History: Lectures in Modern History

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LECTURES ON MODERN HISTORY

by

LORD ACTON (JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON)







INAUGURAL LECTURE

ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

Delivered at Cambridge, June 1895

FELLOW STUDENTS--I look back today to a time before the middle of
the century, when I was 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.

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

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

"Politics," said Sir John Seeley, "are vulgar when they are not
liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature
when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics."
Everybody perceives the sense in which this is true.  For the
science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the
stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of a river;
and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by
experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action
and a power that goes to the making of the future #1.  In France,
such is the weight attached to the study of our own time, that
there is an appointed course of contemporary history, with
appropriate text-books #2.  That is a chair which, in the progressive
division of labour by which both science and government prosper #3,
may some day be founded in this country.  Meantime, we do well to
acknowledge the points at which the two epochs diverge.  For the
contemporary differs from the modern in this, that many of its
facts cannot by us be definitely ascertained.  The living do not
give up their secrets with the candour of the dead; one key is
always excepted, and a generation passes before we can ensure
accuracy.  Common report and outward seeming are bad copies of the
reality, as the initiated know it.  Even of a thing so memorable
as the war of 1870, the true cause is still obscure; much that we
believed has been scattered to the winds in the last six months,
and further revelations by important witnesses are about to
appear.  The use of history turns far more on certainty than on
abundance of acquired information.

Beyond the question of certainty is the 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 #4.  For a man is justly despised who has one
opinion in history and another in politics, one for abroad and
another at home, one for opposition and another for office.
History compels 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 of ideas, which are not the effect
but the cause of public events #5; and even to allow some priority
to ecclesiastical history over civil, since, by reason of the
graver issues concerned, and the vital 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 #6.

In the same manner, there is wisdom and depth in the philosophy which
always considers the origin and the germ, and glories in history as
one consistent epic #7.  Yet every student ought to know that mastery
is acquired by resolved limitation.  And confusion ensues from the
theory of Montesquieu and of his school, who, adapting the same term
to things unlike, insist that freedom is the primitive condition of
the race from which we are sprung #8.  If we are to account mind not
matter, ideas not force, the spiritual property that gives dignity and
grace and intellectual value to history, and its action on the
ascending life of man, then we shall not be prone to explain the
universal by the national, and civilisation by custom #9.  A speech of
Antigone, a single sentence of Socrates, a few lines that were
inscribed on an Indian rock before the Second Punic War, the footsteps
of a silent yet prophetic people who dwelt by the Dead Sea, and
perished in the fall of Jerusalem, come nearer to our lives than the
ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine on the Hercynian
acorns.

For our present purpose, then, I describe as Modern History that which
begins four hundred years ago, which is marked off by an evident and
intelligible line from the time immediately preceding, and displays in
its course specific and distinctive characteristics of its own #10.
The modern age did not proceed from the medieval 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 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 #11, and governed by usage and the will of masters who were in
their graves, the sixteenth century went forth armed for untried
experience, and ready to watch with hopefulness a prospect of
incalculable change.

That forward movement divides it broadly from the older world;
and the unity of the new is manifest in the universal spirit of
investigation and discovery which did not cease to operate, and
withstood the recurring efforts of reaction, until, by the advent
of the reign of general ideas which we call the Revolution, it at
length prevailed #12.  This successive 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 #13.  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 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 #14.  As
time went on, the atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened,
until, in the Renaissance, the art of exposing falsehood dawned
upon keen Italian minds.  It was then that History as we
understand it began to be understood, and the illustrious dynasty
of scholars arose to whom we still look both for method and
material.  Unlike the dreaming prehistoric world, ours knows the
need and the duty to make itself master of the earlier times, and
to forfeit nothing of their wisdom or their warnings #15, and has
devoted its best energy and treasure to the sovereign purpose of
detecting error and vindicating entrusted truth #16.

In this epoch of full-grown history men have not acquiesced in
the given conditions of their lives.  Taking little for granted
they have sought to know the ground they stand on, and the road
they travel, and the reason why.  Over them, therefore, the
historian has obtained an increasing ascendancy #17.  The law of
stability was overcome by the power of ideas, constantly varied
and rapidly renewed #18; ideas that give life and motion, that take
wing and traverse seas and frontiers, making it futile to pursue
the consecutive order of events in the seclusion of a separate
nationality #19.  They compel us to share the existence of societies
wider than our own, to be familiar with distant and exotic types,
to hold our march upon the loftier summits, along the central
range, to live in the company of heroes, and saints, and men of
genius, that no single country could produce.  We cannot afford
wantonly to lose sight of great men and memorable lives, and are
bound to store up objects for admiration as far as may be #20; for
the effect of implacable research is 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 Fenelon, the cherished model of
politicians, ecclesiastics, and men of letters, the witness
against one century and precursor of another, the advocate of the
poor against oppression, of liberty in an age of arbitrary power,
of tolerance in an age of persecution, of the humane virtues
among men accustomed to sacrifice them to authority, the man of
whom one enemy says that his cleverness was enough to strike
terror, and another, that genius poured in torrents from his
eyes.  For the minds that are greatest and best alone furnish the
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 #21, to choose
the star that guides his course, to correct, and test, and assay
his convictions by the light within #22, and, with a resolute
conscience and ideal courage, to remodel and reconstitute the
character which birth and education gave him #23.

For ourselves, if it were not the quest of the higher level and
the extended horizon, international history would be imposed by
the exclusive and insular reason that parliamentary reporting is
younger than parliaments.  The foreigner has no mystic fabric in
his government, and no arcanum imperii.  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 develop 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 political
science to every man who can read.  And the discussions of
constituent assemblies, at Philadelphia, Versailles and Paris, at
Cadiz and Brussels, at Geneva, Frankfort and Berlin, above nearly
all, those of the most enlightened States in the American Union,
when they have recast their institutions, are paramount in the
literature of politics, and proffer treasures which at home we
have never enjoyed.

To historians the later part of their enormous subject is
precious because it is inexhaustible.  It is the best to know
because it is the best known and the most explicit.  Earlier
scenes stand out from a background of obscurity.  We soon reach
the sphere of hopeless ignorance and unprofitable doubt.  But
hundreds and even thousands of the moderns have borne 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.  Part of the lives of Luther and Frederic, a little of the
Thirty Years' War, much of the American Revolution and the French
Restoration, the early years of Richelieu and Mazarin, and a few
volumes of Mr. Gardiner, show here and there like Pacific islands
in the ocean.  I should not even venture to claim for Ranke, the
real 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 #24.  The Vatican
archives alone, now made accessible to the world, filled 3239
cases when 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
develop learning at the expense of writing, and to accomplish a
revolution in other sciences as well.

To men in general I would justify the stress I am laying on
Modern History, neither by urging its varied wealth, nor the
rupture with precedent, nor the perpetuity of change and increase
of pace, nor the growing predominance of opinion over belief, and
of knowledge over opinion, but by the argument that it is a
narrative told of ourselves, the record of a life which is our
own, of efforts not yet abandoned to repose, of problems that
still entangle the feet and vex the hearts of men.  Every part of
it is weighty with inestimable 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 #25.  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 #27.  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 #28.

The first of human concerns is religion, and it is the salient
feature of the modern centuries.  They are signalised as the
scene of Protestant developments.  Starting from a time of
extreme 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, and the area of settled questions emerged, much of the
dispute was abandoned to the serene and soothing touch of
historians, invested as they are with the prerogative of
redeeming the cause of religion from many unjust reproaches, and
from the graver evils of reproaches that are just.  Ranke used to
say that Church interests prevailed in politics until the Seven
Years' War, and marked a phase of society that ended when the
hosts of Brandenburg went into action at Leuthen, chaunting their
Lutheran hymns #29.  That bold proposition would be disputed even if
applied to the present age.  After Sir Robert Peel had broken up
his party, the leaders who followed him declared that no popery
was the only basis on which it could be reconstructed #30.  On the
other side may be urged that, in July 1870, at the outbreak of
the French war, the only government that insisted on the
abolition of the temporal power was Austria; and since then we
have witnessed the fall of Castelar, because he attempted to
reconcile Spain with Rome.

Soon after 1850 several of the most intelligent men in France,
struck by the arrested increase of their own population 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 centuries has favoured the new
elements; and the centre of gravity, moving from the Mediterranean
nations to the Oceanic, from the Latin to the Teuton, has also
passed from the Catholic to the Protestant #31.

Out of these controversies proceeded political as well as
historical science.  It was in the Puritan phase, before the
restoration 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 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 #32.
Thus was exchanged the dominion of will over will for the dominion
of reason over reason.  The true apostles of toleration are not
those who sought protection for their own beliefs, or who had none
to protect; but men to whom, irrespective of their cause, it was
a political, a moral, and a theological dogma, a question of
conscience involving both religion and policy #33.  Such a man was
Socinus; and others arose in the smaller sects--the Independent
founder of the colony of Rhode Island, and the Quaker patriarch
of Pennsylvania.  Much of the energy and zeal which had laboured
for authority of doctrine was employed for liberty of prophesying.
The air was filled with the enthusiasm of a new cry; but the cause
was still the same.  It became a boast that religion was the
mother of freedom, that freedom was the lawful offspring 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 feature of
the historic cycles before us.  Beginning with the strongest
religious movement and the most refined despotism ever known, it
has led to the superiority of politics over divinity in the life
of nations, and terminates in the equal claim of every man to be
unhindered by man in the fulfilment of duty to God #34--a doctrine
laden with storm and havoc, which is the secret essence of the
Rights of Man, and the indestructible soul of Revolution.

