Historical and Political Essays | Page 5

joys and sorrows of the past
our measures of judgment are almost hopelessly false. The most
humane man cannot emancipate himself from the law of his nature,
according to which he is more affected by some tragic circumstance
which has taken place in his own house or in his own street than by a
catastrophe which has carried anguish and desolation over enormous
areas in a distant continent. In history, too, there are vast tracts which
are almost necessarily unrealised. We judge a period mainly by its great
men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the fortunes of a small class;
and the great mass of obscure, suffering, inarticulate humanity, whose
happiness is often so profoundly affected by political and military
events, almost escapes our notice. It should be the object of history to
bring before us past events in their true proportion and significance,

and one of the greatest improvements in modern history is the
increased attention which is paid to the social, industrial, and moral
history of the poor. The paucity of our information and the difficulty of
realising the conditions of obscure multitudes will always make this
branch of history very imperfect, but it is one of the most essential to
the just judgment of the past.
Another task which lies before the historian is that of distinguishing
proximate from ultimate causes. Our first natural impulse is to attribute
a great change to the men who effected it and to the period in which it
took place, and to neglect or underrate the long train of causes which
had been, often through many generations, preparing its advent. A
faithful historian must especially guard against this error. He must
study the slow process of growth as well as the moment of
efflorescence, the long progress of decay as well as the final
catastrophe. He will probably find that the part played by statesmen and
legislatures is less than he had imagined, and that the causes of the
movements he relates must be sought over a wider area and through a
longer period.
Moral, intellectual, or economical movements very slightly connected
with political life are often those which have most largely contributed
to the good or evil fortunes of a nation; and even in the sphere of
politics it is not the events which attract the most vivid contemporary
interest that have the most enduring influence. Few things contribute so
much to the formation of the social type as the laws regulating the
succession of property and especially the agglomeration or division of
landed property. The growth of militarism in a nation, besides its direct
and obvious consequences, forms a type of character which will sooner
or later show itself in almost every department of legislation, and the
tendency of politics to enlarge or narrow the sphere of individual
liberty or of government control, will affect most deeply the habits of
the people. Laws regulating private enterprises, substituting State
control or initiative for individual action, encouraging or discouraging
thrift, and above all interfering with free contracts, have much more
than an immediate influence, for they become the prolific parents of
many further extensions. In the words of an excellent observer, it will

be found 'that our legislative interference is but the first link of a long
chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally
produced by the effects of the preceding.' It is by studying such
tendencies through long periods of time that their good or evil
influences may be best discovered, and this should be one of the great
tasks of the historian.
But, however large a part may be given to the impersonal influences in
history, he will still be largely concerned with the record of individual
achievements, and the great men of the past will form the most
conspicuous landmarks of his narrative. I have often thought, however,
that nations are judged too much by the great men they have produced
and not sufficiently by the way in which they have discriminated
among them and appreciated them. Genius is like the wind that bloweth
where it listeth, and it often appears in strangely uncongenial quarters.
The true nobility of a nation is shown by the men they choose, by the
men they follow, by the men they admire, by the ideals of character and
conduct they place before them. Tried by such tests, there is often much
that is profoundly saddening in the history of countries that have been
far from poor in the number of their great men.
In the judgment of historical characters there are two cautions on which
it may not be useless to dwell. There is a large class of public men who
show little capacity in dealing with or directing the present conditions
of their time, but who see clearly the bourne