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LECTURES 
 
 STUDYOF HISTORY, 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 IN OXFORD, 1859-GL 
 
 By GOLDWIN SMITH, M.A., 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN TUE UNIVERSITY OP 
 OXFORD. 
 
 TO WUICU IS ADDED 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE N. Y. HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 IN DECEMBER, 1SG4, ON 
 
 THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 
 18 6 6. 
 
REFEREMCE 
 
 -1\\"^ 
 %(.^ 
 
 \%^^ 
 
 By Transfer 
 
 D. C. Public Lll9flfy 
 
 FEB 2 3 1933 
 

 DISTRICtfe^Jg^BIA PROPERTY 
 IRMSFERRED IROM BU&LIQ LIBRARY 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 rAGB 
 
 An Inaugural Lecture 5 
 
 On the Study op History — 1 45 
 
 On the Study of History — II 81 
 
 On some supposed Consequences of the Doctrine of Histor- 
 ical Progress 117 
 
 The Moral Freedom of Man 165 
 
 On the Foundation of the American Colonies 185 
 
 The University of Oxford 217 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 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 honor 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 relation 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 consid- 
 eration, 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 
 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 proficient 
 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 
 
6 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 foundation, for a knowledge of treaties is mentioned in 
 the letters patent of foundation as specially necessary 
 for the public interest. Some subsequent regulations, 
 though of doubtful validity, named International Law 
 and Political Economy, with the Method of reading Mod- 
 ern 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 anticipation 
 of the late resolution of the University to found a school 
 of Law and Modern History. The Professorship of Mod- 
 ern History, the Professorship of Political Economy, the 
 Chichele Professorship of Diplomacy and International 
 Law, the Professor and Teachers of the Modern Lan- 
 guages, 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 farther 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 
 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. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 7 
 
 Conjecture points to Sir Kobert Walpole. That minis- 
 ter was at the height of power when the professorship 
 was founded under George I. When the foundation was 
 confirmed under George IL, 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 favorite, again into his own strong 
 and skillful grasp. If Walpole was the real founder — if 
 he even sanctioned the foundation — it is a remarkable 
 testimony from a political leader of a turn of mind prac- 
 tical to coarseness, and who had discarded the literary 
 statesmen of the Somers and Halifax school, to the value 
 of high political education as a qualification for the pub- 
 lic service. It is also creditable to the memory of a min- 
 ister, 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 L, however, or his minister, was not the 
 first of English rulers who had endeavored to draw di- 
 rect from the University a supply of talented and high- 
 ly-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 leveling fanaticism of 
 his party, to make himself our chancellor, to foster our 
 
8 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 learning -with his all-pervading energy, and to seek to 
 draw our choicest 3^outh to councils which it must be 
 allowed were always filled, as far as the evil time per- 
 mitted, 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 
 philosophers, 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 Dunbar against 
 a general who had foiled Wallenstein, 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 great- 
 ness to which she still looks back with a proud and wist- 
 ful eye. Cromwell, to use his own words, "was by birth 
 a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height, 
 nor yet in obscurity ;" 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 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 unrivaled age. And therefore his ambition, if it 
 was treasonable, was not low. Therefore he bore him- 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 9 
 
 self always not as one who gambled for a stake, but as 
 one who struggled for a cause. Therefore the great sol- 
 dier 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 ; there- 
 fore he loved and called to his council-board high and 
 cultivated intellect, and employed it to serve the interest 
 of the state without too anxiously inquiring how it 
 would serve his own ; therefore he felt the worth of the 
 Universities, saved them from the storm which laid 
 throne and altar in the dust, and earnestly endeavored 
 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 Eevolution. Those 
 who wish to see how power is wielded without high cul- 
 tivation and great ideas, should trace the course of Na- 
 poleon, so often compared with Cromwell, and preferred 
 to him— Xapoleon, the great despiser of philosophers — 
 and ask whether a little of the philosophy^ which he de- 
 spised might not have mitigated the vulgar vanity which 
 breathes through his bulletins, and tempered his vulgar 
 lust of conquest with some regard 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 or headlong 
 force, or by a cunning which belongs almost as much to 
 
 A 2 
 
10 AN INAUGUKAL LECTURE. 
 
 brutes as to man. The men who have really left their 
 mark in England, the founders of her greatness from 
 Alfred to the Elizabethan statesmen, and from the Eliz- 
 abethan 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 channel or another, with the 
 great thoughts of those who had gone before them, and 
 prepared for action by lofty meditations, the parents of 
 high designs. 
 
 The attempt of the crown, however, to found a politic- 
 al school at Oxford and Cambridge by means of this pro- 
 fessorship must be said, at the time, to have failed. Per- 
 haps 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 con- 
 descension of the Convocation in even returning thanks 
 for the professorship to the royal founder, whom he 
 styles "the Duke of Brunswick, commonly called King 
 George I." ISTor does the new study in itself seem to 
 have been more welcome, at this time, than other inno- 
 vations. The Convocation point their gratitude especial- 
 ly to that part of the royal letter which promises "that 
 the hours for teaching his majesty's scholars the Modern 
 Lan2:ua2:es shall be so ordered as not to interfere with 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 11 
 
 those already appointed for their acaderaical studies." 
 What the academical studies were which were to be so 
 jealously guarded against the intrusion of Modern His- 
 tory and Modern Languages, what they were even for 
 one who came to Oxford gifted, ardent, 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 dissolute, 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 bequeathed 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 religion which the gen- 
 try 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 Convocation of that day were 
 so anxious to guard against the intrusion of new knowl- 
 edge, there can not be two opinions. We have left that 
 depravity far behind us ; but in the day of its ascenden- 
 cy 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 
 
12 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 merit. But soon followed the fierce Parliamentary strug- 
 gles of his declining hour, when the refusal of a place 
 in a public ofiice 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 consigned 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 borough- 
 monger would be bestowed upon a promising student. 
 Under these most adverse circumstances, few king's schol- 
 ars seem ever to have been appointed. The scholars, 
 and the commission given by the original statutes to the 
 professor 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 public 
 bodies ; and in that event, it might not have been out of 
 place for the Universities to remind the government of 
 the expressed desire and the old engagement of the crown. 
 In the mean time. Modern History and its associate 
 studies enjoy the more certain encouragement of a Mod- 
 ern History School and academical honors. 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 statesman who founded it, in 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 13 
 
 great measure, for the study of the Civil Law ; that study 
 which once formed the statesmen of Europe and connect- 
 ed 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 History 
 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 in- 
 stituting the new schools — that of increasing industry by 
 bringing into play the great motive power of love of a 
 special subject, and that of making education a more di- 
 rect training for life. These are the titles of the History 
 School to continued support, even if its state for some 
 time to come should need indulgence ; as indulgence I 
 fear it will long need, unless the University should see 
 fit to place it under more regular and authoritative guid- 
 ance, and unless the difficulties which colleges find in 
 providing permanent tuition in this department can be 
 in some way overcome. 
 
 That the love of a special subject is a great spur to in- 
 dustry needs no proof, and it has never yet been shown 
 that the mind is less exercised when it is exercised with 
 pleasure. Every experienced student knows that the 
 great secret of study is to read with appetite. Under the 
 
14 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 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 honor in the contests of after life. 
 Study pursued under its influence generally makes an 
 aspiring character ; but study pursued, in part, at least, 
 from love of the subject, makes a happier character; and 
 why should not this also be taken into account in choos- 
 ing 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, cer- 
 tainly not the least momentous 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 prepara- 
 tion for after life may be called Utilitarianism. The ob- 
 jection, 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 are bound 
 to act, on far-sighted views of the real interests of educa- 
 tion, without paying too much deference 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 clergy, its 
 great professions, the heads of its great manufactures 
 and trades. It was so in the earlier period of our histo- 
 ry, 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 honor. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 15 
 
 To power, wealth, and honor 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 honor which 
 shall shine beyond the hour. Utilitarianism in educa- 
 tion is a bad thing. But the great places of national 
 education may avoid Utilitarianism till government is in 
 the hands of ambitious ignorance, till the Bench of Jus- 
 tice is filled with pettifoggers, till coarse cupidity and em- 
 piricism stand beside the sick-bed, till all the great lev- 
 ers of opinion are in low, uneducated hands. Our care 
 for the education of the middle classes, however 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 a di- 
 minishing class — which I believe the University had es- 
 pecially in view in instituting the School of Law and 
 Modern History, and which it was thought particularly 
 desirable to win to study by the attraction of an interest- 
 ing 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 es- 
 tuaries of the Scheldt, Ehine, Ems, Weser, Elbe, and Ey- 
 der ; in a great part of Westphalia and other districts of 
 
16 AN INAUGUEAL LECTUEE. 
 
 Germany ; in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway ; 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 proportion of the land. 
 France and Prussia" (it seems he will soon be able to 
 say Eussia) " have in our times been added to the coun- 
 tries in which the land is divided into small estates of 
 working peasant proprietors. In every country of Eu- 
 rope, under whatever form of government, however re- 
 motely and indirectly affected by the wars and convul- 
 sions of the French Ee volution, 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 divis- 
 ion and distribution of the land into small estates of a 
 working peasant proprietary, not to its aggregation into 
 large estates of a nobility and gentry. This has been the 
 real revolution 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 pro- 
 prietors prevails; 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 electric- 
 ity 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 assur- 
 edly prevail which European opinion shall decide to be 
 the better for the whole people. But which is the better 
 
AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 17 
 
 system for the whole people is a, question with a double 
 aspect. One aspect is that of physical condition, the oth- 
 er 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 so- 
 cial educators of the people, may countervail the material 
 advantages which a landowning peasantry enjoy, and 
 even the accession of moral dignity, the prudence, the 
 frugality, which the possession of property in the lower 
 class, even more than in ours, seems clearly to draw in 
 its train.'" But then the gentry must know their posi- 
 tion, and own their duty to those by whose labor they 
 are fed. They must be resident, they must be well-edu- 
 cated, they must be able and willing to act as the social 
 and moral educators of those below them. They must 
 do their part, and their Universities must make it a defi- 
 nite 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 property, to squan- 
 der the fruits of the peasant's labor 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 land- 
 lord," may swell till it prevails — till it prevails in En- 
 gland, as it has prevailed in the land, separated from ours 
 only by a few leagues of sea, which, eighty years ago, 
 
 * I am here only stating the case as it may be stated in favor of the 
 present system, not giving my own opinion on the question. — Note to 2d 
 edit. 
 
18 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 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 Kevolution, the fervor and the auster- 
 ity of Kousseau had cast out from good society the levity 
 and sensuality of Voltaire."^ Atheism, frivolity, heartless- 
 ness, sybaritism, had gone out of fashion with Madame 
 de Pompadour and Madame Dubarri. Theism, philan- 
 thropy, earnestness, even simplicity of life, or at least the 
 praise of simplicity of life, had become the order of the 
 day; and 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 to paint strongly enough this charac- 
 teristic of the Eevolution, and to make it preach clearly 
 enough its tremendous lesson as to the difference between 
 social sentiment and social duty. We know Paley's apo- 
 logue of the idle pigeon, consuming, squandering, scatter- 
 ing about in lordly wastefulness the store of corn labori- 
 ously 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 point- 
 ed, is nothing more dangerous than that property has its 
 duties. Landed property, fortunately for the moral dig- 
 nity and real happiness of its possessors, has its obvious 
 duties. Funded property, and other kinds of accumula- 
 ted wealth, have duties less obvious, to the performance 
 of which the possessors must be guided, if their Univer- 
 
 * Sec Lavallee, Histoire des Fran^ais, book iii., section 3, chapter 5. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 19 
 
 sities desire to see them living the life and holding the 
 place in creation not of animals of large, varied, and elab- 
 orate consumption, but of men. 
 
 But can education teach the rich to do their duty ? If 
 it can not, why do the rich come to places of education ? 
 If it can not, 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 endeavoring to earn the rent 
 the labor of the people pays them by doing good among 
 the people? In feudal times, when the landed aristocra- 
 cy 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 education to social duties ; 
 not to the duties of schoolmasters, lecturers, or statists, 
 but to the duties of landed gentlemen. Before the late 
 changes, the influence of education had hardly been tried 
 on them. A little philology and a little geometry, for- 
 gotten as soon as learned, might sharpen the wits a little, 
 but could awaken no lasting intellectual interests, open 
 no intellectual pleasures to compete with animal enjoy- 
 ments, kindle generous sympathies and aspirations in no 
 heart. ISTow we have for the aristocracy and gentry a 
 school, in effect, of Social Science, that is, of Jurispru- 
 dence, 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 re- 
 jected. It is an experiment, but it is a rational and 
 
20 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 practical experiment, and human legislation can be no 
 more.* 
 
 I dwell on these points because we have heard ex- 
 pressed, by persons of influence in council and congrega- 
 tion, a desire, which I doubt not extensively prevails, 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 con- 
 demned, 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 de- 
 plored in country parishes by clergymen who uphold 
 the system here. History and its cognate subjects may 
 not prove as much intellectual power as the mixed phil- 
 osophical 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 so- 
 ciety, 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 
 
 * 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 2d edit. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 21 
 
 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 diflicul- 
 ties of education necessarily increase when it has to do 
 with those who are placed by birth at the level to which 
 other men by labor aspire, and who are heirs to wealth 
 which they have not earned, and honor 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 connection between the distribu- 
 tion of property, especially landed property, in a coun- 
 try, and its political institutions, is necessarily close ; and 
 countries of peasant proprietors have proved hitherto in- 
 capable of supporting constitutional government* Those 
 countries gravitate toward centralized and bureaucratic 
 despotism with a force which in France, after many years 
 of Parliamentary liberty, seems to have decisively re- 
 sumed its sway. There is no class wealthy and strong 
 enough to form independent Parliaments, or of local in- 
 fluence sufficient to sustain local self-government through 
 the country. There is nothing to stand between the peo- 
 ple and the throne. This is the great historic service of 
 the English landed gentry, but it is a service which can 
 not be well or safely performed without a political edu- 
 cation. Europe is filled with the rivalry between the 
 Constitutional and Imperialist systems, the greatest polit- 
 
 * This remark must be limited to the monarchical nations of Europe. — 
 Note to 2d edit. 
 
22 AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 
 
 ical controversy wliicli 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 Parliaments, 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, inter- 
 mittent, and it falls on high and low alike, or rather on 
 the high than on the low. There is no tyranny so con- 
 stant, so searching, so hopeless, no tyranny which so sure- 
 ly makes the people its victims, as class taxation and 
 class law. The political ascendency which the gentry in 
 feudal times owed to arms they must now retain, if they 
 retain it, by superiority of intelligence, and by making it 
 felt that their government 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 des- 
 perate positions and ruinous defeats. We may be on the 
 eve of social as well as political change. The new dis- 
 tribution of political power, which all parties in the state 
 appear to regard as near at hand,* will certainly alter the 
 character of legislation, and will very probably draw with 
 it an alteration of those laws touching the settlement and 
 the inheritance of property by which great estates are 
 partly held together. In that case, Oxford may in time 
 
 * In 1859. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTUEE. 23 
 
 cease to have the same class to educate, and may have, 
 accordingly, to qualify her system of education. But 
 the mission of a University is to society as it is ; and the 
 political 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 charac- 
 ter 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-festeriog 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 gen- 
 tlemen of England bore themselves so that their country 
 has reason to be proud of them forever. Nothing could 
 be more lofty than their love of principles, nothing more 
 noble than their disregard of all personal and class inter- 
 ests 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 hered- 
 itary 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 pe- 
 riod 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 spriog of philosophy, 
 science, history, and poetry at that time. It is not to 
 
24 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 j)liilological exercise that our earliest Latin grammar ex- 
 horts the student, nor is it a mere sharpening of the fac- 
 ulties that it promises as his reward. It calls to the 
 study of the language wherein is contained a great treas- 
 ure of wisdom and knowledge ; and, the student's labor 
 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 ca- 
 non or the emendator of a corrupt passage, that the early 
 scholars undertook those ardent, lifelong, and truly ro- 
 mantic toils which their massy volumes bespeak to our 
 days — our days which are not degenerate from theirs in 
 labor, but in which the most ardent intellectual labor is 
 directed to a new prize. Besides, Latin was still the lan- 
 guage of literary, ecclesiastical, diplomatic, legal, academ- 
 ical 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 balance 
 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, 3^ou must choose 
 such as the world values, and such as may win the alle- 
 giance of a manly mind. It has been said that six 
 months' study of the language of Schiller and Goethe 
 will now open to the student more high enjoyment than 
 six years' study of the languages of Greece and Rome. 
 It is certain that six months' study of French will now 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 25 
 
 open to the student more of Europe than six years' study 
 of that which was once the European tongue. These are 
 changes in the circumstances and conditions of education 
 which can not be left out of sight in deahng with the 
 generality of minds. Great discoveries have been made 
 by accident ; but it is an accidental discovery, and must 
 be noted as such, if the studies which were first pursued 
 as the sole key to wisdom and knowledge, 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 
 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 so- 
 cial and constitutional questions, and all questions of leg- 
 islation, through its haze. There is a mass of informa- 
 tion 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 ora- 
 tory 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. ISTor J 
 will the ancient historians and the ancient writers on po- 
 litical philosophy serve the turn. The classics are in- 
 
 B 
 
26 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 deed in this, as in other departments, a wonderful and 
 precious manual of humanity ; but the great questions 
 of poUtical 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 stud- 
 ied in modern writers. The great problems which perplex 
 our statesmen touching the rights of the laboring popu- 
 lation and the distribution of political power among all 
 classes of the people were completely solved for the an- 
 cients 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 problems and difficulties of the representa- 
 tive system were equally unknown to a state which was 
 a city, and all whose free citizens met with ease to de- 
 bate and vote in their own persons in the public place. 
 So, again, with all the great questions that have arisen 
 out of the relations between the spiritual and the tem- 
 poral power embodied in Church and State, the duty of 
 the state toward religion. Church establishments, tolera- 
 tion, liberty of conscience. So, again, with the question 
 of the education of the people, which was simple enough 
 when the people were all freemen, supported in intellect- 
 ual leisure by a multitude of slaves. In the history of 
 the ancient republics we see indeed all the political mo- 
 tives and passions at work in their native form, and 
 through a medium of crystal clearness, but under circum- 
 stances so different that few direct lessons can be drawn. 
 Compare any revolution of Athens, Corcyra, or Rome, its 
 simple springs and simple passions, with the vast com- 
 plexity of the motives, sentiments, ideas, theories, aspira- 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 27 
 
 tions, which, are upon the scene in the great drama of the 
 French Ee volution. New political, as well as new phys- 
 ical maladies are set up from time to time, as one great 
 crisis succeeds another in the history of the world. Fa- 
 natical persecution was the deadly offspring of the Cru- 
 sades ; 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 persecute the 
 Christians, because persecution was iion hujusce scecuU; 
 it did not become that civilized age. But how far re- 
 moved is this cold and haughty tolerance, which implicit- 
 ly 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 relig- 
 ious war, has found — at least its higher and purer spirits 
 have found — that true religion there can not 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, marvelously near to our hearts; 
 and, undoubtedly, they are farther from our passions than 
 the historians of the present day. Yet even to those se- 
 rene 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 pamphlet which 
 some may think less admirable in favor of universal suf- 
 frage, vote by ballot, and popular courts of law. The 
 
28 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 history of Kome, and of the Eoman 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 ques- 
 tion of high police, and writers are liable to fall into the 
 hands of administrative justice for taking any but the 
 Csesarean 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 greatness, and far 
 be it from us to disregard style in choosing books of edu- 
 cation. 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 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 an- 
 cients 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 his- 
 torians 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 Christianity, European Civilization, the 
 History of the Keformation, the History of Europe during 
 the French Revolution, are not so easily reduced to the 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTUEE. 29 
 
 proportions 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 saying 
 that our great age of art, in history at least, is not yet 
 fully come. The subject of the decline of Feudalism 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 itself 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 life- 
 less 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 painting ever was so vivid as 
 that which lures the reader through all that is extrava- 
 gant in Carlyle. Gibbon's shallow and satirical view of 
 the Church and Churchmen has made him miss 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, its luminous 
 grandeur and august proportions, reared as it is out of a 
 heap of materials the most confused and mean, and ask 
 of what Greek or Eoman edifice, however classical, 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 forever meet the eye of the historical student, 
 
30 AN INAUGUKAL LECTUEE. 
 
 passing, as the historical students of all time will pass, 
 over that stately and nndecaying arch which spans the 
 chaos of the declining 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 manly ed- 
 ucation, the one, as I have ventured to submit, is deeply 
 affected by the other. It would appear that to be avail- 
 able for the higher education a subject must be traversed 
 by principles and capable 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 becoming a philosophy, hav- 
 ing 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 sep- 
 arate nations, and the effects, good or evil, of all the vari- 
 ous 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 historj^, 
 from the metaphysical school of Hegel to the positivist 
 school of Comte ; researches which, though they may be 
 often, though they may hitherto always have been, made 
 under the perverse 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, 
 
AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 81 
 
 I venture to think the History School must draw largely 
 for its educational value on the two sciences (they should 
 rather be called philosophies) which are associated with 
 History in the School, Jurisprudence and PoHtical Econ- 
 omy. 
 
 The forms and practice of the law, the art of the advo- 
 cate, can not 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 
 mediseval youth. The Viner foundation seems to have 
 been intended to restore its energy by the life-giving vir- 
 tue of practical utility. But there is evidence that the 
 Yiner foundation, like that of Modern History and Mod- 
 ern 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, in- 
 stinct 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 stud- 
 ies 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 di- 
 plomacy forever above that system of chicanery and in- 
 trigue of which Talleyrand was the evil deit}^, and make 
 
82 AN INAUGUKAL LECTUEE. 
 
 it the instrument of international justice. Truly great 
 men have always been frank and honest negotiators, and 
 frank and honest negotiation alone becomes a truly great 
 people. "He had no foreign policy," says a Frencli 
 statesman of a great English minister, "but peace, good- 
 will, and justice among nations." A really good and im- 
 partial manual of international law"^ is a work still to bo 
 produced. There is the same want of a good manual of 
 the principles of jurisprudence; the principles of juris- 
 prudence in the abstract, and the comparative jurispru- 
 dence of different nations. For want of this, we are driv- 
 en to study some national system of law, either that of 
 the Eomans or of our own country. That of the Eomans 
 is somewhat remote, and sometimes veils its principles in 
 shapes difficult to pierce, except to a student versed in 
 Eoman 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 cov- 
 ers 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 technicalities or antiquities 
 of English law, that constitute the proper subject of that 
 part of our examinations ; especially as of those who pass 
 through the school, fewer probably will be destined for 
 the actual profession of the law than to be county magis- 
 trates, and administer plain justice to the people. 
 
 Political Economy, though once accepted by the Uni- 
 
 * I do not mean to give currency to the special phrase international 
 laiv, 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 tri- 
 bunal, no means of giving legal effect to a decision. — Note to 2d edition. 
 
AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 83 
 
 versity 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 inckide among their sub- 
 jects the great work of Adam Smith. Few will think 
 that the bounds of safe discretion are exceeded by the 
 permission to know something of economical science thus 
 accorded to students destined, many of them by their 
 birth, more by their wealth or talent, to become the leg- 
 islators of a great commercial country, and whose errors 
 in economy may bring dearth of bread into every cot- 
 tage, and with dearth evils that arise when parent and 
 child can not both be fed. Political Economy is still the 
 object of antipathies, excusable but unfounded. A hy- 
 pothetical science, true in the abstract, but not applicable 
 in its rigor 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 tQ -pccijise the providence and 
 contradict the designs of God. Political Economy is 
 guilty of seeking to put an end to the existence of a pau- 
 per class. Such a class may in imagination be the kneel- 
 ing 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 
 m.en; but in reality they are the Lazaroni who sacked 
 and burned with Masaniello, and the sans-culottes who 
 butchered with Eobespierre. 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 
 
 B2 
 
34: AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 destitute. " Dr. Adam Smith's conduct in private life," 
 says tlie author of the sketch prefixed to his great work, 
 " did not behe 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. Stew- 
 art mentions 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 accom- 
 panied with circumstances equally honorable to the deli- 
 cacy of his feelings and the liberality of his heart." It is 
 false sentiment to talk of a political economist as though 
 he were a religious teacher, but through no sermons does 
 the spirit of true humanity breathe more strongly than 
 through the writings of Adam 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 
 put mercy into the heart of fanaticism or ambition, but 
 his spirit always wrastles^ and, wroGtles hard and long, 
 with those spirits of CTuei.ty to, sav^- ihe world from war. 
 Again, no rich man need fear that he will learn from Po- 
 litical Economy the moral sophism that luxury may be 
 laudably indulged in because it is good for trade. On 
 the contrary, he will learn to distinguish between pro- 
 ductive 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 
 
AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 85 
 
 of a political economist, but of a most Christian king. 
 Those words were the answer of Louis XIY. 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 co- 
 lossal debt, brought to the verge, and beyond the verge, 
 of famine, and forced to pour out their blood like water 
 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 
 with fire and sword. Once more, it is supposed that Po- 
 litical Economy sanctions hard dealings between class 
 and class, and between man and man; that it encour- 
 ages the capitalist to use men as " hands," without fel- 
 low-feeling and without mercy ; and these charges are 
 found side by side with the sentimental praise of that 
 atrocious system of Vagrancy Laws and Statutes of La- 
 borers 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 laborer wandering in quest of a better market, cer- 
 tainly finds as little response in the dry mind of Political 
 Economy as the poetry of bloody persecutions and judi- 
 cial murder. But those who wish to find a condemna- 
 tion of the inhumanity as well as the folly of overwork- 
 ing and underfeeding the laborer will not have to seek 
 far before they find it in the pages of Adam Smith. 
 Adam Smith, indeed, condemns in the measured language 
 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 
 
3Q AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 
 
 manufacturer and the grinding landlord. But perhaps 
 his sentence will not on either account have less weight 
 with reasonable men. The laws of the production and 
 distribution of wealth are not the laws of duty or affec- 
 tion. But they are the most beautiful and wonderful of 
 the natural laws of God, and through their beauty and 
 their wonderful wisdom they, like the other laws of na- 
 ture 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 hindering 
 them, they gather, store, dispense, husband, if need be, 
 against scarcity, the wealth of the great community of 
 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-laborers 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 fulfill 
 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. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 37 
 
 But, though the philosophy of this school may, for the 
 present, be drawn mainly from its Jurisprudence and Po- 
 litical 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 devel- 
 oped power of the pure intellect, the driest light, to use 
 Bacon's phrase, of the understanding, will make a great 
 thinker, 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 Ox- 
 ford, if she is under some disadvantages, possesses some 
 great advantages for the appreciation of historical char- 
 acter and the ethical treatment of histor}^, 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 history. We can not have in this seat of learn- 
 ing the knowledge of the world and of action which pro- 
 duces 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 his- 
 tory as that of Napier. But we have in a singular de- 
 
38 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 gree 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, part- 
 ly from 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 important periods, provided 
 only that they are combined 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 
 can not 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 na- 
 tion, in the main, writes its own history best; it best 
 knows its own land, its own institutions, the relative im- 
 portance 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 views of others. We are 
 indignant, or we smile at the religion of French aggran- 
 dizement, 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 moral- 
 ity in the world, depends on the perpetual acquisition of 
 fresh territory and fresh diplomatic influence by France. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 89 
 
 Perhaps tliere 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 orig- 
 inal arrangement by which Modern History and Mod- 
 ern Languages were united was the right one, that I can 
 not refrain from expressing a hope that the expediency 
 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 depart- 
 ments 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 igno- 
 rance 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 rffoulds, 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, Tii me- 
 Mores radices egeris^ "You will strike root deeper and bear 
 
40 AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 
 
 fruit higher than your teacher," may be repeated by each 
 generation of intellect to thali which is at once its pupil 
 and its heir. 
 
 The range of the student's historical reading here must 
 necessarily be limited, and we naturally take as the sta- 
 ple 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 equaled ours in the unbroken continuity of its na- 
 tional life. The institutions of France before the Eevo- 
 lution 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 sentiment 
 between feudal France and the France of Louis XIY. 
 The French Canadian, the surviving relic of France un- 
 der the old monarchy, is, in every thing but race and 
 language, a widely different man from the Frenchman of 
 Paris. But we hear of questions in our youngest colo- 
 nies being settled by reference to the institutions of Ed- 
 ward the Confessor. The same habits of local self-gov- 
 ernment which are so much at the root of'our political 
 character now, held together English society in the coun- 
 ty, the hundred, the parish, the borough, when the cen- 
 tral government was dissolved by the civil wars of Hen- 
 ry III., the wars of the Eoses, and the Great Eebellion. 
 It fortunately happens, also, that the main interest of our 
 history lies in the development of our political constitu- 
 tion. England has always been a religious country, both 
 under the old and under the reformed faith. But she 
 has not been the parent of great religious movements. 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 41 
 
 excepting Wyclifiism, 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 Eo- 
 man order with ISTorthern liberty, and harmonizing the 
 freest development of individual mind and character 
 with intense national unity and unfailing reverence for 
 the law. The present age seems likely to decide wheth- 
 er this work, so full of the highest effort, moral as well 
 as intellectual, has been wrought by England for herself 
 alone or for the world.* 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 English Constitution is accepted by all En- 
 glishmen, 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 Profess- 
 or 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 (5pen and independent 
 mind. And, happily, in studying the constitutional his- 
 tory of England, modern or medigeval, 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, 
 
 * I speak of the substance^ not o^ the forms of the Constitution. — Note 
 to 2d edit. 
 
42 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 
 
 and who has lately been taken from the place of honor 
 which he long held among our living literary worthies 
 to be numbered with the illustrious 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 Modern History 
 School.'-^ I rest my plea on the fact that there is a class 
 of students destined to perform the most important duties 
 to society in after life peculiarly needing education to dis- 
 pose 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, ra- 
 tionally based on the results of our experience, embracing 
 the subject in all its aspects, and determining the intrinsic 
 value of different studies, their relative effect on the pow- 
 ers 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 
 
 • 
 
 * I confess I have been induced to publish this lecture, somewhat late 
 and contrary to my original intention, by the hope that I may draw the 
 attention of the University to the state of the School of Law and Modern 
 History, left as it is without that superintendence 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 fellowshij^s 
 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 2d edit.] 
 
AN INAUGURAL LECTURE. 48 
 
 the face. We in this place differ widely in our opinions 
 respecting education, and our difference of opinions re- 
 specting education is intimately connected with our dif- 
 ference of opinions respecting deeper things. In this, 
 Oxford is only the reflection of a world torn by contro- 
 versies 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 enlightened rulers and legislators for the English 
 people. 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 sup- 
 port it now that it is founded. It is hard to adapt me- 
 diaeval 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 
 can not abandon the hope that whatever steps may prove 
 necessary to provide regular and competent instruction 
 in Modern History and the cognate subjects will be taken 
 by the University in fulfillment of its promise to the na- 
 tion. I feel still more confident that the co-operation of 
 the colleges with the staff of the University for this pur- 
 pose 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 
 
4A AN INAUGUEAL LECTURE. 
 
 the tutor in the duties of University education. What 
 he was in the Middle Ages is an antiquarian qnestion. 
 It is clear that since that time his position and duties 
 have greatly changed. The modern press is the medias- 
 val 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. Oxford herself is no longer what a Univer- 
 sity was in the Middle Ages. No more, as in that most 
 romantic epoch of the history of intellect, will the way- 
 worn student, who had perhaps begged his way from the 
 cold shade of feudalism to this solitary point of intellect- 
 ual light, look down upon the city of Ockham and Eoger 
 Bacon as the single emporium of all knowledge, the single 
 gate to all the paths of ambition, with the passionate rev- 
 erence 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 responsibili- 
 ties 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. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 I. 
 
