i.gtxjres pp The 
 Study p? History. 
 
 By Goldwin Smith, m, a. 
 
DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/lecturesonstudyo01smit_0 
 

 
 
 
Lectures on the. 
 
 Study of History. 
 
 DELIVERED IN OXFORD, 1859-61. 
 
 BY GOLDWIN SMITH, M.A., 
 
 LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN TIIE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 $uthotiized Canadian Edition. 
 
 TORONTO: 
 
 ADAM, STEVENSON & CO., 
 073 - 
 
Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year One 
 Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy-three, by Adam, Stevenson & Co., 
 in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture. 
 
 DUDLEY & BURNS, 
 
 PRINTERS, 
 
 TORONTO. 
 
°toH- 
 
 5 L 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 An Inaugural Lecture . 3 
 
 On the Study of History.— 1 .44 
 
 ---II. 79 
 
 On some supposed Consequences of the Doc¬ 
 trine of Historical Progress . . . . 115 
 
 The Moral Freedom of Man ...... 165 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 INAUGURAL. 
 
 New statutes having just been made by the Crown, 
 on the recommendation of the Council, for the purpose 
 of adapting the Professorship I have the honour to hold 
 to the present requirements of the University, this seems a 
 fit occasion for saying a few words on the study of Modern 
 History in Oxford, and the functions of this Chair in rela¬ 
 tion to that study. I made some remarks on the subject 
 in commencing my first course with my class ; but the 
 new statutes were then only under consideration, and 
 before venturing to address the University, I wished to 
 become acquainted with the state of the Modern History 
 school, and with the duties of my Chair. 
 
 This Chair was founded in the reign of George I., and 
 its original object was to train students for the public 
 
4 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 service. The foundation was double, one Chair here and 
 one at Cambridge. Attached to each Chair were two 
 teachers of Modern Languages, and twenty King’s schol¬ 
 ars, whose education in history and the modern languages 
 the Professor was to superintend ; and the most pro¬ 
 ficient among whom he was to recommend from time to 
 time for employment, at home or abroad, in the service 
 of the State. Diplomacy was evidently the first object 
 of the foundation, for a knowledge of treaties is men¬ 
 tioned in the letters patent of foundation as specially 
 necessary for the public interest. Some subsequent regu¬ 
 lations, though of doubtful validity, named International 
 Law and Political Economy, with the method of reading 
 Modern History and Political Biography, as the subjects 
 for the Professor’s lectures. Thus the whole foundation 
 may be said to have been in great measure an antici¬ 
 pation of the late resolution of the University to found a 
 school of Law and Modern History. The Professorship 
 of Modern History, the Professorship of Political Econo¬ 
 my, the Chichele Professorship of Diplomacy and Inter¬ 
 national Law, the Professor and Teachers of the Modern 
 Languages, do now for the students of our present school 
 just what the Professor of History and his two teachers 
 of Modern Languages were originally intended to do for 
 the twenty King’s scholars under their care. The whole 
 of these subjects have further been brought into connec¬ 
 tion, in the new school, with their natural associate, the 
 study of Law. 
 
 I have failed, in spite of the kind assistance of my 
 friends the Librarian of the Bodleian and the Keeper of 
 the Archives, to trace the real author of what we must 
 
ON THK STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 allow to have been an enlightened and far-sighted 
 scheme — a scheme which, had it taken effect, might 
 have supplied Parliament and the public service in the 
 last century with highly trained legislators and statesmen, 
 and perhaps have torn some dark and disastrous pages 
 from our history. It is not likely that the praise is due 
 to the King himself, who, though not without sense and 
 public spirit, was indifferent to intellectual pursuits. 
 Conjecture points to Sir Robert Walpole. That Minister 
 was at the height of power when the Professorship was 
 founded under George I. When the foundation was 
 confirmed under George II., he had just thrust aside the 
 feeble pretensions of Sir Spencer Compton, and gathered 
 the reins of Government, for a moment placed in the 
 weak hands of the favourite, again into his own strong 
 and skilful grasp. If Walpole was the real founder, if he 
 even sanctioned the foundation, it is a remarkable testi¬ 
 mony from a political leader of a turn of mind practical 
 to coarseness, and who had discarded the literary states¬ 
 men of the Somers and Halifax school, to the value of 
 high political education as a qualification for the public 
 service. It is also creditable to the memory of a Minis¬ 
 ter, the reputed father of the system of Parliamentary 
 corruption, that he should have so far anticipated one of 
 the best of modern reforms as to have been willing to 
 devote a large amount of his patronage to merit, and to 
 take that merit on the recommendation of Universities, 
 one of which, at least, was by no means friendly to the 
 Crown. 
 
 King George I., however, or his Minister, was not the 
 first of English rulers who had endeavoured to draw 
 
6 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 direct from the University a supply of talented and 
 highly educated men for the service of the State. I 
 almost shrink from mentioning the name which intrudes 
 so grimly into the long list of the Tory and High Church 
 Chancellors of Oxford. But it was at least the nobler 
 part of Cromwell’s character which led him to protect 
 Oxford and Cambridge from the levelling fanaticism of 
 his party, to make himself our Chancellor, to foster our 
 learning with his all-pervading energy, and to seek to 
 draw our choicest youth to councils which it must be 
 allowed were always filled, as far as tlie evil time permit¬ 
 ted, with an eye to the interest of England, and to her 
 interest alone. Cromwell’s name is always in the mouths 
 of those who despise or hate high education, who call, 
 in every public emergency, for native energy and rude 
 common sense, — for no subtle and fastidious philoso¬ 
 phers, but strong practical men. They seem to think 
 that he really was a brewer of Huntingdon who left his 
 low calling in a fit of fanatical enthusiasm to lead a great 
 cause (great, whether it were the right cause or the wrong,) 
 in camp and council, to win battles against Prince 
 Rupert and David Leslie, to fascinate the imagination 
 of Milton, and by his administration at home and abroad 
 to raise England, in five short years, and on the morrow 
 of a bloody civil war, to a height of greatness to which 
 she still looks back with a proud and wistful eye. Crom¬ 
 well, to use his own words, “ was by birth a gentleman, 
 living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in ob¬ 
 scurity ; ” he was educated, suitably to his birth, at a good 
 classical school ; he was at Cambridge ; he read law ; 
 but what was much more than this, he, who is supposed 
 
ON THE STUDY OK HISTORY. 
 
 7 
 
 to have owed his power to ignorance and narrowness of 
 mind, had brooded almost to madness over the deepest 
 questions of religion and politics, and, as a kinsman of 
 Hampden and an active member of Hampden’s party, 
 had held intimate converse on those questions with the 
 profoundest and keenest intellects of that unrivalled age. 
 And therefore his ambition, if it was treasonable, was not 
 low. Therefore he bore himself always not as one who 
 gambled for a stake, but as one who struggled fora cause. 
 Therefore the great soldier loved the glory of peace 
 above the glory of war, and the moment he could do so, 
 sheathed his victorious sword ; therefore, if he was driven 
 to govern by force, he was driven to it with reluctance, 
 and only after long striving to govern by nobler means ; 
 therefore he kept a heart above tinsel, and, at a height 
 which had turned the head of Caesar, remained always 
 master of himself; therefore he loved and called to his 
 council-board high and cultivated intellect, and em¬ 
 ployed it to serve the interest of the State without too 
 anxiously enquiring how it would serve his own ; there¬ 
 fore he felt the worth of the Universities, saved them 
 from the storm which laid throne and altar in the dust, 
 and earnestly endeavoured to give them their due place 
 and influence as seminaries of statesmen. Those who 
 wish to see the conduct of a real brewer turned into a 
 political chief, should mark the course of Santerre in the 
 French Revolution. Those who wish to see how power 
 is wielded without high cultivation and great ideas, 
 should trace the course of Napoleon, so often compared 
 with Cromwell, and preferred to him •—Napoleon, the 
 great despiser of philosophers ; — and ask whether a little 
 
8 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 of the philosophy he despised might not have mitigated 
 the vulgar vanity which breathes through his bulletins, 
 and tempered his vulgar lust of conquest with some re¬ 
 gard for nobler things. It would indeed be a flaw in 
 nature if that which Arnold called the highest earthly 
 work, the work of government, were best performed by 
 blind ignorance and headlong force, or by a cunning 
 which belongs almost as much to brutes as to man. The 
 men who have really left their mark on England, the 
 founders of her greatness from Alfred to the Elizabethan 
 statesmen, and from the Elizabethan statesmen down to 
 Canning and Peel, have been cultivated in various ways ■ 
 some more by study, some more by thought ; some by 
 one kind of study, some by another ; but in one way 
 or other they have been all cultivated men. The minds 
 of all have been fed and stimulated, through one chan¬ 
 nel or another, with the great thoughts of those v ho had 
 gone before them, and prepared for action by lofty medi¬ 
 tations, the parents of high designs. 
 
 The attempt of the Crown, however, to found a 
 political school at Oxford and Cambridge by means of 
 this Professorship, must be said, at the time, to have 
 failed. Perhaps at Oxford the Whig seed fell on a 
 Jacobite soil. Long after this the evils of a disputed 
 succession were felt here, and the University was the 
 slave of one of the two political factions, to the utter loss 
 of her true power and her true dignity as the impartial 
 parent of good and great citizens for the whole nation. 
 The Jacobite Hearne has recorded in his Diary his 
 anguish at the base condescension of the Convocation in 
 even returning thanks for the Professorship to the royal 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 9 
 
 founder, whom he styles “ the Duke of Brunswick, com¬ 
 monly called King George I.” Nor does the new study 
 in itself seem to have been more welcome, at this time, 
 than other innovations. The Convocation point their 
 gratitude especially to that part of the royal letter which 
 promises “ that the hours for teaching His Majesty’s 
 scholars the Modern Languages shall be so ordered as 
 not to interfere with those already appointed for their 
 academical studies.” What the academical studies were 
 which were to be so jealously guarded against the in¬ 
 trusion of Modern History and Modern Languages, what 
 they were even for one who came to Oxford gifted, ar¬ 
 dent, eager to be taught, is written in the autobiography 
 of Gibbon. It is written in every history, every essay, 
 every novel, every play which describes or betrays the 
 manners of the clergy and gentry of England in that dis¬ 
 solute, heartless, and unbelieving age. It is written in 
 the still darker records of faction, misgovernment, iniquity 
 in the high places both of Church and State, and in the 
 political evils and fiscal burdens which have been be¬ 
 queathed by those bad rulers even to our time. The 
 corruption was not universal, or the nation would never 
 have lifted its head again. The people received the re- 
 1 igion which the gentry and clergy had rejected; the 
 people preserved the traditions of English morality and 
 English duty ; the people repaired, by their unflagging 
 industry, the waste of profligate finance, and of reckless 
 and misconducted wars. But as to the character of the 
 upper classes, whose educational discipline the Convo¬ 
 cation of that day were so anxious to guard against the 
 the intrusion of new knowledge, there cannot be two 
 
10 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 opinions. We have left that depravity far behind us ; 
 but in the day of its ascendancy perhaps its greatest 
 source was here. 
 
 But not only was Oxford lukewarm in encouraging the 
 new studies ; the Crown, almost unavoidably, failed to do 
 its part. At the time of the foundation Walpole was all- 
 powerful, and might have spared a part of the great 
 bribery fund of patronage for the promotion of merit. 
 But soon followed the fierce Parliamentary struggles of 
 his declining hour, when the refusal of a place in the 
 public office might have cost a vote, a vote might have 
 turned a division, and an adverse division might not only 
 have driven the hated minister from place, but have con¬ 
 signed him to the Tower. After the fall of Walpole 
 came a long reign of corruption, connived at, though not 
 shared, even by the soaring patriotism of Chatham, in 
 which it would have been in vain to hope that any¬ 
 thing which could be coveted by a boroughmonger 
 would be bestowed upon a promising student. Under 
 these most adverse circumstances few King’s scholars 
 seem ever to have been appointed. The scholars, and 
 the commission given by the original statutes to the Pro¬ 
 fessor to recommend the most diligent for employment 
 under the Crown, have now, after long abeyance, been 
 formally abolished by the Council in framing the new 
 statutes, I confess, a little to my regret. The abuse of 
 patronage drove the nation to the system of competitive 
 examination. Competitive examination, in its turn, may 
 be found to have its drawbacks. In that case there may 
 be a disposition to try honest recommendation by pub¬ 
 lic bodies ; and in that event it might not have been out 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. I I 
 
 of place for the Universities to remind the Government 
 of the expressed desire and the old engagement of the 
 Crown. 
 
 In the meantime, Modern History and its associate 
 studies enjoy the more certain encouragement of a 
 Modern History School and academical honours. They 
 also enjoy, or ought to enjoy, the encouragement of 
 being the subjects of examination for the Fellowships 
 of All Souls ; a College destined, by the statesmen who 
 founded it, in great measure for the study of the Civil 
 Law—that study which once formed the Statesmen of 
 Europe, and connected the Universities with the cabinets 
 of Kings, and the wealthy and powerful professors of 
 which, in Italy, its most famous seat, sleep beside 
 princes, magistrates, and nobles, in many a sumptuous 
 tomb. 
 
 Possibly, also, the School of Law and Modern His¬ 
 tory being practically a modified revival of the Faculty 
 of Law in the University, the subjects of examination 
 for the degree of B.C.L., and the qualifications for the 
 degree of D.C.L., might be modified in a corresponding 
 manner. If this were done I should not despair of 
 seeing a real value imparted to these degrees. I would 
 respectfully commend this point to the consideration of 
 the Council. 
 
 The University seems to have had two objects in 
 instituting the new Schools, that of increasing in¬ 
 dustry by bringing into play the great motive power 
 of love of a special subject, and that of making edu¬ 
 cation a more direct training for life. These are the 
 titles of the History School to continued support, even 
 
12 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 if its state for some time to come should need indul¬ 
 gence ; as indulgence I fear it will long need, unless 
 the University should see fit to place it under more 
 regular and authoritative guidance, and unless the 
 difficulties which Colleges find in providing permanent 
 tuition in this department can be in some way over¬ 
 come. 
 
 That the love of a special subject is a great spur to 
 industry needs no proof, and it has never yet been 
 shewn that the mind is less exercised when it is exer¬ 
 cised with pleasure. Ever)’ experienced student knows 
 that the great secret of study is to read with appetite. 
 Under the old system, the University relied mainly on 
 the motive of ambition. Such ambition is manly and 
 generous, and its contests here, conducted as they are, 
 teach men to keep the rules of honour in the contests 
 of after-life. Study pursued under its influence gene¬ 
 rally makes an aspiring character; but study pursued, 
 in part at least, from love of the subject, makes a hap¬ 
 pier character ; and why should not this also be taken 
 into account in choosing the subjects of education ? 
 But the grand and proved defect of ambition as a 
 motive is, that it fails with most natures, and that it 
 fails especially with those, certainly not the least mo¬ 
 mentous part of our charge, whose position as men of 
 wealth and rank is already fixed for them in life. 
 
 To make University education a more direct pre¬ 
 paration for after-life, may be called Utilitarianism. 
 The objection, no doubt, flows from a worthy source. 
 We are the teachers of a great University, and we 
 may take counsel of her greatness. We may act, and 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 1 3 
 
 are bound to act, on far-sighted views of the real in¬ 
 terests of education, without paying too much defer¬ 
 ence to the mere fashion of the hour. But the most 
 far-sighted views of the real interests of education 
 would lead us to make our system such as to draw 
 hither all the mental aristocracy of the country-—its 
 nobility, its gentry, its clerg), its great professions, 
 the heads of its great manufactures and trades. It 
 was so in the earlier period of our history, when almost 
 every man of intellectual eminence in any line must 
 have looked back to the Universities not only as the 
 scene of his youth but as the source of the knowledge 
 which was to him power, wealth, and honour. To 
 power, wealth, and honour, our system of education 
 must lead, if it is to keep its hold on England, though 
 it should be to power which shall be nobly used, to 
 wealth which shall be nobly spent, and to honour 
 which shall shine beyond the hour. Utilitarianism 
 in education is a bad thing. But the great places of 
 national education may avoid Utilitarianism till Govern¬ 
 ment is in the hands of ambitious ignorance, till the 
 Bench of Justice is filled with pettifoggers, till coarse 
 cupidity and empiricism stand beside the sick bed, till all 
 the great levers of opinion are in low, uneducated hands. 
 Our care for the education of the middle classes, how¬ 
 ever it may be applauded in itself, will ill compensate 
 the country for our failure to perform thoroughly the 
 task of educating our peculiar charge, the upper classes, 
 and training them to do, and teaching them how to do, 
 their duty to the people. 
 
 There is one class of our students — I fear of late 
 
14 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 a diminishing class — which I believe the University 
 had specially in view in instituting the School of Law 
 and Modern History, and which it was thought parti¬ 
 cularly desirable to win to study by the attraction of 
 an interesting subject, and to train directly for the 
 duties of after-life, more especially as the education of 
 this class closes here. The duties in after-life of the 
 class I refer to are peculiar, and its position seems fast 
 becoming unique in Europe. 
 
 “ In Flanders, Holland, Friesland,” says Mr. Laing 
 in his well known work on Europe in 1848, “about 
 the estuaries of the Scheldt, Rhine, Ems, Weser, Elbe, 
 and Eyder ; in a great part of Westphalia and other 
 districts.of Germany; in Denmark, Sweden, and Nor¬ 
 way ; and in the south of Europe, in Switzerland, the 
 Tyrol, Lombardy and Tuscany, the peasants have from 
 very early times been the proprietors of a great pro¬ 
 portion of the land. France and Prussia ” (it seems 
 he will soon be able to say Russia) “have in our times 
 been added to the countries in which the land is di¬ 
 vided into small estates of working peasant proprietors. 
 In every country of Europe, under whatever form of 
 government, however remotely and indirectly affected 
 by the wars and convulsions of the French revolution, 
 and however little the laws, institutions and spirit of 
 the government may as yet be in accordance with this 
 social state of the people, the tendency, during this 
 century, has been to the division and distribution of 
 the land into small estates of a working peasant pro¬ 
 prietary, not to its aggregation into large estates of 
 a nobility and gentry. This has been the real revo- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 *5 
 
 lution in Europe. The only exception is Great Britain.” 
 In the Colonies, we may add, even of Great Britain, the 
 tendency to small estates and working proprietors pre¬ 
 vails ; and as colonies are drawn, generally speaking, 
 from the most advanced and enterprising part of the 
 population, their tendencies are to their mother country 
 a prophecy of her own future. 
 
 The force of opinion in this age is paramount ; and it 
 runs with the certainty, if not with the speed of electri¬ 
 city round the sympathetic circle of European nations. 
 Of these two systems, the system of great landowners 
 and the system of small working proprietors, that will 
 assuredly prevail which European opinion shall decide to 
 be the better for the whole people. But which is the 
 better system for the whole people, is a question with a 
 double aspect. One aspect is that of physical condi¬ 
 tion ; the other is that of civilization. It may be that 
 the civilizing influence of a resident class of gentry, well 
 educated themselves, and able and willing to be the 
 moral and social educators of the people, may counter¬ 
 vail the material advantages'which a land-owning peas¬ 
 antry enjoy, and even the accession of moral dignity, the 
 prudence, the frugality, which the possession of property 
 in the working class, even more than in others, seems 
 clearly to draw in its train.' 1 But then the gentry must know 
 their position, and own their duty to those by whose 
 labour they are fed. They must be resident, they must 
 be well educated, they must be able and willing to act as 
 the social and moral educators of those below them. 
 
 a I am here only stating the case as it may be stated in favour of 
 the present system, not giving my own opinion on the question. 
 
i6 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 They must do their part, and their Universities must 
 make it a definite and primary object to teach them to 
 do their part, in a system under which, if they will do 
 their part, they at least may enjoy such pure, true, and 
 homefelt happiness as never Spanish grandee or French 
 seigneur knew. If they are to make it their duty, under 
 the influence of overstrained notions of the rights of pro¬ 
 perty, to squander the fruits of the peasant’s labour in 
 dull luxury, or in swelling the vice and misery of some 
 great capital, the cry already heard, “the great burden on 
 land is the landlord,” may swell till it prevails ; till it 
 prevails in England, as it has prevailed in the land, sepa¬ 
 rated from ours only by a few leagues of sea, which, 
 eighty years ago, fed the luxury of Versailles. The 
 luxury of Versailles seemed to itself harmless and even 
 civilizing; it was graceful and enlightened ; it was not 
 even found wanting in philanthropy, though it was 
 found wanting in active duty. Before the Revolution, 
 the fervour and the austerity of Rousseau had cast out 
 from good society the levity and sensuality of Voltaire. b 
 Atheism, frivolity, heartlessness, sybaritism, had gone out 
 of fashion with Madame de Pompadour and Madame 
 Du Barri. Theism, philanthropy, earnestness, and even 
 simplicity of life, or at least the praise of simplicity of 
 life, had become the order of the day; the beams of 
 better times to come, played upon the current, and the 
 rainbow of Utopian hope bent over it, as it drew, with a 
 force now past mortal control, to the most terrible gulf in 
 history. Even the genius of Carlyle has perhaps failed 
 
 'See Lavallee, Histoire des Francais. Bk. iii., section 3, chap. 5. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 17 
 
 to paint strongly enough this characteristic of the Revo¬ 
 lution, and to make it preach clearly enough its tremen¬ 
 dous lesson as to the difference between social sentiment 
 and social duty. We know Paley’s apologue of the idle 
 pigeon, consuming, squandering, scattering about in lordly 
 wastefulness the store of corn laboriously gathered for 
 him by the subservient flock. That apologue, catching 
 the eye of King George III., is said to have cost Paley a 
 bishopric. But its moral, duly pointed, is nothing more 
 dangerous than that property has its duties. Landed 
 property, fortunately for the moral dignity and real hap¬ 
 piness of its possessors, has its obvious duties. Funded 
 property, and other kinds of accumulated wealth, have 
 duties less obvious, to the performance of which the pos¬ 
 sessors must be guided, if the Universities desire to see 
 them living the life and holding the place in creation, not 
 of animals of large, varied, and elaborate consumption, 
 but of men. 
 
 But can education teach the rich to do their duty? If 
 it cannot, why do the rich come to places of education ? 
 If it cannot, what have we to do but abdicate that part 
 of our trust ? But experience says it can. Look round 
 to the really well educated men of property of your ac¬ 
 quaintance. Are they not, as a body, good and active 
 members of society, promoters of good social objects, 
 and, if landowners, resident, and endeavouring to earn 
 the rent the labour of the people pays them, by doing 
 good among the people ? In feudal times, when the 
 landed aristocracy and gentry owed the State military 
 service, they were trained to arms; now they owe the 
 State social service, and they must be trained by educa- 
 
i8 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 tion to social duties, not to the duties; of schoolmasters, 
 lecturers, or statists, but to the duties of landed gentle¬ 
 men. Before the late changes, the influence of educa¬ 
 tion had haidly been tried on them. A little philology 
 and a little geometry, forgotten as soon as learnt, might 
 sharpen the wits a little, but could awaken no lasting 
 intellectual interest, open no intellectual pleasures to 
 compete with animal enjoyments, kindle generous sym¬ 
 pathies and aspirations in no heart. Now we have for 
 the aristocracy and gentry a school, in effect, of Social 
 Science, that is, of Jurisprudence, including Constitutional 
 Law, and of Political Economy, with History illustrating 
 both. This appeals, as directly as it can, to the interests 
 of the class for whom it was instituted, and by whom it 
 appears not to be rejected. It is an experiment, but it is 
 a rational and practical experiment, and human legisla¬ 
 tion can be no more. c 
 
 I dwell on these points because we have heard 
 expressed, by persons of influence in Council and Con¬ 
 gregation, a desire, which I doubt not extensively pre¬ 
 vails, to undo our recent legislation ; a feeling which, if 
 it does not actually bring us back to the old system, may 
 cripple the operation of the new. The old system stood 
 condemned, so far as the gentry were concerned, not by 
 its theoretical imperfections as a scheme of education, 
 but by its manifest results; results which are felt and 
 deplored in country parishes by clergymen who uphold 
 the system here. History and its cognate subjects may 
 
 c On reviewing this passage I fear I have spoken in too sanguine 
 terms of the probable effects of education on those who are without 
 the common motives for exertion. — Note to 2nd Edit. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 19 
 
 not prove as much intellectual power as the mixed philo¬ 
 sophical and philological culture of the old classical 
 school. Their true place and value, in a perfect system 
 of education, will be fixed when we shall have solved 
 those great educational problems which, in their present 
 uncertainty, and considering their vast importance to 
 society, may worthily employ and well reward the most 
 powerful and aspiring minds. But these studies at least 
 form a real education, with something that may interest, 
 something that may last, something that may set the stu¬ 
 dent reflecting, and make him unwilling to live a mere life 
 of idleness by the sweat of other men’s brows. If in them, 
 as compared with severer studies, some concession is 
 made to the comparative feebleness of the principle of 
 industry in those who are not compelled to work for their 
 bread with brain or hand, it is only a reasonable recogni¬ 
 tion of the real facts of the case, to which all ideals of 
 education, as well as of politics, must bend. The diffi¬ 
 culties of education necessarily increase when it has to do 
 with those who are placed by birth at the level to which 
 other men by labour aspire, and who are heirs to wealth 
 which they have not earned, and honour which they 
 have not won. 
 
 One grand advantage the English system of property 
 and society has over the rival system of the Continent,— 
 and it is an advantage which our new scheme of educa¬ 
 tion for the gentry tends directly, and we may say infal¬ 
 libly, to improve. The connexion between the distribu¬ 
 tion of property, especially landed property in a country, 
 and its political institutions, is necessarily close; and 
 countries of peasant proprietors have proved hitherto in- 
 2 
 
20 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 capable of supporting constitutional government . 4 Those 
 countries gravitate towards centralized and bureaucratic 
 despotism with a force which in France, after many years 
 of parliamentary liberty, seams to have decisively resumed 
 its sway. There is no class wealthy and strong enough 
 to form independent Parliaments, or of local influence 
 sufficient to sustain local self-government through the 
 country. There is nothing to stand between the people 
 and the throne. This is the great historic service of the 
 English landed gentry. But it is a service which cannot 
 be well or safely performed without a political education. 
 Europe is filled with the rivalry between the constitutional 
 and imperialist systems, the greatest political controversy 
 which has arisen in any age. Those who would watch 
 that controversy with intelligence, and judge it rightly, 
 must remember that Parliaments, like other institutions, 
 are good only as they are well used. If Parliaments 
 were to tax and legislate as ignorant and bigoted Parlia¬ 
 ments, the blind delegates of class interests, have taxed 
 and legislated in evil times, the case of the advocates of 
 democratic despotism would be strong. Tyranny, the 
 Imperialists might say, is an evil; but the worst tyranny 
 of the worst tyrant is short, partial, intermittent, and it 
 falls on high and low alike, or rather on the high than on 
 the low. There is no tyranny so constant, so searching, 
 so hopeless, no tyranny which so surely makes the people 
 its victims, as class taxation and class law. The political 
 ascendancy which the gentry in feudal times owed to 
 arms they must now retain, if they retain it, by superior- 
 
 d This remark must be limited to the monarchical nations of 
 Europe. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 21 
 
 ity of intelligence, and by making it felt that their gov¬ 
 ernment is a government of reason in the interest of the 
 whole people. Conservatism itself, if it were the special 
 function of Oxford to produce that element of opinion, 
 ought for its own best purposes to be an enlightened 
 Conservatism, not a Conservatism of desperate positions 
 and ruinous defeats. We may be on the eve of social as 
 well as political change. The new distribution of politi¬ 
 cal power which all parties in the State appear to regard 
 as near at hand , 6 will certainly alter the character of 
 legislation, and will very probably draw with it an altera¬ 
 tion of those laws touching the settlement and the in¬ 
 heritance of property by which great estates are partly 
 held together. In that case, Oxford may in time cease 
 to have the same class to educate, and may have, accord¬ 
 ingly, to qualify her system of education. But the mis¬ 
 sion of a University is to society as it is; and the politi¬ 
 cal character and intelligence of the English gentry is, 
 and will be for a long time to come, a main object of our 
 system and a principal test of its success. 
 
 It is impossible not to be struck with the high cha- 
 acter and the high intelligence of the English aristocracy 
 and gentry in the early part of the seventeenth century. 
 Their lot was cast in an evil day, when the deep-seated 
 and long-festering division between Anglo-Catholicism 
 and Protestantism, and between the political tendencies 
 congenial to each, was destined, almost inevitably, to 
 break out in a civil contest. But in that contest the 
 gentlemen of England bore themselves so that their 
 
 * In 1859. 
 
22 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 country has reason to be proud of them for ever. Noth- 
 ing could be more lofty than their love of principles ; 
 nothing more noble than their disregard of all personal 
 and class interests when those principles were at stake. 
 The age was, no doubt, one of high emotions, such as 
 might constrain the man who best loved his ancestral 
 title and his hereditary lands to hold them well lost for a 
 great cause. But it appears likely that education had 
 also played its part. The nobility and gentry as a class 
 seem to have been certainly more highly educated in the 
 period of the later Tudors and the earlier Stuarts than in 
 any other period of our history. Their education was 
 classical. But a classical education meant then not a 
 gymnastic exercise of the mind in philology, but a deep 
 draught from what was the great, and almost the only 
 spring of philosophy, science, history and poetry at that 
 time. It is not to philological exercise that our earliest 
 Latin grammar exhorts the student, nor is it a mere 
 sharpening of the faculties that it promises as his reward. 
 It calls to the study of the language wherein is contained 
 a great treasure of wisdom and knowledge ; and, the 
 student’s labour done, wisdom and knowledge were to be 
 his meed. It was to open that treasure, not for the sake 
 of philological niceties or beauties, not to shine as the 
 inventor of a cannon or the emendator of a corrupt pas¬ 
 sage, that the early scholars undertook those ardent, life¬ 
 long, and truly romantic toils which their massy volumes 
 bespeak to our days — our days which are not degenerate 
 from theirs in labour, but in which the most ardent intel¬ 
 lectual labour is directed to a new prize. Besides, Latin 
 was still the language of literary, ecclesiastical, diplo- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 2 3 
 
 matic, legal, academical Europe; familiarity with it was the 
 first and most indispensable accomplishment, not only of 
 the gentlemen, but of the high-born and royal ladies of the 
 time. We must take all this into account when we set the 
 claims of classical against those of modern culture, and bal¬ 
 ance the relative amount of motive power we have to rely 
 on for securing industry in either case. In choosing the 
 subjects of a boy’s studies you may use your own discre¬ 
 tion ; in choosing the subjects of a man’s studies, if you 
 desire any worthy and fruitful effort, you must choose such 
 as the world values and such as may win the allegiance of a 
 manly mind. It has been said that six months’ study of the 
 language of Schiller and Goethe will now open to the stu¬ 
 dent more high enjoyment than six years’ study of the lan¬ 
 guages of Greece and Rome. It is certain that six months’ 
 study of French will now open to the student more of Eu¬ 
 rope than six years’ study of that which was once the Euro¬ 
 pean tongue. These are changes in the circumstances and 
 conditions of education which cannot be left out of sight in 
 dealing with the generality of minds. Great discoveries 
 have been made by accident; but it is an accidental dis¬ 
 covery, and must be noted as such, if the studies which 
 were first pursued as the sole key to wisdom and know¬ 
 ledge, now that they have ceased not only to be the sole 
 but the best key to wisdom and knowledge, are still the 
 best instruments of education. 
 
 It would be rash to urge those who are destined to be 
 statesmen, ( and some here may well by birth and talent 
 be destined to that high calling,) to leave the severer and 
 therefore more highly valued training for that which is 
 less valued because it is less severe. But those who are 
 
24 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 to be statesmen ought to undergo a regular political edu¬ 
 cation, and they ought to undergo it before they are 
 plunged into party, and forced to see all history, all social 
 and constitutional questions, and all questions of legis¬ 
 lation, through its haze. There is a mass of information 
 and established principles to be mastered before a man 
 can embark usefully or even honestly in public life. The 
 knowledge got up for debating societies, though far from 
 worthless, is not sufficient. It is necessarily got up with 
 the view of maintaining a thesis ; and even the oratory 
 so formed, being without pregnancy of thought or that 
 mastery of language which can only be acquired by the 
 use of the pen, is not the oratory that will live. Nor will 
 the ancient historians and the ancient writers on political 
 philosophy serve the turn. The classics are indeed in 
 this, as in other departments, a wonderful and precious 
 manual of humanity ; but the great questions of political 
 and social philosophy with which this age has to deal,— 
 and surely no age ever had to deal with greater,—have 
 arisen in modern times, and must be studied in modern 
 writers. The great problems which perplex our states¬ 
 men touching the rights of the labouring population and 
 the distribution of political power among all classes of the 
 people, were completely solved for the ancients by 
 Slavery, which placed at once out of the pale of political 
 existence those whose capability of using rightly political 
 power is now the great and pressing doubt. The pro¬ 
 blems and difficulties of the representative system were 
 equally unknown to a State which was a city, and all 
 whose free citizens met with ease to debate and vote in 
 their own persons in the public place. So, again, with all 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 2 5 
 
 the great questions that have arisen out of the relations 
 between the spiritual and the temporal power embodied 
 in Church and State, the duty of the State towards 
 religion, Church establishments, toleration, liberty of 
 conscience. So, again, with the question of the educa¬ 
 tion of the people, which was simple enough when the 
 people were all freemen, supported in intellectual leisure 
 by a multitude of slaves. In the history of the ancient 
 republics we see indeed all the political motives and pas¬ 
 sions at work in their native form, and through a medium 
 of crystal clearness ; but under circumstances so different 
 that few direct lessons can be drawn. Compare any re¬ 
 volution of Athens, Corcyra, or Rome, its simple springs 
 and simple passions, with the vast complexity of the 
 motives, sentiments, ideas, theories and aspirations which 
 are upon the scene in the great drama of the French 
 Revolution. New political, as well as new physical 
 maladies are set up from time to time, as one great crisis 
 succeeds another in the history of the world. Fanatical 
 persecution was the deadly offspring of the Crusades ; 
 terrorism of the frenzied reign of the Jacobins. Political 
 virtues, though the same in essence, assume a deeper 
 character as history advances. The good Trajan forbade 
 Pliny, as procurator of Bithynia, to prosecute the Chris¬ 
 tians, because persecution was non hujusce sceculi, it did 
 not become that civilized age. But how far removed is 
 this cold and haughty tolerance, which implicitly views 
 religion as a question of police, from the deep doctrine 
 of liberty of conscience, the late gain of a world which, 
 after ages of persecution, martyrdom, and religious war, 
 has found—at least its higher and purer spirits have 
 
26 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 found—that true religion there cannot be where there is 
 not free allegiance to the truth. 
 
