>Œuvres Inédites</i>, ii. 121. La véritable grandeur de +l'homme n'est que dans l'accord du sentiment libéral +et du sentiment religieux.—September 17, 1853, +<i>Œuvres Inédites</i>, ii. 228. Qui cherche dans la liberté +autre chose qu'elle-même est fait pour servir.—<i>Ancien +Régime</i>, 248. Je regarde, ainsi que je l'ai toujours +fait, la liberté comme le premier des biens; je vois +toujours en elle l'une des sources les plus fécondes +des vertus mâles et des actions grandes. Il n'y a pas +de tranquillité ni de bien-être qui puisse me tenir +lieu d'elle.—January 7, 1856, <i>M<sup>me</sup>. Swetchine</i>, i. 452. +La liberté a un faux air d'aristocratie; en donnant +pleine carrière aux facultés humaines, en encourageant +le travail et l'économie, elle fait ressortir les +supériorités naturelles ou acquises.—<span class="smcap">Laboulaye</span>, <i>L'État +et ses Limites</i>, 154. Dire que la liberté n'est point<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +par elle-même, qu'elle dépend d'une situation, d'une +opportunité, c'est lui assigner une valeur négative. La +liberté n'est pas dès qu'on la subordonne. Elle n'est +pas un principe purement négatif, un simple élément de +contrôle et de critique. Elle est le principe actif, +créateur organisateur par excellence. Elle est le +moteur et la règle, la source de toute vie, et le principe +de l'ordre. Elle est, en un mot, le nom que prend +la conscience souveraine, lorsque, se posant en face +du monde social et politique, elle émerge du moi pour +modeler les sociétés sur les données de la raison.—<span class="smcap">Brisson</span>, +<i>Revue Nationale</i>, xxiii. 214. Le droit, dans +l'histoire, est le développement progressif de la liberté, +sous la loi de la raison.—<span class="smcap">Lerminier</span>, <i>Philosophie du +Droit</i>, i. 211. En prouvant par les leçons de l'histoire +que la liberté fait vivre les peuples et que le +despotisme les tue, en montrant que l'expiation suit +la faute et que la fortune finit d'ordinaire par se +ranger du côté de la vertu, Montesquieu n'est ni +moins moral ni moins religieux que Bossuet.—<span class="smcap">Laboulaye</span>, +<i>Œuvres de Montesquieu</i>, ii. 109. Je ne comprendrais +pas qu'une nation ne plaçât pas les libertés +politiques au premier rang, parce que c'est des libertés +politiques que doivent découler toutes les autres.—<span class="smcap">Thiers</span>, +<i>Discours</i>, x. 8, <i>March</i> 28, 1865. Nous +sommes arrivés à une époque où la liberté est +le but sérieux de tous, où le reste n'est plus +qu'une question de moyens.—<span class="smcap">J. Lebeau</span>, <i>Observations +sur le Pouvoir Royal</i>: Liége, 1830, p. 10. +Le libéralisme, ayant la prétention de se fonder +uniquement sur les principes de la raison, croit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +d'ordinaire n'avoir pas besoin de tradition. Là est son +erreur. L'erreur de l'école libérale est d'avoir trop +cru qu'il est facile de créer la liberté par la réflexion, +et de n'avoir pas vu qu'un établissement n'est solide +que quand il a des racines historiques.—<span class="smcap">Renan</span>, +1858, <i>Nouvelle Revue</i>, lxxix. 596. Le respect des +individus et des droits existants est autant au-dessus +du bonheur de tous, qu'un intérêt moral surpasse +un intérêt purement temporel.—<span class="smcap">Renan</span>, 1858, +<i>Ib.</i> lxxix. 597. Die Rechte gelten nichts, wo +es sich handelt um das Recht, und das Recht der +Freiheit kann nie verjähren, weil es die Quelle alles +Rechtes selbst ist.—<span class="smcap">C. Frantz</span>, <i>Ueber die Freiheit</i>, +110. Wir erfahren hienieden nie die ganze Wahrheit: +wir geniessen nie die ganze Freiheit.—<span class="smcap">Reuss</span>, +<i>Reden</i>, 56. Le gouvernement constitutionnel, comme +tout gouvernement libre, présente et doit présenter +un état de lutte permanent. La liberté est la perpétuité +de la lutte.—<span class="smcap">De Serre.</span> <span class="smcap">Broglie</span>, <i>Nouvelles +Études</i>, 243. The experiment of free government is +not one which can be tried once for all. Every generation +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.—<span class="smcap">Winthrop</span>, <i>Addresses</i>, +163. L'histoire perd son véritable caractère du +moment que la liberté en a disparu; elle devient +une sorte de physique sociale. C'est l'élément personnel +de l'histoire qui en fait la réalité.—<span class="smcap">Vacherot</span>, +<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 1869, iv. 215. Demander la +liberté pour soi et la refuser aux autres, c'est la définition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +du despotisme.—<span class="smcap">Laboulaye</span>, December 4, 1874. Les +causes justes profitent de tout, des bonnes intentions +comme des mauvaises, des calculs personnels comme +des dévouemens courageux, de la démence, enfin, +comme de la raison.—<span class="smcap">B. Constant</span>, <i>Les Cent Jours</i>, +ii. 29. Sie ist die Kunst, das Gute der schon weit +gediehenen Civilisation zu sichern.—<span class="smcap">Baltisch</span>, <i>Politische +Freiheit</i>, 9. In einem Volke, welches sich zur +bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, überhaupt zum Bewusstseyn +der Unendlichkeit des Freien—entwickelt hat, ist +nur die constitutionelle Monarchie möglich.—<span class="smcap">Hegel's</span> +<i>Philosophie des Rechts</i>, § 137, <i>Hegel und Preussen</i>, +1841, 31. Freiheit ist das höchste Gut. Alles +andere ist nur das Mittel dazu: gut falls es ein +Mittel dazu ist, übel falls es dieselbe hemmt.—<span class="smcap">Fichte</span>, +<i>Werke</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Patrick Henry</span>, +1788. <span class="smcap">Wirt</span>, <i>Life of Henry</i>, 272.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Historiæ ipsius præter delectationem utilitas +nulla est, quam ut religionis Christianæ veritas demonstretur, +quod aliter quam per historiam fieri non +potest.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span>, <i>Opera</i>, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +of criticism, in the persons of its most famous students, +with Ecclesiastical History.—<span class="smcap">Stubbs</span>, <i>Lectures</i>, +9. Je regarde donc l'étude de l'histoire comme l'étude +de la providence.—L'histoire est vraiment une seconde +philosophie.—Si Dieu ne parle pas toujours, il agit +toujours en Dieu.—<span class="smcap">D'Aguesseau</span>, <i>Œuvres</i>, xv. 34, 31, +35. Für diejenigen, welche das Wesen der menschlichen +Freiheit erkannt haben, bildet die denkende Betrachtung +der Weltgeschichte, besonders des christlichen +Weltalters, die höchste, und umfassendste Theodicee.—<span class="smcap">Vatke</span>, +<i>Die Menschliche Freiheit</i>, 1841, 516. La +théologie, que l'on regarde volontiers comme la plus +étroite et la plus stérile des sciences, en est, au contraire, +la plus étendue et la plus féconde. Elle confine +à toutes les études et touche à toutes les questions. +Elle renferme tous les éléments d'une instruction +libérale.—<span class="smcap">Scherer</span>, <i>Mélanges</i>, 522. The belief that +the course of events and the agency of man are subject +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.—<span class="smcap">Thirlwall</span>, +<i>Remains</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Coleridge</span>, <i>Table +Talk</i>, 144. It certainly appears strange that the men +most conversant with the order of the visible universe +should soonest suspect it empty of directing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +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 prepossessions +of natural piety.—<span class="smcap">Martineau</span>, <i>Essays</i>, i. 122. +Die Religion hat nur dann eine Bedeutung für den +Menschen, wenn er in der Geschichte einen Punkt +findet, dem er sich völlig unbedingt hingeben kann.—<span class="smcap">Steffens</span>, +<i>Christliche Religionsphilosophie</i>, 440, 1839. +Wir erkennen darin nur eine Thätigkeit des zu seinem +ächten und wahren Leben, zu seinem verlornen, +objectiven Selbstverständnisse sich zurücksehnenden +christlichen Geistes unserer Zeit, einen Ausdruck für +das Bedürfniss desselben, sich aus den unwahren +und unächten Verkleidungen, womit ihn der moderne, +subjective Geschmack der letzten Entwicklungsphase +des theologischen Bewusstseyns umhüllt hat, zu seiner +historischen allein wahren und ursprünglichen Gestalt +wiederzugebären, zu derjenigen Bedeutung zurückzukehren, +die ihm in dem Bewusstseyn der Geschichte +allein zukommt und deren Verständniss in dem +wogenden luxuriösen Leben der modernen Theologie +längst untergegangen ist.—<span class="smcap">Georgii</span>, <i>Zeitschrift für +Hist. Theologie</i>, ix. 5, 1839.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Liberty, in fact, means just so far as it is realised, +the right man in the right place.