 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, ow- 
 ing to the complexity of the phenomena, the incomplete- 
 ness 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 discovery is one 
 which rebukes the pretensions of individual 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 Eoman 
 character broke through the narrow exclusiveness of 
 savage nationality by bending in its hour of conquest to 
 the intellect of conquered Greece ; nobler in this than 
 
46 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 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 Eoman Stoic, the great idea of the community of man, 
 with its universal rights and duties, distinctly though 
 faintly dawned ; and therefore to the Eoman Stoic it was 
 given to be the real author of Home'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 resur- 
 rection of Greece and Eome in the revival of their litera- 
 ture 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 
 disguise of a school divine, but in his own person ; the 
 heathen historian awakening Christian sympathies ; the 
 heathen poet touching Christian hearts, showed that in 
 morality, in sympathy, in heart, though not in faith, the 
 Christian and the heathen were one. That sense of uni- 
 ty, traversing all distinctions between Christian and pa- 
 gan, and between the churches of divided Christendom, 
 has grown with the growth of philosophy, science, juris- 
 prudence, literature, art, the common and indivisible her- 
 itage of man. A more enlightened and humane diplo- 
 macy and the gradual ascendency of international law 
 have strengthened the sense of common interests and 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 47 
 
 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 mediasval 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 recorded history to 
 awaken thoroughly the historic sense, to furnish abund- 
 ant matter for historical reflection, and to arouse a lively 
 curiosity as to the relation between the present and the 
 past. There was needed a habit of methodical investiga- 
 tion 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 phys- 
 ical conditions and accessories of man's estate. These 
 conditions 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. Yico, indeed, 
 was the precursor of this philosophy. In his mind first 
 arose the thought, awakened by the study of Greek and 
 Eoman 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 domam, that 
 she should hasten to plant her flag upon this newly-dis- 
 covered 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 
 
48 ox THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 imagined barrier between the physical and moral world. 
 The phenomena of man's life and history 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 obser- 
 vation, well recorded 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 be- 
 sides, 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 Eeformation because there was no edifice 
 so vast and solid as mediaeval 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 sci- 
 ence and her laws. Only let them be sure that what is 
 august and tranquilizing in law really belongs to science, 
 and that it is not borrowed by her from another source. 
 Let them be sure that in putting off the dignity, they also 
 put off the 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 institu- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 49 
 
 tions, the passing and keeping of laws, the erecting and 
 preserving of churches and forms of worship, the institu- 
 ting and observing of social customs, may be all resolved 
 into the element of action. So may all intellectual his- 
 tory, 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 
 every where present in history, and the founders of the 
 new physical science of history have to lay the founda- 
 tions of their science in what seems the quicksand of 
 free-will. 
 
 This difficulty they have to meet either by showing that 
 free-will is an illusion, or by showing that its presence 
 throughout history is compatible, in spite of all appear- 
 ances, with the existence of an exact historical science. 
 
 They take both lines. Some say " Free-will is an illu- 
 sion, or, at least, we can not be sure that it is real. Our 
 only knowledge of it is derived from consciousness, 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 can not observe itself: it is not in na- 
 ture 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 knowledge 
 
 C 
 
50 ON" THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 of their own existence ? From what other source do they 
 derive the knowledge that their words, the very words 
 they "Qse 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 ade- 
 quately represent the fact, and may even, if pressed, in- 
 volve some confusion of ideas. But he is scarcely a phi- 
 losopher 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 phe- 
 nomena ? 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 necessity, but 
 only causation, and the certainty which causation 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 connection between cause and 
 effect, what is it to mean ? Is the word to be sent adrift 
 on the dictionary without a meaning ? The rooted con- 
 tradiction 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. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 51 
 
 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 appar- 
 ent contradiction in life and history between free-will and 
 the certain omniscience of the Creator, which compre- 
 hends human actions, and which you acknowledge 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 can not be answered by distinguishing between 
 foreknowledge and after-knowledge, because its force lies 
 in the certainty which is common to all knowledge, not 
 in the relation of time between the knowledge and the 
 thing known. The real answer seems to be this, that the 
 words omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, though 
 positive in form, are negative in meaning. They mean 
 only that we know not the bounds of the knowledge, 
 power, or presence of God. What we do know, if we 
 know any thing, is that His presence is not such as to 
 annihilate or absorb our separate beiog, nor His knowl- 
 edge and power such as to overrule or render nugatory 
 our free-will. 
 
 ISTor will it avail the constructors of a science of Man 
 to cite the moral certainty with which we predict the 
 conduct of men or nations whose characters are settled. 
 This settled character was formed by action, and the ac- 
 tion by which it was formed was free, so that the uncer- 
 tain element which baffles science is not got rid of, but 
 only thrown back over a history or a life. 
 
 Then they analyze action, and say it follows its motive, 
 
62 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 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 ivMch motive it will follow? Action is a choice be- 
 tween 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 be- 
 fore, 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 com- 
 bination of chemical elements or mechanical forces. The 
 motive which is not acted on goes for nothing; and as 
 that motive may be and often is the one which — accord- 
 ing to the only test we have, that of the man's previous 
 actions — is the strongest, we see on what sort of founda- 
 tion a science of action and history must build. 
 
 When the action is done, indeed, the connection be- 
 tween it and its motive becomes necessary and certain, 
 and we may argue backward from action to motive with 
 all the accuracy of science. Finding at Eome a law to 
 encourage tyrannicide, we are certain that there had been 
 tyrants at Eome, though there is nothing approaching to 
 historical evidence of the tyranny of Tarquin. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 53 
 
 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 afterward 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 any thing in the material world ; why 
 the virtues and vices of man are to be treated on a total- 
 ly different footing from the virtues of food or the vices 
 of 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, co- 
 incides with the period of a year which is naturally 
 selected by the Kegistrar General for his reports. But, 
 first, the statistics tendered are not moral, but legal. 
 
54 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 They tell ns only the outward act, not its inward moral 
 character. They set down alike under Murder the act 
 of a Kush or a Palmer, and the act of an Othello. Sec- 
 ondly, we are to draw some momentous inferences from 
 the uniformity of the returns. How far are they uni- 
 form? 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 Kestoration, in which we know very 
 well there was no great outburst of wickedness, give us 
 a table including the civil war between the Burgundians 
 and the Armagnacs, the St. Bartholomew, the Eeign of 
 Terror, or the days of June, 1848. It will be said, per- 
 haps, 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 commence- 
 ment 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 in- 
 sinuate, but variable, and may be varied for the better by 
 the wisdom of governments — governments which Neces- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTOEY. 55 
 
 sarians are always exhorting to reform themselves, in- 
 stead of showing how their goodness or badness neces- 
 sarily arises from the climate or the food. If the statist- 
 ics were fixed by necessity, to collect them would be a 
 mere indulgence of curiosity, like measuring all the hu- 
 man 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 sta- 
 tistics, 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 can 
 not be calculated unless you can find a certain antece- 
 dent 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 wdiat manipulation, 
 out of mere ignorance, knowledge can be educed. It is 
 worth remarking, also, that an average is not a law ; 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 gather- 
 ed by fair and complete induction from the facts of his- 
 tory. 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 can not 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 
 
56 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 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 con- 
 tains, what even the next line contains, no one has yet 
 been able to foretell. Prediction, the crown of all sci- 
 ence, the new science of Man and History has not ven- 
 tured to put on. That prerogative, which is the test o^^ 
 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 any thing, 
 rather lead us to believe that the human race and its his- 
 tory are young. The vast length of geologic compared 
 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 fa- 
 mous one of Comte, who makes the course 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. How 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 any thing but a mere segment of a more extensive 
 law? But, besides this, before we proceed to compare a 
 colossal hypothesis with the facts, we 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 any 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 57 
 
 thing else obviously false or absurd, may be dismissed at 
 once, without the form of verification. The three terms 
 of the supposed series, the Theological, Metaphysical, and 
 Positive states, must be distinct and successive, or it will 
 be no series at all. Now, taking " Positive" 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 ISTewton was, 
 a sound astronomer and a great discoverer of astronomi- 
 cal 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 admiration a saying of Lamennais, 
 contrasting, as they suppose, the religious with the scien- 
 tific view of things. "Why do bodies gravitate toward 
 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 hypothesis that the 
 world was made by one God ; an hypothesis which, it 
 
 2 
 
58 ON" THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 should be observed, was quite independent of the prog- 
 ress of science, since it had been promulgated in the 
 first chapter of Genesis before science came into exist- 
 ence. As to the Metaphysical era, which is the inter- 
 vening term of the series between the Theological and 
 the Positive, nothing in history corresponding to this era 
 has been or can be produced. Ko age is or can be point- 
 ed out in which a nation or mankind believed the phe- 
 nomena of the world or of human nature to be produced 
 by metaphysical entities. A few philosophers, indeed, 
 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 fa- 
 tal. 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 morality is not absolute, but his- 
 torical. If there can be no complete historical induction, 
 and if, at the same time, Man is to be studied historically, 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 59 
 
 not morally, and the rule of right action is to be taken, 
 not from our moral instincts, but from the observation of 
 historical facts, it is difficult to see how there can be any 
 rule of right action at all. Morality and our moral judg- 
 ment of characters and actions must, it would seem, al- 
 ways remain in suspense till the world ends, and history 
 is complete. History of itself, if observed as science ob- 
 serves the facts of the physical world, can scarcely give 
 man any principle or any object of allegiance, unless it 
 be success. Success accordingly enters very largely into 
 the morality of the thorough-going Positivist. He can- 
 onizes conquerors and despots, and consigns 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 mere copy of the 
 social aspect of Christianity ; as the Church, the sacra- 
 ments, and the priesthood, invented to satisfy our relig- 
 ious instincts, are a mere copy of the Church of Eome. 
 
 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 him- 
 self 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 
 
60 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 see the end of the struggle. If evil prevails, his allegi- 
 ance must be transferred. 
 
 It is true that morality, in judging the past, must take 
 notice of historical circumstances, as morality takes no- 
 tice 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 con- 
 tradistinction to an absolute, morality ; though a moral- 
 ity which disregarded the circumstances of actions in his- 
 tory 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 vary ever so 
 much with the circumstances, justice has been justice, 
 mercy has been mercy, honor has been honor, 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 sanc- 
 tion strong measures in evil times ; selfish ambition, 
 treachery, mnrder, 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 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 61 
 
 here, too, is bounded hj 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 inju- 
 rious to the character of the slaveowner, 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 exe- 
 crable every where and in all times. 
 
 So, again, it is most true that there is a general connec- 
 tion between the different parts of a nation's civilization ; 
 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. It is folly 
 to force on the most backward nations the laws and gov- 
 ernment of the most forward, or to offer intellectual in- 
 stitutions 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 can not 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 
 indebted 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 
 
62 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 gain a certain calmness and breadth, of view, derived 
 from, regions in ■which there is no partisanship or fanati- 
 cism, because there are no interests by which partisan- 
 ship or fanaticism can be inflamed. It is less easy to ac- 
 knowledge that the student of history is indebted to the 
 physical school of historical philosophy for enlarging our 
 historical sympathies. That school, on the contrary, ex- 
 tinguishes 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 toward the human organ of a necessary prog- 
 ress, any more than toward 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 
 scientific view of history and man. "Truth does not re- 
 gard 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 pnt an end to self-ex- 
 ertion, 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 enlight- 
 en and improve each other. 
 
 We must not suppose that because the order of nation- 
 al actions is often necessary, the actions themselves are. 
 ! A nation may have to go through one stage of knowl- 
 edge or civilization before it can reach another, but its 
 going through either is still free. Nations must accumu- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 63 
 
 late a certain degree of wealth, before they can have lei- 
 sure to think or write ; but the more degraded and indo- 
 lent 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 can not 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 
 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 ac- 
 tions of particular men and nations, and their exactness 
 ceases. The most exact of them, naturally, is Political 
 Economy, which deals with the more animal part of hu- 
 man nature, where the tendencies are surer because the 
 conflict of motives is less. Yet even in Political Econo- 
 my no single proposition can be enunciated, however 
 
64: ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 true in the general, which is not constantly falsified by 
 individual actions. It seems doubtful whether the tend- 
 encies 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 im- 
 possible 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 contagion 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 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 gen- 
 eral laws, are so far from excluding personal influences, 
 that they have made a kind of hagiology and demonol- 
 ogy of eminent promoters of progress and eminent reac- 
 tionists, as though these, rather than the laws, ruled the 
 whole ; and no higher, not to say more fabulous, estimate 
 of the personal influence of Eichelieu 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 Llitzen, 
 the chance by which the Eussian lancers missed Napoleon 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 65 
 
 in the church-yard 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 embodi- 
 ments of an idea, or the phases of an idea, which is as- 
 sumed to have been involved in the original scheme of 
 things. China, which is naturally first fixed on in ap- 
 plying this hypothesis to the facts of history, may, by a 
 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 hard- 
 ly go farther. "We may dispense with asking how an 
 idea, which never was present to any mind but that of 
 a 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 hap- 
 pens 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 Philosophy, 
 
66 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 as well as Physical Science, attempting to extend its em- 
 pire 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 destiny 
 of nations. The importance of these influences is great, 
 and to trace them is a task full of interest and instruc- 
 tion. But man is the same in his moral and intellectual 
 essence, that is, in his sovereign part, whatever his stock, 
 whether he live beneath African suns or Arctic frosts, 
 whether his food be flesh, corn, or a mixture 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. Eace seems, of all 
 physical influences, the strongest. Yet how small and 
 superficial is the difference, compared with the agree- 
 ment, 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 passion for degrading humanity to mere clay, 
 and leveling it with the other objects of physical science, 
 is liable, like other prevailing passions, to lead to exag- 
 geration. Confident deductions, of the most sweeping 
 and momentous kind, are made from a statement of phys- 
 ical fact. The statement is overthrown,* yet the deduc- 
 tions 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 general- 
 ly true. 
 
 * See the Edinburg Review, vol. evii., p. 468-9 (April, 1858). 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 67 
 
 There is also a floating notion that the lives of nations 
 are limited by some mysterious law, and that they are 
 born, 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 independ- 
 ent 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 Ee volutions : it seem- 
 ed to hold till the accession of Louis Philippe, but where 
 is it now? The similarity between the two revolutions 
 was in truth superficial, compared with their dissimilar- 
 ity. Eeligion, the main element of the English move- 
 ment, was wanting in the French : the flight of the no- 
 bility, the confiscation of their estates, and the establish- 
 ment of a new peasant proprietary, which decided the 
 ultimate character and destiny of the French movement, 
 were wanting in the English. So far as there was a sim- 
 ilarity, it was produced partly by mere general tenden- 
 cies, which lead to anarchy after gross misgovernment, 
 to a dictatorship after anarchy, and to the attempt to re- 
 cover freedom after a dictatorship ; partly by mere acci- 
 dents, such as the want of a son and heir in the case both 
 of Charles II. and of Louis XYIIL, and the consequent 
 
68 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 reversion of the crown to a brother, who belonged by age 
 and education to the old state of things. Had Mon- 
 mouth been Charles's 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 sug- 
 gest, might have been played with other puppets, less 
 sensible of pain and misery than man. Surely it is per- 
 ilous work to be reading the most secret counsels of the 
 Creator by a light always feeble, often clouded by preju- 
 dice, 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 less pro- 
 fane ? Is the scoff of Frederick true, and is Providence 
 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 Eome, on which a preacher was eloquent- 
 ly 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 Creek and Eoman with the Hebrew civilization. 
 This is the source of that excellence which you call di- 
 vine." 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 show that 
 Christianity itself is no special interposition of Provi- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 69 
 
 dence 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 can not last." He would have spoken 
 more safely still if he had said, ''Last or not last, it is un- 
 just, 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 succes- 
 sion of ages. Are these without a meaning ? If so, the 
 two greatest facts in the world are alone meaningless. 
 
 It is clear that the division of nations has entered deep- 
 ly 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 rail- 
 road might surmount — but also by race, by language, 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. 
 JSTor 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 
 
70 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 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, committed to the keep- 
 ing of one nation only, might, as frailty and error are 
 conditions of man's bemg, become extinct forever. They 
 not only raise each other again when fallen, they save 
 each other from falling ; they support 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 ac- 
 tion of opinion is not shut out by despotic folly. They 
 do for each other nationally very much what men of dif- 
 ferent characters do for each other morally in the inter- 
 course of life ; and that they might do this, it was neces- 
 sary that they should be as they are, and as the arrange- 
 ments 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 moral- 
 ity, 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 civilized portion 
 of the globe. The first was made by the military Eome 
 of antiquity ; the second, of a qualified kind, was made 
 by the ecclesiastical Eome of the Middle Ages, partly by 
 priestly weapons, partly by the sword of devout kings. 
 The result was universal corruption, political 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 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 71 
 
 seem, the corruption would have been hopeless. In the 
 first case, the warlike tribes of the North shivered the 
 yoke of Kome, and after an agony of six centuries, re- 
 stored the nations. In the second case, Greece rose from 
 the dead with the New Testament in her hand, and 
 breathed into the kindred spirits of the great Teutonic 
 races such love of free inquiry and of liberty that they 
 rose and rent the bonds of Eome 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 forever, like the 
 doomed spirits in Dante 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 experi- 
 ence 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 philoso- 
 phy of history deals — the succession of ages. It is clear 
 that the history of the race, or at least of the principal 
 portion of it, exhibits a course of moral, intellectual, and 
 material progress, and that this progress is natural, being a 
 caused by the action of desires and faculties implanted in 
 
72 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 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 toward wisdom and 
 virtue ; and it is as being a progress of effort, not a nec- 
 essary development, that its incidents, revealed in his his- 
 tory, 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 hu- 
 man pride. The assertion that history began in feti- 
 chism and cannibalism is made without a shadow of 
 proof. Those states are assumed at a venture to have 
 been the first, because they are seen to be the lowest; 
 the possibility of their being not original states, but dis- 
 eases, being left out of sight. As to fetichism, the first 
 hunter or shepherd who swore to another and disap- 
 pointed him not, though it were to his own hinderance, 
 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 immortal- 
 ity of the soul. It is onyihology^ 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 re- 
 ligion, however perverted his idea of God, and however 
 degraded his worship may have been. As to cannibal- 
 ism, it seems to be sometimes a frenzy of the warlike pas- 
 sions, 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, 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 73 
 
 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, 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 labor 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 aug- 
 mented 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 in- 
 
 D 
 
74 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 creasing in number and value from age to age, whose au- 
 thors are the proper and sole objects of the world's grat- 
 itude and love. We have no moral improvement ; the 
 moral nature of man remains the same from the begin- 
 ning, with the same passions and affections, good and 
 evil, which it is confidently added are always in equilib- 
 rium. The moral law is the same for all ages and na- 
 tions ; 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 prog- 
 ress of the intellect alone, but that the progressive virtue 
 of the intellect lies in skepticism or doubt, the state of 
 mind which suspends all action ; and when it is farther 
 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 throughout man's 
 life, from his birth to his old age. But character does 
 not remain the same ; the character of the man is contin- 
 ually 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 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 75 
 
 alone. Part of it is silently transmitted, witli 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 cer- 
 tain maturity of sentiment to call out the mute sympathy 
 with which nature is charged for man, to lend their mys- 
 tery to the forest and the sea, its pensiveness to evening, 
 its moral to the year. When a modern, instead of writ- 
 ing modern poetry, imitates, however skillfully, the -poet- 
 ry of the Greeks, how great is the sacrifice of all that 
 most touches our hearts, and yet how much that is be- 
 yond the range of Greek sentiment remains ! Philan- 
 thropy is a Greek word, but how wide a circle of ideas, 
 sentiments, affections, unknown to the Greeks, does its 
 present meaning embrace 1 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 unac- 
 countable 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 traveler between the cradle and 
 the grave, and that the great fact of life is death, and the 
 centre of human interest moves gradually toward the 
 other world. Man would perhaps have been paralyzed 
 in his early struggle with nature for subsistence had 
 
76 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 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 Phcedo is a graceful work of philosophic art rather 
 than a very passionate effort to overcome the grave. 
 The Greek, for the most part, rose lightly from the ban- 
 quet of life to pass into that unknown land with whose 
 mystery speculation had but dallied, and of which come- 
 dy had made a jest. The Eoman 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 thorough-going 
 school of materialism has found it necessary to provide 
 something for man's spiritual nature, and has made a 
 shadowy divinity out of the abstract being of humanity, 
 and a shadowy immortality 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 character because the 
 moral law and our moral nature are the same in all per- 
 sons. But the variety of characters which our hearts, 
 
ON" THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 77 
 
 bound to no one type, acknowledge as good, noble, beau- 
 tiful, 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 pic- 
 ture 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 mor- 
 al law is the basis and condition, as the common moral 
 nature is the rudiment, of all excellence in human char- 
 acter. But it is the basis and condition only ; it is nega- 
 tive, whereas character is positive, and wins our rever- 
 ence 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 can not doubt, the great and ever-in- 
 creasing variety of situations in history and life were in- 
 tended by the Creator 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 in- 
 tellect 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 
 
78 ON THE STUDY OF HISTOEY. 
 
 it would scarcely be a happier world. Suppose intellect 
 to be tlie end of Man, and all moral effort, all moral beau- 
 ty, 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 Cre- 
 ator, it is difiicult 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 labor at- 
 tain a modicum of knowledge 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, every thing has a meaning, every thing 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 emo- 
 tion, 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 history, 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 philosophers 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 pos- 
 sible worlds. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 79 
 
 We must pause before tlie question liow deep tlie 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 tlie 
 past, is ours. That is a secret that lies behind the veil. 
 
ON THE STUDY OP HISTORY, 
 
 11. 
 
 In a former lecture I gave reasons for hesitating to be^ 
 lieve that history is governed by necessary laws. I sub- 
 mitted that history is made up of the actions of men, and V 
 that each of us is conscious in his own case that the ac- 
 tions of men are free. I am not aware that even an at- 
 tempt has been made to reconcile the judgments of the 
 retrospective conscience, the belief implied in those judg- 
 ments that each action might have been done or left tin- 
 done, and the exceptional allowance which conscience 
 makes in the case of actions done wholly or partly on 
 compulsion, with the hypothesis that our actions are sub- 
 ject to causation, like the events of the physical world. 
 Wherein is an Alfred more the subject of moral appro- 
 bation than a good harvest, or a Philip II. more the sub- 
 ject 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 matter 
 of fact, run in accordance with any invariable law, we 
 might be obliged to admit that the Necessarians (so I 
 shall venture to call them till they can find another ap- 
 plication for the'term "necessity") had gained their cause, 
 
 D2 
 
62 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 though a strange contradiction would then be estabhshed 
 between our outward observation and our inward con- 
 sciousness. I therefore examined the hypothesis 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 objections 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 ven- 
 ture to think immensely exaggerated, the effects pro- 
 duced on the comparative history of nations by certain 
 ph3^sical influences, especially 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 verification, but, at the same time, to in- 
 sist 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 assertions of astrology. I see 
 no impossibility, but an extreme 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 human nature and with the his- 
 tory of human, thought. It is all the more likely that 
 this usurpation on the part of science should have taken 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 83 
 
 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 physical 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 show forth its power, and we will be- 
 lieve. Let those who have studied the science of Man 
 and History predict a single event by means of their sci- 
 ence ; 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 sci- 
 ence of humanity, and produce a better man. 
 
 Till the law of history is not "only laid down, but 
 shown to agree with the facts, or till humanity has been 
 successfully treated by scientific methods, I confess I 
 shall continue to suspect that the new science of Man is 
 merely a set of terms, such as "development," "social 
 statics," "social dynamics," "organization," and, above 
 all, "law," 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 
 
84 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 individual life and in society, may and do present moral 
 connections 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 
 developed according to invariable laws, such as, when 
 discovered, would give birth to a new science. 
 
 I confess that I am not wholly unbiased 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 myste- 
 rious as they may be, they will not be so terrible or mys- 
 terious as death; they can but show 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 render- 
 ing 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 with 
 admiration at the good deeds of history or burn with in- 
 dignation at the evil? Is the moral world a reality, or 
 is it a mere phantasmagoria, a puppet-show of fate ? 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 85 
 
 Some of these writei^s 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, un- 
 dying nature of moral good and evil, the real proof that 
 our moral part lives beyond the grave. Is this convic- 
 tion 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 ob- 
 serve 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 dictation is as impertinent as the dictation of theol- 
 ogy 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 
 scientific 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. 
 
 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 
 
86 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 of human life has sprung? In the first place, what right 
 has inductive science to the term laiu f 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 inductive 
 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 ut- 
 terly the attempt has failed. Let her weave mazes of 
 thought, observe upon observation, induce upon induc- 
 tion as she will, she will find the ground of universals 
 and the basis of science to be instinctive reliance in the 
 wisdom and unity of the Creator. And thus science, in- 
 stead of excluding the supernatural, does constant hom- 
 age to it for her own existence. 
 
 In the second place, what is the sum of physical sci- 
 ence ? Compared with the comprehensible universe and 
 with conceivable time, not to speak of infinity and eter- 
 nity, it is the observation of a mere point, the experience 
 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 
 suggest. 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 na- 
 ture is akin to ours, and who has made our hearts capa- 
 ble of such converse. Astronomy has its practical uses, 
 without which man's intellect would scarcely rouse itself 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 87 
 
 to those speculations ; but its greatest result is a revela- 
 tion of immensity pervaded bj one informing mind ; and 
 this revelation is made by astronomy only in the same 
 sense in wbicli the telescope reveals the stars to the eye 
 of the astronomer. 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 
 can not tell from what urns of pain and pleasure its pen- 
 siveness 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 corresponding 
 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 ef- 
 fort, corresponding to the effort by which man raises him- 
 self 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 Kaphael mov- 
 ing over the canvas of the Transfiguration. It sees the 
 pencil 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. 
 
88 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 . There is truth as well as vigor 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 showed a Newton as we show an ape." 
 
 If they could not show a Newton as we show an ape, or 
 a Newton's discoveries as we show the feats of apish 
 cunning, it was because Newton was not a mere intel- 
 lectual power, but a moral being, laboring in the serv- 
 ice of his kind, and because his discoveries were the re- 
 ward, not of sagacity only, but of virtue. We can imag- 
 ine a mere organ of vision so constructed by Omnipo- 
 tence as to see at a glance infinitely more than could be 
 discovered by all the Newtons, but the animal which 
 possessed that organ would not be higher than the moral 
 being. 
 
 Eeason, 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 
 exerting 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. 
 
 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 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 89 
 
 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, leav- 
 ing out of sight the phenomena of our moral nature, but 
 to want one of the two faculties necessary for sound in- 
 vestigation. They are acute observers, but bad reason- 
 ers. And science must not expect to be exempt from 
 the rules of reasoning. We can not give credit for evi- 
 dence which does not exist, because if it existed it would 
 be of a scientific kind ; nor can we pass at a bound from 
 slight and precarious premises to a tremendous conclu- 
 sion, because the conclusion would annihilate the spirit- 
 ual 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, con- 
 sequently, 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 his- 
 tory is another. A science of history can rest on noth- 
 ing short of causation ; a philosophy of history rests 
 upon connection — such connection 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 
 produced upon their character, between historic antece- 
 dents and their results. So far is the philosophy of his- 
 tory from being a new discovery, that the most meagre 
 chronicle of the Middle Ages, the painted records of 
 Egyptian kings, as they show some connection between 
 
90 ox THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 events, present the germ of a philosophy ; of the philos- 
 ophy which, in its highest form, traces the most general 
 connections, 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 
 doo'matic and ecclesiastical divisions between different 
 
 o 
 
 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, arc 
 in their essence the same every where, and every where 
 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 deca}^, 
 now visibly going on, of feudal institutions, and of the 
 social system with which they are connected. Its conse- 
 quences, to those who have imagined that the vital faith 
 of man rests on ecclesiastical divisions, are not unattend- 
 ed with perplexity and dismay. But if the churches of 
 Hildebrand, 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 implicitly appealed, and which therefore is above 
 them all. A certain man was hung by his enemies 
 blindfolded 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 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 91 
 
 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 exagger- 
 ated into identity, and a strange vision has arisen of an 
 aggregate humanity, of which each man is a manifesta- 
 tion and an organ, and into which we at death return ; 
 the difference 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 re- 
 ligious instincts of man and his sense of immortalit}^, 
 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 Eoman 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 identi- 
 ty, 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 particular life has been. No one can divest himself 
 of the sense of individual responsibility, or imagine him- 
 self, by any effort of fancy, becoming a part of the mass 
 of humanity and ceasing to be himself 
 
 It is not the less certain that we are in a real and deep 
 
92 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 sense "members one of another," and that moral philos- 
 ophy 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 es- 
 tate of man. 
 
 The progress of the human race is a truth of which 
 every-day language is full; one which needs no logical 
 proof and no rhetorical enforcement. That the products 
 of human action, thought, contrivance, labor, do not all 
 perish with their authors, but accumulate from generation 
 to generation, is in itself enough to make each generation 
 an advance upon that which went before it. The move- 
 ment of history is complex. We asked in a former lec- 
 ture 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 humanity, 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 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 his- 
 tory. 
 
 Character, indeed, seems to be the only thing within 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTOKY. 93 
 
 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 
 importing into the divine nature the Stoic notion of self- 
 suflicing 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 restlessness 
 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 pan- 
 egyric of his favorite 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 in 
 a created being worthy of affection which is not produced 
 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 con- 
 ceive a being created morally perfect without effort, you 
 
94 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 will produce a picture of insipidity whicli 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 char- 
 acter 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 indi- 
 vidual men. Those who espouse the theory of necessary 
 development as the key to history are driven to strange 
 consequences. They are compelled to represent the tor- 
 pid sensualism of the Eoman Empire as an advance upon 
 the vigorous though narrow virtue of the Eepublic. I 
 see not how they escape from allowing, what with their 
 historical sympathies they would not be disposed to al- 
 low, that in the history of our own country the Restora- 
 tion 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 endeavors 
 which are overstrained, chimerical, misdirected, higher 
 than the general nature can sustain, and that upon these 
 endeavors a reaction is apt to ensue. During the reac- 
 tion some of the intellectual fruits of the crisis may be 
 gathered in, but the moral nature languishes ; though the 
 elevation of the moral type gained by the previous effort 
 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 
 
ON" THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 95 
 
 can not forbear to ask, and may possibly obtain, some 
 satisfaction. In the material and intellectual world we 
 are content to see order and design. The law of gravita- 
 tion, the laws of the association of ideas, so far as they 
 go, perfectly satisfy our minds. But in history it is oth- 
 erwise. Here we are not satisfied with the discovery of 
 a law, whether of development or of effort ; we desire, 
 we can not help desiring, to see not only order and de- 
 sign, 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 pulliug down of worn-out institutions brings per- 
 plexity and suffering on that generation, however preg- 
 nant 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 in- 
 dustry, however beneficent in its results, involves suffer- 
 ings to the masses which the world is long in learning 
 how-to avert. In the rude commencements of govern- 
 ment 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 his- 
 tory by the cruel test of pre-eminence in war and success 
 in conquering the neighboring 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- 
 
96 ox THE STUDY OF HISTOEY. 
 
 prise ; and in the earliest ages tlie circunistauces of sav- 
 age hordes are such that thej are inevitably driven on 
 each other, or on the neighboriog 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 connection, 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 cer- 
 tain connection between cowardice and cruelty ; and the 
 moral as well as the physical basis of humanity requires 
 to be laid in fortitude 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 rejections, 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. !N'or 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 efl'usion of blood, what rending of 
 affections, what misery has been undergone to try out the 
 question between different theories of society and govern- 
 ment, each of which was plausible in itself I TThat an 
 expenditure of high and aspiring spirits was necessary 
 to prove that the monastic and contemplative life, in 
 
ox THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 97 
 
 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, labor not only in 
 mental, but in moral degradation, to support a high and 
 fine type of humanity in the few. Examine any beauti- 
 ful 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 can not reach, and the lamp which 
 lights the studies of a Bacon or 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 labor supported the discoverer in intellectual leis- 
 ure. Kor 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 Eome, amidst her moral 
 lassitude, makes great roads, promotes material civiliza- 
 tion, codifies the law. The last century had no soul for 
 poetry, but it took up with melody, and produced the 
 Handels and Mozarts. Lower pains go with lower pleas- 
 ures, and the savage life is not without its physical im- 
 munities and enjoyments. The life of intense hope that 
 is lived in the morning of great revolutions may partly 
 
 E 
 
98 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 make up for the danger, the distress, and the disappoint- 
 ment of their later hour. But these, if they are touches 
 of kindness and providence in Nature, welcome 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 humble 
 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 valor and en- 
 terprise 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 appar- 
 ent capability of progress, waiting to be taken up into the 
 general movement by their brethren who are more ad- 
 vanced, when, in the course of Providence, the age of 
 military enterprise is past, and that of religious and phi- 
 lanthropic 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 with the facts of history which will reconcile 
 the general course of history to our sense of justice? I 
 say, to our sense of justice. I assume here that man has 
 really been created in the image of God ; that the moral- 
 ity of man points true, however remotely, to the morality 
 of God; that human justice is identical with divine jus- 
 tice, and is therefore a real key to the history of the 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 99 
 
 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 any thing. 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 re- 
 ligion which is mere submission to power, without moral 
 sympathy or allegiance. 
 
