A Political and Social History of Modern Europe | Page 5

been as constant under industrial democracy of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries as under the benevolent despotism of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But in measure as government
has enlarged its scope, the governed have worked out and applied
protective principles of personal liberties. The Puritan Revolution, the
French Revolution, the American Revolution, the uprisings of
oppressed populations throughout the nineteenth century, would be
quite inexplicable in other than modern times. In fact the whole
political history of the last four centuries is in essence a series of
compromises between the conflicting results of the modern exaltation
of the state and the modern exaltation of the individual.

(4) Replacement of the idea of the necessity of uniformity in a definite
faith and religion by toleration of many faiths or even of no faith. A
great state religion, professed publicly, and financially supported by all
the citizens, has been a distinguishing mark of every earlier age.
Whatever else may be thought of the Protestant movement of the
sixteenth century, of the rise of deism and skepticism in the seventeenth
and eighteenth, and of the existence of scientific rationalism in the
nineteenth and twentieth, there can be little doubt that each of them has
contributed its share to the prevalence of the idea that religion is
essentially a private, not a public, affair and that friendly rivalry in
good works is preferable to uniformity in faith.
(5) Diffusion of learning. The invention of printing towards the close of
the fifteenth century gradually revolutionized the pursuit of knowledge
and created a real democracy of letters. What learning might have lost
in depth through its marvelous broadening has perhaps been
compensated for by the application of the keenest minds in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to experimental science and in our
own day to applied science.
(6) Spirit of progress and decline of conservatism. For better or for
worse the modern man is intellectually more self-reliant than his
ancestors, more prone to try new inventions and to profit by new
discoveries, more conscious and therefore more critical of conditions
about him, more convinced that he lives in a better world than did his
fathers, and that his children who come after him should have a better
chance than he has had. This is the modern spirit. It is the product of all
the other elements of the history of five hundred years--the larger
geographical horizon, the greater physical comfort, the revolutionized
political institutions, the broader sympathies, the newer ideals of
education. Springing thus from events of the past few centuries, the
modern spirit nevertheless looks ever forward, not backward. A debtor
to the past, it will be doubly creditor to the future. It will determine the
type of individual and social betterment through coming centuries.
Such an idea is implied in the phrase, "the continuity of history"--the
ever-flowing stream of happenings that brings down to us the heritage
of past ages and that carries on our richer legacies to generations yet
unborn.
From such a conception of the continuity of history, the real

significance of our study can be derived. It becomes perfectly clear that
if we understand the present we shall be better prepared to face the
problems and difficulties of the future. But to understand the present
thoroughly, it becomes necessary not only to learn what are its great
features and tendencies, but likewise how they have been evolved. Now,
as we have already remarked, six most important characteristics of the
present day have been developed within the last four or five centuries.
To follow the history of this period, therefore, will tend to familiarize
us both with present-day conditions and with future needs. This is the
genuine justification for the study of the history of modern times.
Modern history may conveniently be defined as that part of history
which deals with the origin and evolution of the great distinguishing
characteristics of the present. No precise dates can be assigned to
modern history as contrasted with what has commonly been called
ancient or medieval. In a sense, any division of the historical stream
into parts or periods is fundamentally fallacious: for example, inasmuch
as the present generation owes to the Greeks of the fourth century
before Christ many of its artistic models and philosophical ideas and
very few of its political theories, the former might plausibly be
embraced in the field of modern history, the latter excluded therefrom.
But the problem before us is not so difficult as may seem on first
thought. To all intents and purposes the development of the six
characteristics that have been noted has taken place within five hundred
years. The sixteenth century witnessed the true beginnings of the
change in the extensive world discoveries, in the establishment of a
recognized European state system, in the rise of Protestantism,