—<span class="smcap">Seeley</span>, <i>Lectures +and Essays</i>, 109.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> In diesem Sinne ist Freiheit und sich entwickelnde +moralische Vernunft und Gewissen gleichbedeutend. +In diesem Sinne ist der Mensch frei, sobald sich das<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +Gewissen in ihm entwickelt.—<span class="smcap">Scheidler</span>, <i>Ersch und +Gruber</i>, xlix. 20. Aus der unendlichen und ewigen +Geltung der menschlichen Persönlichkeit vor Gott, +aus der Vorstellung von der in Gott freien Persönlichkeit, +folgt auch der Anspruch auf das Recht +derselben in der weltlichen Sphäre, auf bürgerliche +und politische Freiheit, auf Gewissen und Religionsfreiheit, +auf freie wissenschaftliche Forschung u.s.w., +und namentlich die Forderung dass niemand lediglich +zum Mittel für andere diene.—<span class="smcap">Martensen</span>, <i>Christliche +Ethik</i>, i. 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Es giebt angeborne Menschenrechte, weil es +angeborne Menschenpflichten giebt.—<span class="smcap">Wolff</span>, <i>Naturrecht</i>; +<span class="smcap">Lœper</span>, <i>Einleitung zu Faust</i>, lvii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> La constitution de l'état reste jusqu'à un certain +point à notre discrétion. La constitution de la société +ne dépend pas de nous; elle est donnée par la force +des choses, et si l'on veut élever le langage, elle +est l'œuvre de la Providence.—<span class="smcap">Rémusat</span>, <i>Revue des +Deux Mondes</i>, 1861, v. 795.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Die Freiheit ist bekanntlich kein Geschenk der +Götter, sondern ein Gut das jedes Volk sich selbst +verdankt und das nur bei dem erforderlichen Mass +moralischer Kraft und Würdigkeit gedeiht.—<span class="smcap">Ihering</span>, +<i>Geist des Römischen Rechts</i>, ii. 290. Liberty, in the +very nature of it, absolutely requires and even supposes, +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.—<span class="smcap">Butler</span>, +<i>Sermons</i>, 331. In each degree and each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +variety of public development there are corresponding +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.—<span class="smcap">Parkman</span>, <i>Canada</i>, +396. Die Freiheit ist die Wurzel einer neuen Schöpfung +in der Schöpfung.—<span class="smcap">Sederholm</span>, <i>Die ewigen +Thatsachen</i>, 86.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> La liberté politique, qui n'est qu'une complexité +plus grande, de plus en plus grande, dans le gouvernement +d'un peuple, à mesure que le peuple lui-même +contient un plus grand nombre de forces diverses +ayant droit et de vivre et de participer à la chose +publique, est un fait de civilisation qui s'impose lentement +à une société organisée, mais qui n'apparaît point +comme un principe à une société qui s'organise.—<span class="smcap">Faguet</span>, +<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 1889, ii. 942.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Il y a bien un droit du plus sage, mais non pas +un droit du plus fort.—La justice est le droit du plus +faible.—<span class="smcap">Joubert</span>, <i>Pensées</i>, i. 355, 358.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Nicht durch ein pflanzenähnliches Wachsthum, +nicht aus den dunklen Gründen der Volksempfindung, +sondern durch den männlichen 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.—<i>Rundschau</i>, +Nov. 1893, 313. Nicht das Normale, +Zahme, sondern das Abnorme, Wilde, bildet überall die +Grundlage und den Anfang einer neuen Ordnung.—<span class="smcap">Lasaulx</span>, +<i>Philosophie der Geschichte</i>, 143.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Um den Sieg zu vervollständigen, erübrigte das<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> +zweite Stadium oder die Aufgabe: die Berechtigung +der Mehrheit nach allen Seiten hin zur gleichen +Berechtigung aller zu erweitern, d.h. bis zur Gleichstellung +aller Bekenntnisse im Kirchenrecht, aller Völker +im Völkerrecht, aller Staatsbürger im Staatsrecht und +aller socialen Interessen im Gesellschaftsrecht fortzuführen.—<span class="smcap">A. +Schmidt</span>, <i>Züricher Monatschrift</i>, i. 68.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Notre histoire ne nous enseignait nullement la +liberté. Le jour où la France voulut être libre, elle +eut tout à créer, tout à inventer dans cet ordre de +faits.—Cependant il faut marcher, l'avenir appelle les +peuples. Quand on n'a point pour cela l'impulsion +du passé, il faut bien se confier à la raison.—<span class="smcap">Dupont +White</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 1861, vi. 191. Le +peuple français a peu de goût pour le développement +graduel des institutions. Il ignore son histoire, il +ne s'y reconnaît pas, elle n'a pas laissé de trace dans +sa conscience.—<span class="smcap">Scherer</span>, <i>Études Critiques</i>, i. 100. +Durch die Revolution befreiten sich die Franzosen +von ihrer Geschichte.—<span class="smcap">Rosenkranz</span>, <i>Aus einem +Tagebuch</i>, 199.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Freeman</span>, <i>Historical Essays</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Jowett</span>, <i>Essays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +and Reviews</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Haddan</span>, <i>Replies</i>, +348.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> 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 instruments +of His goodness.—<span class="smcap">Coleridge</span>, <i>Biographia +Literaria</i>, 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 revolutions +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.—<span class="smcap">J. Wilson</span>, November 26, +1787, <i>Works</i>, iii. 293. La Révolution, c'est-à-dire +l'œuvre des siècles, ou, si vous voulez, le renouvellement +progressif de la société, ou encore, sa nouvelle constitution.—<span class="smcap">Rémusat</span>, +<i>Correspondance</i>, October 11, 1818. +A ses yeux loin d'avoir rompu le cours naturel des +évènements, ni la Révolution d'Angleterre, ni la nôtre, +n'ont rien dit, rien fait, qui n'eût été dit, souhaité, fait, +ou tenté cent fois avant leur explosion. “Il faut en +ceci,” dit-il, “tout accorder à leurs adversaires, les surpasser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +même en sévérité, ne regarder à leurs accusations +que pour y ajouter, s'ils en oublient; et puis les sommer +de dresser, à 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.”—<i>Revue de Paris</i>, xvi. 303, on +Guizot. Quant aux nouveautés mises en œuvre par +la Révolution Française on les retrouve une à une, +en remontant d'âge en âge, chez les philosophes du +XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle, chez les grands penseurs du XVI<sup>e</sup>, chez +certains Pères d'Église et jusque dans la République de +Platon.—En présence de cette belle continuité de +l'histoire, qui ne fait pas plus de sauts que la nature, +devant cette solidarité nécessaire des révolutions avec +le passé qu'elles brisent.—<span class="smcap">Krantz</span>, <i>Revue Politique</i>, +xxxiii. 264. L'esprit du XIX<sup>e</sup> siècle est de comprendre et +de juger les choses du passé. Notre œuvre est d'expliquer +ce que le XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle avait mission de nier.—<span class="smcap">Vacherot</span>, +<i>De la Démocratie</i>, pref., 28.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> La commission recherchera, dans toutes les parties +des archives pontificales, les pièces relatives à l'abus +que les papes ont fait de leur ministère spirituel contre +l'autorité des souverains et la tranquillité des peuples.—<span class="smcap">Daunou</span>, +<i>Instructions</i>, Jan. 3, 1811. <span class="smcap">Laborde</span>, +<i>Inventaires</i>, p. cxii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Aucun des historiens remarquables de cette +époque n'avait senti encore le besoin de chercher les +faits hors des livres imprimés, aux sources primitives, +la plupart inédites alors, aux manuscrits de nos +bibliothèques, aux documents de nos archives.—<span class="smcap">Michelet</span>, +<i>Histoire de France</i>, 1869, i. 2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Doch besteht eine Grenze, wo die Geschichte<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +aufhört und das Archiv anfängt, und die von der +Geschichtschreibung nicht überschritten werden sollte. +<i>Unsere Zeit</i>, 1866, ii. 635. Il faut avertir nos jeunes +historiens à la fois de la nécessité inéluctable du +document et, d'autre part, du danger qu'il présente.