Historical and Political Essays | Page 9

time at
his disposal to-night to a few reflections on the political value of
history, and on the branches and methods of historical study that are
most fitted to form a sound political judgment.
Is history a study of real use in practical, and especially in political, life?
The question, as you know, has been by no means always answered in
the same way. In its earlier stages history was regarded chiefly as a
form of poetry recording the more dramatic actions of kings, warriors,
and statesmen. Homer and the early ballads are indeed the first

historians of their countries, and long after Homer one of the most
illustrious of the critics of antiquity described history as merely 'poetry
free from the incumbrance of verse.' The portraits that adorned it gave
some insight into human character; it breathed noble sentiments,
rewarded and stimulated noble actions, and kindled by its strong
appeals to the imagination high patriotic feeling; but its end was rather
to paint than to guide, to consecrate a noble past than to furnish a key
for the future; and the artist in selecting his facts looked mainly for
those which could throw the richest colour upon his canvas. Most
experience was in his eyes (to adopt an image of Coleridge) like the
stern light of a ship, which illuminates only the path we have already
traversed; and a large proportion of the subjects which are most
significant as illustrating the true welfare and development of nations
were deliberately rejected as below the dignity of history. The old
conception of history can hardly be better illustrated than in the words
of Savage Landor. 'Show me,' he makes one of his heroes say, 'how
great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great
calamities averted. Show me the generals and the statesmen who stood
foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence.... Let the books of the
Treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and
measures in the market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the
light they love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful
throne, and at the sides of her Eloquence and War.'[1]
It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different conception
of history grew up. Historians then came to believe that their task was
not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem; to explain or
illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and
adversity. The history of morals, of industry, of intellect, and of art; the
changes that take place in manners or beliefs; the dominant ideas that
prevailed in successive periods; the rise, fall, and modification of
political constitutions; in a word, all the conditions of national
well-being became the subjects of their works. They sought rather to
write a history of peoples than a history of kings. They looked specially
in history for the chain of causes and effects. They undertook to study
in the past the physiology of nations, and hoped by applying the
experimental method on a large scale to deduce some lessons of real

value about the conditions on which the well-being of society mainly
depends.
How far have they succeeded in their attempt, and furnished us with a
real compass for political guidance? Let me in the first place frankly
express my own belief that to many readers of history the study is not
only useless, but even positively misleading. An unintelligent, a
superficial, a pedantic or an inaccurate use of history is the source of
very many errors in practical judgment. Human affairs are so infinitely
complex that it is vain to expect that they will ever exactly reproduce
themselves, or that any study of the past can enable us to predict the
future with the minuteness and the completeness that can be attained in
the exact sciences. Nor will any wise man judge the merits of existing
institutions solely on historic grounds. Do not persuade yourself that
any institution, however great may be its antiquity, however
transcendent may have been its uses in a remote past, can permanently
justify its existence, unless it can be shown to exercise a really
beneficial influence over our own society and our own age. It is equally
true that no institution which is exercising such a beneficial influence
should be condemned, because it can be shown from history that under
other conditions and in other times its influence was rather for evil than
for good.
These propositions may seem like truisms; yet how often do we hear a
kind of reasoning that is inconsistent with them! How often, for
example, in the discussions on the Continent on the advantages and
disadvantages of monastic institutions has the chief stress of the
argument been laid upon the great benefits which those