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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
MEANING OF HISTORY.
BY
,
FREDERIC HARRISON, M.A.
LONDON:
TEUBNER AND CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
AlDCCCLXII.
��WUL....JL
.
. ,:i- -i*
THE
MEANING OF HISTORY.
too States.
BY
FREDERIC HARRISON, M.A.
.LONDON:
TREBNER AND CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
mdccclxii.
�HABBILD,
�PREFACE.
contain two lectures recently addressed
to a mixed audience in London, as an introduction to a
course of teaching in History, which was subsequently com
menced by the writer. They are printed (nearly as they
were spoken) at the request and chiefly for the use of
those who heard them. It will be seen that they belong
to the most elementary kind of popular instruction, and
they will have little interest for the general reader, much
less for the regular student of history. I was led to
attempt the course of lectures, and afterwards to print
these pages, by my conviction that the first want of our
time is the spread amongst the intelligent body of our
people of solid materials to form political and social
opinion. To stimulate an interest in history seems to me
the only means of giving a fresh meaning to popular
education, and a higher intelligence to popular opinion.
I am aware that nearly every sentence in this outline,
were it not too slight, might give room for serious question,
and possibly for severe criticism. But if opposite opinions
are not noticed, they have still been carefully weighed.
If I have spoken of many still debated topics almost
as though they were decided, it is only because in such a
plan as this any sort of controversy is out of place, not
that I forget or slight all that has been urged on the other
side. But discussion, like research, must have an end
The following pages
�PEEFAGE.
somewhere, and the great need now is not to increase bnt
to use our stores of historical learning. After all, the
only real answer to any theory of history, professing to
be complete and not manifestly inconsistent, is the pro
duction of a counter theory at once more complete and
consistent. The view of history here put forward it will
be seen is in no sense my own. It is drawn with some
care from the various writings of Auguste Comte. Al
though far from being able to adopt all his philosophical
and religious conclusions, I am persuaded that the concep
tion of the past, which is embodied in his works, and the
political and social principles of which that conception
forms the basis, point out the sole path towards all future
improvement.
F. H.
�THE MEANING OH HISTORY.
LECTURE8.
THE USE OF HISTORY.
The question for which we are about to seek an answer
is this :—What is the nse of historical knowledge ? Is an
acquaintance with the events, with the men, with the ideas
of the past, of any real use to us in these days ? has it any
practical bearing upon the happiness and conduct of each
of us in life ?
Now, it must strike us at once, that two very different,
nay, contradictory answers may be given, in fact, are very
frequently given, to this question. But, opposite as they
are, I hardly know from which I more thoroughly dissent.
Some persons tell you roundly, that there is no use at all.
We are, they would say with Bacon, the mature age of the
world ; with us lies the gathered wisdom of ages. To waste
our time in studying exploded fallacies, in reproducing
worn-out forms of society, or in recalling men who were
only conspicuous because they lived amidst a crowd of
ignorant or benighted barbarians, is to wander from the
path of progress, and to injure and not to improve our
understandings. What can be the good to us, they ask,
of the notions of men who thought that the sun went round
the earth; who would have taken a steam-engine for a
dragon or a hippogriff, and had never even heard of the
rights of man ? On the other hand, the other class of
B
�2
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
persons would say of historical knowledge, that it has
fifty different uses. It is very amusing to hear what
curious things they did in by-gone times. It is highly
entertaining to know about forefathers of our own who
were nearly as funny as Chinese. Then, again, it is very
instructive as a study of character; we see in history the
working of the human mind and will. Besides, it is neces
sary to avoid the blunders they committed in past days :
there we collect a store of moral examples, and of political
maxims; we learn to watch the signs of the times, and to
be prepared for situations whenever they return. And it
cannot be doubted, they add, that it is a branch of know
ledge, and all knowledge is good. To know history, they
conclude, is to be well-informed, is to be familiar with some
of the finest examples of elegant and brilliant writing.
Now, between the two, those who tell us plainly that
history is of no use, and those who tell us vaguely that
history is of fifty uses, I do not see much to choose. I
thoroughly disagree with them both, and of the two I
would rather deal with the former. Their opposition, at
any rate, is concentrated into a single point, and may be
met by a single and a direct answer. To them I would
say, Are you consistent ? Do you not in practice follow
another course ? In rejecting all connection with the facts
and ideas of the past, are you not cutting the ground from
under your own feet ? You are an active politician and a
staunch friend of the principles of the liberal party. What
are the traditional principles of a party but a fraction,
small, no doubt, but a sensible fraction of history ? You
are a warm friend of free trade. Well, but free trade has
a history of its own ; its strength lies in the traditions of a
great victory achieved by right over might. You believe
in the cause of progress. But what is the cause of pro
gress but the extension of that civilization, of that change
for the better which we have all witnessed or have learned
to recognize as an established fact ? Your voice is always
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
3
heard for freedom. Well, but do you never appeal to
Magna Charta, to the Bill of Rights, to the Reform Bill,
to American Independence, or the French Revolution ?
You will suffer no outrage on the good name of England.
You are ready to cover the seas with armaments to uphold
the national greatness. But what is the high name of
England if it is not the memory of all the deeds by which,
in peace or war, on sea or land, England has held her own
amongst the foremost of the earth ? Nor is it true that you
show no honours to the men of the past, are not guided by
their ideas, and do not dwell upon their lives, their work,
and their characters. The most turbulent revolutionary
that ever lived, the most bitter hater of the past, finds
many to admire. It may be Cromwell, it may be Rousseau,
■or Voltaire, it may be Robert Owen, it may be Thomas
Paine, but some such leader each will have ; his memory
he will revere, his influence he will admit, his principles he
will contend for. Thus it will be in every sphere of active
life. No serious politician can fail to recognize that, howover strongly he repudiates antiquity, and rebels against the
tyranny of custom, still he himself only acts freely and con
sistently when he is following the path trodden by earlier
leaders, and is working with the current of the principles
in which he throws himself, and in which he has confidence.
For him, then, it is not true that he rejects all common
purpose with what has gone before. It is a question only
of selection and of degree. To some he clings, the rest he
rejects. Some history he does study, and finds in it both
profit and enjoyment.
Or, again, let us suppose such a man to be interested in
any study whatever, either in promoting general education,
or eager to acquire knowledge for himself. Well, he will
find, at every step he takes, that he is appealing to the
authority of the past, is using the ideas of former ages,
and carrying out principles established by ancient, but not
forgotten thinkers. If he studies geometry he will find
�4
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
the first text book put into his hand was written by a
Greek two thousand years ago. If he takes up grammar,
he will be only repeating rules taught by Roman school
masters and professors. Or is he interested in art ? He
will find the same thing in a far greater degree. He goes
to the Museum to see the stuffed birds or the fossil reptiles,,
and he walks into a building- which is a good imitation of a
Greek temple. He goes to the Houses of Parliament tohear a debate, and he enters a building which is a bad imi
tation of a mediaeval town-hall. Or, again, I might say to
him, does he never read his Shakespeare or Milton ; feel
no respect for the opinions of Bacon or of Hume, or Adam
Smith ? I know that he does. I know that such a man
the moment he takes a warm interest in anything—in
politics, in education, in science, in art, or in social im
provement—the moment that his intelligence is kindled,
and his mind begins to work, that moment he is striving
to throw himself into the stream of some previous human
efforts, to identify himself with others, and to try to under
stand and to follow the path of future progress which has
been traced out for him by the leaders of his own party or
school. Therefore, I say that such a man is not consistent
when he says that history is of no use to him. He does
direct his action by what he believes to be the course laid
out before him; he does follow the guidance of certain
teachers whom he respects.
I have then only to ask him on what grounds he rests his
selection; why he chooses some and rejects all others; how
he knows for certain that no other corner of the great field
of history will reward the care of the ploughman, or bring
forth good seed. In spite of himself, he will find himself
surrounded in every act and thought of life by a power
which is too strong for him. If he chooses simply to stag
nate, he may, perhaps, dispense with any actual reference
to the past; but the moment he begins to act, to live, or to
think, he must use the materials presented to him, and,
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
5
so far as he is a member of a civilized community, so far
as he is an Englishman, so far as he is a rational man, he
can as little free himself from the influence of former gene
rations as he can free himself from his personal identity ;
unlearn all that he has learnt; cease to be what his pre
vious life has made him, and blot out of his memory all
recollection whatever.
Let us suppose for a moment that any set of men could
succeed in sweeping away from them all the influences of
past ages, and everything that they had not themselves
discovered or produced. Suppose that all knowledge of
the gradual steps of civilization, of the slow process of
perfecting the arts of life and the natural sciences were
blotted out; suppose all memory of the efforts and strug
gles of earlier generations, and of the deeds of great men,
were gone ; all the landmarks of history; all that has dis
tinguished each country, race, or city, in past times from
others ; all notion of what man had done, or could do ; of
his many failures, of his successes, of his hopes; suppose,
for a moment, all the books, all the traditions, all the
buildings of past ages, to vanish off the face of the earth,
and with them the institutions of society, all political forms,
all principles of politics, all systems of thought, all daily
customs, all familiar arts ; suppose the most deep-rooted
and most sacred of all our institutions gone ; suppose that
the family and home, property, and justice, were strange
ideas without meaning—in a word, that all the customs
which surround us each from birth to death—aye, and
beyond death, in the grave—were blotted out; suppose a
race of men whose minds, by a paralytic stroke of fate had
suddenly been deadened to every recollection, to whom the
•whole world was new—can we imagine, if we can imagine
it, a condition of such utter helplessness, confusion, and
misery—such a race might retain their old powers of mind
and of activity, nay, both might be increased tenfold, and
yet what would it profit them ? Can we conceive such a
�6
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
race acting together, living together, for one hour ? They
would have everything to create. Would any two agree to
adopt the same custom, and could they live without any ?
They would have all the arts, all the sciences, to- reconstruct
anew ; and how would their tenfold intellect help them
there ? Even with minds of the highest order it would be
impossible to think, for the world would present one vast
chaos; even with the most amazing powers of activity,
they would fall back exhausted from the task of recon
structing, reproducing everything around them. Had they
the wisest teachers or the highest social or moral purposes,
they would all be lost and wasted in an interminable strife,
and continual difference ; for family, town, property, society,
country, nay, why not language itself, would be things
which each would be left to create for himself, and each
would create in a different manner. It would realize, in
deed, the old fable of the tower of Babel ■ and the insane
pride of self be followed by shameful confusion and dis
persion, and a race with ten times the intellect, twenty
times the powers, and fifty times the virtues of any race
that ever lived on earth would end, within a generation, in
a state of hopeless barbarism; the earth would return tothe days of primeval forests and swamps, and man descend
almost to the level of the monkey and the beaver.
Now, if this be true, if we are so deeply indebted and
so indissolubly bound to preceding ages, if all our hopes of
the future depend on a sound understanding of the past, I
cannot fancy any knowledge more important, nay, so im
portant, as the knowledge of the way in which this civiliza
tion has been built up. If at once the destiny of our race
and the daily action of each of us are so completely directed
by it, surely the useful existence of each depends much upon
a right estimate of that which has so constant an influenceover him, will be advanced as he works with the working of
that civilization, above him, and around him, will be checked
as he opposes it; it depends upon this that he mistakes none
�THE USE OE HISTORY.
7
of the elements that go to make up that civilization as a
whole, and sees them in their due relation and harmony.
And now this brings me to that second class of objec
tors of whom I spoke; those who, far from denying the
interest of the events of the past, far from seeing no use
at all in their study, are only too ready in discovering a
multitude of reasons for it, and at seeing in it a variety of
incongruous purposes. If they tell us that it furnishes us
with parallels when similar events occur, I should say that
similar events never do and never can occur in history.
The history of man offers one unbroken chain of constant
progress and change, in which no single situation is ever
reproduced. The story of the world is played out like a
drama in many acts and scenes, not like successive games
of chess, in which the pieces meet, combat, and manoeuvre
for a time, and then the board is cleared for another trial,
and they are replaced in their original positions. Political
maxims drawn crudely from history may do more harm
than good. You may justify anything by a pointed example
in history. It will show you instances of triumphant
tyranny and triumphant tyrannicide. You may find in it
excuses for any act or any system, What is true of one
country is wholly untrue of another, What led to a cer- tain result in one age, leads to a wholly opposite result in
another. Then as to character, if the sole object of study
ing history is to see in it the workings of the human heart,
why that is far better studied in the fictitious creations of '
the great masters of character, in Shakespeare, in Moliere,
in Fielding, and Scott. Macbeth and Richard are as true
to nature as any name in history, and give us an impres
sion of desperate ambition more vivid than the tale of any
despot in ancient or modern times. Besides, if we read
history only to find in it picturesque incident or subtle
shades of character, we run as much chance of stumbling
on the worthless and the curious as the noble and the
great. A Hamlet is a study in interest perhaps exceeding.
�THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
all others in fiction or in fact, but we shall hardly find that
Hamlets have stamped their trace very deep in the history
of mankind. There are few lives in all human story more
romantic than that of Alcibiades, and none more base.
Some minds find fascination in the Popish plots of Titus
Oates, where the interest centres round a dastardly ruffian,
The bullies, the fops, the cut-throats, and the Jezebels who
crowded the courts of the Stuarts and the Georges, have
been consigned to permanent infamy in libraries of learned
and of brilliant works. Brilliant and ingenious writing,
alas, has been the bane of history; it has degraded its
purpose, and perverted many of its uses. Histories, aye,
famous histories, have been written, which are little but
minute pictures of scoundrelism and folly triumphant.
Wretches, who if alive now would be consigned to the
gallows or the hulks, have only to take, as it is said, a place
in history, and generations after generations of learned
men will pore over their lives, collect then- letters, theft
portraits, or their books, search out every vile fact in theft
lives with prurient inquisitiveness, and chronicle their ras
calities in twenty volumes. Such stories, some may say,
have a human interest! Well, so has the Newgate Calendar
a human interest of a certain kind. Why, I should like to
ask, is it supposed to show a low taste to enjov the ex
ploits of Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild, and yet it should
be thought a highly refined and useful pursuit to be deep
in the mysteries of all the masquerades in which some
crowned wretch like Charles II. or Louis XV. passed his
nothingness ? Brilliant writing, indeed, is a most delusive
guide. In search of an effective subject for a telling pic
ture, men have wandered into strange and dismal haunts.
We none of us choose our friends on such a plan. Why,
then, should we choose thus the friends round whom our
recollections are to centre ? We none of us wrish to be
intimate with a man simply because he is a picturesquelooking villain, nor do we bring to our firesides men who
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
9
have the reputation of being the loudest braggarts or
keenest sharpers of their time. Well, let it be the same in
our reading’. Let us drive out from about us those whose
only merit is that they are strange or picturesque. Let
not our histories be polluted by their presence, let not
these unholy figures intrude into the worthy fellowship of
the good and great of former days, who we may almost
fancy sit “holding high converse” in grave and solemn
conclave together. No, history read upon such a plan is
worse than nothing. You are quite right if you pass by
untouched these piles of memoirs of the unmemorable—
these lives of those who never can be said to have lived.
Pass them all by in contempt and pity—these riotings
and intrigues, and affectations of worthless men and worth
less ages. Better to know nothing of the past than to
know only its follies, though set forth in eloquent language
and with attractive anecdote. What good can come of
such a knowledge ? What can it profit you in your daily
life, how are you a better or a happier man, because
you know the names of all the kings that ever lived, or
let me say rather existed, and the catalogue of all their
whims and vices, and a minute list of their particular
weaknesses, with all their fools, buffoons, mistresses, and
valets ? You had better learn the Peerage by heart, and
know the names of the grandfathers and grandmothers of
our hereditary rulers. Why not be able to repeat the
■Court Circular? Why is not such knowledge just as
human, and just as valuable, and far more harmless than
that contained in histories in which the foreground is
filled by any villain that wore a crown or a coronet, and
.the brightest colours of the palette are lavished on a
pantaloon whose buffooneries have attracted the eyes of a
crowd ? Or, again, some odd incident becomes the subject
of the labour of lives, and fills volume after volume of
ingenious trifling. Some wretched little squabble is ex
humed, utterly unimportant in itself, utterly unimportant
�10
THE MEANINCr OF HISTORY.
for the persons that were engaged in it, utterly trivial in its
results. Lives are spent in raking up old letters to show
why or how some parasite like Sir T. Overbury was mur
dered, or to unravel some plot about a maid of honour,
or a diamond necklace, or some conspiracy to turn out a
minister, or to detect some court impostor. Why, libraries
could be filled with all the dreary wrangling as to who
was the Man in the Iron Mask, or who was the author
of Junius, oi’ who was Pope Joan? Who in the world
wants to know ? Why do men not exercise their in
genuity on something worth knowing ? Why not discover
the author of the last mysterious murder, or unveil the
secrets of some public job ? There are plenty of things to
find out, or if people are afflicted with a morbid curiosity,
there are surely Chinese puzzles or chess problems left for
them to make out without ransacking the public records
and libraries to find out which out of a nameless crowd
was the most unmitigated scoundrel, or who it is that
must have the credit of being the author of some pecu-'
liarly venomous or filthy pamphlet ? Why need we have
six immense volumes to prove to the world that you have
found the villain, and ask them to read all about him,
and explain in brilliant language how some deed of dark
ness, or some deed of folly really was done ? Why all
this ? Let it be unknown—let the dark thing remain dark
—let them all rot together.
And they call this history. This goodly serving up in
spiced dishes of the clean and the unclean, the wholesome
and the noxious; this plunging down, without a lamp to
guide them, into the charnel-house of the great graveyard,
of the past, and stirring up the decaying carcases of the
outcasts and malefactors of the race. What good can
come of such a work F Without plan, without purpose,
without breadth of view, and without method ; with
nothing but a vague desire to amuse, and a morbid
craving for novelty. Do you suppose such a knowledge
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
11
can teach yon anything ? Do yon think it can tonch the
heart ? Do yon gather from it incentive to action ? Do
yon not feel yon might as well be reading bad novels or
trashy newspapers ? Wonld yon not learn as much from
a trial for murder or a trial of divorce? I would call all
such, not histories, but police reports. I would call such
writers, not historians, but paragraph writers. Have
nothing to do with such. If there is one common
purpose running through the whole history of the past,,
if that history is the story of man’s growth by one un
ceasing progress in dignity, and power, and goodness, if
the gathered knowledge and the gathered conscience of
past ages does control us, support us, inspire us, then is
this trifling with the blots and flaws of this great whole,
this commemorating these parasites and offscourings of
the human race worse than pedantry or folly. It is filling
us with an unnatural contempt for the greatness of the
past, it distorts our conception of that greatness, it is
committing towards oui' spiritual forefathers the same
crime which Ham committed against his father Noah. Is
it not a kind of sacrilege to the memory of the great men
to whom we owe all we prize, that we waste our lives in
poring over the acts of the puny creatures who only en
cumbered their path, who were traitors to them, to us, and
to our kind? Is it not the most wanton ingratitude and
meanness to feel no thought for, no reverence for, those
long labours, those great deeds of daring, endurance,,
magnanimity, and genius, by which the earth has been
smoothed for us, and civilization age after age wrought out
for us, and to think only of some puerile wrangle which
has dishonoured or retarded the great work ? Men on the
battle-field or in their study, by the labour of then brains
or of their hands, have given us what we have, and made
us what we are; a noble army who have done battle with
evil barbarism and the powers of nature, martyrs often
to their duty; yet are we to turn with indifference from
�12
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
the story of their long march and many victories, and find
amusement amidst the very camp followers and sutlers
who hang npon their rear. If history has any lessons, any
unity, any plan, let us turn to it for this and for this alone.
Let this be our test of what is history and what is not,
that it teach us something of the great advance of human
progress, that it tells us of some of those mighty spirits
who have left their mark on all time, that it shows us the
nations of the earth woven togethei’ in one purpose, or is
lit up with those great ideas and those great purposes
which have kindled the conscience of mankind. If not,
we shall be like him in the Pilgrim’s Progress, who is seen
raking amidst straw and litter, whilst an angel is offering
him a crown he will not reach forth his hand to take.
It is in a very different spirit, I know, that you are
prepared to look at history. You want to see how it may
be made a part of education—the m oral training of a
rational man. About the importance, the meaning, and
duty of education we surely shall all agree. It is to a
wise education to which men turn in the break up of all
old systems, creeds, and parties. Why else are we here
to-night ? You have not come here to pass an idle hour.
I have not the wish if I had the power to make it pass
pleasantly, unless we both came with a purpose. Your
presence, then, our presence together in a place of
education, a place designed to extend the benefit of wider
popular education, witnesses that this is the end to which
we look. Why are we here, except it is that we all share
the conviction which grows stronger day by day, that only
as education grows amongst us, wider, more universal,
more sound, more moral, with higher aims and broader
foundations, will true progress in public or private life be
won. Have you not all, in the failure of your most ardent
hopes, in the baffling of your best efforts, in the conscious
ness of want of true knowledge and guidance, in despair
over social miseries and social wrongs, have you not often, I
�THE USE OK HISTORY.
13
say, turned back and felt within you. that, until better and
truer knowledge was spread abroad to all, all hopes were
deceitful and all efforts in vain ? Has not every one of
you who ever believed in or laboured for a political cause
or a public measure, who has stood by some principle of
social good, some temperance movement, some sanitary
scheme, some educational plan, who has ever longed for or
worked for a happier feeling to spring up between the
classes of employers and employed, or rich and poor, still
more each one of you who has ever thought to see old
superstitions fall, and the strife of sects, churches, and
creeds end in a fraternal union of men in one common
work ; has not every one who has ever done or felt this,
had from time to time the bitterness of seeing that his
political principles made no way, that misunderstanding
still abounded, that bigotry, spite, intolerance, ignorance,
brutal ignorance or coarseness, old prejudices, new jealous
ies, and general apathy, divergence, and confusion were
not so easily to be done away ? Has he not felt that acts
of parliament, movements, plans, and societies of all sorts
were paralyzed and helpless until a truer knowledge could
bring men to closer agreement, until a higher moral
standard had set in, until the principles both of those who
sought to change and of those who sought to retain could
be tested by some system of truer science and philosophy,
until, in short, education became general, and sound, and
moral and universal.
I have felt this, and therefore only am I here. In this
spirit, for this purpose only, do I suppose that you have
come. In this spirit, and this spirit only, let us seek to
comprehend the use and meaning of history.
How, if this is what we mean when we speak of edu
cation, let us consider how a knowledge of history forms
any part of it, otherwise it will be better to leave it alone.
Do we ever ask ourselves why knowledge of any kin d is
useful ? It is not so very easy a matter to give a satisfac
�14
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
tory answer after all. It is certainly not true that a know
ledge of facts, as facts, is desirable. Facts are infinite,
and it is not the millionth part of them that is worth
knowing. What some people call the pure love of truth
is after all a very poor affair if we come to think of it. It
often means only a pure love of intellectual fussiness. A
statement may be true, and yet wholly worthless. It
cannot be all facts which are the subject of knowledge.
For instance, a man might learn by heart the Post-Office
Directory, and a very remarkable mental exercise it would
be; but he would hardly venture to call himself a wellinformed man. No ; we want the facts only which add to
our power, or will enable us to act. They only give us know
ledge—they only are a part of education. For instance,
you begin the study of mathematics ; of algebra, or
geometry. What do you do this for ? You hardly expect
to turn it to practical account. You are not like Hudibras,
who could “ tell the clock by algebra,” nor do you find
Euclid’s geometry help you to take the shortest cut to your
own house. No, this is not your object. Your object is to
know something of the simplest principles which underlie
all the sciences. You want to understand practically what
mathematical demonstration means. You want to bring
home to your minds the conception of scientific axioms.
All men count—all men work out calculations—all men
measure something. Well, you want to know what this
counting means ; what rules will serve all calculation and
all m casn rements. You want to know what they call the
abstract laws of the human understanding. You want, in
short, to improve the mind. Again, you study some of the
physical laws of nature ; you read or hear plain facts about
gravitation, or heat, or light. Well, you don’t expect to
be able to become a practical discoverer, or to take out a
patent for a new balloon, or a new stove, or a new lamp.
