Short Studies on Great Subjects | Page 7

ever be when the lost secret of the foundation of Rome can
be recovered by historic laws? If not, where is our science? It may be
said that this is a particular fact, that we can deal satisfactorily with
general phenomena affecting eras and cycles. Well, then, let us take
some general phenomenon. Mahometanism, for instance, or Buddhism.
Those are large enough. Can you imagine a science which would
have[A] foretold such movements as those? The state of things out of
which they rose is obscure; but suppose it not obscure, can you
conceive that, with any amount of historical insight into the old
Oriental beliefs, you could have seen that they were about to transform
themselves into those particular forms and no other?
It is not enough to say, that, after the fact, you can understand partially
how Mahometanism came to be. All historians worth the name have
told us something about that. But when we talk of science, we mean
something with more ambitious pretences, we mean something which
can foresee as well as explain; and, thus looked at, to state the problem
is to show its absurdity. As little could the wisest man have foreseen
this mighty revolution, as thirty years ago such a thing as Mormonism
could have been anticipated in America; as little as it could have been
foreseen that table-turning and spirit-rapping would have been an
outcome of the scientific culture of England in the nineteenth century.
The greatest of Roman thinkers, gazing mournfully at the seething

mass of moral putrefaction round him, detected and deigned to notice
among its elements a certain detestable superstition, so he called it,
rising up amidst the offscouring of the Jews, which was named
Christianity. Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the
Rome of Gregory VII., could he have beheld the representative of the
majesty of the Cæsars holding the stirrup of the Pontiff of that vile and
execrated sect, the spectacle would scarcely have appeared to him the
fulfilment of a rational expectation, or an intelligible result of the
causes in operation round him. Tacitus, indeed, was born before the
science of history; but would M. Comte have seen any more clearly?
Nor is the case much better if we are less hard upon our philosophy; if
we content ourselves with the past, and require only a scientific
explanation of that.
First, for the facts themselves. They come to us through the minds of
those who recorded them, neither machines nor angels, but fallible
creatures, with human passions and prejudices. Tacitus and Thucydides
were perhaps the ablest men who ever gave themselves to writing
history; the ablest, and also the most incapable of conscious falsehood.
Yet even now, after all these centuries, the truth of what they relate is
called in question. Good reasons can be given to show that neither of
them can be confidently trusted. If we doubt with these, whom are we
to believe?
Or again, let the facts be granted. To revert to my simile of the box of
letters, you have but to select such facts as suit you, you have but to
leave alone those which do not suit you, and let your theory of history
be what it will, you can find no difficulty in providing facts to prove it.
You may have your Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may have
your Schlegel's philosophy of history; you may prove from history that
the world is governed in detail by a special Providence; you may prove
that there is no sign of any moral agent in the universe, except man;
you may believe, if you like it, in the old theory of the wisdom of
antiquity; you may speak, as was the fashion in the fifteenth century, of
'our fathers, who had more wit and wisdom than we;' or you may talk
of 'our barbarian ancestors,' and describe their wars as the scuffling of

kites and crows.
You may maintain that the evolution of humanity has been an unbroken
progress towards perfection; you may maintain that there has been no
progress at all, and that man remains the same poor creature that he
ever was; or, lastly, you may say with the author of the 'Contrat Social,'
that men were purest and best in primeval simplicity--
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
In all, or any of these views, history will stand your friend. History, in
its passive irony, will make no objection. Like Jarno, in Goethe's novel,
it will not condescend to argue with you, and will provide you with
abundant illustrations of anything which you may wish to believe.
'What is history,' said Napoleon, 'but a fiction agreed upon?' 'My
friend,' said Faust to the student, who was growing enthusiastic about
the spirit of past ages;