Lectures on Modern history | Page 4

of the
American Revolution and the French Restoration, the early years of
Richelieu and Mazarin, and a few volumes of Mr. Gardiner, show here
and there like Pacific islands in the ocean. I should not even venture to
claim for Ranke, the real originator of the heroic study of records, and
the most prompt and fortunate of European pathfinders, that there is
one of his seventy volumes that has not been overtaken and in part
surpassed. It is through his accelerating influence mainly that our
branch of study has become progressive, so that the best master is

quickly distanced by the better pupil #24. The Vatican archives alone,
now made accessible to the world, filled 3239 cases when they were
sent to France; and they are not the richest. We are still at the beginning
of the documentary age, which will tend to make history independent
of historians, to develop learning at the expense of writing, and to
accomplish a revolution in other sciences as well.
To men in general I would justify the stress I am laying on Modern
History, neither by urging its varied wealth, nor the rupture with
precedent, nor the perpetuity of change and increase of pace, nor the
growing predominance of opinion over belief, and of knowledge over
opinion, but by the argument that it is a narrative told of ourselves, the
record of a life which is our own, of efforts not yet abandoned to repose,
of problems that still entangle the feet and vex the hearts of men. Every
part of it is weighty with inestimable lessons that we must learn by
experience and at a great price, if we know not how to profit by the
example and teaching of those who have gone before us, in a society
largely resembling the one we live in #25. Its study fulfils its purpose
even if it only makes us wiser, without producing books, and gives us
the gift of historical thinking, which is better than historical learning
#27. It is a most powerful ingredient in the formation of character and
the training of talent, and our historical judgments have as much to do
with hopes of heaven as public or private conduct. Convictions that
have been strained through the instances and the comparisons of
modern times differ immeasurably in solidity and force from those
which every new fact perturbs, and which are often little better than
illusions or unsifted prejudice #28.
The first of human concerns is religion, and it is the salient feature of
the modern centuries. They are signalised as the scene of Protestant
developments. Starting from a time of extreme indifference, ignorance,
and decline, they were at once occupied with that conflict which was to
rage so long, and of which no man could imagine the infinite
consequences. Dogmatic conviction--for I shun to speak of faith in
connection with many characters of those days--dogmatic conviction
rose to be the centre of universal interest, and remained down to
Cromwell the supreme influence and motive of public policy. A time

came when the intensity of prolonged conflict, when even the energy of
antagonistic assurance abated somewhat, and the controversial spirit
began to make room for the scientific; and as the storm subsided, and
the area of settled questions emerged, much of the dispute was
abandoned to the serene and soothing touch of historians, invested as
they are with the prerogative of redeeming the cause of religion from
many unjust reproaches, and from the graver evils of reproaches that
are just. Ranke used to say that Church interests prevailed in politics
until the Seven Years' War, and marked a phase of society that ended
when the hosts of Brandenburg went into action at Leuthen, chaunting
their Lutheran hymns #29. That bold proposition would be disputed
even if applied to the present age. After Sir Robert Peel had broken up
his party, the leaders who followed him declared that no popery was the
only basis on which it could be reconstructed #30. On the other side
may be urged that, in July 1870, at the outbreak of the French war, the
only government that insisted on the abolition of the temporal power
was Austria; and since then we have witnessed the fall of Castelar,
because he attempted to reconcile Spain with Rome.
Soon after 1850 several of the most intelligent men in France, struck by
the arrested increase of their own population and by the telling statistics
from Further Britain, foretold the coming preponderance of the English
race. They did not foretell, what none could then foresee, the still more
sudden growth of Prussia, or that the three most important countries of
the globe would, by the end of the century, be those that chiefly
belonged to the conquests of the Reformation. So that in Religion,