No, what you want is to be able to know something of
what our modern philosophers are talking about. You
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
15
want to know why Faraday is a great teacher. You want
to know what it is which seems to affect all nature equally;
which brings you down heavily upon the earth if you
stumble, and keeps the planets in their orbits. You want
to understand what are laws of nature. Again, you want
to improve your mind. You take up such pursuits as botany
or geology ; but then, again, you don’t expect to discover
a new medicine, or a gold-field, or a coal-mine. No, you
want to know something of the mystery around you. You
want to see intelligible structure, consistent unity, and
common laws in the earth on which we live, with the view,
I presume, of feeling more at home in it, of becoming more
attached to it, of living in it more happily. Some of you,
again, study physiology—that is, you take interest in the
structure of the human body, especially of the human
brain, and its relation to the body, and its relation to the
mind and will. Well, why is this ? Again, you do not
expect to discover the elixir of life, like an eminent novelist
of the day, and you hardly expect to dispense with the aid
of the surgeon. Is not the interest you take in all this,
that you want to get a glimpse of that marvellous frame
work of the human form, some notion of the laws of its
existence, some idea of the powers which affect it, which
depress or develope it, some knowledge of the relation of
the thinking and feeling process, and the thinking and feel
ing organ. Well, then, you seek to know something of the
influences to which all human nature is subject, to be able
to understand what people mean when they tell you about
laws of health, or laws of life, or laws of thought. You
want to be in a position to decide for yourself as to the
trustworthiness of men upon whose judgment you depend
for bodily existence.
Now, in this list of the subjects of a rational education,
does it not strike you that something is wanting ? Is it
not like the old saying about the play of Hamlet with
Hamlet left out ?
�16
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
“ The proper study of mankind is man.”
And where in this outline is Man ? Does it not strike you
that whilst this object is wanting, all the rest remains vague
and incomplete, and aimless ? Dor instance, when you are
learning arithmetic or geometry, you are not seeking to
perform feats of memory. You do not want to turn your
self into one of Babbage’s calculating machines. Mathe
matics would indeed be only a jumble of figures if it ended
in itself. But the moment you come to learn the influ
ence which some great discovery has had on the destinies
of man; the moment you see, for instance, how all bn man
thought was lighted up when Galileo saw that the sun, and
not the earth, was the centre of our world; the moment
you feel that the demonstrations of Euclid are things
in which all human minds must agree—indeed, are almost
the only things in which all do agree—that moment the
science has a meaning, and a clue, and a plan. It had
none so long as it was disconnected with the history and
the destiny of man—the past and the future. It is the
same with every other science. What would be the mean
ing of laws of nature unless by them man could act on
nature ? What would be the use of knowing the laws of
health, unless we supposed that a sounder knowledge
of them would ameliorate the condition of men ? What,
indeed, is the use of the improvement of the mind ? It is
far from obvious that mere exercise of the intellectual
faculties alone is a good. A nation of Hamlets (to take a
popular conception of that character) would be more truly
miserable, perhaps more truly despicable, than a nation of
Bushmen. What, then, is it that we mean when we say a
cultivated mind, a mental training, a sound education.
We mean, if we mean anything good, a state of mind by
which we shall become more clear of our condition, of our
powers, of our duties towards our fellows, of our true
happiness, by which we may make ourselves better citizens
and better men, more forbearing to others, more loyal
�17
THE USE OF HISTORY.
towards true teachers, more zealous for social harmony,
more civilized, in short. Well, then, all these preceding
studies have been but a preparation, as it were. They
have been only to strengthen the mind, and give it mate
rial for the true work of education—the inculcation of
human duty.
All knowledge, then is imperfect, we may almost say
meaningless, unless it tends to give us sounder notions of
our human and social interests. And how, then, are we to
prepare ourselves for this ? What we need, are clear prin
ciples about the moral nature of man as a social being;
about the elements of human society; about the nature
and capacities of the understanding. We want safe land
marks to guide us in our search after worthy guides, or
true principles for social or political action. We want, in
short, a general clue to public and private conduct. Few
here, I imagine, will expect to learn this in any other
method than by an acquaintance with human nature. But
human nature is unlike physical nature in this, that its
varieties are infinitely greater, and that it shows continual
change. The earth rolls round the sun in the same orbit
now as in infinite ages past • but man moves forward in a
straight line of progress. Age after age developes into new
phases. It is a study of life, of growth, of variety. One
generation shows one faculty of human nature in a striking
degree; the next exhibits one different to it. All, it is
true, leave their mark upon all succeeding generations, and
civilization flows on like a vast river, gathering up the
waters of its tributary streams. Hence it is that civi
lization, being not a fixed or lifeless thing, cannot be
studied as a fixed or lifeless subject. We can see it only in
its movement and its growth. One year is as good as
another to the astronomer, but it is not so to the political
observer. He must watch successions, and a wide field,
and compare a long series of events. Hence it is that in
all political, all social, all human questions whatever, hisc
�18
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
tory is the main resource of the inquirer. To know what
is most really natural to man as a social being, man must
be looked at as he appears in a succession of ages, and in
very various conditions. To learn the strength or scope
of all his capacities together, he must be judged in those
successive periods in which each in turn were best brought
out. Can any one suppose that he will find all the human
institutions and faculties equally well developed, and all in
their due proportion and order, by simply looking at the
state of civilization now actually around us ? Is it not a
monstrous assumption that this world of to-day, so full of
misery and discontent, strife and despair, ringing with
cries of pain, and cries for aid, can really embody forth to
us complete and harmonious man ? Are there no faculties
within him yet fettered, no good instincts stifled, no high
yearnings marred ? Have we in this year reached the pin
nacle of human perfection, lost nothing that we once had,
gained all that we can gain ? Surely, by the hopes within
us, No! And where are they to be found if not in the
history of the past ? There, in the long struggle of man
upwards, we may watch him in his every mood, and see in
him often some now forgotten power, capacity, or art yet
destined to good service in the future. One by one we
may light on the missing links in the chain which connects
all races and all ages in one, or gather up the broken
threads that must yet be woven into the complex fabric of
life.
But there is another side on which history is still more
necessary as a guide to consistent and rational action. We
not merely need to know what the essential qualities of
civilization and of our social nature really are; but we re
quire to know the general course in which they are tending.
The more closely we look at it the more distinctly we see
that progress moves in a clear and definite path; the deve
lopment of man is not a casual or arbitrary motion : it moves
in a regular and consistent plan. Each part is unfolded
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
19
in due order,—the whole expanding like a single frame.
More and more steadily we see each age working out the
gifts of the last and transmitting its labours to the next.
More and more certain is our sense of being strong only as
we wisely use the materials and follow in the track provided
by the efforts of mankind. Is it possible to mistake how
completely that influence surrounds us. Take our material
existence alone. Well, the earth’s surface has been made,
as we know it, mainly by man. It would be uninhabitable
but for the long labours of those who cleared its primeval
forests, drained its swamps, first tilled its rank soil. All
the inventions on which we depend for existence, the in
struments we use were slowly worked out by the neces
sities of the childhood of the race. We can only modify or
add to these. We could not discard all existing machines
and construct an entirely new set of industrial implements.
Take our political existence. There again we are equally
confined in limits. Our country as a political whole has
been formed for us by a long series of wars, struggles, and
common efforts. We could not refashion England, or
divide it in half, if we tried for a century. Our great
towns, our great roads, the very local administrations of our
counties, were formed for us by the Romans fifteen centu
ries since. Could we undo it if we tried and make London
a country village, or turn Birmingham into the metropolis ?
Some people think they could abolish some great institu
tion, such as the House of Lords, for instance, if they tried
very hard indeed ; but few reformers in this country have
proposed to abolish the entire British Constitution. Most
people look with repugnance on our existing system of the
law of real property. Such as it is it was made for us by our
feudal ancestors misreading Roman texts. Well, incubus
as it is, we must endure it and attempt to improve it. Rew
people would expect to sweep it away at once as a whole.
Turn which ever way you will, we shall find our political sys
tems, laws, and administrations to have been provided for us.
�20
THE MEANING OK HISTORY.
And is not this the case more strongly in all moral and
intellectual questions ? Are we to suppose that whilst our
daily life, our industry, our laws, our customs, are controlled
by the traditions and materials of the past, our thoughts
our habits of mind, our beliefs, our moral sense, our ideas
of right and wrong, our hopes and aspirations, are not just
as truly formed by the civilization in which we have been
reared ? We are indeed able to transform it, to develope it,
and to give it new life and action; but we can only do so
as we understand it. Without this all efforts, reforms, and
revolutions are in vain. A change is made, but a few years
pass over, and all the old causes reappear. There was some
unnoticed power which was not touched, and returns in full
force. Take an instance from our own history. Cromwell
and his Ironsides, who made the great English Revolution,
swept Monarchy, and Church, and peers away, and thought
they were gone for ever. Their great chief dead, the old
system returned like a tide, and ended in the orgies of
Charles and James. The Catholic Church has been, as it
were, staggeringin its last agonies now for many centuries.
Luther believed he had crushed it. Long before his time it
seemed nothing but a lifeless mass of corruption. Pope
after Pope has been driven into exile. Four or five times
has the Church seemed utterly crushed. And yet here in
this nineteenth century, it puts forth all its old pretensions,
and covers its old territory. In the great French Revolu
tion it seemed, for once, that all actual institutions had been
swept away. That devouring fire seemed to have burnt
the growth of ages to the very root. Yet a few years pass,
and all reappear,—Monarchy, and Church, peers, Jesuits,
and Prsetorian guards. Again and again they are over
thrown. Again and again, after seventy years, they rise in
greater pomp and pride. Turn to the memory of many of
us here. They who, with courage, energy, and enthusiasm,
too seldom imitated, once carried the Reform of Parlia
ment and swept away with a strong hand the stronghold of
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
21
abuse and privilege, believed that a new era was opening
for their country. What would they think, what do they
think, now ? When they abolished rotten boroughs, and
test acts, and curtailed expenditure, did they think that
thirty years would find their descendants wrangling about
the purchased votes of some miserable constituency, about
church rates, and acts of uniformity, and spending seventy
millions a year. Does not the experience of every one who
was ever engaged in any public movement whatever remind
him that every step made in advance seems too often wrung
out from him by some silent and unnoticed power ? Has he
not felt enthusiasm give way to despair, and hopes become
nothing but recollections ? What is this unseen power
which seems to baffle and undo the best and strongest
human efforts, that seems to be an overbearing weight
against which no man can long struggle ? What is this ever
acting force which seems to revive the dead, to restore what
we destroy, to renew forgotten watchwords, exploded fal
lacies, discredited doctrines, and condemned institutions ;
against which enthusiasm, intellect, truth, high purpose,
and self-devotion seem to beat themselves to death in vain,
which breaks the heart of the warm, turns strong brains
into peevish criticism, and scatters popular union in angry
discord. It is the past. It is the accumulated wills and
works of all mankind around us and before us. It is civi
lization. It is that power which to understand is strength,
to repudiate which is weakness. Let us not think that
there can be any real progress made which is not based on
a sound knowledge of the living institutions, and the active
wants of mankind. If we can only act on nature so far as
we know its laws, we can only influence society so far as
we understand its elements and ways. Let us not delude
ourselves into thinking that new principles of policy or
social action can be created by themselves or can recon
struct society about us. Those rough maxims, which we
are wont to dignify by the name of principles, may be, after
�22
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
all, only crude formulas and phrases without life or power.
Only when they have been tested, analysed, and compared
with other phases of social life, can we be certain that they
are immutable truths. 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. For
this end we need one thing above all,—we need history.
But perhaps I may be told : ¥es, all this may be very
useful for statesmen, or philosophers, or politicians; but
what is the use of this to the bulk of the people ? They are
not engaged in solving political questions, or devising
schemes to improve society. Well, I am not sure of that.
The bulk of the people, if they are seeking to live the lives
of rational and useful citizens, if they have any self-respect
and self-reliance, if they only wish to do their duty by their
neighbours, are really and truly politicians and reformers.
They are solving political problems, and are affecting society
very deeply. Aman does not need even to be a vestryman,
he need not even have one out of the 20,000 votes for
Marylebone in order to exercise very great political influ
ence. A man, provided he lives like an honest, thoughtful,
truth-speaking citizen, is a power in the state. He is
helping to form that which rules the state, which rules
statesmen, and is above kings, parliaments, or ministers.
FT» is forming public opinion. It is on this, a public opinion,
wise, thoughtful, and consistent, that the destinies of
our country rest, and not on acts of parliament, or move
ments, or institutions, useful as these often are. He who
is forming this is really contributing to the greatness of his
country, though timid statesmen dare not trust him with a
vote, and ignorant agitators may tell him he is a slave.
Every one of us may do this, every one of us may boldly
form and utter his opinion. Every one of us may read his
newspaper, and may give his voice for the right and against
the wrong-, a voice which is not lost, though iu be nob regis
tered on the hustings, or deposited in a ballot-box. Many
�THE USE OE HISTORY.
23
around us are doing this. Many, in a quiet way, not useless,
though unseen, are working out some useful social scheme,
and supporting some well-meant effort. Many are struggling
like men through darkness, through superstition, cant, and
intolerance, towards some more wholesome way of truth
and life, to find something they can believe, something they
can trust, and understand, and live by.
Are there not many amongst us, many here whose lives
are spent in searching for light, in battling with old forms
of error, in looking for some sound bond of union amongst
men ? If there are such, I would ask them, how they can
hope to succeed unless they start armed with some know
ledge of the efforts that men have made towards this end
age after age; unless they know something of the systems
of faith which, in turn, have flourished and fallen, and
know why they flourished and why they failed, and what
good end they served, and what evil they produced ; unless
they know something of the moral and spiritual history of
mankind ? The very condition of success is to recognize
the difficulty of the task. The work is half done when
men see how much is required to begin. Is it not a sort of
presumption to attempt to remodel existing institutions,
without the least knowledge how they were formed, or
whence they grew; to deal with social questions without a
thought how society arose; to construct a social creed
without a dream of fifty creeds which have risen and
vanished before ? Few men would, intentionally, attempt
so much; but many do it unconsciously. They think they
are not statesmen, or teachers, or philosophers ; but, in
one sense, they are. In all human affairs there is this pecu
liar quality. They are the work of the combined labours of
many. No statesman or teacher can do anything alone.
He must have the minds of those he is to guide prepared
for him. They must concur, or he is powerless. In reality?
he is but the expression of their united wills and
thoughts. Hence it is, I say, that all men need, in some
�24
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
sense, the knowledge and the judgment of the statesman
and the social teacher. Progress is but the result of our
joint public opinion; and for progress that opinion must
be enlightened. “ He only destroys who can replace.”
All other progress than this—one based on the union of
many minds and purposes, and a true conception of the
future and the past—is transitory and delusive. Those who
defy this power, the man, the party, or the class who forget
it, will be beating themselves in vain against a wall;
changing, but not improving; moving, but not advancing;
rolling, as the poet says of a turbulent city, like a sick man
on the restless bed of pain.
And now, if the value of some knowledge of past history is granted, and I am asked how it is to be acquired,
whence it is to come, I admit the difficulty of the ques
tion. I know the sea of facts, the libraries of books it
opens to the view, yet I do not despair. After all I have
said none will suppose I recommend a lifeless catalogue
of names, or a dry table of dates. No; it is possible
to know something of history without a pedantic eru
dition. Let a man ask himself always what he wants to
know. Something of man’s social nature ; something of
the growth of civilization. He needs only to understand
something of the character of the great races and systems
of mankind. Let him ask himself what the long ages of
early empires did for mankind; whether they established
or taught anything ; if fifty centuries of human skill, labour,
and thought were wasted like an autumn leaf. Let him
ask himself what the Greeks taught or discovered. Why
the Romans were a noble race, and how they printed their
footmarks so deeply on the earth. Let him ask what was the "
original meaning and life of those great feudal institutions
of chivalry and Church, of which we see only the rotting
carcases. Let him ask what was the strength, the weakness,
and the meaning of the great revolution of Cromwell, or
the great revolution in France. A man may learn much
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
25
true history by a little thinking, without any very ponderous
books. Let him go to the Museums and see the pictures,
the statues, and buildings of Egyptian and Assyrian times,
and ask himself what was the state of society under which
men in the far [East reached so high a pitch of industry,
knowledge, and culture, three thousand years before
our savage ancestors had learned to use the plough. A
man may go to one of our Gothic cathedrals, and seeing
there the stupendous grandeur of its outline, the exquisite
grace of its design, the solemn and touching expression
upon the faces of its old carved or painted saints, kings, and
priests ; may ask himself if the men who built that could
be utterly barbarous, false-hearted, and tyrannical; or if the
power which could bring out such noble qualities of the
human mind and heart must not have left its trace upon
mankind. Indeed, it does not need many books to know
something of the life of the past. A man who has enjoyed
the best lives in old Plutarch knows not a little of Greek
and Roman history. A man who has caught the true spirit
of Walter Scott’s novels knows something of feudalism and
chivalry. But is this enough ? Ear from it. These desul
tory thoughts must be connected. These need to be com
bined into a whole, and combined and used for a purpose.
Above all, we must look on history as a whole, trying to
find what each age and race has contributed to the common
stock, and how and why each followed in its place. Looked
at separately, all is confusion and contradiction; looked at
as a whole, a common purpose appears. The history of the
human race is the history of a growth. It can no more be
taken to pieces than the human frame can be taken to
pieces. Who would think of making anything of the body
without knowing whether it possessed a circulation, a ner
vous system, or a skeleton. History is a living whole. If one
organ be removed, it is nothing but a lifeless mass. What
you have to find in it is the relation and connection of the
parts. You must learn how age developes into age, how
�26
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
country reacts upon country, how thought inspires action,
and action modifies thought. Once conceive that all the
greater periods of history have had a real and necessary
part to fulfil in creating the whole, and you will have done
more to understand it than if you had studied some portion
of it with a microscope. Once feel that all the parts are
needed for the whole, and the difficulty of the mass of
materials vanishes. You will come to regard it as a compo
sition or a work of art which cannot be broken up into
fragments at pleasure. You would as soon th ink of divid
ing it as of taking a figure out of a great picture, or a pas
sage out of a piece of music. Most of you have listened to
one of those noble choruses of Handel, such as that “ Unto
us a son is born,” and have heard the opening notes begin
simple, subdued, and slow, until they are echoed back in
deeper tones, choir answering to choir, voice joining in with
voice, growing fuller and stronger with new and varying
bursts of melody, until the whole stream of song swells into
one vast tide of harmony, and rolls on exulting, wave upon
wave in majestic unity and power. Something like this
complex harmony is seen in the gathering parts of human
history, age taking up the falling notes from age, race
joining with race in answering strain, until the separate
parts are mingled in one, and pour on in one movement
together. Let us shrink from breaking this whole into
fragments, nor lose all sense of harmony in attending to
the separate notes.
Lastly, if I may give a word of practical advice, there
is one mode in which I think history may be most easily
and most usefully approached. Let him who desires to
find profit in it, begin by knowing something of the lives
of great men. Not, I mean, of those most talked about,
not of names chosen at hazard ; but of the real great ones
who can be shown to have left their mark upon distant
ages. Know their lives, I mean, not merely as interesting
studies of character, or as persons seen in a drama, but
�THE USE OF HISTORY.
27
solely as they represent and influence their age. Not for
themselves only must we know them, but as the expression
and types of all that is noblest around them. Let us know,
then, those whom all men cannot fail to recognize as great
—the Caesars, the Charlemagnes, the Alfreds, the Crom
wells, great in themselves, but greater as the centre of the
hearts of thousands.
We have done much towards understanding the past
when we have learned to value and to honour such men
truly. Better to know nothing of history than to know
with the narrow coldness of a pedant a record which ought
to fill us with emotion and reverence. Of all the faults of
the character, surely none is so base as heartless indiffer
ence to benefactors. And have we any benefactors like
these men ? Our closest friends, our earliest teachers, our
parents themselves, are not more truly our benefactors than
they. To them we owe what we prize most—country,
freedom, peace, knowledge, art, thought, and higher sense
of right and wrong. Have we received from any services
like these ; not we only, but all equally in common : and
have any services been given at so great a cost ? What a
long tale of patience, courage, sacrifice, and martyrdom is
the history of human progress ! Should it not affect us as
if we were reading in the diary of a parent the record of his
struggles for his children. For us they toiled, endured,
bled, and died; that we by their labour might have rest,
by their thought might know, by their death might
live happily. We know the devotion with which the
believers in every creed have felt for the authors of their
faith. Intolerant and narrow as this has often been, it yet
bears witness to a sense of one of the deepest and best of
our emotions. The feeling may become too often partial
and bigoted; yet let us beware of neglecting it. Let us
dread, above bigotry itself, a temper of irreverence and
ingratitude. For whom did these men work, if not for us ?
Not for themselves, when they gave up peace, honour, life,
�28
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
reputation itself—as when the great French republican
exclaimed, ££ May my name be accursed, so that France be
free ; not for themselves they worked, but for their cause,
for their fellows, for us. FTot that they might have fame,
butthat they might leave the world better than they found
it; that there might be more good, less evil, abroad in it;
that the good time might come. What else but this sup
ported Milton in his old age, blind, poor, and dishonoured,
when he poured out his spirit in solitude, fall of grace,
tenderness, and hope, amidst the ruin of all he loved and
the obscene triumph of all he despised ? Or what else sup
ported Dante, the poet of Florence, when an ontlaw and an
exile he was cast off by friends and countrymen, and wan
dered about begging his bread from city to city, pondering
the great thoughts which live throughout all Europe ? Was
not this spirit, too, in one, the noblest victim of the French
Revolution, the great philosopher Condorcet; who, con
demned, hunted to death, dying of hunger and suffering,
•devoted the last few hours of his life to the service of
mankind; and, whilst the pursuers were on his track, wrote
in his hiding-place that noble sketch of the progress of the
human race.
It would be base indeed to see in this nothing but a
selfish love of fame. It was at bottom in them all a native
love for right, an inborn desire for the good, the instinct of
duty, which possessed them. To us, indeed, no similar
powers are given, nor on us are similar tasks imposed.
Our path is smooth, because theirs was so rough; our
work is easy, because theirs was so hard; yet the work of
-civilization, of progress, and truth, begun by them, must
be carried on by us; by all, not by some ; for all, not for
¿ome ; and will best be carried on by knowing what they
have done for us, what they could not do, and why and
where they failed.
>,
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
29
LECTURE Bl.
THE CONNECTION OF HISTORIC
On the last occasion we asked if the history of mankind
thronghont past ages might not have some meaning and
uses for us here to-day ? We saw grounds to believe that
in its right knowledge, there are some lessons for us all.
We saw that our daily life and action in any high sense
depends upon our truly comprehending the movement of
that great stream of human civilization on which we are
borne. We saw that to conceive history aright we must
approach it in no pedantic, narrow, or ungenerous spirit.
That we must look into it for its mighty deeds and its
great men, believing that they who have slowly built up
the world of to-day and surrounded our life with infinite
creations of thought and toil, wisdom and skill, are worthy
of memory, and sympathy, and reverence—a reverence not
narrowed to a few ages, or squandered without thought,
but one which can reach back into the twilight of our race,
and embrace all its true teachers and guides. We saw,
too, how history shows us one continuous march of pro
gress, checked and obscured at times, but never stagnant
—how age hands on its work to age—nation beckons
across sea or desert to its brother nation—race gives to race
the choicest product—thinker hands down to thinker ideas
and truths long husbanded and stored as heirlooms of
mankind, until at last generation after generation, and
people with people take up the tale in the yet half-told
drama of the world, of which the catastrophe and issue
rest with us and our lives.
�30
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
Let us now try to sketch the outline of this story, link
century to century, continent to continent, and judge
the share each has in the common work of civilization. To
do so, we must go back to ages long before records began.
It is but of the latter and the shorter portion of the duration
of progress, that any record has been made or preserved.
Yet for a general view materials of certain knowledge
exist. If we write the biography of a man we do not
begin only with the year of his life in which his diary
opens ; we seek to know his parentage, education, and
early association. To understand him we must do so. So,
too, the biography of mankind must not confine itself to
the eras of chronological tables, and of recorded specific
events. Let us remember also that in all large instances
the civilization of an epoch or a people has a certain unity
in it—that their philosophy, their policy, their habits, and
their religion must more or less accord, and all depend at
last upon the special habit of their minds. It is this central
form of belief which determines all the rest. Separately no
item which makes up their civilization as a whole, can be
long or seriously changed. It is what a man believes,
which makes him act as he does. Thus shall we see that
as their reasoning powers develope all else developes
likewise, their science, their art break up or take new
forms; their system of society expands; their life, their
morality, and their religion gradually are dissolved and
reconstructed.
