Studies in Literature and History
acquaintance with the masterpieces of literature--that their reading
must be continuous and consecutive.
Now those among you who are studying for University honours have no
need for any advice from me; they are well aware that the wide
expansion, in these days, of the field of history has raised the
standard of examinations, and that they must be prepared for questions
testing a candidate's critical acumen, the breadth and depth of his
reading, much more closely than was required formerly. But there must
also be many here present who have no examinations in front of them,
who have no ardent inclination or even leisure for abstruse labours.
And I presume that all of you read history for a clear understanding
of past ages, of the acts and thoughts of the great men who illustrate
those times. You all desire to comprehend the sequence and
significance of events. You feel the intellectual pleasure of
appreciating rightly the character and motive of the men and women who
stand in the foreground of our country's annals, and also of those who
are famous in other countries, to know how and why they rose or fell,
whether they deserved the success that they won, or won it without
deserving it. Moreover, for us English folk, who live at the centre of
an empire containing races and communities in various stages of
political development, the lessons of history have a special value.
They teach us to judge leniently of acts and opinions that appear to
us irrational and even iniquitous as we see them in other backward
countries at the present day. We learn that manners and morals may not
be unchangeable in a nation; that fallacies and prejudices are not
ineradicable; that even cruelty, tyranny, reckless bloodshed, are not
incurable vices. For history tells us that some of the nations now
foremost in the ranks of civilisation have passed through the stages
of society in which such things are possible. And thus we can study
the circumstances and conditions of political existence which have
retarded the upward progress of certain nations and accelerated the
advance of others. Such inquiries belong to the philosophy of history.
When we read, for example, the history of England in the fifteenth or
sixteenth century, we find that our ancestors, born and bred in this
same island, kindly men in private life and sincerely religious,
intellectually not our inferiors, yet, when they took sides in
politics or Church questions, did things which appear to us utterly
cruel, against reason, justice, and humanity. To remember this helps
us to realise the difficulty of passing fair judgment not only on the
conduct of our forefathers, but upon the actions and character of
other peoples and governments that are doing very similar things at
the present time in other parts of the world. We shall find it an
arduous task to assign motives, to weigh considerations, to acquit or
condemn. So that, to the politician of to-day, history ought to be an
invaluable guide and monitor for taking an impartial measure of the
difficulties of government in troubled or perilous circumstances. Yet
one sometimes wishes that the record of the fierce and bitter
struggles of former days had been forgotten, for it still breeds
rancour and resentment among the descendants of the people that fought
for lost causes, and suffered the penalty of defeat. The remembrance
keeps alive grievances, and the ancient tale of wrongs that have long
been remedied survives to perpetuate national antipathies. Moreover,
in some of the most celebrated cases known to our own annals, we are
never sure that we have the whole case before us, for the historians
give doubtful help, since the best authorities often take opposite
views, as, for instance, on the question whether Mary Queen of Scots
was her husband's murderess, or a much injured and calumniated lady.
The admitted facts are valued differently, interpreted variously, and
made to support contradictory conclusions. The latest historian of
Rome, Signor Ferrero, sums up a long and elaborate dissertation on the
acts and character of Julius Caesar by a judgment which differs
emphatically from the views of all preceding historians. On some of
these disputed questions we may make up our minds after studying the
evidence; but many historical problems are in truth insoluble; the
evidence is imperfect and untrustworthy.
These, then, are some of the warnings we may take from history. We
must not be hasty about condemning misdeeds of past generations,
whether of the rulers or their people. The times were hard, so were
the men; they were encompassed by dangers, while we who criticise them
live in ease and safety. And when we hear at the present day of
misrule and strife and bloodshed among other races--in Asia, for
example--we may remember our own story, and we may trust that they
also will work their way upward to peace and concord.
But the truth is that, as our knowledge of the past is very imperfect,
so also our predictions of the future are very fallible. The best
observers can see only a very short way ahead. History shows us how
frequently the course of affairs has taken quite unexpected turns, for
good or for ill, forward or backward. On the whole, we may believe
that the main direction is certainly toward the gradual betterment of
the world at large, though the theory of progress is quite modern, for
the ancients looked behind them for the Golden Age. Nowadays we
trumpet the glory of our British empire; yet at intervals our
confidence in its fortunes is shaken by some sharp panic; the decline
and fall of England is predicted. It is, indeed, perilous to be
overconfident, to live in a fool's paradise, for some of us have seen
in our lifetime the sudden catastrophes that have overtaken great
empires. But history may comfort us when we read how often the
downfall of England has been predicted, how we have been on the brink
of shooting down Niagara, as Carlyle declared, or threatened with
imminent invasion, with total loss of commerce and colonies, with
defeat abroad and bankruptcy at home. And yet our country is still
fairly prosperous and free, and as for invasions, we may still trust
that, as Coleridge has written:
'Ocean 'mid the uproar wild
Speaks safety to his island child.'