—<span class="smcap">M. +Hanotaux</span>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> This process consists in determining with documentary +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 consequences.—<span class="smcap">Harrisse</span>, +<i>Discovery of America</i>, 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 critical +inquiries.—<i>Ib.</i> p. v. Few scholars are critics, few +critics are philosophers, and few philosophers look with +equal care on both sides of a question.—<span class="smcap">W. S. Landor</span> +in <span class="smcap">Holyoake's</span> <i>Agitator's Life</i>, ii. 15. Introduire dans +l'histoire, et sans tenir compte des passions politiques +et religieuses, le doute méthodique que Descartes, le +premier, appliqua à l'étude de la philosophie, n'est-ce +pas là une excellente méthode? n'est-ce pas même +la meilleure?—<span class="smcap">Chantelauze</span>, <i>Correspondant</i>, 1883, i. +129. La critique historique ne sera jamais populaire. +Comme elle est de toutes les sciences la plus délicate, +la plus déliée, elle n'a de crédit qu'auprès des esprits +cultivés.—<span class="smcap">Cherbuliez</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, xcvii. +517. Nun liefert aber die Kritik, wenn sie rechter +Art ist, immer nur einzelne Data, gleichsam die Atome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +des Thatbestandes, und jede Kombination, jede Zusammenfassung +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 höchst mistrauisch +gegen jedes Résumé, jede Definition, jedes +abschliessende Wort.—<span class="smcap">Sybel</span>, <i>Historische Zeitschrift</i>, +lvi. 484. Mit blosser Kritik wird darin nichts ausgerichtet, +denn die ist nur eine Vorarbeit, welche da +aufhört wo die echte historische Kunst anfängt.—<span class="smcap">Lasaulx</span>, +<i>Philosophie der Künste</i>, 212.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Babbage</span>, +<i>Bridgewater Treatise</i>, p. xiv.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">J. S. +Mill</span>, <i>Inaugural Address</i>, 34. The only sound +intellects are those which, in the first instance, set their +standard of proof high.—<span class="smcap">J. S. Mill</span>, <i>Examination of +Hamilton's Philosophy</i>, 525.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Greg</span>, +<i>Political Problems</i>, 1870, 173. Il n'y a que les +Allemands qui sachent être aussi complètement objectifs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +Ils se dédoublent, pour ainsi dire, en deux hommes, +l'un qui a des principes très arrêtés et des passions très +vives, l'autre qui sait voir et observer comme s'il n'en +avait point.—<span class="smcap">Laveleye</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 1868, +i. 431. L'écrivain qui penche trop dans le sens où +il incline, et qui ne se défie pas de ses qualités +presque autant que ses défauts, cet écrivain tourne à la +manière.—<span class="smcap">Scherer</span>, <i>Mélanges</i>, 484. Il faut faire volte-face, +et vivement, franchement, tourner le dos au +moyen âge, à ce passé morbide, qui, même quand il +n'agit pas, influe terriblement par la contagion de la +mort. Il ne faut ni combattre, ni critiquer, mais +oublier. Oublions et marchons!—<span class="smcap">Michelet</span>, <i>La +Bible de l'Humanité</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Jowett</span>, <i>Thucydides</i>, ii. 501.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Non theologi provinciam suscepimus; scimus +enim quantum hoc ingenii nostri tenuitatem superet: +ideo sufficit nobis τὸ ὅτι fideliter ex antiquis auctoribus +retulisse.—<span class="smcap">Morinus</span>, <i>De Pœnitentia</i>, ix. 10.—Il +faut avouer que la religion chrétienne a quelque chose +d'étonnant! C'est parce que vous y êtes né, dira-t-on. +Tant s'en faut, je me roidis contre par cette +raison-là même, de peur que cette prévention ne me +suborne.—<span class="smcap">Pascal</span>, <i>Pensées</i>, XVI., 7.—I was fond of +Fleury for a reason which I express in the advertisement; +because it presented a sort of photograph of +ecclesiastical history without any comment upon it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +In the event, that simple representation of the early +centuries had a good deal to do with unsettling me.—<span class="smcap">Newman</span>, +<i>Apologia</i>, 152.—Nur was sich vor dem +Richterstuhl einer ächten, unbefangenen, nicht durch +die Brille einer philosophischen oder dogmatischen +Schule stehenden Wissenschaft als wahr bewährt, kann +zur Erbauung, Belehrung und Warnung tüchtig seyn.—<span class="smcap">Neander</span>, +<i>Kirchengeschichte</i>, 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 apologetische +Zwecke leiten lassen; sein einziges Ziel soll +die Ergründungder Wahrheit sein.—<span class="smcap">Pastor</span>, <i>Geschichte +der Päbste</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Sir W. Hamilton</span>, <i>Discussions</i>, 506. +The more trophies and crowns of honour the Church +of former ages can be shown to have won in the service +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.—<span class="smcap">Nevin</span>, <i>Mercersburg Review</i>, +1851, 168. S'il est une chose à laquelle j'ai donné +tous mes soins, c'est à ne pas laisser influencer mes +jugements par les opinions politiques ou religieuses; +que si j'ai quelquefois péché par quelque excès, c'est +par la bienveillance pour les œuvres de ceux qui +pensent autrement que moi.—<span class="smcap">Monod</span>, <i>R. Hist.</i>, xvi. +184. Nous n'avons nul intérêt à faire parler l'histoire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +en faveur de nos propres opinions. C'est son droit +imprescriptible que le narrateur reproduise tous les +faits sans aucune réticence et range toutes les évolutions +dans leur ordre naturel. Notre récit restera +complètement en dehors des préoccupations de la dogmatique +et des déclamations de la polémique. Plus +les questions auxquelles nous aurons à toucher agitent +et passionnent de nos jours les esprits, plus il est du +devoir de l'historien de s'effacer devant les faits qu'il +veut faire connaître.—<span class="smcap">Reuss</span>, <i>Nouvelle Revue de Théologie</i>, +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.—<span class="smcap">Locke</span>, <i>Letter to +Collins</i>. Il n'est plus possible aujourd'hui à l'historien +d'être national dans le sens étroit du mot. Son patriotisme +à lui c'est l'amour de la vérité. Il n'est pas +l'homme d'une race ou d'un pays, il est l'homme de +tous les pays, il parle au nom de la civilisation générale.—<span class="smcap">Lanfrey</span>, +<i>Hist. de Nap.</i>, iii. 2, 1870. Juger avec +les parties de soi-même qui sont le moins des formes du +tempérament, et le plus des facultés pénétrées et modelées +par l'expérience, par l'étude, par l'investigation, +par le non-moi.—<span class="smcap">Faguet</span>, <i>R. de Paris</i>, i. 151. Aucun +critique n'est aussi impersonnel que lui, aussi libre +de parti pris et d'opinions préconçues, aussi objectif.—Il +ne mêle ou parait mêler à ses appréciations ni inclinations +personnelles de goût ou d'humeur, ou théories d'aucune +sorte.—<span class="smcap">G. Monod</span>, of Faguet, <i>Revue Historique</i>, +xlii. 417. On dirait qu'il a peur, en généralisant ses +observations, en systématisant ses connaissances, de +mêler de lui-même aux choses.—Je lis tout un volume<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +de M. Faguet, sans penser une fois à M. Faguet: je +ne vois que les originaux qu'il montre.—J'envisage +toujours une réalité objective, jamais l'idée de M. +Faguet, jamais la doctrine de M. Faguet.—<span class="smcap">Lanson</span>, +<i>Revue Politique</i>, 1894, i. 98.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> 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 themselves +are a mingled tissue.—<span class="smcap">Arnold</span>, <i>Modern History</i>, +184. I find it a good rule, when I am contemplating +a person from whom I want to learn, +always to look out for his strength, being confident +that the weakness will discover itself.—<span class="smcap">Maurice</span>, +<i>Essays</i>, 305. We may seek for agreement somewhere +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.—<span class="smcap">A. Sidgwick</span>, <i>Distinction +and the Criticism of Beliefs</i>, 1892, 211. That cruel +reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them +always hide their deeper thought.—<span class="smcap">Ruskin</span>, <i>Sesame and +Lilies</i>, i. 16. Je offener wir die einzelnen Wahrheiten +des Sozialismus anerkennen, desto erfolgreicher können +wir seine fundamentalen Unwahrheiten widerlegen.—<span class="smcap">Roscher</span>, +<i>Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift</i>, 1849, i. 177.