Let us then place ourselves back in imagination at a
period when the whole surface of the earth was quite
unlike what it is now. Let us suppose it as it was after
the last great geologic change—the greater portion of its
area covered with primeval forests, vast swamps, dense
jungles, and arid deserts. Let us not think the earth had
always the same face as now. Such as it is it has been
made by man—the rich pasturages and open plains have
all been created by his toil—even the grain, and fruits, and
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
31
flowers that grow upon its soil have been made what they
are by his care. As yet the now teeming valleys of the
great rivers, such as the Hile, or the Euphrates, or the Po,
were wildernesses or swamps. The rich meadows of our
own island were marshes, where its corn fields stand now
were trackless forests. As yet such countries as Holland
were swept over by every tide of the sea, and such coun
tries as Switzerland, and Norway, America, or Russia, were
submerged beneath endless pine woods. And through
these forests and wastes ranged countless races of animals,
many, doubtless, long extinct, in variety and numbers more
than we can even conceive. And where in this terrible
world was man ? Scanty, perhaps, in number, confined to
a few favourable spots, helpless, dispersed, and alone, man
sustained a precarious existence, not yet the lord of crea
tion, inferior to the brutes in strength, only just superior
to them in mind,—nothing but the first of the animals. As
are the lowest of all savages now, perhaps even lower, man
once was. Conceive what Robinson Crusoe would have
been had his island been a dense jungle overrun with
savage beasts, without his gun, or his knife, or his know
ledge, with nothing but his human hand and his human brain.
Ages have indeed passed since then—perhaps some twenty
thousand years—perhaps far more—have rolled by. But
they should not be quite forgotten, and all recollection
perish of that dark time when man waged a struggle for
life or death with nature. Let us be just even to those
who fought that fight with the brutes, hunted down and
exterminated step by step the races too dangerous to man,
and cleared the ground of these monstrous rivals. Every
nation has its primeval heroes, whose hearts quailed not
before the lion or the dragon. Its Nimrod, a mighty
hunter before the Lord ; its Hercules, whose club smote the
serpent hydra; its Odin, who slew monsters. The forests,
too, had to be cleared. Step by step man won his way
into the heart of those dark jungles ; slowly the rank vege
�32
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
tation was swept off, here and there a space was cleared,
here and there a plain was formed which left a patch of
habitable soil. Everywhere man began as a hunter, a
savage hunter, of the woods or the wilderness, without im
plements, without clothing, without homes, perhaps with
out the use of fire. Man’s supremacy over the brutes was
first asserted when his mind taught him how to make the
rude bow, or the flint knife, or to harden clay or wood by
heat. But not only were all the arts and uses of life yet
to be found, but all the human institutions had to be
formed. As yet language, family, marriage, property,
tribe, were not, or only were in germ. A few cries assisted
by gesture, a casual association of the sexes, a dim trace
of parentage or brotherhood, were all that was. Lan
guage, as we know it, has been slowly built up, stage after
stage, by the instinct of the entire race. Necessity led to
new sounds which use developed, sounds became words,
words were worked into sentences, and half-animal cries
grew into intelligible speech. We must remember this
with gratitude, and with no less gratitude those whose
higher instincts first taught them to unite in permanent
pairs, to cling to the children of one home, to form into
parties and companies, to clothe themselves, and put checks
upon the violent passions. Surely they who first drew
savage man out of the life of unbridled instinct and brutal
loneliness ; who first showed the practices of personal de
cency and cleanliness ; who first taught men to be faithful
and tender to the young and the old, the woman, and the
mother; who first brought these wild hunters together
and made them trust each other and their chief—surely
these were the first great benefactors of mankind ;—surely
this is the beginning of the history of the race.
And if this was the material and moral condition of man,
what was his intellectual; what was his knowledge, his
worship, and his religion ? Turn to the earliest traditions of
men, to the simple ideas of childhood, and especially to the
�33
THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
savage tribes we know, and we have the answer. Man’s
intellect was far feebler than his activity or his feelings.
He knew nothing, he rested in the first imagination. He
reasoned on nothing, he supposed everything. He looked
upon nature, and saw it full of life, motion, and strength.
He knew what struggles he had with it, he felt it often
crush him, he felt he could often crush it, and he thought
that all, brutes, plants, rivers, storms, forests, and moun
tains, were powers, living, feeling, and acting like himself.
Is it hard to conceive this ? Do not the primeval legends,
the fairy tales of all nations, show it to us ? Does not the
child punish its doll, and the savage defy the thunder, and
the horse start at a gnarled oak swaying its boughs like
arms in the wind. Man then looked out upon nature, and
thought it a living thing—a simple belief which answered
all questions. He knew nothing of matter, or elements, or
laws. His celestial and his terrestrial philosophy was
summed up in this—things act so because they choose.
He never asked why the sun or moon rose and set. They
were bright beings who walked their own paths when and
as they pleased. He never thought why a volcano smoked,
or a river overflowed, or thought only that the one was
wroth and roared ; and that the other had started in fury
from his bed. And what was his religion ? What could
it but be ? Affection for the fruits and flowers of the earth
—dread and prostration before the terrible in nature—
worship of the bright sun, or sheltering grove or moun
tain—in a word, the adoration of nature, the untutored
impulse towards the master powers around such as we see
it in the negro or the Chinese. As yet nothing was fixed,
nothing common. Each worshipped in love or dread what
most seized his fancy—each family had its own fetishes—•
each tribe its mountains ; often it worshipped its own dead
—friends who had begun a new existence. Such was their
religion, the unguided faith of childhood, exaggerating all
the feelings and sympathies, stimulating love, and hatred,
D
�34
THE MEANING OE HISTORY.
and movement, and destruction, but leaving everything
vague, giving no fixity, no unity, no permanence. In such
a condition, doubtless, man passed through many thousand
years, tribe struggling with tribe in endless battles for
their hunting grounds, often, we may fear, devouring their
captives, without any fixed abode, or definite association,
or material progress, yet gradually forming the various
arts and institutions of life, gradually learning the use of
clothes, of metals, of implements, of speech—a race whose
life depended solely upon the chase, whose only society
was the tribe, whose religion was the worship of natural
objects.
Now in this first struggle with nature man was not
alone. Slowly he won over to his side one or two of the
higher animals. Was not this a wonderful victory, assur
ing his ultimate ascendancy ? The dog was won from his
wolf-like state to join and aid in the chase. The horse
bowed his strength in generous submission to a master.
Do we reflect enough upon the efforts that this cost ? Ai e
we forgetful of the wonders of patience, gentleness, sym
pathy, sagacity, and nerve, which were required for the
first domestication of animals ? Do we sufficiently think
upon the long centuries of care which were needed to
change the very nature of these noble brutes, without
whom we should indeed be helpless ? By degrees the ox,
the sheep, the goat, the camel, and the ass were reared by
man, formed part of his simple family, and became the
lower portion of the tribe. Their very natures, their
external forms were changed. Milk and its compounds
formed the basis of food. The hunter’s life became less
precarious, less rambling, less violent. In short, the second
great stage of human existence began, and pastoral life
commenced. Surely this was a great advance! Larger
tribes could now collect, for there was now no lack of
food; tribes gathered into a horde; something like society
began. It had its leaders, its elders, perhaps its teachers,
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
35
poets, and wise men. Men ceased to rove for ever. They
stay upon a favourable pasture for long together. Next pro
perty, that is stored up subsistence, began; flocks and herds
accumulated; men were no longer torn daily by the wants
of hunger; and leisure, repose, and peace were possible.
The women were relieved from the crushing toil of the
past. The old were no longer abandoned or neglected
through want. Reflection, observation, thought began,
and with thought religion. As life became more fixed
worship became less vague and general. Some fixed great
powers alone were adored, chiefly the host of heaven, the
stars, the moon, and the great sun itself. Then some
elder, freed from toil or war, meditating on the world
around him, as he watched the horde start forth at the
rising of the sun, the animals awakening and nature open
ing beneath his rays, first came to think all nature moved
at the will of that sun himself, perhaps even of some
mysterious power of whom that sun was but the image.
From this would rise a regular worship com mon to the
whole horde, uniting them together, explaining their course
of life, stimulating their powers of thought. With this
some kind of knowledge commenced. Their vast herds
and flocks needed to be numbered, distinguished, and
separated. Arithmetic began; the mode of counting, of
adding and subtracting was slowly worked out. The
horde’s course, also, must be directed by the seasons and
the stars. Hence astronomy began. The course of the
sun was steadily observed, the recurrence of the seasons
noted. Slowly the first ideas of order, regularity, and
permanence arose. The world was no longer a chaos of
conflicting forces. The earth had its stated times, all
governed by the all-ruling sun. How, too, the horde had a
permanent existence. Its old men' could remember the
story of its wanderings and the deeds of its mighty ones,
and would tell them to the young when the day was over.
Poetry, narrative, and history had began. Leisure brought
�36
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
the use of fresh implements. Metals were found and
worked. The loom was invented; the wheeled car came
into use; the art of the smith, the joiner, and the boatbuilder. New arts required a subdivision of labour, and
division of labour required orderly rule. Society had
begun. A greater step was yet at hand. Around some
sacred mountain or grove, in some more favoured spot,
where the horde would longest halt or oftenest return,
some greater care to clear the ground, to protect the
pasture, and to tend the plants was shown; some patches
of soil were scratched to grow some useful grains, some
rude corn ears were cultivated into wheat, the earth began
to be tilled. Man passed into the third great stage of
material existence, and agriculture began. Agriculture
once commenced a new era was at hand. Now organized
society was possible. Do we estimate duly this the
greatest effort towards progress ever accomplished by
mankind ? Do we remember how much had to be learnt,
how many arts had to be invented, before the savage
hunter could settle down into the peaceful, the provident,
and the intelligent husbandman ? What is all our vaunted
progress to this great step ? What are all our boasted
inventions compared with the first great discoveries of
man, the spinning-wheel and loom, the plough, the clay
vessel, the wheel, the boat, the bow, the hatchet, and the
forge ? Surely, if we reflect, our inventions are chiefly
modes of multiplying or saving force; these were the
transformations of substances, or the interchange of force.
Ours are, for the most part, but expansions of the first
idea; these are the creations.
Since it is with agriculture that organized society alone
can start, it is with justice that the origin of civilization is
always traced to those great plains where agriculture alone
was then possible. It was in the basins of the great Asian
rivers, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Ganges, and in that
of the Nile, that fixed societies began. There, wh^ -eirriga-
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
37
tion is easy, the soil rich, and country open, cultivation
arose, and with cultivation of the soil, the accumulation of
its produce, and with more easy sustenance, leisure, thought,
and observation. Use taught man to distinguish between
matter and life, man and animal, thought and motion.
Men’s eyes were opened, and they saw that nature was not
alive, and had no will. They watched the course of the
sun and saw that it moved in fixed ways. They watched
the sea, and saw that it rose and fell by tides. Then, too,
they needed knowledge and they needed teachers. They
needed men to measure their fields, their barns, to teach
them to build strongly, to calculate the seasons for them,
to predict the signs of the weather, to expound the will of
the great powers who ruled them. Thus slowly rose the
notion of gods, tbe unseen rulers of these powers of earth
and sky, a god of the sea, of the river, of the sky, of the
sun, and between them and their gods rose the first priests,
the ministers and interpreters of their will, and polytheism
and theocracies began. Thus simply amidst these great
settled societies of the plain began the great human insti
tution—the priesthood—at first only some wiser elders
who had some deeper knowledge of the arts of settled life.
Gradually knowledge advanced; knowledge of the seasons
and of the stars or of astronomy, of enumeration or arith
metic, of measurement or geometry, of medicine and surgery,
of building, of the arts, of music, of poetry ; gradually this
knowledge became deposited in the hands of a few, and
transmitted and accumulated from father to son. The in
tellect asserted its power, and the rule over a peaceful and
industrious race slowly passed into the hands of a priesthood,
or an educated and sacred class. These were the men who
founded the earliest form of civilized existence; the most
complete, the most enduring, the most consistent of all
human societies, the great theocracies or religious societies
of Asia and Egypt. Thus for thousands of years before the
earliest records of history, in all the great plains of Asia and.
�38
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
along the Nile, nations flourished in a high and elaborate form
of civilization. We will examine one only, the best known to
us, the type, the earliest and the greatest—the Egyptian.
The task to be accomplished was immense. It was
nothing less than the foundation of permanent and or
ganized society. Till this was done all was in danger.
All knowledge might be lost, the arts might perish, the
civil community might break up. Hitherto there had been
no permanence, no union, no system. What was needed
was to form the intellectual and material framework of a
fixed nation. And this the Egyptian priesthood undertook.
The spot was favourable to the attempt. In that great,
rich plain, walled off on all sides by the desert or by the
sea, it was possible to found a society at once industrial,
peaceful, and settled. They needed judges to direct them,
teachers to instruct them, men of science to help them,
governors to rule them, preachers to admonish them,
physicians to heal them, artists to train them, aud priests
to sacrifice for them. To meet these wants a special order
of men spontaneously arose, by whose half-conscious efforts
a complete system of society was gradually and slowly
formed. In their hands was concentrated the whole intel
lectual product of ages, this they administered for the
common good. Gradually by their care there arose a
system of regular industry. To this end they divided out
by their superior skill all the arts and trades of life. Each
work was apportioned, each art had its subordinate arts.
Then as a mode of perpetuating skill in crafts, to insure
a sound apprenticeship of every labour, they caused or
enabled each man’s work to become hereditary within
certain broad limits, and thus created or sanctioned a definite
series of castes. Then to give sanction to the whole, they
consecrated each labour, and made each workman’s toil a
part of his religious duty. Then they organized a scheme of
general education. They provided a system of teach
ing common to all, adapted to the work of each. They
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
39
provided for the special education of the sacred class m the
■whole circle of existing knowledge ; they collected observa
tions, they treasured up discoveries, and recorded events.
Next they organized a system of government. They esta
blished property, they divided out the land, they set up
landmarks, they devised rules for its tenure, they introduced
law, and magistrates, and governors ; provinces were divided
into districts, towns, and villages ; violence was put down, a
«trict police exercised, regular taxes imposed. Next they
organized a strict system of morality, the social, the domestic,
.and the personal duties were minutely defined; practices
relating to health, cleanliness, and temperance, were en
forced by religious obligations, every act of life, every
moment of existence was made a part of sacred duty.
Lastly, they organized national life by a vast system of
common religious rites, by imposing ceremonies which
awakened the imagination and kindled the emotions,
bound up the whole community into an united people, and
gave stability to their national existence, by the awful
majesty of a common and mysterious belief.
Do we want to know what such a system of life was
like ? Let us go into some museum of Egyptian antiqui
ties, where we may see representations of their mode of
existenceZ carved upon their walls. There we may see
nearly all the arts of life as we know them—weaving and
spinning, working in pottery, glass-blowing, building,
-carving^ and painting, ploughing, sowing, threshing, and
gathering into barns, boating, irrigation, fishing, wine
pressing, dancing, singing, and playing—a vast community,
in short, orderly, peaceful, and intelligent; capable of
gigantic works and of refined arts, before which we are
lost in wonder ; a civilized community busy and orderly as
a hive of bees, amongst whom every labour and function
was arranged m perfect harmony and distinctness ; all this
may be seen upon monuments at least 5000 years old.
Here, then, we have civilization itself. All the arts of
�40
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
life had been brought to perfection, and indelibly im
planted on the mind of men in a way that they could never
be utterly lost. All that constitutes orderly government,
the institutions of society, had been equally graven into
human existence. A check had been placed upon the end
less and desultory warfare of tribes; and great nations
existed. The ideas of domestic life, marriage, filial duty,
care for the aged and the dead, had become a second nature.
The wholesome practices of social life, of which we think
so lightly, had all been invented and established. The
practice of regular holidays, and social gatherings, and
common celebrations began—the record and division of past
ages, the exact times of the seasons, and of the year, the
months, and its festivals; the great yet little prized
institution of the week. Nor were the gains to thought
less. In the peaceful rolling on of those primeval ages,
observations had been stored up by an unbroken succes
sion of priests, without which science never would have
existed. It was no small feat in science first to have de
termined the exact length of the year. It needed obser
vations stretching over a cycle of 1500 years. But the
Egyptian priests had enumerated the stars, and could cal
culate for centuries in advance the times of their appearance.
They possessed the simpler processes of arithmetic and
geometry ; they knew something of chemistry, and much
'of botany, and even a little of surgery. There was one
invention yet more astonishing; the Egyptians invented,
the Phenicians perfected, the art of writing, and transmitted
the alphabet—our alphabet—to the Greeks. Do we rightly
estimate the amazing intellectual effort required for tha
formation of the alphabet; not to shape the forms, but
first to conceive that the sounds we utter could be classi
fied, and reduced down to those simple elements we call
the letters. Truly I can imagine hardly any effort of ab
stract thought more difficult than this, and certainly none;
more essential to the progress of the human mind.
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
41
They were indeed great minds who did all this ; great
because they not so much promoted civilization as created
it. Never perhaps before or since have single minds ever
received this universal culture ; never perhaps have shown
this many-sided activity and strength. Never before or
since has such power been concentrated in the same hands
—the entire moral and material control over society. They
were great minds, great souls also who could conceive
and carry through such a task, greater perhaps in this that
they did not care to celebrate themselves for posterity, but
passed away when their work was done, contented to have
seen it done, as Moses did when he went up alone to die in
secret, that no man might know or worship at his tomb.
The debt we owe these men and these times is great. It
is said that man learns more in the first year of his child
hood than in any year subsequently of his life. And in this
long’ childhood of the world, how many things were learnt.
Is it clear that they could have been learnt in any other
way ? Caste, in its decline, is the most degrading of human
institutions. Can we be sure that without it the arts of lifecould have been taught and preserved in those unsettled ages
of war and migration. We rebel justly against all priestly
tyranny over daily life and customs. Are we sure that
without these sanctions of religion and law, the rules of
morality, of decency, and health could ever have been im
posed upon the lawless instincts of mankind. We turn
with repugnance from the monotony of those unvaryingages, and of that almost stagnant civilization ; but are we
sure that without it, it would have been possible to collect
the observations of distant ages, and the records of dynas
ties and eras on which all science and all history rest : would
it have been possible to provide a secure and tranquil field
in which the slow growth of language, art, and thought
could have worked out generation after generation, their
earliest and most difficult result ?
No form of civilization has ever endured so long ; its
�42
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
consequences are stamped deeply still upon our daily life ;
yet the time came when even these venerable systems must
die.
Their work was done, and it was time for them to pass
away. Century after century had gone by teaching the
same lessons, but adding nothing new. Human life began
to be stifled in these primeval forms. The whole empire
of the priests grew evil and corrupt. We know them
chiefly in their decline, when kings and conquerors had
usurped and perverted the patient energies of these longtutored peoples. These great societies passed from indus
trial and social communities into stupendous tyrannies,
made up of cruelty and pride. It was the result of the
great and fatal error which lay beneath the whole priestly
.system. They had misconceived their strength and thenknowledge. They had undertaken to organize society
whilst then- own knowledge was feeble and imperfect.
They had tried to establish the rule of mind, of all rules
the most certainly destined to fail; and they based that
rule upon error and misconception. They pretended to
govern society instead of confining themselves to the only
possible task, to teach it. 1 hey who had begun by securing
progress, now were its worst obstacles. They who began
to rule by the right of intelligence, now dreaded and
crushed intelligence. They fell as every priesthood has
fallen, which has ever based its claims upon imperfect
knowledge, or pretended to command in the practical affairs
of life. Yet there was only one way in which the night
mare of this intellectual and social oppression could be
shaken off, and these strong systems broken up. It was
no. doubt by the all-powerful instinct of conquest, and
by the growth of vast military monarchies that the change
was accomplished. Those antique societies of peace and
irirhi stry degenerated at last into conquering empires,
.and, during 1000 years which precede the Persian empire,
Asia was swept from side to side by the armies of Assyrian,
�the connection of history.
43
Median, Babylonian, and Egyptian conquerors. Empire
after empire rose and fell with small, result, save that they
broke the death-like sleep of ages, and brought distant
people from the ends of the earth into contact with each
■other.
The world seemed in danger of perishing by exhaus
tion. It needed a new spirit to revive it. But now another
race appears upon the scene ; a branch of that great Aryan
people, who from the high lands of central Asia have swept
over Assyria, India, and Europe, the people who as Greeks,
Romans, Gauls, or Teutons have been the foremost of man
kind, of whom we ourselves are but a younger branch.
Now, too, the darkness which covered those earlier ages of
the world rolls off, and accurate history begins, and the drama
proceeds in the broad light of certainty.
It is about 550 B.C. that the first great name in general
history appears, and Cyrus founds the Persian empire.
Eor ages along the mountain slopes between the Himalayas
and the Caspian Sea, the Persian race had dwelt, a simple
race of wandering herdsmen, apart from the vast empires
of Babylon and Nineveh in the plains below. There they
grew up with nobler and freer thoughts, not crushed by
the weight of a powerful monarchy, not degraded by
decaying superstitions, nor enervated by material riches.
They honoured truth, freedom, and energy. They had
faith in themselves and their race. They valued morality
more than ceremonies. They believed in a Supreme
Power of the universe. Just as the northern nations after
wards poured over the Roman empire, so these stronger
tribes were preparing to descend upon the decaying re
mains of the Asiatic empires. They needed only a captain,
and they found one worthy of the task in the great King
Cyrus. He, marshalling his mountain warriors into a solid
army, swept down upon the plains, and one by one the
empires fell before him, until from the Mediterranean to
the Indus, from Tartary to the Arabian Gulf, all Asia
�44
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
submitted to his sway. His successors continued his work,
pushing across Arabia, Egypt, Africa, and Northern Asia
itself. There over that enormous tract they hnilt up the
Persian monarchy, which swallowed up and fused into one
so many ancient empires. The conquerors were soon ab
sorbed, like the Northmen, into the theocratic faith and
life of the conquered, and throughout half of the then
inhabited globe one rule, one religion, one system of life
alone existed. But the Persian kings could not rest whilst
a corner remained unconquered. On the shores of the
Mediterranean they had come upon a people who had defied
them with strange audacity. Against them the whole
weight of the Asian empire was put forth. Bor ten
years fleets and armies were preparing. There came
archers from the wastes of Tartary and the deserts of
Africa; charioteers from Nineveh and Babylon; horsemen,
clubmen, and spearmen; the mailclad footmen of Persia ;
the fleets of the Phenicians; all the races of the East,
gathered in one vast host, and as men said, 5,000,000 men
and 2000 ships poured over the Eastern seas upon the de
voted people.
And who were they who seemed thus doomed F Along
the promontories and islands of the eastern Mediterranean
there dwelt the scattered race whom we call Greeks, who
had gradually worked out a form of life totally differing
from the old, who had wonderfully expanded the old arts
of life and modes of thought. With them the destinies of
the world then rested for all its future progress. With
them all was life, change, and activity. Broken into sec
tions by infinite bays, mountains, and rivers, scattered over
a long line of coasts and islands, the Greek race, with
natures as varied as their own beautiful land, as restless as.
their own seas, had never been moulded into one great
solid empire, and early threw off the weight of a ruling
caste of priests. No theocracy or religious system of
society ever could establish itself amidst a race so full of'
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
45
life and motion, so exposed to influences from without,
so divided within. They had borrowed the arts of life
from the great Eastern peoples, and, in borrowing, had
wonderfully improved them. The alphabet, shipbuilding,
commerce, they had from the Phenicians; architecture,
sculpture, painting from the Assyrian or Lydian empires.
Geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, they had borrowed from
the Egyptians. The various fabrics, arts, and appliances of
the East came to them in profusion across the seas. Their
earliest lawgivers, rulers, and philosophers, had all tra
velled through the great Asian kingdom, and came back to
their small country with a new sense of all the institutions
and ideas of civilized life. But the Greeks borrowed, they '
did not imitate. Alone as yet, they had thrown off the
tyranny of custom, of caste, of kingcraft, and of priestcraft.
They only had moulded the ponderous column and the
imcouth colossus of the East into the graceful shaft and
the life-like figure of the gods. They only had dared to
think freely, to ask themselves what or whence was this
earth around, to meet the great problems of abstract
thought, to probe the foundations of right and wrong.
Lastly, they alone had conceived the idea of a people not
the servants of one man or of a class, not chained down in
a rigid order of submission, but the free and equal citizens
of a republic, for on them had first dawned the idea of a
civilized community in which men should be not masters
and slaves, but brothers.
On poured the myriads of Asia, creating a famine as
they marched, drying up the streams, and covering the
seas with their ships. Who does not know the tale of
that immortal effort—how the Athenians armed old and
young, burned their city, and went on board their ships
—how for three days Leonidas and his three hundred held
the pass against the Asian host, and lay down, each warrior
at his post, calmly smiling in death—how the Greek ships
lay in ambush in their islands, for the mighty fleet of
�46
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
Persia—how the unwieldy mass was broken and pierced
by their dauntless enemy—how, all day, the battle raged
beneath the eyes of the great king himself, and, at its close,
the seas were heaving with the wrecks of the shattered
host. Surely, of all the battles in history, this one of
Salamis was the most precious to the human race. Ko
other tale of. war can surpass it. Do we enough estimate
the heroism, the genius, the marvellous audacity by which
these pigmy fleets and armies of a small, weak race, with
stood and crushed the entire power of Asia, and preserved
from extinction the life and intellect of future ages.