 I will not turn aside here to combat the opposite the- 
 ory. I will merely observe by the way that these things 
 have their history. If the doctrines of any established 
 Church, are not absolute and final truth, its corporate in- 
 terests are apt ultimately to come into collision with the 
 moral instincts of man pressing onward, in obedience to 
 his conscience, toward the farther knowledge of religious 
 truth. Then arises a terrible conflict. To save their 
 threatened dominion, the defenders of ecclesiastical inter- 
 ests use, while they can, the civil sword, and wage with 
 that weapon contests which fill the world with worse 
 than blood. They massacre, they burn, they torture, 
 they drag buman nature into depths of deliberate cruel- 
 ty which, without their teaching, it could never have 
 known ; they train men, and not only men, but women, 
 
100 ON THE STUDY OF HISTOEY. 
 
 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 concubines ; they con- 
 sent, as the price of protection, to bless and sanctify des- 
 potism in its foulest form; they excite bloody wars of 
 opinion against nations struggling to be free. Still, the 
 day goes against them ; humanity exerts its power ; exe- 
 cutioners 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 Pere 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 polit- 
 ical 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 inevitable 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 it is that to fly from 
 falsehood, through whatever clouds and darkness, 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 history has recorded in her 
 bloodiest page. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 101 
 
 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 be- 
 ings are wasted by the Creator, what is saved? Butler, 
 indeed, suggests the analogy of physical nature, and inti- 
 mates 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 connection, 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 amid a painless creation, without 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 depending on and 
 bearing a faint analogy to the improvement of the hu- 
 
102 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 man race. As tlie human race spreads over the world 
 and cultivates it, the carnivorous and ferocious animals 
 disappear, and those more peaceful and happier tribes re- 
 main 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 every where to establish. Eational in- 
 quiries 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 conscience bids us 
 rest satisfied only with the best; but there is also a ra- 
 tional faith which consists in trusting, where our knowl- 
 edge fails, to the goodness and wisdom, which, so far as 
 our knowledge extends, are found worthy of our trust. " 
 Butler, while he built his whole system on analogy, de- 
 clined to inquire 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 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 103 
 
 thing dealt with must be the same also. There is not 
 only no assurance, there is not even the faintest presump- 
 tion 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 ap- 
 plicable 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 punish- 
 ment, 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 unendurable. If we 
 could believe God to be arbitrary, above the throne of 
 God in our hearts would be the throne of justice. 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 can not help divining, then, that the true hypoth- 
 esis of history will be one which will correspond to our 
 sense of justice. But where can such an hy]3othesis be 
 found? Is there any color 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 indi- 
 vidual life ? 
 
104 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 To siicli 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 character of 
 the race. Yet, at the same time, they give strong assur- 
 ance to him whose life they take that it is good for him 
 to die. 
 
 That desire of living after death in the grateful mem- 
 ory 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 labor against his 
 own interest for her general objects ? or does it denote a 
 real connection 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 
 suffering classes of society, when the superiority of phys- 
 ical force is on their side, to rest quiet beneath their lot, 
 and forbear from breaking in with the strong hand upon 
 civilization, 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 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 105 
 
 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 intricate 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, un- 
 supported and unredeemed by his kind, nature, the min- 
 ister of eternal justice, would surely be less lavish of in- 
 dividual life, and of all that is bound up in it, than she 
 is. At least she would show some disposition to dis- 
 criminate. Those myriads on whom, though the acci- 
 dents 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 Gralileans, 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 in- 
 dividual men. It is vain to say that those who are put, 
 through life, to the coarsest uses, the hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water to the social system, can rise to the 
 highest and most refined moral ideal, though we know 
 that in merit toward 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 in- 
 tellect, or fineness of intellect without high mental culti- 
 
 E2 
 
106 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 vation. And if we were to say that the want of that 
 which high mental culture confers is no loss, we should 
 stultify our own efforts to promote and elevate educa- 
 tion. Even the most liberal callings carry with them an 
 inherent bias scarcely compatible with the equable and 
 flawless perfection which constitutes the ideal. Busy 
 action and solitary thought are both necessary for the 
 common service ; yet inevitable moral evils and imper- 
 fections beset alike those who act in the crowd and those 
 who think alone. Each profession has its point of honor, 
 requisite for social purposes, but overstrained with re- 
 gard to general morality, and naturally apt to be accom- 
 panied by some relaxation of the man's general moral 
 tone. We forgive much to a soldier for valor in the 
 field, much to a judge for perfect integrity on the bench 
 of justice; and we can hardly suppose that the con- 
 science 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 duelist, be- 
 cause as a soldier and a citizen he had done his duty su- 
 premely 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 ? ISTo ; it only 
 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 pecul- 
 iar virtues of the religious pastor elsewhere than in the 
 camp or at the bar, though, when the virtues of the re- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 107 
 
 ligious 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 in- 
 equalities in the moral condition of men, and diminish 
 the impediments to self-improvement which they pre- 
 sent; but we can scarcely expect that it will efface them, 
 any more than it will eiface the moral differences attend- 
 ant upon difference of sex. 
 
 In the passionate desire to reach individual perfection, 
 and in the conviction that the claims of society were op- 
 posed to that desire, men have fled from society and em- 
 braced 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 as- 
 cetics ; 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 con- 
 templation, but among them, too, corruption 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 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 
 
108 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 means any thing, 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 nat- 
 ural 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 be- 
 lief that each man is morally not only a law, but an inde- 
 pendent and perfect law to himself. But is this so ? Is 
 the voice of individual conscience independent and infal- 
 lible? Do we not, in doubtful cases, rectify it by con- 
 sulting 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. Uni- 
 versal 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 
 distinct from morality seems altogether to defy our pow- 
 er of conception. "Would conscience retain its authority 
 if it were not more immediately supported by human 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 109 
 
 sympathy, love, and reverence, tlirongli whicli 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 virtu- 
 ous 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 
 toward 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 al- 
 most 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 
 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 
 
110 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 innate in eacTi of us, is an opinion wliich 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, dueling, 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 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 
 
ON" THE STUDY OF HISTORY. Ill 
 
 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 inquiry into this, the central secret of the world. 
 It is not by verbal definitions, however philosophic in ap- 
 pearance, 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 paramount import- 
 ance 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 upward, regarded as comparative- 
 ly good? if by a character tending downward, as com- 
 paratively evil ? Is it not, in short, as indications of char- 
 acter, 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 ana- 
 lyze the phenomena of character by some rational meth- 
 od. 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, 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 
 
112 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 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 character ? and what is it 
 that determines the difference of their effects ? If delib- 
 erate cruelty, for instance, is the worst, the most unpar- 
 donable of vices, may it not point to the prime source of 
 moral excellence in the opposite pole ? These are ques- 
 tions which seem at least to present rational starting- 
 points for inquiry, and to be capable of being handled 
 by a rational method ; and they must be rationally han- 
 dled before we can construct a real philosophy of his- 
 tory — 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 treatment of our 
 moral infirmities and the attainment of moral health. 
 The school which regards history as the evolution 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 charac- 
 ter through free action is in suspense for want of some 
 sounder and more comprehensive account of human char- 
 acter than has yet been supplied. 
 
 On the other hand, history, as we have said, may lend 
 light to the moral philosopher. He can not fail to be 
 assisted and guided by contemplating not individual hu- 
 manity only, but the whole estate of man. Some things 
 become palpable on the large scale, which, in examining 
 the single instance, do not come into view or may be 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 113 
 
 overlooked. History forces on our notice, and compels 
 us to take reasonably into account, the weakness, the nec- 
 essary imperfections, the various and unequal lot, the con- 
 straining circumstances, the short, precarious life of man. 
 In history, too, besides the tragic element of human life, 
 there plainly appears another element, which may not be 
 without its significance. Whenever an historian gives 
 us a touch of genuine humor, we recognize in it a touch 
 of truth. Humor, 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 offenses 
 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 at- 
 tainable ideal, and to the deliberate love of human char- 
 acters in spite of great imperfections, if on the whole they 
 have tended upward, and done, in their measure, their 
 duty to their kind. And is not man more likely to strug- 
 gle 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 show us the first step of the stairs than 
 that which is nearest to the skies? If all the rhetoric of 
 the pulpit were to be taken as literally true, would not 
 
114 ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 
 
 society be plunged into recklessness, or dissolved in ago- 
 nies of despair? A human morality saves much which 
 an impracticable morality would throw away ; it readily 
 accepts the tribute of moral poverty, the fragment 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 noth- 
 ing of the merits of mere innocence. It requires active 
 service to be rendered to society. It holds out no salva- 
 tion by wearing of amulets or telling of beads. Eegard- 
 ing man as essentially a social being, it bears hard on in- 
 dolent 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 un- 
 derpaid is better than to be overpaid ; and that covetous- 
 ness and grasping, though they may not violate the law, 
 are a robbery, at once immoral and fatuous, of the com- 
 mon store. 
 
 There is little fear, let us say once more, lest any man, 
 not a victim to the mad mysticism into which material- 
 ism 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 ag- 
 gregate of humanity, or in the universe of which human- 
 ity is a part. It is difficult to express such 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 re- 
 sult, is a doctrine which our reason, perhaps, finds some- 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 115 
 
 thing to support, and which our hearts readily accept. 
 It unites us not only in sympathy, but in real interest 
 v/ith the generations that are to come after us, as well as 
 with those that have gone before us ; it makes each gen- 
 eration, each man, a partaker in the wealth of all ; it en- 
 courages us to sow a harvest which we shall reap, not 
 with our hands, indeed, 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 de- 
 sires ; 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 melan- 
 choly which flows from the ruins of the past — that past 
 into which we too are sinking, just when great things 
 seem about to come. 
 
ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF THE DOC- 
 TRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 
 
 In previous lectures on the " Study of History" I fully 
 accepted tlie doctrine of Historical Progress. It is obvi- 
 ous that the knowledge and wealth of our race increase 
 and accumulate from age to age, and that their increase 
 and accumulation react 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 be- 
 come better understood. ISTor 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 every thing which in the 
 course of civilization tends to elevate, deepen, and refine 
 the character generally, tends to elevate, deepen, and re- 
 fine it in its religious aspect. 
 
 But then it is alleged, and even triumphantly proclaim- 
 ed, that tremendous consequences follow from this doc- 
 trine. If we accept historical progress, it is said, we must 
 
118 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 give up Christianity. Christianity, we are told, like oth- 
 er 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 de- 
 gree, and immense veneration and gratitude are due to it 
 on that account ; but, like other phases of the same move- 
 ment, 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 progress. 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 mani- 
 festly fallen, and remove once for all this obstruction to 
 the onward movement of the race. Confusion and dis- 
 tress will probably attend the final abandonment of " the 
 popular religion ;" but 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 de- 
 grading to the mind of man. " Let us at once, by a cour- 
 ageous 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 conse- 
 quences 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 effort of 
 courage can be needed, or avail to direct its growth. We 
 have only to let well or ill alone. 
 
THE DOCTEINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 119 
 
 The notion that Christianity is at this moment mani- 
 festly in an expiring state, or, to use the favorite lan- 
 guage of the sect, that " the popular religion has entered 
 on its last phase," is perhaps partly produced by the re- 
 form, 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 Pla- 
 tonists to rationalize the popular mythology of Grreece, 
 and equally ominous of approaching dissolution to the 
 superstition with which its more philosophic adherents 
 found it necessary thus desperately to deal. The analo- 
 gy would be more just if the later Platonists, instead of 
 endeavoring to bring a sensual superstition to the level 
 of the age by violently importing into it a spiritual phi- 
 losophy, had endeavored to restore it to its primitive and 
 most sensual simplicity. Though even in that case it 
 would not be certain, without farther 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 
 well be expected to strike their rhetorical exultation 
 dumb. They admit, I believe, that religion, or whatever 
 
120 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 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, person- 
 al 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 Chris- 
 tianity 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 consequently of the great- 
 est mental agony and distraction, is an achievement which 
 even the most extreme believers in free-will and self-ex- 
 ertion 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 Humanitari- 
 an religion of M. Comte, which is merely a mad travestie 
 of the Eoman 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 discovered 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 philos- 
 ophy have been misunderstood, and that they do not 
 point to the impending fall, but rather to the approach- 
 ing regeneration of Christendom. I do not think that 
 we should refuse to consider, in this lecture-room, a ques- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 121 
 
 tion 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 Mo- 
 hammedan 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 irrev- 
 ocable decay. Where is the brilliant monarchy of Ha- 
 roun Alraschid ? How ephemeral was it compared even 
 with that old Byzantine Empire into whose frame Chris- 
 tianity had infused a new life under the very ribs of 
 death ; a life which even the fatal bequest of Eoman des- 
 potism, extending itself to the Church as well as to the 
 State, could scarcely quench, and which, through ages of 
 Mohammedan oppression, has smouldered on beneath the 
 ashes, to burst out again in reviving Greece. Even in 
 the Moorish communities of Spain, the flower as they 
 were of Mohammedan civilization, internal corruption 
 had prepared the way for the conquering arms of Ferdi- 
 nand and Isabella. Mohammedanism, however, whatev- 
 
 F 
 
122 ON SOME SUPPOSED COIn^SEQUENCES OF 
 
 er 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 Christianity. 
 From the intercourse of its founder vwith 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 ev- 
 ery 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, subju- 
 gating 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 prog- 
 ress, in short, has been but a semblance, due merely to 
 fresh infusions of animal vigor, not to any sustaining 
 principle of moral life. China advanced at an early pe- 
 riod to a certain point of material civilization ; but, hav- 
 ing reached that point, she became a by-word of immo- 
 bility, 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 Span- 
 ish conquest, it might have attained a great height, and 
 confirmed their views of history. But what reason is 
 there to think that Mexico would ever have advanced 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 123 
 
 beyond great buildings erected by slave labor, human 
 sacrifices, and abominable vices ? Again, we are told 
 that the Christian view of history must be narrow and 
 false, because it does not include in its theory of human 
 progress the great negro and fetichist populations of Af- 
 rica. But we ought to be informed what part the negro 
 and fetichist populations of Africa have really played in 
 the progress of humanity, or how the invariable law of 
 spontaneous development through a certain series of in- 
 tellectual 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 Eome was 
 real and high while it lasted, and Christianity has re- 
 ceived its fruits 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 has played so momentous a part in the historical 
 progress of the last century, is triumphantly cited as a 
 palpable instance of this fact. There is much which to 
 the eye of the theologian, looking to religious professions, 
 
124 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 is without the pale of Christendom, but which to the his- 
 torical eye, looking to moral connections, is still within 
 it. That increase 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, espe- 
 cially if we look not to mere numbers, but to intellectual 
 cultivation and influence ; but, viewed morally, it is, con- 
 sidering 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 the divisions 
 of the churches; by the rending of the truth and of the 
 means of religious influence between them ; by the bar- 
 ren and impotent dogmatism into which, through their 
 rivalries and controversies, they are perpetually driving 
 each other; by the sinister alliances of some of them with 
 political obstructiveness 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 discov- 
 eries of science and historical philosophy ; and most of 
 all, perhaps, by the contradiction which their mutual de- 
 nunciations produce between the palpable facts of our 
 common morality and the supposed judgments of relig- 
 ion. 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 
 their moral life from the Christendom which surrounds 
 them ; receive their wives at Christian altars, and bring 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 125 
 
 up their children in the Christian faith. Many a great 
 writer who is brought forward as a proof that the intel- 
 lect of the age is Christian no longer, will be found, on 
 examination, to have nothing in his writings which is 
 not derived from a Christian source. Schleiermacher ap- 
 pears 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 can not be said, historic- 
 ally, 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 Eoman Catholicism by the statecraft of ISTapo- 
 leon, a really great estrangement of the jDcople from 
 Christianity has taken place. And what are the conse- 
 quences 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 Eome, 
 which, bereft of Christian hope, immolates the future to 
 the present ; a despairing abandonment of personal lib- 
 erty and freedom of opinion ; a popular literature of 
 heathen depravity; and a loss of moral objects of inter- 
 est, while military glory and material aggrandizement 
 
126 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 are worshiped in their place. If this state of things is 
 progressive, 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 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, beiug determ- 
 ined by morality, without which the intellectual and pro- 
 ductive 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 ef- 
 fort, the ultimate mark and goal of human progress, and 
 the true key to history. If these positions are sound, the 
 main questions, in determining the ultimate relation be- 
 tween Christianity and human progress, will be, whether 
 the Christian morality is sound and universal, and wheth- 
 er the Christian type of character is perfect and final. It 
 is only if the Christian morality is not sound and univer- 
 sal that it can be discarded or transcended by the moral 
 progress of the race. It is only if the type of character 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 127 
 
 consecrated in the Grospels is not perfect and final that 
 its consecration can ever interfere with the aspirations of 
 humanity advancing toward the goal of purity and per- 
 fection. These are the main questions; we shall also 
 have to consider whether Christianity conflicts with or 
 discourages any special kind of human progress, intel- 
 lectual 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 ns 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 
 common element of moral attraction in all that vast va- 
 riety 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 recognize, not as a mere intellectual specu- 
 lation, but as the real spring of moral endeavor in them- 
 selves. And if there be such a principle, it will, on our 
 hypothesis, 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 nature is indi- 
 cated 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 
 
128 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 apprehend, no special virtue wliicli is not capable of be- 
 ing resolved into this. To take those which appear least 
 obviously identical with benevolence — courage, temper- 
 ance, 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 intemperance unfits us, to per- 
 form 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 prin- 
 ciple, since the indulgence of lust both involves the cor- 
 ruption 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 can not 
 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 principle ; 
 it may be the pursuit of a particular ideal : both the cause 
 or principle and the ideal being matters of common in- 
 terest, 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 in its scope 
 to the whole human race, and labor for the universal 
 good of man ; or it may be limited to the narrow circle 
 of a nation, a guikl, a family, through whom, however, it 
 does indirectly and unconsciously embrace mankind. It 
 
THE DOCTKINE OF HIST^KICAL PEOGRESS. 129 
 
 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 show itself as a peculiar self-devotion 
 to country in the case of the good soldier, and as a pe- 
 culiar self-devotion to the interests of justice in the case 
 of the good judge. Hence arise a multiplicity of deriva- 
 tive and secondary virtues, and an infinite variety of char- 
 acters, of each of which some derivative and secondary 
 virtue is the peculiar stamp. But, multiform as these 
 virtues and characters are, it will be found that they are 
 uniform also ; that, upon examination, they may all be 
 reduced to benevolence in one or other of its various de- 
 grees ; and that on this principle the moral philosopher 
 and the educator, if they would 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 endeavors, the 
 supreme happiness of our earthly life. What these fore- 
 shadow, and how they foreshadow it, is not a fit subject 
 of inquiry here ; but certainly the Gospel holds out a so- 
 cial, 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 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 
 
 F 2 
 
180 ox SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 to good character only as the source, actual or presump- 
 tive, of good action. I reply, that character is not only a 
 disposition to act, it is a disposition to feel and to partici- 
 pate 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 in- 
 capable of sympathizing 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 
 beneficence ? And, again, what presumption of active be- 
 neficence can there be in the case of the dead, our affec- 
 tion 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 sympathj^, does em- 
 brace 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, universal, 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. 
 ISTow Christianity rests on one fundamental moral 
 principle as the complete basis of a perfect moral char- 
 acter, that principle being The love of our Neighbor, 
 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 affec- 
 
THE DOCTEINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 131 
 
 tion, crowned by the highest possible exhibition of it in 
 an act of the most transcendent self-devotion to the in- 
 terest of the human race. This being the case, it is dif- 
 ficult to see how the Christian morality can ever be 
 brought into antagonism 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 vari- 
 ous moral and intellectual conditions attaching to partic- 
 ular 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 varia- 
 tions, 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 move- 
 ment, may advance indefinitely in excellence, but its ad- 
 vance will be an indefinite approximation to the Chris- 
 tian Type. A divergence from that type, to whatever 
 extent it may take place, will not be progress, but de- 
 basement 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 au- 
 
132 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 thority, or even of Eevelation. If it is true, it is a mat- 
 ter of reason as much as any thing 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 unap- 
 proached perfection 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 self- 
 ish objects in comparison of those which are of a less 
 selfish and therefore of a grander kind. But, though es- 
 sentially 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 char- 
 acter being perfect, they are never actually fused. Now, 
 if the type proposed in the Gospels for our imitation 
 were characteristically noble or characteristically amia- 
 ble, characteristically grand or characteristically beauti- 
 ful, it might have great moral attractions, but it would 
 not be universal or final. It would belong to one pecnl- 
 
THE DOCTEINE OF HISTOEICAL PEOGRESS. 133 
 
 iar hemispliere of character, and even though man might 
 not yet actually have transcended it, the ideal would lie 
 beyond it ; it would not remain forever 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, can not discern whether 
 that on which it gazes be more the object of reverence 
 or of love. 
 
 There are differences again between the male and fe- 
 male character, under which, nevertheless, we divine that 
 there lies a real identity, and a consequent tendency 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 Eoman Catho- 
 lics have attempted to consecrate a female type, that of 
 the Virgin, by the side of that which they take to be 
 characteristically male. But 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. 
 
134 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 There is an equally notable absence of any of the pe- 
 culiarities whicli attend particular callings and modes of 
 life, and wbich, though so inevitable under the circum- 
 stances of human society that we have learned 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 Eoman 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 Jewish, the Greek, and the Eoman, each 
 of which had strong national peculiarities of its own. A 
 single touch, a single taint of any one of those peculiari- 
 ties, 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, and 
 exclusiveness of the Jew, of the political pride of the Eo- 
 man, of the intellectual pride of the Greek. Yet it has 
 entirely escaped them all. 
 
 Historical circumstances affect character sometimes di- 
 rectly, 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 DOCTKINE OF HISTOEICAL PROGRESS. 135 
 
 tlie 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 Judgea, as a country suf- 
 fering from the oppression of foreign conquerors, were 
 calculated to produce in the oppressed Jews either insur- 
 rectionary 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 neces- 
 sarily 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 at- 
 tendant narrowness of moral vision. Such was headlong 
 valor among the IN'orthmen. Such was, and is, punctilious 
 hospitality among the tribes of the Desert. Such was the 
 fanatical patriotism of the ancients, which remained a vir- 
 tue, while the nation remained the largest sphere of moral 
 sympathy known to man — his vision not having yet em- 
 braced his kind. The taint of one of these factitious and 
 temporary virtues would, in the eye of historical philoso- 
 phy, have been as fatal to the perfection and universality 
 of a type of character as the taint of a positive vice. Not 
 only the fellow- countrymen, but the companions and 
 
136 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 apostles of Christ were, by the account of the Gospels, 
 imbued with that Jewish patriotism, the fanatical intensi- 
 ty of which disgusted even the ancient world. They de- 
 sired to convert their Master into a patriot chief, and to 
 turn His universal mission into one for the peculiar bene- 
 fit of His own race. Had they succeeded in doing so, even 
 in the slightest degree — or, to take a different hypothesis, 
 had those who constructed 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 be- 
 coming subordinate to his affection for his kind, the Chris- 
 tian Type would have grown antiquated, and would have 
 been left behind in the progress of history toward a high- 
 er 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 char- 
 acter stands clear of the narrow partiality which it is the 
 tendency of advancing civilization to discard. From ex- 
 aggerated patriotism and from exaggerated cosmopolitan- 
 ism 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 character set before 
 
THE DOCTEINE OF HISTOEICAL PKOGRESS. 137 
 
 US in the Gospel been ascetic, our social experience must 
 liave discarded it in the long run, as our moral experience 
 would have discarded it in the long run had it been con- 
 nected with those formal observances into the consecra- 
 tion of which asceticism almost inevitably falls. But the 
 type of character set before us in the Gospels is not ascet- 
 ic, though it is the highest exhibition of self-denial. Nor 
 is it connected with formal observances, though, for rea- 
 sons which are of universal and permanent validity, it 
 provisionally condescends 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 jDurity 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 per- 
 manent 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 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 Kousseau is a reaction against the artificial society of 
 Paris. What likelihood, then, was there that the imag- 
 ination of a peasant of Galilee would spring at a bound 
 beyond place and time, and create a type of character per- 
 fectly distinct in its personality, yet entirely free from all 
 that entered into the special personalities of the age ; a 
 
138 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 type which satisfies 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 Mohammed, and the character which 
 is represented by the name of Buddha, were no doubt 
 great improvements in their day on any thing which had 
 preceded them among the races out of which they arose. 
 But the character of Mohammed 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 Cal- 
 endar of historic characters, in imitation of the Eoman 
 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 phi- 
 losophy by Aristotle, Eoman Civilization by Csesar, Feud- 
 al Civilization by Charlemagne, and so forth ; the ancient 
 Saints having their modern counterparts, and each hav- 
 ing a crowd of minor Saints belonging to the same de- 
 partment of historical progress in his train. Catholicism 
 is there, represented somewhat strangely by St. Paul in- 
 stead of St. Peter. Christianity is not there, neither is 
 Christ. It can not be asserted that a person circumstan- 
 tially mentioned by Tacitus is less historical than Prome- 
 theus, Orpheus, and Numa, who all appear in this Calen- 
 dar ; 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 discus- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL TROGRESS. 139 
 
 sion. The real reason, I apprehend, is that Christianity 
 and its Anthor, though nnquestionably historical, have 
 no peculiar historical characteristics, and no limited place 
 in history. And are we to believe that men whose cul- 
 ture was so small, and whose range of vision was neces- 
 sarily so limited as those of the first Christians, produced 
 a character which a French atheist philosopher of the 
 nineteenth century finds himself unable to treat as hu- 
 man, and place, in its historical relations, among the hu- 
 man benefactors of the race ? I)o you imagine that it is 
 from respect for the feelings of Christian society that M. 
 Comte hesitates to put this name into his Calendar be- 
 side the names of Coesar and Frederick the Great ? The 
 treatise in which the Calendar is given opens with an 
 announcement that M. Comte, by a decisive proclama- 
 tion, made at what he is pleased to style the memorable 
 conclusion of his course of lectures, has inaugurated the 
 reign of Humanity and put an end to the reign of God. 
 
 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 
 peculiar characteristics, the accidents of place and time, 
 by which human personalities are marked — what other 
 notion than this can philosophy form of Divinity mani- 
 fest on earth ? 
 
 The acute and candid author of " The Soul" and the 
 "Phases of Faith" has felt, though he has not clearly ex- 
 pressed, 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 per- 
 fect, it would be hopeless to set up a new religion beside 
 
140 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 it. Accordingly, lie 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 exhibi- 
 tion 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 sec- 
 ond defect alleged is the absence of mirth, and of laugh- 
 ter as its natural and genial manifestation. This objec- 
 tion, though it grates strangely on our ears, is not unrea- 
 sonable. Mirth is a real part of our moral nature, sig- 
 nificant as well as the rest. The great ministers of pure 
 and genial mirth, Cervantes, Shakspeare, Moliere, have 
 fulfilled a moral mission of mercy and justice as well as 
 of pleasure to mankind, and have their place of honor in 
 history with the other great benefactors of the race. 
 And, on the other hand, the attempts to expel mirth from 
 human life and character made by certain austere sects 
 have resulted not only in moroseness, but in actual de- 
 pravity. If this element of good in history is really 
 alien to the Christian type, the Christian type is imper- 
 fect ; we shall have a moral life beside it and beyond it, 
 and at a certain point we shall become aware of its im- 
 perfection, and our absolute allegiance to it will cease. 
 But, before determining this question, the objector would 
 have done well to inquire what mirth really was; wheth- 
 er it was a radically distinct feeling, or only a phase of 
 feeling ; and whether laughter was of its essence or only 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 141 
 
 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 ex- 
 pression 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 
 connection between laughter and tears. Pity, not mirth, 
 would be the characteristic emotion of one who was 
 brought habitually into contact with the weakness of hu- 
 manity in the form of suffering ; but the same power of 
 sympathy would render him capable of genial mirth if 
 brought into contact with weakness in a merely gro- 
 tesque and comic form. According as the one or the 
 other was his lot, his character would take a brighter or 
 a sadder hue ; but we can not help feeling that the lot 
 of m.an 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 wanting in the type of 
 Character presented to us by the Gospels will hardly be 
 affirmed, though the feelings take the sadder and deeper 
 form, the gayer and brighter form being obviously ex- 
 cluded 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 
 
142 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 forms the good element of the whole school of sentiment- 
 al humorists, such as Sterne and Carlyle, and which has 
 for its exciting cause the littleness and frailty of man's 
 estate. This shade of irony is perhaps just perceptible 
 in such passages as that which compares the laborious 
 glory of Solomon with the unlabored beauty of the lilies 
 of the field, a passage by which Mr. Carlyle is strongly 
 attracted, and in which he evidently recognizes the root 
 of that which is true in his own view of the world. It 
 would seem then that mirth, humor, the great masters 
 of mirth and humor, and the whole of that element in 
 the estate and history of man, are not beyond the Chris- 
 tian 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 youthful recollection, on the character of Fletch- 
 er of Madeley. Fletcher's character was no doubt one 
 of remarkable beauty, and certainly not wanting in right- 
 eous indignation against Pharisees. But, being that of 
 an Evangelical Divine, it was produced, not independent- 
 ly, but by a constant imitation of the Character of Christ. 
 Mr. Newman should have gone elsewhere for an inde- 
 pendent instance ; to the School of Socrates, to the School 
 of Roman Stoicism, 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- 
 
THE DOCTKINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 143 
 
 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 pro- 
 nounce 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 his- 
 torians 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 
 shown to be 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 ob- 
 jects of moral admiration. In the first place, we must 
 set aside the mere irregularity, which has in it nothing 
 moral, but by which we are fascinated in no slight de- 
 gree. When morality is presented to us in itself as the 
 object of our moral affections, we can not help entirely 
 loving it ; but when it is presented to us as a formal law, 
 we can not 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 sentiment- 
 al literature of which Byron is the chief In the second 
 place, we must set aside Wallenstein's reserve and lone- 
 liness, qualities which please us partly because they ex- 
 cite our curiosity and stimulate our social affections by a 
 
144 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 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 intellectual power, which is never the object 
 of moral admiration except as the instrument, actual or 
 presumptive, of moral virtue. The darker parts of Wal- 
 lenstein's character, his violence and unscrupulousness, 
 are set aside without question : no one can worship them 
 but the wicked or the delirious. There remains the maj- 
 esty of his character, crowned by his proud and silent 
 death. ISTow 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 ab- 
 sence 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 pursuit of an ideal, though 
 it be that of a Cynic, is essentially the pursuit of an un- 
 selfish object; it is an endeavor to elevate humanity at 
 the expense of the selfish appetites of the individual 
 man. The end of such endeavors is a common good. It 
 is an addition to the high examples and the nobleness of 
 the world. Nor is the reward any thing but the affec- 
 tion 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, prob- 
 ably in more exact and truer terms, but I do not think 
 it can be put so as to make it any thing but a case of 
 
THE DOCTEINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 145 
 
 self-denial and self-sacrifice ; and if it be a case of self- 
 denial and self-sacrifice, it belongs to tlie Christian type. 
 To the same type unquestionably belongs that resigna- 
 tion in death which so deeply moves our hearts as a vic- 
 tory over our great common enemy, and which completes 
 the historical figure of Wallenstein. His acts of mercy, 
 his protests against cruel persecution, the traits of his 
 conjugal affection, need no reconciling explanation to 
 bring them within the Christian pale. 
 
 History will trace a moral connection, 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 thou- 
 sand faults. 
 
 It is said that Yoltaire and Eousseau were great con- 
 tributors to human progress, and that they were not 
 Christians, but enemies to Christianity and outcasts from 
 the Christian pale. I admit that Yoltaire and Eousseau, 
 in spite of the fearful mischief which every rational man 
 must admit them to have done, were contributors to hu- 
 man progress, but I deny that, so far as they were con- 
 tributors to human progress, they were enemies to Chris- 
 tianity or outcasts from the Christian pale. Voltaire 
 contributed to human progress in spite of his unchris- 
 tian levity, mockery, vanity, and obscenity, by preaching 
 Christian beneficence. Christian toleration, Christian hu- 
 manity, Christian hatred of Pharisaical oppression. Eous- 
 seau contributed to human progress in spite of his un- 
 christian impurity, and the egotistical madness from 
 which practical Christianity would have saved him by 
 
146 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 preaching Christian brotherhood and Christian simplicity 
 of life. Rousseau's writings are full of the Gospel. His 
 theory of the world is couched in distinctly Gospel lan- 
 guage, and put into the mouth of a Christian minister. 
 Yoltaire railed against what he imagined was Christian- 
 ity, but you see in a moment it was not the real Chris- 
 tianity ; it was the Christianity of the false, corrupt, and 
 persecuting State Church of France, the Christianity 
 which recalled the Edict of ISTantes, which inspired the 
 Dragonnades, which, in the absurd name of the religion 
 of love, murdered Calas and La Barre. AYhom did Vol- 
 taire 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 resi- 
 dence in England, and whose benevolence, tolerance, and 
 gentle virtues he recognizes as identical at once with 
 those of the Primitive Christians and with his own. 
 