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Dann habe ihn die Wahrnehmung, dass manche +Angaben in den historischen Romanen Walter Scott's, +mit den gleichzeitigen Quellen im Widerspruch +standen, “mit Erstaunen” erfüllt, und ihn zu dem +Entschlusse gebracht, auf das Gewissenhafteste an +der Ueberlieferung der Quellen festzuhalten.—<span class="smcap">Sybel</span>, +<i>Gedächtnissrede auf Ranke</i>. <i>Akad. der Wissenschaften</i>, +1887, p. 6. Sich frei zu halten von allem Widerschein +der Gegenwart, sogar, soweit das menschenmöglich, +von dem der eignen subjectiven Meinung +in den Dingen des Staates, der Kirche und der +Gesellschaft.—<span class="smcap">A. Dove</span>, <i>Im Neuen Reich</i>, 1875, ii. +967. Wir sind durchaus nicht für die leblose und +schemenartige Darstellungsweise der Ranke'schen +Schule eingenommen; es wird uns immer kühl bis +ans Herz heran, wenn wir derartige Schilderungen +der Reformation und der Revolution lesen, welche +so ganz im kühlen Element des Pragmatismus sich +bewegen und dabei so ganz Undinenhaft sind und +keine Seele haben.—Wir lassen es uns lieber gefallen, +dass die Männer der Geschichte hier und dort gehofmeistert +werden, als dass sie uns mit Glasaugen +ansehen, so meisterhaft immer die Kunst sein mag +die sie ihnen eingesetzt hat.—<span class="smcap">Gottschall</span>, <i>Unsere +Zeit</i>, 1866, ii. 636, 637. A vivre avec des diplomates, +il leur a pris des qualités qui sont un défaut chez +un historien. L'historien n'est pas un témoin, c'est +un juge; c'est à lui d'accuser et de condamner au +nom du passé opprimé et dans l'intérêt de l'avenir.—<span class="smcap">Laboulaye</span> +on <span class="smcap">Ranke</span>. <i>Débats</i>, January 12, +1852.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Un théologien qui a composé une éloquente +histoire de la Réformation, rencontrant à Berlin un +illustre historien qui, lui aussi, a raconté Luther et le +XVI<sup>e</sup> siècle, l'embrassa avec effusion en le traitant +de confrère. “Ah! permettez,” lui répondit l'autre +en se dégageant, “il y a une grande différence entre +nous: vous êtes avant tout chrétien, et je suis avant +tout historien.”—<span class="smcap">Cherbuliez</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, +1872, i. 537.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Nackte Wahrheit ohne allen Schmuck; gründliche +Erforschung des Einzelnen; das Uebrige, Gott befohlen.—<i>Werke</i>, +xxxiv. 24. Ce ne sont pas les théories 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 théories.—<span class="smcap">Vincent</span>, +<i>Nouvelle Revue de Théologie</i>, 1859, ii. 252.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Die zwanglose Anordnungs—die leichte und +leise Andeutungskunst des grossen Historikers voll +zu würdigen, hinderte ihn in früherer Zeit sein +Bedürfniss nach scharfer begrifflicher Ordnung und +Ausführung, später, und in immer zunehmenden +Grade, sein Sinn für strenge Sachlichkeit, und genaue +Erforschung der ursächlichen Zusammenhänge, noch +mehr aber regte sich seine geradherzige Offenheit +seine männliche Ehrlichkeit, wenn er hinter den fein +verstrichenen Farben der Rankeschen Erzählungsbilder +die gedeckte Haltung des klugen Diplomaten +zu entdecken glaubte.—<span class="smcap">Haym</span>, <i>Duncker's Leben</i>, 437. +The ground of criticism is indeed, in my opinion, +nothing else but distinct attention, which every reader +should endeavour to be master of.—<span class="smcap">Hare</span>, <i>Dec.</i>, 1736,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> +<i>Warburton's Works</i>, 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 lösen oder +vorzubereiten.—<span class="smcap">Droysen</span>, <i>Historik</i>, 18.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> L'esprit scientifique n'est autre en soi que l'instinct +du travail et de la patience, le sentiment de l'ordre, +de la réalité et de la mesure.—<span class="smcap">Papillon</span>, <i>R. des Deux +Mondes</i>, 1873, v. 704. Non seulement les sciences, +mais toutes les institutions humaines s'organisent de +même, et sous l'empire des mêmes idées régulatrices.—<span class="smcap">Cournot</span>, +<i>Idées Fondamentales</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Ruskin</span>, <i>Seven Lamps</i>, 4. The sum +total of all intellectual excellence is good sense and +method. When these have passed into the instinctive +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.—<span class="smcap">Coleridge</span>, +<i>June</i>, 1814, <i>Mem. of Coleorton</i>, ii. 172. Si +l'exercice d'un art nous empêche d'en apprendre un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +autre, il n'en est pas ainsi dans les sciences: la connoissance +d'une vérité nous aide à en decouvrir une +autre.—Toutes les sciences sont tellement liées +ensemble qu'il est bien plus facile de les apprendre +toutes à la fois que d'en apprendre une seule en la +détachant des autres.—Il ne doit songer qu'à augmenter +les lumières naturelles de sa raison, non pour résoudre +telle ou telle difficulté de l'école, mais pour que dans +chaque circonstance de la vie son intelligence montre +d'avance à sa volonté le parti qu'elle doit prendre.—<span class="smcap">Descartes</span>, +<i>Œuvres Choisies</i>, 300, 301. <i>Règles pour +la Direction de l'Esprit.</i> La connaissance de la méthode +qui a guidé l'homme de génie n'est pas moins utile au +progrès de la science et même à sa propre gloire, que +ses découvertes.—<span class="smcap">Laplace</span>, <i>Système du Monde</i>, ii. 371. +On ne fait rien sans idées préconçues, il faut avoir +seulement la sagesse de ne croire à leurs déductions +qu'autant que l'expérience les confirme. Les idées +préconçues, soumises au contrôle sévère de l'expérimentation, +sont la flamme vivante des sciences d'observation; +les idées fixes en sont le danger.—<span class="smcap">Pasteur</span>, +in <i>Histoire d'un Savant</i>, 284. Douter des vérités +humaines, c'est ouvrir la porte aux découvertes; en +faire des articles de foi, c'est la fermer.—<span class="smcap">Dumas</span>, +<i>Discours</i>, i. 123.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> 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 discussions +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +into our moulds. We call you here on an excursion, +on an adventure, on a voyage of discovery into space +as yet uncharted.—<span class="smcap">Allbutt</span>, <i>Introductory Address at +St. George's</i>, October 1889. Consistency in regard to +opinions is the slow poison of intellectual life.—<span class="smcap">Davy</span>, +<i>Memoirs</i>, 68.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Ce sont vous autres physiologistes des corps +vivants, qui avez appris à nous autres physiologistes +de la société (qui est aussi un corps vivant) la manière +de l'observer et de tirer des conséquences de nos +observations.—<span class="smcap">J. B. Say</span> to <span class="smcap">De Candolle</span>, June 1, +1827.—<span class="smcap">De Candolle</span>, <i>Mémoires</i>, 567.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Stubbs</span>, <i>Seventeen Lectures</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Caird</span>, <i>Evolution of Religion</i>, ii. 43. +It is the property of truth to be fearless, and to +prove victorious over every adversary. Sound reasoning +and truth, when adequately communicated, must +always be victorious over error.—<span class="smcap">Godwin</span>, <i>Political +Justice</i> (Conclusion). Vice was obliged to retire and +give place to virtue. This will always be the consequence +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.—<span class="smcap">Franklin</span>, +<i>Works</i>, ii. 292. It is a condition of our race +that we must ever wade through error in our advance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +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.—<span class="smcap">Babbage</span>, <i>Bridgewater +Treatise</i>, 27. Les hommes ne peuvent, en quelque +genre que ce soit, arriver à quelque chose de raisonnable +qu'après avoir, en ce même genre, épuisé toutes +les sottises imaginables. Que de sottises ne dirions-nous +pas maintenant, si les anciens ne les avaient pas +déjà dites avant nous, et ne nous les avaient, pour +ainsi dire, enlevées!—<span class="smcap">Fontenelle</span>. Without premature +generalisations the true generalisation would +never be arrived at.—<span class="smcap">H. Spencer</span>, <i>Essays</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Brown</span>, <i>Philosophy of the +Human Mind</i>, i. 48, 1824. Parmi les châtiments du +crime qui ne lui manquent jamais, à côté de celui que +lui inflige la conscience, l'histoire lui en inflige un +autre encore, éclatant et manifeste, l'impuissance.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, +<i>Phil. Mod.</i> 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 très longtemps.