When we consider what the adverse forces were, their sustained
resistance, their frequent recovery, the critical 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
century.  And this constancy of 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 #35.  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 #36; Comte, the master
of better men, believed that we drag a lengthening chain under
the gathered weight of the dead hand #37; and many of our recent
classics--Carlyle, Newman, Froude--were persuaded that there is
no progress justifying the ways of God to man, and that the mere
consolidation of liberty is like the motion of creatures whose
advance is in the direction of their tails.  They deem that
anxious precaution against bad government is an obstruction to
good, and degrades morality and mind by placing the capable at
the mercy of the incapable, dethroning enlightened virtue for the
benefit of the average man.  They hold that great and salutary
things are done for mankind by power concentrated, not by power
balanced and cancelled and dispersed, and that the whig theory,
sprung from decomposing sects, the theory that authority is
legitimate only by virtue of its checks, and that the sovereign
is dependent on the subject, is rebellion against the divine will
manifested all down the stream of time.

I state the objection not that we may plunge into the crucial
controversy of a science that is not identical with ours, but in order
to make my drift clear by the defining aid of express contradiction.
No political dogma is as serviceable to my purpose here as the
historian's maxim to do the best he can for the other side, and to
avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own.  Like the economic precept
laissez faire #38, 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
immaculate historians.  Otherwise there is virtue in the saying that a
historian is seen at his best when he does not appear #39.  Better for
us is the example of the Bishop of Oxford, who never lets us know what
he thinks of anything but the matter before him; and of his
illustrious French rival, Fustel de Coulanges, who said to an excited
audience: "Do not imagine you are listening to me; it is history
itself that speaks." #40  We can found no philosophy on the observation
of four hundred years, excluding three thousand.  It would be an
imperfect and a fallacious induction.  But I hope that even this
narrow and dis-edifying section of history will aid you to see that
the action of Christ who is risen on mankind whom he redeemed fails
not, but increases #41; that the wisdom of divine rule appears not in
the perfection but in the improvement of the world #42; and that
achieved liberty is the one ethical result that rests on the
converging and combined conditions of advancing civilisation #43.  Then
you will understand what a famous philosopher said, that History is
the true demonstration of Religion #44.

But what do people mean who proclaim that liberty is the palm,
and the prize, and the crown, seeing that it is an idea of which
there are two hundred definitions, and that this wealth of
interpretation has caused more bloodshed than anything, except
theology?  Is it Democracy as in France, or Federalism as in
America, or the national independence which bounds the Italian
view, or the reign of the fittest, which is the ideal of Germans #45?
I know not whether it will ever fall within my 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 #46, until the guardian of
rights developed into the guardian of duties which are the cause
of rights #47, and that which had been prized as the material
safeguard for treasures of earth became sacred as security for
things that are divine.  All that we require is a workday key to
history, and our present need can be supplied without pausing to
satisfy 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 possessions,
auxiliary churches, and inhuman laws, it reigns no more; that
commerce having risen against land, labour against wealth, the
State against the forces dominant in society #48, the division of
power against the State, the thought of individuals against the
practice of ages, neither authorities, nor minorities, nor
majorities can command implicit obedience; and, where there has
been long and arduous experience, a rampart of tried conviction
and accumulated knowledge, where there is a fair level of general
morality, education, courage, and self-restraint, there, if there
only, a society may be found that exhibits the condition of life
towards which, by elimination of failures, the world has been
moving through the allotted space #50.  You will know it by outward
signs: Representation, the extinction of slavery, the reign of
opinion, and the like; better still by less apparent evidences:
the security of the weaker groups #51 and the liberty of conscience,
which, effectually secured, secures the rest.

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 #52, 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 #53, what is to become of us, docile and
attentive students of the absorbing Past? The triumph of the
Revolutionist annuls the historian #54.  By its authentic exponents,
Jefferson and Sieyes, the Revolution of the last century repudiates
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 #55.  The dispensation under which we live and labour consists
first in the recoil from the negative spirit that rejected the law of
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 #56.  These are the two main arguments of the generation to
which we owe the notion and the scientific methods that make history
so unlike what it was to the survivors of the last century.
Severally, the innovators were not superior to the men of old.
Muratori was as widely read, Tillemont as accurate, Liebnitz as able,
Freret 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.

I would point to three things in particular, out of many, which
constitute the amended order.  Of the incessant deluge 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 #57.  Towards 1830 the documentary studies began on
a large scale, Austria leading the way.  Michelet, who claims,
towards 1836, to have been the pioneer #58, was preceded by such
rivals as Mackintosh, Bucholtz, and Mignet.  A new and more
productive period began thirty years later, when the war of 1859
laid open the spoils of Italy.  Every country in succession has
now been 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 Burner 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 #59.

These matters do not now concern us.  For our purpose, the main thing
to learn is not the art of accumulating material, but the sublimer art
of investigating it, of discerning truth from falsehood and certainty
from doubt.  It is by solidity of criticism more than by the plenitude
of erudition, that the study of history strengthens, and straightens,
and extends the mind #60.  And the accession of the critic in the place
of the indefatigable 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 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, in a
different and adapted sense of the word, may be called the higher
criticism, in comparison with the servile and often mechanical work of
pursuing statements to their root.  For a historian has to be treated
as a witness, and not believed unless his sincerity is established #61.
The maxim that a man must be presumed to be innocent until his guilt
is proved, was not made for him.

For us, then, the estimate of authorities, the weighing of
testimony, is more meritorious than the potential discovery of
new matter #62.  And modern history, which is the widest field of
application, is not the best to learn our business in; for it is
too wide, and the harvest has not been winnowed as in antiquity,
and further on to the Crusades.  It is better to examine what has
been done for questions that are compact and circumscribed, such
as the sources of Plutarch's Pericles, the two tracts on Athenian
government, the origin of the epistle to Diognetus, the date of
the life of St. Antony; and to learn from Schwegler how this
analytical work began.  More satisfying because more decisive has
been the critical treatment of the medieval 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
work.  As they are no longer living, I will say of two Cambridge
professors, Lightfoot and Hort, that they were critical scholars
whom neither Frenchman nor German has surpassed.

The third distinctive note of the 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 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 its 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 discreet
indifference, by secrecy in the matter of the black cap, history
might be lifted above contention, and made an accepted tribunal,
and the same for all #63.  If men were truly sincere, and delivered
judgment by no canons but those of evident morality, then Julian
would be 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 #64.

I speak of this school with reverence, for the good it has done, by
the assertion of historic truth and of its legitimate authority over
the minds of men.  It provides a 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
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 fallacies,
the prejudices, the exaggerations which perpetual contention and the
consequent precautions breed, we have made out for our opponents a
stronger and more impressive case than they present themselves #65.
Excepting one to which we are coming before I release you, there is
no precept less faithfully observed by historians.

Ranke is the representative of the age which instituted the
modern study of History.  He taught it to be critical, to be
colourless, and to be new.  We meet him at every step, and he
has done more for us than any other man.  There are stronger
books than any one of his, and some may have surpassed him in
political, religious, philosophic insight, in vividness of the
creative imagination, in originality, elevation, and depth of
thought; but by the extent of important work well executed, by
his influence on able men, and by the amount of knowledge which
mankind receives and employs with the stamp of his mind upon it,
he stands without a rival.  I saw him last in 1877, when he was
feeble, sunken, and almost blind, and scarcely able to read or
write.  He uttered his farewell with kindly emotion, and I feared
that the next I should hear of him would be the news of his
death.  Two years later he began a Universal History, which is
not without traces of weakness, but which, composed after the age
of 83, and carried, in seventeen volumes, far into the Middle
Ages, brings to a close the most astonishing career in literature.

His course had been determined, in early life, by Quentin
Durward.  The shock of the discovery that Scott's Lewis the
Eleventh was inconsistent with the original in Commynes made him
resolve that his object thenceforth should be above all things to
follow, without swerving, and in stern subordination and
surrender, the lead of his authorities.  He decided effectually
to repress the poet, the patriot, the religious or political
partisan, to sustain no cause, to banish himself from his books,
and to write nothing that would gratify his own feelings or
disclose his private convictions #66.  When a strenuous divine, who,
like him, had written on the Reformation, hailed him as a
comrade, Ranke repelled his advances. "You," he said, "are in the
first place a Christian: I am in the first place a historian.
There is a gulf between us." #67  He was the first eminent writer who
exhibited what Michelet calls _le desinteressement des morts_.  It
was a moral triumph for him when he could refrain from judging,
show that much might be said on both sides, and leave the rest to
Providence #68.  He would have felt sympathy with the two famous
London physicians of our day, of whom it is told that they could
not make up their minds on a case and reported dubiously.  The
head of the family insisted on a positive opinion.  They answered
that they were unable to give one, but he might easily find fifty
doctors who could.

Niebuhr had pointed out that 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 Ranke's hands, and with his light
and dexterous touch he scrutinised and dissected the principal
historians, from Machiavelli to the _Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat_,
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 the useful but subordinate work that was done by
beginners who borrowed his wand, thought that too much was made
of these obscure preliminaries which a man may accomplish for
himself, in the silence of his chamber, with less demand on the
attention of the public #69.  That may be reasonable in men who are
practised in these fundamental technicalities.  We, who have to
learn them, must immerse ourselves in the study of the great
examples.