 Two advantages the ancient historians have, or seem 
 to have, over the modern, as instruments of education. 
 The first is that they are removed in time from the party 
 feelings of the present day. They might be expected to 
 be as far from our passions as they are, considering the 
 wide interval of ages, marvellously near to our hearts. 
 And, undoubtedly, they are farther from our passions 
 than the historians of the present day. Yet even to 
 those serene and lofty peaks of the old world, political 
 prejudice has found its way. The last great history of 
 Greece is at once a most admirable history and a pam¬ 
 phlet which some may think less admirable in favor of 
 universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and popular courts of 
 law. The history of Rome, and of the Roman Empire 
 especially, has been so much fixed on as a battle-ground, 
 though often with strange irrelevancy, by the two great 
 parties of the present day, that in France it is becoming 
 a question of high police, and writers are liable to fall 
 into the hands of administrative justice for taking any 
 but the Ciesarean side. 
 
 The second advantage of the classical historians is 
 their style. Their style, the style at least of those we 
 read here, undoubtedly is a model of purity and great¬ 
 ness ; and far be it from us to disregard style in choos¬ 
 ing books of education. To appreciate language is 
 partly to command it, and to command beautiful and 
 forcible language is to have a key, with which no man 
 who is to rule through opinion can dispense, to the heart 
 and mind of man. To be the master of that talisman 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 27 
 
 you need not be its slave. Nor will a man be master of 
 it without being master of better things. Language is 
 not a musical instrument into which, if a fool breathe, 
 it will make melody. Its tones are evoked only by the 
 spirit of high or tender thought; and though truth is not 
 always eloquent, real eloquence is always the glow of 
 truth. The language of the ancients is of the time 
 when a writer sought only to give plain expression to 
 his thought, and when thought was fresh and young. 
 The composition of the ancient historians is a model of 
 simple narrative, for the imitation of all time. But if 
 they told their tale so simply it was partly because they 
 had a simple tale to tell. Such themes as Latin Christi¬ 
 anity, European Civilization, the History of the Re¬ 
 formation, the History of Europe during the French 
 Revolution, are not so easily reduced to the propor¬ 
 tions of artistic beauty, nor are the passions they excite 
 so easily calmed to the serenity of Sophoclean art. 
 My friend the Professor of Poetry may be right in say¬ 
 ing that our great age of art, in history at least, is not 
 yet fully come. The subject of the decline of Feudal¬ 
 ism and the Papacy, and the rise of Modern Society, is 
 not yet rounded off. The picture of that long struggle 
 may be painted by a calm hand when the struggle it¬ 
 self is done. But not all ancients are classics. The 
 clumsiest and most prolix of modern writers need not 
 fear comparison with Dionysius of Halicarnassus, nor 
 the dryest and most lifeless with the Hellenics. Nor are 
 all moderns devoid of classical beauty. No narrative 
 so complicated was ever conducted with so much skill 
 and unity as that of Lord Macaulay. No historical 
 
28 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 painting ever was so vivid as that which lures the reader 
 through all that is extravagant in Carlyle. Gibbon’s 
 shallow and satirical view of the Church and Church¬ 
 men has made him mbs the grand action and the grand 
 actors on the stage. But turn to the style and structure 
 of his great work—its condensed thought, its lofty and 
 sustained diction, iis luminous grandeur and august pro¬ 
 portions, reared as it is out o^ a heap of materials the 
 most confused and mean—end ask of what Greek or 
 Roman edifice, however classic? 1 , it is not the peer ? In 
 all those sad pages of the history of Oxford there is none 
 sadder than the page which records the student-life of 
 Gibbon. The Oxford of that day is not the Oxford of 
 ours, and we need not fear once and again to speak of it 
 with freedom. But to Oxford are, at least, partly due 
 those foul words and images of evil which will for ever 
 meet the eye of the historical student, passing, as the 
 historical students of all time will pass, over that stately 
 and undecaying arch which spans the chaos of the de¬ 
 clining empire from the old world to the new. 
 
 The intrinsic value of studies is a distinct thing from 
 their educational value ; though, in the case of ma.nly 
 education, the one, as I have ventured to submit, is 
 deeply affected by the other. It would a.ppea.r that to 
 be available for the higher education a subject must be 
 traversed by principles and ca.pable of method ; it must 
 be either a science or a philosophy, not a mere mass of 
 facts without principle or law. In my next lecture I 
 shall venture to offer some reasons for believing, in 
 despite of theories which seem in the ascendant, that 
 history can never be a science. It is, however, fast be- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 2 9 
 
 coming a philosophy, having for its basis the tendencies 
 of our social nature, and for the objects of its research the 
 correlation of events, the march of human progress in 
 the race and in the separate nations, and the effects, 
 good or evil, of all the various influences which from 
 age to age have been brought to bear on the character, 
 mind, and condition of man. This process is being 
 now rapidly carried on through the researches of various 
 schools of speculators on history, from the metaphysical 
 school of Hegel to the positivist school of Comte ; re¬ 
 searches which, though they may be often, though they 
 may hitherto always have been, made under the per¬ 
 verse guidance of theories more or less one-sided, crude, 
 or fantastic, are yet finding a chemistry through their 
 alchemy, and bringing out with their heap of dross grain 
 after grain of sterling gold. Pending the completion of 
 this process, or its approach to completion, I venture to 
 think the History School must draw largely for its edu¬ 
 cational value on the two sciences (they sh ould rather 
 be called philosophies) which are associated with History 
 in the School, Jurisprudence and Political Economy. 
 
 The forms and practice of the law, the art of the ad¬ 
 vocate, cannot be studied at a University. Jurisprudence 
 may be and is studied in Universities. In ours, where 
 its shade still hovers, it once flourished so vigorously 
 as to threaten less lucrative though more spiritual studies 
 with extinction, and pointed the high road of ambition 
 to medieval youth. The Viner foundation seems to 
 have been intended to restore its energy by the life-giving 
 virtue of practical utility. But there is evidence that 
 the Viner foundation, like that of Modern History and 
 
3 ° 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 Modern Languages, was received with some jealousy as 
 an intruder on the old studies, and it failed of its effect. 
 Otherwise Oxford, perchance, might have had a greater 
 part in that code of the laws of free England which is now 
 beginning to be framed, and which will go forth, instinct 
 with the spirit of English justice, to contend for the 
 allegiance of Europe with the Imperial code of France. 
 In International Law we have had the great name of 
 Stowell, the genuine offspring, in some measure, of 
 sudies pursued here. The great subject of International 
 Law was once connected with my Chair. It is now, 
 happily, in separate hands, and in those hands it is 
 united with Diplomacy— an auspicious conjunction, if 
 we may hope that a school of diplomatists will hence 
 arise to raise diplomacy for ever above that system of 
 chicanery and intrigue of which Talleyrand was the evil 
 deity, and make it the instrument of international justice. 
 Truly great men have always been frank and honest ne¬ 
 gotiators, and frank and honest negotiation alone be¬ 
 comes a truly great people. “ He had no foreign 
 policy,” says a French statesman of a great English min¬ 
 ister, “ but peace, good-will, and justice among nations.” 
 A really good and impartial manual of International Law f 
 is a work still to be produced. There is the same want 
 of a good manual of the principles of jurisprudence — the 
 principles of jurisprudence in the abstract—and the com¬ 
 parative jurisprudence of different nations. For want of 
 
 f I do not mean to give currency to the special phrase interna¬ 
 tional law, which I suspect is fraught with dangerous fallacy. 
 There can be no law, in the proper sense of the term, where there 
 is no legislator, no tribunal, no means of giving legal effect to a 
 decision. — Note to 2 nd Edition. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 31 
 
 this we are driven to study some national system of law, 
 either that of the Romans or of our own country. That 
 of the Romans is somewhat remote, and sometimes veils 
 its principles in shapes difficult to pierce, except to a 
 student versed in Roman history. Our own is, as yet, 
 in form barbarous and undigested. But except in so far 
 as it is really, and not only in forms and terms, a relic of 
 feudalism, it covers strong rules of utility and justice, 
 the work of the greatest and most upright tribunals the 
 world ever saw. It is these rules, and not the techni¬ 
 calities or antiquities of English law, that constitute the 
 proper subject of that part of our examinations; especi¬ 
 ally as, of those who pass through the School, fewer 
 probably will be destined for the actual profession of the 
 law, than to be county magistrates, and administer plain 
 justice to the people. 
 
 Political Economy, though once accepted by the 
 University as one of the regular subjects of this Chair, 
 has but one foot, as it were, in the new Examination 
 Statute. The candidates are permitted to include among 
 their subjects the great work of Adam Smith. Few 
 will think that the bounds of safe discretion are ex¬ 
 ceeded by the permission to know something of eco¬ 
 nomical science thus accorded to students destined, 
 many of them by their birth, more by their wealth 
 or talent, to become the legislators of a great com¬ 
 mercial country; and whose errors in economy may 
 bring dearth of bread into every cottage, and with 
 dearth evils that arise when parent and child cannot 
 both be fed. Political Economy is still the object of 
 antipathies, excusable but unfounded. A hypothetical 
 
32 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 science, true in the abstract, but not applicable in its 
 rigour to facts, it has been sometimes too rigorously 
 applied ; and errors, I believe they are now admitted 
 to be errors, touching the relative laws of population 
 and food, though they originated with minds animated 
 by a sincere love of man, seemed to accuse the provi¬ 
 dence and contradict the designs of God. Political 
 Economy is guilty of seeking to put an end to the 
 existence of a pauper class. Such a class may in im¬ 
 agination be the kneeling and grateful crowd in the 
 picture, among whom St. Martin divides his cloak ; 
 imagination may even endow them with finer moral 
 perceptions than those of other men ; but in the reality 
 they are the Lazzaroni who sacked and burned with 
 Masaniello, and the Sans-culottes who butchered with 
 Robespierre. Political Economy, again, is guilty,—not 
 she alone is guilty,—of pronouncing that man must 
 eat his bread in the sweat of his own brow; she is not 
 guilty of denying alms to the helpless and the destitute. 
 “ Dr. Adam Smith’s conduct in private life,” says the 
 author of the sketch prefixed to his great work, “ did not 
 belie the generous principles inculcated in his works. 
 He was in the habit of allotting a considerable part of his 
 income to offices of secret charity. Mr. Stewart men¬ 
 tions that he had been made acquainted with some very 
 affecting instances of his beneficence. They were all, he 
 observes, on a scale much beyond what might have been 
 expected from his fortune ; and were accompanied with 
 circumstances equally honourable to the delicacy of his 
 feelings and the liberality of his heart.” It is false senti¬ 
 ment to talk of a Political Economist as though he were a 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 33 
 
 religious teacher, but through no sermons does the spirit 
 of fue huma-tiiy breathe more strongly than through the 
 writings of Ad'iii Smith; nor has any man in his way 
 more effectually preached peace and good-will on earth. 
 Neither his voice nor that of any teacher can pat mercy 
 into the heart of fanaticism or ambition, but his spirit 
 always wrestles, and wrestles hard and long, with those 
 spirits of cruelty to save the world from war. Again, no 
 rich man need fear that he will learn from Political Eco¬ 
 nomy the moral sophism that luxury may be laudably 
 indulged in because it is good for trade. On the con¬ 
 trary, he will learn to distinguish between productive and 
 unproductive consumption, and the results of each to the 
 community; and he will have it brought home to his 
 mind, more effectually perhaps than by any rhetoric, that 
 if he does live in luxury and indolence, he is a burden to 
 the earth. The words, “ I give alms best by spending 
 largely,” have indeed been uttered, and they came from 
 a hard, gross heart. But it was the heart not of a Politi¬ 
 cal Economist, but of a Most Christian King. Those 
 words were the answer of Louis XIV. to Madame de 
 Maintenon, when she asked him for alms to relieve the 
 misery of the people ; that people whom the ambition 
 and fanaticism of their monarch had burdened with a 
 colossal debt, brought to the verge, and beyond the verge, 
 of famine, and forced to pour out their blood like w'ater 
 on a hundred fields that heresy and democracy might be 
 extirpated, and that the one true religion and the divine 
 pattern of government might be preached to all nations 
 w r ith fire and sword. Once more, it is supposed that 
 Political Economy sanctions hard dealings between class 
 
43 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 and class, and between man and man ; that it encourages 
 the capitalist to use men as “hands,” without fellow-feel¬ 
 ing and without mercy ; and these charges are found side 
 by side with the sentimental praise of that atrocious sys¬ 
 tem of Vagrancy Laws and Statutes of Labourers by 
 which expiring feudalism strove to bind again its fetters 
 on the half emancipated serf. The poetry of the whip, 
 the branding-iron and the gibbet, to be applied to the 
 labourer wandering in quest of a better market, certainly 
 finds as little response in the dry mind of Political Eco¬ 
 nomy as the poetry of bloody persecutions and judicial 
 murder. But those who wish to find a condemnation of 
 the inhumanity as well as the folly of overworking and 
 underfeeding the labourer, will not have to seek far 
 before they find it in the pages of Adam Smith. 
 Adam Smith, indeed, condemns in the measured lan¬ 
 guage of sober justice ; and he takes no distinction, such 
 as we find always tacitly taken in novels and poems by 
 the troubadours of the landed interest, between the 
 grinding manufacturer and the grinding landlord. But 
 perhaps, his sentence will not on either account have less 
 weight with reasonable men. The laws of the produc¬ 
 tion and distribution of wealth are not the laws of duty 
 or affection. But they are the most beautiful and won¬ 
 derful of the natural laws of God, and through their 
 beauty and their wonderful wisdom they, like the other 
 laws of nature which science explores, are not without a 
 poetry of their own. Silently, surely, without any man’s 
 taking thought, if human folly will only refrain from hin¬ 
 dering them, they gather, store, dispense, husband, if need 
 be, against scarcity, the wealth of the great community of 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 35 
 
 nations. They take from the consumer in England the 
 wages of the producer in China, his just wages, and they 
 distribute those wages among the thousand or hundred 
 thousand Chinese workmen who have contributed to the 
 production, justly, to “ the estimation of a hair,” to the 
 estimation of a fineness far passing human thought. They 
 call on each nation with silent bidding to supply of its 
 abundance that which the other wants, and make all 
 nations fellow-labourers for the common store ; and in 
 them lies perhaps the strongest natural proof that the 
 earth was made for the sociable being, man. To buy in 
 the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, the supposed 
 concentration of economical selfishness, is simply to fulfil 
 the command of the Creator, who provides for all the 
 wants of His creatures through each other’s help, to take 
 from those who have abundance and to carry to those 
 who have need. It would be an exaggeration to erect 
 trade into a moral agency; but it does unwittingly serve 
 agencies higher than itself, and make one heart as well as 
 -one harvest for the world. 
 
 But though the philosophy of this School may, for the 
 present, be drawn mainly from its Jurisprudence and 
 Political Economy, and these will be its most substantial 
 studies, there is another element, which must be supplied 
 by simple narrative history, written picturesquely and to 
 the heart. That element is the ethical element, the train¬ 
 ing of right sympathies and pure affections, without which 
 no system of education can be perfect, and for want of 
 which mere mathematical or scientific training appears 
 essentially defective. The most highly developed power 
 of the pure intellect, the driest light, to use Bacon’s 
 
36 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 phrase, of the understanding, will make a great thinker r 
 but it will not make a great man. Statesmen formed by 
 such education would be utterly wanting in emotion and 
 in the power of kindling or guiding it in others. They 
 would be wanting in the aspirations which move men to 
 do great things. History' in this new School has to supply 
 the place both of the ancient historians and the poets in 
 the Classical School; and to a great extent it may do so- 
 And perhaps it may be truly said that Oxford, if she is 
 under some disadvantages, possesses some great advan¬ 
 tages for the appreciation of historical character and the 
 ethical treatment of history, not merely as a subject of 
 education, but as a literary pursuit; and that she may on 
 this ground well aspire to become a great school of his¬ 
 tory. We cannot have in this seat of learning the know¬ 
 ledge of the world and of action which produces such 
 histories as those of Thucydides or Tacitus, or even as 
 that of Lord Macaulay, any more than we can have the 
 knowledge of war which produces such a history as that 
 of Napier. But we have in a singular degree the key to 
 moral and spiritual character in all its varieties and in all 
 its aspects. Oxford gives us this key partly as she is a 
 great school of moral philosophy, partly from the events 
 otherwise most injurious to her usefulness. Large spiritual 
 experience, deep insight into character, ample sympathies* 
 —these at least the University has gained by that great 
 storm of religious controversy through which she has just 
 passed, and which has cast the wrecks of her most gifted 
 intellects on every shore. Such gifts go far to qualify 
 their possessor for writing the history of many very im¬ 
 portant periods, provided only that they are combined 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 37 
 
 with the love of justice and controlled by common 
 sense. 
 
 I have mentioned that the Modern Languages were 
 once united with Modern History in this foundation. 
 They have now separate foundations, but the two studies 
 cannot be divorced. A thorough knowledge of history, 
 even of the history of our own country, is impossible 
 without the power of reading foreign writers. Each 
 nation, in the main, writes its own history best; it best 
 knows its own land, its own institutions, the relative 
 importance of its own events, the characters of its own 
 great men. But each nation has its peculiarities of view, 
 its prejudices, its self-love, which require to be corrected 
 by the impartial or even hostile view's of others. We are 
 indignant, or we smile, at the religion of French aggran¬ 
 disement which displays itself in every page of most 
 French historians, and at the constantly recurring intima¬ 
 tion that the progress of civilization, and even of morality 
 in the world, depends on the perpetual acquisition of 
 fresh territory and fresh diplomatic influence by France. 
 Perhaps there are some things, at which a Frenchman 
 might reasonably be indignant or reasonably smile, in the 
 native historians of a country of whose greatness we may 
 be justly, and of whose beneficent action in Europe we 
 may be more justly, proud. Besides, in regard to our 
 early history, much depends upon antiquarian research, 
 and antiquarian research is not the special excellence of 
 our practical nation. So strongly do I feel that the 
 original arrangement by which Modern History and 
 Modern Languages were united was the right one, that I 
 cannot refrain from expressing a hope that the expe- 
 
35 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 diency of restoring that arrangement may soon come 
 under the consideration of the Council ; and that one of 
 the most flourishing and most •practically useful of our 
 departments may be completely incorporated into our 
 system by becoming a portion of the Modern History 
 School. 
 
 Of the importance of Physical Science to the student 
 of Modern History it scarcely becomes me to speak. All 
 I can say is, that I have reason to lament my own ignor¬ 
 ance of it at every turn. It is my conviction that man is 
 not the slave, but the lord, of the material world ; that 
 the spirit moulds, and is not moulded by, the clay. I 
 believe that nations, like men, shape their own destiny, 
 let nature rough-hew it as she will. But nature does 
 rough-hew the destiny of nations, and the knowledge of 
 her workings and influences, as they bear on man, is a 
 most essential part of history. The next generation of 
 historical students in Oxford will reach, by the aid of this 
 knowledge, what those of my generation can never attain. 
 The words of Roger Bacon to his pupil, Tu meliores 
 radices egcris , “ You will strike root deeper and bear fruit 
 higher than your teacher,” may be repeated by each 
 generation of intellect to that which is at once its pupil 
 and its heir. 
 
 The range of the student’s hi storical reading here must 
 necessarily be limited, and we naturally take as the staple 
 of it the history of our own country. It fortunately 
 happens that the history of our own country is, in one 
 important respect, the best of all historical studies. To 
 say nothing of our claims to greatness, no nation has 
 ever equalled ours in the unbroken continuity of its 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 39 
 
 national life. The institutions of France before the 
 Revolution are of little practical importance or interest 
 to the Frenchman of the present day: there is almost as 
 great a chasm of political organization and political senti¬ 
 ment between feudal France and the France of Louis 
 XIV. The French Canadian, the surviving relic of 
 France under the old monarchy, is, in everything but 
 race and language, a widely different man from the 
 Frenchman of Paris. But we hear of questions in our 
 youngest colonies being settled by reference to the insti¬ 
 tutions of Edward the Confessor. The same habits of 
 local self-government which are so much at the root of 
 our political character now, held together English society 
 in the county, the hundred, the parish, the borough,when 
 the central government was dissolved by the civil wars of 
 Henry III., the Wars of the Roses, and the Great Rebel¬ 
 lion. It fortunate'y happens, also, that the main interest 
 of our country lies in the development of our political 
 constitution. England has always been a religious coun¬ 
 try, both under the old and under the reformed faith. 
 But she has not been the parent of great religious move¬ 
 ments, excepting Wycliffism, which proved abortive. She 
 has received her spiritual impulses mainly from without. 
 That to which the mind of the nation has been turned 
 from its birth, and with unparalleled steadiness, is the 
 working out of a political constitution, combining Roman 
 order with Northern liberty and harmonizing the freest 
 development of individual mind and character with in¬ 
 tense national unity and unfailing reverence for the law. 
 The present age seems likely to decide whether this work, 
 so full of the highest effort, moral as well as intellectual, 
 
40 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 has been wrought by England for herself alone or for the 
 world . 8 Political greatness is not the end of man, nor 
 is it in political events and institutions that the highest 
 interest of history lies. But when we arrive at the region 
 of the highest interest, we arrive also at the region of the 
 deepest divisions of opinion and of feeling. The Eng¬ 
 lish Constitution is accepted by all Englishmen, and its 
 development may be traced in this Chair without treading 
 on forbidden ground. Even with regard to this study, 
 indeed, it is necessary for a Professor of History to warn 
 his pupils that they come to him for knowledge, not for 
 opinions ; and that it will be his highest praise if they 
 leave him, with increased materials for judgment, to judge 
 with an open and independent mind. And, happily, in 
 studying the constitutional history of England, modern 
 or medieval, both professor and pupil have before them 
 the noblest model of judicial calmness and inexorable 
 regard for truth, in that great historian of our constitution 
 whom Oxford produced, and who has lately been taken 
 from the place of honour which he long held among 
 our living literary worthies, to be numbered with the il¬ 
 lustrious dead. 
 
 In my next lecture I propose to speak of the method 
 of studying history. In this I have ventured to plead 
 for support and encouragement, and, what is perhaps 
 most needed of all, proper guidance for our Modem 
 History School. h I rest my plea on the fact that there 
 
 * I speak of the substance not of the forms of the Constitution. 
 -—Note to 2nd Edit. 
 
 h I confess I have been induced to publish this lecture some¬ 
 what late, and contrary to my original intention, by the hope that I 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 41 
 
 is a class of students destined to perform the most im¬ 
 portant duties to society in after-life, peculiarly needing 
 education to dispose and enable them to perform those 
 duties, and whose education as a class has hitherto 
 failed; a fact to which I point with less hesitation 
 because I am persuaded that the sense of it led in 
 great measure to the institution of the Modern History 
 School. I do not rest my plea on any particular theory 
 of education, liberal or utilitarian, special or universal, 
 because no theory of education, rationally based on the 
 results of our experience, embracing the subject in all 
 its aspects, and determining the intrinsic value of dif¬ 
 ferent studies, their relative effect on the powers of the 
 mind and on the character, and the motives to industry 
 which can be relied on in the case of each, has yet been 
 laid before the world. Let us look the fact in the face. 
 We in this place differ widely in our opinions respect¬ 
 ing education ; and our difference of opinions respecting 
 education is intimately connected with our difference of 
 opinions respecting deeper things. In this, Oxford is 
 only the reflection of a world torn by controversies, the 
 greatest, perhaps, which have ever agitated mankind. 
 But we are all agreed in the desire to send out, if we 
 can, good landlords, just magistrates, upright and en¬ 
 lightened rulers and legislators for the English people. 
 
 may draw the attention of the University to the state of the School 
 of Law and Modern History, left as it is without that superinten¬ 
 dence which in its infancy it must require, and little encouraged by 
 the Colleges,—even All Souls having apparently set aside the 
 Parliamentary ordinance by which its fellowships are devoted to 
 the encouragement of the subjects recognized in this School. 
 
 [Written in 1859, since which time some Colleges have heartily 
 .adopted the study.—Note to 2nd Edit.] 
 
42 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE 
 
 We are all agreed in desiring that the rich men who 
 are educated at Oxford should be distinguished above 
 other rich men by their efforts to tread what to every 
 rich man is the steep path of social duty. And if we 
 did not all vote for the foundation of a School of Law 
 and Modern History with a view to the better education 
 of the gentry, we are all bound to acknowledge and 
 support it now that it is founded. It is hard to adapt 
 medieval and clerical colleges to the purposes of modern 
 and lay education. It is hard, too,, to break through 
 the separate unity of the college, a strong bond as it 
 has been, not only of affectionate association, but of 
 duty. Yet I cannot abandon the hope that whatever 
 steps may prove necessary to provide regular and com¬ 
 petent instruction in Modern History and the cognate 
 subjects, will be taken by the University in fulfilment 
 of its promise to the nation. I feel still more confident 
 that the co-operation of the Colleges with the staff of 
 the University for this purpose will not be impeded by 
 jealousies between different orders, which were never 
 very rational, and which may now surely be numbered 
 with the past. We have all one work. The Professor 
 is henceforth the colleague of the Tutor in the duties 
 of University education. What he was in the Middle 
 Ages is an antiquarian question. It is clear that since 
 that time his position and duties have.greatly changed. 
 The modern Press is the medieval Professor, and it is 
 absurd to think that in these days of universal mental 
 activity and universal publication men can be elected 
 or appointed by Convocation or by the Crown to head 
 the march of thought and give the world new truth. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 43 
 
 Oxford herself is no longer vvhat a University was in 
 the Middle Ages.. No more, as in that most romantic 
 epoch of the history of intellect, will the wayworn 
 student, who had perhaps begged his way from the 
 cold shade of feudalism to this solitary point of intel¬ 
 lectual light, look down upon the city of Ockham and 
 Roger Bacon as the single emporium of all knowledge, 
 the single gate to all the paths of ambition, with the 
 passionate reverence of the pilgrim, with the joy of the 
 miner who has found his gold. The functions and 
 duties of Oxford are humbler, though still great. And 
 so are those of all who are engaged in her service, and 
 partake the responsibilities of her still noble trust. To 
 discharge faithfully my portion of those duties, with 
 the aid and kind indulgence of those on whose aid and 
 kind indulgence I must always lean, will be my highest 
 ambition while I hold this Chair. 
 
I. 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 The first question which the student of history has 
 now to ask himself is, Whether history is governed 
 by necessary laws ? If it is, it ought to be written 
 and read as a science. It may be an imperfect science 
 as yet, owing to the complexity of the phenomena, 
 the incompleteness of the observations, the want of 
 a rational method ; but in its nature it is a science, 
 and is capable of being brought to perfection. 
 
 History could not be studied as a whole, — there 
 could be no philosophy of history,—till we thoroughly 
 felt the unity of the human race. That great dis¬ 
 covery is one which rebukes the pretensions of indi¬ 
 vidual genius to be the sole source of progress, for it 
 was made not by one man, but by mankind. Kindled 
 by no single mind, it spread over the world like the 
 light of morning; and the prism must be the work 
 of a cunning hand which could discriminate in it the 
 blended rays of duty, interest, and affection. First, 
 perhaps, the greatness of the Roman character broke 
 through the narrow exclusiveness of savage nation¬ 
 ality, by bending in its hour of conquest to the intel- 
 ( 44 ) 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 45 
 
 lect of conquered Greece ; nobler in this than Greece 
 herself, who, with all her philosophy, talked to the last 
 of Greek and barbarian, and could never see the man 
 beneath the slave. First, perhaps, on the mind of the 
 Roman Stoic the great idea of the community of man, 
 with its universal rights and duties, distinctly though 
 faintly dawned. And therefore to the Roman Stoic it 
 was given to be the real author of Rome’s greatest gift, 
 the science of universal law. Christianity broke down 
 far more thoroughly the barriers between nation and 
 nation, between freeman and slave, for those who were 
 within her pale. Between those within and those 
 without the pale she put perhaps a deeper and wider 
 gulf; not in the times of the apostles, but in the 
 succeeding times of fierce conflict with heathen vice 
 and persecution, and still more in the fanatical and 
 crusading Middle Ages. The resurrection of Greece 
 .and Rome in the revival of their literature made the 
 world one again, and united at once the Christian to 
 the heathen, and the present to the remotest past. 
 The heathen moralist, teaching no longer in the dis¬ 
 guise of a school divine, but in his own person, the 
 heathen historian awakening Christian sympathies, the 
 heathen poet touching Christian hearts, shewed that 
 in morality, in sympathy, in heart, though not in 
 faith, the Christian and the heathen were one. That 
 sense of unity, traversing all distinctions between 
 Christian and pagan, and between the Churches of 
 divided Christendom, has grown with the growth of 
 philosophy, science, jurisprudence, literature, art, the 
 common and indivisible heritage of man. A more 
 
46 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 enlightened and humane diplomacy, and the gradual 
 ascendency of international law, have strengthened 
 the sense of common interests and universal justice 
 from which they sprang; and France, the eldest 
 daughter of the Church, has crusaded to save the 
 Crescent from the aggression of the Cross. Com¬ 
 merce, too, breaking link by link its medieval fetters, 
 has helped to knit nations together in sympathy as 
 well as by interest, and to remove the barriers of the 
 dividing mountains and the estranging sea. There 
 was needed, besides, a great and varied range of re¬ 
 corded history to awaken thoroughly the historic sense, 
 to furnish abundant matter for historical reflection, 
 and to arouse a lively curiosity as to the relation be¬ 
 tween the present and the past. There was needed 
 a habit of methodical investigation, with a view to 
 real results, of which physical science is the great 
 school. There was needed a knowledge, which could 
 only come from the same source, of the physical con¬ 
 ditions and accessories of man’s estate. These condi¬ 
 tions fulfilled, the philosophy of history was born ; and 
 its birth opens a new realm of thought, full, we can 
 scarcely doubt, of great results for man. Vico indeed 
 was the precursor of this philosophy. In his mind first 
 arose the thought, awakened by the study of Greek 
 and Roman antiquity, that history should be read as 
 a whole, and that this whole might have a law. But 
 the law he imagined, that of revolving cycles of men 
 and events, was wild and fruitless as a dream. 
 
 It was natural that physical science should claim the 
 philosophy of history as a part of her own domain, that 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 47 
 
 she should hasten to plant her flag upon this newly- 
 discovered land of thought. Flushed with unhoped 
 for triumphs, why should she not here also triumph 
 beyond hope ? She scorns to see her advance arrested 
 by the imagined barrier between the physical and 
 moral world. The phenomena of man’s life and his¬ 
 tory are complicated indeed, more complicated even 
 than those of the tides or of the weather; but the 
 phenomena of the tides and of the weather have 
 yielded or are yielding to close observation, well re¬ 
 corded statistics, and patient reasoning; why should 
 not the phenomena of man’s actions yield too, and life 
 and history be filled, like all the world besides, with 
 the calm majesty of natural law ? It is a grand 
 thought; and at this time it finds not only minds 
 open to its grandeur, but hearts ready to welcome 
 it. Western Christendom has long been heaving with 
 a mighty earthquake of opinion, only less tremendous 
 than that of the Reformation because there was no 
 edifice so vast and solid as medieval Catholicism to 
 be laid low by the shock. Some their fear of this 
 earthquake has driven to take refuge in ancient fanes, 
 and by altars whose fires are cold. Others are filled 
 with a Lucretian longing to repose under the tranquil 
 reign of physical necessity, to become a part of the 
 material world, and to cast their perplexities on the 
 popes and hierarchs of science and her laws. Only let 
 them be sure that what is august and tranquillizing 
 in law really belongs to science, and that it is not bor¬ 
 rowed by her from another source. Let them be sure 
 that in putting off the dignity, they also put off the 
 
4 8 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 burden of humanity. If man is no higher in his 
 destinies than the beast or the blade of grass, it 
 may be better to be a beast or a blade of grass than 
 a man. 
 
 History is made up of human actions’, whether those 
 actions are political, social, religious, military, or of 
 any other kind. The founding and maintaining of 
 institutions, the passing and keeping of laws, the 
 erecting and preserving of churches and forms of wor¬ 
 ship, the instituting and observing of social customs, 
 may be all resolved into the element of action. So 
 may all intellectual history, whether of speculation, 
 observation, or composition, with their products and 
 effects; the bending of the mind to thought being 
 in every respect as much an action as the moving of 
 the hand. What we call national actions are the 
 actions of a multitude of men acting severally though 
 concurrently, and with all the incidents of several 
 action ; or they are the actions of those men who are 
 in power. Whatever there is in action, therefore, will 
 be everywhere present in history; and the founders 
 of the new physical science of history have to lay the 
 foundations of their science in what seems the quick¬ 
 sand of free-will. 
 
