Lectures on Modern history | Page 2

the graver issues concerned, and the vital consequences of error, it
opened the way in research, and was the first to be treated by close
reasoners and scholars of the higher rank #6.
In the same manner, there is wisdom and depth in the philosophy which

always considers the origin and the germ, and glories in history as one
consistent epic #7. Yet every student ought to know that mastery is
acquired by resolved limitation. And confusion ensues from the theory
of Montesquieu and of his school, who, adapting the same term to
things unlike, insist that freedom is the primitive condition of the race
from which we are sprung #8. If we are to account mind not matter,
ideas not force, the spiritual property that gives dignity and grace and
intellectual value to history, and its action on the ascending life of man,
then we shall not be prone to explain the universal by the national, and
civilisation by custom #9. A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of
Socrates, a few lines that were inscribed on an Indian rock before the
Second Punic War, the footsteps of a silent yet prophetic people who
dwelt by the Dead Sea, and perished in the fall of Jerusalem, come
nearer to our lives than the ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed
their swine on the Hercynian acorns.
For our present purpose, then, I describe as Modern History that which
begins four hundred years ago, which is marked off by an evident and
intelligible line from the time immediately preceding, and displays in
its course specific and distinctive characteristics of its own #10. The
modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession,
with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a
new order of things, under a law of innovation, sapping the ancient
reign of continuity. In those days Columbus subverted the notions of
the world, and reversed the conditions of production, wealth, and power;
in those days Machiavelli released government from the restraint of law;
Erasmus diverted the current of ancient learning from profane into
Christian channels; Luther broke the chain of authority and tradition at
the strongest link; and Copernicus erected an invincible power that set
for ever the mark of progress upon the time that was to come. There is
the same unbound originality and disregard for inherited sanctions in
the rare philosophers as in the discovery of Divine Right, and the
intruding Imperialism of Rome. The like effects are visible everywhere,
and one generation beheld them all. It was an awakening of new life;
the world revolved in a different orbit, determined by influences
unknown before. After many ages persuaded of the headlong decline
and impending dissolution of society #11, and governed by usage and

the will of masters who were in their graves, the sixteenth century went
forth armed for untried experience, and ready to watch with
hopefulness a prospect of incalculable change.
That forward movement divides it broadly from the older world; and
the unity of the new is manifest in the universal spirit of investigation
and discovery which did not cease to operate, and withstood the
recurring efforts of reaction, until, by the advent of the reign of general
ideas which we call the Revolution, it at length prevailed #12. This
successive deliverance and gradual passage, for good and evil, from
subordination to independence is a phenomenon of primary import to
us, because historical science has been one of its instruments #13. If the
Past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the Past is the
safest and the surest emancipation. And the earnest search for it is one
of the signs that distinguish the four centuries of which I speak from
those that went before. The Middle Ages, which possessed good writers
of contemporary narrative, were careless and impatient of older fact.
They became content to be deceived, to live in a twilight of fiction,
under clouds of false witness, inventing according to convenience, and
glad to welcome the forger and the cheat #14. As time went on, the
atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened, until, in the
Renaissance, the art of exposing falsehood dawned upon keen Italian
minds. It was then that History as we understand it began to be
understood, and the illustrious dynasty of scholars arose to whom we
still look both for method and material. Unlike the dreaming prehistoric
world, ours knows the need and the duty to make itself master of the
earlier times, and to forfeit nothing of their wisdom or their warnings
#15, and has devoted its best energy and treasure to the sovereign
purpose of detecting error and vindicating entrusted truth #16.
In this epoch of full-grown history men have not acquiesced in the
given conditions of their lives. Taking little for granted