Victory followed upon victory, and the whole Greek
race expanded with this amazing triumph. The whole of
the old world had been brought face to face with the intel
lect which was to transform it. The Greek mind, with the
whole East open to it, exhibited inexhaustible activity. A
century sufficed to develope a thoroughly new phase of
civilization. They carried the arts to a height whereon
they stand as the types for all time. In poetry they ex
hausted and perfected every form of composition. In
politics they built up a multitude of communities, rich
with a prolific store of political and social institutions.
Throughout their stormy history stand forth great names.
Now and then there arose amongst them leaders of real
genius. For a time they showed some splendid instances of
public virtue, of social life, patriotism, elevation, sagacity, and
energy. For a moment Athens at least may have believed
that she had reached the highest type of political existence.
But with all this activity and greatness there was no true
unity. Wonderful as was their ingenuity, their versatility
and energy, it was too often wasted in barren struggles
and wanton restlessness. For a century and a half after
the Persian invasion, the petty Greek states contended in
one weary round of contemptible civil wars and aimless
revolutions. One after another they cast their great men
aside, to think out by themselves the thoughts that were
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
47
to live for all time, and gave themselves up to be the vic
tims of degraded adventurers. For one moment only in
their history, if indeed for that, they did become a nation.
At last, wearied out by endless wars and constant revolu
tions, the Greek states by force and fraud were fused in one
people by the half-Greek Macedonian kings, and by them,
instead of by true Greeks, the great work so long postponed,
but never through their history forgotten, was at length
attempted—the work of avenging the Persian invasion, and
subduing Asia. Short and wonderful was that career of
conquest, due wholly to one marvellous mind. Alexander,
indeed, in military and practical genius seems to stand
above all Greeks, as Caesar above all Romans ; they two
the greatest rulers of the ancient world. No story, per
haps, in history, is so romantic as the tale of that ten
years of victory when Alexander, at the head of some thirty
thousand veteran Greeks, poured over Asia, crushing army
after army, taking city after city, and receiving the homage
of prince after prince, himself fighting likq a knight-errant:
until subduing the Persian empire, and piercing Asia from
side to side, and having reached even the great rivers of
India, he turned back to Babylon to organize his vast em
pire, to found new cities, pour life into the decrepit frame
of the East, and give to these entranced nations the arts
and wisdom of Greece. For this he came to Babylon, but
came thither only to die. Endless confusion ensued ; pro
vince after province broke up into a separate kingdom, and
the vast empire of Alexander became the prey of military
adventurers. Yet though this attempt of his, like so much
else that Greece accomplished, was, indeed, in appearance
a disastrous failure, still it had not been in vain. The
Greek mind was diffused over the East like the rays of the
rising sun when it revives and awakens slumbering nature.
The Greek language, the most wonderful instrument of
thought ever composed by man, became common to the
whole civilized world; it bound together all educated men
�48
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
from the Danube to the Indus. The Greek literature,
poetry, history, science, philosophy, and art, was at once
the common property of the empire. The brilliance, the
audacity, the strength of the Greek reasoning awoke the
dormant powers of thought. The idea of laws, the idea of
states, the idea of citizenship, came like a revelation upon
the degenerate slaves of the Eastern tyrannies. Nor was
the result less important to the Greek mind itself. Now,
at last, the world was open without obstacle. The philo
sophers poured over the new empire ; they ransacked the
records of primeval times; they studied the hoarded lore
of the Egyptian and Chaldean priests. Old astronomical
observations, old geometric problems, long concealed, were
thrown open to them. They travelled over the whole con
tinent of Asia, studying its wonders of the past, collecting
its natural curiosities, examining its surface, its climates,
its production, its plants, its animals, and its human races,
customs, and ideas. Lastly, they gathered up and pon
dered over the half-remembered traditions and the half
comprehended mysteries of Asian belief, the conceptions
which had risen up before the intense abstraction of Indian
and Babylonian mystics, Jewish and Egyptian prophets and
priests, the notion of some great principle or thought, or
Being, utterly unseen and unknown, above all gods, and
without material form. Thus arose the earliest germ of
that spirit which, by uniting Greek logic with Asian or
Jewish imaginations, prepared the way for the religious
systems of Mussulman and Christian.
Such was the result of the great conquest of Alexander.
Not by its utter failure as an empire are we to judge it;
not by the vices and follies of its founder, or the profli
gate orgies of its dissolution, must we condemn it. We
must value it as the means whereby the effete world of
the East was renewed by the life of European thought,
by which the first ideas of nature as a whole and of
mankind as a whole, arose, by which the ground was
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
49
first prepared for the Roman empire, and for Christian
and Mahometan religion. And, now, what was the gift of
Greece to the world ? As a nation the Greeks had estab
lished little that was lasting. They had changed mnch;
they had organized hardly anything. As the great Asian
system had sacrificed all to permanence, so the Greek
sacrificed all to movement. The Greeks had created no
majestic system of law, no solid political order, no com
plex social system. If civilization had stopped there it
would have ended in ceaseless agitation, discord, and dis
solution. Their character was wanting in self-command
and tenacity, and their genius was too often wasted in
intellectual license. Yet if politically they were unstable,
intellectually they were great. The lives of their great
heroes are their rich legacy to all future ages; Solon, Peri
cles, Epaminondas, and Demosthenes stand forth as the
types of all that is great in the noble leader of men. The
story of their best days has scarcely its equal in history. In
art they gave us the works of Phidias, the noblest image of
the human form ever created by man. In poetry, the
models of all time—Homer, the greatest and the earliest
of poets ; Hlschylus the greatest master of the tragic art;
Plato, the most eloquent of moral teachers; Pindar, the
first of all in lyric art. In philosophy and in science the
Greek mind laid the foundations of all knowledge, beyond
which, until the last three centuries, very partial advance
had been made. Building on the ground prepared by
the Egyptians, they did much to perfect arithmetic,
raised geometry to a science by itself, and invented that
system of astronomy which served the world for fifteen
centuries. In knowledge of animal life, and the art of
healing they constructed a body of accurate observations
and sound analysis; in physics, or the knowledge of
the material earth, they advanced to the point at which
little was added till the time of Bacon himself. In abstract
thought their results were still more surprising. All the
�50
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
ideas that lie at the root of our modern abstract philosophy
may be found in germ in Greece. The schools of modern
metaphysics are little but developments of theirs. They
analysed with perfect precision and wonderful minuteness
the processes employed in language and in reasoning ;
they invented grammar and logic, and rhetoric, and music :
they correctly analysed the human mind, the character,
and the emotions, and invented the science of morality
and the art of education ; they correctly analysed the ele
ments of society and political life, and invented the science
of politics, or the theory of social union. Lastly, they
criticized and laid bare all the existing beliefs of mankind;
pierced the imposing falsehood of the old religions ; medi
tated on all the various answers ever given to the problem
of human destiny, of the universe and its origin, and slowly
worked out the conception of unity through the whole
visible and invisible universe, which, in some shape or
other, has been the belief of man for twenty centuries.
Such were their gifts to the world. It was an intellect
active, subtle, and real, marked by the true scientific
character of freedom, precision, and consistency. And, as
the Greek intellect overtopped the intellect of all races of
men, and combined in itself the gifts of all others, so were
the great intellects of Greece all overtopped and concen
trated in one great mind—the greatest, doubtless, of all
human minds—the matchless Aristotle; as the poet says,
“ The master of those who know,” who, on all branches of
human knowledge, built the strong foundations of abiding
truth.
Let us pause for a moment to reflect what point we
have reached in the history of civilization. Asia had
founded the first arts and usages of material life, begun
the earliest social institutions, and taught us the rudiments
of science and of thought. Greece had expanded all
these in infinite variety and subtlety, had instituted the
free state, and given life to poetry and art, had formed fixed
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
51
habits of accurate reasoning and of sytematic observation.
Materially and intellectually civilization existed. Yet in
Greece we feel that, socially, everything is abortive. The
Greeks had not grown into an united nation. They split
into a multitude of jealous republics. These republics
split into hostile and restless factions. All that we asso
ciate with true national existence was yet to come, but the
noble race who were to found it had long been advancing
towards their high destiny. Alexander, perhaps, had
scarcely heard of that distant, half-educated people, who
for four centuries had been slowly building up the power
which was to absorb aud supersede his empire. But far
beyond the limits of his degenerate subjects, worthier suc
cessors of his genius were at hand—the Romans were
coming upon the world. The Greeks founded the city,
the Romans the nation. The Greeks were the authors of
philosophy, the Romans of government, justice, and peace.
The Greek type was thought, the Roman type was law.
The Greeks taught us the noble lesson of individual free
dom, the Romans the still nobler lesson, the sense of social
duty. It is just, therefore, that to the Romans, as to the
people who alone throughout all ages gave unity, peace,
and order to the civilized world, who gave us the elements
of our modern political life, and have left us the richest
record of acts of public duty, heroism, and self-sacrifice ; it
is just that to them we assign the place of the noblest
nation in history. That which marks the Roman with his
true greatness was his devotion to the social body, his
sense of self-surrender to country; a duty to which the
claims of family and person were implicitly to yield, which
neither death, nor agony, nor disgrace could subdue;
which was the only reward, pleasure, or religion which a
true citizen could need. This was the greatness, not of a
few leading characters, but of an entire people. The
Roman state did not give birth merely to heroes, it was
formed of heroes; nor were they less marked by their
�52
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
sense of obedience, submission to rightful authority where
the interest of the state required it, submission to order
and law. They had too deeply a sense of justice. They
did not war to crush the conquered ; once subdued, they
dealt with them as their fellows, they made equal laws and
a common rule for them ; they bound them all into the same
service of their common country. Above all other nations
in the world they believed in a mission and a destiny.
They paused not century after century in one great object.
No prize could beguile them, no delusion distract them.
Each Roman felt the divinity of the Eternal City, destined
always to march onwards in triumph: in its service every
faculty of his mind was given• life, wealth, and rest were as
nothing to this cause. In this faith they could plan out
for the distant future, build up so as to prepare for vast
extension, calculate far distant chances, and lay stone by
atone the walls of an enduring structure. Hence each
Roman was a statesman, for he needed to provide for the
future ages of his country; each Roman was a citizen of
the world, for all nations were destined to be his fellow
citizens ; each Roman could command, for he had learnt to
obey, and to know that he who commands and he who
obeys are but the servants of one higher power—their
common fatherland.
Long and stern were the efforts by which this power was
built up. But deep as is the mystery which covers the origin
-of Rome, we can still trace dimly how, about the centre of the
Italian peninsula, along the banks of the Tiber, fragments of
two tribes were fused by some heroic chieftain into one ; the
first more intellectual, supple, and ingenious, the second
more stubborn, courageous, and faithful. We see more
clearly how this compound people rose through the strength
of these qualities of mind and character to be the foremost of
the neighbouring tribes; how they long maintained that
religious order of society which the Greeks so early shook
off; how it moulded all the institutions of their life, filled
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
53
them, with reverence for the duties of family, for their
parents, their wives, for the memory and the spirit of their
dead ancestors, taught them submission to judges and
chiefs, devotion to their mother city, love for her com
mands, her laws, and her traditions, trained them to live
and die for her, indeed compassed their whole existence
with a sense of duty towards their fellows and each other ;
how this sense of social duty grew into the very fibres of
their iron natures, kept the State through all dangers rooted
in the imperishable trust and instinct of a massive people ;
then how this well-knit race advanced step by step upon
their neighbouring tribes, slowly united them in one, gave
them their own laws, made them their own citizens ; step by
step advanced upon the only civilized nation of the penin
sula, the theocratic society of Etruria, took from them the
arts of war and peace; how the hordes of Northern bar
barians poured over the peninsula like a flood, sweeping
all the nations below its waters, and when they emerged,
Rome only was left strong and confident; how, after four
centuries of constant struggle, held up always by the sense
of future greatness, the Romans had at length absorbed
one by one the leading nations of Italy, and by one
supreme effort, after thirty years of war, had crushed their
noblest and strongest rivals, their equals in all but genius
and fortune, and stood at last the masters of Italy, from
shore to shore. And now came the great crisis of
their history, the long wars of Rome and Carthage. On
one side was the genius of war, empire, law, and art, on
the other the genius of commerce, industry, and wealth.
The subjects of Carthage were scattered over the Medi
terranean, the power of Rome was compact. Carthage
fought with regular mercenaries, Rome with her disciplined
citizens. Carthage had consummate generals, but Rome
had matchless soldiers. Long the scale trembled. Not
once nor twice was Rome stricken down to the dust. Punic
fleets swept the seas. African horsemen scoured the
�54
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
plains. Barbarian hordes were gathered np by the wealth
of Carthage, and marshalled by the genius of her great
captain. For her fought the greatest military genius of
the ancient world, perhaps of all time. Hannibal, himself a
child of the camp, training a veteran army in the wars of
Spain, led his victorious troops across Gaul, crossed the
Alps, poured down upon Italy, struck down army after
army, and at last, by one crowning victory, scattered the
last military force of Rome. Beset by an invincible army in
the heart of Italy, her strongholds stormed, without gene
rals or armies, without money or allies, without cavalry or
ships, it seemed the last hour of Rome was come. Now, if
ever, she needed that faith in her destiny, the solid strength
of hei’ slow growth, and the energy of her entire people.
They did not fail her. In her worst need her people held
firm, her senate never lost heart, armies grew out of the
very remnants and slaves within her walls. Inch by inch
the invader was driven back, watched and besieged in
turn. The genius of Rome revived in Scipio. He it was
who, with an eagle’s sight, saw the weakness of her enemy,
swooped, with an eagle’s flight, upon Carthage herself, and
at last, before her walls, overthrew Hannibal, and with
him the hopes and power of his country and his race.
It is in these first centuries that we see the source of
the greatness of Rome. Then was founded her true
strength. What tales of heroism, dignity, and endurance
have they not left us ! There are no types of public virtue
grander than those. Brutus condemning his traitor sons
to death ; Horatius defending the bridge against an army ;
Cincinnatus taken from the plough to rule the State, return
ing from ruling the state again to the plough ; the Decii,
father and son, solemnly devoting themselves to death to
propitiate the gods of Rome ; Regulus the prisoner going
to his home only to exhort his people not to yield, and
returning calmly to his prison; Cornelia offering up her
children to death and shame for the cause of the people;
�the connection oe history.
55
great generals content to live like simple yeomen; old and
young ever ready to marcli to certain death ; hearts proof
against eloquence, gold, or pleasure; nohle matrons fram
ing their children to duty; senates ever confident in their
country; generals returning from conquered nations in
poverty; the leaders of triumphant armies becoming the
equals of the humblest citizens.
Carthage once overcome, the conquest of the world fol
lowed rapidly. Spain and the islands of the Mediterra
nean Sea were the prizes of the war. Lower Gaul, Greece,
and Macedon, were also within fifty years incorporated in
Rome. She pushed further. The whole empire of Alex
ander fell into her hands, and at length, after seven hun
dred years of conquest, she remained the mistress of the
civilized world. But, long before this, she herself had be
come the prey of convulsions. The marvellous empire, so
rapidly expanded, had deeply corrupted the power which
had won it. Her old heroes were no more. Her virtues
failed her, and her vast dominions had long become the
prize of bloody and selfish factions. The ancient republic,
whose freemen had once met to consult in the TTorum, broke
up in the new position for which her system was utterly unfit.
Bor nearly a century the great empire had inevitably tended
towards union in a single centre. One dictator after another
had possessed and misused the sovereign power. At last it
passed to the worthiest, and the rule over the whole ancient
w’orld came to its greatest name, the noble Julius Csesar.
In him were found more than the Roman genius for govern
ment and law, with a gentleness and grace few Romans
ever had; an intellect almost Greek in its love of science,
of art, in reach and subtlety of thought; and, above all
this, in spite of vices and crimes which he shared with his
age, a world-wide breadth of view and heart, a spirit of
human fellowship and social progress peculiar to one who
was the friend of men of different races, countries, and
ideas—at once general, orator, poet, historian, ruler, law
�56
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
giver, reformer, and philosopher; in the highest sense the
statesman, magnanimous, provident, laborious, largehearted, affable, resolute, and brave. With him the
Roman empire enters on a new and better phase. He first
saw and showed how this vast aggregate of men must be
ruled no longer as the subjects of one conquering city, but
as a real and single State governed in the interest of all,
with equal rights and common laws; and Rome be no
longer the mistress, but the leader only of the nations. In
this spirit he broke with the old Roman temper of narrow
nationality and pride ; raised to power and trust new men
of all ranks and of all nations ; opened the old Roman
privileges of citizenship to the new subjects; laboured to
complete and extend the Roman law ; reorganized the ad
ministration of the distant provinces; and sought to ex
tinguish the trace of party fury and hatred. And when
the selfish rage of the old Roman aristocracy had struck
him down, before his work was half complete, by a wanton
and senseless murder, yet his work did not perish with him.
The Roman empire at last rose to the level which he had
planned for it. Tor some two centuries it did succeed in
maintaining an era of progress, peace, and civilization—a
government, indeed, at times frightfully corrupt, at times
convulsed to its foundations, yet in the main in accordance
with the necessities of the times, and rising in its highest
types to wise, tranquil, and prudent rule, embracing all, open
to all, just to all, and beloved by all. Then it was, during
those two centuries, broken as they were by temporary con
vulsions, that the nations of Europe rose into civilized life.
Then the Spaniard, the Gaul, the Briton, the German, the
people that dwelt along the whole course of the Rhine and
the Danube, first learnt the arts and ideas of life; law,
government, society, education, industry, appeared amongst
them ; and over the tracts of land trodden for so many
centuries by rival tribes and devastating hordes, security
first appeared, turmoil gave place to repose, and there rose
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
57
the notion, not forgotten for ten centuries, of the solemn
Peace of Rome.
And now, what was it that the Roman had given to the
world? In the first place, his law—that Roman law, the most
perfect political creation of the human mind, which for one
thousand years grew with one even and expanding life—the
law which is the basis of all the law of Europe, including
even our own. Then, the political system of towns. The
actual municipal constitution of every town in Western
Europe, from Gibraltar to the Baltic, from the Hebrides to
Sicily, is but a development of the old Roman city, which
lasted through the middle ages, and began modern indus
trial life. Next, all the institutions relating to administra
tion and police which modern Europe has developed had
their origin there. To them in the middle ages men turned
when the age of confusion was ending. To them again
Tn en turned when the middle ages themselves were passing
away. The establishment of elective assemblies, of gradu
ated magistracies, of local and provincial justice, of
public officers and public institutions, free museums, baths,
theatres, libraries, and schools—all that we understand by
organized society, in a word, may be traced back to Rome.
Throughout all Western Europe, from that germ, civiliza
tion raised its head after the invasion of the Northern
tribes. Erom the same source too arose the force at once
monarchic and municipal, which overthrew the feudal
system. It was the remnant of the old Roman ideas of
provincial organization which first formed the counties
and duchies which afterwards coalesced into a State. It
was the memory of the Roman township which gave
birth to the first free towns of Europe. It was the
tradition of a Roman emperor which, by long interme
diate steps, transformed the Teutonic chieftain into the
modern king or emperor. London, York, Lincoln, Win
chester, Gloucester, and Chester were Roman cities, and
formed then, as they did for the earlier periods of our hi&-
�58
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
tory, the pivots of our national administration. Paris,
Rouen, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, in France; Constance,
Basle, Coblentz, Cologne, upon the Rhine; Cadiz, Barce
lona, Seville, Toledo, Lisbon, in the Spanish, Genoa, Milan,
Verona, Ravenna, Rome, and Naples, in the Italian penin
sula, were in Roman, as in modern times, the great national
centres of their respective countries. But, above all
else, they gave not the notion merely, but the reality of
a state, a permanent system of free obedience to the laws
on the one hand, and a temperate administration of them
on the other; the constant sense of each citizen having his
place in a complex whole.
The Roman’s strength was in action, not in thought;
but in thought he gave us something besides his special
creation of universal law. It was his to discover the
meaning of history. Egypt had carved on eternal rocks
the pompous chronicles of kings. The Greeks wrote pro
found and brilliant memoirs. It was reserved to a Roman
to conceive and execute the history of his people stretch
ing over seven hundred years, and to give the first proof of
the continuity and unity of national life. In art the Roman
did little but develope the Greek types of architecture
into stupendous and complex forms, fit for new uses, and
worthy of his people’s grandeur. But the great triumphs
of his skill were in engineering. He invented the arch, the
dome, and the viaduct. The bridges of the middle ages
were studied from Roman remains. The great domes of
Italian cathedrals, of which that of our own St. Paul’s is but
a feeble imitation, were formed directly on the model of a
temple at Rome. But in thought, the great gift of Rome
was in her language, which has served as an admirable
instrument of religious, moral, and political reflection, and
forms the base of the spoken dialects of three of the great
nations of Europe. Then it was, under that Roman em
pire, that the stores of Greek thought became common to
the world. As the empire of Alexander had shed them
�THE CONNECTION OE HISTOBY.
59
over the East, the empire of Rome gave them to the West.
Greek language, literature, poetry, science, and art, became
the common education of the civilized world , and from
the Hebrides to the Euphrates, from the Atlas to the Cau
casus, for the first and only time in the history of man,
Europe, Asia, and Africa formed one vast whole. The union
of the oriental half, indeed, was mainly external and material,
but throughout the western half a common order of ideas
prevailed. Their religion was the belief m many gods a
system in which each of the powers of nature, each virtue,
each art, was thought to be the manifestation of some
separate god. It was a system which stimulated activity,
self-reliance, toleration, sociability, and art, but which left
the external world a vague and unmeaning mystery, and
the heart of man a prey to violent and conflicting passions.
It possessed not that idea of unity which alone can sustain
philosophy and science, and alone can establish in the
breast a fixed and elevated moral conscience.
The Roman system had its strong points, but it had
also the weak. They were in the main three. It was a
system founded upon war, upon slavery, upon a false and
vague belief. Now as to war, it is most true that war was
not then, as in modern times, the monstrous negation of
civilization. It seems that by war alone could nations then
be pressed into that union which was essential to all future
progress. Whilst war was common to all the nations of an
tiquity, with the Romans alone it became the instrument of
progress. The Romans warred only to found peace. They
did not so much conquer as incorporate the nations. Not
more by the strength of the Roman than by the instinctive
submission in the conquered to his manifest superiority,
was the great empire built up. Victors and vanquished
share in the honour of the common result—law, order,
peace, and government. When the Romans conquered, it
was once for all. That which once became a province of
the Roman empire rested thenceforth in profound tran
�60
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
quillity. No standing armies, no brutal soldiery, overawed
the interior or the towns. Whilst all within the circle of
the empire rested in peace, along its frontiers stood the
disciplined veterans of Rome watching’ the roving hordes
of barbarians, and protecting the pale of civilization.
Still, however useful in its place, it was a system of
war ; a system necessarily fatal in the long run to all pro
gress, to all industry, to all the domestic virtues, to all the
gentler feelings. In a State in which all great ideas and
traditions originated in conquest, the dignity of labour, the
arts of industry, were but slowly recognised or respected;
the work of conquest over, the existence of the great
Roman became in too many cases purposeless, idle, and
vicious. Charity, compassion, gentleness, were not easy
virtues. The home was sacrificed. The condition of
woman in the wreck of the family relations sank to the
lowest ebb. In a word, the stern virtues of the old
Roman private life seemed ending in inhuman ferocity
and monstrous debauchery.
Secondly, the Roman was a system of slavery. It
existed only for the few. True industry was impossible.
The whole industrial class were degraded. The owners of
wealth and its producers were alike demoralized. In the
great towns were gathered a miserable crowd of poor free
men, with all the vices of the “ mean whites ” of Ame
rica. Throughout the country the land was cultivated, not
by a peasantry, not by scattered labourers, but by gangs of
slaves, guarded in workhouses and watched by overseers.
Hence the whole population and all civilization was
gathered in the towns. The spaces between and around
them were wildernesses, with pasturage and slaves in place
of agriculture and men. Thirdly, it was a system based on
a belief in a multitude of gods, a system without truth, or
coherence, or power. There was no single belief to unite
all classes in one faith. Nothing ennobling to trust in, no
standard of right and wrong which could act on the moral
�THE CONNECTION OE HISTORY.
61
nature. There were no recognised teachers. The moral
and the material were hopelessly confused. The politicians
had no system of morality, religion, or belief, and were
void of moral authority. The philosophers and the moral
ists were hardly members of the State, and taught only to
a circle of admirers, and exercised no wide social influence.
The religion of the people had long ceased to be believed.
It had long been without any moral purpose ; it became a
vague mass of meaningless traditions. With these threefold
sources of corruption, war, slavery, false belief, the Roman
empire so magnificent without, was, within, a rotten fabric.