 This difficulty they have to meet either by shewing 
 that free-will is an illusion, or by shewing that its 
 presence throughout history is compatible, in spite of 
 all appearances, with the existence of an exact historical 
 science. 
 
 They take both lines. Some say, “ Free-will is an 
 illusion, or, at least, we cannot be sure that it is real- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 49 
 
 Our only knowledge of it is derived from conscious¬ 
 ness, and it is by no means certain that consciousness 
 is a faculty. It is very likely only a state or condition 
 of the mind. Besides, the mind cannot observe itself: 
 it is not in nature that the same thing should be at 
 once observer and observed.” 
 
 It signifies little under what technical head we class 
 consciousness. The question is, from what source do 
 those who repudiate its indications derive the know¬ 
 ledge of their own existence? From what other source 
 do they derive the knowledge that their words, the 
 very words they use in this denial, correspond to their 
 thoughts, and will convey their thoughts to others ? 
 The mind may not be able to place itself on the table 
 before it, or look at itself through a microscope, and 
 there may be nothing else in nature like its power of 
 self-observation; possibly the term self-observation, 
 being figurative, may not adequately represent the 
 fact, and may even, if pressed, involve some confusion 
 of ideas. But he is scarcely a philosopher who fancies 
 that the peculiarity of a mental fact, or our want of 
 an adequate name for it, is a good reason for setting 
 the fact aside. The same writers constantly speak of 
 the phenomena of mind ; so that it appears there must 
 be some phenomena of mind which they have been 
 able to observe. In whose mind did they see these 
 phenomena? Did they see them in the minds of others, 
 or, by self-observation, in their own ? 
 
 But others say, “We admit the reality of free-will; 
 but the opposite to free-will is necessity, and to form 
 the foundation of our science we do not want neces- 
 
5° 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 sity, but only causation and the certainty which cau¬ 
 sation carries with it : necessity is a mysterious and 
 embarrassing word, let us put it out of the question.’’ 
 But then, if necessity does not mean the certain con¬ 
 nexion between cause and effect, what is it to mean ? 
 Is the word to be sent adrift on the dictionary without 
 a meaning ? The rooted contradiction in our minds 
 between the notion of freedom of action and that of 
 being bound by the chain of certain causation, is not 
 to be removed merely by denying us the use of the 
 term by which the contradiction is expressed. 
 
 But again, they say “ You may as well get over this 
 apparent contradiction in life and history between free¬ 
 will and certain science, for you must get over the ap¬ 
 parent contradiction in life and history between free¬ 
 will and the certain omniscience of the Creator, which 
 comprehends human actions, and which you acknow¬ 
 ledge as part of your religious faith.” No doubt this, 
 though an argumentum ad hominem, is perfectly relevant, 
 because the objection it meets is one in the minds, of 
 those to whom it is addressed ; and I think it has been 
 justly observed, that it cannot be answered by distinguish¬ 
 ing between foreknowledge and afterknowledge, because 
 its force lies in the certainty which is common to all 
 knowledge, not in the relation of time between the know¬ 
 ledge and the thing known. The real answer seems to 
 be this, that the words omniscience, omnipotence, omni¬ 
 presence, though positive in form, are negative in mean¬ 
 ing. They mean only that we know not the bounds of 
 the knowledge, power, or presence of God. What we 
 do know, if we know anything, is that His presence is 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 51 
 
 not such as to annihilate or absorb our separate being, 
 nor His knowledge and power such as to overrule or 
 render nugatory our free-will. 
 
 Nor will it avail the constructors of a science of Man 
 to cite the moral certainty with which we predict the con¬ 
 duct of men or nations whose characters are settled. 
 This settled character was formed by action, and the 
 action by which it was formed was free ; so that the un¬ 
 certain element which baffles science is not got rid of, 
 but only thrown back over a history or a life. 
 
 Then they analyse action, and say it follows its mo¬ 
 tive, and may be predicted from the motive, just as any 
 other consequent in nature follows and may be predicted 
 from its antecedent. It follows a motive, but how are 
 we to tell which motive it will follow ? Action is a 
 choice between motives ; even in our most habitual acts 
 it is a choice between acting and rest. The only ground 
 we have for calling one motive the strongest is that it has 
 prevailed before ; but the motive which has prevailed 
 before, and prevailed often and long, is set aside in every 
 great change of conduct, individual or national, by an 
 effort of the will, for which, to preserve the chain of 
 causation and the science founded on that chain, some 
 other antecedent must be found. 
 
 Action, we said, was a choice between motives. It is 
 important in this inquiry to observe that it is a choice 
 between them, not a compound or a resultant of them 
 all; so that a knowledge of all the motives present 
 at any time to the mind of a man or nation would not 
 enable us to predict the action as we predict the result 
 of a combination of chemical elements or mechanical 
 
 4 
 
5 2 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 forces. The motive which is not acted on goes for 
 nothing ; and as that motive may be and often is the one 
 which—according to the only test we have, that of the 
 man’s previous actions—is the strongest, we see on what 
 sort of foundation a science of action and history must 
 build. 
 
 When the action is done, indeed, the connexion be¬ 
 tween it and its motive becomes necessary and certain ; 
 and we may argue backwards from action to motive with 
 all the accuracy of science. Finding at Rome a law to 
 encourage tyrannicide, we are certain that there had been 
 tyrants at Rome, though there is nothing approaching to 
 historical evidence of the tyranny of Tarquin. 
 
 Those who would found history or ethics on a neces¬ 
 sarian, or, if they will, a causal theory of action, have 
 three things to account for,—our feeling at the moment 
 of action that we are free to do or not to do,—our ap¬ 
 proving or blaming ourselves afterwards for having done 
 the act or left it undone, which implies that we were free, 
 
 _and the approbation or blame of each other, which 
 
 implies the same thing. I do not see that they even 
 touch any of these problems but the first. They do not 
 tell us whether conscience is an illusion or not; nor, if 
 it is not an illusion, do they attempt to resolve for us the 
 curious question, what this strange pricking in the heart 
 of a mere necessary agent means. They do not explain 
 to us why we should praise or blame, reward or punish, 
 each other’s good or bad actions, any more than the good 
 or bad effects of anything in the material world ; why the 
 virtues and vices of man are to be treated on a totally 
 different footing from the virtues of food or the vices of 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 53 
 
 poison. Praise and blame they do,—praise as heartily 
 and blame at least as sharply as the rest of the world— 
 but they do not tell us why. We must not be deceived 
 by the forms of scientific reasoning, when those who use 
 them do not face the facts. 
 
 Great stress is laid by the Necessarians on what are 
 called moral statistics. It seems that, feel as free as we 
 may, our will is bound by a law compelling the same 
 number of men to commit the same number of crimes 
 within a certain cycle. The cycle, curiously enough, 
 coincides with the period of a year which is naturally 
 selected by the Registrar-general for his reports. But, 
 first, the statistics tendered are not moral, but legal. 
 They tell us only the outward act, not its inward moral 
 character. They set down alike under Murder the act of a 
 Rush or a Palmer, and the act of an Othello. Secondly, 
 we are to draw some momentous inference from the uni¬ 
 formity of the returns. How far are they uniform ? M. 
 Quetelet gives the number of convictions in France for 
 the years 1826, ’7, ’8, ’9, severally as 4348, 4236, 4551, 
 4475. The similarity is easily accounted for by that 
 general uniformity of human nature which we all admit- 
 How is the difference, amounting to more than 300 
 between one year and the next, to be accounted for 
 except by free-will ? But, thirdly, it will be found that 
 these statistics are, unconsciously but effectually, garbled. 
 To prove the law of the uniformity of crime, periods are 
 selected when crime was uniform. Instead of four years 
 of the Restoration, in which we know very well there was 
 no great outburst of wickedness, give us a table includ¬ 
 ing the civil war between the Burgundians and the 
 
54 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 Armagnacs, the St. Bartholomew, the Reign of Terror,, 
 or the days of June 1848. It will be said, perhaps, that 
 this was under different circumstances ; but it is a very 
 free use of the term “ circumstance ” to include in it 
 all the evil and foolish actions of men which lead to, or 
 are committed in, a sanguinary revolution. Social and 
 criminal statistics are most valuable ; the commencement 
 of their accurate registration will probably be a great 
 epoch in the history of legislation and government; but 
 the reason why they are so valuable is that they are not 
 fixed by necessity, as the Necessarians allege or insinuate, 
 but variable, and may be varied for the better by the 
 wisdom of governments,—governments which Necessari¬ 
 ans are always exhorting to reform themselves, instead of 
 shewing how their goodness or badness necessarily arises 
 from the climate or the food. If the statistics were fixed 
 by necessity, to collect them would be a mere indulgence 
 of curiosity, like measuring all the human race, when we 
 could not add a cubit to their stature. 
 
 It is important, when people talk of calculating the 
 probabilities and chances of human action on these 
 statistics, to guard against a loose use (which I think I 
 have seen somewhere noted) of the words probability 
 and chance. Probability relates to human actions, 
 which cannot be calculated unless you can find a certain 
 antecedent for the will. Chance is mere ignorance of 
 physical causes; ignorance in what order the cards will 
 turn up, because we are ignorant in what order they are 
 turned down : and it is difficult to see by what manipu¬ 
 lation, out of mere ignorance, knowledge can be educed. 
 It is worth remarking also that an average is not a law 1 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 55 
 
 not only so, but the taking an average rather implies that 
 no law is known. 
 
 But, it may be said, all must give way to a law gathered 
 By fair and complete induction from the facts of history. 
 It is perhaps not so clear why knowledge drawn from 
 within ourselves should give way to knowledge drawn 
 from without. But be that as it may, we may pronounce 
 at once that a complete induction from the facts of 
 history is impossible. History cannot furnish its own 
 inductive law. An induction, to be sound, must take in, 
 actually or virtually, all the facts. But history is unlike 
 all other studies in this, that she never can have, 
 actually or virtually ,all the facts before her. What is 
 past she knows in part; what is to come she knows not, 
 and can never know. The scroll from which she reads is 
 but half unrolled : and what the other half contains, what 
 even the next line contains, no one has yet been able to 
 foretell. Prediction, the crown of all science, the new 
 science of Man and History has not ventured to put on ; 
 that prerogative, which is the test of her legitimacy, she 
 has not yet ventured to exert. 
 
 Science indeed, far from indicating that the materials 
 for the great induction are complete, would, if anything, 
 rather lead us to believe that the human race and its 
 history are young. The vast length of geologic, com¬ 
 pared with the shortness of historic time, whispers that 
 the drama for which the stage was so long preparing must 
 have many acts still to come. 
 
 This ignorance of what is to come destroys, it would 
 seem, among other inductive theories of history, the 
 famous one of Comte, who makes the course of history 
 
56 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 to be determined by the progress of science through its 
 three stages, “ Theological,” “ Metaphysical,” and “ Posi¬ 
 tive;”-” Positive” having, let us observe, a double mean¬ 
 ing, atheistical and sound ,, so that the use of it, in effect, 
 involves a continual begging of the question. Hc*v can 
 M. Comte tell that the “ Positive ” era is the end of 
 all ? How can he tell that the three stages he has before 
 him are anything but a mere segment of a more extensive 
 law ? But besides this, before we proceed to compare a 
 colossal hypothesis with the facts, wc must see whether 
 it is rational in itself, and consistent with our previous 
 knowledge. An hypothesis accounting for certain facts 
 by reference to the sun’s motion round the earth, or 
 anything else obviously false or absurd, may be dis¬ 
 missed at once, without the form of verification. The 
 three terms of the supposed series, the Theological, Me¬ 
 taphysical, and Positive states, must be distinct and suc¬ 
 cessive, or it will be no series at all. Now taking “ Posi¬ 
 tive ” in the fair sense, the sense of sound Theology and 
 Positive Science, the theological and the scientific view 
 of the world are neither distinct nor successive, but may 
 very well go, and do often go, together. A man may be, 
 and Newton was, a sound astronomer and a great dis¬ 
 coverer of astronomical laws, and yet believe that the 
 stars were made and are held in their courses by the 
 hand of God. A man may be, and Butler was, a sound 
 moral philosopher and a great discoverer of the laws of 
 human nature, and yet believe human nature to be in 
 its origin and end divine. Positivists cite for our admira¬ 
 tion a saying of Lamennais, contrasting, as they suppose, 
 the religious with the scientific view of things. “ Why do 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 57 
 
 bodies gravitate towards each other ? Because God 
 willed it, said the ancients. Because they attract each 
 other, says Science.” As though God could not will that 
 bodies should attract each other. Polytheism, putting 
 the different parts of nature under the arbitrary dominion 
 of separate gods, conflicts with, and has been overthrown 
 by, Science, which proves that one set of laws, the work 
 of one God, traverses the whole. And this, I venture to 
 think, is the mustard-seed of truth out of which the vast 
 tree of M. Comte’s historical theory has grown. So far 
 from there being any conflict between Monotheism and 
 Science, all the discoveries of science confirm the hypo¬ 
 thesis that the world was made by one God ; an hypothe¬ 
 sis which, it should be observed, was quite independent 
 of the progress of science, since it had been promulgated 
 in the first chapter of Genesis before science came into 
 existence. As to the Metaphysical era, which is the 
 intervening term of the series between the Theological 
 and the Positive, nothing in history corresponding to this 
 era has been or can be produced. No age is or can be 
 pointed out in which a nation or mankind believed the 
 phenomena of the world or of human nature to be pro¬ 
 duced by metaphysical entities. A few philosophers in¬ 
 deed have talked of nature as the mother of all things ; 
 but by nature they meant not a metaphysical entity, but 
 either the laws of matter personified, in which case they 
 were Positivists, or the God of natural religion as opposed 
 to the God of revelation, in which case they were Theists. 
 So that of the three terms of the supposed series, the first 
 runs into the third and the second vanishes altogether. 
 The theory is open to another objection, which is also 
 
58 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 fatal. Against all the facts, though in accordance with 
 the bias naturally given to M. Comte’s mind by his 
 scientific pursuits, it makes the scientific faculties and 
 tendencies predominant in man. Which view of science 
 was it that predominated in Attila and Timour, who, after 
 all, played a considerable part in determining the course 
 of history? 
 
 What has been said as to the incompleteness of the 
 phenomena of history, and the consequent impossibility 
 of a final induction as to its law, leads to a remark on 
 the theory that “ Man is to be studied historically,” and 
 its necessary corollary that mortality is not absolute but 
 historical. If there can be no complete historical induc¬ 
 tion, and if, at the same time, Man is to be studied his¬ 
 torically, not morally, and the rule of right action is to be 
 taken, not from our moral instincts but from the observa¬ 
 tion of historical facts, it it difficult to see how there can 
 be any rule of right action at all. Morality and our 
 moral judgment of characters and actions must, it would 
 seem, always remain in suspense, till the world ends and 
 history is complete. History of itself, if observed as 
 science observes the facts of the physical world, can 
 scarcely give man any principle or any object of allegi¬ 
 ance, unless it be success. Success accordingly enters 
 very largely into the morality of the thorough-going Posi¬ 
 tivist. He canonizes conquerors and despots, and con¬ 
 signs to infamy the memory of men who, though they 
 fell, fell struggling for a noble cause, and have left a great 
 and regenerating example to mankind. The morality, 
 not only absolute but mystical, which Positivism in its 
 second phase has adopted to satisfy moral instincts, is a 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 59 
 
 mere copy of the social aspect of Christianity; as the 
 Church, the sacraments, and the priesthood, invented to 
 satisfy our religious instincts, are a mere copy of the 
 Church of Rome. 
 
 You may say that virtue has prevailed in history over 
 vice, and that our allegiance is due to it as the stronger. 
 But granting that it has prevailed hitherto, to say which 
 is the stronger you must see the end of the struggle. 
 The theologian who. like Hobbes, makes religion consist 
 not in our moral sympathy with the Divine nature, but in 
 necessary submission to Divine power, will find himself in 
 the same dilemma. He claims our allegiance for the 
 power of good, not on the ground of our sympathy with 
 good, but because it is stronger than the power of evil. 
 He, too, before he says which is the stronger, must see 
 the end of the struggle. If evil prevails, his allegiance 
 must be transferred. 
 
 It is true that morality in judging the past must take 
 notice of historical circumstances, as morality takes 
 notice of present circumstances in judging the actions of 
 living men. Allowance must be made for the age, the 
 •country, the state of things in which each character 
 moved. In this sense (and it is a most important sense), 
 there may be said to be such a thing as historical, in 
 contradistinction to an absolute, morality; though a 
 morality which disregarded the circumstances of actions 
 in history or life would deserve to be called not absolute 
 but idiotic, and, in fact, has never been propounded. 
 But let the merit or demerit of an historical action vaiy 
 ever so much with the circumstances, justice has been 
 justice, mercy has been mercy, honour has been honour, 
 
6o 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 good faith has been good faith, truthfulness has been 
 truthfulness, from the beginning; and each of these 
 qualities is one and the same in the tent of the Arab and 
 in the senates of civilized nations. A sound historical 
 morality will sanction strong measures in evil times ; 
 selfish ambition, treachery, murder, perjury, it will never 
 sanction in the worst of times, for these are the things 
 that make times evil. 
 
 Again, institutions not good in themselves may be 
 good for certain times and countries; they may be better 
 than what went before, they may pave the way for some¬ 
 thing better to follow. Despotism is an improvement on 
 anarchy, and may lead to ordered freedom. But there 
 must be limits to our catholicity in the case of institu¬ 
 tions as well as in the case of actions. Our sympathy 
 here, too, is bounded by morality. It is just possible it 
 may embrace the institution of slavery, if slavery was 
 really a middle term between wars of extermination and 
 a free industrial system; though it is almost impossible 
 to imagine how slavery could ever be otherwise than 
 injurious to the character of the slave-owner, whatever 
 it might be to that of the slave. But cannibalism, 
 which certain theories would lead us philosophically to 
 accept as useful and amiable in its place, must have been 
 execrable everywhere and in all times. 
 
 So, again, it is most true that there is a general con¬ 
 nexion between the different parts of a nation’s civiliza¬ 
 tion ; call it, if you will, a consensus , provided that the 
 notion of a set of physical organs does not slip in with 
 that term. And it is most true that the civilization of 
 each nation must, to a certain extent, run its own course. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 6l 
 
 It is folly to force on the most backward nations the laws 
 and government of the most forward, or to offer intel¬ 
 lectual institutions to tribes which have not attained the 
 arts of life. But that which is good for all may be given 
 to all, and among the things which are good for all are 
 pure morality and true religion. We cannot at once 
 give a British constitution to the Hindoo ; but we may 
 at once, in spite of consensus and necessary development, 
 teach him the virtue of truth and the unity of God. 
 The thing may be impossible in the eye of the positive 
 science of history ; it is done with difficulty, but it is 
 done. 
 
 We have admitted that the philosophy of history is in¬ 
 debted to physical science for habits of methodical rea¬ 
 soning with a view to practical results. From physical 
 science dealing, however wrongly, with history, we also 
 gain a certain calmness and breadth of view, derived 
 from regions in which there is no partizanship or fanati¬ 
 cism, because there are no interests by which partizanship 
 or fanaticism can be inflamed. It is less easy to acknow¬ 
 ledge that the student of history is indebted to the phy¬ 
 sical school of historical philosophy for enlarging our 
 historical sympathies. That school, on the contrary, 
 extinguishes all sympathy in any obvious sense of the 
 word. We can feel love and gratitude for free effort 
 made in the cause of man ; but how can we feel love or 
 gratitude towards the human organ of a necessary pro¬ 
 gress, any more than towards a happy geological forma¬ 
 tion or a fertilizing river ? On the other hand, it would 
 be easy to give specimens of the sort of sympathy and 
 the sort of language which results from taking a purely 
 
62 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 scientific view of history and man. “ Truth does not 
 regard consequences,” was a noble saying ; but there are 
 some cases in which the consequences are a test of truth. 
 As the physical view of character and action, if it really 
 took possession of the mind, must put an end to self- 
 exertion, so the physical view of the history of nations 
 would dissolve the human family by making each nation 
 regard the other as in a course of necessary progress, to 
 be studied scientifically, but not to be hastened or inter¬ 
 fered with, instead of their doing all they can to enlighten 
 and improve each other. 
 
 We must not suppose that because the order of national 
 actions is often necessary, the actions themselves are. A 
 nation may have to go through one stage of knowledge 
 or civilization before it can reach another, but its going 
 through either is still free. Nations must accumulate a 
 certain degree of wealth before they can have leisure to 
 think or write; but the more degraded and indolent 
 races refuse to accumulate wealth. 
 
 We must guard, too, against physical metaphors in 
 talking of history ; they bring with them physical ideas, 
 and prejudice our view of the question. Men do not 
 act in masses, but in multitudes, each man of which has 
 a will of his own, and determines his action by that will, 
 though on the same motives as the rest. Development 
 is a word proper to physical organs, which cannot be 
 transferred to the course of a nation without begging the 
 whole question. The same thing may be said of social 
 statics and dynamics applied to the order and progress of 
 a nation. 
 
 Of course, in hesitating to accept the physical view of 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 63 
 
 man, and the exact science founded on that view, we do 
 not deny or overlook the fact, that besides the character 
 and actions of particular men, there is a common human 
 nature, on the general tendencies of which, considered in 
 the abstract, the Moral and Economical Sciences are 
 founded. In themselves, and till they descend into the 
 actions of particular men or nations, these sciences are 
 exact, and give full play to all those methods of scientific 
 reasoning, of which, once more, physical science seems 
 to be the great school. But let them descend into the 
 actions of particular men and nations, and their exact¬ 
 ness ceases. The most exact of them, naturally, is 
 Political Economy, which deals with the more animal 
 part of human nature, where the tendencies are surer 
 because the conflict of motives is less. Yet even in 
 Political Economy no single proposition can be enunci¬ 
 ated, however true in the general, which is not constantly 
 falsified by individual actions. It seems doubtful whe¬ 
 ther the tendencies are surer in the case of nations than 
 in the case of men. The course of a nation is often as 
 eccentric, as wayward, as full of heroic and fiendish 
 impulse, as impossible to predict from year to year, from 
 hour to hour, as that of a man. The passions of men 
 are not always countervailed and nullified by those of 
 other men in a nation, they are often intensified by con¬ 
 tagion to the highest degree, and national panic or 
 enthusiasm goes far beyond that of single men. The 
 course of nations, too, is liable to the peculiar disturbing 
 influence of great men, who are partly made by, but who 
 also partly make, their age. A grain more of sand, said 
 Pascal, — say rather a grain less of resolution, — in the 
 
64 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 brain of Cromwell, one more pang of doubt in the tossed 
 and wavering soul of Luther, and the current of England 
 or the world’s history had been changed. The Positivists 
 themselves, though it is their aim to exhibit all history as 
 the result of general laws, are so far from excluding per¬ 
 sonal influences, that they have made a kind of hagi- 
 ology and demonology of eminent promoters of progress 
 and eminent reactionists, as though these, rather than 
 the laws, ruled the whole ; and no higher, not to say 
 more fabulous, estimate of the personal influence of 
 Richelieu and Burke will be found than in the work of a 
 Positivist author who has treated all personal history as 
 unphilosophical gossip, henceforth to be superseded by 
 histories written on a philosophical method. Accidents 
 too, mere accidents,—the bullet which struck Gustavus 
 on the field of Lutzen, the chance by which the Russian 
 lancers missed Napoleon in the churchyard of Eylau, 
 the chance which stopped Louis XVI. in his flight at 
 Varennes and carried him back to the guillotine,—turn 
 the course of history as well as of life, and baffle, to that 
 extent, all law, all tendency, all prevision. 
 
 There are some other views, rather than theories, of 
 history, besides the strictly Necessarian theory, which 
 conflict with free-will, and which may be just noticed 
 here. 
 
 One is the view, if it should not be rather called a 
 play of fancy, which treats all nations as stereotyped 
 embodiments of an idea, or the phases of an idea, which 
 is assumed to have been involved in the original scheme 
 of things. China, which is naturally first fixed on in 
 applying this hypothesis to the facts of history, may by a 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 6 5 
 
 stretch of imagination be taken to embody a stereotyped 
 idea, though even in China there has been change, and 
 indeed progress, enough to belie the notion. But as to 
 all the more progressive nations, this view is so palpably 
 contradicted by the most glaring facts, that we need 
 hardly go further. We may dispense with asking how 
 an idea, which never was present to any mind but that 
 ofa modern philosopher, became embodied in the actions 
 which make up the history of a nation : how it passed in 
 its different phases from nation to nation, and how it 
 happens that its last phase exactly coincides with our 
 time. The half-poetic character of this view is apparent, 
 when we are told that the reason for beginning with 
 China is, that the light of civilization, as well as the light 
 of the sun, must rise in the East; as though the sun rose 
 in China ! Here, in fact, we see Metaphysical Philoso¬ 
 phy, as well as Physical Science, attempting to extend 
 its empire over a domain which is not its own. 
 
 Other writers erect some one physical influence, the 
 influence of race, of climate, of food, into a sort of des¬ 
 tiny of nations. The importance of these influences is 
 great, and to trace them is a task full of interest and 
 instruction. But man is the same in his moral and 
 intellectual essence, that is, in his sovereign part, what¬ 
 ever his stock, whether he live beneath African suns or 
 Arctic frosts, whether his food be flesh, corn, or a mix¬ 
 ture of the two. He is not, as these theorists would 
 make him, the most helpless, but the most helpful of 
 animals ; and by his mind, applied to building, warming, 
 clothing, makes his own climate ; by his mind, applied to 
 husbandry and commerce, modifies his own food. Race 
 
66 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 seems, of all physical influences, the strongest. Yet 
 how small and superficial is the difference, compared 
 with the agreement, between a cultivated man and a 
 good Christian from London and one from Paris, or 
 even between one from either of those places and one 
 from Benares. The prevailing fashion for degrading 
 humanity to mere clay, and levelling it with the other 
 objects of physical science, is liable, like other prevailing 
 fashions, to lead to exaggeration. Confident deductions, 
 of the most sweeping and momentous kind, are made 
 from a statement of physical fact. The statement is 
 overthrown.* Yet the deductions are not withdrawn ; 
 and the world in its present mood seems not unwilling 
 to believe that the destruction of the proof leaves the 
 theory founded on it still generally true. 
 
 There is also a floating notion that the lives of nations 
 are limited by some mysterious law, and that they are 
 bom, grow to maturity, and die like men. But the life 
 of a nation is a metaphorical expression. No reason can 
 be given why a nation should die ; and no nation ever 
 has died, though some have been killed by external force. 
 
 Parallels between the political courses of nations are 
 also sometimes pressed too far, and made to seem like a 
 necessary law. Some of the little states of Greece ran a 
 remarkably parallel course, but they were not indepen¬ 
 dent of each other ; they were all members of the Greek 
 nation, and influenced each other’s politics by contagion, 
 and sometimes by direct interference. A parallel, 
 which seemed curiously exact, was also drawn between 
 the events of the English and French Revolutions ; it 
 
 * See the Edinburgh Review, vol. cvii. pp. 468, 9. (April 1858.) 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 67 
 
 seemed to hold till the accession of Louis Philippe, but 
 where is it now ? The similarity between the two Revo¬ 
 lutions was in truth superficial, compared with their 
 dissimilarity. Religion, the main element of the English 
 movement, was wanting in the French; the flight of the 
 nobility, the confiscation of their estates, and the estab¬ 
 lishment of a new peasant proprietary, which decided 
 the ultimate character and destiny of the French move¬ 
 ment, were wanting in the English. So far as there was 
 a similarity, it was produced partly by mere general ten¬ 
 dencies, which lead to anarchy after gross mis-govern- 
 ment, to a dictatorship after anarchy, and to the attempt 
 to recover freedom after a dictatorship ; partly by mere 
 accidents, such as the want of a son and heir in the case 
 both of Charles II. and of Louis XVIII., and the con¬ 
 sequent reversion of the crown to a brother, who belonged 
 by age and education to the old state of things. Had 
 Monmouth been Charles’ legitimate son, all probably 
 would have been changed. 
 
 Lastly, there is the habit of tracing special acts of 
 Providence in history. This sometimes goes the length 
 of making history one vast act of special Providence, and 
 turning it into a puppet-play, which, our hearts suggest, 
 might have been played with other puppets, less sensible 
 of pain and misery than Man. Surely it is perilous work 
 to be reading the most secret counsels of the Creator by 
 a light always feeble, often clouded by prejudice, often 
 by passion. The massacre of St. Bartholomew seemed 
 a special act of Providence to the papal party of the day. 
 Are Te Deums for bloody victories in reality less pro¬ 
 fane ? Is the scoff of Frederic true, and is Providence 
 5 
 
68 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 always with the best drilled grenadiers? To a believer 
 in Christianity nothing seems so like a special act of 
 Providence as the preparation made for the coming of 
 Christianity through the preceding events in the history 
 of Greece and Rome, on which a preacher was elo¬ 
 quently enlarging to us the other day. To a believer in 
 Christianity it seems so. But those who do not believe 
 in Christianity say, ‘ Yes, that is the true account of the 
 matter. Christianity arose from a happy confluence of 
 the Greek and Roman with the Hebrew civilization. 
 This is the source of that excellence you call divine.’ 
 Thus what appears to one side a singular proof of the 
 special interposition of Providence, is used on the other 
 side, and.necessarily with equal force, to shew that Chris¬ 
 tianity itself is no special interposition of Providence at 
 all, but the natural result of the historical events by 
 which it was ushered into the world. The Duke of 
 Weimar spoke more safely when he said of the tyranny 
 of the first Napoleon in Germany, “ It is unjust, and 
 therefore it cannot last.” He would have spoken more 
 safely still if he had said, ‘ Last or not last, it is unjust, 
 and being unjust, it carries its own sentence in its heart, 
 and will prove the weakest in the sum of things.’ 
 
 Is history, then, a chaos because it has no necessary 
 law ? Is there no philosophy of history because there is 
 no science ? 
 
 There are two grand facts with which the philosophy 
 of history deals, — the division of nations and the suc¬ 
 cession of ages. Are these without a meaning ? If so, 
 the two greatest facts in the world are alone mean¬ 
 ingless. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 69 
 
 It is clear that the division of nations has entered 
 deeply into the counsels of creation. It is secured not 
 only by barriers of‘sea, mountains, rivers, intervening 
 deserts, — barriers which conquest, the steam-vessel, and 
 the railroad might surmount, — but also by race, by lan¬ 
 guage, by climate, and other physical influences, so 
 potent that each in its turn has been magnified into the 
 key of all history. The division is perhaps as great and 
 as deeply rooted as it could be without destroying the 
 unity of mankind. Nor is it hard to see a reason for it. 
 If all mankind were one state, with one set of customs, 
 one literature, one code of laws, and this state became 
 corrupted, what remedy, what redemption would there 
 be ? None, but a convulsion which would rend the frame 
 of society to pieces, and deeply injure the moral life 
 which society is designed to guard. Not only so, but 
 the very idea of political improvement might be lost, and 
 all the world might become more dead than China. 
 Nations redeem each other. They preserve for each 
 other principles, truths, hopes, aspirations, which, com¬ 
 mitted to the keeping of one nation only, might, as 
 frailty and error are conditions of man’s being, become 
 extinct for ever. They not only raise each other again 
 when fallen, they save each other from falling; they sup¬ 
 port each other’s steps by sympathy and example; they 
 moderate each other’s excesses and extravagances, and 
 keep them short of the fatal point by the mutual action 
 of opinion, when the action of opinion is not shut out by 
 despotic folly. They do for each other nationally very 
 much what men of different characters do for each other 
 morally in the intercourse of life ; and that they might 
 
7 ° 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 do this, it was necessary that they should be as they are, 
 and as the arrangements of the world secure their being, 
 at once like and unlike—like enough for sympathy, unlike 
 enough for mutual correction. Conquest, therefore, may 
 learn that it has in the long run to contend not only 
 against morality but against nature. Two great attempts 
 have been made in the history of the world to crush the 
 nationality of large groups of nations, forming the civil¬ 
 ized portion of the globe. The first was made by the 
 military Rome of antiquity; the second, of a qualified 
 kind, was made by the ecclesiastical Rome of the Middle 
 Ages, partly by priestly weapons, partly by the sword of 
 devout kings. The result was universal corruption, po¬ 
 litical and social in the first case, ecclesiastical in the 
 second. In both cases aid was brought, and the fortunes 
 of humanity were restored by a power from without, but 
 for which, it would seem, the corruption would have 
 been hopeless. In the first case, the warlike tribes of 
 the North shivered the yoke of Rome, and after an agony 
 of six centuries, restored the nations. In the second 
 case, Greece rose from the dead with the New Testa¬ 
 ment in her hand, and breathed into the kindred spirits 
 of the great Teutonic races such love of free enquiry and 
 of liberty, that they rose and rent the bonds of Rome 
 and her Celtic vassals,—rent them, but at the cost of a 
 convulsion which filled the world with blood, and has 
 made mutual hatred almost the law of Christendom from 
 that hour to this. Without the help of Greece it does 
 not appear that the gate of the tomb in which Europe 
 lay would ever have been forced back. She might have 
 been pent in it for ever, like the doomed spirits in Dante 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 71 
 
 ■when the lid of their sepulchres is closed at the last day. 
 Wickliffe and John Huss spent their force against it in 
 vain. The tyranny might have been differently shared 
 between the different powers of the universal Church, 
 between Pope and Council, between Pope and King; 
 but this change would have done little for liberty and 
 truth. Nationality is not a virtue, but it is an ordinance 
 of nature and a natural bond; it does much good; in 
 itself it prevents none; and the experience of history 
 condemns every attempt to crush it, when it has once 
 been really formed. 
 