 The French Revolution again, with all its crimes and 
 follies, must, up to a certain point in its course, be accept- 
 ed 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 uni- 
 versal brotherhood, and a universal reign of liberty and 
 justice — into the pale of moral Christianity with Rous- 
 seau and Voltaire. From no other source than Christian- 
 ity was derived the genuine spirit of self-devotion which, 
 it is vain to doubt, sent forth on a crusade for the free- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 147 
 
 dom and happiness of man the best soldiers of the Eevo- 
 lutionarj armies — those of whom. Hoche and Marceau 
 were the gentle, brave, and chivalrous types. On the 
 other hand, it was not from Christianity, but from a dark 
 depravation of Christianity, abhorred by all in whom the 
 graces of the Christian character are seen, that the Mon- 
 tagnards derived that lust of persecution which repro- 
 duced the Inquisition and its butcheries in the Commit- 
 tee of Public Safety and the Eeign of Terror. There are 
 men, neither mad nor wicked, to whom the enthusiasts 
 of the Jacobin Club are still objects of fervent admira- 
 tion. 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 Eousseau to Eobespierre 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 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 ISTapoleon. 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, un- 
 der the forms of a civilized age, the worship of Moloch 
 and the worship of Csesar, 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 Christianity was still faintly present, while he 
 most justly pronounces the domination of Napoleon to 
 have been utterly retrograde. 
 
148 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 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 difiiculty in keeping their 
 own course clear, and preserving religious and moral 
 Christianity, in spite of any imperfections in the scientific 
 ideas of its teachers caused by their having lived in an 
 unscientific age. That religious persecution has fearful- 
 ly interfered with science, and every other kind of intel- 
 lectual progress, both by its direct and its indirect effects, 
 may be easily granted. But the tendency to persecution 
 has historically been limited to countries in which cer- 
 tain vicious relations existed between religion and polit- 
 ical 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 philoso- 
 phy ? 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 shown that Christian Mon- 
 otheism does the same. There is indeed — and it is a 
 momentous fact in historical philosophy — what Hume 
 calls a Natural History of Eeligion. All nations have 
 been endowed with the same germ or religious senti- 
 ment, but they have made to themselves different images 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 149 
 
 of Grod, 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 de- 
 gree, 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 his- 
 torical accident whatever. It is Pure Paternity. What 
 discoveries respecting man or the world, what progress 
 of science or philosophy, can be imagined with which the 
 simple conception of God as the Father of All could pos- 
 sibly conflict ? 
 
 It is true that Christianity has something of a mys- 
 terious character. But that, on this account, it must in- 
 terfere with intellectual freedom, or any thing 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 mysteri- 
 ous Unknown."^ 
 
 The moral source and support of great scientific in- 
 quiries, as of other great undertakings for the good of 
 
 * See Mr. Herbert Spencer's work on "First Principles," p. 223. 
 
150 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 mankind, is self-devotion, and self-devotion is the Chris- 
 tian 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 
 tha Middle Ages, which still, though its hour is past, shows 
 its ancient spirit in Montalembert ? What power was it 
 that directly consecrated the principle of local self-govern- 
 ment, 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 polit- 
 ical 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, Bo- 
 lingbroke, Hume, Gibbon, were Imperialists ; they all be- 
 longed, 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 des- 
 potism to preserve tranquillity, refinement, and the enjoy- 
 ments and conveniences of life. It need not be added 
 that the most fanatical enemies of Christianity at the pres- 
 ent day are also fanatical Imperialists. We have almost 
 a decisive instance of the two opposite tendencies in the 
 case of Kousseau and Yoltaire. Kousseau had far more 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 151 
 
 of the Gospel in his philosophy than Yoltaire ; and while 
 the political Utopia of Yoltaire inclined on the whole to 
 Imperialism, being, in fact, a visionary China, and his sym- 
 pathies were with those whom he imagined to be the be- 
 neficent despots of his age, the political Utopia of Eous- 
 seau inclined to an exaggeration of liberty, being a vis- 
 ionary 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 free- 
 dom 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 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 dis- 
 tant ; while the Imperialist proposes, by a beneficent dic- 
 tatorship, 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 shown 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 civili- 
 zation of Eome to the fierce, coarse, destroying barbarism 
 out of which, through her training, was to spring a higher 
 civilization, a gentler as well as a better world. If Chris- 
 tianity has ever seemed to be the ally of despotism, it was 
 
152 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 because she was herself corrupted and disguised either 
 by delirious asceticism, confounding self-degradation with 
 humility, or by ecclesiastical Jesuitism intriguing with po- 
 litical 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 Christianity 
 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 hopefulness of Christianity op- 
 posed themselves to the old Imperialism of Hobbes and 
 the Sensualists, who would have sacrificed the hopes of 
 humanity to material convenience. The charity and hu- 
 mility of Christianity oppose themselves to the new Im- 
 perialism, 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 abso- 
 lute 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 actuating principle is the love 
 of their neighbor, while they are raised by their spiritual 
 life above the selfish motives which are the great obsta- 
 cles 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. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 153 
 
 And why should not these be found for the future, as 
 throughout past history they have been found, in states- 
 men whose objects are disinterested, and whose treasure 
 is not here ? Desperate anxiety for the issue is not nec- 
 essary, or even conducive 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 ap- 
 ple 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 
 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 pub- 
 lic 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 race no part in the histor- 
 ical development of humanity, to show what part in the 
 historical development of humanity these races had real- 
 ly played. It is Christianity alone, I submit, which as- 
 signs them a place in history, by making them the sub- 
 jects of those great missionary and philanthropic enter- 
 prises which form so important a part of the life of Chris- 
 tendom. As the subjects of such enterprises, they do 
 indeed contribute to the development of humanity by 
 
 e2 
 
154 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 developing tlie religious sympathies and affections. Pos- 
 itive Science requires that these races, like the rest, 
 should pass, by a spontaneous movement, from Fetich- 
 ism into Polytheism, and so, through Monotheism, into 
 Atheism, with the corresponding series of social and 
 political phases. Christianitj^, disregarding Positive Sci- 
 ence, 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. 
 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 desire to remove it, has led to all the noble enter- 
 prises of history. ISTeither need the conviction, however 
 deep, that the world is transitory, diminish the desire to 
 labor for its good, if the good done is to be not transito- 
 ry, 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 con- 
 stant imminence of the Last Day. Why, then, is not all 
 social activity paralyzed by the constant imminence of 
 death ? 
 
 Again, it is insinuated that the progress of enlightened 
 views respecting the duties of nations toward 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 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 155 
 
 committed to the conduct of tlie State Priests who sang 
 Te Deums for the successfal rapine of Louis XIV. — a 
 rapine which, it may be remarked by the way, was at 
 least equaled when the last restraints of religion had 
 been removed by the Atheist emperor who afterward sat 
 on the same throne; neither is Christianity committed 
 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 correspond- 
 ingly narrow ; though the whole of this natural history 
 of the Jewish 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 passion- 
 ate devotion, has sunk deep into the affections of human- 
 ity, and justified the sentence that he was a man after 
 God's own heart ; but he could not be expected, any 
 more than a prince of any other primitive nation, to an- 
 ticipate modern enlightenment and humanity by observ- 
 ing 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 Tes- 
 tament and the New. The notion of their having re- 
 garded their enemies as Canaanites, and smitten them 
 
156 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 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 feel- 
 ing a stern satisfaction at the carnage of Drogheda and 
 Wexford ; but Cromwell's own dispatches 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 
 Eevolution — 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 
 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 Jew- 
 ish 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 persecu- 
 tions, his judicial murders perpetrated on blameless and 
 illustrious men, because he belongs to a class of violent 
 and unscrupulous characters in history whom their school 
 are pleased to style heroes. I see that, according to a 
 kindred school of philosophers, Titus performed an un- 
 avoidable duty in exterminating the Jews for rebelling 
 against the idea of Imperialism, which they could scarce- 
 ly, without a miracle, be expected to apprehend. Caesar 
 is becoming an object of adoration evidently as a sup- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 157 
 
 posed type of certain great qualities in which the Chris- 
 tian 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 Eo- 
 man conquest, but principally to create for himself a mil- 
 itary 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 em- 
 ployment of productive rather than of unproductive la- 
 bor, 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 bene- 
 fit, as by the indulgence of personal luxury and pride. 
 It is in Christian states, in states really Christian, that 
 Commerce has appeared in its most energetic and pros- 
 perous, as well as in its noblest form ; the greatest mari- 
 time discoveries 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 histor- 
 ically absurd. Capital and credit are the life of com- 
 mercial 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 
 
158 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 is the foundation of credit. Honest labor and activity 
 in business will hardly be said to be condemned by St. 
 Paul ; and if the anxious and covetous overstraining of 
 labor is opposed to Christianity, it is equally opposed to 
 economical wisdom. Of course the first authors of Chris 
 tianity did not teach political economy before its hour, 
 They took these, like the other political and social ar 
 rangements of the world, as they found them, and re 
 lieved poverty in the way in which it was then relieved 
 The science of Political Economy, since it left the hands 
 of its great founder, 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 virtue. No doubt there would speedily be 
 a divorce between 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 property, but he also understood the 
 relative value of property 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 so- 
 ciety. 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 can not be realized within any calcula- 
 ble time, if it is destined ever to be realized here. Chris- 
 tian philosophers have pronounced the judgment of ra- 
 tional Christianity on Socialism in no ambiguous terms. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 159 
 
 Yet surely puolitical 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 so- 
 cial morality, and with the rational aspirations of social 
 man. Surely they must see farther 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 ar- 
 rangements in which all reasonable men at present ac- 
 quiesce are certainly nearer than those of primitive Chris- 
 tianity 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 
 into direct relations with historical progress. But it is 
 inconceivable that the Love of God should ever conflict 
 with the Love of our Neighbor. It is inconceivable that 
 the one should ever fail to be supported and intensified 
 by the other. The Comtists may preserve their love of 
 Humanity in all its fervor ; they will find it equally fer- 
 vent 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 
 
160 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 guiding light was revealed no more interferes with his- 
 torical 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, can not rise beyond a high proba- 
 bility. It can not 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 sufiicient ground for our practical de- 
 cisions, is not a sufiicient ground for our religious faith 
 and feelings. Butler has imported the rules of worldly 
 prudence 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 can not worship and commune with a Being on a 
 probability even of ten thousand to one that he is God. 
 
 But here again history, taking a broad view of the 
 facts, finds a sufQ.cient answer to the question whether 
 Christendom is likely to perish under mere historical ob- 
 jections. 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 Kesurrection itself, like the immortality 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 161 
 
 of the soul of which it is the pledge, rests on other than 
 mere historical evidence. It rests in part on the doctrine, 
 cognizable 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 over- 
 came the grave, could not be holden of death.* 
 
 Has no great crisis, then, arrived in the history of 
 Christendom ? Certainly a great crisis has arrived, and 
 one which bids fair soon to merge small doubts and diffi- 
 culties 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 ar- 
 rive." 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 intellectual 
 effort, often perhaps misguided and often equivocal, 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 recognizes in it, and pass from the old state 
 of things entire in substance, though perhaps changed in 
 form, into the new. 
 
 * It is commonly assumed that the theory respecting the formation 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 vir- 
 tue. But is not virtue rather a gradual emancipation of the reason and 
 conscience, the sovereign powers of the soul, from every thing 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 ? 
 
162 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 The members of the divided cliurclies have prayed for 
 their reunion through the conversion of all to the peculiar 
 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 po- 
 litical causes, of the grand cause of division in Christen- 
 dom. If historical symptoms are to be trusted, the long 
 death-agony of three centuries is about to terminate, and 
 within no very long period the Papacy will cease to ex- 
 ist. 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 Eome had its origin and being, and the suprem- 
 acy of reason over human authority 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 acces- 
 sions of strength have been derived. The great revolt of 
 the Keformation was arrested in its progress over Europe 
 partly by accidents of national temperament and com- 
 parative mental cultivation, partly and principally by the 
 persecuting power of the great Catholic monarchies, which 
 conspired to preserve the Papacy as the keystone of des- 
 potism, and, by balancing each other, gave it a factitious 
 independence, of which the suspension of Italian nation- 
 ality was also a necessary condition. The Catholic mon- 
 archies are dead or dying. A Voltairian dynasty, the 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF HISTORICAL PROGRESS. 163 
 
 offspring of the French Eevokition, sits on the throne of 
 Charles IX. The successors of Phihp II. have suppressed 
 monasteries and allied themselves with the liberal house 
 of Orleans. The heir of Ferdinand 11. has been compell- 
 ed to recognize 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 nation- 
 ality seems now to be assured. It is vain to think that 
 the Primate of an Italian kingdom can be the Father of 
 Christendom. It is equally vain to think that the na- 
 tional government of Italy can suffer an independent po- 
 tentate, elected by a European conclave, to exist at its 
 side. It is vain to talk of dividing the temporal 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 instru- 
 ments, not spiritual, though not strictly material, of relig- 
 ious intimidation and intrigue. The Papacy will perish, 
 and in it will perish the great obstacle to the reconcilia- 
 tion and reunion of Christendom. Nor will it perish 
 alone. It will draw down with it in its fall, sooner or 
 
164 ON SOME SUPPOSED CONSEQUENCES, ETC. 
 
 later, all those causes of division wliich have subsisted 
 by mere antagonism to it, and many which it has kept 
 alive by its direct, though unrecognized influence 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 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 dis- 
 tress, 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 international and general rela- 
 tions, by a common Christianity. The world, as usual, 
 has anticipated the results of speculation by tacitly solv- 
 ing a great practical problem for itself; and it has found 
 that the brightness of the sunbeam resides in the sun- 
 beam, not in the motes, and that the crystal floor of 
 Heaven is not as unstable as water because it is as clear. 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 A Letter to the ''Daily JVeios'^ of November 20, 1861, de- 
 f ending the principles maintained in the foregoing Lec- 
 tures against the criticisms of an article in the ''West- 
 minster Remem''' 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 Review."* I will 
 now ask your permission to use them for the more agreea- 
 ble purpose of saying a few words on the question between 
 the view of history and humanity advocated in my Lec- 
 tures, and those advocated by the Reviewer. I do not con- 
 cur 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 disci- 
 pline which 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 
 
 * The letter here alluded to, as it related merely to my personal con- 
 dnct and character, is not reprinted. 
 
166 THE MORAL FEEEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 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 " Westmin- 
 ster Review," I shall treat it, of course, merely as the expo- 
 nent of certain opinions, of which it is the organ, not as a 
 criticism of my own work. 
 
 No part of the philosoj^hy 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 ex- 
 pression 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 paiit of political 
 disaster, has come over the moral world. Such a despond- 
 ency followed on the fall of that narrow but vigorous polit- 
 ical life, compounded of patriotism and stoicism, which was 
 embodied in the Roman republic. It followed on the tre- 
 mendous religious wars and revolutions of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. It has followed on the terrible, and, 
 to a great extent, fruitless revolutionary struggles through 
 which Europe has just passed. The abandonment of those 
 social aspirations of man which are so intimately connected 
 with his spiritual hojjes gave birth in the first instance to 
 Ca3sarism, in the second instance to the absolutism of the 
 eighteenth century, which was typified by Louis the Four- 
 teenth, 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 re- 
 
. THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN". 167 
 
 ligious faith has in each of the three instances been attended 
 by the prevalence of a materialistic superstition. The Ro- 
 man materialist was the slave of astrologers : the last cen- 
 tury 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 estab- 
 lishments, 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 communions with the 
 differences of their dogmatic creeds, and the vital impor- 
 tance attached by each communion to its own. Meantime 
 science, having achieved her emancipation 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 of spirit should 
 seem the last strong-hold of unreason, which it will be the 
 crowning triumph of science to subdue. Great men of sci- 
 ence, indeed, like all great men, know the limits of their own 
 sphere. But the lesser men of science, who, to tell the plain 
 truth, have often no more largeness of mind or breadth of 
 cultivation 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 ultramontanism, 
 and had no alternative before him but that of French skep- 
 
16S THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 ticism, wliich he pardonably preferred. Rational religion 
 lie had never beheld. His cultivation had evidently been 
 almost exclusively scientific, and his course of Positive Phi- 
 losophy is a perfect representation of the tendencies of ex- 
 clusively scientific minds when unprovided with a rational 
 theory of the moral world and a rational religion. He goes 
 through the physical sciences ; arrives at that which is be- 
 yond 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 diflers from the physical only in the 
 greater complexity of its phenomena, and the greater diffi- 
 culty, consequent on that complexity, of resolving its phe- 
 nomena into their necessary laws. 
 
 There can scarcely be a doubt that Comte, toward the 
 end of his life, by which time he had been abandoned by 
 Mr. Mill and all his rational disciples, was insane. Xor 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 having at first been only 
 an Aristotle, he, through his afiection 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 conclusion" of his course of lectures as the 
 opening of a new era, and shows how the great thinkers who 
 had preceded 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 j^arody 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 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 169 
 
 read any thing of Comte's works, especially the later, knows 
 that it is the very foundation of his method to give the i^re- 
 dominance to the moral faculties." Those who having, per- 
 haps, just read Comte, fancy that they alone have read him, 
 will find, on farther reference, that the qualifying words 
 " especially the later" arc by no means superfluous. 
 
 All honor to Comte, however, for this — that he Avas 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 labor and earnest thought, 
 what he believed to be a new faith, and tendered it to man- 
 kind 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 de- 
 ranged at the time when he invented his new religion, he 
 might well be said to have done Christendom a great serv- 
 ice by trying, with decisive result, the experiment of satis- 
 fying man's rehgious 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 toward 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 * Westminster' on 
 solid ground." 
 
 In England, Comte has drawn his most distinguished dis- 
 ciples from the University of Oxford. When the Univer- 
 sity awoke from the long torpor of the last century, a vio- 
 lent 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 
 
 ^11 
 
170 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 of Rome. The recoil after that movement staGrejered most 
 of US, and flung some out of rehgion altogether. These 
 men fell in several cases sheer down into Comtism, and it 
 seems that the University of Land has still a fair chance of 
 furnishing leaders to that persuasion. But some of them 
 appear to be in an uncertain and transition state, which they 
 confidently invite the w^orld to accept as the " solid ground" 
 of complete and final truth. At least they vehemently re- 
 pudiate " ajiheism," and affect the phrase " spiritjtil." Do 
 they mean* by God merely a set .of scien.tjific laws ? Do 
 they me^n by^ spirit onlyvaiisubstanice, the' i)h en omen a of 
 which are more " complex" than the phenomena of the ma- 
 terial world? They proclaim that they are "neither Athe- 
 ist, 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 ques- 
 tions 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 cir- 
 cle. 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 refer- 
 ence 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 physical science. In those 
 days, scientific experience was set at naught, and we were 
 told that though in science the earth might go round the 
 sun, in theology the sun went round the earth. Now", mor- 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 al experience is set at naught, 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 coun- 
 terpart, and the just retribution, of the sneers which were 
 formerly directed against induction. We have tramj^led on 
 the lower truth, and we pay the heavy penalty of producing 
 enemies to the highest. When science has been fairly ad- 
 mitted to its due place in the University, its vengeful usurp- 
 ations will probably 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 vio- 
 lence of the reaction among us has partly supplied the spir- 
 it which animates the "Westminster Review." Among 
 other indications, we may recognize with pleasure a kindly 
 feeling toward the University, and a disposition to admit 
 that, though benighted in her general character, yet in vir- 
 tue 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 hos- 
 tile to all that is ecclesiastical, some traces of an ecclesias- 
 tical training-place, such as an ardent passion for propa- 
 gandism, and a tendency to flirt (to use an undignified ex- 
 pression) with the half-educated minds of mechanics, analo- 
 gous to the ecclesiastical habit of flirting with the intellects 
 of half-educated women. Do we not even see, in the ex- 
 traordinary 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 neighbor in philosophy, the " National." Those 
 who are farthest from being adherents of the " ISTational" 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 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 life of the world. When I read vio- 
 lent and contemptuous invectives against " the popular re- 
 ligion," 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 in- 
 tellectual diagnosis an unconscious contribution to " Sociol- 
 ogy," no one will have a right to object, except the few who 
 cherish the purity of the EngUsh tongue. I see that I am 
 supposed to have unwittingly subscribed to some new view 
 of humanity in saying that the fall of the Papacy is " inevi- 
 table," and that the age of Louis XIV. " can never return." 
 If my diagnosis is right, the influence of extraordinary cir- 
 cumstances 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 
 palliation wo^ld not extend to ungenerous tactics, such as 
 the trick of Jesuitically goading orthodoxy to persecute 
 moderate Liberalism, which are a mistake under any dis- 
 pensation. Voltaire has never been forgiven for stirring up 
 persecution against Rousseau. 
 
 The speculations of Mr. Buckle, again, are evidently dom- 
 inated by the influence of a circumstance which is j^urely 
 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 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 173 
 
 which there is for this depends on the irrational condition 
 in which, as has been before said, rehgion 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 re- 
 quired to make out a serious case of opposition between re- 
 ligion and science. When Lord Palmerston snubs the 
 Scotch for desiring a day of religious humiliation at the ap- 
 proach of the cholera, instead of introducing improved drain- 
 age, he is lauded by Mr. Buckle as an Archangel of Light 
 rebuking the Powers of Darkness. Would Lord Palmer- 
 ston 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 preventing self-exertion ? 
 
 I think I can show Mr. Buckle that Christianity has re- 
 cently 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 ex- 
 clusively Christian doctrine, and that it Avas Christianity 
 that first effectively filled society with this aspiration. 'Now 
 he has placed before us, in his last volume, a picture, evi- 
 dently 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, and devoting itself, for the 
 sake of its kind, to the inquiry after scientific truth. I can 
 not help thinking that such an instance, vividly present to 
 
174 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 his mind, ought to convince him that, contrary to his the- 
 ory, 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 observing 
 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 observation. 
 
 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 domina- 
 tion, and surrendering ourselves to their sway. 
 
 Such a question as that of the free personality of man, 
 which is the real point at issue, is likely to be solved by 
 each of us for himself, and by mankind collectively, on prac- 
 tical rather than philosophical grounds. Probably no man, 
 when engaged in high and inspiring action, ever for a mo- 
 ment 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 qual- 
 ified by the signal proofs of immense national energy and 
 great faith in institutions which vast armaments of citizen 
 soldiers, by their mere existence, undeniably afibrd. Even 
 in France, the land of Comte, Proudhon, and Bonapartism, 
 Jules Simon has gone forth the herald of a difierent state 
 of things. A greater object of endeavor than any mere po- 
 litical emancipation or improvement begins to present itself 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 175 
 
 to our view. The i)olitical supports of the Papacy having 
 been cut away by the fall or desperate Aveakness 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 irrational dogma and the chief source of 
 schismatical division among the Christian churches are in a 
 fair way of being removed ; and the reunion of Christendom, 
 which for three centuries has been an empty and hopeless 
 prayer, is likely at last to become a practicable aim. Prob- 
 ably it would be a greater service to humanity, on philo- 
 sophical as well as on religious grounds, to contribute the 
 smallest mite toward 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 amid the energies and as- 
 pirations of a regenerated Christendom they would sponta- 
 neously pass away. 
 
 The rational object of discussion in this as in other de- 
 partments is to produce practical conviction. N'ames and 
 theoretical statements may take care of themselves. The 
 "Westminster" says: "Any thing which tends to deny to 
 man the fullest power to develop his own faculties, to con- 
 trol his own life, and form his future, we are ready to con- 
 demn." If it will adhere to this declaration in the natural 
 sense of the words, there is nothing more to be said, except 
 that if comets " formed their own future" they would be 
 rather embarrassing subjects of "science." 
 
 A student and teacher of History, however, is compelled 
 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 objurgatory 
 
176 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 key, that the free personality of man is an illusion ; for that, 
 feel as free as we may, our actions, both individual and col- 
 lective, are determined by a law, 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 manifest- 
 ation. 
 
 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 propounded and satis- 
 factorily verified. But at present, not only is there no veri- 
 fication, there is not even a hypothesis before us. Comte, in- 
 deed, put forward a hypothesis — that of the necessary prog- 
 ress of society through the "Theological," "Metaphysical," 
 and "Positive" states in succession. But as the "Westmin- 
 ster" repudiates the titles of " Positivist" and " Atheist," I 
 may assume that it abandons Comte's hypothesis as an ac- 
 count of humanity, even if it adheres to it as an account of 
 the 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 pro- 
 motes the improvement of the species, and that religion al- 
 ways retards it. His theory, again, would necessarily be 
 rejected by the " Westminster," if that journal rei^udiates 
 " 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 can not be much ques- 
 tion 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 j)ropounded the 
 
THE MOKAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 177 
 
 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 gainsay- 
 ers, that there is a better religion than Christianity, 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 difficult mat- 
 ter, since. History being but partly unfolded, a portion only 
 of the facts are before us. The "Westminster" 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 postu- 
 late of science is that things will continue as they are. But 
 here is a science which postulates 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 his- 
 tory 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 " Westmin- 
 ster" allows are to be taken into account as well as histor- 
 ical 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 ns, when the action is 
 done, that we are 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 supposition. This is not " meta- 
 physics," nor is it part of any obsolete controversy about 
 
 H2 
 
178 THE MOEAL FEEEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 "predestination." It is at least as much a matter of com- 
 mon sense, and a ground of daily feelings and conduct, as 
 the sensation of heat and cold. Till the sense of moral free- 
 dom, conscience, and the instincts which lead us to praise 
 and blame, reward and punish the actions of others, are ex- 
 plained away, we shall continue to believe that there is 
 something in human actions which renders them not mere- 
 ly more "complex" than the ^^henomena 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 ei- 
 ther of our sense of freedom or of conscience, except on the 
 hypothesis of free-will. As to praise and blame, it is said 
 they attach to actions and qualities simply as they are " mor- 
 al." 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 dispositions 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 and set- 
 tled 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 ac- 
 tions or freely-formed characters, but to " moral qualities," 
 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 AristoteHan theory of "habit," I should not be 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 179 
 
 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 prog- 
 ress toward 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 progress of the soul toward virtue is a progress to- 
 ward freedom. 
 
 The theory of human action in which the " Westminster" 
 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 conse- 
 quences on which your science is to be founded. 
 
 "The common sense of mankind seems to have assumed 
 that the will possesses an immense power of subduing cir- 
 cumstances, forming character, and regulating action." Com- 
 pare this with the allegation in the next page but one, that 
 "our wills are determined by our characters and our cir- 
 cumstances." In the first proposition the " will" is evident- 
 ly taken to be the original source of character. In the sec- 
 ond the will is determined by the character which it origin- 
 ates. 
 
 Look, too, at the following passage, in which the " West- 
 minster" attempts to turn upon me an 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 
 stransje idea of Providence. Then His will must continue 
 
180 THE MOEAL FEEEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 to maintain regular laws. If He does, is He, too, absorbed 
 into this chain of fate ? Is His will sunk in a physical ne- 
 cessity ? N'o, they will tell us. He works regularly, because 
 it is His nature to act by law. Then why is it so degrading 
 to supi3ose that this is man's nature also?" Does the Re- 
 viewer hold that man " maintains 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 his- 
 tory whatever. We have merely a passionate determina- 
 tion to assert that there is some scientific law which shall 
 oust " the popular religion," and that, even though the law 
 can not be found, it ought to be, and must be there. 
 
 A torrent of ridicule is poured upon me for having sup- 
 posed that any inferences afiecting the freedom of human 
 action have ever been drawn, or that there has been a tend- 
 ency to draw any, from the alleged uniformity of " moral 
 statistics." There are various ways of receding from an 
 untenable position ; and that of contemptuously denying 
 that it was ever taken np, if not the most gracious or ingen- 
 uous, is perhaps the most satisfactory and decisive. The 
 same may be said of the contemptuous denial that there 
 has been any disposition to applaud j^hysical 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 beneficent shadow of the sci- 
 
THE MOEAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 181 
 
 ence 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 scientific 
 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 argument- 
 iim ad homineyn against the advocates of free-will, it would 
 conflict with the freedom of human action if it were found- 
 ed, like scientific prevision, on necessary causation. But we 
 have not the slightest reason to believe that this is the case. 
 We can not 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 "Providence" or 
 " scientific prevision," we shall be compelled by the same in- 
 stincts to reject it still. 
 
 Transfer to the subject of physical science the admissions 
 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. Sup- 
 pose physical agents endowed with a " will," that will pos- 
 sessing "immense power of subduing their circumstances," 
 " forming their character, and regulating their actions ;" sup- 
 pose that their operations were caused by their " characters," 
 and that their characters " were caused mainly by their own 
 efforts ;" that they had the fullest power " to develop their 
 
182 THE MOEAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 own faculties" and to " form their own future" — w^hat 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 circum- 
 stances, 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 
 any thing tha-t I have w^'itten that you will find a low esti- 
 mate of the benefits wdaich an improved treatment of those 
 sciences is likely to confer on mankind. 
 
 It is not philosophic to class under the head of circum- 
 stance the influence w^hich 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 influenced by society, 
 so much so as to confine the free- wall and the responsibility 
 of each within narrow limits, is a thought not imwelcome, 
 but, on the contrary, most welcome to the weakness of hu- 
 manity. 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 circumstance, 
 and of social influences. He can also, so far as his memory 
 serves him, trace the connection of each of his past actions 
 with a motive, and of the motives with his pre-existing char- 
 acter and the circumstances which surrounded him, and thus 
 construct a sort of miniature philosophy of his owm history. 
 Yet every man knows that by the exertion of his own w^ill 
 he might have made his life other than it has been. 
 
 As to the theory of history which I have ventured to pro- 
 
THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 183 
 
 pound, 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 disgrace- 
 fully irrational. Its truth or falsehood can be satisfactorily 
 determined only when it has been applied to the facts of 
 history. Few, at all events, Avill 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 intel- 
 lectual world, and that some of them are pernicious, even 
 though they may be patronized by very excellent people. 
 "Mr. Mill" and " Miss Martineau" are active thinkers, and 
 persons of corresponding moral vigor ; but it does not follow 
 that their qualities will descend to those who are imbued 
 with their theories, any more than the purity of Epicurus 
 descended to the Epicureans, or the fiery energy of Moham- 
 med to the fatalistic Turk. As to " Sir G. C. Lewis," there 
 is not a line in his works which warrants the "Westmin- 
 ster" in appealing to his name. 
 
 Suppose the Scotch were to accept as true the very defect- 
 ive, 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 conse- 
 quence pernicious. 
 
 I drew a parallel between the circumstances of the present 
 
184 THE MORAL FREEDOM OF MAN. 
 
 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 un- 
 limited skepticism. On the contrary, we are sometimes apt 
 to ascribe this disposition to a more than ordinary vigor 
 of intellect. Such a prejudice 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 
 unquestionably required a superiority of understanding as 
 well as of intrepidity for an individual to resist the conta- 
 gion 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 
 philosophical skepticism of by far the greater number of 
 those who value themselves on an emancipation from popu- 
 lar errors, arises from the very same weakness with the cre- 
 dulity 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 with- 
 out discrimination, would probably have been a bigot in the 
 days of the League.'" liim, etc., 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith. 
 Oxford, Nov. 18, 18G1. 
 
ON THE 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE MERICM COLONIES. 
 
 Colony is an ambiguous word : the Phoenician colo- 
 nies were factories ; the Koman colonies were garrisons ; 
 the Spanish colonies were gold mines, worked by slaves ; 
 France justly placed the products of her Algerian colony 
 in our Exhibition under the heading "Ministry of War." 
 The Greek cities, in the hour of their greatness, founded 
 new cities the counterparts of themselves. England has 
 had the honor — an honor which no disaster can now 
 rend from her — of becoming the parent of new nations. 
 To colonize in this the highest sense is the attribute of 
 freedom. Freedom only can give the necessary self-re- 
 liance. In freedom only can the habit of self-govern- 
 ment requisite for a young community be formed. The 
 life of the plant must be diffused through all its parts, or 
 its cuttings will not grow. 
 