Politically vigorous, morally it was diseased. Never perhaps
has the world witnessed cases of such stupendous moral
corruption, as when immense power, boundless riches, and
native energy were left as they were then without object, con
trol, or shame. Then, from time to time, there broke forth
a very orgy of wanton strength. But its hour was come.
The best spirits were all filled with a sense of the hollow
ness and corruption around them. Statesmen, poets, and
philosophers, in all these last eras were pouring forth their
complaints and fears, or feebly attempting remedies. The
new element had long been making its way unseen, had
long been preparing the ground, and throughout the civil
ized world there was rising up a groan of weariness and
despair.
Por three centuries a belief in the existence of one God
alone, in whom were concentrated all power and good
ness, who cared for the moral guidance of mankind, a
belief in the immortality of the soul and its existence in
another state, had been growing up in the minds of the
best Greek thinkers. The noble morality of their philoso
phers had taken strong hold of the higher consciences of
Rome, and had diffused amongst the better spirits through
out the empire new and purer types. Next the great em
pire itself, forcing all nations in one State, had long inspired
in its worthiest members a sense of the great brotherhood
�62
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
of mankind, had slowly mitigated the worst evils of slavery,
and paved the way for a religions society. Thirdly, another
and a greater cause was at work. Through Greek teachers
the world had long been growing familiar with the religious
ideas of Asia, its conceptions of a superhuman world,
of a world of spirit, angel, demon, future state, and over
ruling Creator, with its mystical imagery, its spiritual
poetry, its intense zeal and fervent emotion. And now,
partly from the contact with Greek thought and Roman
civilization, a great change was taking place in the
very heart of that small Jewish race, of all the races of
Asia known to us, the most intense, earnest, and pure :
possessing a high sense of personal morality, the truest
yearnings of the heart, and the deepest capacity for
spiritual fervour. In their midst arose a fellowship of
true-hearted brethren, gathered around one noble and
touching character, which adoration has veiled in a mys
tery which passes from the pale of definite history. On
them had dawned the vision of a new era of their national
faith, which should expand the devotion of David, the
high purpose of Isaiah, and the moral excellence of
Samuel, into a gentler, wider, and more loving spirit.
How this new idea grew to the height of a new reli
gion, and brightened, and was shed ovei’ the whole earth by
the strength of its intensity and its purity, is to us a familiar
and enchanting tale. We know how the first fellowship of
the brethren met; how they went forth into all lands with
words of mercy, love, justice, and hope; their self-denial,
humility, and zeal; their heroic lives and awful deaths;
their loving natures and their noble purposes; how they
gathered around them wherever they came the purest and
greatest; how across mountains, seas, and continents, the
coTmmrnion of saints joined in affectionate trust; how from
the deepest corruption of the heart arose a yearning for a
truer life; how the new faith, ennobling the instincts
of human nature, raised up the slave, the poor, and the
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
63
humble to the dignity of common manhood, and gave new
meaning to the true nature of womanhood • how, by slow
degrees, the church, with its rule of right, of morality,
and of communion, arose ; how the first founders and
apostles of this faith lived and died, and all their gifts were
concentrated in one, of all the characters of certain history
doubtless the loftiest and purest,—the -unflinching, the
unselfish, the great-hearted, the loving Paul.
But deeply as this story must always interest us, let us
not forget that the result was due not to one man or to one
people, that each people gave their share to the whole ;
Greece, her thought and gentleness ; Borne, her social in
stinct, her genius for discipline ; Asia, her intensity of belief
and personal morality. The task that lay before the new
religion was immense. It was, upon a uniform faith, to found
a system of sound and common morality, to reform the
deep-rooted evils of slavery; to institute a method which
should educate, teach, and guide, and bring out the ten
derer and higher instincts of our nature. The powers of
mind and of character had been trained by Greece and
Borne, to the Christian church came the loftier mission of
-ruling the affections and the heart.
Brom henceforth the history of the world shows a new
character.
Now and henceforward we see two elements in civiliza
tion working side by side—-the practical and the moral.
There is now a system to rule the State and a system to
act upon the mind ; a body of men to educate, to guide and
elevate the spirit and the character of the individual, as well
as a set of rulers to enforce the laws and direct the action of
the nation. There is henceforward the State and the Church.
Hitherto all had been confused; statesmen were priests
and teachers; public officers pretended to order men’s
lives by law, and pretended in vain. Henceforward our
view is fixed on Europe, on Western Europe alone: we
leave aside the East, we leave the half Bomanized, the
�64
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
half Christianized East to the empire of Mohammed, to the
Arab, the Mongol, and the Turk. We turn solely to the
heirs of time, the West, in which is centred the progress
and the future of the race. Henceforward, then, for the
ten centuries of the middle ages which succeeded in Wes
tern Europe the fall of the Roman Empire, we have two
movements to watch together—Feudalism and Catholicism
—the system of the State and the system of the Church : let
us turn now to the former.
The vast empire of Rome broke up with prolonged con
vulsions. Its concentration in any single hand, however
necessary as a transition, became too vast as a permanent
system. It wanted a rural population; it was wholly with
out local life. Long the awe-struck barbarians stood pausing
to attack. At length they broke in. Ever bolder and more
numerous tribes poured onwards. In wave after wave
they swept over the whole empire, sacking cities, laying
waste the strongholds, at length storming Rome itself;
and laws, learning, industry, art, civilization itself, seem
swallowed up in the deluge. For a moment it appeared that
all that was Roman had vanished. It was submerged, but
not destroyed. Slowly the waters of this overwhelming
invasion abate. Slowly the old Roman towns and their
institutions begin to appear above the waste like the highest
points of a flooded country. Slowly the old landmarks
re-appear and the forms of civilized existence. Four centu
ries were passed in one continual ebb and flow; but at
length the restless movement subsided. One by one the
conquering tribes settled, took root, and occupied the soil.
Step by step they learned the arts of old Rome. At
length they were transformed from the invaders into the
defenders. King after king strove to give form to the
heaving mass, and put an end to this long era of confusion.
One, at length, the greatest of them all, succeeded, and
reared the framework of modern Europe. It was the imperial Charlemagne, the greatest name of the middle ages,
�65
THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
who, like some Roman emperor restored to life, marshalled
the various tribes which had settled in France, Lrermany,
Italy, and the north of Spain, into a single empire, beat
back, in a long life of war, the tide of invaders on the west,
and north, and south, Saxon, Northman, and Saracen, and
awakened anew in the memory of nations the type of civil
government and organized society. His work in itself was
but a single and a temporary effort ; but in its distant con
sequences it has left great permanent effects. It was like a
desperate rally in the midst of confusion ; but it gave man
kind time to recover much that they had lost, In his
empire may be traced the nucleus of the state system of
Western Europe ; by the traditions of his name, the modern
monarchies were raised into power. He too gave shape
and vigour to the first efforts of public administration. But
a still greater result was the indirect effect of his life and
labours. It was by the spirit of his established rule that
the feudal system which had been long spontaneously grow
ing up from beneath the débris of the Roman empire, first
found strength to develope into a methodical form, received
an imperial sanction to its scheme, and the type of its
graduated order of rule. And now what was this feudal
system, and what were its results ?
In the first place, it was a system of local defence.
The knight was bound to guard his fee, the baron his
barony, the count his county, the duke his duchy. Then it
was a system of local government. The lord of the manor
had his court of justice, the great baron his greater court,
and the king his court above all. Then it was a system of
local industry ; the freeholder tilled his own fields, the
knight was responsible for the welfare of his own lands.
The lord had an interest in the prosperity of his lordship.
Hence slowly arose an agricultural industry, impossible in
any other way. The knight cleared the country of robbers,
or beat back invaders, whilst the husbandman ploughed
beneath his castle walls. The nation no longer, as under
F
�66
THE MEANING ON HISTORY.
Greece and Rome, was made up of scattered towns. It had
a local root, a rural population, and complete system of
agricultural life. The monstrous centralization of Rome
was gone, and a local government began. But the feudal
system was not merely material, it was also moral; not
simply political, it was social also. The whole of society
was bound by it together by a long series of gradations.
Each man had his due place and rank, his rights, and his
duties. The knight owed protection to his men; his men
owed their services to him. Under the Roman system,
there had been only citizens and slaves. Row there was none
so high but had grave duties to all below ; none so low, not
the meanest serf, but had a claim for protection. Hence,
all became, from king to serf, recognised members of one
common society. Thence sprung the closest bond which
has ever bound man to man. To the noble natures of the
northern invaders was due the new idea of loyalty, the
spirit of truth, faithfulness, devotion, and trust, the lofty
sense of honour which bound the warrior to his captain, the
vassal to his lord, the squire to his knight. It ripened into
the finest temper which has ever ennobled the man of action,
the essence of chivalry; in its true sense not dead, not des
tined to die, the temper of mercy, courtesy, and truth, of
fearlessness and trust, of a generous use of power and
strength, of succour to the weak, comfort to the poor, reve
rence for age, for goodness, and for woman; which revolts
against injustice, oppression, and untruth, and never listens
to a call unmoved. Is it possible that this spirit is dead ?
This which watched the cradle of modern society, and is the
source of all our poetry and art, does it not live for future
seivice, and new beauty, transiormed from a military to a
peaceful society ? May it not revive the seeds of trust
and duty between man and man, inspire the labourer with
dignity and generosity, raise the landlord to a conscious
ness of duty, and renew the mysterious bond which unites
all those who labour in a common work ?
�THE CONNECTION ON HISTORY.
67
- We turn to the Church, the moral element which per
vades the middle ages. Amidst the crash of the falling
empire, as darker grew the storm which swept over the
visible state on earth, more and more the better spirits
turned their eyes towards a kingdom above the earth. They
turned, as the great Latin father relates, amidst utter cor
ruption to an entire reconstruction of morality ; m the
wreck of all earthly greatness, they set their hearts upon
a future life, and strove amidst anarchy and bloodshed to
found a moral union of society. Hence rose the Catholic
Church, offering to the thoughtful a mysterious and inspir
ing faith ; to the despairing and the remorseful a new and
higher life ; to the wretched comfort, fellowship, and aid;
to the perplexed a grand system of belief and practice—m
its creed Greek, in its worship Asiatic,, in its constitution
Boman. In it we see the Roman genius for organisation
and law, transformed and revived. In the fall of her
material greatness Rome’s social greatness survived.
Rome still remained the centre of the civilized world. Latm
was still the language which bound men of distant lands
together. From Rome went forth the edicts which were
common to all Europe. The majesty of Rome was still the
centre of civilization. The bishops’ court took the place of
that of the imperial governor. The peace of the Church
took the place of the peace of Rome. The barbarian
invaders who overthrew the hollow greatness of the empire,
humbled themselves reverently before the ministers of reli
gion. The Church stood between the conqueror and the
conquered, and joined them both in one. She told to all
Roman and barbarian, slave or freeman, great or weak—
how there was one God, one Saviour of all, one equa sou
in all, one common judgment, one common life hereafter.
She told them how all, as children of one Father, were in His
eyes equally dear; how charity, mercy, humility, devotion
alone would make them worthy of His love ; and at these
words there rose up in the fine spirits of the new races a
�68
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
sense of brotherhood amongst mankind, a desire for à higher
life, a zeal for all the gentler qualities and the higher duties,
such as the world had not seen before. Thus was her first
task accomplished, and she founded a system of morality
common to all and possible to all. She spoke to the slave
of his immortal soul, to the master of the guilt of slavery.
Master and slave should meet alike within her walls, and
lie side by side within her tomb ; and thus her second task
was accomplished, and she overthrew for ever the system
of slavery, and raised up the labourer into the dignity of
a citizen. Then she told how their common Master, of
power unbounded, had loved the humble and the weak.
She told of the simple lives of saints and martyrs, their
tender care of the poorer brethren, their spirit of benevolence, self-sacrifice, and self-abasement ; and thus the third
great task was accomplished, when she placed the essence
of practical religion in care for the weak, in affection for
the family, in reverence for woman, in benevolence to all
and in personal self-denial. Next, she undertook to edu
cate all alike. She provided a body of common teachers ;
she organized schools; she raised splendid cathedrals,
where all might be brought into the presence of the beauti
ful, and see all forms of art in their highest perfection
architecture, and sculpture, and painting, and work in
glass, in iron, and in wood, heightened by inspiring ritual
and touching music. She accepted all without thought of
birth or place. She gathered to herself all the knowledge
of the time, though all was subordinate to religious life.
The priests, so far as such were needed, were poets, histo
rians, dramatists, musicians, architects, sculptors, painters,
judges, lawyers, magistrates, ministers, students of science,
engineers, philosophers, astronomers, and moralists. Lastly,’
she had another task, and she accomplished even that. It
was to stand between the tyrant and his victim ; to succour
the oppressed, to humble the evil ruler, to moderate the
horrors of war ; above all, to join nation to nation, to
�THE CONNECTION OE HISTORY.
69
mediate between hostile races, to give to civilised Europe
some element of union and cohesion.
. .
Let us think of it as it was in its glory, not in its decay.
Letusrememberitasa systemoflife which for ten centuries
possessed the passionate devotion of the foremost spin s o
their time ; one which has left us a rich store of thought
and teaching, of wise precept, lofty poetry, and matchless
devotion; as a system which really penetrated and acted
on the lives of men. Let us think of it as it was m essence,
truly the union of all the men of intellect and character
of their age towards one common end; not like Egyptian
priests, pretending to govern by law ; not like Greek philo,
sophers, expounding to a chosen sect; not like modern
savants, thinking for mere love of thought, or mere ove
fame, without method or concert, without moral guidance,
without social purpose ; but a system in which the wises
and the best men of their day, themselves reared m a com
mon teaching, organized on a vast scale, and direc e . y
one general rule, devoted the whole energies of their brains
and hearts in unison together, to the moral gui nee o
society ; sought to know only that they might eac , o
teach only to improve, and lived only to instruct to raise,
to humanize their fellow men. Let us think of it us as i
was at its best ; and in this forget even the cruelty, the
imposture, and the degradation of its fall ; let horror for its
vices and pity for its errors be lost in one sentiment of admi
ration, gratitude, and honour, for this the best and the las
of all the organized systems of human society ; of ail the
institutions of mankind, the most worthy of remembrance
and regret.
n • <But if we are generous in our judgment let us be jus .
The Catholic system ended, it is most true, in disastrous
and shameful ruin. Excellent in intention and m method, it
was from the first doomed to inevitable corruption from t e
inherent faults of its constitution. It had worthily trame
tod elevated the noblest side of human nature-the reh-
�70
THE MEANING OE HISTORY.
gious, the moral, and the social instincts of our being; and
the energy with which it met this the prime want of men,
upheld it through the long era of its corruption, and still
upholds it in its last pitiable spasm. But with the intellec
tual and with the practical sphere of man’s life, it was by
its nature incompetent to deal. In its zeal for man’s moral
progress it had taken its stand upon a false and even a prepos
terous belief. Burning to subdue the lower passions of man’s
nature, it had vainly hoped to crush the practical instincts
of his activity. It discarded with disdain the thoughts and
labours of the ancient world. It proclaimed as the ideal of
human life, a visionary and even a selfish asceticism. For
a period, for a long period, its transcendent and indispensa
ble services maintained it in spite of every defect and vice ;
but at last the time came when the outraged instincts
reasserted their own, and showed how hopeless is any reli
gion or system of life not based on a conception of human
nature as a whole at once complete and true. The Church
began in indifference towards philosophy and contempt for
material improvement. Indifference and contempt passed
at length into hatred and horror; and it ended in denounc
ing science, and in a bitter conflict with industry. At last
it had become, in spite of its better self, the enemy of all
progress, all thought, all industry, all freedom. It allied
itself with all that was retrograde and arbitrary. It fell
from bad to worse, and settled into an existence of timid
repression. Hence it came that the Church, attempting1 to
teach upon a basis of falsehood, to direct man’s active life
upon a merely visionary creed, to govern a society which
it only half understood, succeeded only for a time. It was
scarcely founded before it began to break up. It had
scarcely put forth its strength before it began to decay. It
stood like one of its own vast cathedrals, building for ages
yet never completed; falling to ruin whilst yet unfinished;
filling us with a sense of beauty and of failure; a monu
ment of noble design and misdirected strength. It fell like
�the connection on history.
71
the Roman empire, with prolonged convulsion and corrup
tion, and left us a memory of cruelty, ignorance, tyranny,
rapacity and vice, which we too often forget were hut the
symptoms and consequences of its fall.
And now we have stood beside the rise and fall of four
great stages of the history of mankind. The priestly
systems of Asia, the intellectual activity of Greece, the
military empire of Rome, the moral government of Catho
licism, had each been tried in turn, and each had been
found wanting. Each had disdained the virtues of the
others; each had failed to incorporate the others. With
the fall of the Catholic and feudal system, we enter upon
the age of modern society. It is an age of dissolution, re
construction, variety, movement, and confusion. It is an
era in which all the former elements re-assert themselves
with new life, all that had ever been attempted is renewed
again ; an era of amazing complexity, industry, and force,
in which eveiy belief, opinion, and idea is criticised, trans
formed, and expanded. Every institution of society and
habit of life is thoroughly unsettled and remodelled; all the
sciences constructed—art, industry, policy, religion, philo
sophy, and morality, developed with a vigorous and con
stant growth; but, withal, it is an era in which all is
individual, separate, and free, without any system, or regu
larity, or unity, or harmony.
First, the feudal system broke up under the influence of
the very industry which it had itself fostered and reared.
The great fiefs as they became settled, gradually gathered
into masses ; one by one they fell into the hands of kings,
and at length upon the ruins of feudalism arose the great
monarchies, and the feudal atoms crystallized into the
actual nations of Europe. The variety and dispersion of
the feudal system vanished. A central monarch established
one uniform order, police, and justice ; and modern political
society, as we know it rose. The invention of gunpowder
made the knight helpless, the bullet pierced his mail, and
�72
THE MEANING OE HISTORY.
standing armies took the place of the feudal militia, The
discovery of the compass opened the ocean to commerce.
The free towns expanded with a new industry, and covered
the continent with infinitely varied products. The knight
became the landlord, the man-at-arms became the tenant,
the serf became the free labourer, and the emancipation of
the worker, the first, the greatest victory of the Church
was complete.
Thus, at last, the energies of men ceased to be occupied
by war, to which a small section of the society was per
manently devoted. Peace became in fact the natural, not
the accidental state of man. Society passed into its final
phase of industrial existence. Peace, industry, and wealth
again gave scope to thought. The riches of the earth were
ransacked, new continents were opened, intercourse in
creased over the whole earth. Greeks, flying from Con
stantinople before the Turks, spread over Europe, bringing
with them books, instruments, inscriptions, gems, and
sculptures; the science, the literature, and the inventions
of the ancient world, long stored up and forgotten on the
shores of the Bosphorus. Columbus discovered America,
The Portuguese sailed round Africa to India; a host of
daring adventurers penetrated untrodden seas and lands ;
man entered at last upon the full dominion of the earth.
Copernicus and Galileo unveiled the mystery of the world,
and made a revolution in all thought. Mathematics,
chemistry, botany, and medicine, preserved mainly by the
Arabs during the middle ages, were again taken up almost
where the Greeks had left them. The elements of the
material earth were eagerly explored. The system of ex
periment (which Bacon reduced to a method) was worked
out by the common labour of philosophers and artists.
For the first time the human form was dissected and ex
plored. Physiology, as a science, began. Human history
and society became the subject of regular and enlightened
thought. Politics became a branch of philosophy. With
�THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY.
all this th© new knowledge was scattered by the printing
press, itself the product and the stimulus of the movement,
in a word, the religious ban was raised from off the human
powers. The ancient world was linked on to the modern.
Science, speculation, and invention lived again after twelve
centuries of trance. A fresh era of progress opened with
the new-found treasures of the past.
Next, before this transformation of ideas, the Church
collapsed. Its hollow dogmas were exposed, its narrow
prejudices ridiculed, its corruptions probed. Mens’ con
sciences and brains rose up against an institution which
pretended to teach without knowledge, and to govern
though utterly disorganized. Convulsion followed on con
vulsion ; the struggle we call the Reformation opened, and
for a century and a half shook Europe to its foundations.
At the close of this long era of massacre and war, it was
found that the result achieved was small indeed. Europe
had. been split into two religious systems, of which neither
one nor the other was fit for its duty, Admiration for the
noble characters of the first Reformers, for their intensity,
truth, and zeal, their heroic lives and deaths, the affecting
beauty of their purposes and hopes is yet possible to us,
whilst we confess that the Protestant, like the Catholic
faith, had failed to organize human industry, society, and
thought; that both were alike hollow, bigoted, and weak,
and both had failed to satisfy the wants and hopes of man.
More and more has thought and knowledge grown into
even fiercer conflict with authority of Book or Pope ; more
and more in Catholic France as in Protestant England, does
the moral guidance of men pass from the hands of priests,
or sect, to be assumed, if it be assumed at all, by the poet,
the philosopher, the essayist, and even the journalist; more
and more does Church and sect stand dumb and helpless
in presence of the evils with which society is rife.
Side by side the religious and the political system
tottered in ruin together. From the close of the fifteenth
�74
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
century, now one/now the other was furiously assailed.
Foi’ the most part both were struck at once. The long
religious wars of Germany and France ; the heroic defence
of the free Republic of Holland against the might of
Spain ; the glorious repulse of its Armada by England ; the
immortal revolution achieved by our greatest stateman,
Cromwell; the struggle of his worthy successor, William
of Orange, against the oppression of Louis XIV., were all
but parts of one long struggle, which lasted during the
whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a struggle
in which religion and politics both equally shared, a struggle
between the old powers of Feudalism and Catholicism on
the one side, with all the strength of ancient systems,
against the half-formed, ill-governed force of freedom, in
dustry, and thought; a long and varied struggle in which
aristocracy, monarchy, privileged caste, arbitrary and mili
tary power, church formalism, dogmatism, superstition,
narrow teaching, visionary worship, and hollow creeds,
were each in turn attacked, and each in turn prostrated.
A general armistice followed this long and exhausting
struggle. The principles of Protestantism, Constitution
alism, Toleration, and the balance of power, established a
system of compromise, and for a century restored some
order in the political and religious world. But in the world
of ideas the contest grew still keener. Industry expanded
to incredible proportions, and the social system was trans
formed before it. Thought soared into unimagined regions,
and reared a new realm of science, discovery, and art..
Wild social and religious visions arose and passed through
the conscience of mankind. At last the forms and ideas
of human life, material, social, intellectual, and moral, had
all been utterly transformed, and the fabric of European
society rested in peril on the crumbling crust of the past.
The great convulsion came. The gathering storm of cen
turies burst at length in the French Revolution. Then,
indeed, it seemed that chaos was come again. It was as if
�THE CONNECTION OE HISTORY.
75
an earthquake had come, blotting out all trace of what
had been, engulfing the most ancient structures, destroy
ing all former landmarks, and scattering society in confu
sion and dismay. It spreads from Paris through every
comer of Prance, from Prance to Italy, to Spain, to Ger
many, to England; it pierces, like the flash from a vast
storm-cloud, through every obstacle of matter, space, or
form. It kindles all ideas of men, and gives wild energy
to all purposes of action. For though terrible it was not
deadly. It came not to destroy but to construct, not to
kill but to give life. And through the darkest and bloodiest
whirl of the chaos there rose up clear on high, before the
bewildered eyes of men, a vision of a new and greater era
yet to come—of brotherhood, of freedom, and of union,
of never ending progress, of mutual help, trust, co-opera
tion, and goodwill; an era of true knowledge, of real
science, and practical discovery; but, above all, an era of
active industry for all; of the dignity, and consecration of
labour, of a social life, just to all, common to all, and
beneficent to all.
That great revolution is not ended. The questions it
proposed are not yet solved. We live still in the heavings
of its shock. It yet remains with us to show how the last
vestiges of the feudal, hereditary, and aristocratic systems
may give place to a genuine, an orderly, and permanent
republic ; how the trammels of a faith long grown useless
and retrograde may be removed without injury to the
moral, religious, and social instincts, which are still much
entangled in it; how industry may be organized, and the
Workman enrolled with full rights of citizenship, a free, a
powerful, and a cultivated member of the social body.