 To pass to the other grand fact with which the philo¬ 
 sophy of history deals—the succession of ages. It is 
 clear that the history of the race, or at least of the prin¬ 
 cipal portion of it, exhibits a course of moral, intellec¬ 
 tual, and material progress ; and that this progress is 
 natural, being caused by the action of desires and facul¬ 
 ties implanted in the nature of man. It is natural, but 
 it is not like any progress caused by a necessary law. It 
 is a progress of effort, having all the marks of effort as 
 clearly as the life of a man struggling and stumbling 
 towards wisdom and virtue ; and it is as being a progress 
 of effort, not a necessary development, that its incidents, 
 revealed in his history, engage our interest and touch our 
 hearts. 
 
 There seems to be nothing in the fact of progress 
 either degrading to human dignity or pampering to human 
 pride. The assertion that history began in fetichism 
 and cannibalism, is made without a shadow of proof. 
 Those states are assumed, at a venture, to have been the 
 first, because they seem to be the lowest; the possibi- 
 
72 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 lity of their being not original states, but diseases, being 
 left out of sight. As to fetichism, the first hunter or 
 shepherd who swore to another and disappointed him 
 not, though it were to his own hindrance, must have 
 felt the supernatural sanction of duty, and the eternity of 
 moral as contrasted with physical evil : and, therefore, he 
 must implicitly have believed in the two great articles of 
 natural religion,—God and the immortality of the soul. 
 It is mythology , of which fetichism is the lowest form, 
 that has its root in nature. Religion has its root in man ; 
 and man can never have been without religion, however 
 perverted his idea of God, and however degraded his 
 worship may have been. As to cannibalism, it seems to 
 be sometimes a frenzy of the warlike passions, sometimes 
 a morbid tendency engendered by the want, in certain 
 islands, of animal food. At all events, it is most unlikely 
 that the original food of man should have been that 
 which is not only the most loathsome but the most 
 difficult to obtain, since he would have to overcome an 
 animal as strong and as cunning as himself. Besides, 
 how could the human race have multiplied if they had 
 lived upon each other ? 
 
 On the other hand, as progress does not imply a state 
 worse than the brutes at the beginning, so it does not 
 imply perfection in the end ; though it is not for us to 
 limit the degree of knowledge or excellence which it 
 may have pleased the Creator to render attainable at 
 last by man. This doctrine, in truth, checks our pride 
 by putting each generation, ours among the number, in 
 its true place. It teaches us that we are the heirs of the 
 past, and that to that heritage we shall add a little, 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 73 
 
 and but a little, before we bequeath it to the future ; 
 that we are not the last or the greatest birth of time ; 
 that all the ages have not wandered in search of truth 
 that we might find it pure and whole ; that we must 
 plant in the hope that others will reap the fruit; that we 
 must hand on the torch,-—brighter, if we do our part,— 
 but that we must hand it on ; and that no spasmodic 
 effort will bring us in our span of life and labour to the 
 yet far-off goal. 
 
 But, welcome or unwelcome, the progress of humanity 
 down to the present time is a fact. Man has advanced 
 in the arts of life, in the wealth which springs from them, 
 in the numbers which they support, and with the increase 
 of which the aggregate powers and sympathies of the 
 race increase. He has advanced in knowledge, and 
 still advances, and that in the accelerating ratio of his 
 augmented knowledge added to his powers. So much 
 is clear ; but then it is said, “ The progress is intellectual 
 only, not moral; we have discoveries of the intellect 
 increasing in number and value from age to age, whose 
 authors are the proper and sole objects of the world’s 
 gratitude and love. We have no moral improvement; 
 the moral nature of man remains the same from the 
 beginning, with the same passions and affections, good 
 and evil, which it is confidently added are always in 
 equilibrium. The moral law is the same for all ages and 
 nations ; nothing has been added to the Decalogue.” 
 This theory is carried as far as it well can be when it is 
 laid down, not only that the progress of humanity is a 
 progress of the intellect alone, but that the progressive 
 virtue of the intellect lies in scepticism or doubt, the 
 
74 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 state of mind which suspends all action ; and when it 
 is further laid down that moral virtue, so far from causing 
 the progress of humanity, sometimes impedes it, the 
 proof of which is the mischief done in the world by good 
 men who are bigots,—as though bigots were good men. 
 
 That morality and man’s moral nature remain the 
 same throughout history, is true; it is true also that 
 morality and the moral nature remain the same through¬ 
 out man’s life, from his birth to his old age. But character 
 does not remain the same ; the character of the man is 
 continually advancing through life; and in like manner 
 the character of the race advances through history. The 
 moral and spiritual experience of the man grows from 
 age to age, as well as his knowledge, and produces a 
 deeper and maturer character as it grows. Part of this 
 experience is recorded in religious books, the writings of 
 philosophers, essays, poetry, works of sentiment, tales,— 
 a class of literature which must seem useless and unmean¬ 
 ing to those who hold that our progress is one of science 
 alone. Part of it is silently transmitted, with its increase, 
 through the training which each generation gives to the 
 next. We ask why the ancients thought and wrote so 
 little about the beauties of nature ? It certainly was not 
 that they lived in a land less beautiful, or saw its beauties 
 with eyes less keen than ours. But the love of natural 
 beauties is not only in the eye ; it requires a certain 
 maturity of sentiment to call out the mute sympathy 
 ■with which nature is charged for man, to lend their 
 mystery to the forest and the sea, its pensiveness to 
 evening, its moral to the year. When a modem, instead 
 of writing modem poetry, imitates, however skilfully, 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 75 
 
 the poetry of the Greeks, how great is the sacrifice of all 
 that most touches our hearts \ and yet how much that 
 is beyond the range of Greek sentiment remains ! 
 Philanthropy is a Greek word, but how wide a circle of 
 ideas, sentiments, affections, unknown to the Greeks, 
 does its present meaning embrace ! In natural religion 
 itself the progress seems not less clear. Man’s idea of 
 God must rise as he sees more of Him in His works, as 
 he sees more of Him by reflecting on his own nature, 
 (in which the true proof of natural religion lies,) and in 
 those efforts of human virtue in other men which would 
 be unaccountable if there were no God, and this world 
 were all. More and more, too, from age to age, the 
 ideas of the soul and of a future life rise in distinctness ; 
 Man feels more and more that he is a traveller between 
 the cradle and the grave, and that the great fact of life 
 is death; and the centre of human interest moves gra¬ 
 dually towards the other world. Man would perhaps 
 have been paralyzed in his early struggle with nature for 
 subsistence, had these deep thoughts then taken too 
 much possession of his mind. His earliest and coarsest 
 wants satisfied, he began to feel other wants, to think of 
 himself and his own destinies, and to enter on a distinct 
 spiritual life. Those at least began to do so who had 
 leisure, power of mind, and cultivation enough to think, 
 and the reach of whose intellects made them feel keenly 
 the narrow limit of this life. Yet the spiritual life was 
 confined to few, and even in those few it was not of a 
 very earnest kind. The Phoedo is a graceful work of 
 philosophic art, rather than a very passionate effort to 
 overcome the grave. The Greek, for the most part, rose 
 
76 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 lightly from the banquet of life to pass into that unknown 
 land with whose mystery speculation had but dallied, 
 and of which comedy had made a jest. The Roman 
 lay down almost as lightly to rest after his course of 
 public duty. But now, if Death could really regain his 
 victory in the mind of man, hunger and philosophy 
 together would hardly hold life in its course. The 
 latest and most thoroughgoing school of materialism has 
 found it necessary to provide something for man’s spi¬ 
 ritual nature, and has made a shadowy divinity out of 
 the abstract being of humanity, and a shadowy immor¬ 
 tality of the soul out of a figment that the dead are 
 greater than the living. Lucretius felt no such need. 
 
 If it could be said that there was no progress in 
 human character because the moral law and the moral 
 nature of man remain the same in all ages, it might 
 equally be said that there could be no variety in cha¬ 
 racter because the moral law and our moral nature are 
 the same in all persons. But the variety of characters 
 which our hearts, bound to no one type, acknowledge 
 as good, noble, beautiful, is infinite, and grows with the 
 growing variety of human life. It ranges from the most 
 rapt speculation to the most vigorous action, from the 
 gentlest sentiment to the most iron public duty, from 
 the lowliest flower in the poetry of Wordsworth to that 
 grand failure, Milton’s picture of the fallen Archangel, 
 who lacks the great notes of evil, inasmuch as he is not 
 mean or selfish, but is true to those who have fallen by 
 him, for them braves a worse fate than the worst, and 
 for them amidst despair wears hope upon his brow. 
 The observance of the moral law is the basis and con- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 77 
 
 dition, as the common moral nature is the rudiment, of 
 all excellence in human character. But it is the basis 
 and condition only; it is negative, whereas character is 
 positive, and wins our reverence and affection because 
 it is so. The Decalogue gives us no account of heroism 
 or the emotions it excites ; still less does it give us an 
 account of that infinite variety of excellences and graces 
 which is the beauty of history and life, and which, we 
 cannot doubt, the great and ever-increasing variety of 
 situations in history and life were intended by the Crea¬ 
 tor to produce. 
 
 If the end and the key of history is the- formation of 
 character by effort, the end and key of history are the 
 same with the end and key of the life of man. If the 
 progress of the intellect is the essential part of history, 
 then the harmony between man and history is at an end. 
 Man does not rest in intellect as his end, not even in 
 intellect of a far less dry and more comprehensive kind 
 than that which the maintainers of the intellectual theory 
 of history have in view. If all mankind were Hamlets 
 it would scarcely be a happier world. Suppose intellect 
 to be the end of Man, and all moral effort, all moral 
 beauty, even all poetry, all sentiment, must go for 
 nothing, they are void, meaningless, and vain an 
 account of the matter which hardly corresponds with 
 the meaning and fitness (not to assume design) which we 
 see in every part of the physical world. Certainly, if 
 we believe in a Creator, it is difficult to imagine Him 
 making such a world as this, with all its abysses of 
 misery and crime, merely that some of His creatures 
 might with infinite labour attain a modicum of knowledge 
 
?8 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 which can be of use only in this world, and must 
 come to nothing again when all is done. But if the 
 formation of character by effort is the end, everything 
 has a meaning, everything has a place. A certain degree 
 of material well-being, for which man naturally exerts 
 himself, is necessary to character, which is coarse and 
 low where the life of man is beast-like, miserable and 
 short. Intellect and the activity of intellect enter (we 
 need not here ask how) deeply into character. For the 
 beauty of intellectual excellence the world forgives great 
 weakness, though not vice ; and all attempts to cast out 
 intellect and reduce character to emotion, even religious 
 emotion, have produced only a type which is useless to 
 society, and which the healthy moral taste has always 
 rejected. And certainly, if character is the end of his¬ 
 tory, and moral effort the necessary means to that end, 
 (as no other means of forming character is known to us,) 
 optimism may, after all, not be so stupid as some philo¬ 
 sophers suppose ; and this world, which is plainly enough 
 so arranged as to force man to the utmost possible 
 amount of effort, may well be the best of all possible 
 worlds. 
 
 We must pause before the question how deep the 
 unity of humanity and the unity of history goes; how 
 far those who, through all the ages, have shared in the 
 long effort, with all its failures, errors, sufferings, will 
 share in the ultimate result; how far those who have 
 sown will have their part in the harvest; those who have 
 planted in the fruit; how far the future of our race, as 
 well as the past, is ours. That is.a secret that lies behind 
 the veil. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 In a former lecture I gave reasons for hesitating to 
 believe that history is governed by necessary laws. I 
 submitted that history is made up of the actions of men, 
 and that each of us is conscious in his own case that 
 the actions of men are free. I am not aware that even 
 an attempt has been made to reconcile the judgments of 
 the retrospective conscience, the belief implied in those 
 judgments that each action might have been done or 
 left undone, and the exceptional allowance which con¬ 
 science makes in the case of actions done wholly or 
 partly on compulsion, with the hypothesis that our 
 actions are subject to causation like the events of the 
 physical world. Wherein is an Alfred more the subject 
 of moral approbation than a good harvest, or a Philip 
 II. more the subject of moral disapprobation than the 
 plague ? This is a question to which I am not aware 
 that an answer has yet been given. 
 
 Still, if it could be shown that history does, as a mat¬ 
 ter of fact, run in accordance with an invariable law, we 
 might be obliged to admit that the Necessarians (so I 
 ( 79 ) 
 
8 o 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 shall venture to call them till they can find another ap¬ 
 plication for the term ‘ necessity ’) had gained their 
 cause ; though a strange contradiction would then be 
 established between our outward observation and our 
 inward consciousness. I therefore examined the hypoth¬ 
 esis of M. Comte, that the development of humanity 
 is regulated by the progress of science through the 
 successive stages of Theological, Metaphysical, and 
 Positive. I submitted that, among other antecedent ob¬ 
 jections to the theory, these three terms do not form a 
 series, Positive, that is, sound Science and Theology not 
 being successive, but co-existent, in the highest minds. 
 Other writers of the same school can hardly be said to 
 have propounded a general hypothesis. They have 
 rather brought out, and I venture to think immensely 
 exaggerated, the effects produced on the comparative 
 history of nations by certain physical influences, especi¬ 
 ally by the influence of food. I think I perceive that 
 there is a tendency among the disciples of these teachers 
 to allow that their hypotheses are incapable of verifica¬ 
 tion : but at the same time to insist that they are grand 
 generalizations, and that, being so grand, it is impossible 
 they should not point to some great truth. For my part 
 I see no more grandeur in a scientific hypothesis which 
 is incapable of verification than in the equally broad as¬ 
 sertions of astrology. I see no impossibility, but an ex¬ 
 treme likelihood, that physical science having lately 
 achieved so much, should arrogate more than she has 
 achieved, and that a mock science should thus have been 
 set up where the domain of real science ends. I think 
 this supposition is in accordance with the tendencies of 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 8 l 
 
 human nature and with the history of human thought. 
 It is all the more likely that this usurpation on the part 
 of Science should have taken place, since Theology has 
 tempted Science to usurp by long keeping her out of her 
 rightful domain. We see here, too, the reaction which 
 follows on all injustice. 
 
 I submitted, moreover, that it is difficult to see how 
 history can supply its own inductive law, since its course 
 is always advancing, the list of its phenomena is never 
 full, and, till the end of time, the materials for the in¬ 
 duction can never be complete. How often would a 
 partial observation lead physicial science to lay down 
 false laws ! 
 
 But why argue without end about that which we may 
 bring to a practical test ? If the master-science has 
 been discovered, let it shew forth its power and we will 
 believe. Let those who have studied the science of Man 
 and History predict a single event by means of their 
 science; let them even write a single page of history on 
 its method ; let them bring up one child by the rules for 
 directing and modifying moral development which it 
 gives. There is another and a higher test. Has the 
 true key to human character been found ? Then let a 
 nobler type of character be produced. Apply the science 
 of humanity, and produce a better man. 
 
 Till the law of history is not only laid down but shewn 
 to agree with the facts, or till humanity has been success¬ 
 fully treated by scientific methods, I confess I shall con¬ 
 tinue to suspect that the new science of Man is merely 
 a set of terms, such as ‘ development,’ ‘ social statics,’ 
 4 social dynamics,’ ‘organization,’ and, above all, ‘ law,’ 
 
82 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 scientifically applied to a subject to which in truth they 
 are only metaphorically applicable ; I shall continue to 
 believe that human actions, in history as in individual 
 life and in society, may and do present moral connec¬ 
 tions of the most intimate and momentous kind, but not 
 that necessary sequence of causation on which alone 
 science can be based ; I shall continue to believe that 
 humanity advances by free effort, but that it is not de¬ 
 veloped according to invariable laws, such as, when dis¬ 
 covered, would give birth to a new science. 
 
 I confess that I am not wholly unbiassed in adhering 
 to this belief. I am ready to face the conclusions of 
 true science. Let true science make what discoveries 
 it will, for example, as to the origin of life ; terrible and 
 mysterious as they may be, they will not be so terrible 
 or mysterious as death ; they can but shew us that we 
 spring from something a little higher than dust, when we 
 know already that to dust we must return. But however 
 we may dally with these things in our hours of intellectual 
 ease, there is no man who would not recoil from rendering 
 up his free personality and all it enfolds, to become a mere 
 link in a chain of causation, a mere grain in a mass of 
 being, even though the chain were not more of iron than 
 of gold, even though the mass were all beautiful and 
 good, instead of being full of evil, loathsomeness, and 
 horror. The enthusiasts of science themselves shrink 
 from stating plainly what, upon their theory, Man is, and 
 how his essence differs from that of a brute or of a tree. 
 Is he responsible ? Wherein, it must once more be 
 asked, does his responsibility consist ? Why praise or 
 blame him ? Why reward or punish him ? Why glow 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 83 
 
 with admiration at the good deeds of history, or bum with 
 indignation at the evil ? Is the moral world a reality, or 
 is it a mere phantasmagoria, a puppet-show of fate? 
 
 Some of these writers cling to the ideas, and love to 
 use the names of Spirit and of God. If spirit exists, what 
 is the spirit of man ? Did it spring together with the 
 other part of him by physical development from a monad, 
 or from a lower animal type ? We have deeply rooted 
 in our nature a conviction of the indefeasible, undying 
 nature of moral good and evil; the real proof that our 
 moral part lives beyond the grave. Is this conviction a 
 freak of our moral nature ? This God who is to reign 
 over His own world on condition that he does not 
 govern it, what is He ? The Supreme law of nature ? 
 Then let us call Him by his right name. Supposing Him 
 distinct from the law of nature, is He above it or beneath 
 it ? If He is above it, why is He bound to observe it in 
 His dealings with the spirit of man ? Why may there not 
 be a whole sphere of existence, embracing the relations 
 and the communion between God and man, with which 
 natural science has no concern, and in which her dic¬ 
 tation is as impertinent as the dictation of theology 
 in physics ? Why may not spiritual experience and an 
 approach to the divine in character be necessary means 
 of insight into the things of the spiritual world, as scien¬ 
 tific instruments and scientific skill are necessary means 
 of insight into the things of the material world ? 
 
 If you give us an hypothesis of the world, let it cover 
 the facts. The religious theory of the world covers all 
 the facts ; the physical view of the world covers the 
 physical facts alone. 
 
 6 
 
84 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 And after all, what is this adamantine barrier of law 
 built up with so much exultation between man and the 
 source from which hitherto all the goodness and beauty 
 of human life has sprung ? In the first place, what right 
 has inductive science to the term laiv? Inductive 
 science can discover at most only general facts; that the 
 facts are more than general, that they are universal, in a 
 word, that they are laws, is an assumption for which in¬ 
 ductive science, while she instinctively builds on it, can 
 herself supply no basis. I need not tell my hearers how 
 she has attempted it by the hand of a great logician, or 
 how utterly the attempt has failed. Let her weave 
 mazes of thought, observe upon observation, induce upon 
 induction as she will, she will find the ground of univer¬ 
 sal and the basis of science to be instinctive reliance in 
 the wisdom and unity of the Creator. And thus science, 
 instead of excluding the supernatural, does constant 
 homage to it for her own existence. 
 
 In the second place, what is the sum of physical 
 science? Compared with the comprehensible universe 
 and with conceivable time, not to speak of infinity and 
 eternity, it is the observation of a mere point, the experi¬ 
 ence of an instant. Are we warranted in founding any¬ 
 thing upon such data, except that which we are obliged 
 to found on them, the daily rules and processes necessary 
 for the natural life of man ? We call the discoveries of 
 science sublime; and truly. But the sublimity belongs 
 not to that which they reveal, but to that which they sug¬ 
 gest. And that which they suggest is, that through this 
 material glory and beauty, of which we see a little and 
 imagine more, there speaks to us a Being whose nature 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 85 
 
 is akin to ours, and who has made our hearts capable of 
 such converse. Astronomy has its practical uses, without 
 which man’s intellect would scarcely rouse itself to those 
 speculations ; but its greatest result is a revelation of 
 immensity pervaded by one informing mind; and this rev¬ 
 elation is made by astronomy only in the same sense in 
 which the telescope reveals the stars to the eye of the as¬ 
 tronomer. Science finds no law for the thoughts which, 
 with her aid, are ministered to man by the starry skies. 
 Science can explain the hues of sunset, but she cannot 
 tell from what urns of pain and pleasure its pensiveness 
 is poured. These things are felt by all men, felt the 
 more in proportion as the mind is higher. They are a 
 part of human nature ; and why should they not be as 
 sound a basis for philosophy as any other part ? But if 
 they are, the solid wall of material law melts away, and 
 through the whole order of the material world pours the 
 influence, the personal influence, of a spirit correspond¬ 
 ing to our own. 
 
 Again, is it true that the fixed or the unvarying is the 
 last revelation of science ? These risings in the scale of 
 created beings, this gradual evolution of planetary sys¬ 
 tems from their centre, do they bespeak mere creative- 
 force ? Do they not rather bespeak something which, 
 for want of an adequate word, we must call creative effort, 
 corresponding to the effort by which man raises himself 
 and his estate ? And where effort can be discovered, 
 does not spirit reign again ? 
 
 A creature whose sphere of vision is a speck, whose 
 experience is a second, sees the pencil of Raphael moving 
 over the canvas of the Transfiguration. It sees the pen- 
 
86 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 cil moving over its own speck, during its own second of 
 existence, in one particular direction ; and it concludes 
 that the formula expressing that direction is the secret 
 of the whole. 
 
 There is truth as well as vigour in the lines of Pope 
 on the discoveries of Newton : 
 
 “ Superior beings, when of late they saw 
 A mortal man unfold all Nature’s law, 
 
 Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape, 
 
 And shewed a Newton as we shew an ape.” 
 
 If they could not shew a Newton as we shew an ape, or 
 a Newton’s discoveries as we show the feats of apish 
 cunning, it was because Newton was not a mere intellec¬ 
 tual power, but a moral being, labouring in the service 
 of his kind, and because his discoveries were the reward 
 not of sagacity only, but of virtue. We can imagine a 
 mere organ of vision so constructed by Omnipotence as 
 to see at a glance infinitely more than could be dis¬ 
 covered by all the Newtons ; but the animal which pos¬ 
 sessed that organ would not be higher than the moral 
 being. 
 
 Reason, no doubt, is our appointed guide to truth. 
 The limits set to it by each dogmatist, at the point where 
 it comes into conflict with his dogma, are human limits ; 
 its providential limits we can learn only by dutifully ex¬ 
 erting it to the utmost. Yet reason must be impartial in 
 the acceptance of data, and in the demand of proof. Facts 
 are not the less facts because they are not facts of sense ; 
 materialism is not necessarily enlightenment; it is possible 
 to be at once chimerical and gross. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 87 
 
 We may venture, without any ingratitude to Science 
 as the source of material benefits and the training-school 
 of inductive reason, to doubt whether the great secret of 
 the moral world is likely to be discovered in her labora¬ 
 tory, or to be revealed to those minds which have been 
 imbued only with her thoughts, and trained in her pro¬ 
 cesses alone. Some indeed, among the men of science 
 who have given us sweeping theories of the world, seem 
 to be not only one-sided in their view of the facts, leaving 
 out of sight the phenomena of our moral nature, but to 
 want one of the two faculties necessary for sound investi¬ 
 gation. They are acute observers, but bad reasoners. 
 And science must not expect to be exempt from the rules 
 of reasoning. We cannot give credit for evidence which 
 does not exist, because if it existed it would be of a scien¬ 
 tific kind; nor can we pass at a bound from slight and 
 precarious premises to a tremendous conclusion, because 
 the conclusion would annihilate the spiritual nature and 
 annul the Divine origin of man. 
 
 That the actions of men are, like the events of the 
 physical world, governed by invariable law, and that 
 consequently there is an exact science of man and history, 
 is a theory of which, even in the attenuated form it is 
 now beginning to assume, we have still to seek the proof. 
 But a science of history is one thing; a philosophy of 
 history is another. A science of history can rest on 
 nothing short of causation ; a philosophy of history rests 
 upon connexion; such connexion as we know, and in 
 every process and word of life assume, that there is be¬ 
 tween the action and its motive, between motives and 
 circumstances, between the conduct of men and the effect 
 
88 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 produced upon their character, between historic ante¬ 
 cedents and their results. So far is the philosophy of 
 history from being a new discovery, that the most meagre 
 chronicle of the Middle Ages, the painted records of 
 Egyptian kings, as they show some connexion between 
 events, present the germ of a philosophy; of the philo¬ 
 sophy which, in its highest form, traces the most general 
 connexions, and traces them through the whole history 
 of man. 
 
 The philosophy of history, in its highest sense, as was 
 before said, is the offspring of a great fact which has but 
 recently dawned upon mankind. That fact is the moral 
 unity of the human race. The softening down of mere 
 dogmatic and ecclesiastical divisions between different 
 parts of Christendom, the intercourse, the moral relation, 
 the treaties and bonds ratified by common appeals to 
 God, into which Christendom has entered with nations 
 beyond its pale, have let in the conviction that virtue and 
 truth, however they may vary in their measure, are in 
 their essence the same everywhere, and everywhere divine. 
 It may be that the growth of this conviction is a more 
 potent cause of the change which we see passing over 
 the face of the world than even the final decay, now 
 visibly going on, of feudal institutions, and of the social 
 system with which they are connected. Its consequences, 
 to those who have imagined that the vital faith of man 
 rests on ecclesiastical divisions, are not unattended with 
 perplexity and dismay. But if the Churches of Hilde¬ 
 brand, Luther and Calvin are passing away, above them 
 rises that Church of pure religion and virtue to which in 
 their controversies with each other they have all impli- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 89 
 
 citly appealed, and which therefore is above them all. 
 A certain man was hung by his enemies blindfold over 
 what he supposed to be a precipice, with a rope in his 
 hands ; he clung till his sinews cracked, and he had tasted 
 the bitterness of death; then, letting go the rope, he 
 found that he had been hanging but half-a-foot from the 
 ground. 
 
 Moral discoveries are generally followed by exaggera¬ 
 tion. The unity of the human race has been exaggerated 
 into identity; and a strange vision has arisen of an aggre¬ 
 gate humanity, of which each man is a manifestation and 
 an organ, and into which we at death return; the differ¬ 
 ence between death and life being, that the one is an 
 objective the other a subjective existence. This wild 
 realism is broached, singularly enough, by a school of 
 thinkers who pour contempt on metaphysical entities. 
 It is, in fact, part of a desperate attempt to satisfy the 
 religious instincts of man and his sense of immortality, 
 when an irrational philosophy, discarding all sources of 
 truth but the observation of the outward sense, has cut 
 off the belief in the invisible world and God. Among 
 the evidences of religion the fact that the blankest scien¬ 
 tific atheism has been compelled to invent for itself a kind 
 of divinity and a kind of spiritual world, and to borrow 
 the worship of the Roman Catholic Church, will not hold 
 the lowest place. 
 
 No one can doubt, if he would, that through the life of 
 each of us there is carried a distinct line of moral identity, 
 along which the retrospective conscience runs. No one 
 can persuade himself that this line breaks off at death, so 
 that when a man dies it ceases to signify what his parti- 
 
9° 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HrSTORY. 
 
 cular life has been. No one can divest himself of the 
 sense of individual responsibility, or imagine himself, by 
 any effort of fancy, becoming a part of the mass of hu¬ 
 manity and ceasing to be himself. 
 
 It is not the less certain that we are in a real and deep 
 sense “ members one of anotherand that moral philo¬ 
 sophy may gain new truth and additional power by taking 
 the philosophy of history into its counsels, and contem¬ 
 plating not only individual humanity but the whole estate 
 of man. 
 
 The progress of the human race is a truth of which 
 everyday language is full j one which needs no logical 
 proof and no rhetorical enforcement. That the products 
 of human action, thought, contrivance, labour, do not 
 all perish with their authors, but accumulate from gener¬ 
 ation to generation, is in itself enough to make each 
 generation an advance upon that which went before it. 
 The movement of history is complex. We asked in a 
 former lecture what was its leading part, and found reason 
 to think that it was the gradual elevation of the human 
 character, to which all the other parts of the movement, 
 intellectual and material, conduce. The rival claims of 
 intellect to be the leading object in the history of hu¬ 
 manity, though strongly put forward, will scarcely bear 
 examination. Intellect may be used for good and it may 
 be used for evil; it may be the blessing of humanity or 
 the scourge ; it may advance the progress of mankind, as 
 it did when wielded by Luther, or retard it, as it did when 
 wielded by Bonaparte. Whether it shall be used for good 
 or evil, whether it shall be the blessing of humanity or 
 the scourge, whether it shall advance progress or retard 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 9 1 
 
 it, depends on the moral character of the possessor, which 
 determines its employment. And this being the case, 
 intellect must be subordinate to moral character in 
 history. 
 
 Character, indeed, seems to be the only thing within 
 the range of our comprehension for the sake of which we 
 can conceive God having been moved to create man. We 
 needlessly put a stumbling-block in our own way by im¬ 
 porting into the divine nature the stoic notion of self- 
 sufficing happiness. The highest nature which we can 
 conceive is not one which disdains, but one which needs 
 affection : and worthy affection can only spring from or 
 be excited by a character of a certain kind. The suppo¬ 
 sition that man was created to love his Creator and to be 
 the object of his Creator’s love accords with our concep¬ 
 tions both of God and man. It does not accord with 
 our conception of God to- suppose that He created man 
 with such capacity for suffering as well as for happiness, 
 and placed him in such a world as this, merely to make 
 an exhibition of His own power or to glorify Himself. 
 To make an exhibition of power belongs to the restless¬ 
 ness of mortal strength, not to the completeness and 
 calmness of Omnipotence. To seek glory belongs to 
 weak human ambition : and equivocal indeed would be 
 the glory of creation if the history of man were to be its 
 measure. One historian after another sets himself to 
 write the panegyric of his favourite period, and each 
 panegyric is an apology or a falsehood. 
 
 Our hearts acquiesce, too, in the dispensation which, 
 instead of creating character in its perfection, leaves it 
 to be perfected by effort. We can conceive no character 
 
9 2 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 in a created being worthy of affection which is not pro¬ 
 duced by a moral struggle; and on the other hand, the 
 greater the moral difficulties that have been overcome, 
 the more worthy of affection does the character seem. 
 Try to conceive a being created morally perfect without 
 effort; you will produce a picture of insipidity which no 
 heart can love. 
 
 And effort is the law, if law it is to be called, of his¬ 
 tory. History is a series of struggles to elevate the cha¬ 
 racter of humanity in all its aspects, religious, intellectual, 
 social, political, rising sometimes to an agony of aspira¬ 
 tion and exertion, and frequently followed by lassitude 
 and relapse, as great moral efforts are in the case of 
 individual men. Those who espouse the theory of neces¬ 
 sary development as the key to history are driven to 
 strange consequences. They are compelled to represent 
 the torpid sensualism of the Roman Empire as an advance 
 upon the vigorous though narrow virtue of the Republic. 
 I see not how they escape from allowing, what with their 
 historical sympathies they would not be disposed to allow, 
 that in the history of our own country the Restoration is 
 an advance upon the Puritan Republic. The facts of 
 history correspond better with our moral sense if we take 
 the view that the awakening of moral life in the race, as 
 in the man, often manifests itself in endeavours which are 
 overstrained, chimerical, misdirected, higher than the 
 general nature can sustain, and that upon these endea¬ 
 vours a reaction is apt to ensue. During the reaction 
 some of the intellectual fruits of the crisis may be gath¬ 
 ered in, but the moral nature languishes ; though the 
 elevation of the moral type gained by the previous effort 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 93 
 
 does not perish, but is gained forever, and, so far as it is 
 true, enters forever as an exalting influence into the 
 thoughts and lives of men. 
 
 But here another problem presents itself, which may be 
 beyond our power fully to solve, but as to which we can¬ 
 not forbear to ask, and may possibly obtain, some satis¬ 
 faction. In the material and intellectual world we are 
 content to see order and design. The law of gravitation, 
 the laws of the association of ideas, so far as they go, 
 perfectly satisfy our minds. But in history it is other¬ 
 wise. Here we are not satisfied with the discovery of a 
 law, whether of development or of effort; we desire, we 
 cannot help desiring, to see not only order and design, 
 but justice. 
 
 We look over history. We see the man almost piti¬ 
 lessly sacrificed to the race. Scarcely any great step in 
 human progress is made without multitudes of victims. 
 Each pulling down of worn-out institutions brings per¬ 
 plexity and suffering on that generation, however pregnant 
 with good it may be to the next. Every great change of 
 opinion is accompanied, to one generation, by the distress 
 of doubt. Every revolution in trade or industry, however 
 beneficent in its results, involves sufferings to the masses 
 which the world is long in learning how to avert. In the 
 rude commencements of government and law what evils 
 do men endure from tyranny and anarchy ! How many 
 of the weaker members of the race perish of want and cold 
 before feeble invention can bridge the gulf between savage 
 and civilized life ? 
 
 It is difficult to doubt that in the early ages of the world 
 races are brought forward to take the lead in history by 
 
94 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 the cruel test of pre-eminence in war and success in con¬ 
 quering the neighbouring races. To primitive tribes, and 
 even to nations long civilized but not yet penetrated with 
 the sense of our common humanity, conquest seems no 
 crime, but either a natural appetite or an heroic enter¬ 
 prise; and in the earliest ages the circumstances of savage 
 hordes are such that they are inevitably driven on each 
 other, or on the neighbouring nations, in quest of fresh 
 hunting-fields, new pastures, or richer and sunnier lands. 
 The human race reaps from this process a moral as well 
 as a physical benefit. There is a connexion, not clearly 
 traced,yet certain, between the stronger qualities in human 
 character, such as courage, and the tenderer qualities, such 
 as mercy, while conversely there is a certain connexion 
 between cowardice and cruelty; and the moral, as well as 
 the physical, basis of humanity, requires to be laid in forti¬ 
 tude and strength. 
 
