Studies in Literature and History
of this kind, by allegations of patriotism or devotion to a faith. Not
many weeks have passed since a dastardly murder was perpetrated in
London, close to this spot, by a crazy wretch who declared himself a
patriot.
So we may profitably lay to mind Lord Acton's stern denunciation, not
only of criminals in high places, but of all, high or low, who pretend
that foul deeds may be justified by asserting pure motives. Let me
quote again from Lord Acton. He has said: 'Of killing, from private
motives or from public, _eadem est ratio_, there is no difference.
Morally, the worst is the last; the fanatic assassin, the cruel
inquisitor, are the worst of all; they are more, not less, infamous,
because they use religion or political expediency as a cloak for their
crimes.' He affirms elsewhere that crimes by constitutional
authorities--by Popes and Kings--are more indefensible than those
committed by private malefactors. And he holds that the theorist is
more guilty than the actual assassin; that the worst use of theory is
to make men insensible to fact, to the real complexion and true
quality of conduct. He would probably have insisted that journalists
and others who instigate political crimes are at least quite as bad as
the actual criminal. Herein, at any rate, we may thoroughly agree with
him, though the question whether the intercourse of nations and their
Governments can be strictly regulated by the same moral standard which
rules among individuals, does raise difficult points for the
conscientious student of history. We have to remember that no power
exists to enforce international laws or police, so that every
Government has to rely upon its own strength for the defence of its
people and the preservation of its rights.
On the whole, I do not know any recent works that may be more
profitable for advice and guidance in reading history than these three
volumes of Lord Acton's. They contain the essence of his unceasing
labours in collecting, comparing, and testing an immense quantity of
historic material. They are particularly valuable for the flashes of
insight into the deeper relations of events, for brief, sententious
observations in which he sums up his judgments upon men and their
doings. They are not to be taken lightly; they demand all your
attention, for the style is compressed and packed with meaning; and
the author seems to expect his readers to be prepared with more
knowledge than, I think, most of us possess. His allusions take for
granted so much learning that they occasionally puzzle the average
man. For example, in one of his essays he makes a passing reference to
'those who in the year 1348 shared the worst crimes that Christian
nations have committed.' What these crimes were he does not say; and
how many of us could answer the question off-hand? Certainly I could
not. But the lectures and essays abound in far-ranging ideas, and show
profound penetration into historic causes and consequences. Some of
the essays, written in comparative youth, betray here and there a
natural leaning towards the Church of Rome, in which he was born, and
against Protestantism; yet his hatred of intolerance and despotism,
spiritual or temporal, was sincere and intense. In politics he was a
Liberal, yet he saw that Liberal institutions, representative
government, are by no means a sure and speedy remedy for misrule in
all times and countries, as in our day simple folk are apt to suppose.
In writing of the condition of Europe during the earlier middle ages
he observes: 'To bring order out of chaotic mire, to rear a new
civilisation and blend hostile and unequal races into a nation, the
thing wanted was not Liberty, but Force.'
Here is a bold and clear-sighted deduction from the lessons of
history, which revolutionary politicians in Asia, where no
nationalities have yet been formed, may well take to heart.
Parliamentary institutions, as Lord Acton has well said, presuppose
unity of a people.
Scattered through these volumes may be found, indeed, certain brief
paragraphs which, as they contain the essence of much learning and
deep thought, may well set us all thinking. In a remarkable essay on
the historical relations of Church and State Lord Acton observes: 'The
State is so closely linked with religion, that no nation that has
changed its religion has ever survived in its old political form.'
Here again is a striking generalisation which a student might set
himself to verify by careful examination of the facts.
And now I will make an end of my address by quoting one more remark of
Lord Acton, in which he gives his definition of history taken as a
whole. 'By universal history,' he says, 'I understand that which is
distinct from the combined history of all countries, which is not a
rope of sand, but a continuous development, and is not a burden on the
memory, but an illumination of the soul. It moves in a succession to
which the nations are subsidiary. Their story will be told, not for
their own sake, but in subordination to a higher series, according to
the time and the degree in which they contribute to the common
fortunes of mankind.'
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Inaugural Address to the Students of King's College for Women,
University of London, October 8, 1909.
RACE AND RELIGION[56]
I propose to offer for consideration some very general views upon the
effects and interaction of the ideas of Race and Religion upon the
political grouping of the population in various countries of Eastern
Europe and of Asia, with the object of showing how they unite and
divide mankind over a great portion of the earth. It will be
understood, I hope, that it is impossible in a brief discussion to go
far or thoroughly over such a wide field. I can only try to indicate
some salient points that may be worth attention.