—<span class="smcap">Renan</span>, +<i>Feuilles Détachées</i>, xiii. Toutes les fois que deux +hommes sont d'un avis contraire sur la même chose, à +coup sûr, l'un ou l'autre se trompe; bien plus, aucun +ne semble posséder la vérité; car si les raisons de +l'un étoient certaines et évidentes, il pourroit les<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +exposer à l'autre de telle manière qu'il finiroit par le +convaincre également.—<span class="smcap">Descartes</span>, <i>Règles: Œuvres +Choisies</i>, 302. Le premier principe de la critique est +qu'une doctrine ne captive ses adhérents que par ce +qu'elle a de légitime.—<span class="smcap">Renan</span>, <i>Essais de Morale</i>, 184. +Was dem Wahn solche Macht giebt ist wirklich nicht +er selbst, sondern die ihm zu Grunde liegende und +darin nur verzerrte Wahrheit.—<span class="smcap">Frantz</span>, <i>Schelling's +Philosophie</i>, i. 62. Quand les hommes ont vu une fois la +vérité dans son éclat, ils ne peuvent plus l'oublier. Elle +reste debout, et tôt ou tard elle triomphe, parce +qu'elle est la pensée de Dieu et le besoin du monde.—<span class="smcap">Mignet</span>, +<i>Portraits</i>, ii. 295. C'est toujours le sens +commun inaperçu qui fait la fortune des hypothèses +auxquelles il se mêle.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, <i>Fragments Phil.</i> i. 51. +Preface of 1826. Wer da sieht wie der Irrthum selbst +ein Träger mannigfaltigen und bleibenden Fortschritts +wird, der wird auch nicht so leicht aus dem thatsächlichen +Fortschritt der Gegenwart auf Unumstösslichkeit +unserer Hypothesen schliessen.—Das +richtigste Resultat der geschichtlichen Betrachtung +ist die akademische Ruhe, mit welcher unsere Hypothesen +und Theorieen ohne Feindschaft und ohne +Glauben als das betrachtet werden was sie sind; als +Stufen in jener unendlichen Annäherung an die +Wahrheit, welche die Bestimmung unserer intellectuellen +Entwicklung zu sein scheint.—<span class="smcap">Lange</span>, +<i>Geschichte des Materialismus</i>, 502, 503. +Hominum errores divina providentia reguntur, ita ut +sæpe male jacta bene cadant.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span>, ed. Klopp, i., +p. lii. Sainte-Beuve n'était même pas de la race des<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +libéraux, c'est-à-dire de ceux qui croient que, tout +compte fait, et dans un état de civilisation donné, le +bien triomphe du mal à armes égales, et la vérité de +l'erreur.—<span class="smcap">D'Haussonville</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, +1875, 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.—<span class="smcap">Torrens</span>, <i>Essay on the Production of +Wealth</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">L. Stephen</span>, +<i>Apology of an Agnostic</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">S. Smith</span>, <i>Moral Philosophy</i>, +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 discoveries.—<span class="smcap">Young</span>, +<i>Works</i>, iii. 621. Error is almost +always partial truth, and so consists in the exaggeration +or distortion of one verity by the suppression of +another, which qualifies and modifies the former.—<span class="smcap">Mivart</span>, +<i>Genesis of Species</i>, 3. The attainment of +scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, +by the help of scientific errors.—<span class="smcap">Huxley: Ward</span>, +<i>Reign of Victoria</i>, ii. 337. Jede neue tief eingreifende +Wahrheit hat meiner Ansicht nach erst das Stadium +der Einseitigkeit durchzumachen.—<span class="smcap">Ihering</span>, <i>Geist des +R. Rechts</i>, ii. 22. The more readily we admit the +possibility of our own cherished convictions being +mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +is right in them will become.—<span class="smcap">Ruskin</span>, <i>Ethics of the +Dust</i>, 225. They hardly grasp the plain truth unless +they examine the error which it cancels.—<span class="smcap">Cory</span>, +<i>Modern English History</i>, 1880, i. 109. Nur durch +Irrthum kommen wir, der eine kürzeren und glücklicheren +Schrittes, als der andere, zur Wahrheit; +und die Geschichte darf nirgends diese Verirrungen +übergehen, wenn sie Lehrerin und Warnerin für die +nachfolgenden Geschlechter werden will.—<i>Münchner +Gel. Anzeigen</i>, 1840, i. 737.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> 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 Aufheben +im philosophischen Sinne ist.—<span class="smcap">Strauss</span>, <i>Hallische +Jahrbücher</i>, 1839, 120.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Dans tous les livres qu'il lit, et il en dévore des +quantités, Darwin ne note que les passages qui contrarient +ses idées systématiques.—Il collectionne les +difficultés, les cas épineux, les critiques possibles.—<span class="smcap">Vernier</span>, +<i>Le Temps</i>, 6 Décembre, 1887. Je demandais +à un savant célèbre où il en était de ses recherches. +“Cela ne marche plus,” me dit-il, “je ne trouve plus +de faits contradictoires.” Ainsi le savant cherche à se +contredire lui-même pour faire avancer sa pensée.—<span class="smcap">Janet</span>, +<i>Journal des Savants</i>, 1892, 20. Ein Umstand, +der uns die Selbständigkeit des Ganges der Wissenschaft +anschaulich machen kann, ist auch der: dass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +der Irrthum, wenn er nur gründlich behandelt wird, +fast ebenso fördernd ist als das Finden der Wahrheit, +denn er erzeugt fortgesetzten Widerspruch.—<span class="smcap">Baer</span>, +<i>Blicke auf die Entwicklung der Wissenschaft</i>, 120. It +is only by virtue of the opposition which it has surmounted +that any truth can stand in the human mind.—<span class="smcap">Bishop +Temple; Kinglake</span>, <i>Crimea</i>, <i>Winter Troubles</i>, +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.—<span class="smcap">Hare</span>, +<i>Means of Unity</i>, i. 19. Kant had a harder struggle +with himself than he could possibly have had with any +critic or opponent of his philosophy.—<span class="smcap">Caird</span>, <i>Philosophy +of Kant</i>, 1889, i. p. ix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> 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 postulate +of modern speculation.—<span class="smcap">L. Stephen</span>, <i>Science of +Ethics</i>, 31. Wie in dem Leben des Einzelnen Menschen +kein Augenblick eines vollkommenen Stillstandes +wahrgenommen wird, sondern stete organische Entwicklung, +so verhält es sich auch in dem Leben +der Völker, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> +Erzeugung aus innerer Kraft und Nothwendigkeit, +unabhängig von Zufall und individueller Willkür, +wie die ursprüngliche Entstehung.—<span class="smcap">Savigny</span>, <i>System</i>, +i. 16, 17. Seine eigene Entdeckung, dass auch die +geistige Produktion, bis in einem gewissen Punkte +wenigstens, unter dem Gesetze der Kausalität steht, +dass jedeiner nur geben kann was er hat, nur hat was +er irgendwoher bekommen, muss auch für ihn selber +gelten.—<span class="smcap">Bekker</span>, <i>Das Recht des Besitzes bei den +Römern</i>, 3, 1880. Die geschichtliche Wandlung des +Rechts, in welcher vergangene Jahrhunderte halb ein +Spiel des Zufalls und halb ein Werk vernünftelnder +Willkür sahen, als gesetzmässige Entwickelung zu begreifen, +war das unsterbliche Verdienst der von Männern +wie Savigny, Eichhorn und Jacob Grimm geführten +historischen Rechtsschule.—<span class="smcap">Gierke</span>, <i>Rundschau</i>, +xviii. 205.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> The only effective way of studying what is called +the philosophy of religion, or the philosophical criticism +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.—<span class="smcap">M. +Müller</span>, <i>Theosophy</i>, 3, 4. La théologie ne doit +plus être que l'histoire des efforts spontanés tentés +pour résoudre le problème divin. L'histoire, en effet, +est la forme nécessaire de la science de tout ce qui +est soumis aux lois de la vie changeante et successive. +La science de l'esprit humain, c'est de même, l'histoire +de l'esprit humain.—<span class="smcap">Renan</span>, <i>Averroës</i>, Pref. vi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Political economy is not a science, in any strict +sense, but a body of systematic knowledge gathered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +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.—<span class="smcap">Bonamy +Price</span>, <i>Social Science Congress</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Ingram</span>, <i>History of Political +Economy</i>, 2. Wir dagegen stehen keinen Augenblick an, +die Nationalökonomie für eine reine Erfahrungswissenschaft +zu erklären, und die Geschichte ist uns +daher nicht Hülfsmittel, sondern Gegenstand selber.