 It is evidently a law of Providence that man shall 
 spread over the earth, make it fruitful, fill it with moral 
 being. When all its powers are brought into play, when 
 it has a civilized nation on every shore, when the instru- 
 ment is, as it were, fully strung, we know not what har- 
 
186 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 mony may result. The great migrations of mankind are 
 the great epochs of history. In the East, the succession 
 of empires has been formed by the successive descents 
 of warlike tribes on the plains of Mesopotamia, on the 
 countries bordering the Persian Gulf, on Hindostan and 
 China. In the "West, the evidence which tends to prove 
 that the Greek and Eoman aristocracies were conquer- 
 ing races, tends also to prove that Greece and Kome were 
 the offspring of migrations. The migration of the Ger- 
 man tribes into the Eoman empire divides ancient from 
 modern, heathen from Christian history. So far the pro- 
 pelling cause was the want of fresh pastures, or, at high- 
 est, the restlessness of conscious strength, the sight of ill- 
 defended wealth, the allurements of sunnier lands. The 
 American colonies are the offspring of humanity at a 
 more advanced stage and in a nobler mood. They arose 
 from discontent, not with exhausted pastures, but with 
 institutions that were waxing old, and a faith that was 
 ceasing to be divine. They are monuments of that vast 
 and various movement of humanity, the significance of 
 which is but half expressed by the name of the Eeforma- 
 tion. They are still receiving recruits from a movement 
 which is now going on similar to the movement of the 
 sixteenth century, and perhaps not less momentous, 
 though, as we are still in the midst of it, not so clearly 
 understood. The enterprises of the Puritans, like their 
 worship, seemed to our forefathers eccentricities, disturb- 
 ing for a moment the eternal order of society and the 
 Church ; but that which in the eyes of man is eccentrici- 
 ty, is sometimes in the course of Providence the central 
 power. 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 187 
 
 Before the actual commencement of the Eeformation 
 European society began to feel those blind motions of the 
 blood which told that the world's year had turned, and 
 that the Middle Ages were drawing to their close. A 
 general restlessness showed itself, among other ways, in 
 maritime adventure. The Columbus of England was 
 John Cabot, borrowed, like the Columbus of Spain, from 
 a nation which, crushed at home, put forth its greatness 
 in other lands. At the close of the fifteenth century, 
 John Cabot, with his more famous son Sebastian, sailed 
 from Bristol, the queen, and now, with its quaint streets 
 and beautiful church, the monument, of English com- 
 merce, as English commerce was in its more romantic 
 and perhaps its nobler hour. The adventurers put forth, 
 graciously authorized by King Henry VII. to discover a 
 new world at their own risk and charge, and to hold it 
 as vassals of his crown, landing always at his port of 
 Bristol, and paying him one fifth of the gains forever. 
 This royal grant of the earth to man, like similar grants 
 made by the Papacy, may provoke a smile, but it was 
 the same delusion which in after times cost tears and 
 blood. The reward of the Cabots was the discovery of 
 North America; and Sebastian, in his second voyage, 
 saw the sun of the arctic summer night shine upon the 
 icebergs of the pole. The great Elizabethan mariners 
 took up the tale. They had two aims — gold, and the 
 northwest passage to the treasures of the East. Without 
 chart or guide, with only, to use their own phrase, a 
 " merrie wind," they went forth on voyages which might 
 have appalled a Franklin, as free and fearless as a child 
 at play. Frobisher sailed north of Hudson's Strait in a 
 
188 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 bark of twenty -five tons. As he dropped down the 
 Thames, Elizabeth graciously waved her hand to an en 
 terprise for which she had done nothing; a great art 
 and one which has something to give the queen her ped 
 estal in history. Gilbert, with a little fleet of boats rath 
 er than ships, took possession for England of Newfound 
 land. As he was on his way homeward, off Cape Bre 
 ton, in a wild night, the lights of his little vessel disap 
 peared. The last words he had been heard to say were 
 " Heaven is as near by sea as it is by land." 
 
 Gold lured these adventurers to discover countries, as 
 it lured the alchemist to found a science. In their thirst 
 for gold they filled their ships with yellow earth. Had 
 that yellow earth really been the precious metal, it would 
 have made the finders richer only for an hour, and 
 brought confusion upon commerce and the whole estate 
 of man. The treasures of the precious metals seem to 
 be so laid that new stores may be found only when the 
 circle of trade is greatly enlarged, and the wealth of 
 mankind greatly increased. And if the precious metals 
 are the only or the best circulating medium, and it is 
 necessary that the balance between them and the sum of 
 human wealth should be preserved, this may perhaps be 
 reckoned among the proofs that the earth is adapted to 
 the use of man. 
 
 England had a keen race for North America with 
 Spain and France. The name of Espiritu Santo Bay, 
 on the coast of Florida, commemorates the presence of 
 those devout adventurers who marched with a train of 
 priests, with all the paraphernalia of the mass, with 
 blood-hounds to hunt the natives and chains to bind 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 189 
 
 them. Spanish, keels first floated on the imperial waters 
 and among the primeval forests of the Mississippi. The 
 name of Carolina, a settlement planned bj Coligny, is a 
 monument fixed by the irony of fate to the treacherous 
 friendship of Charles IX. with the Huguenots on the eve 
 of the St. Bartholomew. North America would have 
 been ill lost to the Spaniard ; it would not have been so 
 ill lost to the Huguenot. 
 
 But the prize was to be ours. After roaming for a 
 century from Florida to Greenland, English enterprise 
 furled its wandering sail upon a shore which to its first 
 explorers seemed a paradise, and called the land Vir- 
 ginia, after the Virgin Queen. Ealeigh was deep in this 
 venture, as his erratic spirit was deep in all the ventures, 
 commercial, political, military, and literary, of that stir- 
 ring and prolific time. So far as his own fortunes were 
 concerned, this scheme, like most of his other schemes, 
 was a brilliant failure. In after times North Carolina 
 called her capital by his name — 
 
 " Et nunc servat honor sedem tuus, ossaque nomen 
 Hesperia in magna, siqua est ea gloria, signat" — 
 
 if that can appease the injured, unhappy, and heroic 
 shade. 
 
 Virginia had seemed an earthly paradise. But on 
 reading igitently the annals of colonization, we soon dis- 
 cover how hard it is for man to fix his dwelling where 
 his fellow has never been ; how he sinks and perishes 
 before the face, grand and lovely though it be, of colos- 
 sal, unreclaimed, trackless nature. The Virginian colo- 
 nists had among them too many broken gentlemen, 
 tradesmen, and serving -men, too few who were good 
 
190 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 hands at the axe and spade. They had come to a land 
 of promise in expectation of great and speedy gains, and 
 it seems clear that great and speedy gains are not to be 
 made by felling primeval woods. That the enterprise 
 was not abandoned was due in a great measure to the 
 cheering presence of a wild adventurer, named Captain 
 John Smith, who, turned by his kind relations as a boy 
 upon a stirring world, with ten shillings in his pocket, 
 and that out of his own estate, had, before he was thirty, 
 a tale to tell of wars in the Low Countries and against 
 the Turks, of battles and single combats, of captivities, 
 of wanderings and voyages in all quarters of the globe, 
 as strange and moving as the tale of Othello ; and who, 
 if he did not win a Desdemona, won a Turkish princess 
 to save him from the bowstring at Adrianople, and an 
 Indian princess to save him from the tomahawk in Vir- 
 ginia. Again and again the settlement was recruited 
 and re-supplied. The original colony of Ealeigh quite 
 died out, and upon the place of its transient abode na- 
 ture resumed her immemorial reign. The settlement 
 was made good under James I., and at last prospered by 
 the cultivation <3f tobacco, so that the royal author of the 
 "Counterblast" unwillingly became the patron of the 
 staple he most abhorred. Even this second colony once 
 re-embarked in despair, and was turned back by the 
 long-boat of the vessel which brought it re-enforcements 
 and supplies. 
 
 To mankind the success of the Virginian colony proved 
 but a doubtful boon. The tobacco was cultivated first 
 by convicts, then by negro slaves. The Dutch brought 
 the first cargo of negroes to the colony ; but the guilt of 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 191 
 
 this detested traffic does not rest in any especial manner 
 on the Dutch: the whole of commercial Europe was 
 tainted with the sin. Sir John Hawkins, Elizabeth's 
 gallant admiral, was a slaver, and the crown itself was 
 not ashamed to share his gains. The cities of Spain 
 were seats of the slave-trade as well as of religious per- 
 secutions ; and both these deadly diseases of humanity 
 had been stimulated by the Crusades. Even the Puri- 
 tans of ISTew England were preserved from the contagion 
 rather by their energetic industry as free laborers, and 
 the nobility of their character, than by clear views of 
 right. They denounced kidnapping; they forbad slav- 
 ery to be perpetual; but bondage in itself seemed to 
 them lawful because it was Jewish. It is an additional 
 reason for dealing carefully with the subject of Jewish 
 history and the Jewish law, when we see them wrested 
 as they are to the defense of slavery, with all its abysses 
 of cruelty and lust. To put the case as low as possible, 
 Can those who support slavery by Jewish precedents say 
 that the Jews for whom Moses legislated possessed that 
 definite conviction of the immortality of the soul, that 
 clear conception of the spiritual life and of the spiritual 
 relations of man to man, on which the loathsomeness of 
 slaveowning in a Christian's eyes principally depends? 
 Nor, again, must slaveowners fancy they are counterparts 
 of English gentlemen. It has been remarked that En- 
 glish gentlemen, when owners of West Indian property, 
 shrank with a half-honorable inconsistency from living 
 on their estates and plying the trade of the slaveowner, 
 though they did not shrink from taking the slaveowner's 
 gains. To continue a slaveowner, the American must be 
 
192 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 false, not only to Christianity, but to all that is proud 
 and high in the great race from which he springs. The 
 growth of trade has necessarily rendered the system 
 more mercenary, cold-blooded, and vile. It was milder 
 and more patriarchal in the hands of the Virginian gen- 
 tlemen of earlier days. "Washington himself was a Vir- 
 ginian slaveowner, the best of slaveowners, and therefore 
 a strong though temperate advocate for the immediate 
 abolition of the slave-trade, and the progressive emanci- 
 pation of the slaves. Jefferson, the first president of the 
 party which now upholds slavery, and, like Washington, 
 a Virginian proprietor, also spoke strong words, uttered 
 terrible warnings, though political passion made him 
 partly faithless to the cause. England indeed owes the 
 American slaveowner charity and patience, for she was 
 the full accomplice, if she was not the author of his guilt. 
 In the treaty of Utrecht we bargained with Spain for a 
 share in the negro trade; and Queen Anne mentioned 
 this article in her speech to Parliament as one of the tro- 
 phies of a war undertaken to save the liberties of Europe. 
 It is true the spirit of William surviving in his council- 
 ors made the war, the spirit of Bolingbroke made the 
 peace. But long after the peace of Utrecht, down to the 
 very eve of our rupture with the American colonies, we 
 encouraged, we enforced the trade, and in our West In- 
 dian slave colonies we kept up the focus of the pestilence. 
 Still, we have purged ourselves of the stain. The Amer- 
 ican slave states were in their own hands, they were fresh 
 in the enjoyment of their own liberties, the declaration 
 of the Rights of Man was on their lips, the case was not 
 desperate, the cause was earnestly pleaded before them, 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 193 
 
 when they in effect determined that they would let slav- 
 ery be as it had been. Then their good angel left their 
 side. 
 
 There is in America another race, less injured than the 
 negro, but scarcely less unhappy. The first English ex- 
 plorers of Virginia brought word that they had been "en- 
 tertained by the Indians with all love and kindness, and 
 with as much bounty, after their manner, as they could 
 possibly devise ; and that they found them a people most 
 gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, 
 and such as lived after the manner of the Golden Age." 
 These loving entertainments and this golden age were 
 soon followed by an iron age of suspicion, hatred, en- 
 croachment, border warfare, treacherous and murderous 
 onfalls of the weaker on the stronger, bloody vengeance 
 of the stronger on the weaker. And now it seems there 
 will soon be nothing left of the disinherited race but the 
 strange music of its names mingling with the familiar 
 names of England in the hills and rivers of its ancient 
 heritage. Yet its blood is not on the heads of those who 
 dwell in its room. They, indeed, have turned the wil- 
 derness over which it wandered into the cities and corn- 
 fields of a great nation, and in so doing they have obeyed 
 the law of Providence, which has given the earth, not for 
 the dominion, but for the support of man. They con- 
 jured the phantom of the Indian hunter's proprietary 
 right by the forms of treaty and purchase. They did 
 not seek to exterminate, they did not seek to enslave; 
 they did seek to civilize and convert. Protestantism in 
 its noblest and purest form, and the better spirit of Jes- 
 uitism — the spirit, that is, of Xavier and not of Loyola — 
 
 I 
 
194 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 vied with each other in doiDg all that religion could do 
 to elevate and save. The marriage of an Indian princess 
 with an Englishman was hailed as an auspicious pledge 
 of the union of the two races under one name and with 
 one God. But the fate of savages brought abruptly into 
 contest with civilization has every where been the same. 
 Never, says an eminent writer, have they been reclaimed 
 except by religion. It is the exception that is doubtful. 
 Where are the reclaimed, or rather the domesticated sav- 
 ages of Paraguay, whose dwindling numbers, even under 
 the Jesuit rule, were kept up by decoying recruits from 
 neighboring tribes ? What do we hear as to the proba- 
 ble fate of the reclaimed savages of New Zealand? It- 
 seems as though to pass at a bound from the lowest step 
 in the scale to the highest were not given to man ; as 
 though to attempt it, even with the best aid, were to die. 
 Mere savages the Indians seem to have been, though 
 America has filled the void of romance in her history 
 with their transfigured image. They knew the simpler 
 arts of life; they had great acuteness of sense, and forti- 
 tude equaled only by their cruelty ; but they lived and 
 died creatures of the hour, caring not for the past or for 
 the future, keeping no record of their forefathers, not 
 storing thought, without laws and government but those 
 of a herd, using the imagery of sense, their seeming elo- 
 quence, only because they lacked the language of the 
 mind, having no religion but a vague awe, which fixed 
 on every thing terrible or marvelous as a god. Yet they 
 did not exist in vain. Without their presence, their aid, 
 slight as it was, their guidance, the heart of the wanderer 
 would perhaps have utterly sunk in that vast solitude, 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES, 195 
 
 then a world away from home and succor. The animal 
 perfection of their lower nature enabled them to struggle 
 with and thread the wilderness, the horrors of which 
 their want of the finer nature made them all the more 
 fit to bear. They were the pioneers of a higher state of 
 things ; and perhaps we, heirs as we seem to ourselves 
 of all the ages, may to the late heirs of our age seem no 
 more. 
 
 Virginia then went prosperously, as it was thought, 
 upon her course, the destined centre and head of the 
 slave states. Her own society and that of the adjoining 
 states, which took their color from her, was old English 
 society, as far as might be, in a new land. The royal 
 governors were little kings. There was no aristocracy 
 as in England, but there was a landed gentry with aristo- 
 cratic pride. There was, down to the Eevolution, the 
 English rule of primogeniture in the succession to land. 
 The Church of England was the church of the colony, 
 half established, and a little inclined to intolerance. In 
 Virginia many of the Cavaliers took refuge in their evil 
 hour. In Virginia Charles II. reigned while he was pro- 
 scribed in England. In Virginia a royal governor could 
 say, as late as 1671, "I thaj^ God there are no free- 
 schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have them 
 these hundred years ; for learning has brought disobedi- 
 ence, and misery, and sects into the world, and printing 
 has divulged them, and libels against the best govern- 
 ment. God keep us from both." 
 
 Meantime, far north, where the eastern mountains of 
 America press the sea, in a bracing climate, on a soil 
 which demands free labor, another colony had been form- 
 
196 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 ed, of other materials, and with a different aim. Of a 
 poor Puritan teacher, more truly than of the royal re- 
 storer of Virginia, might it have been prophesied — 
 
 "Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, 
 His honor and the greatness of his name 
 Shall be, and make new nations." 
 
 When the Presbyterian James mounted the throne, the 
 persecuted Puritans thought a better day had dawned. 
 They were quickly undeceived. The sagacious eye of 
 the royal Solomon at once discerned how much the 
 throne would be strengthened and secured by that com- 
 pact alliance with a party in the Church, which soon laid 
 church and throne together in the dust. At the Hamp- 
 ton Court Conference he revealed at once his purpose 
 and his nature by speaking foul, unkingly words to the 
 honored leaders of that great party whose heroic energy, 
 shining forth in famous soldiers and famous statesmen, 
 had saved England and the English crown from Spain. 
 Under the vigilant eye and zealous hand of Bancroft, the 
 persecution grew hotter and more searching than before. 
 The tale that follows has been often told. A Puritan 
 congregation on the confines of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, 
 and Nottinghamshire, wh(|p teacher's name was Eobin- 
 son, harassed beyond endurance, resolved to leave all 
 they had and fly to Holland, there to worship God in 
 peace. They accordingly attempted to escape, were ar- 
 rested, set free again ; again they attempted to escape, 
 were pursued by the agents of persecution to the shore, 
 and part of them seized, but again with difficulty let go. 
 In Holland the congregation dwelt twelve years, devout, 
 industrious, blameless, no man, said the Dutch magis- 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 197 
 
 trates, bringing suit or accusation against them ; the liv- 
 ing image of that for which we gaze into the darkness of 
 the first two centuries in vain. But the struggle for 
 bread was hard. The children grew sickly and bent 
 with toil before their time. There was war in Germany. 
 The cities of the Low Countries were full of loose and 
 roving soldiery, and Holland itself was torn by the bloody 
 struggle between the Arminians and the Gomarists. 
 Some of the younger members of the congregation fell 
 into evil courses, enlisted, went to sea. Then with 
 prayer and fasting the congregation turned their thoughts 
 to the New World. The Dutch, learning their intention, 
 bid high for them, knowing well the value of such set- 
 tlers. But that which they did they would do as En- 
 glishmen, and for the honor of their own land. They 
 made their suit through friends in England to the king 
 and the Virginia Company ; spoke dutifully of the royal 
 authority, meekly of the authority of bishops ; repre- 
 sented that, though the enterprise was dangerous — and 
 to peasants like them it was dangerous indeed — though 
 the honor of it might be bought with life, yet in their 
 case, no common one, it would be rightly undertaken, 
 and they were not unfit to undertake it. "We are well 
 weaned from the delicate milk of our mother country, 
 and inured to the difficulties of a strange land. The 
 people are industrious and frugal. We are knit together 
 in a most sacred covenant of the Lord, of the violation 
 whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue where- 
 of we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each oth- 
 er's good and of the whole. It is not with us as with 
 men whom small things can discourage." The Virginia 
 
198 ON- THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 Company gave hesitating assistance and a worthless pat- 
 ent. The king and the bishops held out fair hopes of 
 beneficent neglect. " Ungrateful Americans !" cried a 
 minister in a debate on the Stamp Act. " Planted by 
 our care," cried another minister, "nourished up by our 
 indulgence, will they grudge to contribute their mite to 
 relieve us from the heavy burden we lie under?" 
 
 Through the solemn sadness of the parting from Delft 
 Haven shone the glory of great things to come. History 
 reveals abysses which, if her evidence were all, might 
 make us doubt which power it was that ruled the world. 
 But history bears steady witness to the lasting ascend- 
 ency of moral over physical force. All rhetoric apart, 
 those masters of thirty legions, who with so much blood 
 and din shift to and fro the boundaries of kingdoms, go 
 to dust, and, saving the evil they leave behind them, are 
 as though they had never been ; but these poor peasants, 
 at small charge to the Virginia Company, became in a 
 real sense the founders of a new world. 
 
 It was not from Delft Haven, but from Southampton, 
 that they finally embarked. England deserved that hon- 
 or at their hands, for they went forth, though not from 
 the English government, from the heart of the English 
 people. Of their two little vessels, the " Speedwell" 
 leaked, and was forced to put back, with the weaker 
 bodies and fainter spirits in her. The " Mayflower" 
 went on her way alone ; she went safely through storms, 
 carrying greater fortunes than those of C^sar. On Sat- 
 urday, the 11th of November, 1620, she dropped her an- 
 chor on a wintry coast, and next day the Puritan kept 
 his first Sabbath in his own land. He kept that Sabbath 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 199 
 
 sacred in his extremity ; and, amid tlie keen race for 
 wealth, his descendants keep it sacred still. The wel- 
 come of the Puritans to their home was the wilderness in 
 all its horrors, checkered by a ^ew signs of Indian life, 
 and soon by a volley of Indian arrows ; snow ; frost that 
 made the wet clothes of the explorers stiff as iron ; hun- 
 ger that drove them to feed on shell-fish ; deadly fever 
 and consumption. More than half the number died : the 
 survivors had scarce strength to bury the dead by the 
 sea and conceal the graves, lest the Indians might per- 
 ceive how the colony was weakened. The mortal strug- 
 gle lasted for two years. Yet this colony did not, like 
 Virginia, require to be re-founded, not even to be re-vict- 
 naled. ''It is not with us as with men whom small 
 things can discourage." The third summer brought a 
 good harvest, and the victory was won. "Let it not be 
 grievous to you," said the Puritans in England — " let it 
 not be grievous to you that you have been instruments 
 to break the ice for others. The honor shall be yours to 
 the world's end." 
 
 Before the Pilgrims landed, they by a solemn instru- 
 ment founded the Puritan republic. The tone of this in- 
 strument and the success of its authors may afford a les- 
 son to revolutionists who sever the present from the past 
 with the guillotine, fling the illustrious dead out of their 
 tombs, and begin history again with the year one. These 
 men had been wronged as much as the Jacobins. 
 
 " In the name of God. Amen. We whose names are 
 underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign 
 Lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken. 
 
200 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian 
 faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to 
 plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, 
 do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the pres- 
 ence of God and of one another, covenant and combine 
 ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better 
 ordering and preservation, and for the furtherance of the 
 ends aforesaid ; and by virtue hereof to exact, constitute, 
 and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances and acts, 
 constitutions and ofi&ces, from time to time, as shall be 
 thought most meet for the general good of the colony, 
 unto which we promise all due submission and obedi- 
 ence." And then follows the roll of plebeian names, to 
 which the Eoll of Battle Abbey is a poor record of no- 
 bility. 
 
 There are points in history at which the spirit which 
 moves the whole shows itself more clearly through the 
 outward frame. This is one of them. Here we are pass- 
 ing from the feudal age of privilege and force, to the age 
 of due submission and obedience, to just and equal of&ces 
 and laws, for our better ordering and preservation. In 
 this political covenant of the Pilgrim fathers lies the Amer- 
 ican Declaration of Independence. From the American 
 Declaration of Independence was borrowed the French 
 Declaration of the Eights of Man. France, rushing ill- 
 prepared, though with overweening confidence, on the 
 great problems of the eighteenth century, shattered not 
 her own hopes alone, but nearly at the same moment 
 the Puritan Eepublic, breaking the last slight link that 
 bound it to feudal Europe, and placing modern society 
 firmly and tranquilly on its new foundation. To the free 
 
THE AMEKICAN COLONIES. 201 
 
 States of America we owe our best assurance that the 
 oldest, the most famous, the 'most cherished of human 
 institutions are not the life, nor would their fall be the 
 death, of social man ; that all which comes of Charle- 
 magne, and all which comes of Constantino, might go to 
 the tombs of Charlemagne and Constantine, and yet social 
 duty and affection, religion and worship, free obedience to 
 good government, free reverence for just laws, continue 
 as before. They who have achieved this have little need 
 to talk of Bunker's Hill. 
 
 Not that republicanism in New England is all its 
 founders expected it to be. "Our popularity," said the 
 framers of the popular constitution of Ehode Island — 
 "our popularity shall not, as some conjecture it will, 
 prove an anarchy, and so a common tyranny ; for we are 
 exceedingly desirous to preserve every man safe in his 
 person, name, and estate." That might be said confi- 
 dently of a quiet agricultural community of small pro- 
 prietors, which could not be so confidently said of great 
 trading communities with vast and restless cities. But 
 the Puritan institutions have had other difiiculties to con- 
 tend with, for which fair allowance must be made. The 
 stream of English and German, the torrent of Irish emi- 
 gration, relieving other countries of a great danger, casts 
 on the Eepublic a multitude of discontented and lawless 
 spirits, far removed from the restraining influences of 
 their native land, from the eye of neighbors, friends, and 
 kinsmen, from the church-bells of their home. The incon- 
 gruous and fatal union of the free with the slave states, 
 for which those who drove them all to combine against 
 English tyranny are partly responsible, has brought upon 
 
 12 
 
202 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 the constitution the tremendous strain of tlie great slave- 
 ry question, and led to that deadly alliance between the 
 Southern slaveowner and the JSTorthern anarchist which 
 calls itself the Democratic party. The rupture with the 
 English monarchy gave the states a violent bias toward 
 democracy, which they were far from exhibiting before, 
 and set up the revolutionary doctrine of the sovereign 
 people, which tends as much as any other despotic doc- 
 trine to annul the greatest step in the progress of hu- 
 manity by placing will, though it be the will of the many, 
 above reason and the law. To crown all comes the pois- 
 onous influence of the elective presidency, the great prize 
 of restless and profligate ambition ; the fountain of envy, 
 malignity, violence, and corruption ; the object of factions 
 otherwise as devoid of object and of meaning as Neri and 
 Bianchi, Caravat and Shanavest ; in their fierce struggles 
 for which American statesmen have too often shown that, 
 if pubHc life is the noblest of all callings, it is the vilest 
 of all trades. The Diet of the Swiss Confederation, pre- 
 sided over by the first magistrate of the leading canton 
 for the year, would have furnished a happier model. The 
 character of Washington is one of the glories of our race; 
 but was he a man of genius ? Did he see that he had to 
 frame a Constitution for a confederacy of republics, not 
 for a nation ? Did not the image of the English mon- 
 archy, something of the state of which he thought it his 
 duty as President to keep, hover too much before his 
 eyes? Yet, as he looked for the progressive abolition 
 of slavery, he must be acquitted of so terrible an error as 
 an attempt to make one nation of the slave and free. 
 Happily, political institutions kill as seldom as they cure, 
 
THE AMERICAN" COLONIES. 203 
 
 and the real current of a great nation's life may run 
 calmly beneath the seething and frothy surface which 
 alone meets our eyes. 
 
 With popular government the Puritans established 
 popular education. They are the great authors of the 
 system of common schools. They founded a college too, 
 and that in dangerous and pinching times. JSTor did their 
 care fail, nor is it failing, to produce an intelligent people. 
 A great literature is a thing of slow growth every where. 
 The growth of American literature was retarded at first 
 by Puritan severity, which forced even philosophy to put 
 on a theological garb, and veiled the Necessarianism of 
 Mr. Mill in the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards. Now, 
 perhaps, its growth is retarded by the sudden burst of 
 commercial activity and wealth, the development of which 
 our monopolies long restrained. One day, perhaps, this 
 wealth may be used as nobly as the wealth of Florence ; 
 but for some time it will be spent in somewhat coarse 
 pleasures by those who have suddenly won it. It is 
 spent in somewhat coarse pleasures by those who have 
 suddenly won it at Liverpool and Manchester, as well as 
 at New York. One praise, at any rate, American litera- 
 ture may claim — it is pure. Here the spirit of the Pil- 
 grims still holds its own. The public opinion of a free 
 country is a restraining as well as a moving power. On 
 the other hand, despotism, political or ecclesiastical, does 
 not extinguish human liberty. That it may take away 
 the liberty of reason, it gives the liberty of sense. It 
 says to man, Do what you will, sin and shrive yourself; 
 but eschew political improvement, and turn away your 
 thoughts from truth. 
 
204 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 The history of the Puritan Church in New England 
 is one of enduring glory, of transient shame. Of tran- 
 sient shame, because there was a moment of intolerance 
 and persecution; of enduring glory, because intolerance 
 and persecution instantly gave way to perfect liberty of 
 conscience and free allegiance to the truth. The found- 
 ers of New England were Independents. When they 
 went forth, their teacher had solemnly charged them to 
 follow him no farther than they had seen him follow his 
 Master. He had pointed to the warning example of 
 churches which fancied that because Calvin and Luther 
 were great and shining lights in their times, therefore 
 there could be no light vouchsafed to man after theirs. 
 "I beseech you remember it; it is an article of your 
 Church covenant that you be ready to receive whatever 
 truth shall be made known to you from the written word 
 of God." It was natural that the Puritan settlement 
 should at first be a Church rather than a State. To have 
 given a share in its lands or its political franchise to 
 those who were not of its communion would have been 
 to make the receiver neither rich nor powerful, and the 
 giver, as he might well think, poor and weak indeed. 
 But the Communion grew into an Establishment; and 
 the Puritan Synod, as well as the Council of Trent, must 
 needs forget that it was the child of change, and build 
 its barrier, though not a very unyielding one, across the 
 river which flows forever. Ehode Island, Connecticut, 
 New Hampshire, were partly secessions from Massachu- 
 setts, led by those who longed for perfect freedom ; and 
 in fairness to Massachusetts it must be said that among 
 those seceders were some in whose eyes freedom herself 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 205 
 
 was scarcely free. The darkness of the Middle Ages 
 must bear the blarae if not a few were dazzled by the sud- 
 den return of light. The name of Providence, the capi- 
 tal of Ehode Island, is the thank-offering of Eoger Wil- 
 liams, to whose wayward and disputatious spirit much 
 may be forgiven if he first clearly proclaimed, and first 
 consistenly practiced, the perfect doctrine of liberty of 
 conscience, the sole guarantee for real religion, the sole 
 trustworthy guardian of the truth. That four Quakers 
 should have suffered death in a colony founded by fugi- 
 tives from a persecution is a stain on the history of the 
 free churches of America, like the stain on the robe of 
 Marcus Aurelius, like the stain on the escutcheon of the 
 Black Prince. It is true there was no Inquisition, no 
 searching of conscience ; that the persecutors warned 
 their victims away, and sought to be quit of them, not to 
 take their blood ; that the Quakers thrust themselves on 
 their fate in their frenzied desire for martyrdom. All this 
 at most renders less deep by one degree the dye of relig- 
 ious murder. The weapon was instantly wrested from 
 the hand of fanaticism by the humane instinct of a free 
 people, and the blood of those four victims sated in the 
 New World the demon who, in the Old World, between 
 persecutions and religious wars, has drunk the blood of 
 millions, and is scarcely sated yet. If the robe of religion 
 in the New World was less rich than in the Old, it was 
 all but pure of those red stains, compared with which the 
 stains upon the robe of worldly ambition, scarlet though 
 they be, are white as wool. In the New World there 
 was no Inquisition, no St. Bartholomew, no Thirty Years' 
 War: in the New World there was no Yoltaire. If we 
 
206 OJSr THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 would do Yoltaire justice, criminal and fatal as his de- 
 structive levity was, we have only to read his " Cry of 
 Innocent Blood," and we shall see that the thing he as- 
 sailed was not Christianity, much less God. The Ameri- 
 can sects, indeed, soon added to the number of those vari- 
 ations of the Protestant churches which, contrasted with 
 the majestic unity of Eome, furnished a proud argument 
 to Bossuet. Had Bossuet lived to see what came forth 
 at the Eevolution from under the unity of the Church of 
 France, he might have doubted whether unity was so 
 united ; as, on the other hand, if he had seen the practi- 
 cal union of the free churches of America for the weight- 
 ier matters of religion, which De Tocqueville observed, 
 he might have doubted whether variation was so various. 
 It would have been too much to ask a Bossuet to consid- 
 er whether, looking to the general dealings of Providence 
 with man, the variations of free and conscientious inquir- 
 ers are an absolute proof that free and conscientious in- 
 quiry is not the road to religious truth. 
 
 In Maryland, Eoman Catholicism, itself, having tasted 
 of the cup it had made others drink to the dregs, and 
 being driven to the asylum of oppressed consciences, 
 proclaimed the principle of toleration. In Maryland the 
 Church of Alva and Torquemada grew, bloodless and 
 blameless ; and thence it has gone forth, as it was in its 
 earlier and more apostolic hour, to minister to the now 
 large Eoman Catholic population of the United States 
 whatever of good and true, in the great schism of hu- 
 manity, may have remained on the worse and falser side. 
 For in Maryland it had no overgrown wealth and power 
 to defend against the advance of truth. Bigotry, the 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 207 
 
 mildest of all vices, has the worst things laid to her charge. 
 That wind of free discipline which, to use Bacon's image, 
 winnows the chaff of error from the grain of truth, is in 
 itself welcome to man as the breeze of evening. It is 
 when it threatens to winnow awaj, not the chaff of error 
 alone, but princely bishoprics of Strasburg and Toledo, 
 that its breath becomes pestilence, and Christian love is 
 compelled to torture and burn the infected sheep, in or- 
 der to save from infection the imperiled flock. 
 
 There have been wild religious sects in America. But 
 can not history show sects as wild in the Old World ? 
 Is not Mormonism itself fed by the wild apocalyptic vis- 
 ions, and the dreams of a kinder and happier social state, 
 which haunt the peasantry in the more neglected parts 
 of our own country? Have not the wildest and most 
 fanatical sects in history arisen when the upper classes 
 have turned rehgion into policy, and left the lower class- 
 es, who knew nothing of policy, to guide or misguide 
 themselves into the truth ? 
 
 New England was fast peopled by the flower of the 
 Puritan party, and the highest Puritan names were blend- 
 ed with its history. Among its elective governors was 
 Yane, even then wayward as pure, even then suspected 
 of being more Eepublican than Puritan. It saw also the 
 darker presence of Hugh Peters. While the day went 
 hard with freedom and the Protestant cause in England, 
 the tide set steadily westward ; it turned, when the hour 
 of retaliation came, to the great Armageddon of West- 
 minster and Naseby ; after the Eestoration it set to the 
 West again. In New England Puritanism continued to 
 reign with all that was solemn, austere, strange in its 
 
208 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 spirit, manners, language, garb, wlien in England its do- 
 minion, degenerating into tyranny, had met -with a half- 
 merited overthrow. In Kew England three of the judges 
 of Charles I. found a safer refuge than Holland could af- 
 ford, and there one of them lived to see the scales once 
 more hung out in heaven, the better part of his own 
 cause triumphant once more, and William sit on the 
 Protector's throne. 
 