But on the whole history gives political prophets little
encouragement--we cannot foretell the future from the past.
Nevertheless, there is some truth in the saying that history is like
an old almanac, if we may take this to mean that, although the same
events never happen again in the same way, yet in the great movements
of the tide of the world's affairs a sort of periodical recurrence, an
ebb and flow, may be noticed. For example, we know that from the
fifteenth until near the end of the seventeenth century the Asiatic
armies of the Turkish Sultans were invading and conquering
South-Eastern Europe--they reached the gates of Vienna. Then followed
a swing backward of the pendulum, and from the eighteenth to the end
of the nineteenth century the European Powers, Russia and England,
were each extending a great dominion over Asia. Again, up to a few
years ago, the Turkish empire was a barbarous despotism, and we all
believed that it must break up and be extinguished. Yet it has now
revived in a new form, which may possibly restore its power and
prosperity. To search for and distinguish the operating causes, the
powers that underlie these incalculable changes, is a task for the
student of history.
There must be many of you for whom these high problems have a strong
attraction, who enjoy rapid flights over the broad surface of history,
wide outlooks over the past and future. Now, I admit that bold
generalisations are hazardous, unless founded upon very solid
knowledge; but in historical as well as in physical science they are
needed to sum up results, to bring facts into focus. They enable us,
so the late Lord Acton has said, to fasten on abiding issues, to
distinguish the temporary from the transient.
The late Lord Acton, who, as you may remember, was Professor of Modern
History at Cambridge, is reckoned by general consent to have surpassed
all his contemporaries, at least in England, by his encyclopaedic,
accurate, and profound knowledge of history. His reading was vast, his
learning prodigious, his industry never slackened. Yet the literary
production of his life is contained in three volumes of essays,
lectures, and articles; he has left us no complete book. Indeed, his
writing is so disproportionate to his reading that one is tempted to
liken his luminous intellect to a fire on which too much fuel had been
heaped; the ardent mind glowed and shot up its streaks of radiance
through the weight of erudition that overlaid it. Among Lord Acton's
published papers is a 'Note of Advice to Persons about to Write
History,' of which the first word is _Don't_. But he then proceeds to
jot down some hints and maxims, brief and caustic, for the benefit of
those who nevertheless persist in writing; and to some of these I
commend the attention of readers, since upon readers as well as upon
writers lies the duty of forming careful opinions, of judging
impartially, in working out their conclusions upon the events and
personages of past times. For Lord Acton was an indefatigable
researcher after truth; his standard of public morality was austere,
lofty, and uncompromising. I myself venture to think that he was too
rigid; he admitted no excuse for breaches of the moral law on the
pretext, however urgent, of political necessity; he refused to allow
extenuation of violence or bloodshed even in times of great emergency.
'The inflexible integrity of the moral code,' he said, 'is to me the
secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of history.' Now
this is hard doctrine for most of us to follow when we set ourselves,
as students, to condemn or acquit, to blame or to praise the prominent
actors in the drama of our national history. On that stage, as we all
know, the real tragedies that stand on record were sanguinary enough,
and the parts occasionally played in them by our ancestors were of a
sort that now appear most unnatural and indefensible to their
descendants. Yet most of us are disposed to regard with some leniency
even the crimes of a violent and lawless age.
But however this may be, some of Lord Acton's counsels are undoubtedly
valuable as warnings or for guidance, either as lamps to show the
right road, or as lighthouses to keep us from going wrong. His
inaugural lecture at Cambridge on the Study of History is full of
precepts, maxims, warnings, injunctions, all of which may be pondered
by students with advantage. We are enjoined, for example, to beware of
permitting our historic judgment to be warped by influences, whether
of Country, Class, Church, College, or Party; and it is said, by way
of driving home the warning, that the most respectable of these
influences is the most dangerous. But very few writers, and, I
suspect, not many readers, can hold their mental balance quite
steadily, can weigh testimony on either side of a question quite
dispassionately, when our Church, or our Country, perhaps even our
University, is concerned. Nor is it easy for students to find
historians who are entirely unmoved by bias of these kinds, who have
neither a theory to prove, nor a cause to support, nor a hero to be
exalted, nor a sinner to be whitewashed. Indeed, the wicked men of
history have always found some ingenious advocate to defend them by
attempting to justify bad acts on the ground of excellent motives and
intentions, of the exigencies of the situation, or other excuses and
explanations. It is certain that some of the worst crimes on record,
assassinations and savage persecutions, have been defended on pretexts