—<span class="smcap">Roscher</span>, +<i>Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift</i>, 1849, i. 182. +Der bei weitem grösste Theil menschlicher Irrthümer +beruhet darauf, dass man zeitlich und örtlich Wahres +oder Heilsames für absolut wahr oder heilsam ausgiebt. +Für jede Stufe der Volksentwickelung passt +eine besondere Staatsverfassung, die mit allen übrigen +Verhältnissen des Volks als Ursache und Wirkung auf's +Innigste verbunden ist; so passt auch für jede +Entwickelungsstufe eine besondere Landwirthschaftsverfassung.—<span class="smcap">Roscher</span>, +<i>Archiv f. p. Oek.</i>, viii., 2 Heft +1845. Seitdem vor allen Roscher, Hildebrand und +Knies den Werth, die Berechtigung und die Nothwendigkeit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> +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 +Verhältnisse und die in ihnen sichtbaren Gesetze den +Blick gerichtet hatte, auch in die Vergangenheit, in die +Erforschung der bereits hinter uns liegenden wirthschaftlichen +Entwicklung der Völker sich vertiefen müsse.—<span class="smcap">Schönberg</span>, +<i>Jahrbücher f. Nationalökonomie und Statistik</i>, +Neue Folge, 1867, i. 1. Schmoller, moins dogmatique +et mettant comme une sorte de coquetterie à +être incertain, démontre, par les faits, la fausseté ou +l'arbitraire de tous ces postulats, et laisse l'économie +politique se dissoudre dans l'histoire.—<span class="smcap">Breton</span>, <i>R. de +Paris</i>, ix. 67. Wer die politische Oekonomie Feuerlands +unter dieselben Gesetze bringen wollte mit der +des heutigen Englands, würde damit augenscheinlich +nichts zu Tage fördern als den allerbanalsten Gemeinplatz. +Die politische Oekonomie ist somit wesentlich +eine historische Wissenschaft. Sie behandelt einen +geschichtlichen, das heisst einen stets wechselnden +Stoff. Sie untersucht zunächst die besondern Gesetze +jeder einzelnen Entwicklungsstufe der Produktion und +des Austausches, und wird erst am Schluss dieser +Untersuchung die wenigen, für Produktion und +Austausch überhaupt geltenden, ganz allgemeinen +Gesetze aufstellen können.—<span class="smcap">Engels</span>, <i>Dührings +Umwälzung der Wissenschaft</i>, 1878, 121.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> History preserves the student from being led +astray by a too servile adherence to any system.—<span class="smcap">Wolowski</span>. +No system can be anything more than a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +history, not in the order of impression, but in the order +of arrangement by analogy.—<span class="smcap">Davy</span>, <i>Memoirs</i>, 68. +Avec des matériaux si nombreux et si importants, il +fallait bien du courage pour résister à la tentation de +faire un système. De Saussure eut ce courage, et +nous en ferons le dernier trait et le trait principal de +son éloge.—<span class="smcap">Cuvier</span>, <i>Éloge de Saussure</i>, 1810.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> C'était, en 1804, une idée heureuse et nouvelle, +d'appeler l'histoire au secours de la science, d'interroger +les deux grandes écoles rivales au profit de +la vérité.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, <i>Fragments Littéraires</i>, 1843, 95, +on Dégerando. 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.—<span class="smcap">Cliffe Leslie</span>, <i>Essays in +Political and Moral Philosophy</i>, 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 history, +in the manifested progress of the human mind.—<span class="smcap">Sir +William Hamilton</span>, <i>Edin. Rev.</i> l. 200, 1829. +Il n'est point d'étude plus instructive, plus utile que +l'étude de l'histoire de la philosophie; car on y +apprend à se désabuser des philosophes, et l'on y désapprend +la fausse science de leurs systèmes.—<span class="smcap">Royer +Collard</span>, <i>Œuvres de Reid</i>, iv. 426. On ne peut +guère échapper à la conviction que toutes les solutions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +des questions philosophiques n'aient été développées +ou indiquées avant le commencement du dix-neuvième +siècle, et que par conséquent il ne soit très difficile, pour +ne pas dire impossible, de tomber, en pareille matière, sur +une idée neuve de quelque importance. Or si cette conviction +est fondée, il s'ensuit que la science est faite.—<span class="smcap">Jouffroy</span>, +in <span class="smcap">Damiron</span>, <i>Philosophie du XIX<sup>e</sup> Siècle</i>, 363. +Le but dernier de tous mes efforts, l'âme de mes écrits et +de tout mon enseignement, c'est l'identité de la philosophie +et de son histoire.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, <i>Cours de 1829</i>. +Ma route est historique, il est vrai, mais mon but est +dogmatique; je tends à une théorie, et cette théorie je +la demande à l'histoire.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, <i>Ph. du XVIII<sup>e</sup> +Siècle</i>, 15. L'histoire de la philosophie est contrainte +d'emprunter d'abord à la philosophie la lumière qu'elle +doit lui rendre un jour avec usure.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, <i>Du Vrai</i>, +1855, 14. M. Cousin, durant tout son professorat +de 1816 à 1829, a pensé que l'histoire de la philosophie +était la source de la philosophie même. Nous +ne croyons pas exagérer en lui prêtant cette opinion.—<span class="smcap">B. +St. Hilaire</span>, <i>Victor Cousin</i>, i. 302. Il se hâta de +convertir le fait en loi, et proclama que la philosophie, +étant identique à son histoire, ne pouvait avoir une loi +différente, et était vouée à jamais à l'évolution fatale +des quatre systèmes, se contredisant toujours, mais se +limitant, et se modérant, par cela même de manière à +maintenir l'equilibre, sinon l'harmonie de la pensée +humaine.—<span class="smcap">Vacherot</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 1868, +iii. 957. Er hat überhaupt das unvergängliche Verdienst, +zuerst in Frankreich zu der Erkenntniss gelangt zu +sein, dass die menschliche Vernunft nur durch das<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> +Studium des Gesetzes ihrer Entwickelungen begriffen +werden kann.—<span class="smcap">Lauser</span>, <i>Unsere Zeit</i>, 1868, i. +459. Le philosophe en quête du vrai en soi, +n'est plus réduit à ses conceptions individuelles; +il est riche du trésor amassé par l'humanité.—<span class="smcap">Boutroux</span>, +<i>Revue Politique</i>, xxxvii. 802. L'histoire, +je veux dire l'histoire de l'esprit humain, est en +ce sens la vraie philosophie de notre temps.—<span class="smcap">Renan</span>, +<i>Études de Morale</i>, 83. Die Philosophie wurde +eine höchst bedeutende Hülfswissenschaft der Geschichte, +sie hat ihre Richtung auf das Allgemeine gefördert, +ihren Blick für dasselbe geschärft, und sie, wenigstens +durch ihre Vermittlung, mit Gesichtspuncten, +Ideen, bereichert die sie aus ihrem eigenen Schoosse +sobald noch nicht erzeugt haben würde. Weit die +fruchtbarste darunter war die aus der Naturwissenschaft +geschöpfte Idee des organischen Lebens, dieselbe auf +der die neueste Philosophie selbst beruht. Die seit zwei +bis drei Jahrzehnten in der Behandlung der Geschichte +eingetretene durchgreifende Veränderung, wie die +völlige Umgestaltung so mancher anderen Wissenschaft +... ist der Hauptsache nach ihr Werk.—<span class="smcap">Haug</span>, <i>Allgemeine +Geschichte</i>, 1841, i. 22. Eine Geschichte der Philosophie +in eigentlichen Sinne wurde erst möglich 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 Fortschreiten +zur Wahrheit nachwies. Die Gesammtheit +der Philosophie stellt sich also dar als eine geschichtliche +Einheit.—<span class="smcap">Saul</span>, <i>Rundschau</i>, Feb. 1894, 307.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> +Warum die Philosophie eine Geschichte habe und +haben müsse, blieb unerörtert, ja ungeahnt, dass die +Philosophie am meisten von allen Wissenschaften +historisch sei, denn man hatte in der Geschichte den +Begriff der Entwicklung nicht entdeckt.—<span class="smcap">Marbach</span>, +<i>Griechische Philosophie</i>, 15. Was bei oberflächlicher +Betrachtung nur ein Gewirre einzelner Personen und +Meinungen zu sein schien, zeigt sich bei genauerer +und gründlicherer Untersuchung als eine geschichtliche +Entwicklung, in der alles, bald näher, bald +entfernter, mit allem anderen zusammenhängt.—<span class="smcap">Zeller</span>, +<i>Rundschau</i>, Feb. 1894, 307. Nur die +Philosophie, die an die geschichtliche Entwickelung +anknüpft kann auf bleibenden Erfolg auch für 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 Philosophie überhaupt und +insbesondere die Metaphysik ihrer eigenen geschichtlichen +Entwickelung nicht entschlagen, sondern hat +eine Geschichte der Philosophie als eigene und zwar +zugleich historische und spekulative Disziplin, in deren +geschichtlichen Entwickelungsphasen und geschichtlich +aufeinanderfolgenden Systemen der Philosophen +die neuere Spekulation seit Schelling and Hegel zugleich +die Philosophie selbst als ein die verschiedenen +geschichtlichen Systeme umfassendes ganzes in seiner +dialektischen Gliederung erkannt hat.