If we look back upon the ancient world, as it was known to Greece and
to Rome, and as it can be dimly surveyed through the records of
classic antiquity, we find that before the Christian era the
populations were divided and subdivided into races or tribes, with
names signifying a common origin or descent; at any rate some kind of
tribal association. The designation of their country was usually
derived from the name of some dominant race, as Gallia from the Gauls
or Judea from the Jews; indeed I might say, as France from the Franks
or England from the Angles. Religious denominations of any large
community were, I venture to suggest, unknown, at any rate in ancient
Europe. The polytheism of these ages was too local and miscellaneous
to weld together any considerable groups on the basis of a common
worship or belief; for although three great religions then existed,
Buddhism, Hinduism, and the faith of Zoroaster (still represented by
the Parsees), these were confined to Central and Eastern Asia. And,
moreover, these religions had not the missionary spirit; I mean that
they made no vigorous open attempts to spread and gain proselytes,
still less did they use force to convert great multitudes. But after
the Christian era a change came over the face of the Western world.
The Roman empire--that greatest monument of human power, as Dean
Church has called it--began the fusion of races into one vast
political society; its dominion extended continuously from Britain on
the west to Asia Minor and the countries bordering on the Caspian Sea;
it settled the law and language of Southern Europe. The establishment
of the Roman empire is a cardinal epoch of the world's political
history. Then followed two events of immense political importance that
changed the whole aspect and condition of the religious world--the
rise and spread of two powerful missionary and militant religions.
First came Christianity to overspread the lands which the empire had
levelled politically. Islam followed in the seventh century, and the
conflict between these two rival faiths, each claiming universal
spiritual dominion, altered not only the spiritual but also the
temporal order of things in Europe and Western Asia. In Asia the
victorious creed of Mohammed imposed upon immense multitudes a
religious denomination; they became Mussulmans. In Western Europe the
dominion of the Roman empire had by this time fallen to pieces; it was
torn asunder by barbarian invaders; but upon the ruins of that empire
was built up the great Catholic Church of Rome, which gathered
together all races of the West under the common denomination of
Christianity. Beneath the canopies of these two great religions the
primitive grouping of the people survived; throughout Europe there
were no settled kingdoms or nations, but a jumble of races and tribes
contending for land and power. Now we know that in Western Europe this
strife and confusion of the Middle Ages at last ended in the
formation, on a large scale, of separate nationalities, and perhaps we
may take, roughly, the end of the fifteenth century as the period when
the great territorial kingdoms were definitely marked out, and when
the rulers were rounding off their possessions under designations that
may be called national. In these countries the subdivisions according
to race had now lost almost all political significance; but in the
sixteenth century another great disturbing element reappeared. The
great wars of religion again made a fresh division of the people into
two camps of Roman Catholics and Protestants. This ferment has
gradually subsided, and at the present time all minor groups of the
population in Western Europe have been absorbed under large national
designations; the nations are marked off within clearly cut frontiers,
and separated by the paramount distinction of languages. In Western
Europe you do not now define a man by his original race or by his
religion, you ask whose natural-born subject he is, in whose territory
he lives, and you class him accordingly as French, English, Spanish or
Italian.
Now it has been, I think, one result of this consolidation of the West
into States and Nationalities, with religion mostly corresponding to
the region, that the persistence in other parts of the world of the
earlier ideas of race and religion, the primordial grouping of
mankind, has been far too commonly overlooked and undervalued. My
present object is to lay stress on the importance of realising and
understanding them. And I may begin by throwing out the suggestion
that this oversight, this neglect of ideas and facts that still have
great strength and vitality, may be connected with the influence, in
France and England, of a certain school of political philosophy that
arose in the eighteenth century, in France. The Encyclopedistes, as
they were called, because their leaders wrote the celebrated French
Encyclopaedia, treated in theory all notions of separate races,
religions, and frontiers as so many barriers against the spread of a
common civilisation, which was to unite all peoples on general
principles of reason, scientific knowledge, and emancipation from
local or national prejudices. As a theory this might not have had much
practical effect; but at the end of the eighteenth century came the
French Revolution, when these philosophical notions took a very
seriously practical shape; for the French Republican armies invaded
the kingdoms of Western Europe with the war-cry of universal
fraternity and equality. Revolutionary France ignored both race and
religion. It proclaimed, De Tocqueville says, above and instead of all
peculiar nationalities, an intellectual citizenship that was intended
to include the people of every country to which it extended,
superseding all distinctions of language, tradition, and national
character. Under Napoleon this fierce impulse of democratic levelling
was transformed into Imperialism: he aimed at restoring an Empire in