 In philosophy and science again, the race, like the 
 man, advances by the trial of successive hypotheses, 
 which are adopted and rejected in turn till the true one 
 is at length found. In these successive trials and rejec¬ 
 tions, with the mental efforts and sacrifices they involve, 
 humanity gains, what no sudden illumination could give 
 it, large spiritual experience and a deep sense of the value 
 of truth. But error is the portion of those generations by 
 whom the false hypotheses are tried. Nor is this process 
 confined to the domain of mere intellectual truth; theories 
 of life and modes of self-culture are in like manner tried 
 and found impracticable or incomplete, at the expense of 
 thousands, among whom are often numbered the flower 
 of mankind. What effusion of blood, what rending of 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 95 
 
 affections, what misery has been undergone to try out the 
 question between different theories of society and gov¬ 
 ernment, each of which was plausible in itself! What 
 an expenditure of high and aspiring spirits was necessary 
 to prove that the monastic and contemplative life, in 
 spite of its strong natural attractions, was not practicable 
 for man ! 
 
 Cast your eyes over the world, and see how the masses 
 of men, how the majority of nations, labour not only in 
 mental but moral degradation to support a high and fine 
 type of humanity in the few. Examine any beautiful 
 work of art, and consider how coarse and dark is the life 
 of those who have dug its materials, or the materials for 
 the tools which wrought it, out of the quarry or the mine. 
 Things absolutely essential to intellectual progress are 
 furnished by classes which for ages to come the great 
 results of intellect cannot reach, and the lamp which 
 lights the studies of a Bacon or a Leibnitz is fed by the 
 wild, rude fisherman of the Northern Sea. 
 
 It is true that wherever service is rendered we may 
 trace some reciprocal advantage, either immediate or not 
 long deferred. The most abstract discoveries of science 
 gradually assume a practical form, and descend in the 
 shape of material conveniences and comforts to the 
 masses whose labour supported the discoverer in intel¬ 
 lectual leisure. Nor are the less fortunate ages of history 
 and the lower states of society without their consolations. 
 The intervals between great moral and intellectual efforts 
 have functions of their own. Imperial Rome, amidst her 
 moral lassitude, makes great roads, promotes material 
 civilization, codifies the law. The last century had no 
 
9 6 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 soul for poetry, but it took up with melody, and produced 
 the Handels and Mozarts. Lower pains go with lower 
 pleasures, and the savage life is not without its physical 
 immunities and enjoyments. The life of intense hope 
 that is lived in the morning of great revolutions, may 
 partly make up for the danger, the distress, and the 
 disappointment of their later hour. But these, if they 
 are touches of kindness and providence in Nature, wel¬ 
 come as proof that she is not a blind or cruel power, fall 
 far short of the full measure of justice. 
 
 There are nations which have lived and perished half 
 civilized, and in a low moral state, as we may be sure 
 was the case with Egypt, and have played but a hujnble 
 part, though they have played a part, in the history of 
 the world. There are races which have become extinct, 
 or have been reduced to a mere remnant, and whose only 
 work it has been to act as pioneers for more gifted races, 
 or even to serve as the whetstone for their valour and 
 enterprise in the conflict of primitive tribes. There are 
 other races, such as the negro races of Africa, which have 
 remained to the present time, without progress or appa¬ 
 rent capability of progress, waiting to be taken up into 
 the general movement by their brethren who are more 
 advanced, when, in the course of Providence, the age of 
 military enterprise is past, and that of religious and phil¬ 
 anthropic enterprise is come. They wait, perhaps, not 
 in vain ; but, in the interim, do not myriads live and die 
 in a state little above that of brutes ? 
 
 The question then is, Can we find any hypothesis in 
 accordance w'ith the facts of history which will reconcile 
 the general course of history to our sense of justice ? I 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 97 
 
 say, to our sense of justice. I assume here that man has 
 really been created in the image of God; that the mor¬ 
 ality of man points true, however remotely, to the mor¬ 
 ality of God ; that human justice is identical with divine 
 justice, and is therefore a real key to the history of the 
 world. “ If," says Clarke, “justice and goodness be not 
 the same in God as in our ideas, then we mean nothing 
 when we say that God is necessarily just and good ; and 
 for the same reason it may as well be said that we know 
 not what we mean, when we affirm that He is an intelli¬ 
 gent and wise Being; and there will be no foundation at 
 all left on which we can fix anything. Thus the moral 
 attributes of God, however they be acknowledged in 
 words, yet in reality they are by these men entirely taken 
 away ; and, upon the same grounds, the natural attributes 
 may also be denied. And so, upon the whole, this 
 opinion likewise, if we argue upon it consistently, must 
 finally recur to absolute atheism.” Either to absolute 
 atheism or to the belief in a God who is mere power, and 
 to religion which is mere submission to power, without 
 moral sympathy or allegiance. 
 
 I will not turn aside here to combat the opposite 
 theory. I will merely observe by the way that these 
 things have their history. If the doctrines of any estab¬ 
 lished Church are not absolute and final truth, its corpo¬ 
 rate interests are apt ultimately to come into collision 
 with the moral instincts of man pressing onwards, in 
 obedience to his conscience, towards the further know¬ 
 ledge of religious truth. Then arises a terrible conflict. 
 To save their threatened dominion, the defenders of 
 ecclesiastical interests use, while they can, the civil 
 
9 8 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 sword, and wage with that weapon contests which fill 
 the world with worse than blood. They massacre, they 
 burn, they torture, they drag human nature into depths 
 of deliberate cruelty which, without their teaching, it 
 could never have known; they train men, and not only 
 men but women, to look on with pious joy while frames 
 broken with the rack are borne from the dungeon of the 
 Inquisition to its pile. Uniting intrigue with force, they 
 creep to the ear of kings, of courtiers, of royal concu¬ 
 bines ; they consent, as the price of protection, to bless 
 and sanctify despotism in its foulest form; they excite 
 bloody wars of opinion against nations struggling to be 
 free. Still, the day goes against them ; humanity asserts 
 its power ; executioners fail ; sovereigns discover that it 
 little avails the king to rule the people if the Magian is 
 to rule the king ; public opinion sways the world, and 
 the hour of Philip II., of Pfere la Chaise, of Madame de 
 Maintenon, is gone never to return. Then follows a 
 hopeless struggle for the last relics of religious protection, 
 for exclusive political privileges, and for tests ; a struggle 
 in which religion is made to appear in the eyes of the 
 people the constant enemy of improvement and of justice, 
 —religion, from which all true improvement and all true 
 justice spring. This struggle, too, approaches its inevit¬ 
 able close. Then recourse is had, in the last resort, to 
 intellectual intrigue, and the power of sophistry is invoked 
 to place man in the dilemma between submission to an 
 authority which has lost his allegiance and the utter 
 abandonment of his belief in God — a desperate policy ; 
 for, placed between falsehood and the abyss, humanity 
 has always had grace to choose the abyss, conscious as 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 99 
 
 it is that to fly from falsehood, through whatever clouds 
 and darkens, is to fly to the God of truth. In weighing 
 the arguments put before us on these questions, let us 
 not leave out of sight influences whose fatal power his¬ 
 tory has recorded in her bloodiest page. 
 
 Assuming, then, that human justice is the same quality 
 as divine justice, the idea of moral waste in the divine 
 government, as displayed in history, is one in which we 
 shall never force our hearts to acquiesce. If moral beings 
 are wasted by the Creator, what is saved ? Butler, indeed, 
 suggests the analogy of physical nature, and intimates 
 that we may resign ourselves to the waste of souls as we 
 do to the waste of seeds. But in the case of the seed 
 nothing is wasted but the form ; the matter remains 
 indestructible ; while misery and despair there is none. 
 The analogy of animals, on which Butler elsewhere 
 touches in a different connexion, seems more formidable. 
 Here are beings sentient, to a certain extent intelligent, 
 and capable of pleasure and pain like ourselves, among 
 whom good and evil seem to be distributed by a blind 
 fate, regardless of any merits or demerits of theirs. The 
 only answer that can at present be given to the question 
 thus raised seems to be this : that we are not more cer¬ 
 tain of our own existence than we are that no fate or law 
 regardless of morality rules us ; and that as to animals, 
 their destiny is simply beyond our knowledge. Was 
 man to be placed in the world alone ? Was he to be 
 left without the sentiments and the moral influences 
 which spring from his relations with his mute companions 
 and helpmates ? Or could he, the heir of pain in this 
 world, be placed amidst a painless creation, without 
 7 
 
IOO 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 destroying the sympathy of things ? It may be observed, 
 too, that in the state of a large portion of the animal 
 creation there seems to be a progressive improvement, 
 not taking the form of physical development, but depend¬ 
 ing on and bearing a faint analogy to the improvement 
 of the human race. As the human race spreads over the 
 world and cultivates it, the carnivorous and ferocious 
 animals disappear, and those more peaceful and happier 
 tribes remain which are domesticated by man. If man 
 himself should become, as some seem to expect, less 
 carnivorous as he grows more civilized, his relations with 
 animals will of course become still more kindly, and their 
 lot still better. This remark does not go far ; it applies 
 only to a portion of the animal creation. But so far as 
 it goes, it tends to prove that animals are not under blind 
 physical law, but under providential care ; and it suggests 
 a sort of development, if that word is to be used, very 
 different from the organic development which a certain 
 school of science is seeking everywhere to establish. 
 Rational enquiries into the nature, character, and lot of 
 animals seem to be but just beginning to be made; and 
 in their course they may clear up part of that which is 
 now dark. Meantime, mere defect of knowledge is no 
 stumbling-block. There is a faith against reason which 
 consists in believing, or hypocritically pretending to 
 believe, vital facts upon bad evidence, when our con¬ 
 science bids us rest satisfied only with the best; but 
 there is also a rational faith which consists in trusting, 
 where our knowledge fails, to the goodness and wisdom, 
 which, so far as our knowledge extends, are found worthy 
 of our trust. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 IOI 
 
 Butler, while he built his whole system on analogy, 
 declined to enquire strictly what the logical force of 
 analogy was. The real ground of his great argument 
 seems to be this — that the dealings of the same Being 
 (in this instance the Creator) may be expected always 
 to be the same, which is true, with this momentous 
 qualification, that the thing dealt with must be the same 
 also. There is not only no assurance, there is not even 
 the faintest presumption that as God deals with seeds so 
 He will deal with lives ; or that, as He deals with mortal 
 lives, so will He deal with immortal souls. The only 
 analogy really applicable to these matters seems to be 
 that of the moral nature of man, on which its Maker has 
 impressed His own image, and which, when at its best, 
 and therefore likest Him, shrinks from the thought of 
 moral waste, and if it is compelled to inflict suffering by 
 way of punishment, does so not to destroy but to save. 
 The passage of Origen, of which Butler’s analogy is an 
 expansion, is taken from the literature of an age not too 
 deep-thinking or too deep-feeling to endure the idea of 
 an arbitrary God. To us that idea is utterly unendura¬ 
 ble. If we could believe God to be arbitrary, above the 
 throne of God in our hearts would be the throne of jus¬ 
 tice. If we translate Origen’s words into philosophic 
 language, do not they, and does not the argument which 
 Butler has based on them, come to this, — that God is 
 bound to deal with the spiritual as He deals with the 
 material world ? And if this is true, is He not a Fate 
 rather than a God ? 
 
 We cannot help divining, then, that the true hypothe¬ 
 sis of history will be one which will correspond to our 
 
102 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 sense of justice. But where can such an hypothesis be 
 found ? Is there any colour of reason for adopting a 
 view of history which would suppose a deeper commu¬ 
 nity of the human race as to its object and its destiny, 
 than common language implies, and which would stake 
 less than is commonly assumed to be staked on the 
 individual life ? 
 
 To such a view seem to point all the instincts which 
 lead man to sacrifice his individual life to his fellows, his 
 country, and, when his vision becomes more enlarged, to 
 his kind. These instincts are regardless of the state of 
 moral perfection at which he whom they propel to de¬ 
 struction has personally arrived. They do not calculate 
 whether the soldier who rushes first into the breach, the 
 man who plunges into a river to save one who is drown¬ 
 ing, the physician who loses his own life in exploring an 
 infectious disease, is, to use the common phrase, fit to 
 die. They seem distinctly to aim at a moral object 
 beyond the individual moral life, and affecting the cha¬ 
 racter of the race. Yet at the same time they give strong 
 assurance to him whose life they take that it is good for 
 him to die. 
 
 That desire of living after death in the grateful memory 
 of our kind, or, as we fondly call it, of immortality, to 
 which the enjoyment of so many lives is sacrificed, is it 
 a mere trick of nature to lure man to labour against his 
 own interest for her general objects ? Or does it denote 
 a real connexion of the generation to which the hero, the 
 writer, the founder belongs, with the generations that will 
 succeed ? 
 
 Again, what is it that persuades the lowest and most suf- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 103 
 
 fering classes of society, when the superiority of physical 
 force is on their side, to rest quiet beneath their lot, and 
 forbear from breaking in with the strong hand upon civil¬ 
 ization, which in its tardy progress will scarcely bring 
 better times to their children’s children, and has too 
 plainly no better times in store for them ? Is it not an 
 instinct which bids them respect the destinies of the 
 race ? And why should they be bidden to respect the 
 destinies of the race, if those destinies are not theirs ? 
 
 Why this close interlacing of one moral being with the 
 rest in society, if after all each is to stand or fall entirely 
 alone ? Why this succession of ages, and this long intri¬ 
 cate drama of history, if all that is to be done could have 
 been done as well by a single set of actors in a single 
 scene ? 
 
 If each man stood entirely alone in his moral life, 
 unsupported and unredeemed by his kind, nature, the 
 minister of eternal justice, would surely be less lavish of 
 individual life, and of all that is bound up in it, than she 
 is. At least, she would shew some disposition to discri¬ 
 minate. Those myriads on whom, through the accidents 
 of war, changes and failures of trade, earthquakes, plagues 
 and famines, the tower of Siloam falls, as we know they 
 are not sinners above all the Galileans, so we can scarcely 
 think that they, above all the Galileans, are prepared to 
 die. 
 
 Society is the necessary medium of moral development 
 to man. Yet even society, to serve its various needs, 
 sacrifices to a great extent the moral development of indi¬ 
 vidual men. It isvain to say that those who are put, through 
 life, to the coarsest uses, the hewers of wood and drawers 
 
io4 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 of water to the social system, can rise to the highest and 
 most refined moral ideal; though we know that in merit 
 towards society they are, and are sure that in the eye of 
 God they must be, equal to those who do. Delicacy of 
 sentiment, which is essential to our notion of the moral 
 ideal, can scarcely exist without fineness of intellect, or * 
 fineness of intellect without high mental cultivation. 
 And if we were to say that the want of that which high 
 mental culture confers is no loss, we should stultify all 
 our own efforts to promote and elevate education. Even 
 the most liberal callings carry with them an inherent bias 
 scarcely compatible with the equable and flawless perfec¬ 
 tion which constitutes the ideal. Busy action and solitary 
 thought are both necessary for the common service; yet 
 inevitable moral evils and imperfections beset alike those 
 who act in the crowd and those who think alone. Each 
 profession has its point of honour, requisite for social 
 purposes, but overstrained with regard to general morality, 
 and naturally apt to be accompanied by some relaxation 
 of the man’s general moral tone. We forgive much to a 
 soldier for valour in the field, much to a judge for perfect 
 integrity on the bench of justice; and we can hardly 
 suppose that the conscience of the soldier or the judge 
 will not admit into its decisions something of the same 
 indulgence. Did not the strictest of Universities choose 
 as her Chancellor a man of the world, a man of pleasure, 
 and a duellist, because as a soldier and a citizen he had 
 done his duty supremely well ? 
 
 Does it follow that the moral law is to be relaxed 
 on any point, or that any man is to propose to himself a 
 lower standard of morality in any respect ? No ; it only 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. I05 
 
 follows that in forming our general views of man and his 
 destiny we must limit our expectations of individual per¬ 
 fection, and seek for compensation in the advancement 
 of the kind. We must in the main look for the peculiar 
 virtues of the religious pastor elsewhere than in the 
 camp or at the bar; though when the virtues of the 
 religious blend with those of the busy and stirring life, 
 we feel that the highest aspiration of nature is fulfilled. It 
 may be that advancing civilization will soften down 
 inequalities in the moral condition of men, and diminish 
 the impediments to self-improvement which they present; 
 but we can scarcely expect that it will efface them, any 
 more than it will efface the moral differences attendant 
 upon difference of sex. 
 
 In the passionate desire to reach individual per¬ 
 fection, and in the conviction that the claims of society 
 were opposed to that desire, men have fled from society 
 and embraced the monastic life. The contemplative 
 and ascetic type of character alone seemed clear of all 
 those peculiar flaws and deformities to which each of the 
 worldly types is liable. The experiment has been tried 
 on a large scale, and under various conditions; by the 
 Buddhist ascetics; in a higher form by the Christian 
 monks of the Eastern Church; and in a higher still 
 by those of the West. In each case the result has been 
 decisive. The monks of the West long kept avenging 
 nature at bay by uniting action of various kinds with 
 asceticism and contemplation, but among them, too, cor¬ 
 ruption at last set in, and proved that this hypothesis of 
 life and character was not the true one, and that 
 humanity must relinquish the uniform and perfect type 
 
106 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 which formed the dream of a Benedict or a Francis, and 
 descend again to variety and imperfection. 
 
 Variety and imperfection are things, the first of which 
 seems necessarily to involve the second. Yet the taste 
 which prefers variety to sameness, even in the moral 
 world, is so deeply rooted in our nature, that if taste 
 means anything, this taste would seem to have its source 
 and its justification in the reality of things. 
 
 Separate, too, entirely the destinies of man from those 
 of his fellow, and you will encounter some perplexing 
 questions, not to be avoided, touching the strong cases 
 of natural depravity which occur among the most unfor¬ 
 tunate of our kind. Actual idiocy may be regarded as 
 destroying humanity altogether. But are there not natural 
 depravities, moral and intellectual, short of idiocy, which 
 preclude the attainment of any high standard of character, 
 and forbid us to make the moral destiny of these beings 
 too dependent on the individual life ? 
 
 Our common notions, which make the moral life so 
 strictly individual, seem to depend a good deal on the 
 belief that each man is, morally, not only a law but an 
 independent and perfect law to himself. But is this so ? 
 Is the voice of individual conscience independent and 
 infallible ? Do we not, in doubtful cases, rectify it by 
 consulting a friend, who represents to us the general con¬ 
 science of mankind ? Of what is it that conscience 
 speaks? Is it of abstract right and wrong? Are not 
 these conscience itself under another name ? Moralists, 
 therefore, support conscience, and give it meaning by 
 identifying it with universal expediency, with the fitness 
 of things, with the supreme will of the Creator. Univer- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 107 
 
 sal expediency and the fitness of things are ultimate and 
 distant references, if they are not altogether beyond the 
 range of our vision. The will of God as an object dis¬ 
 tinct from morality seems altogether to defy our power 
 of conception. Would conscience retain its authority if 
 it were not more immediately supported by human sym¬ 
 pathy, love, and reverence, through which the Maker of 
 us all speaks to each of us, and which are bestowed in 
 virtue of our conformity to a type of moral character 
 preserved by the opinion and affection of the race ? The 
 sympathy, love, and reverence of our kind are, at all 
 events, objects of a real desire and incitements to virtuous 
 action, which the philosophic definitions of morality, 
 however high-sounding, can scarcely be said to be. 
 
 Common language divides virtues and vices into the 
 social and the self-regarding. But are there any purely 
 self-regarding virtues or vices ? Does not temperance fit 
 us and intemperance unfit us to perform the duties of life 
 towards our kind ? Is it easy to preach temperance and 
 denounce intemperance very powerfully except by refer¬ 
 ence to the claims and opinion of society ? Would a 
 man be very clearly bound to give up an enjoyment 
 which injures himself alone? It is sometimes said of a 
 good-natured spendthrift and voluptuary that he was 
 only his own enemy. We have not to look far to see 
 that he must have been the enemy of all about him, and 
 of society. But if the statement were true it would 
 almost disarm the censure of mankind. 
 
 The question whether virtue be enlightened and deep 
 self-love, which has been rather glossed than solved, may 
 perhaps be partly solved by experiment. You preach 
 
io8 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 against incontinence, for instance, on grounds of personal 
 purity, and your preaching proves not very effective. 
 Try a different course. Preach against incontinence on 
 the ground of pity for its victims, and see whether that 
 motive will be more availing. 
 
 That there is a complete and independent moral code 
 innate in each of us, is an opinion which it is difficult to 
 hold when we see how much the special precepts of the 
 moral law have been altered by social opinion for the 
 best members of society in the course of history. Piracy, 
 wars of conquest, duelling, for example, were once ap¬ 
 proved by the moral code; they are now condemned by 
 the improved code which has sprung from the enlarged 
 moral views and more enlightened conscience of man¬ 
 kind. I say that the special precepts of the moral code 
 are altered ; I do not say that the essence of morality 
 changes. The essence of morality does not change. Its 
 immutability is the bond between the hearts of Homer’s 
 time and ours. The past is not without its image in the 
 present. Suppose a young London thief, such as Defoe 
 has painted, kind-hearted, true to his comrades in danger 
 and distress, making a free and generous use of his plun¬ 
 der, and in his depredations having mercy on the poor. 
 It is plain that the boy would be much better if he did 
 not steal, as he will himself see, directly he is taught what 
 is right. It is plain, on the other hand, that he is not a 
 bad boy, that (to apply the most practical test) you can 
 neither hate nor despise him ; that on the whole he does 
 more good than evil in the world. The evil he does 
 even to property is slight, compared with that which is 
 done by rich idlers and voluptuaries, since while he steals 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 IO9 
 
 a little they taint it all. Not that the moral law does not 
 include property as an essential precept, but that the 
 essence of morality lies deeper than the special precepts 
 of the moral law. 
 
 Where the essence of morality lies, history must wait 
 to be taught by ethical science. Till she is taught it is 
 impossible that she can form her philosophy on a sound 
 basis ; and, therefore, those who are devoted to historical 
 studies may be excused for impatiently desiring a more 
 rational enquiry into this, the central secret of the world. 
 It is not by verbal definitions, however philosophic in 
 appearance, that we shall ascertain what morality really 
 is. We must proceed by a humbler method. Does 
 morality lie in action, or in character ? Do not actions 
 similar in themselves and equally voluntary, change their 
 moral hue as they spring from one character or another ? 
 Are not crimes committed from habit, at once the least 
 voluntary and the most culpable ? and is not the para¬ 
 mount importance of character, of which habitual action 
 is the test, the account of this paradox ? Is not the same 
 action, if done by a character tending upwards, regarded 
 as comparatively good ? if by a character tending down¬ 
 wards, as comparatively evil ? Is it not, in short, as in¬ 
 dications of character, and on that account only, that 
 actions excite our moral emotions, as distinct from our 
 mere sense of social interest ? And if this be so, is it not 
 rather in character than in action that morality lies ? If 
 it is, we must analyze the phenomena of character by 
 some rational method. There are two sets of qualities, 
 one of which excites our reverence, the other our love ; 
 and which tend to fusion in the more perfect characters, 
 
no 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 but, as a character never reaches perfection, are never 
 completely fused. What is the common ingredient of 
 these two sets of qualities ? What is the common element 
 in the hero and the saint ? What connects grandeur of 
 character with grace ? What, in short, are our several 
 moral tastes, and what and how related are the different 
 points of character that attract and repel them ? In the 
 case of doubtful characters, such as that of a Wallenstein, 
 or that of an Othello, what is it that constitutes the 
 doubt ? what is it that turns the scale ? Which of the 
 vices are more, which less, destructive of beauty of char¬ 
 acter ? and what is it that determines the difference of 
 their effects ? If deliberate cruelty, for instance, is the 
 worst, the most unpardonable of vices, may it not point 
 to the prime source of moral excellence in the opposite 
 pole ? These are questions which seem at least to pre¬ 
 sent rational starting-points for enquiry, and to be capable 
 of being handled by a rational method ; and they must 
 be rationally handled before we can construct a real phi¬ 
 losophy of history—perhaps, it may be added, before 
 moral philosophy itself can become fruitful, and pass from 
 airy definition to the giving of real precepts for the treat¬ 
 ment of our moral infirmities and the attainment of moral 
 health. The school which regards history as the evolu¬ 
 tion of a physical organization under a physical law, is 
 ready with a multiplicity of hypotheses, furnished by the 
 analogy of physical science. The school which regards 
 history as the manifestation and improvement of human 
 character through free action is in suspense for want of 
 some sounder and more comprehensive account of human 
 character than has yet been supplied. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 Ill 
 
 On the other hand, history, as we have said, may lend 
 light to the moral philosopher. He cannot fail to be 
 assisted and guided by contemplating not individual 
 humanity only, but the whole estate of man. Some 
 things become palpable on the large scale, which, in ex¬ 
 amining the single instance, do not come into view or 
 may be overlooked. History forces on our notice, and 
 compels us to take reasonably into account, the weakness, 
 the necessary imperfections, the various and unequal lot, 
 the constraining circumstances, the short, precarious life 
 of man. In history, too, beside the tragic element of 
 human life, there plainly appears another element, which 
 may not be without its significance. Whenever an his¬ 
 torian gives us a touch of genuine humour, we recognize 
 in it a touch of truth. Humour, the appreciation of 
 what is comic in man and his actions, is a part of our 
 moral nature ; it is founded on a kind of moral justice ; 
 it discriminates crime from weakness ; it tempers the 
 horror which the offences of a Louis XIV. excite, with a 
 smile, which denotes the allowance due to a man taught 
 by his false position and by his sycophants to play the 
 god. In its application to the whole lot of man, and to 
 the lot of each man, it may perhaps be thought to suggest 
 that the drama is not pure tragedy, and that all is not 
 quite so terrible or so serious as it seems. 
 
 There is no doubt that all this points, not by any 
 means to a lower morality, but to a somewhat lower esti¬ 
 mate of the moral powers of individual man ; to an 
 attainable ideal, and to the deliberate love of human 
 characters in spite of great imperfections, if on the whole 
 they have tended upwards, and done, in their measure, 
 
 4 
 
11 2 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 their duty to their kind. And is not man more likely to- 
 struggle for that which is within than for that which is 
 beyond his reach ? If you would have us mount the 
 steep ascent, is it not better to shew us the first step of 
 the stairs than that w T hich is nearest to the skies ? If all 
 the rhetoric of the pulpit were to be taken as literally true, 
 would not society be plunged into recklessness, or dis¬ 
 solved in agonies of despair ? A human morality saves 
 much which an impracticable morality would throw away; 
 it readily accepts the tribute of moral poverty, the frag¬ 
 ment of a life, the plain prosaic duty of minds incapable 
 from their nature or circumstances of conceiving a high 
 poetic ideal. On the other hand, it has its stricter side. 
 It knows nothing of the merits of mere innocence. It 
 requires active service to be rendered to society. It holds 
 out no salvation by wearing of amulets or telling of beads. 
 Regarding man as essentially a social being, it bears 
 hard on indolent wealth, however regular and pious ; on 
 sinecurism in every sense ; on all who are content to live 
 by the sweat of another man’s brow. It teaches that to 
 be underpaid is better than to be overpaid; and that 
 covetousness and grasping, though they may not violate 
 the law, are a robbery, at once immoral and fatuous, of the 
 common store. 
 
 There is little fear, let us say once more, lest any man, 
 not a victim to the mad mysticism into which materialism 
 is apt to be hurried by the Nemesis of reason, should 
 imagine himself divested of his distinct personality, or of 
 his distinct personal responsibility, and merged in the 
 aggregate of humanity, or in the universe of which 
 humanity is a part. It is difficult to express such 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 ”3 
 
 reveries in the language of sane men. But that the 
 human race is, in a real sense, one; that its efforts are 
 common, and tend in some measure to a joint result; 
 that its several members may stand in the eye of their 
 Maker, not only as individual agents, but as contributors 
 to this joint result,—is a doctrine which our reason, 
 perhaps, finds something to support, and which our 
 hearts readily accept. It unites us not only in sympathy 
 but in real interest with the generations that are to 
 come after us, as well as with those that have gone 
 before us ; it makes each generation, each man, a 
 partaker in the wealth of all ; it encourages us to sow a 
 harvest which we shall reap, not with our own hands, in¬ 
 deed, but by the hands of those that come after us; it at 
 once represses selfish ambition and stimulates the desire 
 of earning the gratitude of our kind ; it strengthens all 
 social, and regulates all personal desires; it limits, and 
 by limiting sustains effort, and calms the passionate 
 craving to grasp political perfection or final truth; it fills 
 up the fragment, gives fruitfulness to effort, apparently 
 wasted, and covers present failure with ultimate success ; 
 it turns the deaths of states, as of men, into incidents in 
 one vast life; and quenches the melancholy which flows 
 from the ruins of the past,—that past into which we too 
 are sinking, just when great things seem about to 
 
 come. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES 
 OF THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 In previous lectures on the “ Study of History ” I 
 fully accepted the doctrine of Historical Progress. It is 
 obvious that the knowledge and wealth of our race 
 increase and accumulate from age to age, and that their 
 increase and accumulation re-act powerfully on the 
 moral state of man. It is less obvious, but it seems not 
 less certain, that our views of morality itself expand, and 
 that our moral code is improved, as, by the extension of 
 human intercourse, our moral relations are multiplied, 
 and as, by the advancement of science and jurisprudence, 
 they become better understood. Nor can it easily be 
 denied that this progress extends even to religion. In 
 learning more of man we learn more of Him in whose 
 image man was made; in learning more of the creation 
 we learn more of the Creator ; and everything which in 
 the course of civilization tends to elevate, deepen, and 
 refine the character generally, tends to elevate, deepen, 
 and refine it in its religious aspect. 
 
 But then it is alleged, and even triumphantly pro- 
 
 8 (115) 
 
116 THE DOCTRINE OF HrSTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 claimed, that tremendous consequences follow from this 
 doctrine. If we accept historical progress, it is said, we 
 must give up Christianity. Christianity, we are told, like 
 other phases of the great onward movement of humanity, 
 has had its place, and that a great place, in history. In 
 its allotted epoch it was progressive in the highest 
 degree, and immense veneration and gratitude are due to 
 it on that account: but, like other phases of the same 
 movement, it had its appointed term. That term it has 
 already exceeded. It has already become stationary, and 
 even retrograde; it has begun, instead of being the 
 beneficent instrument, to be the arch-enemy of human pro¬ 
 gress. It cumbers the earth; and the object of all 
 honest, scientific, free-thinking men, who are lovers 
 of their kind, should be to quicken the death-pangs into 
 which it has manifestly fallen, and remove once for all 
 this obstruction to the onward movement of the race. 
 Confusion and distress will probably attend the final 
 abandonment of “ the popular religionbut it is better 
 at once to encounter them than to keep up any longer 
 an imposture which is disorganizing and demoralizing to 
 society, as well as degrading to the mind of man ‘ Let 
 us at once, by a courageous effort, say farewell to our old 
 faith, and, by a still more courageous effort, find ourselves 
 a new one !’ A gallant resolution, and one which proves 
 those who have taken it to be practical believers in free¬ 
 will, and redeems them from the reproach of admitting the 
 logical consequences of their own doctrines touching the 
 necessary progress of humanity by way of development 
 and under the influence of invariable laws. If history 
 grows like a vegetable, or like the body of an animal, no 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 117 
 
 effort of courage can be needed, or avail, to direct its 
 growth. We have only to let well, or ill, alone. 
 
 The notion that Christianity is at this moment mani¬ 
 festly in an expiring state, or, to use the favourite language 
 of the sect, that “ the popular religion has entered on its 
 last phase,” is perhaps partly produced by the reform, or 
 attempted reform, of Christian doctrine which is at 
 present going on. This movement is supposed to be an 
 exact parallel to the attempt made by the later Platonists 
 to rationalize the popular mythology of Greece, and 
 equally ominous of approaching dissolution to the super¬ 
 stition with which its more philosophic adherents found 
 it necessary thus desperately to deal. The analogy 
 would be more just if the later Platonists, instead of 
 endeavouring to bring a sensual superstition to the level 
 of the age by violently importing into it a spiritual phil¬ 
 osophy, had endeavoured to restore it to it its primitive 
 and most sensual simplicity. Though even in that case it 
 would not be certain, without further proof, that because 
 the attempt to reform Polytheism had failed, Christianity 
 must be incapable of reform. Historical analogy, as an 
 interpreter of present events, has its uses, and it has also 
 its limits. Christianity supposes that with its Founder 
 something new came into the world. The King of Siam 
 may, after all, be about, in contradiction to the whole of 
 his experience, to see the water freeze. 
 
 If, however, they to whom I allude have rightly read 
 the present by the light of the past ; if, as they say, a 
 sound and free philosophy of history distinctly points to 
 the approaching departure of Christianity from the world, 
 a terrible crisis has indeed arrived, and one which might 
 
Il8 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 well be expected to strike their rhetorical exultation 
 dumb. They admit, I believe, that religion, or whatever 
 stands in the place of it, is the very core, centre, and 
 vital support of our social and political organization; so 
 that without a religion the civil tie would be loosened, per¬ 
 sonal would completely prevail over public motives, 
 selfish ambition and cupidity would break loose in all 
 directions, and society and the body politic would be in 
 danger of dissolution. They cry aloud, as I have said, 
 that Christianity being exploded, a new religion must be 
 produced in order to save humanity from ruin and 
 despair. Now to produce a new religion off-hand, and 
 that at a moment of the most appalling peril, and conse¬ 
 quently of the greatest mental agony and distraction, is 
 an achievement which even the most extreme believers in 
 free-will and self-exertion would scarcely think possible 
 to man. I am not aware that so much as the rudiment 
 of a new religion has yet been actually produced, unless 
 it be the Humanitarian religion of M. Comte, which is 
 merely a mad travestie of the Roman Catholic Church, 
 and from which even the disciples of the Comtist 
 philosophy, if they have any sense of the grotesque 
 remaining, turn away in despair. Thus the law of 
 human development, instead of being, like the laws dis¬ 
 covered by science, regular and beneficent, the just 
 object of our confidence as well as of our admiration, 
 has failed abruptly, and brought humanity to the brink 
 of an abyss. 
 