Such is the task before us. The ground is all prepared, the
materials are abundant and sufficient. We have a rich
harvest of science, a profusion of material facilities, a vast
collection of the products, ideas, and inventions of past
ages. Every vein of human life is full; every faculty has
�THE MEANING OF HISTORY.
been trained to full efficiency; every want of our nature is
supplied. We need now only harmony, order, union ; we
need only to group into a whole these powers and gifts; the
task before us is to discover some complete and balanced
system of life; some common basis of belief; some object
for the imperishable religious instincts and aspirations of
mankind; some faith to bind the existence of man to the
visible universe around him; some common social end for
thought, action, and feeling; some common ground for
teaching, studying, or judging. We need to extract the
essence of all older forms of civilization, to combine them,
and harmonize them in one, a system of existence which
may possess something of the calm, the completeness, and
the symmetry of the earliest societies of men; the zeal
for truth, knowledge, science, and improvement, which
mark the Greek, with something of his grace, his life, his
radiant poetry and art; the deep social spirit of Rome,
its political sagacity, its genius for government, law and
freedom, its noble sense of public life; above all else, the
constancy, earnestness, and tenderness of the mediseval
system ; its sense of the surrender of self to a Power above,
its undying zeal for the spiritual union of man kind ;—and
with all this the industry, the knowledge, the variety, the
activity, of modem life.
THE END.
-
Habbild, Printer, Lohdos.
/ •
♦ W.SS*’
Ji*/-
��■«”—
�
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The meaning of history : two lectures
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Harrison, Frederic [1831-1923]
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Place of publication: London
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1892
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History
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388
[September
CONTRASTS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY,
HE whole interest of history broadly what contrasts can be traced
depends on the eternal likeness between ancient and modern times,
of human nature to itself, and on leaving it to be inquired how far
the similarities or analogies which these may happen to affect any case
we in consequence perpetually dis in hand.
cover between that which has been
The very expressions, Ancient and
and that which is. Were it other Modern History, need a preliminary
wise, all the narratives of the past caution. Some nations may seem
would be an enigma to our under to be in nearly the same state in
standings ; for we should be with ancient and in modern times : as
out that sympathy which kindles the roving Arabs and Tartars ; per
imagination and gives insight; nor haps even the inhabitants of China
would the experience of the ancient and its neighbouring Archipelago.
world afford instruction or warning All such people are tacitly excluded
to him who is trying to anticipate from this discussion ; roving tribes,
futurity. With good reason, there because they have no history worth
fore, the greatest stress is ordinarily the name ; the Chinese nations, be
laid on this side of the question— cause their culture notoriously has
the similarities to be detected be become stationary, and, as we have
tween the past and the present. In no history of their earlier times, we
the world of Greece or Rome, of cannot detect such contrasts as may
Egypt or Judaea, Carthage or really exist between their present
Babylon, the same never-ending and former state. By modern
struggles of opposite principles were history we must chiefly mean
at work, with which we are so well Christian history, yet not so as to
acquainted in modern times. The exclude the Mohammedan nations.
contests between high birth and They too have their strong points
wealth, between rich and poor, be of contrast to the ancient military
tween conservatives and progres monarchies, and will be treated in
sists, to say nothing of the purely their turn; but their history is
moral conflicts of patriotism and certainly monotonous. One form
selfishness, justice and oppression, of government only—military des
mercy and cruelty, all show them potism—has arisen among them ;
selves in every highly developed and, owing to this meagreness,
community, in proportion to the there is less to say about them.
fulness of information which we The Mohammedan empires, as in
enjoy concerning it. The names chronology they more properly be
and the form often differ, when the long to the middle age, so in their
substance was the same as now. actual development appear to be
Nevertheless, it is equally needful midway between their prototypes in
to be aware of the points at which the ancient and their representatives
similarity ceases and contrast in the modern Christian world.
begins ; otherwise, our application Generally speaking, it is only be
of history to practical uses will be tween things in important senses
mere delusive pedantry. This, no alike that it is worth while to insist
doubt, is the difficulty, through on unlikeness. To contrast things
which no golden rule can avail to different in kind, is seldom needed;
help us. We are thrown back upon but where similarity is close, to
good sense to judge of each question point out dissimilarity is instructive.
I. The first topic which we may
as it occurs, and all that the writer
of history or the philosopher can do make prominent is contained in the
for the aid of readers, is, to state word slavery. In modern Christen-
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
dom slavery is ail anomaly. It liad
pined away and vanished in Europe
in proportion to civilisation. When
first it was established in the
American colonies, no one foresaw
the magnitude it would assume.
When the great Republican Union
arose, its founders would not admit
the word slave or any equivalent
into the Federal constitution. Be
lieving that slavery must soon die
out of itself, they declined any direct
controversy about it, and veiled
its actual existence under a general
term thafwould include apprentices,
criminals under sentence, or even
minors ; alas I not foreseeing that
the invention of the cotton-gin
would give a new money-value to
slaves, and generate a fanatical
theory which glorified slavery as a
precious institution. Hence without
a terrible civil war the proud ambi
tion of slave owners could not be
crushed. But the mighty price was
paid. Slavery in the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies all now seems
to be doomed. Simultaneously the
Russian dynasty has reversed its
policy. Having for several centuries
by a gradual succession of imperial
edicts depressed the peasants, first
into serfs and next into slaves, it
has raised them into free labourers
who have legal rights in the soil
and a status which the English
peasant may envy. The most en
lightened of the Mussulmans now
glorify their Prophet as a promoter
of freedom, a panegyrist of emanci
pation. In the judgment now of
all highly cultivated men, slavery is
an unnatural, unjust, dangerous
institution, doomed by the voice of
conscience, and suffrage of reason, to
total extinction ; though we grieve
to know the perpetual effort which
freebooters make, and will make, to
renew it; not least, the degenerate
offspring of Europeans, whenever
they get beyond the reach of
European law. But in the ancient
world neither law nor philosophy
nor religion forbade slavery; slightly
to regulate its worst enormities,
389
was all that religion or law at
tempted. Slavery was with them
not the exception, but the rule. No
philosopher theorised against it, no
philanthropist (if such we may call
any Greek or Roman) was ashamed
of it, no statesman dreamed of taking
measures to destroy it. The savage
who wandered over the steppes of
southern Russia needed a slave to
milk his mares, and blinded him
lest he should escape. The Lacedae
monian warrior, proud of freedom,
regarded public slaves as essential
to his existence, important alike in
the camp, on the field of battle, and
in his own city. Even the simple
and comparatively virtuous German,
in his forest hut, coveted and often
attained the attendance of slaves,
whose status perhaps was rather
that of a serf. To the leading
commercial states, Tyre, Corinth,
2Egina, slaves were a staple article
of merchandise. Chattels they were,
yet not in these clays mere cattle,
useful for their brute force and
for little beside. They were often
persons of greater accomplishment
than their masters, and this accom
plishment enhanced their price.
Some persons kept schools of slaves,
in which they learned music and
other elegant arts, or arithmetic
and bookkeeping, cooking and
domestic service, or agriculture and
its kindred branches ; or some other
trade ; of course, not for the slaves’
benefit, but to raise their market
able value.
Through the ferocities of war,
the ancient slave trade raged most
cruelly against civilised man. All
captives from an enemy, however
seized, became the booty of the
captor and liable to personal slavery.
Pirates even in peace prowled along
the coasts, and often carried off as
prey any promising children, hand
some women, or stout men, on whom
they could lay hands. In many
cases, the same ship played the part
of merchant and kidnapper, as occa
sion might serve. After the suc
cessful siege of an opulent town, it
�390
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
was not uncommon for the entire
population, young and old, of both,
sexes and of all ranks, to be sold
into bondage : whereby sometimes
the slave market was so glutted
that they might be had for a trifle.
It thus not seldom happened, that
the well educated and delicately
nurtured were degraded beneath
humanity ; and, dreadful as was the
personal suffering to individuals,
the result was in one sense more
favourable to slaves collectively,
than the very different state of
modern colonial bondage. Slaves,
as such, were less despised, and
there was not so great a chasm as
to moral feeling between them and
the free community. The freeborn
and instructed were probably better
treated in slavery than others ; aud
certainly were often set free by
benevolent persons or by grate
ful masters. There was no pre
judice against colour. In no two
countries was the actual or legal
state of slaves quite the same, and
in some places and times the transi
tion from slavery to unprivileged
freedom was not very great. This
may have been among the reasons
which blinded thoughtful persons
to the essential immorality of the
system, however modified ; yet it is
wonderful that Aristotle should de
fine a slave to be ‘ a living tool ’ (a
phrase which one might expect
rather from an indignant aboli
tionist), and not draw any inference
against the system as inhuman.
Nay, he says, that nature by giving
to the Greeks minds so superior,
marked out slavery to the Greeks
as the natural status for barbarians.
Barbarian Romans could not assent
to this doctrine ; yet no voice in all
antiquity uttered an indignant pro
test against slavery as such. In
one country only of the ancient
world—a part, or some reported, the
whole of India—was slave-labour
said to be unknown. A species of
slavery, serving some of the pur
poses of apprenticeship, may have
existed then, as recently, without
[September
being particularly noticed ; so too
may the practice of selling beautiful
maidens to supply the harems of
chieftains.
That Egypt, as well as India,
should have dispensed with an or
dinary slave class, was perhaps a
natural result of the system of
caste. Where a Pariah caste exists
there is no want of men for any
sort of rude or unpleasant labour,
such as the Greeks believed none
but slaves would undertake. The
strength of domestic animals, aided
by good roads, and, still more,
modern machinery, relieves man
kind from a thousand hard tasks,
which the ancients exacted from the
sinews of bondsmen. It is interest
ing here to observe by what pro
cess those oppressions are removed
which weigh direfully on the lowest
class of a civilised community.
Even when Solomon built his cele
brated little temple (about as large
as an English parish church), for
which cedars were cut in Mount
Lebanon by aid of the skilful
Tyrians, it was believed that he
used 70,000 bondsmen that bare
burdens, and 80,000 hewers of tim
ber. No mention is made of mules
or ponies to carry down the loads;
even asses might better have borne
the toil, if it had been matter of
simple carrying on a clear path.
Egyptian pictures represent vast
weights as drawn by the hands of
men, who tug simultaneously when
the conductor sings or waves his
wand.
Shall we suppose that
brutes, though stronger, could not
be trained to the co-operation re
quisite ? Be this as it may, the
strain fell on human sinews. Hewers
of wood and drawers of water are
phrases often conjoined to express
the suffering of bondsmen from
causes which in the present day in
volve no kind of distressing toil.
With us, if enormous masses of
granite are to be moved along a
prepared road, not even bullocks or
horses are often thought in place,
but the engineer supersedes them
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
by a steam-engine and one or more
chains.
It is recorded that, when the
Spaniards first learned the wealth
of the American mines, their ava
rice pressed the unhappy natives so
severely as to kill them in great
numbers by the toil of ascending
and descending the mines with
heavy burdens. Of course, our
most rudimental machinery im
mensely relieves or supersedes this.
Yet, even to this day, a miner’s life
is so revolting to one who has not
been, as it were, born and bred in
it, that we cannot wonder at the
ancient doubt whether any but a
slave would work in a mine. For
this purpose, criminals and prisoners
of war were used by the Egyptians,
which would seem to be the only
form of slavery in that kingdom ;
and their labour is described as of
the most galling cruelty. Whether
the Indians had slaves in their
mines, perhaps the Greeks were not
well informed enough to ascertain.
To labour in the dark, and under
ground, may appear to most of us
an unbearable infliction, but modern
experience proves that, by aid of
machinery, it may be so lightened
as to be chosen voluntarily for gain.
To a thoughtful Athenian or Roman
it may have seemed doubtful whe
ther civilization was not purchased
too dearly, for its maintenance was
thought to require the permanent
degradation of, perhaps, the majo
rity of a nation into the unmanly
and demoralising state of bondage.
But this was an exaggeration, true
only of a brilliant but luxurious and
unsound state of society. In the
simpler and earlier order of things,
the labours of the field and work
shop were performed by freemen;
but, with the development of the
military spirit, and owing to the
small extent of a homogeneous na
tive population, the freemen were
drafted off for soldiers, and their
place was supplied by captives of
war. This undue predominance of
military institutions, especially in
391
the Roman world, engendered and
fostered preedial slavery. Under the
Emperors, through the comparative
cessation of wars and piracy, the
slave-trade became far less active,
and imperial legislation, in many
ways, regulated the state of slavery,
so that very great cruelties became
rarer, and some exceptional forms
of cruelty impossible ; nevertheless,
so much the more was a general
grinding degradation riveted upon
the masses of the country people.
Such an idea as the common Rights
of Men was nowhere sounded forth.
What then was never heard is now
an axiom, that all men, of every
class, of every nation, of every
complexion and climate, have some
indefeasible rights, which neither
conquest nor legislation, nor sale by
parents can take away. Herein lies
an enormous difference between the
past and future. Whatever the
origin of human races, wenow recog
nise all menas morally homogeneous,
and, in a just state, subject to a
single code of law. On the con
trary, antiquity admitted the prin
ciple of favoured races, even among
freemen. This may deserve a few
detailed remarks.
II. The first step upward from
slavery is into serfdom. Indeed
the former always tends to merge
itself into the latter, when the
slave trade is inactive. If slaves
can only be had from the natural
home supply, the value of the
workman immediately rises. It
becomes fit once the interest of the
master, and the duty of the law
giver, to secure the due increase
of the working population, and the
maintenance of their full strength.
In a tranquil society, developed only
from within, this would secure the
transition to serfdom, which is com
plete when families of labourers are
inseparable from an estate. But
besides the slaves and serfs, many
ancient nations, great and small,
recognised ranks very diverse, sub
ject even to different systems of
law. A ruling race was sure to be
�392
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
a privileged order, whose liberties
with the property or persons of
others were ill repressed by law ; and
of the rest, some were able to rise,
others not; some without political
lights, but endowed with full social
rights ; others treated as foreigners.
The principle may be seen alike
in despotic Persia, in oligarchical
Lacedamion and Rome; in part, also,
in democratic Athens. In some
sense it was superseded by a system
of caste, where that existed, which
by no means implied necessarily a
primitive difference of race. But
where an empire was founded by
conquest of numerous cities and
tribes, diverse in race and language,
the distinction of race and race
arose naturally, and was unblameable while the revolution was still
recent. But meddling and jealous
legislation endeavours to enact as a
law for ever that which ought only
to be a temporary caution of the
executive government—a caution
which the timidity of newly-seized
power is never apt to neglect.
Since our renewal of the East
India Company’s Charter in 1833,
the natives of India are by law put
on a perfect equality with the Bri
tish born, and were declared admis
sible to every office of power except
free; that of Governor-General, and
Commander-in-Chief. Yet every
one knows how little danger there
is that the executive will be too
eager to fill up its appointments
with born Indians. If, for security
against this imaginary danger, it
were forbidden by express laws, this
would forbid the barriers which
separate the conquered from the
conquering race to decay with time ;
and if to this were added a law
against intermarriage, it would ex
hibit anew the mischievous prin
ciples of exclusion, which have so
often sustained the galling iniqui
ties of conquest. It is a fallacy to
insist that because some races of
men have greater talents for go
vernment than others—even if the
fact be conceded—therefore they
[September
are entitled to award to themselves
peculiar legal privileges and rights.
A dominant race is never liable to
think too highly of its subjects and
too meanly of itself; the opposite
error is uniformly that from which
mankind has suffered. If the race
which is in power has greater capa
cities, it will outstrip the rest in a
fair field, without advantage from
the law. Each individual has ad
vantage already in the very name
of his nation. But jealousies and
pride in general prevailed. Most
ancient empires split up societies
into sharply distinguished orders
of men ; and as there was no
sudden chasm, they were the less
startled at the depth to which hu
manity was sunk in the unfortunate
slave.
We have less reason for boasting
than for mourning and contrition;
for our practice is by no means
commensurate with our theory ; but
European theory is now far more
humane than that of the ancients.
No high executive officer, no judge,
no member of a high council, no
authority in jurisprudence, will
justify giving to the members of a
ruling race any indefinite claims for
service, facilities foi’ oppression, or for
evading rightful obligations. What
ever our difficulties in administering
justice where a population is hetero
geneous, we loudly and unshrink
ingly avow our duty of abiding by
and enforcing equal law. This, wo
may feel confident, will henceforth
be the received principle of the
modern world, wherever European
influence has once been dominant.
Those powers who fail of enforcing
their own principle will not the less
successfully indoctrinate the sub
ject population with it, perhaps to
their own overthrow; for to the
enthroning of the idea of Equal
Rights to all races, events are sure
to gravitate, when the rulers them
selves enunciate it; nor can men
in power recede from a principle
which all the intellect of their own
nation proclaims and glorifies. This
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
is a great contrast between us and
antiquity.
III. One may not pass by a topic
closely akin to the last, although
prudence forbids any great confi
dence of tone concerning a move
ment which, is but in embryo. A
cry arises, not only against depres
sion of any Races, but also against
the depression of one Sex. Every
imperial power uses lavishly the
lives of its young men as soldiers.
Imperial England lavishes them also
in emigration and in nautical dan
gers. Hence women have the toil
of self-support, and, perhaps, the
double toil of family support, thrown
upon them; and in nearly every
market it is discovered by themthat their male rivals have unfair
advantage. Hitherto women have
suffered in silence, and with little
interchange of thought. The novel
fact is now, that in the freest coun
tries the sex is the most loudly
avowing discontent with its poli
tical depression. The movement
already belongs to so many coun
tries of Christendom, as to indicate
that it is no transient phenomenon,
but has deep causes. Partial suc
cess in so many places (as in the
municipal franchise of England) is
a promise that the movement must
expand into greater force. Hitherto
women of the higher ranks have
often held executive power, directly
as queens, or indirectly as mis
tresses of kings ; or, again, as vice
regents, or representatives of barons
and squires, their husbands; but
women from the families of private
citizens, who are the mass of every
nation, have hitherto been utterly
without political power, and rarely
hold any subordinate public posi
tion, except the worst paid. In
the American Union they have
rebelled against this state of things
for a full quarter of a century.
The force of mind and grasp of
knowledge which many women dis
play in various spheres of thought,
and not least in politics, are a fact
which cannot count for nothing ;
393
so that one who shuns to be rash
may yet forebode that the countries
which allow a political vote to un
educated men will not long refuse
it to the mass of educated women.
In this prospect we most surely see
a remarkable and hopeful contrast
of the Future to the Past, when
it is considered how large a part of
the miseries of history have arisen
from the sensualities and cruelties
of the male sex. Of course, we
know that, women, equally with
men, can be corrupted by the pos
session of power, and can be ex
quisitely cruel; but this is rare,
and somewhat abnormal. In gene
ral the sex is more tender-hearted
and refined; and their collective
exercise of power would forbid
many a war, and be generally fa
vourable to the side of humanity.
But wishing here to speak rather
of what is positively attained and
recognisable by all minds, than of
that which is only probable, I stay
my pen from further remark on
this topic.
IV. There is a signal contrast of
external circumstances between the
older and newer state of things
herein; that nearly every ancient
civilised state looked out upon a
barbarism immeasurable in mass
and power; barbarism, on which it
could never hope to make a per
manent impression, and by which
it might well fear io be swallowed
up. Tartary was the mightiest
realm of Barbaria. Gibbon has elo
quently and instructively detailed
the causes which made the Tartars
pre-eminently familiar with the art
of campaigning and guiding the
marches of immense hosts. At no
time known to us can the Tartar
nations have been so low in the
scale of civilisation as numerous
tribes whom we call savages. They
always had an abundance of sheep
and goats, and an extraordinary
number of horses. They always
had the art of mining for iron, and
forging swords. Even the inven
tion of steel was ascribed to north-
�394
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
ern people, otherwise backward in
civilisation. Waggons were brought
to a high state of perfection, and
over vast steppes of Tartary were
able to traverse the open country
without roads. This implies suffi
ciently good carpentry, and no lack
of needful tools. The whole nation
being moveable, it was hard to
limit the magnitude of a Tartar
army. The northern region could
not be coveted by the southerners,
and was practically unconquerable
by them. It fell under their sway
only -when some Tartar dynasty
conquered a southern people, and
still retained the homage of its na
tive realm. This has happened
again and again with Tartar con
querors of China. At the earliest
era of which we have notice of
Persia from Greeks or Romans, it
is manifest how powerful were the
Tartar sovereigns who interfered
in Persian domestic politics, when
they did not affect direct con
quest. This eternal conflict of the
Tartars and the Persians is sym
bolised in the mythical Turan and
Iran. In our mediaeval period a
Mogul dynasty seated itself in India,
two successive dynasties of Turks,
the Seljuks and the Ottomans, over
whelmed Asia Minor, and the exist
ing dynasty of Persia is esteemed
Tartar. Such is the peculiarity of
Asiatic geography, that it may seem
difficult to boast of civilisation
being ever there safe from bar
barism. Nevertheless the Tartar
power is virtually broken by the
wonderful development of Russian
empire. Mistress of the Amoor,
and. exercising control over Khiva,
Russia shuts the Tartars in on both
sides, and teaches them the su
premacy of civilised force in ways
so intelligible, that no future sove
reign of Tartary (if all were united
under one chief) could fancy him
self the chief potentate on earth.
Southern nations are no longer
palsied by the idea that their north
ern invaders are innumerable. Geo
graphy discloses their weakness as
[September
■well as their strength ; even China
has less to fear from Tartary than
in ancient times.
But when we approach Western
Asia and Europe, the contrast is
far more marked and important.
The Gauls, who temporarily over
whelmed Italy, and a century later,
Greece, are described as an ex
tremely rude people; so are the
Scythians, whose cavalry was gene
rally formidable to Persia, and to
Rome. Even Germany, Hungary,
and the regions south of the
Danube, often threatened overthrow
to the civilisation of their southern
neighbours. Imperial Rome for
several centuries stood at bay
against the Germans, but could do
little more; and when her best-in
formed men had begun to learn the
intractable character and vast ex
tent of the more or less closely
related tribes, despair for civilisa
tion was apt to seize them. Even
under the splendid military reign
of Trajan, conqueror of Dacia, the
historian Tacitus, relating a war in
which Germans slew one another,
earnestly hopes that the gods will
increase this fratricidal spirit, since
‘ the vates of the Empire pressing
us hard ’ there is no better prayer
to offer. Apparently he regarded it
as inevitable that the savage would
break the barriers of the Roman
provinces and sweep away all
culture before him ; which, in
deed, is the very thing which hap
pened, through the essential error
of Roman policy and the disorgani
zations incident to mere military
rule.
If a civilised power can entirely
subdue a barbarian neighbour, it
may, at considerable expense, per
haps civilise him ; but when the
nature of the country forbids this,
it is unwise in the more civilised to
admit a common frontier. Augustus
aspired to conquer Germany, and
actually pushed the frontier of the
empire to the Elbe, but the insur
rection under Arminius drove him
back to the Rhine ; then at last he
�1874]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
learned that, through her swamps
and forests and the wild nature of
her people, Germany was not worth
having, and that moderation is an
imperial virtue. But Germany and
the Empire were still conterminous,
though the frontier was pushed
back. The thing to be desired was
to sustain between them—as a sort
of buffer that should break German
assault — a half-civilised highspirited people, intelligent enough
to estimate Roman power, proud of
alliance and honours, but aware of
its essential inferiority to the mighty
Empire. Such a people, well armed
and -well supported by Roman re
sources, and taught all the arts of
Roman war, would have been worth
half-a-dozen armies; but to main
tain in them a free spirit was essen
tial to success, and this free spirit
was dreaded by the Romans as
contagious. Agricola planned to
conquer Ireland (says Tacitus, who
seems to approve the policy) lest
the knowledge that the Irish were
free should make the Britons less
contented in vassalage. It was
because the Romans systematically
broke the spirit of every nation
whom they conquered, and allowed
of none but imperial armies, that
the neighbour barbarians found no
resistance in the provinces, when
(from whatever cause) imperial
troops were not at hand. Thus
little good resulted to the world’s
history from the Roman conquest
of the ruder populations of Gaul,
or from the complete conquest of
Britain and of Dacia. Even wild
animals (says the Caledonian orator
in Tacitus), if you keep them caged
up, forget their courage. The
Britons and the Dacians were not
merely tamed; they were cowed
and unmanned. To have subdued
all Germany in this way would
have been useless. Charlemagne at
length undertook the problem,
which had been too hard for Trajan
and Marcus Antoninus ; but he was
already as much German as
VOL. X .----NO. LVII,
NEW SERIES.