Apart from what is technical, method is only the reduplication of
common sense, and is best acquired by observing its use by the
ablest men in every variety of intellectual employment #70.  Bentham
acknowledged that he learned less from his own profession than
from writers like Linnaeus and Cullen; and Brougham advised the
student of Law to begin with Dante.  Liebig described his Organic
Chemistry as an application of ideas found in Mill's Logic, and a
distinguished physician, not to be named lest he should overhear
me, read three books to enlarge his medical mind; and they were
Gibbon, Grote, and Mill.  He goes on to say, "An educated man
cannot become so on one study alone, but must be brought under
the influence of natural, civil, and moral modes of thought." #71
I quote my colleague's golden words in order to reciprocate them.
If men of science owe anything to us, we may learn much from them
that is essential #72.  For they can show how to test proof, how to
secure fulness and soundness in induction, how to restrain and to
employ with safety hypothesis and analogy.  It is they who hold
the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error
ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails #73.
Theirs is the logic of discovery #74, 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 #75.  Faraday
declares that "in 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."

From the first years of the century we have been quickened and
enriched by contributors from every quarter.  The jurists brought
us that law of continuous growth which has transformed history
from a chronicle of casual occurrences into the likeness of
something organic #76.  Towards 1820 divines began to recast their
doctrines on the lines of development, of which Newman said, long
after, that evolution had come to confirm it #77.  Even the
Economists, who were practical men, dissolved their science into
liquid history, affirming that it is not an auxiliary, but the
actual subject-matter of their inquiry #78.  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 #79, 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 #80.  Comte begins a
volume with the words that the preponderance of history over
philosophy was the characteristic of the time he lived in.  Since
Cuvier first recognised the conjunction between the course of
inductive discovery and the course of civilisation #82, science had
its share in saturating the age with historic ways of thought,
and subjecting all things to that influence for which the
depressing names historicism and historical-mindedness have been
devised.

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 #83.  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 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
#84.  The name remained; but its origin, attested by Defoe,
dropped out of common memory, as if one party were ashamed of
their godfather, and the other did not care to be identified
with his cause and character.  You all know, I am sure,
the story of the news of Trafalgar, and how, two days after it
had arrived, Mr. Pitt, drawn by an enthusiastic crowd, went
to dine in the city.  When they drank the health of the minister
who had saved his country, he declined the praise. "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: _Seipsam virtute, Europam exemplo_.
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 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 #85.  General
Wellesley, fresh from India, was present.  Ten years later, when
he had accomplished that which Pitt had seen in the lucid
prescience of his last days, he related at Paris what I scarcely
hesitate to call the most astounding and profound prediction in
all political history, where such things have not been rare.


I shall never again enjoy the opportunity of speaking my thoughts
to such an audience as this, and on so privileged an occasion a
lecturer may well be tempted to bethink himself whether he knows
of any neglected truth, any cardinal proposition, that might
serve as his selected epigraph, as a last signal, perhaps even as
a target.  I am not thinking of those shining 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 #86; see that
your judgments are your own, and do not shrink from disagreement;
no trusting without testing; be more severe to ideas than to
actions #87; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause or the
weakness of the good #88; never be surprised by the crumbling of an
idol or the disclosure of a skeleton; judge talent at its best
and character at its worst; suspect power more than vice #89, and
study problems in preference to periods; for instance: the
derivation of Luther, the scientific influence of Bacon, the
predecessors of Adam Smith, the medieval masters of Rousseau, the
consistency of Burke, the identity of the first Whig.  Most of
this, I suppose, is undisputed, and calls for no enlargement.
But the weight of opinion is against me when I exhort you never
to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of
rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your
own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the
undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong #90.
The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is
perpetual.  At every step we are met by arguments which go to
excuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and reduce the
just man to the level of the reprobate.  The men who plot to
baffle and resist us are, first of all, those who made history
what it has 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 #91.

The mission of that school was to make distant times, and
especially the Middle Ages, then most distant of all, intelligible
and acceptable to a society issuing from the eighteenth century.
There were difficulties in the way; and among others this, that,
in the first fervour of the Crusades, the men who 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 #92.  A murderer was no criminal
if he followed local custom, if neighbours approved, if he was
encouraged by official 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
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.

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 and duration
legitimate #93; 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 #94.  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 part of real greatness to know how to
stand and fall alone, stemming, for a lifetime, the contemporary
flood #95.

Ranke relates, without adornment, that William III ordered the
extirpation of a Catholic clan, and scouts the faltering excuse
of his defenders.  But when he comes to the death and character
of the international deliverer, Glencoe is forgotten, the
imputation of murder drops, like a thing unworthy of notice #96.
Johannes Mueller, a great Swiss celebrity, writes that the
British Constitution occurred to somebody, perhaps to Halifax.
This 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 #97; but it is less grotesque
than it appears.  Lord Halifax was the most original writer of
political tracts in the pamphleteering crowd between Harrington
and Bolingbroke; and in the Exclusion struggle he produced a
scheme of limitations which, in substance, if not in form,
foreshadowed the position of the monarchy in the later Hanoverian
reigns.  Although Halifax did not believe in the plot #98, he
insisted that innocent victims should be sacrificed to content
the multitude.  Sir William Temple writes: "We only disagreed in
one point, which was the leaving some priests to the law upon the
accusation of being priests only, as the House of Commons had
desired; which I thought wholly unjust.  Upon this point Lord
Halifax and I had so sharp a debate at Lord Sunderland's
lodgings, that he told me, if I would not concur in 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, 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."

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 bad than good #99; and this discouraging conclusion does
not depend upon theology, for James Mozley supports the sceptic
from the other flank, with all the artillery of the 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." #100  There is a popular saying of Madame de Stael, that
we forgive whatever we really understand.  The paradox has been
judiciously pruned by her descendant, the Duke de Broglie, in the
words: "Beware of too much explaining, lest we end by too much
excusing." #101  History, says Froude, does teach that right and wrong
are real distinctions.  Opinions alter, manners change, creeds
rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of
eternity #102.  And if there are moments when we may resist the
teaching of Froude, we have seldom the chance of resisting when
he is supported by Mr. Goldwin Smith: "A sound historical
morality will sanction strong measures in evil times; selfish
ambition, treachery, murder, perjury, it will never sanction in
the worst of times, for these are the things that make times
evil--Justice has been justice, mercy has been mercy, honour has
been honour, good faith has been good faith, truthfulness has
been truthfulness from the beginning."  The doctrine that, as Sir
Thomas Browne says, morality is not ambulatory #103, 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 not formed out of events and characters, either
present or past.  History is a preceptor of prudence, not of
principles.  The principles of true politics are those of
morality enlarged; and I neither now do, nor ever will admit of
any other." #104

Whatever a man's notions of these later centuries are, such, in
the main, the man himself will be.  Under the name of History,
they cover the articles of his philosophic, his religious, and
his political creed #105.  They give his measure; they denote his
character: and, as praise is the shipwreck of historians, his
preferences betray him more than his aversions.  Modern History
touches us so nearly, it is so deep a question of life and death,
that we are bound to find our own way through it, and to owe our
insight to ourselves.  The historians of former ages, unapproachable
for us in knowledge and in talent, cannot be our limit.  We have
the power to be more rigidly impersonal, disinterested and just
than they; and to learn from undisguised and genuine 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.


NOTES TO THE INAUGURAL LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

#1 No political conclusions of any value for practice can be arrived at
by direct experience.  All true political science is, in one sense of
the phrase, a priori, being deduced from the tendencies of things,
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.--MILL, Inaugural Address, 51.

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

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

#4 Nous risquons toujours d'etre influences par les prejuges de notre
epoque; mais nous sommes libres des prejuges particuliers aux
epoques anterieures.--E. NAVILLE, Christianisme de Fenelon, 9.

#5 La nature n'est qu'un echo de l'esprit.  L'idee est la mere du
fait, elle faconne graduellement le monde a son image.--
FEUCHTERSLEBEN, in CARO, Nouvelles Etudes Morales, 132.
Il n'est pas d'etude morale qui vaille l'histoire d'une idee.--
LABOULAYE, Liberte Religieuse, 25.

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

#7 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.--FREEMAN, Historical Essays, iv., 253.
Nothing but a thorough knowledge of the social system, based upon a
regular study of its growth, can give us the power we require to
affect it.--HARRISON, Meaning of History, 19. Eine Sache wird nur
vollig auf dem Wege verstanden, wie sie selbst entsteht.--In dem
genetischen Verfahren sind the Grunde der Sache, auch die Grunde des
Erkennens.--TRENDELENBURG, Logische Untersuchungen, ii. 395, 388.

#8 Une telle liberte . . . n'a rien de commun avec le savant systeme
de garanties qui fait libres les peuples modernes.--BOUTMY, Annales
des Sciences Politiques, i. 157.  Les trois grandes reformes qui ont
renouvele l'Angleterre, la liberte religieuse, la reforme
parlementaire; et la liberte economique, ont ete obtenues sous la
pression des organisations extra-constitutionnelles.-OSTROGORSKI,
Revue Historique, lii. 272.

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

#10 Ceterum in legendis Historiis malim te ductum animi, quam anxias
leges sequi.  Nullae stint, quae non magnas habeant utilitates; et
melius haerent, quae libenter legimus.  In universum tamen, non
incipere ab antiquissimis, sod ab his, quae nostris temporibus
nostraeque notitiae propius cohaerent, ac paulatim deinde in remotiora
eniti, magis e re arbitror.-GROTIUS, Epistolae, 18.