 It is my strong conviction that history has arrived at 
 no such crisis ; that the indications of historical philoso¬ 
 phy have been misunderstood, and that they do not 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 119 
 
 point to the impending fall, but rather to the approach¬ 
 ing regeneration of Christendom. I do not think that we 
 should refuse f o consider, in this lecture-room, a question 
 which lies at the very root of the philosophy of history, 
 merely because it happens also to be of the highest 
 practical importance. I propose, therefore, to add a few 
 remarks on this point, by way of supplement to the two 
 general lectures on the “ Study of History,” in which the 
 Doctrine of Historical Progress has been maintained. 
 
 In the first place, we are struck by the fact that sus¬ 
 tained historical progress has not been universal, as those 
 against whom I am arguing always assume, but has been 
 confined to Christian nations. For a short time the 
 Mahomedan nations seemed to advance, not merely in 
 conquering energy, but in civilization. They have even 
 been set up as the moral rivals of Christendom by those 
 who are anxious that Christendom should not appear to 
 be without a rival. But their progress was greatest where 
 they were most immediately in contact with Christianity, 
 and it has long since ended in utter corruption and ir¬ 
 revocable decay. Where is the brilliant monarchy of 
 Haroun Alraschid ? How ephemeral was it compared 
 even with that old Byzantine Empire into whose frame 
 Christianity had infused a new life under the very ribs of 
 death ; a life which even the fatal bequest of Roman 
 despotism, extending itself to the Church as well as to 
 the State, could scarcely quench, and which, through 
 ages of Mahomedan oppression, has smouldered on be¬ 
 neath the ashes to burst out again in reviving Greece. 
 Even in the Moorish communities of Spain, the flower 
 as they were of Mahomedan civilization, internal cor- 
 
120 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 ruption had prepared the way for the conquering arms of 
 Ferdinand and Isabella. Mahomedanism, however, 
 whatever the degree of progressive energy displayed by 
 it may have been, was not a separate and independent 
 religion, but a debased offspring of Judaism and Christi¬ 
 anity. From the intercourse of its founder with Jews 
 and Christians it derived the imposing Monotheism which 
 has been its strength both as a conquering power and as 
 a system of civilization; while the want of a type of 
 character, such as Christianity possesses, has been in 
 every sense its fatal weakness. Turning to the remoter 
 East, we find that its history has not been a history of 
 progress, but of the successive descents of conquering 
 races from the more bracing climate of the North, sub¬ 
 jugating the languid inhabitants of the plains, and found¬ 
 ing a succession of empires, sometimes mighty and gor¬ 
 geous, but always barren of nobler fruits, which, when the 
 physical energy of the conquering race was spent, in its 
 turn at once fell into decay. The semblance of progress, 
 in short, has been but a semblance, due merely to fresh 
 infusions of animal vigour, not to any sustaining princi¬ 
 ple of moral life. China advanced at an early period to 
 a certain point of material civilization; but having 
 reached that point she became a byeword of immobility, 
 as Egypt, the ancient China, was in a former day. 
 This immemorial stagnation seems now about to end in 
 total dissolution, unless Christian nations should infuse 
 a regenerating influence from without. The civilization 
 of Mexico is deplored by certain philosophers, who seem 
 to think that, had its career not been cut short by Spanish 
 conquest, it might have attained a great height, and con- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 I 2 I 
 
 firmed their views of history. But what reason is there 
 to think that Mexico would ever have advanced beyond 
 great buildings erected by slave labour, human sacrifices, 
 and abominable vices ? Again, we are told that the 
 Christian view of history must be narrow and false, be¬ 
 cause it does not include in its theory of human progress 
 the great negro and fetichist populations of Africa. But 
 we ought to be informed what part the negro and feti¬ 
 chist populations of Africa have really played in the pro¬ 
 gress of humanity ; or how the invariable law of 
 spontaneous development through a certain series of 
 intellectual and social conditions, which we are told gov¬ 
 erns the history of all nations, has been verified in their 
 case. The progress of ancient Greece and Rome was 
 real and high while it lasted, and Christianity has received 
 its fruit into herself. Its moral sources deserve to be 
 more accurately explored than they have yet been ; but 
 in both cases it came to an end at the moment of its 
 apparent culmination, from internal causes and without 
 hope of renewal. In both cases it sank under an empire, 
 the Macedonian in one case, that of the Caesars in the 
 other, which, whatever it may have been in its effects on 
 humanity at large, was certainly the grave of republican 
 virtue. 
 
 It is confidently said that the historical progress of the 
 most advanced nations of Europe during recent times 
 has been beyond the pale of Christendom, and that it 
 forms a conclusive proof of the exhaustion and decline of 
 Christianity. The intellect of Protestant Germany, which 
 lias played so momentous a part in the historical progress 
 of the last century, is triumphantly cited as a palpable 
 
122 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 instance of this fact. There is much which to the eye of 
 the theologian, looking to religious professions, is without 
 the pale of Christendom ; but which to the historical eye, 
 looking to moral connexions, is still within it. That in¬ 
 crease of infidelity, which is spoken of with so much 
 alarm on one side and so much exultation on the other, 
 theologically viewed, is no doubt great, especially if we 
 look not to mere numbers, but to intellectual cultivation 
 and influence; but, viewed morally, it is, considering the 
 distractions of Christendom, surprisingly small. Great 
 masses of intelligence and eminent leaders of thought in 
 all departments have been nominally and outwardly 
 estranged from Christendom by divisions of the Churches; 
 by the rending of the truth and of the means of religious 
 influence between them; by the barren and impotent 
 dogmatism into which, through their rivalries and contro¬ 
 versies, they are perpetually driving each other ; by the 
 sinister alliances of some of them with political obstruct¬ 
 iveness and injustice; by the apparent conflict which 
 their pretensions create between the claims of reason 
 and those of religious faith ; by the false ground which 
 some of them have taken in regard to the discoveries of 
 science and historical philosophy ; and most of all, per¬ 
 haps, by the contradiction which their mutual denunci¬ 
 ations produce between the palpable facts of our common 
 morality and the supposed judgments of religion. But 
 it will be found, on closer inspection, that these apparent 
 seceders from Christendom remain Christians in their 
 whole view of the world, of God, of the human 
 character and destinies ; speak a language and appeal to 
 principles and sympathies essentially Christian ; draw 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 123 
 
 their moral life from the Christendom which surrounds 
 them ; receive their wives at Christian altars ; and bring 
 up their children in the Christian faith. Many a great 
 writer who is brought forward as a proof that the intellect 
 of the age is Christian no longer, will be found, on ex¬ 
 amination, to have nothing in his writings which is not 
 derived from a Christian source. Schleiermacher appears 
 to be hailed as one of those who, by their criticisms, have 
 pronounced the doom of the “ popular religion;” 
 Schleiermacher received the Eucharist on his death-bed, 
 and died declaring that he had adhered to the living 
 spirit of Christianity rather than to the dead letter. He 
 may have been illogical ; but he cannot be said, histori¬ 
 cally, not to have been a Christian. 
 
 In France, perhaps, alone, owing to peculiar disasters, 
 not the least of which was the hypocritical re-establish¬ 
 ment of Roman Catholicism by the statecraft of Napoleon, 
 a really great estrangement of the people from Christi¬ 
 anity has taken place. And what are the consequences 
 of the estrangement to the progress of this great nation, 
 which not a century ago was intellectually at the head of 
 Europe, which seemed by her efforts to have opened a 
 new era of social justice for mankind, and which the 
 atheistical school desire now, in virtue of her partial 
 atheism, to erect into the president and arbitress of the 
 civilized world ? The consequences are a form of 
 government, not created by a supreme effort of modern 
 intellect, but borrowed from that of declining Rome, 
 which, bereft of Christian hope, immolates the future to 
 the present ; a despairing abandonment of personal 
 liberty and freedom of opinion; a popular literature of 
 
124 THE doctrine of historical progress. 
 
 heathen depravity; and a loss of moral objects of interest, 
 while military glory and material aggrandizement are 
 worshipped in their place. If this state of things is pro¬ 
 gressive, what is retrograde ? 
 
 There are three great elements of human progress, the 
 moral, the intellectual, and the productive ; or virtue, 
 knowledge, and industry. But these three elements, 
 though distinct, are not separate, but closely connected 
 with each other. There is a moral element in every 
 good work of intellect, and in every good production of 
 industry; while, on the other hand, the works of intellect 
 and the productions of industry exercise a vast influence 
 on our moral condition. It was contended in a former 
 lecture that the moral element of progress was the 
 cardinal element of the three; the direction of the 
 intellect to good objects, which leads to the attainment 
 of useful knowledge, and the self-exertion and self-denial 
 which constitute industry, being determined by morality, 
 without which the intellectual and productive powers of 
 man would be aimless and wandering forces, working at 
 random good and evil. It was also contended that the 
 formation of good moral character, the only object which 
 comprehends all the rest, and which all human actions, 
 discoveries, and productions promote and subserve, was 
 the final end of all human effort, the ultimate mark and 
 goal of human progress, and the true key to history. If 
 these positions are sound, the main questions, in deter¬ 
 mining the ultimate relation between Christianity and 
 human progress, will be, whether the Christian morality 
 is sound and universal, and whether the Christian type 
 of character is perfect and final. It is only if the Chris- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 1 25 
 
 tian morality is not sound and universal that it can be 
 discarded or transcended by the moral progress of the 
 race. It is only if the type of character consecrated in 
 the Gospels is not perfect and final that its consecration 
 can ever interfere with the aspirations of humanity 
 advancing towards the goal of purity and perfection. 
 These are the main questions; we shall also have to con¬ 
 sider whether Christianity conflicts with or discourages 
 any special kind of human progress, intellectual or 
 industrial. 
 
 What is the root and essence of moral character? 
 What is it that connects together all those moral habits 
 which we call the virtues, and warrants us in giving 
 them the collective name of virtue ? Courage, chastity, 
 and generosity are, at first sight, three different things : 
 in what respect is it that they are one ? What is the com¬ 
 mon element of moral attraction in all that vast variety 
 of character, regular or irregular, severe or tender, to 
 which, in history and life, our hearts are drawn ? Some 
 one principle there must surely be which traverses all this 
 uniform diversity, some one principle which our hearts 
 would recognise, not as a mere intellectual speculation, 
 but as the real spring of moral endeavour in themselves. 
 And if there be such a principle, it will, on our hypothe¬ 
 sis, be the key at once to the life of individual man and 
 to the history of the race. It will contain in it not only 
 a true moral philosophy, but a true philosophy of 
 history. 
 
 Now, whatever mystery may shroud the ultimate 
 source of our moral being, thus much seems tolerably 
 certain, that the seat of the moral principle in our 
 
126 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 nature is indicated and covered by the quality to which, 
 according to the intensity of its manifestation, we give 
 various names, ranging from benevolence to self-sacrifice. 
 There is, I apprehend, no special virtue which is not 
 capable of being resolved into this. To take those which 
 appear least obviously identical with benevolence— 
 courage, temperance, and chastity. Courage, when it is 
 a virtue, is the sacrifice of our personal safety to the 
 interests of our kind, which rises to its highest pitch in 
 the case of martyrdom. Temperance fits us, while in¬ 
 temperance unfits us, to perform our duty to society, 
 and spares, while intemperance wastes, the common 
 store. Chastity is, in like manner, a sacrifice of the 
 selfish animal passions to the social principle, since the 
 indulgence of lust both involves the corruption and 
 misery of its victims, and destroys in the man who 
 indulges it the capacity for pure affection. We need not 
 here discuss the question whether there is any virtue 
 which is solely and purely self-regarding. If there is, its 
 good effects must end with the individual life; it cannot 
 be one of the springs of human progress. 
 
 Benevolence may of course take as many special forms, 
 and produce as great a variety of benevolent characters, 
 as there are social and unselfish objects in the world. 
 It may be the advocacy of a particular cause or prin¬ 
 ciple ; it may be the pursuit of a particular ideal : both 
 the cause or principle and the ideal being matters of 
 common interest and tending to the common good. It 
 may be the devotion to science or art, as the instruments 
 of human improvement and happiness, which forms the 
 moral side of the intellectual life. It may be extended 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 I27 
 
 in its scope to the whole human race, and labour for the 
 universal good of man ; or it may be limited to the 
 narrow circle of a nation, a guild, a family, through 
 whom, however, it does indirectly and unconsciously 
 embrace mankind. It is sure to be affected, and almost 
 sure to be somewhat distorted in its special character, by 
 the position of each man in life, and to shew itself as a 
 peculiar self-devotion to country in the case of the good 
 soldier, and as a peculiar self-devotion to the interests 
 of justice in the case of the good judge. Hence arise a 
 multiplicity of derivative and secondary virtues, and an 
 infinite variety of characters, of each of which some deri¬ 
 vative and secondary virtue is the peculiar stamp. But 
 multiform as these virtues and characters are, it wfill be 
 found that they are uniform also ; that, upon examina¬ 
 tion, they may all be reduced to benevolence in one 
 or other of its various degrees; and that on this principle 
 the moral philosopher and the educator, if they w-ould 
 attain to real results, must take their stand. In the same 
 manner, I apprehend that the approbation and affection 
 which benevolence obtains for us, these, and not any¬ 
 thing more individual or more transcendental, are the 
 real earthly assurance and support of virtue, the earthly 
 object of virtuous endeavours, the supreme happiness of 
 our earthly life. What these foreshadow, and how they 
 foreshadow it, is not a fit subject of inquiry here; but 
 certainly the Gospel holds out a social, not an individual 
 heaven. 
 
 In a former lecture the question was raised whether 
 morality lies in action or in character, and whether 
 our approbation of moral actions is translated from 
 
128 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 action to character, or from character to action. Some 
 reasons were given for inclining to believe that it is in 
 character rather than in action that morality lies. It is 
 said, on the other hand, that character is only a formed 
 disposition to act in a particular way, and that our 
 approbation attaches to good character only as the 
 source, actual or presumptive, of good action. I reply, 
 that character is not only a disposition to act, it is a dis¬ 
 position to feel and to participate in certain emotions; 
 emotions which are sometimes incapable of being 
 translated into action. You would not say that a man’s 
 character was perfect who should be incapable of sym¬ 
 pathizing in the emotions produced by the most glorious 
 or the most tender visions of nature ; and yet what 
 special action can flow from such sympathies as these? 
 Does the presence of a beloved friend give us pleasure 
 merely as implying a likelihood of his active benefi¬ 
 cence ? And again, what presumption of active benefi¬ 
 cence can there be in the case of the dead, our affection 
 for whose characters often survives the grave ? This 
 passive element in character, generally called sensibility, 
 seems to be a main source of poetry and art, which play 
 so important a part in human life and history. Now a 
 character formed on benevolence, as it implies not only 
 action, but affection and the power of sympathy, does 
 embrace a passive as well as an active element, or 
 rather, it presents a passive as well as an active phase ; 
 and in this respect again it seems to be perfect, uni¬ 
 versal, and final. A character formed on the moral basis 
 propounded by Gibbon, the love of pleasure and the 
 love of action, would fail, among other things, in not 
 having a sympathetic side. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 1 29 
 
 Now Christianity rests on one fundamental moral 
 principle, as the complete basis of a perfect moral char¬ 
 acter, that principle being the love of our Neighbour, 
 another name for Benevolence. And the type of Char¬ 
 acter set forth in the Gospel history is an absolute em¬ 
 bodiment of Love both in the way of action and affection, 
 crowned by the highest possible exhibition of it in an act 
 of the most transcendent self-devotion to the interest of 
 the human race. This being the case, it is difficult to see 
 how the Christian morality can ever be brought into an¬ 
 tagonism with the moral progress of mankind ; or how the 
 Christian type of character can ever be left behind by the 
 course of human development, lose the allegiance of the 
 moral world, or give place to a newly emerging and 
 higher ideal. This type, it would appear, being perfect, 
 will be final. It will be final, not as precluding future 
 history, but as comprehending it. The moral efforts of 
 all ages, to the consummation of the world, will be efforts 
 to realize this character, and to make it actually, as it is 
 potentially, universal. While these efforts are being 
 carried on under all the various circumstances of life and 
 society, and under all the various moral and intellectual 
 conditions attaching to particular men, an infinite variety 
 of characters, personal and national, will be produced; 
 a variety ranging from the highest human grandeur down 
 to the very verge of the grotesque. But these characters, 
 with all their variations, will go beyond their source and 
 their ideal only as the rays of light go beyond the sun. 
 Humanity, as it passes through phase after phase of the 
 historical movement, may advance indefinitely in excel¬ 
 lence; but its advance will be an indefinite approximation 
 
130 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 to the Christian type. A divergence from that type, to 
 whatever extent it may take place, will not be progress, 
 but debasement and corruption. In a moral point of 
 view, in short, the world may abandon Christianity, but 
 it can never advance beyond it. This is not a matter of 
 authority, or even of Revelation. If it is true, it is a 
 matter of reason as much as anything in the world. 
 
 There are many peculiarities arising out of personal and 
 historical circumstances, which are incident to the best 
 human characters, and which would prevent any one of 
 them from being universal or final as a type. But the 
 type set up in the Gospels as the Christian type seems 
 to have escaped all these peculiarities, and to stand out 
 in unapproached purity as well as in unapproached per¬ 
 fection of moral excellence. 
 
 The good moral characters which we see among men 
 fall, speaking broadly, into two general classes ; those 
 which excite our reverence and those which excite our 
 love. These two classes are essentially identical, since 
 the object of our reverence is that elevation above selfish 
 objects, that dignity, majesty, nobleness, appearance of 
 moral strength which is produced by a disregard of selfish 
 objects in comparison with those which are of a less self¬ 
 ish and therefore of a grander kind. But though essentially 
 identical, they form, as it were, two hemispheres in the 
 actual world of moral excellence ; the noble and the 
 amiable, or, in the language of moral taste, the grand and 
 the beautiful. Being, however, essentially identical, they 
 constantly tend to fusion in the human characters which 
 are nearest to perfection, though, no human character 
 being perfect, they are never actually fused. Now, if the 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 131 
 
 type proposed in the Gospels for our imitation were 
 characteristically noble or characteristically amiable, 
 charcteristically grand or characteristically beautiful, it 
 might have great moral attractions, but it would not be 
 universal or final. It would belong to one peculiar 
 hemisphere of character, and even though man might not 
 yet actually have transcended it, the ideal would lie be¬ 
 yond it; it would not remain for ever the mark and goal 
 of our moral progress. But the fact is, it is neither 
 characteristically noble and grand, nor characteristically 
 amiable and beautiful; but both in an equal degree, per¬ 
 fectly and indistinguishably, the fusion of the two classes 
 of qualities being complete, so that the mental eye, 
 though it be strained to aching, cannot discern whether 
 that on which it gazes be more the object of reverence 
 or of love. 
 
 There are differences again between the male and 
 female character, under which, nevertheless, we divine 
 that there lies a real identity, and a consequent ten¬ 
 dency to fusion in the ultimate ideal. Had the Gospel 
 type of character been stamped with the peculiar marks 
 of either sex, we should have felt that there was an 
 ideal free from those peculiarities beyond it. But this is 
 not the case. It exhibits, indeed, the peculiarly male 
 virtue of courage in the highest degree, and in the form 
 in which it is most clear of mere animal impetuosity and 
 most evidently a virtue; but this form is the one 
 common to both sexes, as the annals of martyrdom 
 prove. The Roman Catholics have attempted to conse¬ 
 crate a female type, that of the Virgin, by the side of 
 that which they take to be characteristically male. But 
 9 
 
I32 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 the result obviously is a mutilation of the original type, 
 which really contained all that the other is supposed 
 to supply ; and the creation of a second type which has 
 nothing distinctive, but is, in its attributes as well as in 
 its history, merely a pale and partial reflection of the 
 first. 
 
 There is an equally notable absence of any of the 
 peculiarities which attend particular callings and modes 
 of life, and which, though so inevitable under the cir¬ 
 cumstances of human society that we have learnt to 
 think them beauties, would disqualify a Character for 
 being universal and the ideal. The Life depicted in the 
 Gospel is one of pure beneficence, disengaged from 
 all peculiar social circumstances, yet adapted to all. 
 In vain would the Roman Catholic priest point to it 
 as an example of a state like his own ; the circumstances 
 of Christ’s life and mission repel any inferences of 
 the kind. 
 
 The Christian type of Character, if it was constructed 
 by human intellect, was constructed at the confluence of 
 three races, the J ewish, the Greek, and the Roman, each 
 of which had strong national peculiarities of its own. A 
 single touch, a single taint of any one of those pecu¬ 
 liarities, and the character would have been national, not 
 universal; transient, not eternal: it might have been the 
 highest character in history, but it would have been dis¬ 
 qualified for being the ideal. Supposing it to have been 
 human, whether it were the effort of a real man to attain 
 moral excellence, or a moral imagination of the writers 
 of the Gospels, the chances, surely, were infinite against 
 its escaping any tincture of the fanaticism, formalism, 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 133 
 
 and exclusiveness of the Jew, of the political pride of 
 the Roman, of the intellectual pride of the Greek. Yet 
 it has entirely escaped them all. 
 
 Historical circumstances affect character sometimes 
 directly, sometimes by way of reaction. The formalism 
 of the Pharisees might have been expected to drive any 
 character with which it was brought into collision into 
 the opposite extreme of laxity; yet no such effect can be 
 discerned. Antinomianism is clearly a deflection from 
 the Christian pattern, and the offspring of a subsequent 
 age. 
 
 The political circumstances of Judaea, as a country 
 suffering from the oppression of foreign conquerors, 
 were calculated to produce in the oppressed Jews either 
 insurrectionary violence (which was constantly breaking 
 out) or the dull apathy of Oriental submission. But the 
 Life which is the example of Christians escaped both 
 these natural impressions. It was an active and decisive 
 attack on the evils of the age; but the attack was 
 directed not against political tyranny or its agents, but 
 against the moral corruption which was its source. 
 
 There are certain qualities which are not virtues in 
 themselves, but are made virtues by time and circum¬ 
 stance. and with their times and circumstances pass 
 away; yet, while they last, are often naturally and almost 
 necessarily esteemed above those virtues which are most 
 real and universal. These factitious virtues are the 
 offspring for the most part of early states of society, and 
 the attendant narrowness of moral vision. Such was 
 headlong valour among the Northmen. Such was, and 
 is, punctilious hospitality among the tribes of the Desert. 
 
134 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 Such was the fanatical patriotism of the ancients, which 
 remained a virtue, while the nation remained the largest 
 sphere of moral sympathy known to man,—his vision 
 not having yet embraced his kind. The taint of one of 
 these factitious and temporary virtues would, in the eye 
 of historical philosophy, have been as fatal to the perfec¬ 
 tion and universality of a type of character as the taint 
 of a positive vice. Not only the fellow-countrymen, but 
 the companions and Apostles of Christ were, by the 
 account of the Gospels, imbued with that Jewish patriot¬ 
 ism, the fanatical intensity of which disgusted even the 
 ancient world. They desired to convert their Master 
 into a patriot chief, and to turn His universal mission 
 into one for the peculiar benefit of His own race. . Had 
 they succeeded in doing so, even in the slightest degree, 
 —or to take a different hypothesis, had those who con¬ 
 structed the mythical character of Christ admitted into it 
 the slightest tinge of a quality which they could hardly, 
 without a miracle, distinguish from a real virtue,—the 
 time would have arrived when, the vision of man being 
 enlarged, and his affection for his country becoming 
 subordinate to his affection for his kind, the Christian 
 type would have grown antiquated, and would have 
 been left behind in the progress of history towards a 
 higher and ampler ideal. But such is not the case. A 
 just affection for country may indeed find its prototype 
 in Him who wept over the impending destruction of 
 Jerusalem, and who offered the Gospel first to the Jew : 
 but His character stands clear of the narrow partiality 
 which it is the tendency of advancing civilization to dis¬ 
 card. From exaggerated patriotism and from exagge- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 135 
 
 rated cosmopolitanism the Christian Example is equally 
 free. 
 
 Asceticism, again, if it has never been a virtue, even 
 under exceptional circumstances, is very easily mistaken 
 for one, and has been almost universally mistaken for 
 one in the East. There are certain states of society,— 
 such, for example, as that which the Western monks 
 were called upon to evangelize and civilize by their 
 exertions,—in which it is difficult to deny the usefulness 
 and merit of an ascetic life. But had the type of charac¬ 
 ter set before us in the Gospel been ascetic, our 
 social experience must have discarded it in the long run; 
 as our moral experience would have discarded it in 
 the long run had it been connected with those formal 
 observances into the consecration of which asceticism 
 almost inevitably falls. But the type of character set 
 before us in the Gospels is not ascetic, though it is 
 the highest exhibition of self-denial. Nor is it connected 
 with formal observances, though, for reasons which are 
 of universal and permanent validity, it provisionally con¬ 
 descends to the observances established in the Jewish 
 Church. The character of the Essenes, as painted by 
 Josephus, which seems to outvie the Christian character 
 in purity and self-denial, is tainted both with asceticism 
 and formalism, and though a lofty and pure conception, 
 could not have been accepted by man as permanent and 
 universal. 
 
 Cast your eyes over the human characters of history, 
 and observe to how great an extent the most soaring 
 and eccentric of them are the creatures of their country 
 and their age. Examine the most poetic of human 
 
136 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 visions, and mark how closely they are connected, either 
 by way of direct emanation or of reaction, with the 
 political and social circumstances amidst which they 
 were conceived; how manifestly the Utopia of Plato is 
 an emanation from the Spartan commonwealth; how 
 manifestly the Utopia of Rousseau is a reaction against 
 the artificial society of Paris. What likelihood, then, 
 was there that the imagination of a peasant of Galilee 
 would spring at a bound beyond place and time, and 
 create a type of character perfectly distinct in its per¬ 
 sonality, yet entirely free from all that entered into 
 the special personalities of the age ; a type which satis¬ 
 fies us as entirely as it satisfied him, and which, as far as 
 we can see or imagine, will satisfy all men to the end of 
 time. 
 
 The character of Mahomet, and the character which 
 is represented by the name of Buddha, were no doubt 
 great improvements in their day on anything which had 
 preceded them among the races out of which they arose. 
 But the character of Mahomet was deeply tainted with 
 fierce Arab enterprise, that of Buddha with languid East¬ 
 ern resignation : and all progress among the nations by 
 which these types were consecrated has long since come 
 to an end. 
 
 M. Comte has constructed for his sect a whimsical 
 Calendar of historic characters, in imitation of the Ro¬ 
 man Catholic Calendar of Saints. Each month and each 
 day is given to the historic representative of some great 
 achievement of humanity. Theocracy is there, repre¬ 
 sented by Moses, ancient poetry by Homer, ancient 
 philosophy by Aristotle, Roman Civilization by Caesar, 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 137 
 
 Feudal Civilization by Charlemagne, and so forth ; the 
 ancient saints having their modern counterparts, and 
 each having a crowd of minor saints belonging to the 
 same department of historical progress in his train. Ca¬ 
 tholicism is there, represented somewhat strangely by 
 St. Paul instead of St. Peter. Christianity is not there : 
 neither is Christ. It cannot be asserted that a person 
 circumstantially mentioned by Tacitus is less historical 
 than Prometheus, Orpheus, and Numa, who all appear 
 in this Calendar; and the allegation that there is no 
 Christianity but Catholicism, and that St. Paul, not 
 Christ, was its real founder, is too plainly opposed to 
 facts to need discussion. The real reason, I apprehend, 
 is that Christianity and its Author, though unquestion¬ 
 ably historical, have no peculiar historical characteristics, 
 and no limited place in history. And are we to believe 
 that men whose culture was so small, and whose range 
 of vision was necessarily so limited as those of the first 
 Christians, produced a character which a French atheist 
 philosopher of the nineteenth century finds himself una¬ 
 ble to treat as human, and place, in its historical relations, 
 among the human benefactors of the race ? Do you ima¬ 
 gine that it is from respect for the feelings of Christian 
 society that M. Comte hesitates to put this name into his 
 Calendar, beside the names of Csesar and Frederic the 
 Great ? The treatise in which the Calendar is given 
 opens with an announcement that M. Comte, by a deci¬ 
 sive proclamation, made at what he is pleased to style the 
 memorable conclusion of his course of lectures, has inau¬ 
 gurated the reign of Humanity and put an end to the 
 reign of God. 
 
138 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 The essence of man’s moral nature, clothed with a per¬ 
 sonality so vivid and intense as to excite through all ages 
 the most intense affection, yet divested of all those pecu¬ 
 liar characteristics, the accidents of place and time, by 
 which human personalities are marked,-—what other no. 
 tion than this can philosophy form of Divinity manifest 
 on earth ? 
 
 The acute and candid author of “ The Soul” and the 
 '• Phases of Faith ” has felt, though he has not clearly 
 expressed, the critical importance of this question. He 
 has felt that a perfect type of character was the essence 
 of a practical religion, and that if the Christian type was 
 perfect it would be hopeless to set up a new religion be¬ 
 side it. Accordingly he tries to point out imperfections 
 in the character of Christ ; and the imperfections which 
 he points out are two in number. The first is the exhi¬ 
 bition of indignation against the hypocritical and soul- 
 murdering tyranny of the Pharisees. This is surely a 
 strange exception to be taken by one who is himself a 
 generous denouncer of tyranny and oppression. I have 
 little doubt that had no indignation against sanctimoni¬ 
 ous crime been exhibited, its absence would have been 
 seized upon as a proof of imperfect humanity. The 
 second defect alleged is the absence of mirth, and of 
 laughter as its natural and genial manifestation. This 
 objection, though it grates strangely on our ears, is not 
 unreasonable. Mirth is a real part of our moral nature, 
 significant as well as the rest. The great ministers of 
 pure and genial mirth, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Moliere, 
 have fulfilled a mission of mercy and justice as well as of 
 pleasure to mankind, and have their place of honour in 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 139 
 
 history with the other great benefactors of the race. And, 
 on the other hand, the attempts to expel mirth from hu¬ 
 man life and character made by certain austere sects, have 
 resulted not only in moroseness but in actual depravity. 
 If this element of good in history is really alien to the 
 Christian type, the Christian type is imperfect; we shall 
 have a moral life beside it and beyond it, and at a cer¬ 
 tain point we shall become aware of its imperfection, and 
 our absolute allegiance to it will cease. But before de¬ 
 termining this question, the objector would have done 
 well to inquire what mirth really was ; whether it was a 
 radically distinct feeling, or only a phase of feeling ; and 
 whether laughter was of its essence or only an accident ? 
 Mirth, pity and contempt seem to be three emotions 
 which are all excited by human weakness. To weakness 
 add suffering, and mirth is turned to pity ; add vice, and 
 mirth is turned to contempt. Mirth itself is excited by 
 weakness alone, which it discriminates alike from the 
 weakness of vice on the one hand, and from weakness 
 attended by suffering on the other. The expression of 
 contempt is a sarcastic laughter, akin to the laughter of 
 mirth, and the milder form of pity betrays itself in a 
 smile. There is, moreover, evidently a close connexion 
 between laughter and tears. Pity, not mirth, would be 
 the characteristic emotion of one who was brought habi¬ 
 tually into contact with the weakness of humanity in the 
 form of suffering ; but the same power of sympathy would 
 render him capable of genial mirth if brought into con¬ 
 tact with weakness in a merely grotesque and comic form. 
 According as the one or the other was his lot, his charac¬ 
 ter would take a brighter or a sadder hue; but we cannot 
 
140 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 help feeling that the lot of man here, having more in it 
 of the painful than of the laughable, the sadder character 
 is the more sympathetic, the more human, and the deeper 
 of the two. That a feeling for human weakness is want¬ 
 ing in the type of Character presented to us by the Gos¬ 
 pels, will hardly be affirmed ; though the feeling takes 
 the sadder and deeper form ; the gayer and brighter form 
 being obviously excluded by the circumstances of the 
 case, as the Gospel history sets it forth. Perhaps, indeed, 
 the exclusion is not so absolute but that a trace of the 
 happier emotion may be discerned. Just at the point 
 where human mirth passes into pity there is a shade of 
 tender irony, which forms the good element of the whole 
 school of sentimental humourists, such as Sterne and Car¬ 
 lyle, and which has, for its exciting cause, the littleness 
 and frailty of man’s estate. This shade of irony is per¬ 
 haps just perceptible in such passages as that which com¬ 
 pares the laborious glory of Solomon with the unlaboured 
 beauty of the lilies of the field ; a passage by which Mr. 
 Carlyle is strongly attracted, and in which he evidently 
 recognises the root of that which is true in his own view 
 of the world. It would seem then that mirth, humour, 
 the great masters of mirth and humour, and the whole of 
 that element in the estate and history of man, are not 
 beyond the Christian type of character, but within it. 
 
 Mr. Newman has attempted to deny not only that the 
 Christian type of Character is perfect, but that it is unique. 
 What character then in history is its equal ? If a rival 
 can be found, the allegiance of humanity may be divided 
 or transferred. Mr. Newman fixes, evidently with some 
 misgiving, and without caring accurately to verify a youth- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 141 
 
 ful recollection, on the character of Fletcher of Madeley. 
 Fletcher’s character was no doubt one of remarkable 
 beauty, and certainly not wanting in righteous indigna¬ 
 tion against Pharisees. But being that of an Evangelical 
 Divine, it was produced, not independently, but by a con¬ 
 stant imitation of the Character of Christ. Mr. Newman 
 should have gone elsewhere for an independent instance; 
 to the School of Socrates, to the School of Eoman Stoi¬ 
 cism, to the Court and Camp of Bonaparte. He knows 
 history too well. 
 