 Among the emigrants were clergymen, Oxford and 
 Cambridge scholars, high-born men and women, for in 
 that moving age the wealthiest often vied with the poor- 
 est in indifference to worldly interest and devotion to a 
 great cause. Even peers of the Puritan party thought 
 of becoming citizens of Massachusetts, but had enough 
 of the peer in them to desire still to have an hereditary 
 seat in the councils of the state. Massachusetts answered 
 this demand by the hand of one who had himself made a 
 great sacrifice, and without republican bluster : '' When 
 God blesseth any branch of any noble or generous family 
 with a spirit and gifts fit for government, it would be a 
 taking of God's name in vain to put such a talent under 
 a bushel, and a sin against the honor of magistracy to 
 neglect such in our public elections. But if God should 
 not delight to furnish some of their posterity with gifts 
 fit for magistracy, we should enforce them rather to re- 
 proach and prejudice than exalt them to honor, if we 
 should call those forth whom God doth not to public au- 
 thority." The Yenetian seems to be the only great aris- 
 tocracy in history the origin of which is not traceable to 
 the accident of conquest; and the origin even of the 
 "Venetian aristocracy may perhaps be traced to the acci- 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 209 
 
 dent of prior settlement and the contagious example of 
 neighboring states. That which has its origin in acci- 
 dent may prove useful and live long; it may even sur- 
 vive itself under another name, as the Eoman patriciate, 
 as the Norman nobility survived themselves under the 
 form of a mixed aristocracy of birth, political influence, 
 and wealth. But it can flourish only in its native soil. 
 Transplant it, and it dies. The native soil of feudal aris- 
 tocracy is a feudal kingdom, with great estates held to- 
 gether by the law or custom of primogeniture in succes- 
 sion to land. The New England colonies rejected primo- 
 geniture with the other institutions of the Middle Ages, 
 and adopted the anti-feudal custom of equal inheritance, 
 under the legal and ancestral name of gavelkind. It 
 was Saxon England emerging from the Norman rule. 
 This rule of succession to property, and the equality with 
 which it is distributed, are the basis of the republican in- 
 stitutions of New England. To transfer those institu- 
 tions to countries where that basis does not exist would 
 be almost as absurd as to transfer to modern society the 
 Eoman laws of the Twelve Tables or the Capitularies of 
 Charlemagne. 
 
 In New York, New Jersey, Delaware, settlements 
 formed by the energy of Dutch and Swedish Protest- 
 antism have been absorbed by the greater energy of the 
 Anglo-Saxons. The rising empire of his faith beyond 
 the Atlantic did not fail to attract the soaring imagina- 
 tion of Gustavus ; it was in his thoughts when he set out 
 for Llitzen. But the most remarkable of the American 
 colonies, after the New England group, is Pennsylvania. 
 We are rather surprised, on looking at the portrait of the 
 
210 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 gentle and eccentric founder of the Society of Friends, 
 to see a very comely youth dressed in complete armor. 
 Penn was a highly educated and accomplished gentle- 
 man, heir to a fine estate, and to all the happiness and 
 beauty, which he was not without a heart to feel, of En- 
 glish manorial life. '' You are an ingenious gentleman," 
 said a magistrate before whom he was brought for his 
 Quaker extravagances ; "why do you make yourself un- 
 happy by associating with such a simple people?" In 
 the Old World he could only hope to found a society ; 
 in the New World he might hope to found a nation, of 
 which the law should be love. The Constitution he 
 framed for Philadelphia, on pure republican principles, 
 was to be "for the support of power in reverence with 
 the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of 
 power. For liberty without obedience is confusion, and 
 obedience without liberty is slavery." He excluded 
 himself and his heirs from the founder's bane of author- 
 ity over his own creation. It is as a reformer of crim- 
 inal law, perhaps, that he has earned his brightest and 
 most enduring fame. The codes and customs of feudal 
 Europe were lavish of servile or plebeian blood. In the 
 republic of New England the life of every man was pre- 
 cious, and the criminal law was far more humane than 
 that of Europe, though tainted with the dark Judaism of 
 the Puritans, with the cruel delusion which they shared 
 with the rest of the world on the subject of witchcraft, 
 and with their overstrained severity in punishing crimes 
 of sense. Penn confined capital punishment to the crimes 
 of treason and murder. Two centuries afterward, the ar- 
 guments of Komilly and the legislation of Peel convinced 
 
' THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 211 
 
 Penn's native country that these reveries of his, the dic- 
 tates of wisdom which sprang from his heart, were sober 
 truth. We are now beginning to see the reality of an- 
 other of his dreams, the dream of making the prison not 
 a jail only, but a place of reformation. Of the two errors 
 in government, that of treating men like angels and that 
 of treating them like beasts, he did something to show 
 that the one to which he leaned was the less grave, for 
 Philadelphia grew up like an olive-branch beneath his 
 fostering hand. 
 
 In the Carolinas, the old settlement of Coligny was re- 
 peopled with English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Swiss, the 
 motle}'' elements which will blend with Hollander and 
 Swede to form in America the most mixed, and, on one 
 theory, the greatest of all races. The philosophic hand 
 of Locke attempted to create for this colony a highly 
 elaborate Constitution, judged at the time a masterpiece 
 of political art. Georgia bears the name of the second 
 king of that line whose third king was to lose all. Its 
 philanthropic founder, Oglethorpe, struggled to exclude 
 slavery, but an evil policy and the neighborhood of the 
 West Indies bafiled his endeavors. Here Wesley preach- 
 ed, here Whitfield ; and Whitfield, too anxious to avoid 
 offense that he might be permitted to save souls, paid a 
 homage to the system of slavery, and made a sophistical 
 apology for it, which weigh heavily against the merits of 
 a great apostle of the poor. 
 
 For some time all the colonies, whatever their nominal 
 government, whether they were under the crown, under 
 single proprietors, under companies, or under free char- 
 ters, enjoyed, in spite of chronic negotiation and litigation 
 
212 ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 with the powers in England, a large measure of practical 
 independence. James I. was weak ; Charles I. and Laud 
 had soon other things to think of; the Long Parliament 
 were disposed to be arrogant, but the Protector was mag- 
 nanimous ; and finally, Charles II., careless of every thing 
 on this side the water, was still more careless of every 
 thing on that side, and Clarendon was not too stiff for 
 prerogative to give a liberal charter to a colony of which 
 he was himself a patentee. Eoyal governors, indeed, 
 sometimes tried to overact the king, and the folly of Sir 
 William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, all but forestall- 
 ed, and well would it have been if it had quite forestalled, 
 the folly of Lord ISTorth. With this exception, the colo- 
 nies rested content and proud beneath the shadow of En- 
 gland, and no thought of a general confederation or ab- 
 solute independence ever entered into their minds. As 
 they grew rich, we tried to interfere with their manufac- 
 tures and monopolize their trade. It was unjust and it 
 was foolish. The proof of its folly is the noble trade 
 that has sprung up between us since our government 
 lost all power of checking the course of nature. But 
 this was the injustice and the folly of the time. No such 
 excuse can be made for the attempt to tax the colonies 
 — in defiance of the first principles of English govern- 
 ment — begun by narrow-minded incompetence and con- 
 tinued by insensate pride. It is miserable to see what 
 true afiection was there flung away. Persecuted and ex- 
 cited, the founders of New England, says one of their his- 
 torians, did not cry Farewell Eome, Farewell Babylon ! 
 They cried. Farewell dear England ! And this was their 
 spirit even far into the fatal quarrel. ''You have been 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 213 
 
 told," thej said to the British. Parliament, after the sub- 
 version of the chartered liberties of Massachusetts, "you 
 have been told that we are seditious, impatient of gov- 
 ernment, and desirous of independence. Be assured that 
 these are not facts, but calumnies. Permit us to be as 
 free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with 
 you to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness ; 
 we shall ever be ready to contribute all in our power to 
 the welfare of the whole empire ; we shall consider your 
 enemies as our enemies, and your interest as our own. 
 But if you are determined that your ministers shall wan- 
 tonly sport with the rights of mankind ; if neither the 
 voice of justice, the dictates of law, the principles of the 
 Constitution, nor the suggestions of humanity, can re- 
 strain your hands from shedding human blood in such 
 an impious cause, we must then tell you that we will 
 never submit to be ' hewers of wood and drawers of wa- 
 ter' for any nation in the world." What was this but 
 the voice of those who framed the Petition of Eight and 
 the Great Charter ? Franklin alone, perhaps, of the lead- 
 ing Americans, by the dishonorable publication of an 
 exasperating correspondence, which he had improperly 
 obtained, shared with Grenville, Townshend, and Lord 
 North the guilt of bringing this great disaster on the 
 English race. There could be but one issue to a war in 
 which England was JSghting against her better self, or 
 rather in which England fought on one side, and a cor- 
 rupt ministry and Parliament on the other. The Parlia- 
 ment of that day was not national ; and though the na- 
 tion was excited by the war when once commenced, it by 
 no means follows that a national Parliament would have 
 commenced it. The great national leader rejoiced that 
 
21-i ON THE FOUNDATION OF 
 
 tlie Americans had resisted. But disease, or that worse 
 enemy wbicli liovers so close to genius, deprived us of 
 Chatham at the most critical hour. One thing there was 
 in that civil war on which both sides may look back 
 with pride. In spite of deep provocation and intense 
 bitterness, in spite of the unwarrantable cmplo3anent of 
 foreign troops and the infomous employment of Indians 
 on our side, and the exasperating interference of the 
 French on the side of the Americans, the struggle was 
 conducted on the whole with great humanity. Com- 
 pared with the French Eevolution, it was a contest be- 
 tween men with noble natures and a fight between infu- 
 riated beasts. Something, too, it is that from that strug- 
 gle should have arisen the character of Washington, to 
 teach all ages, and especially those which are inclined to 
 worship violence, the greatness of moderation and civil 
 duty. It has been truly said that there is one spectacle 
 more grateful to Heaven than a good man in adversity — 
 a good man successful in a great cause. Deeper happi- 
 ness can not be conceived than that of the years which 
 Washington passed at Mount Yernon, looking back upon 
 a life of arduous command held without a selfish thought, 
 and laid down without a stain. 
 
 The loss of the American colonies was perhaps, in it- 
 self, a gain to both countries. It was a gain as it eman- 
 cipated commerce, and gave free course to those recipro- 
 cal streams of wealth which a restrictive policy had for- 
 bidden to flow. It was a gain as it put an end to an ob- 
 solete tutelage, which tended to prevent America betimes 
 to walk alone, while it gave England only the puerile 
 and somewhat dangerous pleasure of reigning over those 
 whom she did not and could not govern, but whom she 
 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 215 
 
 was tempted to harass and insult. A source of military 
 strength colonies can hardly be. You prevent them 
 from forming proper military establishments of their 
 own, and you drag them into your quarrels at the price 
 of undertaking their defense. The inauguration of free 
 trade was in fact the renunciation of the only solid ob- 
 ject for which our ancestors clung to an invidious and 
 perilous supremacy, and exposed the heart of England by 
 scattering her fleets and armies over the globe. It was 
 not the loss of the colonies, but the quarrel, that was one 
 of the greatest, perhaps the greatest disaster that ever 
 befell the English race. Who would not give up Blen- 
 heim and Waterloo if only the two Englands could have 
 parted from each other in kindness and in peace ; if our 
 statesmen could have had the wisdom to say to the 
 Americans generously and at the right season, "You are 
 Englishmen like ourselves ; be, for your own happiness 
 and our honor, like ourselves, a nation ?" But English 
 statesmen, with all their greatness, have seldom known 
 how to anticipate necessity ; too often the sentence of 
 history on their policy has been that it was wise, just, 
 and generous, but " too late." Too often have they 
 waited for the teaching of disaster. Time will heal this, 
 like other wounds. In signing away his own empire 
 over America, George III. did not sign away the empire 
 of English liberty, of English law, of English literature, 
 of English religion, of English blood, or of the English 
 tongue. But, though the wound will heal — and that it 
 may heal ought to be the earnest desire of the whole 
 English name — hi&tory can never cancel the fatal page 
 which robs England of half the glory and half the hap- 
 piness of being the mother of a great nation. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 It is with great pleasure that a student finds himself 
 returning from the alien sphere of politics to the conge- 
 nial sphere of letters, and from the region of national and 
 party divisions to the fellowship of learning, undivided 
 and perpetual. It is with especial pleasure than an En- 
 glish student of history finds himself in the company of 
 those who are pursuing the same study in America. The 
 members of the Historical Society, kindly recognizing the 
 bond of literary kindred, have invited me to take part in 
 their proceedings this evening ; and I am told that I shall 
 not be selecting an unacceptable theme for my remarks 
 in directing your attention to some points connected with 
 the history of one of the great Universities of our com- 
 mon race. 
 
 The name of Oxford calls up at once the image of ven- 
 erable antiquity embodied in all the architectural beauty 
 of the past. To the historic eye the city is, in fact, the 
 annals of England written in gray stone. And those an- 
 nals are a varied and moving tale. If you measure by 
 mere time, the antiquity of the old cities of Christendom 
 is but a span compared with the antiquity of Egypt ; but 
 if you measure by history, it is rather the antiquity of 
 
 K 
 
218 THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFOED. 
 
 Egypt that is a span. " Those buildings must be very 
 old," said an American visitor to his Oxford host, pointing 
 to a very black-looking pile. "No," was the reply; "the 
 color of the stone deceives you ; their age is only two 
 hundred years." Two hundred years, though a great an- 
 tiquity to the inhabitants of a new country, are but as the 
 flight of a weaver's shuttle to the age of the Pyramids. 
 It is by another measure that the age of such cities as 
 Oxford must be meted. Between her earliest and latest 
 monuments lies the whole intellectual history of Chris- 
 tendom, from the very infancy of medij»val faith to this 
 skeptical maturity (as it seems to us) of modern science, 
 together with all the political, social, and ecclesiastical 
 memories which intellectual history brings in its train. 
 Movements and reactions, the ebb and flow of contending 
 and fluctuating thought, have left their traces all around. 
 As you walk those streets, you see, in the spirit of history, 
 Duns Scotus and Eoger Bacon, Wickliffe, Erasmus, Wol- 
 sey, the chiefs and martyrs of the Eeformation, Hooker, 
 Laud, Butler, Shelley ; while you meet in the flesh the 
 leaders, on the one hand, of the great Anglican — or rath- 
 er Eomanizing — reaction, and, on the other, the leaders 
 of what seems likely to prove a second and more com- 
 plete Eeformation. 
 
 Nowhere do you feel more intensely the power of the 
 Past, and the ascendency of the d-ead over the living. 
 This influence, in truth, weighs somewhat too heavily on 
 the intellectual life of Oxford, while it is too feeble in the 
 intellectual life of a new country like this. An Oxford 
 student can preserve his independence, and even his in- 
 dividual activity of mind, only by cultivating a very 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 219 
 
 large and liberal interest in the general fortunes and des- 
 tinies of humanity. 
 
 Kor is the calmness of the past less felt in Oxford than 
 its power. Thither turn your steps, if you desire to put 
 off for a time the excitement of the passing hour. The 
 keep of the Korman castle is that from which the Em- 
 press Maud made her escape during the war in the time 
 of Stephen. Merton College is a memorial of the Barons' 
 war in the reign of Henry III. ; Magdalen of the wars of 
 the Koses. Traces of the political and ecclesiastical strug- 
 gle between Charles I. and the Commons are every where 
 to be seen. Over the gate of University College stands 
 the statue of James II., who, when he sojourned within 
 those walls, was striking the last blow struck by a Stuart 
 king for the Stuart cause. Five civil wars — with their 
 divisions, that seemed eternal — their hatreds, that seemed 
 inextricable — all turned to charitable memories and tran- 
 quil dust. 
 
 This spell of antiquity is potent enough to overpower 
 even the presence of youth. When I left Oxford, in the 
 dead quiet of the summer vacation, the colleges lay with 
 their gray walls on their broad expanse of lawn, and 
 among their immemorial trees, still and pensive as a vis- 
 ion of the past. ISTow they are full, if not of the most 
 profitable, of the merriest life on earth. Active forms 
 move about the quadrangles, cheerful voices are heard 
 from the windows which surround them. In the morn- 
 ing the more industrious are engaged in their studies, full 
 of the intellectual hopes of youth. In the afternoon there 
 are parties going forth to and returning from their sports. 
 Then the windows of the old dining-halls glow with a rud- 
 
220 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 dj light ; and soon after there come from other windows 
 the sounds of merriment, which do not, in all cases, give 
 place to the stillness of the student's evening task. If it 
 were summer, we should have parties of students in very 
 unacademical costumes coming back from the cricket- 
 match or the boat-race ; and if a victory had been won, 
 we should hear it celebrated in a way which would make 
 the old walls ring — though, among a people trained to 
 respect authority, the apparently uncontrollable wildness 
 of the evening's festivities easily gives way to order in 
 the morning. Yet all this no more dispels the pensive- 
 ness that hangs round the ancient city than the bright 
 green leaves of spring dispel the sombre tint of its walls. 
 The impression, on the contrary, is rather made more in- 
 tense by the contrast. The old dial, whose shadow has 
 measured out so many lives, will soon measure out these 
 also, little as youth may think of its end. The old clock 
 will soon toll away this generation, as it has tolled away 
 the generations that are gone. On the college books are 
 written the names of the fathers of these youths, of their 
 grandfathers, of their ancestors for centuries past. They 
 too, when they wrote their names there, were young. 
 
 Before entering on the history of Oxford, it will be as 
 well, for the benefit of such of my hearers as may not 
 have visited England, briefly to explain the character of 
 the institution, which, though nearly identical with that 
 of the University of Cambridge, differs essentially from 
 that of the Universities in this country, and from that of 
 most, if not all, the Universities on the Continent of Eu- 
 rope — the possible exception being the Universities of 
 Spain. The University of Oxford is a Federation of Col- 
 
THE UKIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 221 
 
 leges. Each college is a separate institution for the pur- 
 poses of instruction and discipline, has its own governing 
 body, consisting of a Head (variously styled President, 
 Principal, Warden, Provost, Master, and — in the case of 
 Christchurch — Dean) and Fellows ; its own endowments, 
 its own library, lecture-rooms, and dining-hall ; its own 
 domestic chapel, where service is performed by its own 
 chaplains. Each has also its own code of statutes, and 
 the power, subject to those statutes, of making laws for 
 itself The college instructors, called Tutors, are gener- 
 ally chosen from the number of the Fellows, as are also 
 the administrators of college discipline, called Deans or 
 Censors. All the members of the colleges are members 
 of the University, and subject to University government 
 and laws. The University holds the public examinations 
 and confers the degrees. It legislates, through its Coun- 
 cil and Convocation, on what may be called Federal sub- 
 jects, and administers Federal discipline through its Vice- 
 chancellor and Proctors. In the matter of discipline 
 there is, I believe, a speculative difference of opinion as 
 to the Federal jurisdiction of the proctors within the col- 
 lege gates ; but the bond of mutual interest between all 
 the members of the Federation is too strong to allow this 
 or any state-right question ever to threaten us with an 
 academical civil war. There is also a University stafP of 
 teachers in all the subjects of instruction, called the Pro- 
 fessors, to whose lectures the students from all the col- 
 leges resort, and whose duty it is to carry the instruction 
 to a higher point than it can be carried by the college 
 tutors, who are mostly younger men, not permanently 
 devoted to a college life, but intending to take one of the 
 
222 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 many ecclesiastical benefices in the gift of the colleges, or 
 to embrace, in course of time, some other active calling. 
 The Federal element is embodied in the public buildings 
 of the University — the Bodleian Library ; the Examina- 
 tion Schools, which occupy the lower part of the same 
 great Tudor quadrangle ; the Radcliffe Library, from the 
 dome of which the best view of the city is obtained ; 
 the Convocation House, in which University statutes are 
 passed and University degrees conferred ; the Theatre, in 
 which the memory of founders and benefactors is cele- 
 brated at the gay ceremony of the Summer Commemora- 
 tion, prize compositions recited, and honorary degrees be- 
 stowed on distinguished visitors ; the University Muse- 
 um ; the University Press ; and, above all, the University 
 Church of St. Mary, which, with its beautiful spire, crowns 
 the Academic City, and in which sermons are preached 
 to the assembled University, after the hour of college 
 chapel, from a pulpit not unfamed in the annals of relig- 
 ious thought. 
 
 The mainspring of the system, as regards education, 
 lies in the University Examinations for the degree of 
 Bachelor of Arts. At these examinations the majority 
 of the students seek only to attain the standard required 
 for an ordinary, or "pass" degree. The more aspiring be- 
 come candidates for "honors," and obtain a place in the 
 first, or one of the lower classes, according to their merits. 
 The publication of these class-lists is, as might be expect- 
 ed, the great event of University life, and it is not an in- 
 significant event in the domestic and social life of En- 
 gland. The training of those who read for high honors at 
 Oxford or Cambridge is probably the severest that youth 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 223 
 
 any where undergoes, and it is prolonged, generally speak- 
 ing, to the age of twenty-two. The system of competition 
 is not carried quite so high at Oxford as at Cambridge, 
 where the candidates are not only divided into classes, but 
 arranged in each class in their order of merit ; whereas at 
 Oxford they are only divided into classes, and the names 
 arranged alphabetically in each class. Whether such 
 strong stimulants of youthful ambition, and such marked 
 distinctions for youthful attainment would be necessary or 
 desirable in a perfect state of things, is perhaps a doubtful 
 question. But in English society as it is, the intellectual 
 honors thus awarded by national authority are useful as 
 a counterpoise, however imperfect, to the artificial distinc- 
 tions of hereditary rank and wealth. Nor can it be de- 
 nied that the class -lists have given England men in all 
 departments, from theology to finance, whose high train- 
 ing has lent loftiness to their own character and aspira- 
 tions, and to the character and aspirations of their nation. 
 The College Fellowships, which are bestowed by exam- 
 ination, and to which stipends are attached, averaging 
 about £200, or $1000, a year, form additional and more 
 substantial prizes for exertion among the flower of our 
 students, and it is in the competition for these that the 
 highest intellectual efforts of all are probably made. Our 
 almost exclusive subjects of instruction, till recently, were 
 the classics, with ancient philosophy and ancient history, 
 mathematics being recognized, and by some of our stu- 
 dents carried to a high point, but not held in the same 
 honor, though at Cambridge they were the dominant 
 study. Eecently, by an academic revolution, something 
 like that which substituted the classical for the scholastic 
 
224 THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFOKD. 
 
 system in the sixteentli century, we have thrown open 
 our doors to physical science, modern history, jurispru- 
 dence, and political economy, to which honors are now 
 awarded legally, equal to those conferred on classics, 
 though classics still, practically, retain the foremost place. 
 The degrees higher than that of Bachelor of Arts — that 
 of Master of Arts, and those of Bachelor or Doctor of 
 Theology, Civil Law, or Medicine — are rather marks of 
 academical standing than rewards of intellectual exertion, 
 though there is an examination for the degree in Civil 
 Law, and one of a more effective character for the degree 
 in Medicine. The degree of Doctor of Civil Law is con- 
 ferred as an honorary mark of distinction on illustrious 
 visitors of all kinds — generals, admirals, politicians, and 
 diplomatists, as well as men of letters or science. Law 
 and Medicine, of which the Universities were the schools 
 in the Middle Ages, are now studied, the first in the 
 chambers of London barristers, the second in the great 
 London hospitals. Of Theology England has no regular 
 school. The Universities, which were once places of pro- 
 fessional as well as of general training in England, as they 
 are still on the Continent, are now in England places of 
 general training alone. They are the final schools of 
 those among our English youth who can afford to give 
 themselves the advantage, and pay to their country the 
 tribute of a long liberal education. 
 
 It is still a disputed question whether the Universities 
 belong to the Established Church or to the nation. The 
 Dissenters have recently been admitted by Parliament to 
 the Bachelor's degree. An effort is now being made, 
 which has occasioned a pretty sharp struggle in the 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFOED. 225 
 
 House of Commons, to tlirow open to them the Master's 
 degree, which would make them members of Convoca- 
 tion, the governing body of the University. The Fellow- 
 ships of colleges -are all confined to members of the Es- 
 tablished Church. If England seems, in this and some 
 other respects, now to lag behind other nations in the 
 march of liberty, it is partly because at one time she had 
 so much outstripped them all. 
 
 The Colleges still retain something of their mediaeval 
 and monastic character, though modern life and Protest- 
 antism have, to a great extent, broken through the found- 
 er's rule. The Fellows — such of them, at least, as are in 
 residence — still live partly in common, dining together in 
 the college hall, where they sit at the upper end, on a 
 kind of dais, while the students sit at long tables down 
 the hall, and retiring together after dinner to their " com- 
 mon-room" (an institution unknown to our austere found- 
 ers), to take dessert and wine, and talk over the subjects 
 of the day. What is of more importance, they still for- 
 feit their Fellowships on marriage ; whence, as was be- 
 fore mentioned, few of them settle down permanently to 
 college life, which, though pleasant for a time, becomes 
 very dreary as a man grows old, and when all the com- 
 panions of his youth are gone. The jealous gates of the 
 old monastic quadrangles, however, which, according to 
 the founders' statutes, were to admit jao female form more 
 dangerous than that of an elderly laundress, have quite 
 forgotten their ungracious duty, as a visitor to our sum- 
 mer festival of Commemoration will easily see. 
 
 One of the most striking objects in the High Street is 
 a long, dark range of buildings, in a late Gothic style, 
 
 K2 
 
226 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFOED. 
 
 called University College — a name whicli increases to 
 strangers the difficulty of understanding the relations be- 
 tween the colleges and the University. This is the old- 
 est of our existing foundations, and its reputed founder is 
 King Alfred, whose e^gj appears in the hall and com- 
 mon-room, beside those of Eldon, Stowell, and Windham, 
 the later and more authentic worthies of the college. Its 
 real founder, however, was unquestionably "William of 
 Durham, a learned and munificent ecclesiastic of the thir- 
 teenth century, who bequeathed a sum of money to the 
 University for the support of students in theology, and 
 whose theologians were afterward settled by the Univer- 
 sity on the spot, though in a humbler house. There can 
 be little doubt that Oxford, as one of the chief cities of 
 Saxon England, was a place of education in the time and 
 under the auspices of Alfred, whose birthplace, Wantage, 
 was close by. But no authentic evidence definitely con- 
 nects the great restorer of Anglo-Saxon learning and in- 
 stitutions with the University or any of its foundations ; 
 though, on the strength of spurious testimony, a court of 
 law has actually recognized him as the Founder, and his 
 successors on the throne of England as the Yisitors, of 
 the college founded by the University out of the bequest 
 of William of Durham. If he erected or revived any 
 schools at Oxford, the scythe of the Norman conquest 
 passed over them. ^^Yet William of Durham, if he were 
 now alive, would scarcely be grieved to see that his 
 foundation had become a monument to the memory of 
 Alfred. 
 
 We may more reasonably look to the monasteries of 
 which there are remains at Oxford for the origin of the 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 227 
 
 present University. Learning owes a tribute to the beau- 
 tiful ruins of these houses wherever they are found, for 
 on them first her ark rested when the waters of the bar- 
 barian deluge were beginning to subside. In their clois- 
 ters her expiring lamp was first revived ; from them its 
 rays first shone out again over the dark waste. The 
 Abbey of Bee, in Normandy, which sent forth Lanfranc, 
 the precursor of the great civilians, and Anselm, the pre- 
 cursor of the great schoolmen, was itself the germ of a 
 University. 
 
 Certain, however, it is that in the reigns of the Norman 
 successors of William the Conqueror there was a Univer- 
 sity at Oxford, and that in the reign of Henry III. there 
 was a great University — one chronicler says a University 
 with thirty thousand students. This is scarcely credible. 
 But the mediaeval city swarmed and overflowed with ar- 
 dent youths flocking to the sole source of knowledge and 
 the great avenue of promotion. A bastion in the city 
 walls was rented, as appears by the city records, for the 
 habitation of students. The University was then not 
 only a place of liberal education, but the school of the 
 great professions, which, as we have said, have since mi- 
 grated to the capital. The whole academical course at 
 that period, up to the highest degree in any one of the 
 Faculties, occupied sixteen years. There were also gram- 
 mar-schools for boys, so that all ages were mingled to- 
 gether — not only all ages, but natives of all countries. 
 There was then not only an England, a France, a Ger- 
 many , an Italy, a Spain, but a Christendom with one 
 Church, one Pope, one Priesthood, one ecclesiastical law, 
 one language for all educated men, and a group of com- 
 
228 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 mon Universities which were now appearing in the differ- 
 ent lands of Europe, like stars coming out, one bj one, in 
 the media3val night. Students went from one University 
 to another, learning at each the special kind of knowl- 
 edge for which each was famous. French youths came 
 to the scholastic disputations of Oxford, and Oxford doc- 
 tors taught in the schools of Paris. Perhaps the love of 
 wandering, not yet quelled in the half-civilized heart, had 
 something to do with the migrations of the student, as it 
 had with the expeditions of the pilgrim. 
 
 The studies were, first, "Arts," including all the sub- 
 jects of general instruction known at the time ; and aft- 
 erward Theology, Law, or Medicine. Law was the great 
 study of those who desired to make their fortunes and to 
 rise in the world. Its monks, who struggled hard to win 
 the great places of learning for themselves and for the 
 cause of which they were the champions, wished to re- 
 lease students in Theology from the necessity of proceed- 
 ing through "Arts." But the academic spirit seems to 
 have prevailed, and to have enforced the previous course 
 of general study as a preparation for the theologian ; a 
 sound decision, if the theologian is to know man as well 
 as God ; or, to put the case more truly, if to know God 
 he must know man. The cardinal study, however, and 
 the particular glory of Oxford, was the scholastic philos- 
 ophy, a study condemned by Bacon, and in its superan- 
 nuated decrepitude justly condemned, as bearing no fruit. 
 If it bore no fruit, it at least, in the mind of the mediaeval 
 student, bore the leaves and blossoms of most romantic 
 hope. But we have ceased to regard it with contempt. 
 We know that, in its hour, it played no mean part in 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 229 
 
 training tlie intellect of msm. And if it bore no material 
 fruits, it bore the moral fruit of a faith in the world of 
 ideas, and a deep interest in the nnseen. It belongs to 
 the spiritual, though chimerical age of monasticism, ca- 
 thedrals, and crusades. Duns Scotus, the " Subtle Doc- 
 tor," Alexander Hales, the ''Irrefragable Doctor," and 
 Ockham, the great ISTominalist, were among the glories of 
 scholastic Oxford; and they are glories the lustre of 
 which is now dimmed, but, while science and humanity 
 are grateful to him who serves them in his allotted place 
 and time, will never die. Wicklifife himself was one of 
 the greatest of the schoolmen. In the keen reasonings 
 of the school philosophy he sharpened the controversial 
 weapons with which he was to assail the errors and cor- 
 ruptions of the Church. In its high dreams he formed 
 his ideal theory of a Christian world. 
 
 There is a name in the annals of mediaeval Oxford 
 more famous in philosophy than any of these. The good 
 taste of the last century pulled down, under a local im- 
 provement act, an arch which spanned Folly Bridge, and 
 contained a chamber hallowed by tradition as Friar Ba- 
 con's study. There, according to the legend, the great 
 and formidable Franciscan, the man of too much light for 
 a dark age, the father and protomartyr of modern science, 
 pursued studies which, in his case at least, had a practical 
 and fruitful, as well as a metaphysical side. There, as 
 wondering ignorance fancied, the mighty master of the 
 Black Art, now called Science, and the study of the laws 
 of God, held forbidden converse with the Brazen Head. 
 And there, we may more easily believe, was compounded 
 for the first time a black powder which possessed a mag- 
 
230 THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 ical power indeed, and at the first explosion of wliicli the 
 walls of the feudal castle fell to the ground. 
 
 The teaching was of the professional kind, the oral lec- 
 tures of the professor being, in that age, not a mere sup- 
 plement to books, but the only great source of knowl- 
 edge, the only way of publishing new ideas. The lec- 
 tures were given, not in regular lecture-rooms, but in 
 church porches, and wherever the lecturer could find 
 space and shelter, while eager multitudes crowded to hear 
 the great teacher of the day. Knowledge has since been 
 drunk from purer springs, but never, perhaps, with a 
 thirstier lip. The scholars also exercised their logical 
 powers, and at once displayed their acquirements and 
 gained a more thorough mastery over them by the prac- 
 tice of disputations — the tournaments of the intellectual 
 knight — with a Moderator as the umpire, to rule the lists 
 and adjudge the prize. 
 