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

#12 Formuler des idees generales, c'est changer le salpetre en
poudre.--A. DE MUSSET, Confessions d'un Enfant du Siecle, 15.  Les
revolutions c'est l'avenement des idees liberales.  C'est presque
toujours par les revolutions qu'elles prevalent et se fondent, et
quand les idees liberales en sont veritablement le principe et le but,
quand elles leur ont donne naissance, et quand elles les couronnent a
leur dernier jour, alors ces revolutions sont legitimes--REMUSAT, 1839,
in Revue des Deux Mondes 1875, vi. 335.  Il y a meme des personnes de
piete qui prouvent par raison qu'il faut renoncer a la raison; que ce
n'est point la lumiere, mais la foi seule qui doit nous conduire, et
que l'obeissance aveugle est la principale vertu des chretiens.  La
paresse des inferieurs et leur esprit flatteur s'accommode souvent de
cette vertu pretendue, et l'orgueil de ceux qui commandent en est
toujours tres content.  De sorte qu'il se trouvera peut-etre des gens
qui seront scandalises que je fasse cet honneur a la raison, de
l'elever au-dessus de toutes les puissances, et qui s'imagineront que
je me revolte contre les autorites legitimes a cause que je prends son
parti et que je soutiens que c'est a elle a decider et a
regner.--MALEBRANCHE, Morale, 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.--CANNING, 1st June 1827.
Parliamentary Review, 1828, 71.  American history knows but one avenue
of success in American legislation, freedom from ancient prejudice.
The best lawgivers in our colonies first became as little
children.--BANCROFT, History of the United State, i. 494.  Every
American, from Jefferson and Gallatin down to the poorest squatter,
seemed to nourish an idea that he was doing what he could to overthrow
the tyranny which the past had fastened on the human mind.--ADAMS,
History of the United States, i. 175.

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

#14 Ce n'est guere avant la seconde moitie du XVIIe siecle qu'il
devint impossible de soutenir l'authenticite des fausses decretales,
des Constitutions apostoliques, des Recognitions Clementines, du faux
Ignace, du pseudo-Dionys, et de l'immense fatras d'oeuvres anonymes ou
pseudonymes qui grossissait souvent du tiers ou de la moitie
l'heritage litteraire des auteurs les plus considerables.--DUCHESNE,
Temoins anteniciens de la Trinite, 1883, 36.

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

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

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

#18 The real history of mankind is that of the slow advance of
resolved deed following laboriously just thought; and all the greatest
men live in their 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.--RUSKIN.  Facts are the mere dross of history.  It is
from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent
among them like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its
value.--MACAULAY, Works, v. 131.

#19 Die Gesetze der Geschichte sind eben die Gesetze der ganzen
Menschheit, gehen nicht in die Geschicke eines Volkes, einer
Generation oder gar eines Einzelnen auf.  Individuen and Geschlechter,
Staaten and Nationen, konnen zerstauben, die Menschheit bleibt--
A. SCHMIDT, Zuricher Monatsschrift, i. 45.

#20 Le grand peril des ages democratiques, soyez-en sur, c'est la
destruction ou l'affaiblissement excessif des parties du corps social
en presence du tout.  Tout ce qui releve de nos jours l'idee de
l'individu est sain.--TOCQUEVILLE, 3rd January 1840, OEuvres, vii. 97.
En France, il n'y a plus d'hommes.  On a systematiquement tue l'homme
au profit du people, des masses, comme disent nos legislateurs
ecerveles.  Puis un beau jour, on s'est apercu que ce people n'avait
jamais existe qu'en projet, que ces masses etaient un troupeau
mi-partie de moutons et de tigres.  C'est une triste histoire.  Nous
avons a relever l'ame humaine contre l'aveugle et brutale tyrannie des
multitudes.--LANFREY, 23rd March 1855.  M. Du CAMP, Souvenirs
Litteraires, ii. 273.  C'est le propre de la vertu d'etre invisible,
meme dans l'histoire, a tout autre oeil que celui de la conscience.
--VACHEROT, Comptes Rendus de l'Institut, lxix. 319.  Dans l'histoire
ou la bonte est la perle rare, qui a ete bon passe presque avant qui a
ete grand.--V. HUGO, Les Miserables, 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.--LASAULX, Sokrate, 3.  Instead of saying that the
history of mankind is the history of the masses, it would be much more
true to say that the history of mankind is the history of its great
men.--KINGSLEY, Lectures, 329.

#21 Le genie n'est que la plus complete emancipation de toutes les
influences de temps, de moeurs et de pays.--NISARD, Souvenirs, ii. 43.

#22 Meine kritische Richtung zieht mich in der Wissenschaft durchaus
zur Kritik meiner eigenen Gedanken hin, nicht zu der der Gedanken
Anderer.--ROTHE, Ethik, i p. 11.

#23 When you are in young years the whole mind is, as it were, fluid,
and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the
mind pleases to order it to form itself into.--CARLYLE, On the Choice
of Books, 131.  Nach allem erscheint es somit unzweifelhaft als eine
der psychologischen Voraussetzungen des Strafrechts, ohne welche der
Zurechnungsbegriff nicht haltbar ware, dass der Mensch fur seinen
Charakter verantwortlich ist and ihn muss abandern konnen.--RUMELIN,
Reden and Aufsatse, ii.. 60. An der tiefen and verborgenen Quelle,
woraus der Wille entspringt, an diesem Punkt, nur hier steht die
Freiheit, and fuhrt das Steuer and lenkt den Willen.  Wer nicht bis zu
dieser Tiefe in sich einkehren and seinen naturlichen Charakter von
hier aus bemetsten 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.--FISCHER, Problem der Freiheit, 27.

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

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

#26 N'attendez donc pas les lecons de l'experience; elles coutent trop
cher aux nations.--O. BARROT, Memoires, ii. 435.  Il y a des lecons
dans tous les temps, pour tous les temps; et celles qu'on emprunte a
des ennemis ne sont pas les moins precieuses.--LANFREY, Napoleon,
v. p. ii.  Old facts may always be fresh, and may give out a fresh
meaning for each generation.--MAURICE, Lectures, 62.  The object is to
lead the student to attend to them; to make him take interest in
history not as a mere narrative, but as a chain of causes and effects
still unwinding itself before our eyes, and full of momentous
consequences to himself and his descendants--an unremitting conflict
between good and evil powers, of which every act done by any one of
us, insignificant as we are, forms one of the incidents; a conflict in
which even the smallest of us cannot escape from taking part, in which
whoever does not help the right side is helping the wrong.--MILL,
Inaugural Address, 59.

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

#28 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.--LECKY, Value of History, 21.  C'est a l'histoire qu'il faut
se prendre, c'est le fait que nous devons interroger, quand l'idee
vacille et fait a nos yeux.--MICHELET, Disc. d'Ouverture, 263.  C'est
la loi des faits telle qu'elle se manifeste dans leur succession.
C'est la regle de conduite donnee par la nature humaine et indiquee
par l'histoire.  C'est la logique, mais cette logique qui ne fait
qu'un avec enchainement des choses.  C'est l'enseignement de
l'experience.--SCHERER, Melanges, 558.  Wer seine Vergangenheit nicht
als seine Geschichte hat and weiss wird and ist characterlos Wem ein
Ereigniss sein Sonst plotzlich abreisst, von seinem Jetzt wird leicht
wurzellos.--KLIEFOTH, Rheinwalds Repertorium, xliv. 20.  La politique
est une des meilleures ecoles pour l'esprit.  Elle force a chercher la
raison de toutes choses, et ne permet pas cependant de la chercher
hors des faits.--REMUSAT, Le Temps Passe, i. 31.  It is an unsafe
partition that divides opinions without principle from unprincipled
opinions.--COLERIDGE, Lay Sermons, 373.

Wer nicht von drei tausend Jahren sich weiss Rechenschaft zu geben,
Bleib' im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tag zu tage leben!
                                                       Goethe

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

#29 Die Schlacht bei Leuthen ist wohl die letzte, in welcher diese
religiosen Gegensatze entscheidend eingewirkt haben.--RANKE,
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vii. 70.

#30 The only real cry in the country is the proper and just old No
Popery cry.--Major Beresford, July 1847. Unfortunately the strongest
bond of union amongst them is an apprehension of Popery.--Stanley, 12th
September 1847.  The great Protectionist party having degenerated into
a No Popery, No Jew Party, I am still more unfit now than I was in
1846 to lead it.--G.  Bentinck, 26th December 1847; Croker's Memoirs,
iii. 116, 132, 157

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

#32.  Diese Heiligen waren es, die aus dem unmittelbaren Glaubensleben
and den Grundgedanken der christlichen Freiheit zuerst die Idee
allgemeiner Menschenrechte abgeleitet and rein von Selbstsucht
vertheidigt haben.--WEINGARTEN, Revolutionskirchen, 447.  Wie selbst
die Idee allgemeiner Menschenrechte, die in dem gemeinsamen Character
der Ebenbildlichkeit Gottes gegrundet sind, erst durch das
Christenthum zum Bewusstsein gebracht werden, wahrend jeder andere
Eifer fur politische Freiheit als ein mehr oder weniger
selbstsuchtiger and beschrankter sich erwiesen hat.--NEANDER,
Pref. to Uhden's Wilberforce, p. v.  The rights of individuals and the
justice due to them are as dear and precious as those of states;
indeed the latter are founded on the former, and the great end and
object of them must be to secure and support the rights of
individuals, or else vain is government.--CUSHING, in CONWAY, Life of
Paine, i. 217.  As it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not
yet understood; so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the
restitution of all things, and without miraculous interpositions, it
must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at--by the
continuance and progress of learning and liberty.--BUTLER, Analogy,
ii. 3

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

#34 Apres la volonte d'un homme, la raison d'etat; apres la raison
d'etat, la religion, apres la religion, la liberte.  Voila toute la
philosophie de l'histoire.--FLOTTES, La Souverainete du Peuple, 1851,
192.  La repartition plus egale des biens et des droits dans ce monde
est le plus grand objet que doivent se proposer ceux qui menent les
affaires humaines.  Je veux seulement que l'egalite en politique
consiste a etre egalement libre.--TOCQUEVILLE, 10th September 1856.
Mme. Swetchine, i. 455.  On peut concevoir une legislation tres
simple, lorsqu'on voudra en ecarter tout ce qui est arbitraire, ne
consulter que les deux premiere lois de la liberte et de la propriete,
et ne point admettre de lois positives qui ne tirent leur raison de
ces deux lois souveraines de la justice essentielle et absolue.
LETROSNE, Vues sur la Justice Criminelle, 16.  Summa enim libertas
est, ad optimum recta ratione cogi.--Nemo optat sibi hanc libertatem,
volendi quae velit, sed potius volendi optima.--LEIBNIZ, De Fato.
TRENDELENBURG, Beitrage sur Philosophie, ii. 190.