395
Gaulish, and his chief struggle was
against Saxony. The next great
gain to civilisation was in Poland—
in Hungary — and in Southern
Russia. When Herodotus wrote,
the whole region to the north of
the Black Sea acknowledged the
sovereignty of roving equestrian
tribes ;only agriculturists of foreign
origin were settled among them in
Podolia and in the Crimea, who
paid them tribute. These, it may
be conjectured, were the nucleus of
the Ostrogoths, who afterwards
appeared in great strength in that
region, and from it migrated into
the Roman empire. Other tribes
filled the vacuum, but became agri
culturists like the Goths ; so that
the Russians easily retained them
under settled institutions. To Peter
the Great, in the last century, we
owe the establishment of the whole
of European Russia as industrious
people under well organised Go
vernments. Even Siberia, along
the high-roads which have been
reclaimed from the interminable
forests, has a settled population
attached to its own soil and proud
of its name. In the course of the
last thousand years, in Mongolia
itself, the same process has gone on,
of restricting the limits of the rov
ing tribes. In numbers they must
now be ever inferior to the settled
populations, and every development
of the art of war throws them
farther and farther behind. Much
more is Europe secure from all
alarms of the barbarian from with
out. Our dangers are solely w’hen,
by bad national institutions and
selfish neglect of our home popula
tion, we allow barbarism to grow up
from within.
V. Another contrast to be ob
served between the ancients and the
moderns lies in the number of great
states which have simultaneously
attained a robust civilisation, no one
of which is able to establish a uni
versal dominion. This was for two
or three centuries a cause of turbuE E
�39 G
('out easts of Ancient and Modern History,
lent yet thriving progress in Greece;
bnt all the Powers were there on
too small a scale to be able to resist
the great monarchies. No doubt
in China, in India, in Persia, civi
lised states on a grand scale existed
simultaneously; but each was a
separate world. Possibly in China
and in India at an early time there
was a complex internal struggle
similar to those of which we know
in Greece and in Europe ; but as far
as is recorded, the history of each
great country went on independently
of the other countries ; just as the
Roman and the Persian Empires,
though conterminous, were little
affected in their internal concerns,
each by the other. Ancient free
dom was generally on a small scale.
According to Aristotle, no Polity
could consist of so many as a hun
dred thousand citizens. A state
with only so many, may be con
quered by foreign force, in spite of
wise policy and the utmost bravery;
but to a homogeneous people of
twenty or thirty millions this can
only happen through the gravest
domestic errors. In ancient times
the attempt at widespread conquest
was unhappily more and more pros
perous as time went on. A succes
sion of great empires is displayed
before us, Assyrian, Median, Per
sian, Macedonian, Roman, each
larger than the preceding. The
last swallowed up into itself the
whole cultivation of the West and
much of its barbarism : each empire
in its turn was practically isolated,
independent and wholly self-willed,
aware of no earthly equal. A victim
of Roman tyranny scarcely had a
hope of escaping into the remote
Persia, any more than into the bar
barous populations which girt the
empire north and south. Under
despotism thus uncontrolled, all that
was manly and noble, all genius and
all the highest art, with love of
country, died away: the resources
of civilisation were crumbling and
sensibly declining, even during the
century which produced the very
[September
best Roman Emperors, Vespasian,
Titus, Trajan, Hadrian and the two
Antonines, before any Gothic in
road ; hence, when the barbarian
triumphed, what remained of the
precious fabric fell as in a mass.
But the rivalry of great powers in
Europe effectively sustains all vital
principles. Despotic and wilful as
Russia may seem, she is really so
anxious to secure the good opinion
of Europe, that she does not disdain
to subsidize foreign newspapers as
her advocates. The dynasties col
lectively form a sort of European
Commonwealth, which displays
great jealousy if one make encroach
ments on another. Thus in their
external action they encounter muoh
criticism, remonstrance, or severer
checks, and nevei’ think that they
are irresponsible. Even as to their
internal concerns, in which none
■will endure that another should in
terfere with diplomatic suggestion
or advice, they cannot be exempt
from the criticism of European
literature. For in this greater
Commonwealth there is in some
sense a common literature. Modern
languages more and more assume a
form in which it becomes a deter
minate problem, and not an ardu
ous one, to translate from one into
the other. Through travellers, fixed
embassies, and newspaper corre
spondents, an atmosphere of common
knowledge is maintained, largely
pervaded by a common sentiment,
which, in proportion to the extent
of education, inevitably affects the
minds of public men. Moreover,
in all the foremost states, and
especially those in which despotism
and bureaucracy predominate, a
severe cultivation is thought neces
sary to high office. A despotism
like that of Turkey, recent Naples
or recent Spain, which accounts
education to be needless for its
functionaries, is understood to be
decaying, and is despised by the
other powers. So large a moral
and mental action of state on state
was unknown to antiquity. In it
�1*74]
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
we have a valuable guarantee for
the maintenance and preservation
of anything good which has been
earned by civilised effort. In this
connection we ought not to pass
over the joint cultivation of science
by all the leading nations of Chris
tendom. The material sciences have
emphatically become ‘ sinews of
war ’ as well as means of wealth ;
so that no imperial power can de
spise them. Each great country has
its peculiar objects or facilities of
study, and what is discovered in
one is studied and must be learned
by others. Science is notoriously
cosmopolitan, and steadily aids the
diffusion of common thought and
common knowledge upon which
common sentiment may reasonably
establish itself.
VI. We have not at all abandoned,
scarcely have we relaxed, the rigid
formalities by which imperial power
seeks to elevate its high personages
and maintain the steadiness of its
ordinances. Nevertheless, with the
stability of freedom under law, and
the growth of a scientific spirit,
criticism of national institutions
becomes more and more fundamen
tal, in a country so free as England.
Hence it is scarcely credible that
we can long continue to be, what
we are, a marked exception to the
rest of Christendom in regard to
the tenure of land. So far as we
know of antiquity, conquest and
conquest alone, unmodified by con
siderations of moral right, enacted
the landed institutions. Out of
unequal rights in the soil, more than
out of any other single cause, springs
social depression to the excluded,
and often a wide pauperism. In all
Europe like causes produced like
results, and nearly everywhere the
actual cultivators of the soil were
oppressed in various degrees ; but
time has in most countries largely
altered their position for the better.
In less than a hundred years an
immense change has passed over
the Continent. In Italy, Switzer
land, and Spain, things were never
397
so bad as elsewhere, nor perhaps in
Holland and parts of Germany.
Norway retains a state of equality
unbroken by conquest. France and
Prussia, Hungary and Austria,
Poland, Sweden, and Russia, have
all endowed the peasantry with de
finite rights in the soil. Over the
entire breadth of the Continent the
principle has now established itself,
which permits of arguing politically,
as all will argue morally, that land,
water, and air are gifts of God
to collective man, necessary to life,
and therefore not natural possessions
of individuals, except as actual cul
tivators. Small states of antiquity,
sometimes in favour of their own
citizens (generally at the expense
of another nation), avowed a doc
trine of each family having a right
to land: even this was exceptional.
No doctrine concerning land was
propounded by moral philosophy ;
no practical recognition of right in
the cultivator, as such, was ever
dreamed of by great imperial
powers; no dogma concerning it was
put forth by a hierarchy, even
after a Christian apostle had writ
ten, that the cry of those who sow
and reap the fields, whose hire the
powerful keep back by fraud, had
entered the ears of the Lord of
Hosts. When moral philosophy
deals with the question of property
in land, as it already deals with
that of property in human bodies,
the effect on all civilised nations
will be immense; and it is now
pretty clear that such a develop
ment must come, and that shortly.
The English aristocracy will shriek
and storm, as did the American
slaveholders. A Marquis lately
spoke of certain landed property as
sacred, because it had been sanc
tioned by Parliament. Just so, it
was pleaded that slaves were A
sacred property because they had
been bought, and because slave
owners had passed laws to sanction
it.
Such arguments are good
enough for those who hold on by
the law of might, but are contemp-
�398
Contrasts of Ancient and Modern History.
tible to all who appeal to the law of
right. They avail to show that it
is prudent and equitable in the
state to give an ample consideration
whenever it dispossesses an indi
vidual ; but never can establish that
it is right to keep a whole nation
of cultivators living from hand to
mouth, without any fixed tenure of
the soil, without roof or hearth of
their own, or increased profit from
increased diligence in culture. If
England were in this matter at the
head of Europe, existing inequali
ties might last for centuries longer.
But since she lingers ignominiously
behind all the best known powers,
—and while Ireland is her old
scandal, the Scottish and English
peasants have no better security
whatever in their tenure, and are ac
cidentally superior, chiefly through
manufacturing and commercial
wealth—since, moreover, the Eng
lish colonies entirely renounce that
doctrine of land which English
landlords have set up, — finally,
since in India the supreme power
avows and enforces a widely dif
ferent doctrine ; the existing system
is destined to a fundamental change.
Precisely because those who claim
reform feel towards the landlord
class as tenderly as abolitionists felt
towards slave-owners—making all
allowance for their false position
blamelessly inherited,—desiring to
make the change as gentle to them
as public justice will permit; there
fore the more decisive and unhesi
tating is the appeal to moral prin
ciple in the political argument. In
this resolute appeal to morals is
involved a great contrast to the
state of things possible in any
ancient power, where slavery, serf
dom, or caste existed. A claim of
landholders which rests on the
enactments of a Parliament from
which all but landholders were
systematically excluded for cen
turies, is signally destitute of moral
weight. They who use it do not
know that they are courting conmpt. Unless they will undertake
[September
to establish that the claim is morally
just, they effect nothing but to show
that, having stepped into legislative
power, they have used it for their
private benefit; while, by excluding
all but their own order, they be
trayed their own consciousness of
malversation. This, in part, relates
to past generations, but, of course,
the alleged rights are hereditary
only. The evil deeds of predeces
sors have wrongfully enriched the
present holders. In every case, it
is by moral argument that they will
have to be established, if established
they can be, against the consensus of
all Europe, tlie American Union,
the other British colonies, and the
Anglo-Indian empire.
VII. Last, perhaps not least, of
the general moral contrasts which
will make a signal difference be
tween the ancients and the moderns,
is the elementary education of the
masses of every community. This
education, no doubt, is as yet chiefly
in the future. In the late American
civil war the ‘ mean whites ’ of the
South were so ignorant that only by
seeing and feeling the force of Nor
thern armies could they learn that
there was any greater power in the
world than their own State. Germany
and the American Union having de
clared for, and vigorously carried out,
the education of the lowest people, it
is morally certain that first England,
next Austria and France, will follow.
Partial interests, religious animosi
ties, old prejudices, timid forebod
ings, will impede, but can only de
lay, the movement; though a century
may be needed before it is strictly
European. When it is established
that there are to be no slaves, no
serfs, no dangerous class of citizens,
the problem cannot be worked out
with the vast masses of ignorant
freemen. Hence general national
education is one of the certainties
of the future. It is the last con
trast of modern and ancient times
which it is expedient to treat in
one article.
Francis W. Newman.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Contrasts of ancient and modern history. [Part 1].
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Newman, Francis William
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 388-398 ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. From Fasier's Magazine 10, no. 57 (September 1874]. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. First of a 4-part article deploys contrasts in terms of periodisation, slavery, serfdom, gender, the contrast between barbarity and civilization, the application of science and land tenure.
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[s.n.]
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1874
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C223
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History
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Ancient History
Conway Tracts
History
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Text
��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
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Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The new Book of Kings
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Davidson, John Morrison [1843-1916]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 123, [5] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: List of reviews of the book in four unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication from KVK.
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The Modern Press
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[1885?]
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T399
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Republicanism
Monarchy
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English
History
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Republicanism
Socialism
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ebd53f890b8daad1738956098278fe3c
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Text
IMMANUEL KANT
IN HIS RELATION TO MODERN HISTORY.
PAPER READ BEFORE THE FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL
HISTORICAL SOCIETY ON THE lUh MARCH 1875,
BY
Dr G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.RHist.S.,
ONB OF THE LECTURERS IN H.M. DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, 8.E.
Price Sixpence.
��IMMANUEL KANT.
INGLE individuals stand to the general historical
in the
Sdo development of humanity corbels, same relation as
detached stones, statues,
spires, or weather
cocks to a building. The individual, in the eyes of
the philosophical historian, has only so far an interest
as he forms a link in the great chain of human activi
ties, or one stone in the historical dome. The indivi
dual is the outgrowth of his times, his dwelling-place
or country, the intellectual and social atmosphere in
which he has been reared and nourished. In propos
ing to read a paper on Immanuel Kant I did not
intend to take up your time with his private life, little
biographical notices of his character, but to place
before you my objective views as to his influence on
our modern mode of thinking, as the basis of our
modern history. I purpose to keep to the general
principles which I laid down before you in my paper
“ On the possibility of a strictly scientific treatment of
Universal History ” (see vol. III. Transactions of the
E. H. S., page 380) ; and shall try to apply those
principles in sketching the development of an indivi
dual in whom the static and dynamic forces w’orking
in humanity were well balanced. Kant, as philoso
pher, is merely a link in a long chain of mighty spe
culative and empirical, or deductive and inductive
thinkers, who serve to illustrate, that from the earliest
times of the awakening consciousness of humanity man
tried to bring about an understanding of the natural
�6
Immanuel Kant
and intellectual phenomena surrounding him. The
method which these thinkers pursued was either a
priori or a posteriori ; they either started with general
principles, and reasoned from them down to particu
lars ; or they followed the more thorny path of arguing
from particulars in order to come to general conclu
sions. Finally, Kant stands by himself in founding a
system which succeeded in bringing harmony into
these two conflicting methods. He may be said to
have been the only “ deducto-inductive ” philosopher ;
he was a genius, able to grasp mind and matter, the
noumenal and phenomenal in their innermost connec
tion, and succeeded in destroying a one-sidedness in
philosophy which often had been detrimental to the
real progress of science.
Bacon and Descartes opposed the old methods of
philosophy, and endeavoured to explain the various
phenomena of nature on a merely mechanical basis.
But Bacon, after all, was a reviver of the atomistic
theory of Demokritos, whilst Leibnitz, in opposing
Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza, and their teleological
principles, turned back to Plato and Aristotle, in order
to unite d priori the conflicting elements of the two
Greek philosophers in his theory of monads. Kant is
neither exclusively empirical nor teleological, he is the
creator of an entirely new mode of thinking and study
ing. All philosophy before Kant was more or less
theology. The circle of experience was extremely
narrow ; and theology bore all before it : no one could
gainsay it. Explanations and hypotheses drawn from
the fertile sources of imagination and intuition, pro
ductive of surmises and conjecture, had full play and
ruled supreme. Free-will, the senses, perception,
matter, spirit, body, soul, nature, God, and universe,
were settled as entities out of the inner consciousness
of poets, prophets, or philosophers. By degrees and
slowly, experience tried to collect and heap up obser
vations ; which were at first isolated; often in con
�In his Relation to Modern History.
7
tradiction to certain d priori settled assumptions, but
subsequently they were arranged and brought into
mutual relation, and we see natural sciences take a
position apparently opposed to theology, philosophy,
and metaphysics. Matter affecting and impressing our
senses, acting and reacting on them, was pronounced to
be the only thing we could grasp, or know anything of.
The experimentalist grew angry with the metaphy
sicians or theologians, and blamed the efforts of those
who argued on matters which he was trying to dis
cover by means of scientific observation. “ Either the
theologians come to the same final results as we men of
science, then they are entirely superfluous ; or they
persist in opposing us with false assumptions, propa
gating thus errors which are detrimental to the progress
of knowledge, and then they are worse than super
fluous ; they are altogether pernicious.” From this
conflict also a division in the scientific world arose.
Some devoted themselves exclusively to “ realism,”
others to “ idealism.” Everywhere at this period we
see strife and warfare.
In ancient times, as in the Middle Ages, the experi
mental sciences were but unruly and undisciplined
children, continually finding fault with their mother,
speculation; history was yet unknown, mere chronicles,
or at the most biographies, existed. The knowledge of
connecting laws was wanting, all was guess work, all
was a disconnected heap of facts in sciences as well as
in history. The discovery of America and the Refor
mation suddenly changed the very mode of thinking.
Without the Reformation, no philosopher of the stamp
of Bacon could have been possible. Philosophy
detached itself through Bacon from theology, and
entered the lists of experimental sciences ; so intimate
was the connection between philosophy and experiment,
that we in England speak of a microscope as a philo
sophical instrument, and might even call a new method
of dyeing silk, or a new way of manuring, a philoso
�8
Immanuel Kant
phical invention. In consequence of this one-sided
ness, inagurated by Bacon, we became more and more
devoted to a realistic, or as some people have it, matejealistic and practical philosophy, and failed to see that
there was a power in us which has to arrange, to system
atize, and even to apply what has been gathered on
the fields of experience. Opposed to this realistic
school were first Descartes and Leibnitz. The pure
intellect was to be the source of all knowledge;
nothing was worth studying, except what could be
reduced to an algebraic formula. Spinoza brought
this theory to perfection. Not only nature, but all
human life, with all its fluctuating passions, was to be
explained by mathematical rules. Man’s sufferings,
actions, intentions, and motives were to be treated as
planes, triangles, spheres, cubes, squares, pyramids, or
polyhedrons, &c. Leibnitz tried to save philosophy
from these matter-of-fact tendencies. He discovered
in mathematics the differential and infinitesimal “ cal
culus ; ” and in physics a new law—motion. He
strove to establish a union between primitive and final
causes. He had an idea that the contrast between
inorganic and organic, natural and spiritual, mechanical
and moral elements must cease through the notion of
continuity in the unity of gradually progressive, selfacting forces. His system reached its climax in his
“ Theodicy,” altogether beyond the comprehension of
human intellect. He dimly felt that there ought to be
a union between metaphysics and experience, but the
solution of this problem was beyond his powers.
Professor Christian Wolf was a thorough dogmatist.
Philosophy was to him the knowledge of everything
possible. Anything was possible that could be brought
under a strict logical law, according to the “principium,
identitatis,” “ contradictionis,” and “ rationis sufficientis.” We were taken back by him to the categories
of Aristotle. Experimental philosophy and meta
physics were again separated; the latter was to make
�In his Relation to Modern History.
9
us acquainted with the essence of things from a specu
lative point of view, this was treated of by Wolf in his
Ontology, under the heading “ De Entitate ; ” compris
ing the simple, compound, final, infinite, perfect, im
perfect, accidental, and necessary substances. The
universe, soul, and God were discussed according to
these ontological categories, as subjects of Wolf’s cos
mology, pneumatology, and theology. Dogmatism in
philosophy celebrated its greatest triumphs before the
dazzled eyes of Europe. Dialectics ruled supreme.
Explanations were given, and the unfathomable was
again fathomed — of course only in words. Kant
stepped on the philosophical platform when the dog
matism of Wolf was in its zenith ; he was himself a
pupil of this mighty metaphysician. The struggle
between the sciences, a priori and those a posteriori,
was recommenced. The foundations of metaphysics un
dermined by Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza,
stood propped up by Wolf’s ingenuity, but his system
was terribly shaken again by the mighty sceptical
philosophers of England and Scotland. Bacon already
denied that metaphysics, treating of the supernatural,
could be a science. Locke went further ; he set down
experience and perceptions as the basis upon which to
build up a system of philosophy. Sensation and
reflection were to be the leading elements. Bacon
declared the supernatural to be an impossibility, and
Locke pronounced even the supersensual a mere fiction,
opposing Descartes as the latter opposed Bacon. Locke’s
final dogma was, that experience cannot make us
acquainted with the essence of things, but merely with
their impressions on our senses. Berkeley, in analys
ing sensual impressions, found them producing per
ceptions, and therefore turned upon the realists and
proclaimed triumphantly that after all everything is
“ idea.” He thus confounded effect and cause, and
pronounced them to be identical. All observations are
mere impressions on our senses, but these produce
B
�IO
Immanuel Kant
perceptions, perceptions are ideas, therefore everything
is mere idea. All material things if deprived of our
perception are nothing. There are only perceiving and
perceived elements or ideas in us, which take their
origin in God. Berkeley's dogma may he summed up
thus : God has endowed us with the faculty of percep
tion through impression, all knowledge is therefore of
divine origin. His dogmatism led to Hume’s scepticism.
Hume started by endeavouring to find out, whether
we may become conscious of the impressions made by
perceptions on our senses, and whether knowledge were
possible beyond such perceptions. He assumes only
one possible science—mathematics—the conclusions of
which are analytic (according to him) by means of
equations. Empirical conclusions he wishes only to
be based on the law of causation (the nexus causalis),
and the whole of his philosophy may be reduced to the
question : is a cognisable causal “ nexus ” between the
objects of experience and their impressions on our
senses, possible ? He denies this most peremptorily.
Reason cannot connect different impressions, and at
the same time trace their causes with certainty; her
conclusions are only analytic but never synthetic. All
conclusions drawn by experience can therefore never
be strictly demonstrated, as we can only recognise the
effect but never the necessary cause. Neither reason
nor experience can give us real insight into causality,
and this very causality is one of the essential factors of
science. What we are capable of attaining is a con
tinuation of facts and impressions. The post hoc
becomes a propter hoc, or the “after” a “therefore.”
This change is performed through our reasoning faculty.
The causal nexus is a mere assumption, it is a faith, a
belief, like any other, and not a reality. This will
suffice to characterise the philosophical stand-point at
the period when Kant began his career.
Glancing at the political and social condition of his
times, we find him entering the University when Wolf
�In his Relation to Modern History.
11
returned, to Halle, and Frederic II. ascended the throne.
The seven years’ war interrupted his academical
studies. He finished his great work at the time when
Frederic the Great ended his glorious life. He was
attacked and persecuted under the government of
Frederic William II., but ended his career, once more
allowed to breathe a free and independent thinker
under Frederic William III. Kant was born on the
22nd of April 1724 at Konigsberg. His ancestors were
of Scotch origin, thus Kant indirectly is a countryman
of the great Scotchman David Hume, from whom he
descended in a direct spiritual line as philosopher. It
is often interesting to trace the general law of action
and reaction in single individuals. The most influential
agents have been educated by those who were to fall
a sacrifice to the destructive intellectual powers of their
pupils. Bacon was educated by Scholastics; Descartes
by Jesuits; Spinoza by Rabbis; and Kant by
Pietists. Kant never could understand the unhealthy
and deadening principles of his pietistic masters; he
learned from them a certain discipline of the mind for
which he was always grateful. He was a stern moralist
in thought and deed all his life.
Seven years, from 1733 to 1740 he frequented the
“Collegium Fredericianum”—nine years (from 17461755) he was tutor in three different families ; and
on the 12th of June 1755 he took his degree with a
dissertation “on fire.” In April 1756 he was made a
private teacher at the University, and he had to spend
fifteen years of his life in that position till he was at
last appointed “Professor Ordinarius” at the University
at Konigsberg.
In the year 1756 he delivered his first Lecture; he
was so nervous that his voice nearly failed him, and he
was scarcely heard—but the next Lecture was better,
and at last he became famous for his learning and the
amiability of his delivery. He continually asserted
that his intention was not to teach what had been
�12
Immanuel Kant
taught, but to suggest and to rouse the minds of his
hearers to self-thought and self-reasoning. He declared
publicly that his students would not learn philosophy
from him—but how to think for themselves. From
the year 1760 he took up various subjects besides
Philosophy. He lectured to the theological faculty
on “ Natural Theology ; ” to large audiences on “ An
thropology” and “Physical Geography.” In 1763 and
1764 he published his “ Only possible means to prove
the existence of the Divinity,” and his “ Observations
on the Beautiful and Sublime ”—and gave Lectures on
these two subjects. In 1781 appeared his greatest
work under the title “ Critique of pure reason,” 1783 he
published his “ Prolegomena of any possible Meta
physics,” 1785 his “Principles of a Metaphysic of
Morals,” 1786 his “Metaphysical Introduction to
Natural Sciences,” 1788 his “Critique of Practical
Reason,” and 1790 his “ Critique of our Reasoning
Faculty,” 1793 his “ Religion within the limits of Pure
Reason.”
He died on the 12th of February 1804. What a
period—what a life from 1724-1804 ! He witnessed
the Seven Years’ war, the French Revolution, the
establishment of the American Republic; the fall of
the convention, the rise of Napoleon—the political and
social change of everything in Europe. Schiller and
Goethe were inspired by him—-he saw action and
reaction, flux and reflux in human thoughts and
achievements—Sciences of unknown subjects sprang
up—Geology under Werner began hypothetically to
step forward with uncertainty and timidity—Oken
proclaimed his theory of evolution in unintelligible
alchemistic phrases. Everything appeared to assume
new phases. Men were either inclined to Voltairian
incredulity, to Rousseau’s fanaticism; Hume’s scep
ticism; or Jesuitic bigotry. Mysticism went hand in
hand with a negation of all things. Swedenborg stood
in the foreground with his supernatural epileptic fits ;
�In his Relation to Modern History.
13
whilst Holbach, Grimm, and D’Alembert denied even
our spiritual faculty of “ negation.” The intellectual
state of Europe was but a reflex of the social and
political condition of those times. Old mediaeval
Erance, with her centralised organization grown out of
the grossest feudalism, was in dissolution; Germany
sighed under 240 major and minor despots, and a
childish, almost Chinese, over-regulation in public
matters ; England was at least parliamentarily free, the
abode of the greatest orators that ever raised their
voices for the public welfare. America possessed a
Washington; France a Robespierre and Napoleon;
England a Chatham and Burke; and Germany a Kant,
a Hamann, Herder, and Jacobi.