 In modern times the University of Oxford, like every 
 thing connected with the Anglican Church, has been Con- 
 servative. She has, in fact, been the citadel of the Con- 
 servative party. In the thirteenth century, her heroic 
 age, her leaning, both in religion and politics, was to the 
 Liberal side ; and she belonged not to the reactionary, but 
 to the progressive element of the mediaeval Church and 
 society — to that which prepared, not to that which strug- 
 gled to avert, and afterward to cancel, the Eeformation. 
 There was a sympathy for the doctrines of the Wal- 
 denses ; there was a strong sympathy, at least among the 
 younger students, for the doctrines of Wickliffe. The 
 learned Bishop of Lincoln, Grossteste, the leading man of 
 Oxford in the reign of Henry III., was the head of a par- 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 281 
 
 ty in the Church and nation which protested against the 
 encroachments and the corruptions of the court of Kome, 
 and died anathematized bj the Pope, sainted as a patriot 
 by the people. This party of independence in the Church 
 was closely connected with the party of constitutional 
 liberty in the states and Oxford, afterward the strong- 
 hold of Charles I., was then the strong-hold of De Mont- 
 fort. Not the hearts only of Oxford students were with 
 the champions of liberty, but their arms ; and at the de- 
 fense of Northampton they fought against the King un- 
 der their own banner, and, according to the chronicles, 
 fought well. From the spirit of Oxford, it has been truly 
 said, if not from Oxford itself, emanated the famous poet- 
 ic pamphlet in favor of constitutional government. 
 
 " Nee omnis aretatio privat libertatem, 
 Nee omnis districtio tollit potestatem. 
 Ad quid vult libera lex reges arctari ? 
 Ne possint adultera lege maculari. 
 
 *'Et hac coarctatio non est servitutis; 
 Sed est ampliatio regire virtutis. 
 Igitur comrnunitas regni consulatur ; 
 Et quid universitas sentiat sciatur. " 
 
 Let the believers in liberty pray for us that we may have 
 another heroic age. 
 
 There were no colleges then. The students lived in 
 hostels or halls, most of which were afterward absorbed 
 by the spreading buildings of the colleges, under one of 
 the Masters of Arts or Doctors of the University, select- 
 ed as their tutor. They were divided into nations, or 
 Northerners and Southerners, according to the part of 
 the kingdom from which they came. I should say the 
 
282 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 
 
 academical community in those days resembled rather a 
 modern German University than the modern Oxford, if I 
 had not before me the indignant words of a learned writ- 
 er who protests against our comparing the academic ad- 
 herents of Grrossteste andDe Montfort with "the bemud- 
 dled Burschen, who vapored at the barricades of Berlin 
 and Yienna;" and declares the Oxford scholars, in those 
 golden days, were characterized as much by the spirit of 
 duty, intelligence, and order, as the Burschen are by that 
 of anarchy and absurdit}^ But order — in the material 
 sense at least — was not invariably characteristic of the 
 Oxford scholar. Our modern " Town and Gown rows" 
 are the faint and attenuated relics of the desperate affrays 
 which in the Middle Ages took place between the impet- 
 uous students of the University and the strong-handed 
 burghers of the feudal town. A penitential procession, 
 which the citizens were compelled annually to perform, 
 long kept alive the memory of one of the bloodiest of 
 these encounters. There were fights also, and sanguina- 
 ry fights, between the students and the Jews, who had 
 not failed to come in considerable force to a University 
 for the practice of usury, or to draw upon themselves 
 the hatred of their debtors — farther inflamed and sancti- 
 fied in its own eyes by fanatical antipathy to the misbe- 
 liever. The tragic memory of a great massacre attaches 
 to a spot called the Seven Deadly Sins, the site of the 
 Old Jewry, now occupied by New Inn Hall. Sometimes, 
 again, there were conflicts between the two "Nations" 
 far more serious than those between the clubs in a mod- 
 ern German University ; and on one occasion they drew 
 out in the fields near the town, and fought a pitched bat- 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 233 
 
 tie with bows and arrows. Papal Legates were never 
 welcome visitors among the English, who always, in their 
 most Catholic times, had a something of Protestantism 
 and a good deal of Teutonic independence in their hearts ; 
 and the Lord Legate Otho, in the thirteenth century, 
 having visited Oxford in the course of his mission, was 
 — in consequence of a quarrel between his cook and one 
 of the hungry scholars, who had been drawn by the 
 steam of a legate's dinner to the kitchen — set upon by 
 the academic populace, and with great difficulty escaped 
 with his life. The royal authority in those feudal times 
 was fitfully interposed to punish tumults rather than pre- 
 serve order. That concourse of students, of all ranks 
 and nations, not a few of them mendicants, was no doubt 
 an active-minded, ill-governed, inflammable mass — the 
 quintessence of the intellect, but also of the turbulence 
 of their time. 
 
 The first college, and the prototype of all the rest, both 
 at Oxford and Cambridge, was founded by Walter de 
 Merton, Chancellor of England under Henry IIL and Ed- 
 ward L, who deserves the honor due to a man of genius, 
 if it be a proof of genius to bid a new institution live. 
 It stands on the south of the city, close to Christchurch 
 meadow, with a chapel, or rather church, and tower, 
 famed as examples of the best Gothic style, with three 
 quadrangles of different epochs, a front toward the mead- 
 ow like a great Tudor mansion, and a pleasant garden 
 with a grove of limes. The little dark quadrangle, called 
 — nobody knows why — " Mob Quad," is the oldest part 
 of the pile, and the cradle of college life. Merton had 
 before him the different elements of his idea — the mon- 
 
234 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFOED. 
 
 asteries, with their strict discipline ; the halls or hostels 
 of students, with their secular studies; the stipends or 
 exhibitions which the wealthy friends of learning were 
 in the habit of giving to needy scholars, but which ended 
 with the life of the giver. He adopted the architectural 
 form and something of the strict rule of a monastery, but 
 without the asceticism or the vows, devoting his house 
 to prayer as well as to study, and attaching to it a chapel 
 for the performance of religious services, but making 
 study the distinctive object. His design was expressed 
 in his code of statutes, which were to a great extent 
 copied by subsequent founders. According to these, the 
 Scholars (now the Fellows) of Merton College were to 
 be of good character, chaste, peaceful, humble, indigent 
 and in need of assistance, apt for study, and desirous of 
 making progress in it. Their qualifications were to be 
 tested by a probationary novitiate of one year. The 
 Fellowship was to be forfeited by neglect of study, or by 
 the acquisition of such a benefice in the Church as would 
 render the Fellow no longer in need of assistance. The 
 Fellows were to reside constantly in college, and regu- 
 larly to attend the schools of the University. They were 
 first to study " the liberal arts and philosophy;" then to 
 pass on to theology, except four or five, who might study 
 canon law. One of them also was to be a grammarian 
 — for the benefit, probably, of the children of the found- 
 er's kin, who were to be brought up in the house. The 
 rule of study was simply that of the schools of the Uni- 
 versity. The rule of life prescribed common meals, at 
 which the Fellows were to sit in silence, after the monas- 
 tic fashion, and listen to the reader ; uniform dress ; the 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 235 
 
 use of the Latin tongue ; strict obedience ; surveillance 
 of tlie juniors by the seniors; and periodical inquiries, 
 like those made at the monastic chapters, into the char- 
 acter and conduct of all the members of the society. At- 
 tendance at the canonical hours and the celebration of 
 masses was enjoined on all, and, for this purpose, those 
 of the society were required to be in priest's orders. 
 Masses were said in this, as in all mediseval foundations, 
 for the founder's soul. The college was to be governed 
 by a Warden — "a man circumspect in spiritual and in 
 temporal affairs." There were also to be subordinate of- 
 ficers for discipline, and for managing the estates and 
 keeping the accounts ; and every year, after harvest, the 
 Warden was to make his progress through the estates, 
 and to report to the society on his return. The annual 
 stipend of each Fellow was to be fifty shillings, subject 
 to mulcts for absence from the schools. The Warden 
 was to have fifty merks for his table and two horses for 
 his progress. The number of Fellows was to increase 
 with the estate, and this increase none, under pain of their 
 founder's high displeasure, were to oppose, saving in very 
 urgent cases, such as a heavy debt, a suit with a power- 
 ful adversary (when, in those days, gold would have been 
 too needful to obtain justice), losses by fire, a murrain 
 among the flocks, general collections for poor students, 
 the ransom of the prince or a prelate, a public contribu- 
 tion for the defense of the Holy Land. Each Fellow at 
 his election was to take an oath to obey the statutes ; and 
 though power is given to the society to make new rules, 
 no power is given to alter those of the founder. 
 
 The last regulation proved very fatal in after times to 
 
236 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 the welfare of Merton's foundation, and to that of the 
 other foundations which were modeled after the pattern 
 of his, because it kept them stationary while all around 
 was moving — unchanging while all around was changed. 
 But it evinces no special illiberality or tyrannical tend- 
 ency on the part of its good author. The men of his 
 generation, the men of many generations after his, hav- 
 ing no extensive knowledge of history, would have no 
 conception of the great onward movement of humanity 
 which the study of history, ranging over long periods of 
 time and including great revolutions, has revealed, and 
 which would convict of an arrogance bordering on in- 
 sanity the man who should, in these times, presume to 
 bind his own ideas on any community as an inviolable 
 and immutable law. To them all seemed fixed and un- 
 changing as the solid earth, of the revolutions of which 
 they were as little conscious as they were of the progress 
 of the political, social, and intellectual world. They paint- 
 ed the apostles in the dress of their own age, and thought 
 that men would wear the same dress till the end of time. 
 They had no idea that fifty shillings a year would ever 
 cease to be a comfortable income for a Scholar ; or that 
 a Warden, in making his annual progress round the es- 
 tates of his college, would ever be able to travel more 
 rapidly and conveniently than on horseback. And in 
 truth, if they had thought that the poetry and enjoyment 
 of traveling would never be greater than it was in those 
 annual rides in the summer time through woods and 
 over hills, by castle, and abbey, and feudal town, not from 
 hotel to hotel, but from one country grange to another, 
 their error would not have been great. Merton allows 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFOED. 237 
 
 his Warden and Fellows to make new rules as occasion 
 might require, in addition to those he gave them, and in 
 this he shows himself a liberal legislator for his day. ^ He 
 was scarcely in his grave, however, before his inability, 
 as a mortal, to mould his fellow-men exactly according 
 to his will became apparent in deviations from his rule ; 
 and we have the Visitor of his college. Archbishop Peck- 
 ham, fulminating against the admission of interdicted 
 studies, the neglect of the rule of indigence, and other 
 violations and perversions of the founder's law. 
 
 The necessity of respecting individual freedom was as 
 little understood in the Middle Ages as that of making 
 provisions for reasonable changes in institutions. Men 
 saw no evil in absolutely surrendering their individuali- 
 ty into the hands of a founder, whether he were the 
 founder of a monastic order such as St. Dominic or St. 
 Francis, or the founder of a college such as Merton. As 
 little did a founder see any evil in accepting and enforc- 
 ing the surrender. And in those simple times of faith 
 and devotion both parties erred in ignorance, and there- 
 fore in comparative innocence. But the error of both 
 grew more conscious and less innocent when Loyola de- 
 liberately set himself to turn his followers not only into 
 intellectual slaves, but into "living corpses," and when 
 his followers renounced the freedom to which they had 
 been called to become the instruments of his design. 
 
 Merton College was ecclesiastical, as all literary insti- 
 tutions and learned men were in the Middle Ages, when, 
 in fact, society was divided into the soldier, the priest, 
 the burgher, and the serf. But it belonged to the secu- 
 lar, not to the regular clergy. No monk was to be ad- 
 
238 THE UNIYEESITY OF OXFOKD. 
 
 mitted among the Fellows ; and in case the Visitor 
 should exercise his office by deputy, the deputy was not 
 to be a monk — provisions which seem to denote that the 
 founder's leaning was to the party of nationality and in- 
 dependence, not to the Papal party, of which the monk- 
 ish orders were the most zealous and effective supporters. 
 And, in truth, the sons of Dominic hardly succeeded in 
 gaining a firm ascendency over the native independence 
 of the Anglo-Saxon mind. England was never in the 
 dominions of the Inquisition. 
 
 The enactment that the Fellows of Merton should all 
 be indigent had, no doubt, as its primary object, the ful- 
 fillment of the founder's charitable intentions toward 
 poor students. But the men of those times also enter- 
 tained an ascetic preference for poverty as the higher 
 spiritual state — an error, as we all know, if the doctrine 
 be applied to the wages of honest labor, and not merely 
 to those who live in idleness and luxury by the sweat of 
 another's brow, yet an error more respectable than the 
 worship of wealth, and in this respect to be classed with 
 the other chimerical but not ignoble fancies of the time. 
 Poor men were also the most likely to render perfect 
 obedience, for the sake of their founder's bread, to all 
 the requirements of his rule. Nor was there any lack 
 of indigence in mediseval Oxford. Many of the youths 
 who had found their way from the bonds and darkness 
 of feudalism to the light, freedom, and hope of the Uni- 
 versity were, as was before said, actual mendicants. They 
 were in the habit of receiving regular licenses from the 
 Vice-Chancellor to beg. 
 
 Our picture of a mediaeval college would hardly be 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 239 
 
 complete without the servants — the manciple, cook, but- 
 ler, barber, and porter, and the groom who kept the horses 
 for the annual progress. There were in some colleges 
 regular members of the foundation, with " commons" or 
 allowances like the Head and Fellows. Chaucer has de- 
 scribed the manciple of a temple (that is, a college of law- 
 yers in London), and the description will serve equally 
 well for the manciple of a college at Oxford. Domestic 
 service then was not a commercial contract, but a sort of 
 personal allegiance, like the fealty of a vassal to his lord, 
 and probably, as a general rule, it lasted through life. It 
 now seems, in America at least, to have almost reached 
 its last stage of existence. 
 
 I have cited Chaucer. He has given, in the Prologue 
 to the Canterbury Tales, a picture (not the least admira- 
 ble in that gallery of social portraits) of an Oxford stu- 
 dent of this, or of a rather later period, which will no 
 doubt represent to us sufficiently well the inmates of the 
 House of Merton : 
 
 "A clerk there was of Oxenforde also, 
 That unto logike hadde long ygo. 
 As lene was his hors as is a rake, 
 And he was not right fat I undertake ; 
 But loked holwe and thereto soberly. 
 Ful thredbare was his overest courtepy, 
 For he hadde geten him yet no benefice, 
 Ne was nought worldly to have an office. 
 For him was lever han at his beddes hed 
 A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red. 
 Of Aristotle and his philosophic. 
 Than robes rich, or fidel, or sautrie. 
 But all be that he was a philosophre, 
 Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre ; 
 
24:0 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 But all that he might of his frendes hente, 
 On bokes and on lerning he it spente ; 
 And besily gan for the soules praie 
 Of him th^t yave him %Yherewith to scolaie. 
 Of studie took he moste cure and hede ; 
 Not a word spake he more than was nede ; 
 And that was said in forme and reverence, 
 And short and quike and ful of high sentence. 
 Souning in moral vertue was his speche, 
 And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche. " 
 
 If this description is as true as it is genial and vivid, 
 " Oxenforde" bad no reason to be asbamed of ber "clerks." 
 Tbougb tbeir pbilosopby produced no gold, tbej must 
 have been very far from an ignoble or worthless element 
 in tbe nation. 
 
 Sucb was tbe most ancient of tbese communities, tbe 
 thread of whose corporate lives has run through so many 
 centuries, and survived so many revolutions ; in whose 
 domestic archives are recorded tbe daily habits and ex- 
 penses of so many successive generations. Would that 
 they had left a record of tbeir thoughts and feelings too, 
 or even of the events that passed before tbeir eyes ! 
 
 If you come to Merton, or to any of tbe colleges of 
 which it was the type, in tbe present day, you will see 
 tbe old buildings and feel tbeir influence, but you will 
 trace only the faint and fading remains of the original in- 
 stitution. You will find tbe Fellows still dining togeth- 
 er, and still unmarried ; but you will have no reader at 
 meals, nor will the meal be silent, nor will tbe speech be 
 in the Latin tongue. What is of more importance, tbe 
 scholars of Merton, who have assumed tbe common name 
 of Fellows, instead of being students in the schools of tbe 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 241 
 
 University, have themselves become teachers, engaged in 
 the tuition of the students who fill the extended build- 
 ings of the college. This is a change which has taken 
 place in the colleges generally since the date of their 
 foundation, though in some, especially those of later date, 
 the rudiments of the system of college tuition are discern- 
 ible in the original statutes. Junior members have gen- 
 erally been added to the foundation, if they were not 
 originally a part of it, who receive stipends from the col- 
 lege, and wear a special gown to distinguish them as 
 foundationers, but are not members of the governing 
 body. To these the name of Scholars is now appropria- 
 ted, though in the earlier colleges it was given to those 
 who are now the Fellows. Such of the Fellows as are 
 still students study in London, in the precincts of the law 
 or in the great schools of medicine. 
 
 Baliol is of earlier date than Merton as a foundation, 
 but it was not till a later period, and probably in imita- 
 tion of Merton, that it took the shape of a regular college. 
 John Baliol — the father of that Baliol who was King of 
 Scotland for a day — besought his wife Dervorguilla, on 
 his death-bed, to continue the charitable assistance which 
 he had given to poor Oxford scholars during his life. 
 The " noble and virtuous lady," in fulfillment of this re- 
 quest, bought a house in Oxford, and placed her husband's 
 scholars in it. She gave them a short and sensible code 
 of statutes, enjoining them to attend divine service on 
 festivals, and on other days to frequent the schools of the 
 University ; to pray for her husband's soul ; and to ob- 
 serve some simple rules of life. A young scholar, or serv- 
 itor, was to be fed with the broken meat from their table. 
 
 L 
 
242 THE UNIVEKSITY OF OXFOED. 
 
 As the foundation of a Baliol, the college is a monument 
 of the close connection which existed between the En- 
 glish and Scotch nobility, and of the tendency which the 
 two nations showed to unite with each other, till the wars 
 of Edward I. put deadly enmity between them, and de- 
 layed their union for four centuries. In its outward ap- 
 pearance, Baliol, in spite of its new buildings, the offspring 
 of the revived Gothic taste, is perhaps the least attractive 
 of all the colleges ; but for many years past it has been 
 the most distinguished in intellect, and the foremost in 
 the race for University honors. Let no one, looking on 
 its ugliness, conclude that beauty is unfavorable to learn- 
 ing. The talisman of its intellectual greatness has not 
 been ugliness, but freedom. Dervorguilla was led by her 
 good sense, or by some happy accident (let us hope by 
 her good sense), to leave the members of her college great 
 liberty in elections to Fellowships — not fettering them, as 
 most of the founders did, with preferences to the natives 
 of favored counties or of founder's kin. They were thus 
 enabled to select and reward merit, to secure the most 
 distinguished names for their societ}^, and the best teach- 
 ers for their students, and to place a poor and originally 
 very humble college at the head of the whole University. 
 Exeter College and Oriel College are memorials of the 
 unhappy times of Edward II. The founder of Oriel Col- 
 lege, Adam de Brome, a chaplain of the unfortunate king, 
 felt that he had fallen on evil days ; for in the opening 
 of his statutes he concludes a long jeremiade on the cor- 
 ruptions and miseries of the age with the dismal declara- 
 tion that all visible things are visibly tending to annihila- 
 tion (qua3 visibilem habent essentiam tendunt visibiliter 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 243 
 
 acl non esse). Evil days they were indeed — the days of 
 a weak king, when weakness in a king was criminal ; of 
 civil discord, of disastrous and humiliating war, of famine 
 and misery that loosened the very bonds of society. And 
 it was something that, with all this around them, men 
 could still live in the world of intellect, and, with a hope- 
 ful though a sorrowful hand, cast bread on the waters, to 
 be found in a happier hour. Walter de Stapyldon, Bish- 
 op of Exeter, the founder of Exeter College, perished in 
 an insurrection of the populace of London on the eve of 
 his master's fall. The elections to the Fellowships at Ori- 
 el College, like those at Baliol, were left comparatively 
 open, and with the same result. Among the illustrious 
 men numbered among the Fellows in recent times were 
 Arnold, Whately, and — perhaps more famous than either 
 — J. H. ISTewman, whose genius organized and led the 
 great Eomanizing reaction in the Church of England, 
 which ought to bear his name rather than that of his 
 friend and coadjutor. Dr. Pusey. 
 
 The great Palladian building opposite to University 
 College, in High Street, was substituted by the classiciz- 
 ing taste of the last century for the ancient buildings of 
 Queen's College. This college was founded by Eggles- 
 field, chaplain to Philippa, the Queen of Edward III, and 
 was commended to the patronage of all queens consort 
 by the founder, who could himself only give "a widow's 
 mite" toward the accomplishment of his design. The per- 
 mission to speak French as well as Latin, and the injunc- 
 tion to cultivate courtly manners, betoken Egglesfield's 
 acquaintance, as a royal chaplain, with the court — one of 
 the gayest and most gallant courts, the most full of spirit 
 
244 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 
 
 and life, perhaps, that ever met in halls devoted to the 
 " dull pomp of kings." Egglesfield was also full of mys- 
 tical fancies and extravagant symbolism. The members 
 of his college were to be thirteen, answering to the num- 
 ber of Christ and the apostles ; they were to sit at dinner 
 as he imagined Christ and the apostles had sat at the Last 
 Supper ; they were to wash the feet of thirteen poor men 
 once every year; they were to maintain seventy poor 
 boys, in honor of the seventy disciples ; they were to 
 have in their chapel a candelabrum with seven branches, 
 to typify the seven gifts of the Spirit, and worst the sev- 
 en devils. A symbolical needle is still presented to each 
 of the Fellows at the annual college festival with the 
 words, " Take this and be thrifty," to recall an absurd ety- 
 mology (Aiguille) of the founder's name ; and from some 
 fancy, perhaps equally childish, the college is still sum- 
 moned to dinner by the sound of a horn. Such puerili- 
 ties mingled with the highest designs of these men ; so 
 true it is that in their grandest works they were "like 
 noble boys at play." It is a cherished but a baseless tra- 
 dition that, within the walls of the college founded by his 
 mother's chaplain, was educated the heroic boy whose 
 first feat of arms was performed at Crecy ; who led En- 
 gland at Poictiers ; and whose name, if we could honest- 
 ly claim it, would be dear to us, less because he was the 
 first soldier, than because, with all his faults, and all the 
 stains on his bright career, he was the first gentleman of 
 his age. Queen's College has a somewhat better preten- 
 sion to the honor of having educated the victor of Agin- 
 court, who is said to have resided here under the tuition 
 of his uncle, Cardinal Beaufort. 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 245 
 
 And now a crisis arrived in the history of the Univer- 
 sity. Whether it was from the troubles consequent on 
 the preaching of Wickliffe, or from any other cause, the 
 numbers of the students fell off, and the schools were be- 
 coming deserted, when a friend appeared to restore the 
 prosperity of Oxford by a new and more magnificent 
 foundation. 
 
 New College is four centuries and a half old. Once it 
 was not only new, but a novelty, and the wonder of its 
 age. This college, and the great school at "Winchester at- 
 tached to it, were the splendid and memorable work of 
 William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, who, com- 
 bining, after the manner of those days, the statesman with 
 the churchman, was the chancellor, the favorite minister, 
 and the chief diplomatist of Edward III. Loaded with 
 preferment, even to an excess of pluralism, by the favor 
 of his sovereign, he used his accumulated wealth with the 
 munificence which Bacon, childless himself, complacently 
 notes as characteristic of childless men. The founder of 
 ISTew College had originally risen in life and attracted the 
 king's notice by his skill as an architect — a calling not 
 incompatible with the clerical character in an age when 
 the clergy embraced all who wrought not with the hand, 
 but with the brain. He had built Windsor Castle ; and 
 in founding his own colleges, no doubt he gratified the 
 tastes of the architect as well as those of the friend of re- 
 ligion and learning. The chapel, the hall, the cloisters, 
 the tower, the great quadrangle, still bespeak his genius ; 
 though the great quadrangle has been somewhat marred 
 by the tastelessness of a later age, which has also added 
 another quadrangle, in wretched imitation, it is believed, 
 
246 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 of some part of Yersailles. Beyond, you pass into a gar- 
 den remarkable for its fine masses of varied foliage and 
 its vignette view of Magdalen Tower, Skirting the col- 
 lege and garden is the ancient city wall, here in its most 
 perfect state, and most completely recalling the image of 
 the old feudal town. The style of the college is the ear- 
 liest perpendicular, marking the entrance of Gothic archi- 
 tecture into the last of its successive phases of beauty, and 
 at the same time the entrance of Mediaeval Catholicism 
 and the feudal system upon the period of their decline. 
 The special studies prescribed by the founder, which are 
 of a classical character, also mark the dawn of the Kenais- 
 sance in England some time after its light had begun to 
 fill the sky in the land of Petrarch. This was the age of 
 Gower and Chaucer, the natal hour of modern English 
 literature. With the revival of learning was destined to 
 come a great revolution in the religious sphere. But to 
 this part of the movement Wykeham was no friend. In 
 ecclesiastical matters he was a Conservative. He had 
 come into collision with the early Eeformation, and with 
 the precursor of Luther in the person of Wickliffe. He 
 dedicated his two colleges to the Virgin, of whom he was 
 a special devotee, and whose image stands conspicuous in 
 more than one part of the quadrangle. He went beyond 
 the previous founders in making peculiar and sumptuous 
 provision for the performance of the Catholic ritual, with 
 its stoled processions and tapered rites, and in enjoining 
 religious observances and devotions on the members of 
 his college. New College is still distinguished not only 
 by the size and beauty of its chapel, but by its excellent 
 choral service. Like many a Catholic patron and pro- 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 247 
 
 moter of learning in the epoch preceding the Eeformation 
 — like Wolsey, like Sir Thomas More, like Leo X. — 
 Wykeham, in fostering classical literature and intellectual 
 progress, unconsciously forwarded the destruction of all 
 that was most dear to him. He warmed into life the ser- 
 pent (so he would have thought it) that was to sting his 
 own Church to death. 
 
 New College had altogether more the character of an 
 Abbey than the previous foundations. Its warden lived 
 with more of the state of an abbot than the warden of 
 Merton and the other colleges of that type. Its statutes 
 prescribed a more monastic rule of life than previous 
 codes. They regulated more narrowly, not to say more 
 tyrannically, the details of personal conduct, and provided 
 for more of mutual surveillance and denunciation. They 
 forbid any student to go beyond the gates any where, ex- 
 cept to the schools of the University, without a compan- 
 ion to keep watch over him. They betray an increased 
 desire to force individual character into a prescribed 
 mould. We may gather from their enactments that in 
 those days, as in these, the student was sometimes led 
 astray from the path of learning and asceticism by the 
 sports and allurements of an evil world ; for they strictly 
 enjoin abstinence from gambling, hunting, and hawking. 
 Each member of the college is sworn to observe them by 
 oaths which, by their almost portentous rigor and prolix- 
 ity, seem to betray the advent of an age when, the relig- 
 ious faith of the world having given way, morality had 
 given way with it, and man could no longer put trust in 
 man. 
 
 The University, as has been said, appears to have been 
 
248 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 in a languishing state wlien New College was founded. 
 Wykeham obtained for his students the peculiar privilege 
 of being examined for their degrees by the College in- 
 stead of the University, whereby he meant to raise them 
 to a higher pitch of industry, though the privilege proved, 
 in after times, a charter of idleness. He also provided 
 for instruction by college tutors within the walls. 
 
 In these respects his college was peculiar. It was still 
 more peculiar in its connection with the famous school 
 which, standing beneath the shadow of Winchester Ca- 
 thedral, casts over boyhood the spell of reverend antiqui- 
 ty. Winchester was the first of our English public 
 schools, and the archetype of our public school system : 
 a system somewhat severe, taking the boy, almost the 
 child, from his home, and throwing him before his hour 
 into a world almost as hard as that with which the man 
 will have to struggle ; but the parent, no doubt, of some 
 Roman virtues, and the mistress, in part, of our imperial 
 greatness. 
 
 It is probable that the troubles which interfered with 
 the prosperity of the University had been connected with 
 the rise of Wicklifiism. The arch-heretic was himself 
 the foremost of Oxford teachers and the leader of the ar- 
 dent intellect of Oxford, as well as of its high spiritual 
 aspirations. It was with great difficulty, and after re- 
 peated struggles, that the Church authorities succeeded in 
 purifying, if ever they did succeed in purifying, the Uni- 
 versity of this plague ; and our first religious test was di- 
 rected against this, the earliest form of the Protestant re- 
 ligion. Among those who had caught the infection was 
 Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College, a venerable and 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 249 
 
 somewliat sombre pile close to Exeter. Afterward he 
 grew orthodox, was made a bishop, and, becoming a dead- 
 ly enemy of the party which he had deserted, founded a 
 theological college specially to combat "that new and 
 pestilent sect, which assailed all the sacraments and all 
 the possessions of the Church." These words are not a 
 bad summary of Wickliffism, a movement directed at once 
 against the worldly wealth of the Establishment and the 
 sacramental and ceremonial system, which failed any lon- 
 ger to satisfy the religious heart. Whether Bishop Flem- 
 ing's college contributed much toward the suppression 
 of Protestant heresy in those days we do not know. In 
 the last century it produced a group of students of a se- 
 rious turn, diligent in religious studies and exercises, and 
 on that account the laughing-stock of their fellow-students 
 in a skeptical and scoffing age, at the head of whom was 
 the modern counterpart of Wickliffe — John Wesley. 
 
 Facing one way on High Street, the other on the Ead- 
 clyffe Square, with a fine Gothic front, two quadrangles, 
 and a pair of high towers in debased Gothic style, but 
 very picturesque, stands All Souls' College. Over the 
 gateway in High Street are sculptured the souls for whose 
 relief from Purgatory the college was partly founded. 
 Chichele, its founder, was Archbishop of Canterbury and 
 Chancellor of Henry V. Parliament already at that time 
 was moving the Crown to secularize church property and 
 apply it to the defense of the realm. Shakspeare has im- 
 mortalized the statement of the chroniclers that Arch- 
 bishop Chichele urged his master to claim the crown of 
 France in order to divert him from attending to these 
 proposals. Some confirmation of this belief may perhaps 
 
 L2 
 
250 THE UNIVERSITY OP OXFORD. 
 
 be found in tlie statutes of Chicliele's college, which com- 
 mand its members, as a duty more incumbent on them 
 even than that of learning, to pray for the souls of King 
 Henry V. and such of his companions in arms as " drank 
 the bitter cup of death" in the fields of that glorious but 
 unjust, and therefore, in its ultimate issue, disastrous war. 
 In after times, through some unexplained train of acci- 
 dents, the college became appropriated to men of high 
 family, and the claims of aristocratic connection are still 
 struggling with those of merit for the possession of the 
 institution. 
 
 Chichele had been educated at New College, the stat- 
 utes of which he to a great extent copied. Another son 
 of the same house, who also copied its statutes, was Wil- 
 liam of Waynflete, Chancellor of Henry YL, and founder 
 of Magdalen College, which stands beside the Eiver Cher- 
 well, amidst its smooth expanses of lawn and under its 
 immemorial trees, the loveliest of all the homes of learn- 
 ing, the richest in all that is dear to a student's heart. 
 Let one whose youth was passed in that fair house pay 
 his tribute of gratitude and reverence to his founder's 
 shade. In this work, we may believe, the spirit of a 
 statesman-prelate, tossed on the waves of civil war, found 
 relief from the troubles of an unquiet time. Under that 
 gateway, when the tracery, now touched by age, was fresh, 
 and the stone, now gray, was white, passed Eichard III., 
 with his crime in his heart. The shadow of his dark 
 presence is in the rooms of state over the gateway, which 
 have just been restored by the college to their pristine 
 magnificence. But pass on, under the cloisters, through 
 the quadrangle, with its tranquil beauty, its level floor of 
 
THE UNIVEKSITY OF OXFOED. 251 
 
 green, and its quaint symbolic figures, and you will come 
 to the walk consecrated by the gentle genius of Addi- 
 son. 
 
 The quadrangle, chapel, and hall are the work of the 
 founder. But the tower, which lends grace to every view 
 of Oxford, is believed to be a monument of the taste and 
 of the soaring genius of Wolsey, who was a Fellow of the 
 college, and the occurrence of whose name is ominous of 
 coming change. 
 