#35 All the world is, by the very law of its creation, in eternal
progress; and the cause of all the evils of the world may be traced to
that natural, but most deadly error of human indolence and corruption,
that our business is to preserve and not to improve.--ARNOLD, Life, i.
259.  In whatever state of 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.--HERSCHEL, Prel.
Dis. 360.  It is in the development of thought as in every other
development; the present suffers from the past, and the future
struggles hard in escaping from the present.--MAX MULLER, Science of
Thought, 617.  Most of the great positive evils of the world are in
themselves removable, and will, if human affairs continue to improve,
be in the end reduced within narrow limits.  Poverty in any sense
implying suffering may be completely 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.  J. S. MILL, Utilitarianism, 21, 22.  The ultimate standard of
worth is personal worth, and the only progress that is worth striving
after, the only acquisition that is truly good and enduring, is the
growth of the soul--BIXBY, Crisis of Morals, 210.  La science, et
l'industrie qu'elle produit, ont, parmi tous les autres enfants du
genie de l'homme, ce privilege particulier, que leur vol non-seulement
ne peut pas s'interrompre, mais qu'il s'accelere sans cesse.--CUVIER,
Discours sur la Marche des Sciences, 24 Avril 1816.  Aucune idee parmi
celles qui se referent a l'ordre des faits naturels, ne tient de plus
pres a la famille des idees religieuses que l'idee du progres, et n'est
plus propre a devenir le principe d'une sorte de foi religieuse pour
ceux qui n'en ont pas d'autres.  Elle a, comme la foi religieuse, la
vertu de relever les ames et les caracteres.--COURNOT, Marche des
Idees, ii. 425.  Dans le spectacle de l'humanite errante, souffrante
et travaillant toujours a mieux voir, a mieux penser, a mieux agir, a
diminuer l'infirmite de l'etre human, a apaiser l'inquietude de son
coeur, la science decouvre une direction et un progres.--A. SOREL,
Discours de Reception, 14.  Le jeune homme qui commence son education
quinze ans apres son pere, a une epoque ou celui-ci, engage dans une
profession speciale et active, ne peut que suivre les anciens
principes, acquiert une superiorite theorique dont on doit tenir
compte dans la hierarchie sociale.  Le plus souvent le pere n'est-il
pas penetre de l'esprit de routine, tandis que le fils represente et
defend la science progressive?  En diminuant l'ecart qui existait
entre l'influence des jeunes generations et celle de la vieillesse ou
de l'age mur, les peuples modernes n'auraient donc fait que reproduire
dans leur ordre social un changement de rapports qui s'etait deja
accompli dans la nature intime des choses.--BOUTMY, Revue Nationale,
xxi. 393.  Il y a dans l'homme individuel des principes de progres
viager; il y a, en toute societe, des causes constantes qui
transforment ce progres viager en progres hereditaire.  Une societe
quelconque tend a progresser tant que les circonstances ne touchent
pas aux causes de progres que nous avons reconnues, l'imitation des
devanciers par les successeurs, des etrangers par les indigenes.--
LACOMBE, L'Histoire comme Science, 292.  Veram creatae mentis
beatitudinem consistere in non impedito progressu ad bona majora.
--LEIBNIZ to WOLF, 21st February 1705. In cumulum etiam pulchritudinis
perfectionisque universalis operum divinorum progresses quidam
perpetuus liberrimusque totius universi est agnoscendus, ita ut ad
majorem semper cultum procedat.--LEIBNIZ ed. Erdmann, 150a.  Der
Creaturen and also auch unsere Vollkommenheit bestehen in einem
ungehinderten starken Forttrieb zu neuen and neuen Vollkommenheiten.
--LEIBNIZ, Deutsche Schriften, ii. 36.  Hegel, welcher annahm, der
Fortschritt der Neuzeit gegen das Mittelalter sei dieser, dass die
Principien der Tugend and den Christenthums, welche im Mittelalter
sich allein im Privatleben and der Kirche zur Geltung gebracht hatten,
nun auch anfingen, das politische Leben zu durchdringen.--FORTLAGE,
Allg.  Monatsschrift, 1853, 7.  Wir Slawen wissen, das die Geister
einzelner Menschen and ganzer Volker sich nur durch die Stufe ihrer
Entwicklung unterscheiden.--MICKIEWICZ, Slawische Literatur,
ii. 436. Le progres ne disparait jamais, mais il se deplace souvent.
Il va den gouvernants aux gouvernes.  La tendance des revolutions est
de le ramener toujours parmi les gouvernants.  Lorsqu'il est a la tete
den societes, il marche hardiment, car il conduit.  Lorsqu'il est dans
la masse, il marche a pas lents, car il lutte.--NAPOLEON III., Des
Idees Napoleoniennes.  La loi du progres avait jadis 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'iniquite, c'est
le vice, que la civilisation tend a emporter dans sa marche
irresistible; mais la vie des individus et des peuples est devenue
pour elle une chose sacree.  Elle transforme plutot qu'elle ne detruit
les choses qui s'opposent a son developpement; elle procede par
absorption graduelle plutot que par brusque execution; elle aime a
conquerir par l'influence den idees plutot que par la force des armes,
un peuple, une classe, une institution qui resiste an progres.--
VACHEROT, Essais de Philosophie Critique, 443.  Peu a peu l'homme
intellectuel finit par effacer l'homme physique.--QUETELET, De l'Homme,
ii. 285, In dem Fortschritt der ethischen Anschauungen liegt daher der
Kern den geschichtlichen Fortschritts uberhaupt.--SCHAFER,
Arbeitsgebiet der Geschichte, 24.  Si l'homme a plus de devoirs a
mesure qu'il avance en age, ce qui est melancolique, mais ce qui est
vrai, de meme aussi l'humanite est tenue d'avoir une morale plus
severe a mesure qu'elle prend plus de siecles.--FAGUET, Revue des Deux
Mondes, 1894, iii. 871.  Si donc il y a une loi de progres, elle se
confond avec la loi morale, et la condition fondamentale du progres,
c'est la pratique de cette loi.--CARRAU, Ib. 1875, v. 585.  L'idee du
progres, du developpement, me parait etre l'idee fondamentale continue
sous le mot de civilisation.--GUIZOT, Cours d'Histoire, 1828, 15.  Le
progres n'est sous un autre nom, que la liberte en action.--BROGLIE,
Journal den Debats, 28th January 1869.  Le progres social est continu.
Il a ses periodes de fievre ou d'atonie, de surexcitation ou de
lethargie; il a ses soubresauts et ses haltes, mais il avance
toujours.--DE DECKER, La Providence, 174.  Ce n'est pas au bonheur
seul, c'est au perfectionnement que notre destin nous appelle; et la
liberte politique est le plus puissant, le plus energique moyen de
perfectionnement que le ciel nous ait donne.--B. CONSTANT, Cours de
Politique, ii. 559.  To explode error, on whichever side it lies, is
certainly to secure progress.--MARTINEAU, Essays, i. 114.  Die
sammtlichen Freiheitsrechte, welche der heutigen Menschheit so theuer
sind, sind im Grunde nur Anwendungen den Rechts der Entwickelung.
--BLUNTSCHLI, Kleine Schriften, i. 51.  Geistiges Leben ist auf
Freiheit beruhende Entwicklung, mit Freiheit vollzogene That
and geschichtlicher Fortschritt.--Munchner Gel. Azeigen, 1849, ii.
83.  Wie das Denken erst nach and nach reift, so wird auch der freie
Wille nicht fertig geboren, sondern in der Entwickelung erworben.--
TRENDELENBURG, Logische Untersuchungen, ii. 94.  Das Liberum Arbitrium
im vollen Sinne (die vollstandig aktuelle Macht der Selbstbestimmung)
lasst sich seinem Begriff zufolge schlechterdings nicht unmittelbar
geben; es kann nur erworben werden durch das Subjekt selbst, in sich
moralisch hervorgebracht werden kraft seiner eigenen Entwickelung.--
ROTHE, Ethik, I. 360.  So gewaltig sei der Andrang der Erfindungen and
Entdeckungen, dass "Entwicklungsperioden, die in fruheren Zeiten
erst in Jahrhunderten durchlaufen warden, die im Beginn unserer
Zeitperiode noch der Jahrzehnte bedurften, sich heute in Jahren
vollenden, haufig schon in voller Ausbildung ins Dasein
treten."--PHILIPPOVICH, Fortschritt and Kulturentwicklung, 1892, i.,
quoting SIEMENS, 1886.  Wir erkennen dass dem Menschen die schwere
korperliche Arbeit, von der er in seinem Kampfe um's Dasein stets
schwer niedergedruckt war and grossenteils noch ist, mehr and mehr
deurch die wachsende Benutzung der Naturkrafte zur mechanischen
Arbeitsleistung abgenommen wird, dass die ihm zufallende Arbeit immer
mehr eine intellektuelle wird.--SIEMENS, 1886, Ib. 6.