 The truth is, that Sectarianism has narrowed not only 
 the pale of Christianity, but the type of Christian charac¬ 
 ter ; and made men think of it as a rigid, austere, priestly, 
 or puritanic mould, shutting out the varied grandeur, 
 beauty, and beneficence of history: so that a schism has 
 been produced between the consecrated type and the 
 heart of man. There are in history a multitude of mixed 
 characters, often of a very fascinating kind. In these we 
 must separate the good from the evil before we pronounce 
 that the good does not belong to Christianity. I will take 
 a mixed character which I have more than once used as 
 an illustration before, and to which all historians have 
 been strongly attracted in spite of its great defects, — the 
 character of Wallenstein. If that which is a real object 
 of moral admiration in Wallenstein can be shewn to ba* 
 Christian, as crucial an experiment as it is easy to devise 
 will have been successfully performed. But we must 
 begin by examining the character closely, and set aside 
 those parts of it which are not the real objects of moral 
 admiration. In the first place we must set aside the 
 mere irregularity, which has in it nothing moral, but by 
 
142 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 which we are fascinated in no slight degree. When 
 morality is presented to us in itself, as the object of our 
 moral affections, we cannot help entirely loving it; but 
 when it is presented to us as a formal law, we cannot 
 help a little hating it: and we are pleased when we are 
 able to rebel against its letter, with the spirit, or some 
 semblance of it, on our side ; a feeling which is the real 
 talisman of all that school of sentimental literature of 
 which Byron is the chief. In the second place, we must 
 set aside Wallenstein’s reserve and loneliness, qualities 
 which please us partly because they excite our curiosity 
 and stimulate our social affections by a sort of half-denial, 
 partly also because, from experience, they raise in us an 
 expectation of real moral excellences, strength of mind, 
 and that capacity for warm affection which often lurks in 
 the most reserved characters while it is wanting in the 
 least reserved. We must set aside again mere intellec¬ 
 tual power, which is never the object of moral admiration 
 except as the instrument, actual or presumptive, of moral 
 virtue. The darker parts of Wallenstein’s character, his 
 violence and his unscrupulousness, are set aside without 
 question: no one can worship them but the wicked or 
 the delirious. There remains the majesty of his charac¬ 
 ter, crowned by his proud and silent death. Now this 
 majesty was produced by sacrificing the lower and meaner 
 appetites and passions, above all, the passion of fear, to 
 a moral ideal, which, such as it was, Wallenstein struggled 
 to attain. The ideal was to a great extent a false one, 
 and deeply tainted by the absence of religious sentiment 
 to which a great man placed in the midst of bigots and 
 Jesuits was naturally reduced. But it was an ideal; and 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 143 
 
 the pursuit of an ideal, though it be that of a Cynic, is 
 essentially the pursuit of an unselfish object; it is an en¬ 
 deavour to elevate humanity at the expense of the selfish 
 appetites of the individual man. The end of such endea¬ 
 vours is a common good. It is an addition to the high 
 examples and the nobleness of the world. Nor is the 
 reward anything but the affection of man, which proud, 
 high characters only seek more deeply when they seem 
 perhaps, even to themselves, to scorn and repel it. The 
 case may be put in other, probably in more exact and 
 truer terms, but I do not think it can be put so as to 
 make it anything but a case of self-denial and self-sacri¬ 
 fice ; and if it be a case of self-denial and self-sacrifice, 
 it belongs to the Christian type. To the same type 
 unquestionably belongs that resignation in death which 
 so deeply moves our hearts as a victory over our great 
 common enemy, and which completes the historical fig¬ 
 ure of Wallenstein. His acts of mercy, his protests 
 against cruel persecution, the traits of his conjugal affec¬ 
 tion, need no reconciling explanation to bring them with¬ 
 in the Christian pale. 
 
 History will trace a moral connexion, where it really 
 exists, through all intellectual divisions and under all 
 eclipses of intellectual faith. In her eyes Christendom 
 remains morally one, though divided, ecclesiastically, by 
 a thousand accidents, by a thousand infirmities, by a 
 thousand faults. 
 
 It is said that Voltaire and Rousseau were great 
 contributors to human progress ; and that they were not 
 Christians, but enemies to Christianity and outcasts from 
 the Christian pale. I admit that Voltaire and Rousseau, 
 
• 144 THE DOCTRINE of historical progress. 
 
 in spite of the fearful mischief which every rational man 
 must admit them to have done, were contributors to 
 human progress, but I deny that so far as they were 
 contributors to human progress they were enemies to 
 Christianity, or outcasts from the Christian pale. Vol¬ 
 taire contributed to human progress in spite of his 
 unchristian levity, mockery, vanity, and obscenity, by 
 preaching Christian beneficence, Christian toleration, 
 Christian humanity, Christian hatred of Pharisaical 
 oppression. Rousseau contributed to human progress in 
 spite of his unchristian impurity, and the egotistical mad¬ 
 ness from which practical Christianity would have saved 
 him, by preaching Christian brotherhood and Christian 
 simplicity of life. Rousseau’s writings are full of the Gos¬ 
 pel. His theory of the world is couched in distinctly 
 Gospel language, and put into the mouth of a Christian 
 minister. Voltaire railed against what he imagined was 
 Christianity, but you see in a moment it was not the 
 real Christianity; it was the Christianity of the false, cor¬ 
 rupt, and persecuting State Church of France, the Chris¬ 
 tianity which recalled the Edict of Nantes, which 
 inspired the Dragonades, which, in the abused name of 
 the religion of love, murdered Calas and La Barre. 
 Whom did Voltaire call the best of men? Of whom did 
 he say, with an earnestness to which his nature was 
 almost a stranger, that he loved them, and that, if he 
 could, he would pass the rest of his life among them in a 
 distant land? It was not the philosophers of Paris or 
 Berlin of whom he spoke thus, but the Quakers, with 
 whose sect, then in its happiest hour, he had come into 
 contact during his residence in England, and whose 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 145 
 
 benevolence, tolerance, and gentle virtues he recognises 
 as identical at once with those of the Primitive Chris¬ 
 tians and with his own. 
 
 The French Revolution again, with all its crimes and 
 follies, must, up to a certain point in its course, be 
 accepted as a step, though a sinister and equivocal step, 
 in the progress of mankind. But we have brought all 
 that was good in the French Revolution, — its aspirations 
 after universal brotherhood, and a universal reign of 
 liberty and justice, — into the pale of moral Christianity 
 with Rousseau and Voltaire. From no other source than 
 Christianity was derived the genuine spirit of self- 
 devotion which, it is vain to doubt, sent forth on a 
 crusade for the freedom and happiness of man, the best 
 soldiers of the Revolutionary armies, — those of whom 
 Hoche and Marceau were the gentle, brave, and chival¬ 
 rous types. On the other hand, it was not from Chris¬ 
 tianity, but from a dark depravation of Christianity, 
 abhorred by all in whom the graces of the Christian 
 character are seen, that the Montagnards derived that 
 lust of persecution which reproduced the Inquisition 
 and its butcheries in the Committee of Public Safety 
 and the Reign of Terror. There are men, neither mad 
 nor wicked, to whom the enthusiasts of the Jacobin Club 
 are still objects of fervent admiration. Such a feeling is 
 strange, but not unaccountable. The account of it is to 
 be found in the faint tradition of Christian fraternity 
 which passed from the Gospel through Rousseau to 
 Robespierre and St. Just, and which has redeemed even 
 these sinister names from the utter execration of history. 
 Deep as was the abyss of crime into which those fanatics 
 
146 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 fell, there was a deeper abyss beyond. All influence of 
 Christianity was indeed gone when the lives of millions 
 and the hopes of a world were sacrificed, not to any 
 political or social visions, however chimerical, but to the 
 utterly selfish and utterly atheistic ambition of Napoleon. 
 The worship of that conqueror by the nation which gave 
 the blood of its children to his evil deity for the sake of 
 sharing his domination, was, under the forms of a 
 civilized age, the worship of Moloch and the worship of 
 Caesar, the old antagonists of Jehovah and of Christ. 
 Comte is at least an impartial witness in this matter ; 
 and Comte sees progress in Jacobinism, where Chris¬ 
 tianity was still faintly present, while he most justly 
 pronounces the domination of Napoleon to have been 
 utterly retrograde. 
 
 Does Christianity, then, interfere with progress of any 
 particular kind, intellectual or industrial ? 
 
 Does it interfere with the progress of science ? As a 
 matter of fact, science has not only been advanced, but 
 for the most part created by Christians. A bigoted or 
 cowardly theology has indeed created some confusion in 
 the relations between science and religion, by attempting 
 to dominate beyond its proper sphere ; but the highest 
 scientific minds have found no difficulty in keeping their 
 own course clear, and preserving religious and moral 
 Christianity, in spite of any imperfections in the scien¬ 
 tific ideas of its teachers caused by their having lived in 
 an unscientific age. That religious persecution has fear¬ 
 fully interfered with science, and every other kind of in¬ 
 tellectual progress, both by its direct and its indirect 
 effects, may be easily granted. Eut the tendency to 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 147 
 
 persecution has historically been limited to countries in 
 which certain vicious relations existed between religion 
 and political power. If it has been found beyond these 
 limits, it was as a lingering habit and in an expiring state. 
 
 Is it the Christian conception of God that is likely to 
 conflict with the progress of science, or of moral philo¬ 
 sophy ? We see at once that Polytheism, subjecting the 
 different parts of nature to the sway of different Powers, 
 conflicts with the unity of creation which the progress of 
 science displays. Let it be shewn that Christian Mono¬ 
 theism does the same. There is indeed—and it is a 
 momentous fact in historical philosophy — what Hume 
 calls a Natural History of Religion. All nations have 
 been endowed with the same germ or religious sentiment ; 
 but they have made to themselves different images of 
 God, according to the peculiar aspects of nature with 
 which they were brought into contact, and the state of 
 their own civilization. The tendency is not yet extinct. 
 Narrow-minded men of science, accustomed to only one 
 sphere of thought, still create for themselves what they 
 think a grander Deity in their own image, rob the Divine 
 Nature of its moral part, and set up a scientific God. If 
 the Christian conception of the Deity were tainted by 
 one of these historical accidents, even in the slightest 
 degree, the time would come, in the course of human in¬ 
 quiry, when history would acknowledge the grandeur of 
 such a conception, record its temporary beneficence, and 
 number it with the past. But it is tainted with no histo¬ 
 rical accident whatever. It is Pure Paternity. What 
 discoveries respecting man or the world, what progress 
 of science or philosophy, can be imagined, with which 
 10 
 
148 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 the simple conception of God as the Father of All could 
 possibly conflict ? 
 
 It is true that Christianity has something of a mysteri¬ 
 ous character. But that, on this account, it must inter¬ 
 fere with intellectual freedom, or anything for which 
 intellectual freedom is requisite, can hardly be said, when 
 Hume himself emphatically speaks of the world as a mys¬ 
 tery, and when the acutest writers of the same school at 
 the present day find it necessary to gratify a true intel¬ 
 lectual instinct by reminding us that, after all, beyond 
 that which science makes known to us there lies the 
 mysterious Unknown.* 
 
 The moral source and support of great scientific inqui¬ 
 ries, as of other great undertakings for the good of man¬ 
 kind, is self-devotion ; and self-devotion is the Christian 
 virtue. 
 
 Does Christianity interfere with political progress ? 
 The great instrument of political progress is generally 
 allowed to be liberty. It is allowed to be so ultimately 
 even by those who wish to suppress it provisionally, and 
 to inaugurate for the present a despotic dictatorship of 
 their own ideas. And Christianity, by first proclaiming 
 the equality and brotherhood of men, became the parent 
 of just and enduring liberty. What spiritual power pre¬ 
 sided over the birth of our free institutions ? Was it not 
 the earnest though narrow and distorted Christianity of 
 the Middle Ages, which still, though its hour is past, 
 shews its ancient spirit in Montalembert ? What power 
 was it that directly consecrated the principle of local self- 
 
 See Mr. Herbert Spencer’s work on “First Principles,” p.223. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 149 
 
 government, the foundation of all true liberty, in the 
 religious association of the parish ? Cast your eyes over 
 the map of nations, and see whether sincere Christianity 
 and political freedom are unsuited to dwell together. 
 Name, if you can, any great Christian philosopher who 
 has been an enemy to freedom. On the other hand, 
 Hobbes, Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon, were Imperial¬ 
 ists ; they all belonged, though in different degrees, to 
 the school which takes a sensual and animal view of 
 man, mistrusts all moral and spiritual restraints, and 
 desires a strong despotism to preserve tranquillity, refine¬ 
 ment, and the enjoyments and conveniences of life. It 
 need not be added that the most fanatical enemies of 
 Christianity at the present day are also fanatical Impe¬ 
 rialists. We have almost a decisive instance of the two 
 opposite tendencies in the case of Rousseau and Voltaire. 
 Rousseau had far more of the Gospel in his philosophy 
 than Voltaire: and while the political Utopia of Voltaire 
 inclined on the whole to Imperialism, being, in fact, a 
 visionary China, and his sympathies were with those 
 whom he imagined to be the beneficent despots of his 
 age, the political Utopia of Rousseau inclined to an 
 exaggeration of liberty, being a visionary State of Nature, 
 and his sympathies were entirely with the people. What 
 are the elements external to itself which Christianity has 
 found most cognate, and of which it has taken up most 
 into its own system ? They are the two free nations of 
 antiquity,- — nations whose freedom indeed was a narrow, 
 and therefore a short-lived one, compared with that of 
 Christendom, but whose thoughts and works were those 
 of the free. The game of freedom is a bold game; those 
 
150 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 who play it, unlike the Imperialist, must be prepared to 
 face present turbulence, extravagance, and waywardness, 
 and much besides that is disappointing and repulsive, for 
 the sake of results which are often distant; while the 
 Imperialist proposes, by a beneficent dictatorship, to 
 keep all calm and rational for at least one life. And 
 this bold game Christianity, by the force of her spiritual 
 elevation, and of her cardinal virtue of hope, has always 
 shewn herself able and ready to play. By mere force of 
 spiritual elevation, with no philosophic chart of the future 
 to guide and assure her, she turned with a victorious 
 steadiness of conviction, such as science itself could 
 scarcely have imparted, from the dying civilization of 
 Rome to the fierce, coarse, destroying barbarism out of 
 which, through her training, was to spring a higher civili¬ 
 zation, a gentler as well as a better world. If Christi¬ 
 anity has ever seemed to be the ally of despotism, it was 
 because she was herself corrupted and disguised either 
 by delirious asceticism, confounding self-degradation with 
 humility, or by ecclesiastical Jesuitism intriguing with 
 political power. The second of these agencies has, 
 indeed, been at work on a great and terrible scale: on 
 such a scale that those who saw no other form of Chris¬ 
 tianity around them may well be pardoned for having 
 taken Christianity to be an enemy of liberty as well as of 
 the truth. But the facts of history point the other way. 
 The seriousness of Christianity and its deep sense of 
 individual responsibility opposed themselves, though in 
 a stern and harsh form, to Stuart despotism, with its 
 Buckingham, its “ Book of Sports,” and its disregard of 
 morality and truth. The spiritual energy and hopeful 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 151 
 
 ness of Christianity opposed themselves to the old Impe¬ 
 rialism of Hobbes and the Sensualists, who would have 
 sacrificed the hopes of humanity to material convenience. 
 The charity and humility of Christianity oppose them¬ 
 selves to the new Imperialism, which we are told is to 
 inaugurate a fresh era of civilization, and which is, in 
 fact, an insane reverie of rampant egotism, dreaming of 
 itself as clothed with absolute power to force its own 
 theories on the world. 
 
 Does political progress depend on theory ? Why 
 should they study that theory less earnestly, with a 
 mind less free from the disturbance of interest and 
 ambition, or in any way less successfully, whose actu¬ 
 ating principle is the love of their neighbour, while 
 they are raised by their spiritual life above the selfish 
 motives which are the great obstacles to the attainment 
 and reception of political truth ? Does political progress 
 depend upon action ? Political action requires a fixed 
 aim, a cool head, and a firm hand. And why should not 
 these be found for the future, as throughout past history 
 they have been found, in statesmen whose objects are 
 disinterested, and whose treasure is not here ? Desper¬ 
 ate anxiety for the issue is not necessary, or even condu¬ 
 cive to success. A man might play a match at chess 
 more eagerly, but he would not play it better, if his life 
 were staked on the game. It was not supposed that 
 Tell’s aim would be steadier when the apple was placed 
 on the head of his child. 
 
 We have been told that Christianity almost stifled the 
 political genius of Cromwell. “ Almost ” is a saving 
 word. The greatest statesman, perhaps, that the world 
 
152 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 ever saw, and the one who most largely contributed to 
 the greatness of his country, even in the most vulgar and 
 material sense, not only was a Christian, but drew from 
 Christianity, though tainted in his case with Judaism, 
 every principle, every idea, every expression of his public 
 life. 
 
 If it is philanthropic enterprise that is to regenerate 
 society, with this, again, Christianity has, to say the least, 
 no inherent tendency to interfere. I ventured to chal¬ 
 lenge the Positivists, who condemn the Christian view of 
 the world for giving the negro races no part in the histo¬ 
 rical development of humanity, to shew what part in the 
 historical development of humanity these races had really 
 played. It is Christianity alone, I submit, which assigns 
 them a place in history, by making them the subjects of 
 those great missionary and philanthropic enterprises 
 which form so important a part of the life of Christen¬ 
 dom. As the subjects of such enterprises they do in¬ 
 deed contribute to the development of humanity by 
 developing the religious sympathies and affections. Posi¬ 
 tive Science requires that these races, like the rest, should 
 pass, by a spontaneous movement, from Fetichism into 
 Polytheism, and so, through Monotheism, into Atheism, 
 with the corresponding series of social and political 
 phases. Christianity, disregarding Positive Science, sets 
 to work to turn them into civilized Christians. 
 
 An eminent writer, before mentioned, thinks he has 
 contravened Christianity in saying that now, having 
 ceased to be a Christian, he loves with a deliberate love 
 the world and the things of the world. So he did when, 
 being a Christian, he went as a missionary to the East. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 1 53 
 
 To love the world, it is not necessary to think there is no 
 evil in the world. On the contrary, it is the strong sense 
 of the evil existing in the world that, by exciting the de¬ 
 sire to remove it, has led to all the noble enterprises of 
 history. Neither need the conviction, however deep, 
 that the world is transitory, diminish the desire to labour 
 for its good, if the good done is to be not transitory but 
 eternal. We are told that the social activity of Christians 
 must be paralyzed by the views which are alleged to be 
 a part of Christianity, respecting the constant imminence 
 of the Last Day. Why then is not all social activity par¬ 
 alyzed by the constant imminence of death ? 
 
 Again, it is insinuated that the progress of enlightened 
 views respecting the duties of nations towards each other, 
 must be retarded by the dark lust of conquest which is 
 inspired by the popular religion, with its gloomy worship 
 of the God of Battles. I am unable to discern any his¬ 
 torical foundation for this notion. Christianity is not 
 committed to the conduct of the State Priests who sang 
 Te Deums for the successful rapine of Louis XIV. ■ a 
 rapine which, it may be remarked by the way, was at 
 least equalled, when the last restraints of religion had 
 been removed, by the atheist Emperor who afterwards 
 sat on the same throne. Neither is Christianity com¬ 
 mitted to the excesses of fanatical sectaries who took the 
 Old Testament for their Gospel instead of the New. The 
 uncritical Puritan could not so clearly see what we by the 
 light of historical criticism most clearly see, that the Jews 
 were not a miracle but a nation ; and that, like all other 
 nations, they had their primitive epoch of conquest and 
 of narrow nationality, with moral views correspondingly 
 
154 THE DOCTRINE of historical progress. 
 
 narrow : though the whole of this natural history of the 
 J ewish race was instinct with, and, as it were, transmuted 
 by, a moral and religious spirit, to which it is idle to say 
 a parallel can be found in the history of any other nation. 
 The character of David, for example, by its beauty, its 
 chivalry, and its childlike and passionate devotion, has 
 sunk deep into the affections of humanity, and justified 
 the sentence that he was the man after God’s own heart: 
 but he could not be expected, any more than a prince of 
 any other primitive nation, to anticipate modern enlight¬ 
 enment and humanity by observing the laws of civilized 
 war, and giving quarter to the garrison and inhabitants of 
 a conquered town. 
 
 This error of the Puritans, however, after all, has not 
 left so very deep a stain on history. They were not so 
 very ignorant of the real relations between the Old 
 Testament and the New. The notion of their having 
 regarded their enemies as Canaanites, and smitten them 
 hip and thigh, is mainly due to the imagination of loose 
 historical writers. No civil war in history had ever been 
 conducted with half so much humanity, or with half so 
 much self-restraint, as that which they conducted in the 
 spirit of their mixed Hebrew and Christian religion. 
 Fanciful or cynical writers may picture Cromwell as 
 feeling a stern satisfaction at the carnage of Drogheda 
 and Wexford : but Cromwell’s own despatches excuse it, 
 on the ground that it would save more blood in the end. 
 You have only to turn to the civil war of the French 
 Revolution—carried on, as it was, in the meridian light 
 of modern civilization, and with an entire freedom from 
 superstitious influences—to know that even the stern 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 1 55 
 
 spirit of the Old Testament has not been the most cruel 
 power in history. There has been, in truth, a good deal 
 of exaggeration, and even some cant upon this subject. 
 Men who weep over the blood which was shed by Jewish 
 hands in the name of morality, are not indisposed, if we 
 may judge by their historical sympathies, to take pretty 
 strong measures for an idea. They can embrace, with 
 something like rapture, the butcherly vagrancy laws of a 
 Tudor King, his brutal uxoricides, his persecutions, his 
 judicial murders perpetrated on blameless and illustrious 
 men, because he belongs to a class of violent and unscru¬ 
 pulous characters in history whom their school are pleased 
 to style heroes. I see that, according to a kindred school 
 of philosophers, Titus performed an unavoidable duty in 
 exterminating the Jews for rebelling against the idea of 
 Imperialism, which they could scarcely, without a miracle, 
 be expected to apprehend. Csesar is becoming an object 
 of adoration, evidently as a supposed type of certain great 
 qualities in which the Christian type is supposed to be 
 wanting. He stands as one of the great historical Saints 
 of the Comtist Calendar, a month being called after his 
 name. Yet this beneficent demigod put to the sword a 
 million of Gauls, and sold another million into slavery, 
 partly in the spirit of Roman conquest, but principally to 
 create for himself a military reputation. 
 
 Then it is intimated that the political economy of 
 Christianity is bad, and that it has interfered with the 
 enjoyment, and therefore with the production, of wealth. 
 There can be no doubt that Christianity, so far as it has 
 had an influence in history, has always tended to the 
 employment of productive rather than of unproductive 
 
156 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 labour, and to the promotion of art rather than of luxury. 
 But these are not yet alleged to be economical evils. 
 Wealth has been just as much enjoyed, and the produc¬ 
 tion of wealth just as much stimulated, by the building 
 of splendid churches, by the employment of great artists, 
 and by a munificent expenditure for the common benefit, 
 as by the indulgence of personal luxury and pride. It is 
 in Christian states, in states really Christian, that Com¬ 
 merce has appeared in its most energetic and prosperous, 
 as well as in its noblest form ; the greatest' maritime dis¬ 
 coveries have been made under the banner of the Cross; 
 and he who says that the life of Gresham or Columbus 
 was alien to Christianity, says what is historically absurd. 
 Capital and credit are the life of commercial enterprise. 
 The Gospel inculcates the self-denial which is necessary 
 to the accumulation of capital; and, to say the least, it 
 does not discourage the honesty which is the foundation 
 of credit. Honest labour and activity in business will 
 hardly be said to be condemned by St. Paul; and if the 
 anxious and covetous overstraining of labour is opposed 
 to Christianity, it is equally opposed to economical wis¬ 
 dom. Of course the first authors of Christianity did not 
 teach political economy before its hour. They took these 
 like the other political and social arrangements of the 
 world, as they found them, and relieved poverty in the 
 way in which it was then relieved. The science of Poli¬ 
 tical Economy, since it left the hands of its great found¬ 
 er, has fallen to a great extent into the hands of men of 
 less comprehensive minds, under whose treatment it has 
 gone near to erecting hardness of heart into a social vir¬ 
 tue. No doubt there would speedily be a divorce between 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 15 7 
 
 Christianity and the progress of such a science as this. 
 But this is not the science of Adam Smith. Adam Smith 
 understood the value, moral as well as material, of pro¬ 
 perty ; but he also understood the relative value of pro¬ 
 perty and affection. 
 
 If the community of goods among the early Christians 
 is cited as a proof that Christianity must be opposed to 
 economical progress, the answer is, that Christianity has 
 never erected, or tended to erect, this natural expression 
 of new-born love and zeal into a normal condition of 
 society. Whenever a great religious movement has taken 
 place in history, the spirit of humanity has beaten in this 
 way against its earthly bars, and struggled to realize at 
 once that which cannot be realized within any calculable 
 time, if it is destined ever to be realized here. Christian 
 philosophers have pronounced the judgment of rational 
 Christianity on Socialism in no ambiguous terms. Yet 
 surely political economists are too well satisfied with 
 their science if they feel confident that its laws, or sup¬ 
 posed laws, have yet been harmonized with a sound 
 social morality, and with the rational aspirations of social 
 man. Surely they must see further into the future course 
 of history than any one else can see, if they are able to 
 assure us that the social motives to industry can never 
 prevail over the personal motives; or even that the 
 arrangements in which all reasonable men at present 
 acquiesce are certainly nearer than those of primitive 
 Christianity to the ultimate social ideal. 
 
 The Christian character has of course been treated of 
 here in its moral and social aspect alone, because in that 
 character alone it is manifested in history, and brought 
 
158 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 into direct relations with historical progress. But it is 
 inconceivable that the Love of God should ever conflict 
 with the Love of our Neighbour. It is inconceivable 
 that the one should ever fail to be supported and inten¬ 
 sified by the other. The Comtists may preserve their 
 love of Humanity in all its fervour; they will find it 
 equally fervent in those who add to it the love of God. 
 
 It has been objected that Christianity, from the mere 
 fact of its being an historical religion, opposes progress 
 by compelling the world always to look backward. I 
 scarcely apprehend the force of this objection, though 
 those who make it evidently feel it to be of great force. 
 If a type of character was to be set up for the imitation 
 of mankind, it was necessary that it should be set up at 
 some point in history, and that the eye of humanity 
 should always be turned to that point, wherever it might 
 be. But the fixity of the point in history at which the 
 guiding light was revealed no more interferes with histo¬ 
 rical progress than the fixity of the pole-star interferes 
 with the progress of a ship. 
 
 There is, indeed, another objection, of a much graver 
 kind, to the sufficiency of a merely historical religion. 
 Historical evidence, being the evidence of witnesses who 
 are dead, and who may possibly, however improbably, 
 have been mistaken, cannot rise beyond a high proba¬ 
 bility. It cannot amount to such absolute certainty as 
 we derive from the evidence of our senses, or from that 
 of our moral perceptions. And probability, however 
 high, though a sufficient ground for our practical deci¬ 
 sions, is not a sufficient ground for our religious faith and 
 feelings. Butler has imported the rules of worldly pru- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 159 
 
 dence into a sphere where they have no place. We may 
 wisely stake our worldly interests on a probable, or even, 
 if the prize be great, on a merely possible event; but we 
 cannot worship and commune with a Being on a proba¬ 
 bility even of ten thousand to one that he is God. 
 
 But here again history, taking a broad view of the 
 facts, finds a sufficient answer to the question whether 
 Christendom is likely to perish under mere historical 
 objections. In all that has really created and sustained 
 Christendom there is nothing which rests on historical 
 evidence alone. That which has created and sustained 
 Christendom has been the Christian idea of God as the 
 Father of all, the spiritual life supported by that idea, the 
 Character of Christ always present as the object of Chris¬ 
 tian affection and the model for Christian imitation, and 
 the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The 
 fact of the Resurrection itself, like the immortality of the 
 soul, of which it is the pledge, rests on other than mere 
 historical evidence. It rests in part on the doctrine, cog¬ 
 nizable by reason, independently of historical evidence, 
 that, from the intimate connection between death and 
 sin, a perfectly sinless nature, such as that of Him who 
 overcame the grave, could not be holden of death b . 
 
 Has no great crisis, then, arrived in the history of 
 
 b It is commonly assumed that the theory respecting the forma¬ 
 tion of character by habit, the laws of which are analogous to the 
 laws of matter, is equally applicable to the formation of vice and to 
 the formation of virtue. But is not virtue rather a gradual emanci¬ 
 pation of the reason and conscience, the sovereign powers of the 
 soul, from everything in the shape of motive that can affect them in 
 a mechanical manner and enslave them to the laws of matter, and to 
 the material accident, death ? 
 
l6o THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 Christendom ? Certainly a great crisis has arrived, and 
 one which bids fair soon to merge small doubts and dif¬ 
 ficulties in mighty events. But it is not so clear that 
 this crisis is an unhappy one. We may be sure it is one 
 which has been long in preparation. Of the great events 
 of history it may be said with more truth, or at least with 
 more practical import, than it was said by Montaigne of 
 death, “ Every day they approach, the last day they 
 arrive.” We may be sure also that what is coming will 
 be what the world has deserved ; and the world has of 
 late been a scene of religious, moral, political, and intel¬ 
 lectual effort, often perhaps misguided and often equivo¬ 
 cal, but still effort, which has at least deserved a different 
 meed from that due to lethargy and despair. Finally, we 
 may be sure that good will assert that indestructible 
 quality which history recognises in it, and pass from the 
 old state of things entire in substance, though perhaps 
 changed in form, into the new. 
 
 The members of the divided Churches have prayed for 
 their re-union through the conversion of all to the pecu¬ 
 liar doctrines of one. It seems as though the prayer 
 were now about to be granted in a less miraculous 
 manner by the simple removal, through concurrent 
 moral and political causes, of the grand cause of the 
 division in Christendom. If historical symptoms are to 
 trusted, the long death-agony of three centuries is about 
 to terminate, and within no very long period the Papacy 
 will cease to exist. The chief historical conditions of 
 its existence have expired, or are rapidly expiring. In 
 the supremacy of human authority over reason in the 
 mind of man the power of Rome had its origin and 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. l6l 
 
 being; and the supremacy of reason over human autho¬ 
 rity in the mind of man is now decisive and complete. 
 The rationalistic theories of recent advocates of the 
 Papacy, such as De Maistre and Dr. Newman, are 
 suicidal concessions to the spirit of a changed world. 
 The loss of moral allegiance, even in countries nominally 
 Papal, has for some time past been continuous and rapid; 
 and we ourselves well know the source whence the small, 
 precarious, and equivocal accessions of strength have 
 been derived. The great revolt of the Reformation was 
 arrested in its progress over Europe partly by accidents 
 of national temperament and comparative mental cultiva¬ 
 tion, partly and principally by the persecuting power of 
 the great Catholic Monarchies, which conspired to pre¬ 
 serve the Papacy as the keystone of despotism, and by 
 balancing each other, gave it a factitious independence, 
 of which the suspension of Italian nationality was also a 
 necessary condition. The Catholic Monarchies are 
 dead or dying. A Voltarian dynasty, the offspring of 
 the French Revolution, sits on the throne of Charles 
 IX. The successors of Philip II. have suppressed 
 monasteries and have allied themselves with the liberal 
 house of Orleans. The heir of Ferdinand II. has been 
 compelled to recognise Protestantism and to grant a 
 Constitution to the Austrian Empire. The balance of 
 power between France, Spain, and Austria having been 
 destroyed, the nominal head of Christendom has sunk 
 to a puppet of French diplomacy, degraded to the dust 
 by the sinister and contemptuous support which prolongs 
 the existence of his mutilated power. The revival of 
 Italian nationality seems now to be assured. It is vain 
 
162 THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 to think that the Primate of an Italian kingdom can be- 
 the Father of Christendom. It is equally vain to think 
 that the national government of Italy can suffer an inde¬ 
 pendent potentate, elected by a European conclave, to 
 exist at its side. It is vain to talk of dividing the tem¬ 
 poral from the spiritual power. To command the soul 
 is to command the man. It was for the Suzerainty of 
 Europe, and for nothing less, that the Papacy and the 
 Germanic Empire fought, the one with the arms of force, 
 the other with the arms of superstition. We might 
 share the dream of a purely spiritual Papacy if we did 
 not know too well that the Papal power, to whatever 
 extent it may have been exercised for spiritual ends, was 
 the creature of political accidents and political influences, 
 aided by the instruments, not spiritual, though not strictly 
 material, of religious intimidation and intrigue. The 
 Papacy will perish, and in it will perish the great obsta¬ 
 cle to the reconciliation and re-union of Christendom. 
 Nor will it perish alone. It will drawdown with it in 
 its fall, sooner or later, all those causes of division which 
 have subsisted by mere antagonism to it, and many which 
 it has kept alive by its direct, though unrecognised, influ¬ 
 ence over the rest of the ecclesiastical world. Then, if 
 Christianity be true, there may, so far as the outward 
 arrangements of the world are concerned, once more arise 
 a Christendom, stripped indeed of much that is essential 
 to religion in the eyes of polemical theologians, but as 
 united, grand, and powerful, as capable of pervading 
 with its spirit the whole frame of society, as fruitful of 
 religious art and all other manifestations of religious life, 
 as Christendom was before the great schism; but resting 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 163 
 
 on the adamantine basis of free conviction, instead of 
 the sandy foundation of human authority and tradition 
 supported by political power. Those who imagine that 
 such a consummation, if it come, must come with terrible- 
 convulsions and distress, do not consider that a great part 
 of educated Europe has, in fact, for some time been 
 united, and guided in the conduct of life and in all inter¬ 
 national and general relations, by a common Christianity. 
 The world, as usual, has anticipated the results of specu¬ 
 lation by tacitly solving a great practical problem for 
 itself; and it has found that the brightness of the sunbeam 
 resides in the sunbeam, not in the motes, and that the 
 crystal floor of Heaven is not as unstable as water because 
 it is as clear. 
 
