Lectures on Modern history. Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton
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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