—<span class="smcap">Gloatz</span>, +<i>Spekulative Theologie</i>, i. 23. Die heutige Philosophie +führt uns auf einen Standpunkt von dem aus die +philosophische Idee als das innere Wesen der Geschichte<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +selbst erscheint. So trat an die Stelle einer +abstrakt philosophischen Richtung, welche das Geschichtliche +verneinte, eine abstrakt geschichtliche +Richtung welche das Philosophische verläugnete. +Beide Richtungen sind als überschrittene und besiegte +zu betrachten.—<span class="smcap">Berner</span>, <i>Strafrecht</i>, 75. Die Geschichte +der Philosophie hat uns fast schon die Wissenschaft +der Philosophie selbst ersetzt.—<span class="smcap">Hermann</span>, <i>Phil. +Monatshefte</i>, ii. 198, 1889.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Le siècle actuel sera principalement caractérisé +par l'irrévocable prépondérance de l'histoire, en philosophie, +en politique, et même en poésie.—<span class="smcap">Comte</span>, +<i>Politique Positive</i>, iii. 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> The historical or comparative method has revolutionized +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 evolution +itself, with all its far-reaching consequences, +but the achievement of the historical method?—<span class="smcap">Prothero</span>, +<i>Inaugural</i>. <i>National Review</i>, <i>Dec.</i> 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 himself +anticipated.—<span class="smcap">Priestley</span>, <i>History of Vision</i>, 1772,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +i. Pref. i. Cuvier se proposait de montrer l'enchaînement +scientifique des découvertes, leurs relations avec +les grands évènements historiques, et leur influence +sur les progrès et le développement de la civilisation.—<span class="smcap">Dareste</span>, +<i>Biographie Générale</i>, xii. 685. +Dans ses éloquentes leçons, l'histoire des sciences est +devenue l'histoire même de l'esprit humain; car, +remontant aux causes de leurs progrès et de leurs +erreurs, c'est toujours dans les bonnes ou mauvaises +routes suivies par l'esprit humain, qu'il trouve ces +causes.—<span class="smcap">Flourens</span>, <i>Éloge de Cuvier</i>, 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 können.—Deswegen ist aber eine +solche Darstellung doch noch nicht der gesammten +Wissenschaft adäquat, 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 verständige Betrachtung der Geschichte der +Wissenschaften, welche diese selbst in stetem Flusse +zeigt und die Tendenz ihres Fortschreitens in offenbarer +und sicherer Weise klarlegt.—<span class="smcap">Rosenberger</span>, +<i>Geschichte der Physik</i>, iii., p. vi. Die Continuität in +der Ausbildung aller Auffassungen tritt um so deutlicher +hervor, je vollständiger man sich damit, wie sie zu +verschiedenen Zeiten waren, vertraut macht.—<span class="smcap">Kopp</span>, +<i>Entwickelung der Chemie</i>, 814.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Die Geschichte und die Politik sind Ein und +derselbe Janus mit dem Doppelgesicht, das in der<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> +Geschichte in die Vergangenheit, in der Politik in die +Zukunft hinschaut.—<span class="smcap">Gügler's</span> <i>Leben</i>, ii. 59.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Essex</span>, +<i>Letters</i>, 10, <i>Jan.</i> 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. Oates +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.—<span class="smcap">Defoe</span>, +<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, l. 403.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> La España será el primer pueblo en donde se +encenderá esta guerra patriotica que solo puede +libertar á Europa.—Hemos oido esto en Inglaterra á +varios de los que estaban alli presentes. Muchas +veces ha oido lo mismo al duque de Wellington el +general Don Miguel de Alava, y dicho duque refirió +el suceso en una comida diplomatica que dió en Paris +el duque de Richelieu en 1816.—<span class="smcap">Toreno</span>, <i>Historia +del Levantamiento de España</i>, 1838, i. 508.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">De Smedt</span>, +<i>Introductio ad historiam critice tractandam</i>, 1866, i. 5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Hundert schwere Verbrechen wiegen nicht so +schwer in der Schale der Unsittlichkeit, als ein +unsittliches Princip.—<i>Hallische Jahrbücher</i>, 1839, 308. +Il faut flétrir les crimes; mais il faut aussi, et +surtout, flétrir les doctrines et les systèmes qui tendent +à les justifier.—<span class="smcap">Mortimer Ternaux</span>, <i>Histoire de la +Terreur</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> 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 assaulting +it.—<span class="smcap">Stubbs</span>, <i>Seventeen Lectures</i>, 97.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Caeteris paribus, on trouvera tousjours que ceux +qui ont plus de puissance sont sujets à pécher +davantage; et il n'y a point de théorème de géométrie +qui soit plus asseuré que cette proposition.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span>, +1688, ed. Rommel, ii. 197. Il y a toujours eu de la +malignité dans la grandeur, et de l'opposition à l'esprit +de l'Évangile; mais maintenant il y en a plus que +jamais, et il semble que comme le monde va à sa fin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +celui qui est dans l'élévation fait tous ses efforts pour +dominer avec plus de tyrannie, et pour étouffer les +maximes du Christianisme et le règne de Jésus-Christ, +voiant qu'il s'approche.—<span class="smcap">Godeau</span>, <i>Lettres</i>, 423, +March 27, 1667. 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.—<span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span>, +June 22, 1817. <i>Letters of Lake Poets</i>, 369.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> I cieli han messo sulla terra due giudici delle +umane azioni, la coscienza e la storia.—<span class="smcap">Colletta</span>. +Wenn gerade die edelsten Männer um des Nachruhmes +willen gearbeitet haben, so soll die Geschichte ihre +Belohnung sein, sie auch die Strafe für die Schlechten.—<span class="smcap">Lasaulx</span>, +<i>Philosophie der Künste</i>, 211. Pour juger +ce qui est bon et juste dans la vie actuelle ou passée, +il faut posséder un criterium, qui ne soit pas tiré du +passé ou du présent, mais de la nature humaine.—<span class="smcap">Ahrens</span>, +<i>Cours de Droit Naturel</i>, i. 67.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> L'homme de notre temps! La conscience +moderne! Voilà encore de ces termes qui nous +ramènent la prétendue philosophie de l'histoire et la +doctrine du progrès, quand il s'agit de la justice, c'est-à-dire +de la conscience pure et de l'homme rationnel, +que d'autres siècles encore que le nôtre ont connu.—<span class="smcap">Renouvier</span>, +<i>Crit. Phil.</i> 1873, ii. 55.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Il faut pardonner aux grands hommes le marchepied +de leur grandeur.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, in <span class="smcap">J. Simon</span>, <i>Nos +Hommes d'État</i>, 1887, 55. L'esprit du XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle +n'a pas besoin d'apologie: l'apologie d'un siècle est +dans son existence.—<span class="smcap">Cousin</span>, <i>Fragments</i>, iii. 1826.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> +Suspendus aux lèvres éloquentes de M. Cousin, nous +l'entendîmes s'écrier que la meilleure cause l'emportait +toujours, que c'était la loi de l'histoire, le rhythme +immuable du progrès.—<span class="smcap">Gasparin</span>, <i>La Liberté Morale</i>, +ii. 63. Cousin verurtheilen heisst darum nichts +Anderes als jenen Geist historischer Betrachtung +verdammen, durch welchen das 19 Jahrhundert die +revolutionäre Kritik des 18 Jahrhunderts ergänzt, +durch welchen insbesondere Deutschland die geistigen +Wohlthaten vergolten hat, welche es im Zeitalter der +Aufklärung von seinen westlichen Nachbarn empfangen.—<span class="smcap">Iodl</span>, +<i>Gesch. der Ethik</i>, ii. 295. Der Gang der +Weltgeschichte steht ausserhalb der Tugend, des +Lasters, und der Gerechtigkeit.—<span class="smcap">Hegel</span>, <i>Werke</i>, viii. +425. Die Vermischung des Zufälligen im Individuum +mit dem an ihm Historischen führt zu +unzähligen falschen Ansichten und Urtheilen. Hierzu +gehört namentlich alles Absprechen über die moralische +Tüchtigkeit der Individuen, und die Verwunderung, +welche his zur Verzweiflung an göttlicher Gerechtigkeit +sich steigert, dass historisch grosse Individuen +moralisch nichtswürdig erscheinen können. Die +moralische Tüchtigkeit besteht in der Unterordnung +alles dessen was zufällig am Einzelnen unter das an +ihm dem Allgemeinen Angehörige.