Like a bright sun shedding lustre around, the Teuton
philosopher stands high above his times witnessing in
serene splendour the intellectual, religious, and political
chaos beneath him, out of which grew our 19th
Century. Not without meaning has he been placed on
the monument of Frederic the Great as the first amongst
the mighty generals of the still mightier king. Socially
and politically Frederic II., and intellectually and
philosophically Immanuel Kant understood the pro
gressively advancing spirit of their times. And therein
consists the real merit of a historical character. No
glorious battles, no victories, no extensions of territory,
no artificially embellished towns, no momentary
prosperity in commercial enterprises, can make up for a
misunderstanding, or according to my theory for an
untimely disturbance of the acting and reacting moral
and intellectual forces in humanity. He who in
history or sciences dares to touch that balance and
disturb its equilibrium, can but bring trouble on
humanity, for he forces generation after generation to
readjust that balance. Kant’s private as well as public
life was one great and successful effort to keep our
morals and our intellect within the boundaries of the
possible.
�14
Immanuel Kant
Independence and the most punctual legality were
to be the basis of the individual and of the state, as
but an aggregate of individuals; Pure moral principles,
without any admixture of dogmatic dross, were to be
the moving springs of humanity; our knowledge ' was
to be based on a full consciousness of the possibility and
certainty of our conclusions. The most important step
to attain this was to trace in the phenomena of human
thoughts and actions a certain law. To show how far
we, as finite beings, endowed with intellect, might
grasp space and time, the infinite, the invisible, the
transcendental, and the supersensual, so as not to waste
our faculties on matters which must remain for ever
unapproachable in the dominion of science, was to
render the very greatest service to humanity. Kant
achieved this task. His “Critique of Pure Season”
was partly misunderstood, or rather generally not
understood at all, or was distorted because some felt it
to be a death-warrant of all speculative efforts, meta
physical verbiage and dogmatic quarrels. The book
was decried as unintelligible transcendentalism and
incomprehensible dialecticism. Kant’s interpretation
of transcendentalism was one which some people
would not like to admit; by this expression he meant
simply, to transcend, “ to step over ” the boundaries of
dogmatism, and to ascertain after having shaken off
this dead weight, how far we might proceed in the
regions of the Supersensual. His great merit was to
prove that our transcending certain limits leads to
-nothing but to mere assumptions; whether such
assumptions and surmises are necessary for certain
emotional purposes, he does not decide. He affirms
our capacity of becoming conscious of perceptions and
tries to trace the conditions under which perceptions
may be systematized and thus increase our scientific
acquirements.
His philosophy is therefore not sceptic, but criti
cal. His very first principle in starting on the thorny
�In his Relation to Modern History.
15
path of philosophy was 11 never to take an assertion for
granted, without having carefully examined it.”
“ Neither affirm nor deny without the most minute in
vestigation.”
Who does not see in these propositions the germ, of
our modern mode of thinking ? who does not perceive
that the intellectual development of humanity was to
be based on principles differing totally from those of
antiquated authority or blind faith ? He was by no
means an anti-dogmatist; he only looked on dogmatic
metaphysics and experimental philosophy as two un
known quantities. The more the latter increased, the
more the former decreased in value; till, when experi
mental philosophy went over into scepticism, the stand
point of metaphysics was brought down to Zero; at
this point Kant pronounced it not only valueless, but
utterly useless. The mere playing with words on words,
dialectical contortions and distortions, metaphysical
writhings and grimaces were utterly repulsive to his
noble, straightforward nature. The power that thought
in us and was conscious of the process, namely, mind,
he not only recognised, but tried to discipline.
He began his philosophical studies in 1740, and
thirty years later, he founded his new system. The
first work with which he inaugurated his new method
of reasoning was published in 1768, and his last ap
peared in 1798, again, after exactly thirty years of
mature reflection. Each decennary had its task. Dur
ing the first three, he approaches step by step the solu
tion of his system, whilst during the last three, we see
him applying his discovery, and bringing his system to
perfection. During the first two decennaries (17401760), Kant investigates and follows up the postulates
of the Leibnitz-Wolf philosophy ; during the third
(1760-1770), he is occupied withan analysis of the
leading English philosophers, especially with Hume’s
scepticism; and in 1770 he raises himself far above the
dogmatic metaphysicians and the dry experimentalists,
and takes his own lofty position. During the fourth
�16
Immanuel Kant
decennary, he is silent; during the fifth, he publishes
his “Critique of Pure Reason,” (1780-1790), and de
fines the extent to which we may trust our power to
draw conclusions, and tries in the last decennary to
apply his well-founded system to solve the positive
problems of universal history.
During the first period, he enters into an inquiry on
the moving forces of the universe; and endeavours to
establish a nexus between cause and effect.
During the second period, he traces the possibility
or impossibility of proving a first cause. If cause, why
first, and how so first ? He then comes to the only
possible mode of proving the existence of a first cause,
namely, the ontological. Out of the mere notion,
“God,” the existence of God cannot be proved; but,
taking all the attributes necessary to form the concep
tion of God, such a being may not only be assumed to
exist, but must necessarily exist. In following up
Kant’s critical reasoning, we arrive at a mathematical
conviction of the existence of God, which is of greater
value than the mere dogmatic assumption. Anything
not in itself contradictory, is cognisable, say the ideal
ists ; only that is cognisable which exists, say the real
ists. Supposing nothing existed, then we could think
nothing. In denying these two conditions, we should
deny every intellectual and material possibility. As
suming that something is possible, we must look upon
it as the sequence of something that existed previously.
There must be for everything a final cause. This final
cause cannot be denied ; its existence, on the contrary,
must be assumed. There must be a something before
anything is possible without which nothing could
be possible. This necessary existence may be con
ceived as indivisible in its essence, simple in its ele
ment, spiritual in its being, eternal in its duration, un
changeable in its condition—in one word, it must be
God 1 This once enunciated and assumed, he went on a
step farther and examined the modus operand! of our
mind, with its intellectual and reasoning faculties.
�In his Relation to Modern History.
What, he asked, is within the range of real cognition ?
He compares metaphysics and mathematics, and finds,
that whilst the former is entirely based on analysis, the
latter is founded on synthesis.
By drawing a strict distinction between analytic and
synthetic conclusions, Kant created an entirely new
stand-point for all our studies. He distinguishes be
tween the emotional, as our moral and sesthetical, and
-between the intellectual as our reasoning and scientific
faculties. As morals and beauty, so are strict reason
ing and science analogous elements. Here he is at
issue with Hume, who assumes analysis as the basis in
mathematics. Kant asserts the very opposite. Quan
tities and forms are the objects of mathematics—but
these quantities and forms are not given, but,constructed,
they are combined, built up synthetically. To become
conscious of a triangle, is to construct the required for
mal conditions, enabling us to perceive in them a tri
angle. Metaphysicians, however, have only analysis at
their command. Analytic judgments or conclusions are
those in which the predicate is already contained in the
subject, by which a part of a whole is merely detached.
In the assertion, “ God is omnipotent,” I detach an
attribute of the subject God, and assert in reality nothing
but that God is God. For, if I have a conception of
God, I have also a knowledge of his omnipotence.
Such conclusions as these may be very ingenious, but
they do not contribute to a widening of our knowledge,.
Synthetic conclusions are those in which a predicate
is joined to a subject which is altogether extraneous to,
and often apparently in contradiction with, it. As “ water
freezes,” I have to prove how, under what conditions,
and why water freezes. I have to know what water
and what freezing is ; whether in such a condition water
ceases to be a fluid, and if it cease, what is its condi
tion in a state of crystallisation, what are crystals ; does
water in a frozen condition still contain heat; what is
heat; how can heat be latent in ice; does water freeze
�i8
Immanuel Kant
if mixed with salt, why should it freeze with greater
difficulty if so mixed. The amount of knowledge ac
quired through synthetic conclusions is ever increasing
—analysis is a mere repetition of the same things.
Kant took a mediating position between Descartes
and Leibnitz, between Leibnitz and Newton, be
tween Wolf and Crusius, and between Crusius and
Hume. Between the English experimentalists and
German metaphysicians there appeared always to
be an insurmountable gulf. Kant tried to bridge
over this gulf. Metaphysics was to be turned into an
experimental science. He establishes the principles of
natural theology and morals, out of the very properties
of things, though we may for ever remain ignorant of
their real essence. With reference to the existence of
the divinity, he tried this with his ontological proof.
With reference to morals, he proceeded in the same
way. Every moral action must have an aim or pur
pose—either an aim for another secondary aim, or for
its own final purpose. In both instances, the action is
caused and necessary ; but, in the first instance, it is
conditional, and in the second, unconditional. An
action done for a secondary purpose, for hope of re
ward or for fear of punishment, is at the utmost right,
clever, or reasonable, but it is not absolutely moral. In
order to become moral, it must be done unconditionally,
for its own sake. This led him to the contemplation
of the beautiful which Hutcheson and Shaftsbury be
fore him closely connected with our moral feelings.
Morals and aesthetics are so closely allied, that our
moral feelings are but a taste for right action ; Shafts
bury calls morals the beautiful in our emotions, the
harmony in our sentiments, the right proportion be
tween our self-love and benevolence. Virtue is beauty
of action ; our sense of virtue is but our aesthetical feel
ing put into practice; whilst art puts it into forms.
Virtue and taste are innate forces in human nature,
like any other faculty of our mind, but they have to be
�In his- Relation to Modern History.
19
developed, cultivated and fostered. For morals and
aesthetics have one common root, they complete one an
other. Art was thus elevated to its very highest stan
dard. How Kant’s lofty and sublime ideas influenced
poetry may be best studied in the works of the im
mortal Schiller, whose writings are permeated with
Kant’s theories and principles. To suggest was the
principal aim of all his writings of this period. The
student was not to be filled with given thoughts, .he
was to be excited to think ; he was neither to be carried
or led, he was to be made to walk for himself. “ In
inverting this method of teaching, the students pick
up some kind of reasoning before ever their intellect
has been cultivated, and they carry about a mere bor
rowed science. This is the cause that we meet with
learned men, who have so little intellect, and why our
academies send so many more muddled (abgeschmackte)
heads into the world than any other state of the com
munity.”
During the third period of his mental evolution
Kant occupied himself with a close investigation of
our mental functions. Psychology and physiology are
with him not separated but closely united studies.
The workings of the brain and the mind were in his
eyes in close relation, and he attributed all visions,
fanaticism, melancholy and sentimental amativeness
to a greater or lesser degree of mental aberration ; the
cause of which must be sought in the derangement of
our cerebral organs.
If the phantoms of our imagination turn into
visions ; if our inner sensations become outwardly
perceptible, our senses are in a state of dream. If our
reason assumes certain conceptions of its own as
realities our reason is in a state of dream. “ There are
emotional dreams, and there are dreams of our intellec
tual faculty. Visions belong to the first class;
metaphysics, undoubtedly, to the second.” He thus
arrives at a point when metaphysics and madness are
�20
Immanuel Kant
treated as equal aberrations of our emotional and mental
nature, though their origin is distinct, according to
our different organization.
Dogmatists and Meta
physicians, visionaries and ghost-seers are declared to
be but “airy architects of imaginary worlds.” Let
them dream on as long as they like—that they but
dream, becomes day by day clearer. Metaphysics were
developed by Kant’s inquiries into a study to make
ourselves acquainted with the limitation of human
reason. We may, with its aid, as Goethe says in a
Kantian sense
“ There see that you can clearly explain
What fits not into the human brain. ”
This slow and gradual destruction of all hollow
knowledge led us to a greater culture of those sciences
which are possible, and have become an ever-growing
barrier to false and credulous sentimentalism, and
emotional dogmatism.
The “ supersensual ” is not
within the boundaries of human reason. Transcendental
philosophy has to deal with experience, and not to
ignore it.
No knowledge is possible beyond the
domains of our direct perception; of the essence of
things we know nothing; the noumenal is and must
remain to us a mystery ; the phenomenal is within our
grasp. An absolute psychology, cosmology, or theology
is impossible. Kant thus does not deny the existence
of the “ supersensual,” he only denies our faculty of
becoming cognisant of it. What an immense stride
towards a really human, and, at the same time, humane
investigation of all those elements, which ought to
form the basis of our possible studies. Kant then goes
farther and proves with his trenchant power of criticism
that morals are independent of metaphysics, that
humanity in general and every individual in particular
carry the regulating force of morals already in their
very organization. He distinguishes between opinion,
faith, and knowledge. We may have reasons to make
�In.his Relation to Modern History.
21
a statement, but these reasons may be based on an utterly
subjective conviction, such a conviction is but an opinion
and does not exclude doubt; if, however, our convic
tions are based on objective observation, our opinion
rises into the reliable domain of knowledge; if again
our convictions are based on subjective elements
supported by doubtful objective proofs, we may,
individually, be convinced of certain assumed facts,
we may believe in them, but we do not know. In
applying these important distinctions to the whole
sphere of our intellectual and material world, we
were induced by Kant to draw more definite distinc
tions between the possible and impossible, the necessary
and merely accidental. In the mighty circle of religion
we have to bear three points in view. 1. If all faith in
a supernatural world be based on morals (Ethic actions)
religion cannot have any other essential and real
object than a purely moral one; all elements that do
not foster pure morality will be secondary, strange,
indifferent, or even dangerous. Religion, in fact, with
Kant becomes pure Ethics. 2. Ethics are not based
on a strictly scientific cognition, or theoretical convic
tion but on moral actions and practical necessity. Not
theoretical assumption, but practical reason becomes
thus the basis of religious faith. 3. Granting this, it
follows that our practical reason is independent of
mere logical operations, that it discards as will and
moral force all such boundaries as are erected by
speculation, and drives us to conform to laws which
must be common to the whole of humanity.
During the fourth period he is silent. The storm of
sceptic doubt was conquered. In this period we best
perceive the positive results of the convulsions which
brought forth Criticism instead of Scepticism—for,
though we acknowledge the force of doubt, we think it
should be subject to a regulating higher power—viz. :
Criticism. During the fifth period he shakes off the
fetters of idealism and materialism, and defines in his
�22
Immanuel Kant
a Critique of Pure Reason ” the boundaries of man’s
understanding. In accomplishing this he assumes two
principles upon which all knowledge and philosophy
must rest. The one is idealistic—subjective, and the
other empirical—objective. The inborn intellectual
faculty—mind—can as little be neglected as the outer
world with its impressions acting on our idealistic
subjectivity. He thus founded cosmology—worked
out by Alex. v. Humboldt—Geology by Leopold Buch,
and Sir Charles Lyell,* and then he paved the way to
the grand theory of Darwinism, or the theory of the
gradual development of matter; he excited to Anthro
pology and Ethnology, for he strove, through exper
ience, to trace law in all the phenomena surrounding
us, in nature as well as in the subtle regions of our
mental operations.
These principles changed the whole system of our
philosophical and historical studies. Creation was not
assumed as having taken place according to a certain
dictum, but we had to investigate the earth’s crust to
see how far we might trace the gradual formation
of our globe. Kant’s method produced compara
tive philology and mythology. Language was not to
be a settled gift, but was to be traced back to its first
origin ; this was the case with the different religions
of ancient times. We were not to suppose that millions
were left without religious comfort, but to investigate
and ascertain how far the religious systems are rooted
in the impressions of nature, how far they represent
the moral and social condition of certain groups of
mankind. This distinction led to a closer study of the
nature of man, leading to biology and sociology, but
above all to a deeper and systematic study of history.
There is no branch of learning which should be culti
vated with greater care than history, that is history
* Whose recent death we must all deeply regret—though he left us
his immortal works as the most glorious monument of his earthly
existence.
�In his Relation to Modern History.
23
from a scientific point of view. What appears in single
individuals as mere chance, or the result of coincidence
might perhaps be looked upon as subject to law like
any other natural phenomenon j though, in the latter
case, unconscious material particles are the elements,
whilst in history, man with his consciousness, his as
sumed free will, passions, intellectual and bodily facul
ties, is the complicated agent. Kant affirmed, (and he
can claim the honour of having been the first to do so,)
in 1784, when statistical tables were still in their in
fancy, that in looking on humanity as a whole, appa
rently disconnected incidents may be brought under
the sway of certain laws acting with stern regularity.
He drew attention to the complicated phenomena of
the changes in the weather, the growth of plants under
certain climatological conditions, the course of streams
and their influences on the progress of civilization.
Individuals, like whole nations, are entirely unconsci
ous of the fact, that whilst they appear to work against
one another, or have only their own egotistic aims in
view, they are working according to certain laws to
accomplish the grand destiny of mankind. If it may
be assumed as an axiom, “ that the natural capacities
of a creature have to develop according to a purpose,”
we may assert that this must be the case with man too.
Applied to animals, we find this law obeyed, and pro
ducing natural selection. Any organ not wanted is
thrown off. Taking man, we find, that though he is
the only consciously reasoning creature on earth, his
natural capacities are destined to be developed in the
genus, and not in the individual. Thus, the study of
a single individual is like the analysis of a single in
sect without any cognisance of the different varieties
of animals. Historical progress is not only not the
result of the exertions of single individuals, but those
very individuals are but the outgrowths of generations
after generations, inheriting their mode of thinking and
acting, and finally maturing the innate intellectual
�24
Immanuel Kant
germ to a fruit which in its turn is again the seed of
further developments. For the first cause has willed
that man, if we except the automatic function of his
animal nature, should evolve everything necessary for
his happiness and perfection, in opposition to his natu
ral instincts, out of his own reason, or rather out of the
sum total of reason, existing in humanity. “The
means which nature employs to attain this aim,” is,
according to Kant, “ antagonism,” which, in its turn,
becomes the very basis of legal order and social com
fort. History is but one long series of wars, murders,
conquests, intrigues, opposition of individuals against
individuals, of families against families, of tribes against
tribes, and of nations against nations, as if man only
delighted in destruction and ruin. But is this so ?
On the contrary, what unphilosophical minds bewail,
is but a process in operation to attain in the end the
greatest amount of happiness for mankind. Man was
not destined to be idle, but he has to learn how to use
his bodily and intellectual faculties.
Wars, controversies, passions, and strife lead to
activity, and activity is life. Wars engender peace;
controversies, truth ; covetousness, commercial enter
prise ; passion, virtue; and strife, brotherly love and
good will. Antagonism drives us to seek the solution
of the only problem that should occupy humanity, to
form one grand community, ruled by the laws of right.
The most ingenious institutions, all our philosophical
systems, all our religious efforts, are but continuous pro
gressive attempts to lead humanity from a savage state
to that of civilization. To further the solution of this
difficult problem, we want a guide, a leader, and this we
find in the consciousness of our nature and knowledge
of the past, enabling us to make ourselves acquainted
with our destiny. We have not to look to an indi
vidual for guidance, but to the supreme principles of
right. Individual rulers are only instruments to watch
over these principles and see them practised. This
�In his Relation to Modern History.
25
problem of a perfect constitution of humanity will only
be attained when man will form a grand international
tribunal which will settle the disputes of nations ac
cording to just laws binding on humanity at large.
As Kant saw in his mind’s eye the necessity for the
existence of a planet beyond Saturn, the then last
known planet of our solar system (1754), which planet,
“ Uranus,” was discovered twenty-six years later, by
Herschel (1781); so he foresaw in 1784, that which
America and England inaugurated in Geneva nearly
ninety years later. An international tribunal settling
the disputes of two of the greatest nations of the world
at a table covered with green baize, by means of quiet
arguments, and not on blood-stained battlefields with
the sacrifice of wealth, happiness, and the lives of in
numerable human beings. Kant clearly saw that
history is but the outer garb of inward forces working
in humanity according to a pre-arranged law, which
law must be assumed to be as fixed as that by which
the solar systems are brought into order and cohesion.
The endeavours of modern historians should be to trace
this law.
Law has to deal with forces, producing as causes—
effects, and these forces must act and react, because a
stationary force would be lifeless. The two forces
working in antagonism and conflict can but be our moral
and intellectual faculties, which, in their disturbed
balances explain all the phenomena of history. Kant
must be looked upon as the real founder of modern
thought, for his ideas, like those of every powerful mind,
pervade our whole intellectual and social atmosphere.
The writers following Kant, whether in England
or Erance, consciously or unconsciously continue in
the path which he began to hew out for coming
generations. Eichte, his antagonist, really strengthened
the position he attacked. Schelling worked out, like
Comte, with copious verbosity, Kant’s principles.
Their terminology differs from that of Kant, but in
�26
Immanuel Kant
essence they add nothing to his first principles.
Schelling proclaims his immanence of spirit in nature,
which immanence we can only trace in law. In assert
ing that the universe has its ground in what in God is
not God, Schelling deviates from Kant, and leads us
to the Pythagorean Monad and Dyad, a severance of
mind and matter, or of God and creation, which is
mere verbiage.
Hegel built on Kant with the difference, that with
him the subjective becomes the absolute; whilst the
objective is turned into the differentiation of the abso
lute • adding to these phenomena a third one when the
absolute turns from its externality back into itself.
Schoppenhauer and Hartmann continued to develope
Kant’s principles in an idealistic direction, whilst the
host of naturalists, geologists, physiologists, biologists,
psychologists, ethnologists, and comparative gramma
rians follow him, cured of all cravings after the super
sensual, and try to ascertain what we may learn in the
ever varying empire of the phenomenal.
Kant did not destroy thrones, he made no kings or
kinglets, he did not brandish a blood-stained sword,
command armies, hold levees, create marshalls, com
manders-in-chief, shoot free-thinking men, or trample
under foot the rights of nations and individuals, like
so many a phantom of glory, that could only be reared
in the chaotic disorder of our ill-balanced moral and
intellectual forces. Unlike these he did not vanish
like a thunder-storm, which purifies the air but leaves
wreck and ruin behind.
The mighty warriors often are like swollen mountain
streams after a violent shower ; bubbling noisily, these
streams rush down in torrents, tear down fences and
houses, inundate plains and fields—carrying devastation
in every one of their waves, and then disappear; whilst
the philosopher, of the stamp of the great and immortal
Kant, resembles a broad and majestic intellectual river,
cutting deeply through mountains, meadows, fields,
�In his Relation to Modern History.
27
villages, and towns, flowing slowly and noiselessly, but
spreading happiness, fertility, and abundance around,
serving as a mighty high-road to connect nations through
their most noble outgrowths, their philosophers and
searchers for truth into one grand progressively advanc
ing community.
The great and inexhaustible means for furthering
this union is an indefatigable study of history. For is
it not a calumny of the Creator, whose wisdom we
continually praise in a thousand tongues, to assume,
that we ought to study only certain of his works, and
neglect altogether the Creator’s fairest product, man
in his gradual development 1 In the unconscious
regions of the empire of nature, in stars and nebulae,
solar systems, crystallisations and chemical combina
tions we trace wisdom, law, and order; only the stages
of man’s intellectual activity, as they present them
selves in history, are looked upon as an eternal re
proach to the Creator, who is’ assumed to have acted
on firm principles in the minutest of his inorganic or
organic creatures, but who is thought to have left
humanity without aim, law, or purpose on this globe,
so that we are forced to turn our eyes despairingly
from this world and to hope for the fulfilment of our
destiny in unknown regions.
History treated from a scientific point of view
teaches us, that this is not the case.
History as it is usually written without the basis of
a general principle or merely as an accumulation of
disconnected facts, state-enactments, or copied docu
ments collected in musty archives, is only very useful
building material, out of which we have to construct
an intelligible and comprehensive system of history.
It is distressing to contemplate what later generations
may do 'with history if details grow at the ratio of the
last twenty or seventy years. Unfortunately, professed
historians, ignorant as they too often are, assert that
“ history is a mere child’s box of letters out of which
�28
Immanuel Kant.
the historian picks what he wants to spell out; ” but
this is the view of a narrow-minded state-paper copyist;
and not of a philosophical historian, whose aim can never
be to glorify individuals or to distort facts according to
the wants of a party or the fashion of a period, but to
look upon humanity as one great whole, and to trace in
its complicated actions, order based on law.
The historical world is as little barred as the ideal
world—both are open; it is our faculty of seeing
blinded by details, it is our mind confused by isolated
facts, that will or cannot comprehend the stern law
that drives man towards his real destiny : the greatest
possible happiness of all united into one common
brotherhood.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Immanuel Kant in his relation to modern history: paper read before the Fellows of the Royal Historical Society on the 11th March 1875
Creator
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 28 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1875]
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G5515
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Philosophy
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Immanuel Kant in his relation to modern history: paper read before the Fellows of the Royal Historical Society on the 11th March 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
History
Immanuel Kant