CHAPTER II.

HISTORY-PHILOSOPHICAL.

N the last chapter we considered History as a record and

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narrative of facts only. But it is usually more than a mere record. In the works of writers like Gibbon, Hume, Grote, Macaulay, Carlyle, the narrative is interwoven with philosophical and other reflections, which serve as bond and connecting link to the web and sequence of events; the problem of the historian being to find such causes, motives, and impulses, as shall be sufficient to explain the facts, and bind them into a complete and harmonious whole. If the motives and causes assigned are felt to spring naturally from the situation and character of the actors, we say the historian has given us a faithful account of the period he is recording; if not, we are dissatisfied, and pronounce his work a failure; as when a novelist, after laying down the ground-work of his characters, is unable to make them consistent or realisable. In other words, unless the causes assigned as adequate in the past, would be considered adequate to produce the same results in the present, we do not credit the representation. In a celebrated chapter of his great work, Gibbon has enumerated the causes which he deems sufficient to account for the spread of Christianity in the early ages. We ask ourselves whether the like causes would account for like facts, under like circumstances, to-day; and accept or reject his conclusions accordingly. Carlyle gives us what is called a 'new estimate' of Cromwell, and Froude of Henry VIII. We consider whether the estimates fit the facts according to the present laws of human nature, and so give or withhold our approbation. So that History, instead of throwing light on the Present, gets all the light it has to give from the Present;

instead of being the standpoint from which the present is to be interpreted and guided, the Present is the standpoint, and History but illustration and commentary merely. The neglect of this principle of interpretation has been the source of farreaching errors in historians otherwise great and admirable. No historian, perhaps, has taken more pains to make his characters credible and consistent than Carlyle. He is constantly asking us whether we can believe that men like Cromwell, Frederick, or Mirabeau, who did such and such things under such and such circumstances, could have been the men they are usually represented to be; and tells us that if we cannot do so, we are bound to reject the representation. But he sometimes departs from this, his own, principle of judging the Past by the Present, and when he does so, he falls into those peculiar errors from which most of his political heresies have taken their rise. He was never weary, for instance, of praising what he called the beautiful relation that existed between lord and serf under the old feudal régime; and of holding it up as a kind of exemplar for our imitation and guidance at the present time. In this relation, he asserted, the lord, on the one hand, gave guidance and protection; the serf, in return, loyalty and obedience. Now, not only was this not true as an historical fact, except in the most mechanical sense, but no man can believe that it ever could have been the fact. If we consider the relation in its effects on the heart (and this, indeed, was Carlyle's chief concern), instead of being beautiful, it was absolutely demoralising. Although the serf may have given loyalty and obedience-for there is no power so base and oppressive but will be reverenced by those who suffer from it-the lord, in return, regarded the serf as little better than a beast of the field, and treated him accordingly. As for the protection he afforded the serf, it was simply a piece of mutually-advantageous selfinterest; while the guidance he gave him eventuated in that brutal ignorance in which he has lain until our own time. Carlyle would not, of course, have the identical relation repeated

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in the present day; he would put a hero in the place of a lord, and the people in general in the place of a herd of serfs. But the upshot would be the same while the relationship continued, were it even to the end of time-on the one hand a nation of flunkeys, and on the other, a tyrant who would treat them as slaves. This result inheres in the very essence of the relation, and must reappear under like conditions in every age and nation. No history, groping among the dead rubbish-heaps of the Past, can obliterate this pregnant truth drawn from a just insight into To-day.

But how, it may be asked, are we to interpret the Past from the Present, if there are no institutions in the present answering to those in the past ? We have no serfs, for example, in England at the present time, how then are we to understand a state of society of which they were a component element? The answer is by analogy, by looking at the essence of the relation. Between a modern master and his lackeys and dependents, the same essential relation subsists as between the lord and the serf of feudal times. If we realise to ourselves the full round of this relationship, deepen the shades to correspond with the more absolute power possessed by a lord in early times, allow for a more aristocratic state of opinion and belief, the result will be the solution desired. This method of interpreting the Past from the Present has been followed by Shakspeare in his great historical dramas, with such success as we all know. He wishes, for example, to give us a picture of old Roman times. He gets from Plutarch and other sources the broad historical facts, the form of government and religion, the distribution of power and authority; this is the skeleton to which he has to give life and reality. How does he proceed? He simply takes his stand on the times in which he himself lived; notes the effects existing institutions have on his own and other minds; allows for the differences in custom, mode of life, and political and religious forms; and the result is a drama or dramas more real and lifelike, more true and believable, an insight into the working

of Roman life more subtle and profound, than all the husks with which the historians have furnished us. Instead of History giving us any insight into To-day, it is only our insight into To-day that can make the old dead bones of History live.

I am aware that there are a certain number of generalizations which are supposed to be the peculiar products of History, and which, whether for warning or encouragement, have a mystic sanctity attached to them quite out of proportion to their real value. These teachings of History, as they are called, include, among the rest, such well-worn platitudes as that luxury is the cause of decline in States; that the license of democracies ends in despotism; and that the first breath of liberty, instead of appeasing discontent, excites it. Now, whatever truth there may be in these generalities, our belief in them is no more due to the teachings of History, than our belief that two and two make four is due to the teaching of History. Were they not seen to hold true at the present time, to say that History affirmed them would have about as much weight as to say that, because History affirmed it, two and two make five. We believe luxury to be the forerunner of decline, not because History affirms the sequence, but because we see to-day that luxury tends to selfishness, isolation, and enervation, and that these relax those social bonds without which a nation cannot subsist. We believe the license of democracies will end in despotism, not because a number of historical facts support the induction, but because we perceive that license breeds disorder, and out of disorder order can come only by supreme power being placed for the time in the hands of some one individual. We cannot, of course, make as many direct observations as we should wish on the relations between the fall of States and their political antecedents. We cannot have empires and kingdoms falling to pieces every day before our eyes to serve merely as crucial experiments for our political inductions. We are obliged, accordingly, to draw on the Past for such

historical sequences as shall supplement the want of direct observation, and shall illustrate and enforce our political convictions. And it is precisely here that History is of service. Not that it teaches us anything new, but that it strengthens the convictions we have already formed from observation of the Present, by furnishing us with evidence of their truth in times gone by. It gives us the same sort of assurance as if we had discovered the account of an ancient eclipse in some old forgotten book, after having read that its exact time had been calculated by astronomers of our own day. It does for mankind what the experience of other minds does for the individual. The greater part of our knowledge is got by proxy, and not by direct experience. It is largely drawn from the reports of reliable contemporaries, or from the books and conversation of eye-witnesses. Nevertheless, we believe and act on the information received, not because the authority is infallible, but because it runs in accord with our other beliefs, or at least does no violence to them. I can believe in events I have not witnessed, in crimes I have not committed, not because the testimony is unimpeachable, but because it corresponds to tendencies which I feel in myself, or see in the world around me. I can believe in a man killing his neighbour in a passion although I have never witnessed it, because I can realise the extent to which passion will go when unchecked by higher considerations. So, too, with History. It supplies the present age with experience of former ages, and so gives assurance that those results have actually happened which we should have been led to expect from tendencies visible in our own time. But the conclusions drawn from it must be credible to us now, or were a messenger sent from Heaven to announce them we should not believe him. And thus it is that the fraction of eternity known as To-day, will, if rightly seen, balance the whole of recorded history, as easily as a drop of water, when rightly placed, will balance the sea.

That History gets all its credence from insight into To-day