#36 Once, however, he wrote:--Darin konnte man den idealen Kern der
Geschichte des menschlichen Geschlechtes uberhaupt sehen, dass in den
Kampfen, die sich in den gegenseitigen Interessen der Staaten und
Volker vollziehen, doch immer hohere Potenzen emporkommen, die das
Allgemeine demgemass umgestalten and ihm wieder einen anderen
Charakter verleihen.--RANKE, Weltgeschichte, iii. 1, 6.

#37 Toujours et partout, les hommes furent de plus en plus domines par
l'ensemble de leurs predecesseurs, dont ils purent seulement modifier
l'empire necessaire.--COMTE, Politique Positive, iii. 621.

#38 La liberte est l'ame du commerce--Il faut laisser faire les hommes
qui s'appliquent sans peine a ce qui convient le mieux; c'est ce qui
apporte le plus d'avantage.--COLBERT, in Comptes Rendus de l'Institut,
xxxix. 93.

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

#40 Ne m'applaudissez pas; ce n'est pas moi qui vous parle; c'est
l'histoire qui parle par ma bouche.--Revue Historique, xli. 278.

#41  Das Evangelium trat als Geschichte in die Welt, nicht als
Dogma--wurde als Geschichte in der christlichen Kirche deponirt.--ROTHE,
Kirchengeschichte, ii. p. x.  Das Christenthum ist nicht der Herr
Christus, sondern dieser macht es.  Es ist sein Werk, undzwar ein
Werk, das er stets unter der Arbeit hat.--Er selbst, Christus der
Herr, bleibt, der er ist in alle Zukunft, dagegen liegt es
ausdruchlich im Begriffe seines Werks, den Christenthums, dass es
nicht so bleibt, wie es anhebt.--ROTHE, Allgemeine kirchliche
Zeitschrift, 1864, 299.  Diess Werk, weil es dem Wesen der Geschichte
zufolge eine Entwickelung ist, muss uber Stufen hinweggehen, die
einander ablosen, und von denen jede folgende neue immer nur unter der
Zertrummerung der ihr vorangehenden Platz greifen kann.--ROTHE,
Ib. 19th April 1865.  Je grosser ein geschichtliches Princip ist, desto
langsamer and uber mehr Stufen hinweg entfaltet es seinen Gehalt;
desto langlebiger ist es aber ebendeshalb auch in diesen seinen
unaufhorlichen Abwandelungen.--ROTHE, Stille Stunden, 301.  Der
christliche Glaube geht nicht von der Anerkennung abstracter
Lehrwahrheiten aus, sondern von der Anerkennung einer Reihe von
Thatsachen, die in der Erscheinung Jesu ihren Mittelpunkt
haben.--NITZSCH, Dogmengeschichte, i. 17.  Der Gedankengang der
evangelischen Erzahlung gibt datum auch eine vollstandige Darstellung
der christlichen Lehre in ihren wesentlichen Grundzugen; aber er
gibt sie im allseitigen lebendigen Zusammenhange mit der Geschichte
der christlichen Offenbarung, und nicht in einer theoretisch
zusammenhangenden Folgenreihe von ethischen und dogmatischen
Lehrsatzen.--DEUTINGER, Reich Gottes, i. p. v.

#42 L'Univers ne doit pas estre considere seulement dans ce qu'il est;
pour le bien connoitre, il faut le voir aussi dans ce qu'il doit
estre.  C'est cet avenir surtout qui a ete le grand objet de Dieu dans
la creation, et c'est pour cet avenir seul que le present existe.--
D'HOUTEVILLE, Essai sur la Providence, 273.  La Providence emploie les
siecles a elever toujours un plus grand nombre de familles et
d'individus a ces biens de la liberte et de l'egalite legitimes que,
dans l'enfance des societes, la force avait rendus le privilege de
quelques-uns.--GUIZOT, Gouvernement de la France, 1820, 9.  La marche
de la Providence n'est pas assujettie a d'etroites limites; elle ne
s'inquiete pas de tirer aujourd'hui la consequence du principe qu'elle
a pose hier; elle la tirera dans des siecles, quand l'heure sera
venue; et pour raisonner lentement selon nous, sa logique n'est pas
moins sure.--GUIZOT, Histoire de la Civilisation, 20.  Der Keim
fortschreitender Entwicklung ist, auch auf gottlichem Geheisse, der
Menschheit eingepflanzt.  Die Weltgeschichte ist der blosse Ausdruck
einer vorbestimmten Entwicklung.--A. HUMBOLET, 2nd January 1842, Im
Neuen Reich, 1872, i. 197.  Das historisch grosse ist religios gross;
es ist die Gottheit selbst, die sich offenbart.--RAUMER.  April 1807,
Erinnerungen, i. 85

#43: Je suis arrive a l'age ou je suis, a travers bien den evenements
differents, mais avec une seule cause, celle de la liberte reguliere.
--TOCQUEVILLE, 1st May 1852, OEuvres Inedites, ii. 185.  Me trouvant
dans un pays ou la religion et le liberalisme sont d'accord, j'avais
respire.--J'exprimais ce sentiment, il y a plus de vingt ans, dans
l'avant-propos de la Democratie.  Je l'eprouve aujourd'hui aussi
vivement que si j'etais encore jeune, et je ne sais s'il y a une seule
pensee qui ait ete plus constamment presente a mon esprit.--5th August
1857, OEuvres, vi. 395.  Il n'y a que la liberte (j'entends la moderee
et la reguliere) et la religion, qui, par un effort combine, puissent
soulever les hommes au-dessus du bourbier ou l'egalite democratique
les plonge naturellement.--1st December 1852, OEuvres, vii. 295.  L'un
de mes reves, le principal en entrant dans la vie politique, etait de
travailler a concilier l'esprit liberal et l'esprit de religion, la
societe nouvelle et l'eglise.--15th November 1843, OEuvres Inedites,
ii. 121.  La veritable grandeur de l'homme n'est que dans l'accord du
sentiment liberal et du sentiment religieux.--17th September 1853,
OEuvres Inedites, ii. 228. Qui cherche dans la liberte autre chose
qu'elle-meme est fait pour servir.--Ancien Regime, 248.  Je regarde,
ainsi que je l'ai toujours fait, la liberte comme le premier des
biens; je vois toujours en elle l'une den sources les plus fecondes
den vertus males et des actions grandes.  Il n'y a pas de tranquillite
ni de bien-etre qui puisse me tenir lieu d'elle.--7th January 1856,
Mme. Swetchine, i. 452.  La liberte a un faux air d'aristocratie; en
donnant pleine carriere aux facultes humaines, en encourageant le
travail et l'economie, elle fait ressortir les superiorites naturelles
on acquises.--LABOULAYE, L'Etat et ses Limites, 154.  Dire que la
liberte n'est point par elle-meme, qu'elle depend d'une situation,
d'une opportunite, c'est lui assigner one valeur negative.  La liberte
n'est pas des qu'on la subordonne.  Elle n'est pas un principe
purement negatif, un simple element de controle et de critique.  Elle
est le principe actif, createur organisateur par excellence.  Elle est
le moteur et la regle, 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 emerge du moi pour modeler les societes sur les donnees de la
raison.--BRISSON, Revue Nationale, xxiii. 214.  Le droit, dans
l'histoire, est le developpement progressif de la liberte, sous la loi
de la raison.--LERMINIER, Philosophie du droit, i. 211.  En prouvant
par les lecons de l'histoire que la liberte fait vivre les peoples 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 cote de la vertu,
Montesquieu n'est ni moins moral ni moins religieux que Bossuet.--
LABOULAYE, OEuvres de Montesquieu, ii. 109.  Je ne comprendrais pas
qu'une nation ne placat pas les libertes politiques au premier rang,
parce que c'est des libertes politiques que doivent decouler toutes
les autres.--THIERS, Discours, x. 8, 28th March 1865.  Nous sommes
arrives a une epoque our la liberte est le but serieux de tous, ou le
rester n'est plus qu'une question de moyens.--J. LEBEAU, Observations
sur le Pouvoir Royal: Liege, 1830, p. 10.  Le liberalisme, ayant la
pretention de se fonder uniquement sur les principes de la raison,
croit d'ordinaire n'avoir pas besoin de tradition.  La est son erreur.
L'erreur de l'ecole liberale est d'avoir trop cru qu'il est facile de
creer la liberte par la reflexion, et de n'avoir pas vu qu'un
etablissement n'est solide que quand il a des racines historiques.
--RENAN, 1858, Nouvelle Revue, lxxix. 596.  Le respect des individus
et den droits existants est autant au-dessus du bonheur de tous, qu'un
interet moral surpasse un interet purement temporel.--RENAN, 1858,
Ib. lxxix. 597.  Die Rechte gelten nichts, wo es sich handelt um das
Recht, und das Recht der Freiheit kann nie verjahren, weil es die
Quelle alles Rechtes selbst ist.--C. FRANTZ, Ueber die Freiheit, 110.
Wir erfahren hienieden nie die ganze Wahrheit: wir geniessen nie die
ganze Freiheit.--REUSS, Reden, 56.  Le gouvernement constitutionnel,
comme tout gouvernement libre; presente et doit presenter un etat de
lutte permanent. La liberte est la perpetuite de la lutte.--DE SERRE.
BROGLIE, Nouvelles Etudes, 243.  The experiment of free government is
not one which can be tried once for all.  Every 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.--WINTHROP, Addresses, 163.
L'histoire perd son veritable caractere du moment que la liberte en a
disparu; elle devient une sorte de physique socials.  C'est l'element
personnel de l'histoire qui en fait la realite.--VACHEROT, Revue des
Deux Mondes, 1869, iv. 215.  Demander la liberte pour soi et la
refuser aux autres, c'est la definition du despotisme.--LABOULAYE, 4th
December 1874.  Les causes justes profitent de tout, den bonnes
intentions comme des mauvaises, des calculs personnels comme den
devouemens courageux, de la demence, enfin, comme de la
raison.--B. CONSTANT, Les Cent Jours, ii. 29.  Sie ist die Kunst, das
Gute der schon weit gediehenen Civilisation zu sichern.--BALTISCH,
Politische Freiheit, 9.  In einem Volke, welches sich zur burgerlichen
Gesellschaft, uberhaupt zum Bewusstseyn der Unendlichkeit des
Freien--entwickelt hat, ist nur die constitutionelle Monarchie
moglich.--HEGEL's Philosophie des Rechts, #137, Hegel und Preussen,
1841, 31. Freiheit ist das hochste Gut.  Alles andere ist nur das
Mittel dazu: gut falls es ein Mittel dazu ist, ubel falls es dieselbe
hemmt.--FICHTE, Werke, iv. 403.  You are not to inquire how your trade
may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful
people, but how your liberties can be secured. For liberty ought to be
the direct end of your government.--PATRICK HENRY, 1788; WIRT, Life of
Henry, 272.