 11 
 

 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 A Letter to the “ Daily News ” of Noz'ember 20, jS 6 i, defending the 
 principles maintained in the foregoing Lectures against the criticisms 
 of an article in the “ Westminster Review ” of October in the same 
 year, entitled “ Mr. Goldwin Smith on the Study of History 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ DAILY NEWS.” 
 
 Sir, — You were so good as to allow me the other day 
 to use your columns for the purpose of defending my 
 conduct as a Professor against the “ Westminster Re¬ 
 view .”' 1 I will now ask your permission to use them for 
 the more agreeable purpose of saying a few words on 
 the question between the view of history and humanity 
 advocated in my Lectures, and those advocated by the 
 Reviewer. I do not concur in the assumption that the 
 daily press is not a fit organ for such discussions. The 
 daily press has long since been practically accepted by 
 the community as a fit organ for the discussion of every¬ 
 thing that concerns and interests man. And it has this 
 great advantage, that every one who writes in it must at 
 least try to make himself intelligible — a discipline which 
 
 a The letter here alluded to, as it related merely to my personal 
 conduct and character, is not reprinted.” 
 
 165 
 
i66 
 
 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 many writers of great books would be all the better for 
 having undergone. The notion that calmness, gravity, 
 and moderation in the treatment of great subjects are 
 confined to quarterly journals, is not, I venture to think, 
 agreeable to experience. 
 
 So far as I may have occasion to allude to the “ West¬ 
 minster Review,” I shall treat it, of course, merely as the 
 exponent of certain opinions of which it is the organ, 
 not as a criticism of my own work. 
 
 No part of the philosophy of history is more important 
 than that which teaches us to study the history of opinion, 
 and to separate, in each theory of man and of the world, 
 that which demands our consideration as the result of 
 pure thought from that which may be set aside as the 
 mere expression of feeling produced by the circumstances 
 of the time. 
 
 Thrice, at least, since man became conscious, or partly 
 conscious, of his spiritual nature, and of the dignity of his 
 being, a sort of despondency, the result in part of political 
 disaster, has come over the moral world. Such a despon¬ 
 dency followed on the fall of that narrow but vigorous poli¬ 
 tical life, compounded of patriotism and Stoicism, which 
 was embodied in the Roman Republic. It followed on 
 the tremendous religious wars and revolutions of the six¬ 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries. It has followed on 
 the terrible, and to a great extent fruitless, revolutionary 
 struggles through which Europe h^s just passed. The 
 abandonment of those social aspirations of man which are 
 so intimately connected with his spiritual hopes gave birth 
 in the first instance to Caesarism, in the second instance 
 to the absolutism of the eighteenth century which was 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 167 
 
 typified by Louis the Fourteenth, and erected into a 
 Chinese Utopia by Voltaire. In the present instance 
 it has given birth to Imperialism, which has naturally 
 triumphed most signally in the country where the decay 
 of religion, as well as the political lassitude arising from 
 abortive revolution, is most complete. The loss of reli¬ 
 gious faith has in each of the three instances been attend¬ 
 ed by the prevalence of a materialistic superstition. 
 The Roman materialist was the slave of astrologers : the 
 last century hung on the lips of Cagliostro and his 
 brother quacks ; and we fill the void of spiritual life with 
 mesmerism and spirit-rapping. 
 
 At the same time the religious life of the present age 
 is attacked by a powerful influence of a different kind. 
 The pressure of false authority, reigning in old dogmatic 
 establishments, has kept religion in an irrational state, as 
 any man may easily convince himself by comparing the 
 identity of the Christian character and life in all commu¬ 
 nions with the differences of their dogmatic creeds, and 
 the vital importance attached by each communion to its 
 own. Meantime science, having achieved her emancipa¬ 
 tion from authority, has made prodigious progress, and 
 acquired vast influence over the life of man. Thus 
 religion in her weakness and her fetters is brought into 
 contact and into contrast with science in her strength and 
 freedom : and no wonder that to exclusively scientific 
 minds the domain £>f spirit should seem the last strong¬ 
 hold of unreason, which it will be the crowning triumph 
 of science to subdue. Great men of science, indeed, like 
 all great men, know the limits of their own sphere. But 
 the lesser men of science, who, to tell the plain truth, 
 
1 68 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 have often no more largeness of mind or breadth of cul¬ 
 tivation than an ingenious mechanic, grasp eagerly at the 
 sceptre of the moral world. 
 
 Comte, the real though disclaimed author of the “ West¬ 
 minster” philosophy, was placed in a position which 
 exposed him to all these influences in the highest degree. 
 As a Frenchman, he lived in the midst of political despair. 
 He saw religion only in the aspect of French ultramontan- 
 ism, and had no alternative before him but that of French 
 scepticism, which he pardonably preferred. Rational 
 Religion he had never beheld. His cultivation had 
 evidently been almost exclusively scientific, and his course 
 of Positive Philosophy is a perfect representation of the 
 tendencies of exclusively scientific minds when unpro¬ 
 vided with a rational theory of the moral world and a 
 rational religion. He goes through the physical sciences; 
 arrives at that which is beyond science; and impatient of 
 the limit set to his course, tries to bridge over the gulf by 
 laying it down, dogmatically and without proof, that the 
 moral—or, as he chose to call it, the sociological—world 
 differs from the physical only in the greater complexity 
 of its phenomena, and the greater difficulty, consequent 
 on that complexity, of resolving its phenomena into their 
 necessary laws. 
 
 There can scarcely be a doubt that Comte, towards 
 the end of his life, by which time he had been abandoned 
 by Mr. Mill and all his rational d^ciples, was insane. 
 Nor is it difficult to detect the source of his insanity. It 
 was egotism, uncontrolled by the thought of a higher 
 power, and, in its morbid irritation, unsoothed by the 
 influence of religion. The passage in which he says that 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 169 
 
 having at first been only an Aristotle, he, through his 
 affection for a female friend, became also a St. Paul, has 
 been often quoted. But it is not a more rampant display 
 of egotism than the passage at the beginning of his 
 “ Catechism,” in which he depicts the “ memorable con¬ 
 clusion ” of his course of lectures as the opening of a 
 new era, and shews how the great thinkers who had pre¬ 
 ceded him in history were precursors of himself. 
 
 In his later phase, having become a St. Paul, he 
 proceeded to found a new religion, which is simply 
 an insane parody of the Roman Catholicism before his 
 eyes, set a mystic morality above science, and turned the 
 “Positive Philosophy” upside-down. “Every one,” says 
 the “Westminster,” “who has read anything of Comte’s 
 works, especially the later, knows that it is the very 
 foundation of his method to give the predominance to 
 the moral faculties.” Those who having, perhaps, just 
 read Comte, fancy that they alone have read him, 
 will find on further reference that the qualifying words, 
 “ especially the later,” are by no means superfluous. 
 
 All honour to Comte, however, for this—that he was 
 not a mere reckless assailant of the convictions by which 
 the world around him lived. He produced, at the cost, 
 no doubt, of much conscientious labour and earnest 
 thought, what he believed to be a new faith, and 
 tendered it to mankind as a substitute for that which 
 he took away. That the view of humanity which he 
 adopted was ignoble and absurd was his misfortune, 
 as the victim of unhappy influences, far more than his 
 fault. If it were not so clear that he was deranged at the 
 time when he invented his new religion, he might well be 
 
170 
 
 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 said to have done Christendom a great service by 
 trying, with decisive result, the experiment of satisfying 
 man’s religious instincts by a Creed and Church other 
 than the Christian. As it is, this momentous task is left 
 for the “Westminster,” which, indeed, seems to have 
 made great progress towards fulfilling it. For, whereas in 
 January we were exhorted, with much solemn pathos, to 
 brace up our courage to the point of going forth into the 
 void in search of a new religion, we are now confidently 
 invited to leave Christianity, and “stand with the ‘West¬ 
 minster’ on solid ground.” 
 
 In England, Comte has drawn his most distinguished 
 disciples from the University of Oxford. When the Uni¬ 
 versity awoke from the long torpor of the last century, a 
 violent ecclesiastical movement set in, which naturally 
 took a High Church direction, and, as every one knows, 
 threw many of our best and most gifted members into 
 the Church of Rome. The recoil after that movement 
 staggered most of us, and flung some out of religion 
 altogether. These men fell in several cases sheer down 
 into Comtism, and it seems that the University of Laud 
 has still a fair chance of furnishing leaders to that 
 persuasion. But some of them appear to be in an un¬ 
 certain and transition state, which they confidently invite 
 the world to accept as the “ solid ground ” of complete 
 and final truth. At least they vehemently repudiate 
 “ atheism,” and affect the phrase “ spiritual.” Do they 
 mean by God merely a set of scientific laws ? Do they 
 mean by spirit only a substance, the phenomena of which 
 are more “complex” than the phenomena of the 
 material world ? They proclaim that they are “ neither 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. I 71 
 
 Atheist, Pantheist, Positivist, nor Materialist.” Do they, 
 then, believe in the existence of a personal God ? If so, 
 do they suppose that only “ scientific ” relations exist 
 between that God and the spirit of man ? Have they 
 made up their mind about the immortality of the soul ? 
 All these questions we have a right to ask them when 
 they invite us to leave our present position and “ stand ” 
 with them “on solid ground.” 
 
 Generations at Oxford pass quickly. Within the brief 
 space of twenty years I have seen the wheel come full 
 circle. When I was an undergraduate, theology was 
 “the queen (and tyrant) of the sciences.” Now it is an 
 “ extinct science.” Then, the questions between the 
 Vulcanian and Neptunian theories in geology were being 
 settled by reference to the double nature of a sacrament. 
 Now, we are settling all the questions of the moral 
 and spiritual world by reference to the methods of physi¬ 
 cal science. In those days, scientific experience was set 
 at nought, and we were told that though in science the 
 earth might go round the sun, in theology the sun 
 went round the earth. Now, moral experience is set at 
 nought, and we are told that, morally, we may know 
 action to be free, but that science pronounces it to 
 be bound by the law of causation. The sneers which are 
 at present directed against free-will are the exact counter¬ 
 part, and the just retribution, of the sneers which 
 were formerly directed against induction. We have 
 trampled on the lower truth, and we pay the heavy 
 penalty of producing enemies to the highest. When 
 science has been fairly admitted to its due place in 
 the University, its vengeful usurpations will probably 
 
172 
 
 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 cease, and we shall no longer, in this way at least, 
 bewilder and disturb the world. 
 
 One who knows Oxford can hardly doubt that the 
 violence of the reaction among us has partly supplied 
 the spirit which animates the “Westminster Review." 
 Among other indications we may recognise with pleasure 
 a kindly feeling towards the University, and a dispo¬ 
 sition to admit that though benighted in her general 
 character, yet in virtue of certain secondary influences of 
 a happy kind, such as the study of Mill and Grote, she is 
 capable of producing great men. We may also perceive 
 in an element, most hostile to all that is ecclesiastical, 
 some traces of an ecclesiastical training place, such as 
 an ardent passion for propagandism, and a tendency 
 to flirt (to use an undignified expression) with the half- 
 educated minds of mechanics, analogous to the eccle¬ 
 siastical habit of flirting with the intellects of half- 
 educated women. Do we not even see, in the extraordi¬ 
 nary rapidity with which the “ science ” of some of these 
 high scientific minds has been acquired, an analogy to 
 the religious phenomenon of “sudden conversion?” 
 
 The special violence of Oxford reaction may perhaps 
 be fairly gauged by comparing the “ Westminster ” with 
 its nearest neighbour in philosophy, the “ National.” 
 Those who are farthest from being adherents of the 
 “National” must see that the opinions of its chief 
 writers have been formed calmly and deliberately,—not 
 under the influence of a furious revulsion of feeling. It 
 gives at least a due place to science in its view of things ; 
 but it is not science mad; and it treats, at all events, 
 with philosophic tenderness that which is at present 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 173 
 
 the life of the world. When I read violent and con¬ 
 temptuous invectives against “ the popular religion,” I 
 always suspect that the writer has not long emerged 
 from some particularly “popular” phase of that religion, 
 and that his language is affected for the moment by 
 an angry recollection of the thraldom in which his spirit 
 has recently been held. 
 
 If the “ Westminster ” chooses to call this attempt 
 at intellectual diagnosis an unconscious contribution to 
 “Sociology,” no one will have a right to object, except 
 the few who cherish the purity of the English tongue. I 
 see that I am supposed to have unwittingly sub¬ 
 scribed to some new view of humanity in saying that the 
 fall of the Papacy is “ inevitable,” and that the age 
 of Louis XIV. “ can never return.” If my diagnosis is 
 right, the influence of extraordinary circumstances 
 may fairly be pleaded in palliation of certain very violent 
 attacks on Christianity, in case those attacks should 
 hereafter prove to have been premature. But the pallia¬ 
 tion would not extend to ungenerous tactics, such as the 
 trick of jesuitically goading orthodoxy to persecute mode¬ 
 rate liberalism, which are a mistake under any dispensa¬ 
 tion. Voltaire has never been forgiven for stirring up 
 persecution against Rousseau. 
 
 The speculations of Mr. Buckle, again, are evi¬ 
 dently dominated by the influence of a circumstance 
 which is purely accidental. The reason why he makes 
 religion the demon of history clearly is, that he imagines 
 religion to be the arch-enemy of his divinity—Science. 
 But the slight ground which there is for this depends on 
 the irrational condition in which, as has been before 
 
174 
 
 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 said, religion has been kept by false authority, embodied 
 in State Churches. The free Churches of the United 
 States have necessarily taken their hue in some measure 
 from the Churches of Europe, with whose bigotry 
 they are somewhat tinged. Yet, in the United States, 
 there seems to be scarcely any complaint that free 
 inquiry in any department is stifled or discouraged by 
 religion. Even here, a good deal of exaggeration is 
 required to make out a serious case of opposition 
 between religion and science. When Lord Palmerston 
 snubs the Scotch for desiring a day of religious humilia¬ 
 tion at the approach of the cholera, instead of introduc¬ 
 ing improved drainage, he is lauded by Mr. Buckle 
 as an Archangel of Light rebuking the Powers of Dark¬ 
 ness. Would Lord Palmerston have told the Ironsides, 
 on the eve of a battle, that if they meant to gain the 
 victory they must fight and not pray ? And, after all, is 
 the Scotch nation so very marked an instance of the 
 ill effects of religion in destroying good sense and pre¬ 
 venting self-exertion. 
 
 I think I can shew Mr. Buckle that Christianity has 
 recently rendered Science a most signal service, not the 
 first it has rendered of the kind. He will scarcely deny 
 that the ethical doctrine of self-sacrifice is a peculiarly, 
 if not an exclusively, Christian doctrine, and that it was 
 Christianity that first effectively filled Society with this 
 aspiration. Now he has placed before us, in his last 
 volume, a picture, evidently not imaginary, but real, of 
 an intellect of first-rate power, drawn by natural ambition 
 to the glittering prizes of political and oratorical eminence, 
 but, in the spirit of self-sacrifice, renouncing those prizes, 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 175 
 
 and devoting itself, for the sake of its kind, to the inquiry 
 after scientific truth. I cannot help thinking that such 
 an instance, vividly present to his mind, ought to con¬ 
 vince him that, contrary to his theory, moral excellence 
 does contribute, as well as intellectual greatness, to the 
 scientific progress of the world. 
 
 If Mr. Buckle has ever had the opportunity of observ¬ 
 ing the influence of rational and healthy religion on the 
 intellect and character, he has not thought it worth his 
 while, as a philosopher, to record the results of his obser¬ 
 vation. 
 
 None of us will escape the influences of our time. We 
 shall undergo them, more or less, in the way of repulsion 
 if not of attraction ■ but we may at least try to analyze 
 them and guard against them, instead of courting their 
 domination, and surrendering ourselves to their sway. 
 
 Such a question as that of the free personality of n an, 
 which is the real point at issue, is likely to be solved by 
 each of us for himself, and by mankind collectively, on 
 practical rather than philosophical grounds. Probably 
 no man, when engaged in high and inspiring action, ever 
 for a moment doubted his moral freedom, or imagined 
 himself to be the mere organ of a “sociological” law. 
 And the world is now once more entering upon a course 
 of action of a high and inspiring kind. The lassitude 
 which followed on the convulsion of 1848 is passing 
 away. The emancipation of Italy, and the resolute but 
 wise and temperate struggle which Hungary is making 
 for her freedom, have revived the political hopes of man ; 
 and if there are discouraging appearances on the other 
 side of the Atlantic, they are qualified by the signal 
 
176 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 proofs of immense national energy and great faith in 
 institutions which vast armaments of citizen soldiers, by 
 their mere existence, undeniably afford. Even in France, 
 the land of Comte, Proudhon, and Bonapartism, Jules 
 Simon has gone forth the herald of a different state of 
 things. A greater object of endeavour than any mere 
 political emancipation or improvement begins to present 
 itself to our view. The political supports of the Papacy 
 having been cut away by the fall or desperate weakness 
 of the old Catholic monarchies, on which, since the 
 Reformation, it has rested, and the power of the Popes 
 having (with deference to M. Guizot be it said) long 
 ceased to be a spiritual power, the great pillars of irra¬ 
 tional dogma and the chief source of schismatical division 
 among the Christian Churches are in a fair way of being 
 removed; and the re-union of Christendom, which for 
 three centuries has been an empty and hopeless prayer, 
 is likely at last to become a practicable aim. Probably 
 it would be a greater service to humanity, on philosophical 
 as well as on religious grounds, to contribute the smallest 
 mite towards this consummation, than to construct the 
 most perfect demonstration of the free personality of 
 man. As things are, rationalistic and fatalistic reveries 
 may be laboriously confuted ; but amidst the energies 
 and aspirations of a regenerated Christendom, they would 
 spontaneously pass away. 
 
 The rational object of discussion in this as in other 
 departments is to produce practical conviction. Names 
 and theoretical statements may take care of themselves. 
 The “Westminster” says:—“Anything which tends to 
 deny to man the fullest power to develope his own 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 177 
 
 faculties, to control his own life, and form his future, we 
 are ready to condemn.” If it will adhere to this decla¬ 
 ration in the natural sense of the words, there is nothing 
 more to be said, except that if comets “ formed their 
 ow T n future” they would be rather embarrassing subjects 
 of “ science.” 
 
 A student and teacher of History, however, is com¬ 
 pelled to deal with a theory which, if true, would deeply 
 affect the treatment of his special subject. 
 
 We are in effect told with great vehemence of language, 
 rising, when objections are offered, to a highly objurga¬ 
 tory key, that the free personality of man is an illusion ; 
 for that, feel as free as we may, our actions, both indi¬ 
 vidual and collective, are determined by a law r , or a set 
 of laws, as fixed as those which determine the phenomena 
 of physical agents, and of which what we call our free¬ 
 will is only the manifestation. 
 
 The answer is : — This discovery is most momentous, if 
 true. Let the law, or set of laws, be stated, and its or 
 their existence demonstrated by reference to the facts of 
 human life or history, and we will accept them as we 
 accept any other hypothesis which is distinctly pro¬ 
 pounded and satisfactorily verified. But at present, not 
 only is there no verification, there is not even a hypothe¬ 
 sis before us. Comte, indeed, put forward a hypothesis 
 -—that of the necessary progress of society through the 
 “'rheological,” “Metaphysical,” and “ Positive ” states 
 in succession. But as the “Westminster” repudiates 
 the titles of “ Positivist ” and “ Atheist,” I may assume 
 that it abandons Comte ’3 hypothesis as an account of 
 humanity, even if it adheres to it as an account of the 
 
178 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 history of science. Mr. Mill has merely reproduced 
 Comte. Mr. Buckle can hardly be said to have put 
 forward any general hypothesis, unless it be that morality 
 never promotes the improvement of the species, and that 
 religion always retards it. His theory, again, would 
 necessarily be rejected by the “Westminster,” if that 
 journal repudiates “ Atheism ” in a practical sense. 
 And since it has led him to the conclusion that there are 
 no two countries which more closely resemble each other 
 in their condition than Scotland and Spain, I presume 
 there cannot be much question as to its value in the 
 minds of ordinary reasoners. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton did not go about the world asserting 
 that the motions of the planets must have a law, and 
 railing at people for doubting his assertion. He pro¬ 
 pounded the hypothesis of gravitation, and verified it by 
 reference to the facts. We only ask the discoverers of 
 the Law of History to do the same. 
 
 In the same way, when philosophers proclaim with 
 angry vehemence, and violent expression of contempt 
 for gainsayers, that there is a better religion than Chris¬ 
 tianity, we only ask them to produce a better religion. 
 
 I have indeed suggested a reason for surmising that 
 the verification of a law of History will be rather a diffi¬ 
 cult matter, since, History being but partly unfolded, a 
 portion only of the facts are before us. The “ Westmin¬ 
 ster ” vehemently asserts that “ the human race does not 
 increase in bulk : it changes in character. In no respect 
 does it remain the same. It assumes ever new phases.” 
 The universal postulate of Science is that things will 
 continue as they are. But here is a science which pos- 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 179 
 
 tulates that the things with which it deals will always be 
 changing in every respect, so that the truth of to-day 
 may be the exploded chimera of to-morrow. Direct 
 verification of a general hypothesis in this case seems 
 to be impossible. And as we have no other history 
 wherewith to compare that of the inhabitants of this 
 planet, verification by comparison is of course out of the 
 question. 
 
 In regard to the individual actors of which the sum of 
 history is made up, our “ instincts,” which the “ West¬ 
 minster” allows are to be taken into account as well as 
 historical induction, tell us plainly that at the moment 
 of action, all the “ antecedents ” being as they are, we are 
 free to do the action or let it alone. They tell us, when 
 the action is done, that we were free to do it or let it 
 alone. And, in the form of moral judgment, they praise 
 or condemn the actions of other men on the same sup¬ 
 position. This is not “ metaphysics,” nor is it part of 
 any obsolete controversy about “predestination.” It is 
 at least as much a matter of common sense, and a ground 
 of daily feelings and conduct, as the sensation of heat 
 and cold. Till the sense of moral freedom, conscience, 
 and the instincts which lead us to praise and blame, 
 reward and punish the actions of others, are explained 
 away, we shall continue to believe that there is something 
 in human actions which renders them not merely more 
 “complex” than the phenomena of the physical world, 
 but essentially different in regard to the mode of their 
 production. 
 
 I am not aware that any account has yet been given 
 either of our sense of freedom or of conscience, except 
 
 12 
 
l8o THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 on the hypothesis of free-will. As to praise and blame, 
 it is said they attach to actions and qualities simply as 
 they are “moral.” It only remains to define “moral,” 
 and see whether you can help including in it the notion 
 of freedom. We are told that fixed and settled disposi¬ 
 tions are praised and blamed most, though, from the 
 fact that they are fixed and settled, their actions are the 
 least free. But we praise and blame such dispositions 
 on the assumption that they were freely formed. Nothing 
 can be either more fixed or settled, or more odious, than 
 the disposition of a man who has been bred up among 
 cannibals and thieves. Yet we blame it very little, 
 because it has not been freely formed. 
 
 It may be observed that in attempting to explain moral 
 approbation or disapprobation as attaching, not to free 
 actions or freely formed characters, but to “ moral quali¬ 
 ties,” the “ Westminster ” is simply reproducing the 
 argument by which Jonathan Edwards attempted to 
 reconcile moral sense with Predestination. Some caution, 
 therefore, should be used in sneering at the views of 
 Jonathan Edwards as a type of obsolete metaphysics. 
 
 As to the Aristotelian theory' of “ habit,” I should not 
 be afraid to impugn it (if it were necessary) any more 
 than the Aristotelian theory that virtue consists in acting 
 “in a mean.” I am strongly inclined to think that 
 Aristotle, and those who have followed him, observed 
 vice and jumped to a conclusion about virtue. I have 
 no doubt that in its progress towards vice the soul falls 
 under the dominion of quasi-material laws, of which it 
 becomes at last the utter slave. But I believe, and 
 think it matter of general consciousness, that the pro- 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. l8l 
 
 gress of the soul towards virtue is a progress towards 
 freedom. 
 
 The theory of human action in which the “ Westmin¬ 
 ster ” at present reposes is that “ our acts are caused 
 mainly by our own characters, which are formed mainly 
 by our own efforts.” It only remains to give us an 
 account of “ effort.” Is it the same with action, or 
 something different ? If it is the same, the theory comes 
 to this—that action is caused by character, which is 
 caused by action. If it is different, tell us what it is, 
 and bring it into the chain of necessary sequences on 
 which your science is to be founded. 
 
 “ The common sense of mankind seems to have as¬ 
 sumed that the will possesses an immense power of 
 subduing circumstances, forming character, and regulat¬ 
 ing action.” Compare this with the allegation in the 
 next page but one, that “ our wills are determined by 
 our characters and our circumstances.” In the first pro¬ 
 position the “ will ” is evidently taken to be the original 
 source of character. In the second the will is determined 
 by the character which it originates. 
 
 Look too at the following passage, in which the 
 “Westminster” attempts to turn upon mean expression 
 I have used as to the constant working of the Deity in 
 nature : — “ If He is not working still in nature, he says, 
 we have a strange idea of Providence. Then His will 
 must continue to maintain regular laws. If He does, is 
 He, too, absorbed into this chain of fate ? Is His will 
 sunk in a physical necessity? No, they will tell us. He 
 works regularly because it is His nature to act by law. 
 Then why is it so degrading to suppose that this is man’s 
 
182 
 
 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 nature also ?” Does the reviewer hold that man “ main¬ 
 tains the regular laws of human nature by his will ?” or is 
 his argument that, since it is not degrading to the Deity 
 to be the master of natural laws, it is not degrading to 
 man to be their slave ? 
 
 The fact is, we have not before us in the “Westminster" 
 any definite theory of human action, of humanity, or of 
 history whatever. We have merely a passionate determi¬ 
 nation to assert that there is some scientific law which 
 shall oust “ the popular religion,” and that even though 
 the law cannot be found, it ought to be, and must be 
 there. 
 
 A torrent of ridicule is poured upon me for having 
 supposed that any inferences affecting the freedom of 
 human action have ever been drawn, or that there has 
 been a tendency to draw any, from the alleged uniformity 
 of “ moral statistics.” There are various ways of reced¬ 
 ing from an untenable position ; and that of contemptu¬ 
 ously denying that it was ever taken up, if not the most 
 gracious or ingenuous, is perhaps the most satisfactory 
 and decisive. The same may be said of the contemptu¬ 
 ous denial that there has been any disposition to applaud 
 physical theories which break down the barrier between 
 humanity and brutes. 
 
 It would be a very wicked, as well as a very silly thing, 
 to oppose such a benefit to mankind as the formation of 
 a new science. If the Reviewer thinks he can found a 
 science on “ high probability running not seldom into 
 moral certainty,”—the estimate of the foundation of his 
 new science which he appears willing to adopt,—let him 
 do so by all means, and we will repose under the benefi- 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 183 
 
 cent shadow of the science which he founds. I have no 
 fear lest man should be “ degraded ” by the reception of 
 any kind of truth. On the other hand, I have not much 
 fear lest I should “ undermine all natural religion ” by 
 maintaining that free personality in and through which 
 alone men can apprehend or commune with a personal 
 God. 
 
 Of course there is no direct opposition between scien¬ 
 tific prevision and the freedom of human action. The 
 opposition is between the freedom of human action and 
 the necessary causation on which scientific prevision is 
 founded. As to the Divine prevision, which is so freely 
 used as an argumentum ad hominem against the advocates 
 of free-will, it would conflict with the freedom of human 
 action if it were founded, like scientific prevision, on 
 necessary causation. But we have not the slightest 
 reason to believe that this is the case. We cannot form 
 the slightest idea as to the mode of the Divine prevision, 
 and till we can it will be a mere sophism to bring it into 
 this question. 
 
 Christendom has been compelled by its moral instincts 
 to reject the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination; and 
 though that doctrine may put on the name of “ Pro¬ 
 vidence” or “ scientific prevision,” we shall be compelled 
 by the same instincts to reject it still. 
 
 Transfer to the subject of physical science the admis¬ 
 sions which the discoverers of this new science of 
 humanity are compelled to make touching their subject, 
 and let us see what the consequence to physical science 
 would be. Suppose physical agents endowed with a 
 “ will,” that will possessing “ immense power of subduing 
 
184 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 their circumstances,’’ “ forming their character, and regu¬ 
 lating their actions suppose that their operations were 
 caused by their “ characters,” and that their characters 
 “ were caused mainly by their own effortsthat they 
 had the fullest power “ to develope their own faculties,” 
 and to “form their own future”—what sort of ground 
 would physical science then rest on ? With how much 
 confidence would her inductions and predictions be 
 made? 
 
 So far as human actions are determined not by the 
 self-formed character and the individual will but by our 
 circumstances, including the general constitution of our 
 nature, so far they are of course the subjects actually, or 
 potentially, of science. And on this ground the sciences 
 of ethics, politics, and political economy are formed. It 
 is not, I believe, in anything that I have written that you 
 will find a low estimate of the benefits which an improved 
 treatment of those sciences is likely to confer on man¬ 
 kind. 
 
 It is not philosophic to class under the head of cir¬ 
 cumstance the influence which the social actions of men 
 have on the lives and characters of their fellows. That 
 the life and character of each of us is immensely influ¬ 
 enced by society, so much so as to confine the free-will 
 and the responsibility of each within narrow limits, is a 
 thought not unwelcome, but on the contrary most wel¬ 
 come, to the weakness of humanity. Yet each of us 
 knows that there is something which depends, not on 
 the society in which he is placed, but on himself alone. 
 
 Every man looking back over his own past life feels 
 that he has been in a great degree the creature of cir- 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 185 
 
 cumstance, and of social influences. He can also, so 
 far as his memory serves him, trace the connexion of 
 each of his past actions with a motive, and of the motives 
 with his pre-existing character, and the circumstances 
 which surrounded him; and thus construct a sort of 
 miniature philosophy of his own history. Yet every man 
 knows that by the exertion of his own will he might 
 have made his life other than it has been. 
 
 As to the theory of history which I have ventured to 
 propound, viz., that its key is to be found, not as Mr. 
 Buckle maintains, in the progress of science, but in the 
 formation of man’s character, which is pre-eminently 
 religious and moral, I hope there is nothing on the face 
 of that theory disgracefully irrational. Its truth or false¬ 
 hood can be satisfactorily determined only when it has 
 been applied to the facts of history. Few, at all events, 
 will doubt that to write the history of man worthily, it is 
 necessary to get to the very core of humanity, in which 
 case “religion and morality” can hardly be excluded 
 from consideration. 
 
 I emphatically repeat that I have no desire to obstruct 
 the formation of a new science. I will reverently accept 
 it when it is formed, in the fullest faith that it will be 
 elevating as well as beneficial to mankind. But we may 
 be allowed to think that there are such things as chimeras 
 in the intellectual world, and that some of them are per¬ 
 nicious, even though they may be patronized by very 
 excellent people. “ Mr. Mill” and “ Miss Martineau” 
 are active thinkers, and persons of corresponding moral 
 vigour; but it does not follow that their qualities will 
 descend to those who are imbued with their theories, 
 
i86 
 
 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 any more than the purity of Epicurus descended to the 
 Epicureans, or the fiery energy of Mahomet to the fatal¬ 
 istic Turk. As to “ Sir G. C. Lewis,” there is not a line 
 in his works which warrants the “ Westminster ” in 
 appealing to his name. 
 
 Suppose the Scotch were to accept as true the very 
 defective, inaccurate, and misleading analysis which Mr. 
 Buckle has given of their history ; they would be led at 
 once to discard that which, with all its imperfections 
 and drawbacks, has been the root of their greatness as a 
 nation. No regard for politeness could hinder me from 
 calling such a consequence pernicious. 
 
 I drew a parallel between the circumstances of the 
 present day and those of the last century; and I will 
 conclude with some words of Dugald Stewart, written at 
 the end of the last century, which, if not strictly relevant 
 to the present question, have, I think, a bearing on it, 
 and are good in themselves :—“ That implicit credulity 
 is a mark of a feeble mind will not be disputed; but it 
 may not perhaps be as generally acknowledged that the 
 case is the same with unlimited scepticism. On the 
 contrary, we are sometimes apt to ascribe this disposition 
 to a more than ordinary vigour of intellect. Such a pre¬ 
 judice was by no means unnatural at that period in the 
 history of modern Europe when reason first began to 
 throw off the yoke of authority, and when it unquestion¬ 
 ably required a superiority of understanding as well as 
 of intrepidity for an individual to resist the contagion of 
 a prevailing superstition. But in the present age, in 
 which the tendency of fashionable opinions is directly 
 opposite to those of the vulgar, the philosophical creed, 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 187 
 
 the philosophical scepticism of by far the greater number 
 of those who value themselves on an emancipation from 
 popular errors, arises from the very same weakness with 
 the credulity of the multitude ; nor is it going too far to 
 say, with Rousseau, that ‘ he who in the end of the 
 eighteenth century has brought himself to abandon all 
 his early principles without discrimination, would proba - 
 bly have been a bigot in the days of the League.’ ” 
 
 I am, &c., 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH. 
 
 Oxford , Nov. 18, 1861. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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