—<span class="smcap">Marbach</span>, +<i>Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie</i>, 7. Das Sittliche +der Neuseeländer, der Mexikaner ist vielmehr ebenso +sittlich, wie das der Griechen, der Römer; und das +Sittliche der Christen des Mittelalters ist ebenso +sittlich, wie das der Gegenwart.—<span class="smcap">Kirchmann</span>, +<i>Grundbegriffe des Rechts</i>, 194. Die Geschichtswissenschaft<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +als solche kennt nur ein zeitliches und mithin +auch nur ein relatives Maass der Dinge. Alle Werthbeurtheilung +der Geschichte kann daher nur relativ +und aus zeitlichen Momenten fliessen, und wer sich +nicht selbst täuschen und den Dingen nicht Gewalt +anthun will, muss ein für allemal in dieser Wissenschaft +auf absolute Werthe verzichten.—<span class="smcap">Lorenz</span>, +<i>Schlosser</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">De +Wette</span> to Sand's Mother, <span class="smcap">Cheyne</span>, <i>Founders of +Criticism</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Lecky</span>, <i>Value of History</i>, 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> La durée ici-bas, c'est le droit, c'est la sanction de +Dieu.—<span class="smcap">Guiraud</span>, <i>Philosophie Catholique de l'Histoire</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Ceux qui ne sont pas contens de l'ordre des +choses ne sçauroient se vanter d'aimer Dieu comme +il faut.—Il faut toujours estre content de l'ordre du +passé, parce qu'il est conforme à la volonté de Dieu +absolue, qu'on connoit par l'évènement. Il faut +tâcher de rendre l'avenir, autant qu'il dépend de nous, +conforme à la volonté de Dieu présomptive.—<span class="smcap">Leibniz</span>, +<i>Werke</i>, ed. Gerhardt, ii. 136. Ich habe damals bekannt +und bekenne jetzt, dass die politische Wahrheit +aus denselben Quellen zu schöpfen ist, wie alle anderen, +aus dem göttlichen Willen und dessen Kundgebung +in der Geschichte des Menschengeschlechts.—<span class="smcap">Radowitz</span>, +<i>Neue Gespräche</i>, 65.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> A man is great as he contends best with the +circumstances of his age.—<span class="smcap">Froude</span>, <i>Short Studies</i> i.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> +388. La persuasion que l'homme est avant tout une +personne morale et libre, et qu'ayant conçu seul, dans +sa conscience et devant Dieu, la règle de sa conduite, +il doit s'employer tout entier à l'appliquer en lui, hors +de lui, absolument, obstinément, inflexiblement, par une +résistance perpétuelle opposée aux autres; et par une +contrainte perpétuelle exercée sur soi, voilà la grande +idée anglaise.—<span class="smcap">Taine; Sorel</span>, <i>Discours de Réception</i>, +24. In jeder Zeit des Christenthums hat es einzelne +Männer gegeben, die über ihrer Zeit standen und von +ihren Gegensätzen nicht berührt wurden.—<span class="smcap">Bachmann</span>, +<i>Hengstenberg</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Hobbes</span>, +quoted by <span class="smcap">De Morgan</span>, June 3, 1858, <i>Life of Sir +W. R. Hamilton</i>, iii. 552.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> 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 admiration +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.—<span class="smcap">Campbell's</span> +<i>Lives of the Chief Justices</i>, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +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.—<span class="smcap">Palfrey</span>, +<i>New England</i>, iv. 127, 129 (also speaking +of witchcraft). Il est donc bien étrange que sa +sévérité tardive s'exerce aujourd'hui sur un homme +auquel elle n'a d'autre reproche à faire que d'avoir +trop bien servi l'état par des mesures politiques, +injustes peut-être, violentes, mais qui, en aucune +manière, n'avaient l'intérêt personnel du coupable +pour objet.—M. Hastings peut sans doute paraître +répréhensible aux yeux des étrangers, des particuliers +même, mais il est assez extraordinaire qu'une nation +usurpatrice d'une partie de l'Indostan veuille mêler +les règles de la morale à celles d'une administration +forcée, injuste et violente par essence, et à laquelle il +faudrait renoncer à jamais pour être conséquent.—<span class="smcap">Mallet +du Pan</span>, <i>Memories</i>, ed. Sayous, i. 102.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> On parle volontiers de la stabilité de la constitution +anglaise. La vérité est que cette constitution est +toujours en mouvement et en oscillation et qu'elle se +prête merveilleusement au jeu de ses différentes parties. +Sa solidité vient de sa souplesse; elle plie et ne rompt +pas.—<span class="smcap">Boutmy</span>, <i>Nouvelle Revue</i>, 1878, 49.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> 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.—<i>Savile Correspondence</i>, +173.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Cette proposition: L'homme est incomparablement +plus porté 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 +métaphysique. Il est donc incomparablement plus +probable qu'une action faite par un homme, est +mauvaise, qu'il n'est probable qu'elle soit bonne. +Il est incomparablement plus probable que ces +secrets ressorts qui l'ont produite sont corrompus, +qu'il n'est probable qu'ils soient honnêtes. +Je vous avertis que je parle d'une action qui n'est +point mauvaise extérieurement.—<span class="smcap">Bayle</span>, <i>Œuvres</i>, +ii. 248.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> A Christian is bound by his very creed to suspect +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.—<span class="smcap">Mozley</span>, +<i>Essays</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Mozley</span>, +<i>Letters</i>, 333. Les critiques, même malveillants, sont +plus près de la vérité dernière que les admirateurs.—<span class="smcap">Nisard</span>, +<i>Lit. fr.</i>, Conclusion. Les hommes supérieurs +doivent nécessairement passer pour méchants. Où +les autres ne voient ni un défaut, ni un ridicule,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +ni un vice, leur implacable œil l'aperçoit.—<span class="smcap">Barbey +d'Aurevilly</span>, <i>Figaro</i>, March 31, 1888.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Prenons garde de ne pas trop expliquer, pour +ne pas fournir des arguments à ceux qui veulent tout +excuser.—<span class="smcap">Broglie</span>, <i>Réception de Sorel</i>, 46.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Froude</span>, <i>Inaugural Lecture at +St. Andrews</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Carlyle</span> to +<span class="smcap">Froude</span>, <i>Longman's Magazine</i>, 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.—<span class="smcap">Fitch</span>, <i>Lectures on Teaching</i>, +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.—<span class="smcap">Greg</span>, <i>Essays on Political and Social Science</i>, +1853, i. 562. La volonté de tout un peuple ne peut +rendre juste ce qui est injuste: les représentants +d'une nation n'ont pas le droit de faire ce que la +nation n'a pas le droit de faire elle-même.—<span class="smcap">B. +Constant</span>, <i>Principes de Politique</i>, i. 15.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Sir Thomas +Browne</span>, <i>Works</i>, iv. 64.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Osons croire qu'il seroit plus à propos de mettre +de côté ces traditions, ces usages, et ces coutumes +souvent si imparfaites, si contradictoires, si incohérentes, +ou de ne les consulter que pour saisir les inconvéniens +et les éviter; et qu'il faudroit chercher +non-seulement les éléments d'une nouvelle législation, +mais même ses derniers détails dans une étude approfondie +de la morale.—<span class="smcap">Letrosne</span>, <i>Réflexions sur la +Législation Criminelle</i>, 137. M. Renan appartient à +cette famille d'esprits qui ne croient pas en réalité la +raison, la conscience, le droit applicables à la direction +des sociétés humaines, et qui demandent à l'histoire, +à la tradition, non à la morale, les règles de la politique. +Ces esprits sont atteints de la maladie du +siècle, le scepticisme moral.—<span class="smcap">Pillon</span>, <i>Critique Philosophique</i>, +i. 49.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> 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.—<span class="smcap">Arnold</span>, +<i>Modern History</i>, 311.</p></div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Lecture on the Study of History, by Lord Acton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY *** + +***** This file should be named 25720-h.htm or 25720-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/7/2/25720/ + +Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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