#44 Historiae ipsius praeter delectationem utilitas nulla est, quam ut
religionis Christianae veritas demonstretur, quod aliter quam per
historian fieri non potest.--LEIBNIZ, Opera, ed. Dutens, vi. 297.  The
study of Modern History is, next to Theology itself, and only next in
so far as Theology rests on a divine revelation, the most thoroughly
religious training that the mind can receive.  It is no paradox to say
that Modern History, including Medieval History in the term, is
coextensive in its field of view, in its habits of criticism, in the
persons of its most famous students, with Ecclesiastical History.--
STUBBS, Lectures, 9.  Je regarde donc l'etude de l'histoire comme
l'etude de la providence.  L'histoire est vraiment une seconde
philosophy.--Si Dieu ne parle pas toujours, il agit toujours en Dieu.
--D'AGUESSEAU, OEuvres, xv. 34, 31, 35.  Fur diejenigen, welche das
Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit erkannt haben, bildet die denkende
Betrachtung der Weltgeschichte, besonders den christlichen Weltalters,
die hochste, und umfassendste Theodicee.--VATKE, Die Menschliche
Freiheit, 1841, 516.  La theologie, que l'on regarde volontiers comme
la plus etroite et la plus sterile den sciences, en est, au contraire,
la plus etendue et la plus feconde.  Elle confine a toutes les etudes
et touche a toutes les questions.  Elle renferme tous les elements
d'une instruction liberale.--SCHERER, Melanges, 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.--THIRLWALL, Remains,
iii. 282.  A true religion must consist of ideas and facts both; not
of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere philosophy;
nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are the
symbols, or out of which they are grounded; for then it would be mere
history.--COLERIDGE, Table Talk, 144.  It certainly appears strange
that the men most conversant with the order of the visible universe
should soonest suspect it empty of directing 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.--MARTINEAU, Essays, i. 122.  Die Religion hat nur dann eine
Bedeutung fur den Menschen, wenn er in der Geschichte einen Punkt
findet, den er sich vollig unbedingt hingeben kann.--STEFFENS,
Christliche Religionsphilosophie, 440, 1839.  Wir erkennen darin nur
eine Thatigkeit den zu seinem achten und wahren Leben, zu seinem
verlornen, objectiven Selbstverstandnisse sich zurecksehnenden
christlichen Geistes unserer Zeit, einen Ausdruck fur das Bedurfniss
desselben, sich aus den unwahren und unachten Verkleidungen, womit ihn
der moderne, subjective Geschmack der letzten Entwicklungsphase des
theologischen Bewusstseyns umhullt hat, zu seines historischen allein
wahren und ursprunglichen Gestalt wiederzugebaren, zu diejenigen
Bedeutung zuruckzukehren, die ihm in den Bewusstseyn der Geschichte
allein zukommt und deren Verstandniss in den wogenden luxuriosen Leben
der modernen Theologie langst untergegangen ist.--GEORGII. Zeitschrift
fur Hist. Theologie, ix. 5, 1839.

#45 Liberty, in fact, means just so far as it is realised, the right
man in the right place.--EELEY, Lectures and Essays, 109.

#46 In diesem Sinne ist Freiheit und sich entwickelnde moralische
Vernunft und Gewissen gleichbedeutene.  In diesen Sinne ist der Mensch
frei, sobald sich das Gewissen in ihm entwickelt.--SCHEIDLER, Ersch
und Gruber, xlix. 20.  Aus der unendlichen und ewigen Geltung der
menschlichen Personlichkeit vor Gott, aus der Vorstellung von der in
Gott freien Personlichkeit, folgt auch der Anspruch auf das Recht
derselben in der weltlichen Sphere, auf burgerliche und politische
Freiheit, auf Gewissen und Religionsfreiheit, auf freie
wissenschaftliche Forschung u.s.w., und namentlich die Forderung, dass
niemand lediglich zum Mittel fur andere diene.--MARTENSEN, Christliche
Ethik, i. 50.

#47 Es giebt angeborne Menschenrechte, weil es angeborne Menschenpflichten
giebt.--WOLFFE, Naturrecht, LOEPER, Einleitung zu Faust, lvii.

#48 La constitution de l'etat reste jusqu'a un certain point a notre
discretion.  La constitution de la societe ne depend pas de nous;
elle est donnee par la force des choses, et si l'on veut elever le
langage, elle est l'oeuvre de la Providence.--REMUSAT, Revue des Deux
Mondes, 1861, v. 795.

#49 Die Freiheit ist bekanntlich kein Geschenk der Gotter, sondern
ein, Gut das jedes Volk sich selbst verdankt und das nur bei den
erforderlichen Mass moralischer Kraft und Wurdigkeit gedeiht.--
IHERING, Geist den Romischen Rechts, ii. 290.  Liberty, in the very
nature of it, absolutely requires, und 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.--BUTLER, Sermons, 331.
In each degree and each 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.--PARKMAN, Canada, 396.  Die Freiheit ist die Wurzel einer
neuen Schopfung in der Schopfung.--SEDERHOLM, Die ewigen Thatsachen,
86.

#50 La liberte politique, qui n'est qu'une complexite plus grande, de
plus en plus grande, dans le gouvernement d'un peuple, a mesure que le
peuple lui-meme contient un plus grand nombre de forces diverses ayant
droit et de vivre et de participer a la chose publique, est un fait de
civilisation qui s'impose lentement a une societe organisee, mais qui
n'apparalt point comme un principe a une societe qui s'organise.--
FAGURT, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1889, ii. 942.

#51 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.--JOUBERT, Pensees,
i. 355, 358.

#52 Nicht durch ein pflanzenahnliches Wachsthum, nicht aus den dunklen
Grunden der Volksempfindung, sondem durch den mannlichen Willen, durch
die Ueberzeugung, durch die That, durch den Kampf entsteht, behauptet,
entwickelt sich das Recht.  Sein historisches Werden ist ein
bewusstes, im hellen Mittagslicht der Erkenntniss und der
Gesetzgebung.--Rundschau. November 1893, 13.  Nicht das Normale,
Zahme, sondern das Abnorme, Wilde, bildet uberall die Grundlage und
den Anfang einer neuen Ordnung.--LASAULX, Philosophie der Geschichte,
143.

#53 Um den Sieg zu vervollstandigen, erubrigte des 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 Volker im Volkerrecht, aller
Staatsburger im Staatsrecht und aller socialen Interessen im
Gesellschaftsrecht fortzufuhren.--A. SCHMIDT, Zuricher Monatschrift,
i. 68.

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

#55 The discovery of the comparative method in philology, in
mythology--let me add in politics and history und the whole range of
human thought--marks a stage in the progress of the human mind at
least as great and memorable as the revival of Greek and Latin
learning.--FREEMAN, Historical Essays, iv. 301.  The diffusion of a
critical spirit in history and literature is affecting the criticism
of the Bible in our own day in a manner not unlike the burst of
intellectual life in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.--JOWETT,
Essays and Reviews, 346. As the revival of literature in the sixteenth
century produced the Reformation, so the growth of the critical
spirit, and the change that has come over mental science, and the
mere increase of knowledge of all kinds, threaten now a revolution
less external but not less profound.--HADDAN, Replies, 348

#56 In his just contempt and detestation of the crimes and follies of
the Revolutionists, he suffers himself to forget that the revolution
itself is a process of the Divine Providence, and that as the folly of
men is the wisdom of God, so are their iniquities instruments of His
goodness.--COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria, ii. 240.  In other parts
of the world, the idea of revolutions in government is, by a mournful
and indissoluble association, connected with the idea of wars, and all
the calamities attendant on wars.  But happy experience teaches us to
view such 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.--J. WILSON, 26th
November 1787, Works, iii. 293.  La Revolution, c'est-a-dire l'oeuvre
des siecles, ou, si vous voulez, le renouvellement progressif de la
societe, on encore, sa nouvelle constitution.-REMUSAT, Correspondance,
11th October 1818.  A ses yeux loin d'avoir rompu le tours naturel des
evenements, ni la Revolution d'Angleterre, ni la notre, n'ont rien
dit, rien fait, qui n'eut ete dit, souhaite, fait, on tente cent fois
avant leur explosion.  "Il faut en ceci," dit-il, "tout accorder a
leurs adversaires, les surpasser meme en severite, ne regarder a leurs
accusations que pour y ajouter, s'ils en oublient; et puis les sommer
de dresser, a leur tour, le compte des erreurs, des crimes, et des
maux de ces temps et de ces pouvoirs qu'ils ont pris sous leur
garde."--Revue de Paris, xvi. 303, on Guizot.  Quant aux nouveautes
mises en oeuvre par la Revolution Francaise on les retrouve une a une,
en remontant d'age en age, chez les philosopher du XVIII/e siecle,
chez les grands penseurs du XVI/e, chez certains Peres d'Eglise et
jusque dans la Republique de Platon.--En presence de cette belle
continuite de l'histoire, qui ne fait pas plus de sauts que la nature,
devant cette solidarite necessaire des revolutions avec le passe
qu'elles brisent.--KRANTZ, Revue Politique, xxxiii. 264.  L'esprit du
XIX/e siecle est de comprendre et de juger les choses du passe.  Notre
oeuvre est d'expliquer ce que le XVIII/e siecle avait mission de
nier.--VACHEROT, De la Democratie, pref., 28.