 The next foundation, following hard upon Magdalen, 
 is Brasenose, a mass of buildings close under the Ead- 
 clyffe Library — dark, as much from the discoloring of the 
 stone as from years. As the night of the Middle Ages 
 passed away, and the sun of the Eenaissance climbed the 
 sky, more colleges and fewer monasteries were founded. 
 Yet the bishop and the pious knight who jointly found- 
 ed Brasenose had no misgiving as to the perpetual con- 
 tinuance of Eoman Catholic devotions. They did not 
 imagine that a day would come, and that soon, when it 
 would be no longer a duty to attend daily mass, to repeat 
 the Miserere and the Sancta Marie Mater^ to say the Pater- 
 noster five times a day in honor of the five wounds of 
 Christ, and the Angelical Salutation as many times in 
 honor of the five joys of the Virgin. Yet the patent of 
 their foundation is dated in the third year of Henry 
 YIII. 
 
 Pent between Merton and Christchurch — a confine- 
 ment from which its growing greatness may one day 
 tempt it to escape by migration — is Corpus Christi Col- 
 lege. The quadrangle, with its quaint sun-dial, stands as 
 it was left by the founder, Fox, Bishop of Winchester, a 
 
252 THE UNIVEKSITY OF OXFOED. 
 
 statesman and diplomatist, trusted in the crafty councils 
 of Henry YIL We are now in full Kenaissance, and on 
 tlie brink of the Keformation. The name of the college, 
 denoting a strong belief in transubstantiation, and the de- 
 votions prescribed in the statutes, show that the founder 
 was (as the holder of the rich see of Winchester might 
 be expected to be) an adherent of the established fliith. 
 He had first intended to found a monastery. But his 
 far-sighted friend. Bishop Oldham, said, ''What ! my lord, 
 shall we build houses and provide livelihoods for a com- 
 pany of bussing [praying] monks, whose end and fall we 
 may ourselves live to see ? No, no ; it is more meet that 
 we should provide for the increase of learning, and for 
 such as by their learning may do good to the Church and 
 commonwealth." To the Eenaissance, however. Fox's 
 college emphatically belongs. For the first time the 
 classical authors are distinctly prescribed as studies, and 
 a long and liberal list of them is given in the statutes. 
 Latin composition, both in prose and verse, is enjoined ; 
 and even on holidays and in vacation the students are 
 required to practice themselves in writing verses and 
 letters, in the rules of eloquence, the poets, orators, and 
 historians. Greek as well as Latin was to be spoken by 
 the students in the college hall — an enactment which be- 
 speaks the intoxicating enthusiasm excited by the revi- 
 val of learning. The foundation embraced two classic- 
 al lecturers for the whole University, and Greece and 
 Southern Italy are especially mentioned as countries from 
 which the lecturers are to be taken. The language of 
 the statutes themselves affects classical elegance, and the 
 framer apologizes for not being perfectly Ciceronian. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 253 
 
 Erasmus, who had visited the college, said that it would 
 b,e to Britain what the Mausoleum was to Caria, what the 
 Colossus was to Ehodes. This it has hardly been, but it 
 has produced eminent men ; and here Arnold practiced 
 in youthful, almost boyish, debate the weapons which he 
 was afterward to wield for truth and justice on an ampler 
 field. 
 
 Pulpit eloquence as well as classical learning was now 
 in vogue, and the Fellows of Corpus Christi College are 
 required, when of a certain standing, to preach in popu- 
 lous cities, and at last, as the crowning test of their pow- 
 ers, at St. Paul's Cross. To preach at St. Paul's Cross 
 went, among other Fellows of the College, Eichard Hook- 
 er, and those who have read his life can tell with how lu- 
 dicrous and calamitous a result. 
 
 The hour of Media3val Catholicism was now come ; 
 but its grandest foundation at Oxford was its last. The 
 stately fagade, the ample quadrangle, the noble hall of 
 Christchurch are monuments, as every reader of Shak- 
 speare knows, of the magnificence of Cardinal Wolsey, a 
 true Prince of the Church, with a princely, if not with a 
 pure heart. Here we stand on the point of transition be- 
 tween Catholic and Protestant Eugland. Wolsey was in 
 every sense an English Leo X. ; an indifferentist, proba- 
 bly, in religion, as well as loose in morals, till misfortune 
 and the approach of death made him again turn to Grod ; 
 an enthusiast only in learning ; one of a group of men 
 who, by fostering the new studies, promoted — without 
 being aware of it — the progress of the new faith, and 
 built with their own hands the funeral pile of their own 
 Church. He suppressed a number of small monasteries 
 
254 THE UNIVEKSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 to found ChristcTiurcli ; and no doubt he felt for the 
 monks — with their trumpery^ their gross legends, and 
 their fabricated relics — the same contempt which was 
 felt for them by Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, and all 
 other educated and enlightened men of the time. But 
 he started back, and was troubled in mind when he found 
 that the eminent teachers whom he had sought out with 
 great pains for his new college were teachers of other 
 novelties besides the classics. 
 
 Grand as it is, Christchurch is not what Wolsey in- 
 tended it to be. Had his design been fulfilled, it would 
 have been " Oxford" indeed, and the University would 
 have been almost swallowed up in ''Cardinal College," 
 the name which, with a spirit of self-glorification some- 
 what characteristic of him, he intended to give his found- 
 ation. But in the midst of his work he fell ; and the 
 king, whom he had served too well, took his wealth and 
 usurped his place as the legal founder of Christchurch, 
 though he has not been able to usurp his place in history 
 or in the real allegiance of Christchurch men. The col- 
 lege, however, though shorn of part of its splendor, was 
 still splendid. In after times it became — in a social and 
 political sense at least — the first in England, and the por- 
 traits which line its hall are a gallery of English worthies 
 in church and state. 
 
 And now over Oxford, as well as over the rest of En- 
 gland — and more fiercely, perhaps, than over any other 
 city of England — swept the great storm of the Eeforma- 
 tion. The current of religious thought which, left to it- 
 self, would have flowed in a peaceful and beneficent 
 stream, restrained by the barriers of a political church, 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 255 
 
 at last burst upon society with the accumulated fury of 
 a pent-up torrent. The monasteries, in Oxford as else- 
 where, fell by a cruel though a righteous doom ; their 
 beauty was laid desolate. For a moment the colleges 
 were in danger. Our charters were taken from us, and 
 the hungry courtiers, fleshed with the plunder of the 
 monasteries, marked us for their prey. But Henry YIII. 
 was learned, and a friend of learning : after a short hesi- 
 tation he drove off the pack of ravening hounds, and the 
 charters were given back into our trembling hands. But 
 every thing monastic was rigorously suppressed. The 
 great bell of Christchurch, which Milton heard from his 
 neighboring house at Forest Hill, "swinging slow with 
 sullen roar," was saved from the wreck of Ouseney Ab- 
 bey, the chief monastery of the city. 
 
 The revolution was almost as great in the intellectual 
 as in the ecclesiastical sphere. The books of the great 
 school philosophers and divines — of Aquinas, Duns Sco- 
 tus, the Master of the Sentences — were torn up and scat- 
 tered about the college quadrangles. They had been the 
 "angelic," the "subtle," the "irrefragable" doctors of 
 their day. 
 
 To and fro swept the tide of controversy and persecu- 
 tion from the beginning of the Eeformation under Hen- 
 ry YIII. to the final settlement under Elizabeth. Now 
 Catholics were expelled from their colleges by Edward 
 YI., now Protestants by Mary, and again Catholics by 
 Elizabeth. In Broad Street, opposite Baliol College, a 
 site once occupied by the city ditch, is a spot marked by 
 a flat cross of stone. There Cranmer, Latimer, and Eid- 
 ley died. In the city wall, close by, was their prison- 
 
256 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 house. While the Protestant divines, Bucer and Fagius, 
 reigned in Oxford, the wife of Fagius was buried near 
 the shrine of St. Frideswide, in Christchurch Cathedral. 
 The Catholics, in their hour of triumph, flung out the ac- 
 cursed wife of the heretic from the holy ground. The 
 Protestants, in their turn victorious, mingled her bones 
 with those of the saint, and the dust of the two remains 
 forever blended together by the irony of fate. 
 
 Two colleges, Trinity and St. John's, were founded dur- 
 ing the brief Catholic reaction under Philip and Mary. 
 As celibate institutions, colleges, though less distinctively 
 Catholic than monasteries, were still more congenial to 
 Catholicism than to Protestantism, and it was natural 
 that the fashion of founding them should revive with 
 Catholic ascendency. The founder of Trinity, Sir Thom- 
 as Pope, was an ardent partisan of the Eeaction, and has 
 earnestly enjoined his Fellows to avoid the contamination 
 of the Protestant heresy. He lived to see them make 
 way for Protestants. Sir Thomas White, the founder 
 of St. John's, was a great merchant, and one of a group 
 whose princely munificence in the endowment of literary 
 or charitable institutions ennobled English commerce in 
 those days. In England, at the present day, a man who 
 has grown rich by commerce generally aspires to found 
 a family. In America, it seems, he still aspires to found 
 an institution. 
 
 The Elizabethan era was glorious at Oxford as well as 
 elsewhere, though the literary spirit of the University 
 was classical, not national, like that which culminated in 
 Shakspeare. The learned queen paid us a visit, was en- 
 tertained with classical dramas and flattered in classical 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFOED. 257 
 
 harangues, and, at jDarting, expressed her warm affection 
 for the University. On Shotover Hill, over which the 
 old London Koad passed, is a monument marking the 
 spot to which the heads of colleges toiled up to meet her, 
 and where, no doubt, there was abundance of ceremony 
 and genuflection. It need scarcely be said that her still 
 more learned successor made the light of his countenance 
 shine upon us. In the great Quadrangle of the Schools, 
 a very noble monument of the late Tudor architecture, 
 upon a fagade pedantically adorned with all the Greek 
 orders, sits the effigy of the royal Solomon, majestic as 
 when he drank the rich incense of Bacon's adulation. 
 And be it said that James was, at all events, none the 
 worse for his learning. It inspired him with sone benef- 
 icent ideas, and redeemed his weakness from utter degra- 
 dation. 
 
 James bestowed on the University the right of send- 
 ing representatives to Parliament. A questionable boon. 
 For, though universities, if they are worth any thing, will 
 make their influence felt in politics, it is not desirable 
 that they should be directly involved in the struggles of 
 political parties. Theirs should be a neutral territory 
 and a serener air. 
 
 Exeter College, founded by a prelate of Edward II., 
 was refounded and raised to its present magnificence by 
 Sir William Petre, a statesman of the Elizabethan age, 
 and an upholder of the Spartan theory of education 
 against Ascham, who took the more liberal view. These 
 famous Elizabethan statesmen were all highly-cultivated 
 men. Cultivation without force may be impotent, but 
 force without cultivation is blind. Force without culti- 
 
258 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 vation has produced great effects for tlie time, but only 
 cultivated men have left their mark upon the world. 
 
 Another knight of the Elizabethan age, Sir Thomas 
 Bodley, founded the Bodleian Library, now one of the 
 famous libraries of the world. The book -worm will 
 scarcely find a greater paradise than the good knight's 
 antique reading-room, especially in the quiet months of 
 the summer vacation. If the spirit of learned leisure 
 and repose breathes any where, it is there. 
 
 Jesus College was founded in the reign of Elizabeth, 
 for Welshmen, the remnant of the old Celtic inhabitants 
 of Britain, who, saved from the Saxon sword by the ram- 
 part of the Welsh hills, had in that fastness preserved 
 their national language and character, and do still to 
 some extent preserve them, though railroads and other 
 centralizing and civilizing influences are now fast com- 
 pleting the inevitable work of amalgamation. To draw 
 Welsh students to English Universities would of course 
 be an object with all who desired the consolidation of 
 the United Kingdom. This was a Protestant college, 
 founded to uphold and disseminate the faith which Lin- 
 coln College, its neighbor over the way, had been found- 
 ed to combat and put down. The Fellows are adjured to 
 prefer Scripture to that which is not Scripture, truth to 
 tradition. They are also directed specially to cultivate, 
 and even to speak, Hebrew — a language which Protest- 
 ants loved as the key to the Old Testament, and Catho- 
 lics dreaded as the sure source of misbeliefs. According 
 to the strong partisans of Catholicism, to learn Greek was 
 heretical, to learn Hebrew was diabolical. The lingering 
 love of clerical celibacy, however, betrays itself in a stat- 
 
THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 259 
 
 lite forbidding the principal to marry. It is well known 
 how strong this feeling was in the half-Catholic heart of 
 the Virgin Queen. 
 
 Wadham College was founded in the reign of James I., 
 on a site occupied by a monastery of Austin friars. In 
 style it is a mixture of the Gothic college with the Tudor 
 manor-house. In beauty and attractiveness as a home of 
 learning it is second, perhaps, only to Magdalen. It is, 
 moreover, interesting as the last great collegiate founda- 
 tion of the mediaeval type, the last creation of that medi- 
 a3val spirit, which, like Gothic architecture, lingered at 
 Oxford longer than in any other place in Protestant Brit- 
 ain. Sir Nicholas Wadham, whose name it bears, seems 
 to have been, like a large portion of the wealthier classes 
 at that time, a waverer in religion. It is said that he 
 first intended to found a monastery abroad, but afterward 
 made up his mind to found a college at home. Upon his 
 death his widow, Dame Dorothy Wadham, fulfilled his 
 design by building and endowing this noble house. The 
 hand of time has touched it with a far higher beauty, 
 especially on its garden side, since its foundress looked 
 upon her work. 
 
 Two colleges, Pembroke and Worcester (the latter 
 known to our summer visitors by the beauty of its gar- 
 dens), are of later date than Wadham ; but these grew 
 up to their present goodly proportions out of foundations 
 which, in their origin, were comparatively poor and in- 
 significant. 
 
 Meantime a great change has been passing over the 
 character of the University. In the thirteenth century 
 we had been liberal and even somewhat revolutionary. 
 
260 THE UNIVERSITY OE OXFORD. 
 
 both in religion and politics; we now became at once 
 Tory and High-Church. We had been the school of lib- 
 erty, progress, hope ; we now became the school of doc- 
 trines most adverse to them all. This was due mainly to 
 the clerical character of the Fellowship, which, the Uni- 
 versity having been completely absorbed in the colleges, 
 bound her destinies to those of the Established Church 
 and its protector and ally, the Crown. The rule of cel- 
 ibacy, and the somewhat monkish tendencies of college 
 life, also contributed to make Oxford, as she has twice 
 been, the scene of a great Eomanizing reaction. 
 
 In restoring the beautiful Gothic Church of St. Mary, 
 where the University sermons are preached, we have 
 spared, on historical grounds, an incongruous portico, in 
 the Italian style, which, though built nearly a century 
 after the Eeformation, bears an image of the Virgin and 
 Child. This is a monument of Laud, and helped to send 
 him to the scaffold. In the interior quadrangle of St. 
 John's College stand the statues of Charles and Henrietta, 
 placed there by the same hand. Laud was the President 
 of this college. Here he learned the narrow, arbitrary 
 notions of government which he afterward put in practice 
 with such fatal effect upon a more important scene ; and 
 here, in angry college controversies with the Puritans, he 
 imbibed the malignant hatred of that sect which, when 
 he had mounted to power, broke out in persecution. 
 
 Laud was a University reformer, though in a despotic 
 way. He gave us a new Code of University Statutes, 
 containing, no doubt, some enactments which were useful 
 in their way. But here, too, he was Laud. He complete- 
 ly sacrificed liberty to order. He gave us no power of 
 
THE UNIVEKSITY OF OXFORD. 261 
 
 amendment ; and lie legally bound upon our necks the 
 oligarchy toward which our once free Constitution had 
 for some time been practically tending. We burst his 
 fetters only a few years ago. 
 
 During the great civil war, Oxford, once almost the 
 head-quarters of Simon de Montfort, was the head-quar- 
 ters of Charles. The city was in a state of siege. Study 
 ceased. The students were in arms. The Eoyalist Par- 
 liaments sat in our college halls and our Convocation. 
 One seat of learning became the Mint. Soldiers trooped 
 in the streets. The college plate was melted down into 
 money ; and thus perished, probably, a rare collection of 
 medieval works of art. The monuments of that period 
 are not houses of learning, but the traces of earth-works 
 which united the Eiver Cherwell with the Isis, and pro- 
 tected the beleaguered city. 
 
 The victorious Puritans have left their mark on some 
 painted windows and Eomish images. The extreme fa- 
 natics of the party would have done away with Universi- 
 ties and learning altogether, and left nothing but the Bible 
 and the pulpit. But Cromwell was of a different mind. 
 He was no incarnation either of mere fanaticism or of 
 brute force. He had been bred at a grammar-school and 
 at Cambridge. What was more, he had conversed on the 
 highest themes with the choicest spirits of his time. He 
 protected and fostered both Universities, and did his best 
 to draw highly-cultivated men from them into the public 
 service. Of course he put Puritans in our high places. 
 But these men promoted learning as well as Puritanism, 
 restored discipline, revived education, and upheld the 
 honor of the University in their day. 
 
262 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. ^. 
 
 Of course Oxford hailed the Eestoration. Alas for the 
 depths of servility into which, in that her evil hour, she 
 fell ! Archbishop Sheldon then reigned over its in the 
 spirit of the most violent Eoyalism and the narrowest in- 
 tolerance. The Sheldonian Theatre, in which our Com- 
 memorations are held, is his work. Let it do what it 
 may to redeem an unloved and unhonored name. 
 
 The Eadclyffe Library, rising with its Palladian dome 
 in not unpleasing contrast to the Gothic buildings which 
 surround it, and upon the whole galaxy of which it looks 
 down, is a memorial of the Augustan glories of the reign 
 of Anne, of which even Tory Oxford did not fail to catch 
 the beams. Its founder. Dr. Eadclyffe, was the court phy- 
 sician of the time. Less pleasing memorials of the same 
 age are the Chapel of Trinity College, and other build- 
 ings, designed by Aldrich, the Dean of Christchurch in 
 that day, a tasteless architect, but a man of liberal culture, 
 and the centre of a group of scholars who made Christ- 
 church illustrious in his time. 
 
 And now we come to a period over which every loyal 
 son of Oxford will gladly pass as quickly as he may. 
 The State Church of England during the greater half of 
 the last century was torpid and corrupt, and Oxford 
 shared its torpor and corruption. The only spirit active 
 in the University was that of Jacobitism — a political con- 
 spiracy in favor of the heir of James II., and against the 
 constitutional liberties of the nation — destitute, in the 
 case of the Oxford Fellows, even of the redeeming lustre 
 which valor sheds over the self-devoted adherents of a 
 bad cause. Instead of bleeding at Preston and Culloden, 
 these men merely indulged their factious feeling by 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 263 
 
 " drinking the king over the water" in what Gibbon calls 
 the " deep but dull potations which excused the brisk in- 
 temperance of youth," In truth the University, in the 
 proper sense of the word, could scarcely be said to live 
 in those days. Her corpse was possessed by an alien 
 spirit of clerical depravity and political intrigue. Learn- 
 ing slept, education languished, university and college 
 examinations became a farce. Life in most of the col- 
 leges was indolent, sensual, and coarse. A few names, 
 such as those of Lowth and Wharton, redeemed our dis- 
 honor. Christchurch — thanks, chiefly, to the good schol- 
 ars it received from Westminster school — maintained a 
 position higher than that of the other colleges. But our 
 general history for seventy or eighty years was such that 
 we would gladly bury it in oblivion. It is not surprising 
 that a University where duty was dead, where religious 
 faith was a mere prejudice deeply tainted with political 
 bigotry, should have become the mother of skepticism 
 and irreligion, or that the most conspicuous name among 
 the Oxford men of the last century should be that of 
 Gibbon. If we seek architectural memorials of this evil 
 age, they will be found in tasteless masses of modern 
 building, such as the "new buildings" at Magdalen, de- 
 signed merely as luxurious residences, without any 
 thought of the higher aims of architectural art. 
 
 The commencement of the present century, when the 
 mind of Europe had been stirred by the French Eevolu- 
 tion, and the great struggles, political and intellectual as 
 well as military, to which it gave birth, witnessed a re- 
 vival of learning and education at Oxford. Then it was 
 that our examinations were again made effective, that our 
 
264 THE UNIVEESITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 class-list was instituted, and that Oxford once more be- 
 came, wliat slie had so long ceased to be, a power in the 
 intellectual world. Then it was that our Cannings and 
 Peels began to arise, and that we began again to send 
 men of worth and high aspirations into the service of the 
 state. Still we were High Tories. At Oxford, in 1814, 
 the Allied Sovereigns celebrated their victory, and a me- 
 morial of their visit is seen in the portraits of the Emperor 
 of Kussia and the King of Prussia, which hang, with that 
 of Greorge IV. between them, in the Sheldonian Theatre. 
 Among the honors and rewards heaped on the Duke of 
 Wellington, the great chief of the Tory party. Was the 
 Chancellorship of the University, and at his installation 
 Oxford was the scene of a memorable gathering of his 
 political adherents. It was, in fact, their first rally after 
 their great overthrow. 
 
 Scarcely, however, had the intellectual revival of the 
 University commenced, when, owing to the clerical and 
 half- monastic character of the colleges, Oxford became 
 the centre of the great priestly and Eomanizing reaction 
 in the Anglican Church, of which Dr. Newman was the 
 illustrious leader, and which was provoked by the gen- 
 eral progress of liberal opinions in the nation and the 
 victory of Parliamentary Eeform. The annals of that 
 reaction belong rather to the history of the Anglican 
 Church than to that of the University of Oxford. But 
 when it was at its height it completely absorbed the in- 
 tellectual activity of the University, and fatally shattered 
 many a fine mind destined by nature to render high 
 service to Oxford and to the nation, but now rendered 
 useless, except as the wrecked vessel which marks the 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 265 
 
 sunken reef. Of this attempt to revive the faith and the 
 ecclesiastical institutions of the Middle Ages, the archi- 
 tectural additions and restorations in the Gothic style 
 with which Oxford abounds, and which have been made 
 within the last thirty years, are in part the monuments, 
 though they are mainly the fruits of an improved taste in 
 architecture, and a returning preference for the Eomantic 
 over the Classical in poetry and art. The Martyrs' Me- 
 morial also — erected near the spot where Cranmer, Lati- 
 mer, and Eidley suffered — may be regarded as, in another 
 sense, a monument of the same epoch. It is the archi- 
 tectural manifesto of the Protestant party against the 
 Eomanizing doctrines of Dr. Newman and his disciples. 
 
 The secession of Dr. Newman to the Church of Eome 
 closed, in truth, the history of the religious movement of 
 which he was the leader. With him, its genius, its po- 
 etry, its chivalry, its fascinations for high intellects and 
 spiritual natures passed away. Since that time it has al- 
 most lost its spiritual character, and degenerated into a 
 mere State Church combination, the subservient ally of 
 political Toryism, and the tool of the Tory chiefs. Twen- 
 ty years ago it carried with it almost all the powerful in- 
 tellects of the University ; now it has decisively lost them 
 all. Eomanizing extravagances in ceremonial, language, 
 dress, and all that Carlyle calls the '^ millinery and up- 
 holstery" part of the movement, still go on ; but these 
 are the freaks and toys of children, not the deliberate ef- 
 forts of men to master the intellect of the world. 
 
 Since the catastrophe of Tractarianism the proper in- 
 terests of the University have revived, and a more liberal 
 spirit has begun to pervade our society and administra- 
 
 M 
 
266 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 tion. The Tractarian movementj thougli itself reaction- 
 ary, broke up old Anglican and Tory prejudices, weaned 
 active minds from subservience to custom and tradition, 
 loosened the soil in all directions, and prepared the ground 
 for healthier plants to grow. Having trained those who 
 were influenced by it to rest on authority instead of rest- 
 ing on truth, it, of course, at its downfall, left behind it a 
 certain amount of religious perplexity and distress pecul- 
 iar to Oxford, besides what is generally prevalent in an 
 age of final transition from false authority to rational re- 
 ligion. But this is accidental, and, as Oxford teachers 
 and students brace themselves to their proper duties, it 
 will pass away. 
 
 Meantime our course of education, till lately confined 
 to classics and mathematics, is being rendered more lib- 
 eral and more adequate to the needs of our age by the 
 admission of Science, History, Jurisprudence, and Politic- 
 al Economy. The Museum, newly built on the north of 
 the city, and the Taylor Institution for the stud}^ of mod- 
 ern languages, are the architectural expressions of an on- 
 ward movement in education almost as important as that 
 which substituted classical literature for the scholastic 
 philosophy in the sixteenth centurj^. 
 
 We have also got rid, by the help of Parliament, of the 
 antiquated codes of statutes with which each founder, anx- 
 ious to perpetuate his own will to the end of time, had 
 prevented the free development and frozen the life-blood 
 of his college. Our case is a warning to others, especial- 
 ly to the citizens of the United States, where private mu- 
 nificence displays itself to so large an extent in the en- 
 dowment of institutions, against the danger, incident to 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 267 
 
 perpetual endowments, of allowing the gifts of one gen- 
 eration to become the fetters of those which follow. No 
 perpetual foundation should be permitted without a pow- 
 er vested in proper authorities of amending, from time to 
 time, the regulations of the founder, so far as is consistent 
 with his main object, which should always be distinctly 
 stated at the commencement of the instrument of found- 
 ation. 
 
 At the same time and by the same assistance we shook 
 ofP, in part at least, the oligarchical government imposed 
 on us by Laud, and recovered in some measure the free- 
 dom of action and the power of self-adaptation and de- 
 velopment without which no institution can long sustain 
 its greatness. 
 
 The friends of Reform and Progress within the Uni- 
 versity did not call on the central government for aid 
 without hesitation. All Englishmen are attached to lo- 
 cal liberties and jealous of the interference of the central 
 power. We are, moreover, convinced that the great places 
 of national education and learning, as the guardians of 
 interests and principles which are the common heritage 
 of al], should be as free as possible from the influence and 
 vicissitudes of political parties. But it was for emanci- 
 pation, not for interference, that Oxford reformers appeal- 
 ed to Parliament; and it was in a case where, from the 
 absence of any legal power of amending our statutes, we 
 were unable to emancipate ourselves. 
 
 Moreover, from the predominance of the clerical ele- 
 ment (the immemorial bane of our greatness), we are sub- 
 jected, in academical legislation, to an inflaence more sec- 
 tional and more injurious than that of any political party 
 
268 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 not wholly regardless of the general interests of the na- 
 tion. It is on this account that the friends of liberty at 
 Oxford are obliged again to appeal to Parliament to re- 
 lieve US from the religious tests, and enable us once more 
 to become the University of the whole nation. Your Ox- 
 ford guest will not exert himself with the less energy or 
 the less confidence in this cause after having, once in his 
 life, breathed the air, to him so strange, to you so happi- 
 ly familiar, of perfect religious liberty, and learned, from 
 the evidence of his own senses, how false, how blasphe- 
 mous is the belief that rational religion is opposed to free- 
 dom, or that freedom is injurious to rational religion. 
 
 Thus we have traced, though necessarily in a brief and 
 summary way, the history of this group of corporations, 
 and seen the united threads of their existence pass through 
 many successive phases of the national history, and re- 
 flect the varying hues, the happy lights, and the melan- 
 choly shadows of each phase in turn. We have seen pass 
 before us the long train of Founders, in the characters 
 and costumes of many successive ages : the sceptred Plan- 
 tagenets ; the warrior prelates ; the ecclesiastical states- 
 men of the Middle Ages ; the grave knights, bountiful 
 ladies, and wealthy merchants of the Tudor age; the 
 more familiar forms of modern intellect and science. A 
 common purpose runs through and unites the whole, 
 binding the present to all the generations of the past. In 
 the latest buildings we see modern science installed in a 
 home prepared for it by the Gothic architecture of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 It only remains to be said that Oxford, like all the an- 
 tiquities and glories of England, is yours as well as ours. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 269 
 
 It is a part of the common heritage of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. I trust that any American who may come to it, ei- 
 ther as a visitor or a student, will not fail to be welcomed, 
 as I know by happy experience that Englishmen are wel- 
 comed here. 
 
 f 
 
 THE END, 
 
Carlyle^s Frederick. 
 
 HISTORY OF FRIED RICH II., called 
 
 Frederick the Great By Thomas Carlvle, Author 
 of a ^^ Hi/lory of the French Revolution^'' ''Oliver Crom- 
 well^'' ^'c. With Portraits and Maps. Complete in Six 
 Volumes. 12 ;;/<?, Cloth^ $2 00 per Volume. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle is about the only living writer wliose opinions are of value even when 
 it is impossible to agree with them. No one is more fond than he of paradox, but few 
 men's paradoxes hint at so important truths. No one with a more autocratic dogma- 
 tism sets up strong men as heroes, or condemns the hapless possessors of pot-bellies to 
 infamy; but then his judgments, even when they can not be confirmed, always en- 
 force some weighty principle which we were in danger of forgetting. And if it some- 
 times happens that neither the hero nor the priuciples commend themselves, still the 
 thoroughness of the execution, and the fire with which all his writings are instinct, 
 never fail to make a great work — London Review. 
 
 He writes history just as no man but Carlyle can write it, and for this reason his 
 history will be widely held in great admiration. We should never turn to this so 
 much for a history of Frederick as for Carlyle: he gives us himself emphatically, 
 amusingly, unquestionably, in these pages; yet he picks up facts to illustrate the life 
 of his hero and his times that no other man would have thought of touching, and to 
 the thinking mind those facts are ful of the bone and sinew of h.\9,tovY.— Evening 
 Pvst. 
 
 History, in the true sense, he does not and can not write, for he looks on mankind 
 as a herd without volition and without moral force; but such vivid pictures of events, 
 such living conceptions of character, we find nowhere else in prose. The figures of 
 most historians seem like dolls stuffed with bran, whose whole substance runs out 
 through any hole that criticism may tear in them ; but Carlyle's are so real that, if 
 you prick them, they bleed. — North Ainerican Review. 
 
 Wlien Carlyle writes a book we only look into it to see Carlyle, not the subject of 
 which he writes. He stands up among authors like a knarled and sturdy oak, full 
 of all sorts of fantastic phfipe?, ri'liculous oddities that denote a superabundance of 
 vigor in his growth — a vigor that will not be confined by the laws of ordinar}' life. 
 Frederick, as seen through the eyes of Carl5ie, will and does possess the attributes 
 /)f a god that never existed among men. This book Avill seize the big-eared world, 
 and compel it to listen — Boston Poat. 
 
Carlyle's Frederick the Great. 
 
 Probably the History of Frederick will forever remain one of the finest pieces of lit- 
 erary painting, as well as one of the most marvelous attempts at special pleading, 
 extant in our own or any language.— IyO?i(?o?i Spectator. 
 
 The rcdactcur can not adequately convey, in the short space allotted him, a con- 
 ception of the masterly thought, the comely diction, the astute philosophy, which 
 manifest themselves on every page of this last product of Carlyle's scholarly re- 
 searches and gifted intellect. There are some publications submitted to his examina- 
 tion which, because of their incorporate, inherent power, can not receive from his pen 
 a satisfactory mentioning of. " Frederick the Great" is one of them. Let the re- 
 viewer be never so succinct and comprehensive in the expression of his critical 
 opinions, he can simply marvel in silence at the graphic details (as in the book 
 now under our thumbing) of plots and campaigns, in cabinet council or on field of 
 battle, which captivate his attention, and then do what we most sincerely desire in 
 this respect — enjoin upon every reader an earnest perusal of the same. And this ia 
 the best, nay, all, that he can do — Home Journal. 
 
 Carlyle is, indeed, quaint and odd; but he is no less earnest, and true, and noble, 
 and grand. lie is the one specimen of his kind, we really believe, of philosophers, 
 historians, and poets. Of course we find his peculiarities all through the great work, 
 and equally of course we find it profoundly interesting in matter and piquant in 
 style. — Ex>iscox>al Recorder. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle has at last completed his graven image, and sets it up for the admira- 
 tion of the world. The Smelfunguses and Di-yasdusts, whom Carlyle deliglits to rid- 
 icule, have been great helps to him in gathering up the details of a life which at best 
 was unamiable, if not brutal; stem and unlovely, if not repulsive— the life of a man 
 whose love for war in the field was carried into the closet, and penetrated the gentler 
 seclusion of the family circle. Mr. Carlyle, with that amazing fancy for hero-wor- 
 ship in which he excels, would force us to believe his paragon all that he paints 
 him ; and there is certainly power in the picture. The old records have been most 
 thoroughly sifted by Carlyle, viho seems to have eliminated every grain of wheat from 
 bushels of chaflf. — Examiner and Chronicle. 
 
 The reader is out of patience with him in almost every page, yet reads him through 
 to the end, and closes the book still wishing for more. He is a man of tremendous 
 prejudices and partialities. Frederick is one of his heroes. Carlyle, however, has 
 reasons always to give for his likes and dislikes, and one is sure to be interested in 
 the argument, whether he accepts the conclusion or not— Christian Times and 
 Witness. 
 
 Published by HARPER cS^ BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any 
 f-aft of the United States, on receipt of tiie price. 
 
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