#57 La commission recherchera, dans toutes les parties des archives
pontificales, les pieces relatives a l'abus que les papes ont fait de
leur ministere spirituel contre l'autorite des souveraines et la
tranquillite des peuples.--DAUNOU, Instructions, 3rd January
1811. LABORDE, Inventaires, p. cxii.

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

#59 Doch besteht eine Grenze, wo die Geschichte aufhort und das Archiv
anfangt, und die von der Geschichtschreibung nicht uberschritten
werden sollte.--Unsere Zeit, 1866, ii. 635.  Il faut avertir nos
jeunes historiens a la fois de la necessite ineluctable du document
et, d'autre part, du danger qu'il presente.--M. HANOTAUX.

#60 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.--HARRISSE,
Discovery of America, 1893, 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--Ib. p. v.  Few scholars are critics, few critics are
philosophers, and few philosophers look with equal care on both sides
of a question.--W. S. LANDOR in HOLYOAKE'S Agitator's Life, ii. 315.
Introduire dans l'histoire, et sans tenir compte des passions
politiques et religieuses, le doute methodique que Descartes, le
premier, appliqua a l'etude de la philosophie, n'est-ce pas la une
excellente methode? n'est-ce pas meme la meilleure?--CHANTELAUZE,
Correspondant, 1883, i. 129.  La critique historique ne sera jamais
populaire.  Comme elle est de toutes les sciences la plus delicate, la
plus deliee, elle n'a de credit qu'aupres des esprits cultives.--
CHERBULIEZ, Revue des Deux Mondes, xcvii. 517.  Nun liefert aber die
Kritik, wenn sie rechter Art ist, immer nur einzelne Data, gleichsam
die Atome 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 des eigenen Arbeit wie bei jener des anderen, immer hochst
mistrauisch gegen jedes Resume, jede Definition, jedes abschliessende
Wort.--SYBEL, Historische Zeitschrift, lvi. 484.  Mit blosser Kritik
wird darin nichts ausgerichtet, denn die ist nur eine Vorarbeit,
welche da aufhort, wo die echte historische Kunst anfangt.--LASAULX,
Philosophie der Kunste, 212.

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

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

#63 There are so few men mentally capable of seeing both sides of a
question; so few with consciences sensitively alive to the obligation
of seeing both sides; so few placed under conditions either of
circumstance or temper, which admit of their seeing both sides.--GREG,
Political Problems, 1870, 173.  Il n'y a que les Allemands qui sachent
etre aussi completement objectifs.  Ils se dedoublent, pour ainsi
dire, en deux hommes, l'un qui a des principes tres arretes et des
passions tres vives, l'autre qui sait voir et observer comme s'il n'en
avait point.--LAVELEYE, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1868, i. 431.
L'ecrivain qui penche trop dans le sens ou il incline, et qui ne se
defie pas de ses qualites presque autant que ses defauts, cet ecrivain
tourne a la maniere.--SCHERER, Melanges, 484.  Il faut faire
volteface, et vivement, franchement, tourner le dos an moyen age, a ce
passe morbide, qui, meme 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!--MICHELET, La Bible de l'Humanite,
483.  It has excited surprise that Thucydides should speak of
Antiphon, the traitor to the democracy, and the employer of assassins,
as "a man inferior in virtue to none of his contemporaries."  But
neither here nor elsewhere does Thucydides pass moral judgments.--
JOWETT, Thucydides, ii. 501.

#64 Non theologi provinciam suscepimus; scimus enim quantum hoc
ingenii nostri tenuitatem superet: ideo sufficit nobis to hoti [Gk]
fideliter ex antiquis auctoribus retulisse.--MORINUS, De Poenitentia,
ix. 10.  Il faut avouer que la religion chretienne a quelque chose
d'etonnant!  C'est parce que vous y etes ne, dira-t-on.  Tant s'en
faut, je me roidis contre par cette raison-la meme, de peur que cette
prevention ne me suborne.--PASCAL, Pensees, 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.  In the event, that simple representation of the
early centuries had a good deal to do with unsettling me.--NEWMAN,
Apologia, 152.--Nur was sich vor dem Richterstuhl einer achten,
unbefangenen, nicht durch die Brille einer philosophischen oder
dogmatischen Schule stehenden Wissenschaft als wahr bewahrt, kann zur
Erbauung, Belehrung und Warnung tuchtig seyn.--NEANDER,
Kirchengeschichte, 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 Ergrundung der Wahrheit
sein.--PASTOR, Geschichte der Pabste, 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.--SIR W. HAMILTON, Discussions, 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.--NEVIN,
Mercersburg Review, 1851, 168.  S'il est une chose a laquelle j'ai
donne tous mes soins, c'est a ne pas laisser influencer mes jugements
par les opinions politiques on religieuses; que si j'ai quelquefois
peche par quelque exces, c'est par la bienveillance pour les oeuvres
de ceux qui pensent autrement que moi.--MONOD, R. Hist. xvi. 184.
Nous n'avons nul interet a faire parler l'histoire en faveur de nos
propres opinions.  C'est son droit imprescriptible que le narrateur
reproduise tous les faits sans aucune reticence et range toutes les
evolutions dans leur ordre naturel.  Notre recit restera completement
en dehors des preoccupations de la dogmatique et des declamations de
la polemique.  Plus les questions auxquelles nous aurons a 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
connaitre.--REUSS, Nouvelle Revue de Theologie, vi. 193, 1860.  To
love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection
in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.--LOCKE, Letter
to Collins.  Il n'est plus possible aujourd'hui a l'historien d'etre
national dans le sons etroit du mot.  Son patriotisme a lui c'est
l'amour de la verite.  Il n'est pas l'homme d'une race on d'un pays,
il est l'homme de tous les pays, il parle au nom de la civilisation
generale.--LANFREY, Hist. de Nap. iii. 2, 1870.  Juger avec les
parties de soi-meme qui sont le moins des formes du temperament, et le
plus des facultes penetrees et modelees par l'experience, par l'etude,
par l'investigation, par le non-moi.--FAGUET, R. de Paris, i. 151.
Aucun critique n'est aussi impersonne que lui, aussi libre de partis
pris et d'opinions preconcues, aussi objectif--Il ne mele ou parait
meler a ses appreciations ni inclinations personnelles de gout on
d'humeur, on theories d'aucune sorte.--G. MONOD, of Faguet, Revue
Historique, xlii. 417.  On dirait qu'il a peur, et generalisant ses
observations, en systematisant ses connaissances, de meler de lui-meme
aux choses.--Je lis tout un volume de M. Faguet, sans penser une fois
a M. Faguet: je ne vois que les originaux qu'il montre.--J'envisage
toujours une realite objective, jamais l'idee de M. Faguet, jamais la
doctrine de M. Faguet.--LANSON, Revue Politique, 1894, i. 98

#65 It should teach us to disentangle principles first from parties,
and again from one another; first of all as showing how imperfectly
all parties represent their own principles, and then how the
principles themselves are a mingled tissue.--ARNOLD, Modern History,
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.--MAURICE, Essays,
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.--A. SIDGWICK, Distinction and the Criticism of
Beliefs, 1892, 211.  That cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men
which makes them always hide their deeper thought.--RUSKIN, Sesame and
Lilies, i. 16.  Je offener wir die einzelnen Wahrheiten des Sozialismus
anerkennen, desto erfolgreicher konnen wir seine fundamentalen
Unwahrheiten widerlegen.--ROSCHER, Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, 1849,
i. 177.

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

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

#68 Nackte Wahrheit ohne allen Schmuck; grundliche Erforschung des
Einzelnen; das Uebrige, Gott befohlen.--Werke, xxxiv. 24.  Ce ne sont
pas les theories qui doivent nous servir de base dans la recherche des
faits, mais ce sont les faits qui doivent nous servir de base pour la
composition des theories.--VINCENT, Nouvelle Revue de Thoologie, 1859,
ii. 252.

#69 Die zwanglose Anordnungs--die leichte und leise Andeutungskunst des
grossen Historikers voll zu wurdigen, hinderte ihn in fruherer Zeit
sein Bedurfniss nach scharfer begrifflicher Ordnung und Ausfuhrung,
spater, und in immer zunehmenden Grade, sein Sinn fur strenge
Sachlichkeit, und genaue Erforschung der ursichlichen Zusammenhange,
noch mehr aber regte sich seine geradherzige Offenheit seine mannliche
Ehrlichkeit, wenn er hinter den fein verstrichenen Farben der
Rankeschen Erzahlungsbilder die gedeckte Haltung des klugen Diplomaten
zu entdecken glaubte.--HAYM, Duncker's Leben, 437.  The ground of
criticism is indeed, in my opinion, nothing else but distinct
attention, which every reader should endeavour to be master of.--HARE,
December 1736; Warburton's Works, xiv. 98.  Wenn die Quellenkritik so
verstanden wird, als sei sie der Nachweis, wie ein Autor den andern
benutzt hat, so ist das nur ein gelgentliches Mitte--eins unter
anderen--ihr Aufgabe, den Nachweis der Richtigke