LECTURES ON MODERN HISTORY. LECTURE I. ON THE VALUE OF HISTORY, AND ON THE ORIGINAL STATE OF MEN IN EUROPE AND GERMANY. THERE are three subjects which chiefly attract the attention of educated men, and occupy the leisure, which the duties of life and their social position leave them: the philosophy of life,—the enjoyment of the fine arts,—and the study of history. All three are adapted in various ways to exalt and enrich the inward man. They are in this respect equally indispensable. Yet it is pre-eminently from the study of history, that all these endeavours after a higher mental culture derive their fixed centre and support,-viz., their common reference to man, his destinies and energies. Without a knowledge of the mighty past, the philosophy of life, however much it may enchant by wit, or transport by eloquence, will never be able to carry us beyond the limits of the present, out of the narrow circle of our customs and immediate Associations. Even the higher philosophy itself, that most daring, and for that very reason, a noble aspiration of human thought, can never with impunity neglect a constant retrospection of the history of man's development and of his mental energies, as it would otherwise infallibly be entangled and lost in the unintelligible. History, on the contrary, if it does not stop at the mere enumeration of names, dates, and external facts; if it seizes on and sets forth the spirit of great times, of great men, and great events, is in itself a true philosophy, intelligible to all, and certain, and in its manifold. applications the most instructive. The value of the fine arts R for all higher mental culture is acknowledged. But without the earnestness which they acquire only by their relation to the destinies and history of man, they would ever be in danger of becoming an empty pastime-a mere revel of the imagination. The meaning of the most admirable and highest productions of the plastic arts and of poetry becomes really perceptible to us, only when we can enter into the spirit of the times out of which they sprang, or which they set forth. If philosophy more immediately engages the understanding, if the fine arts occupy the feelings and the imagination, so history, on the other hand, claims the whole attention of man, and all the faculties of his soul alike; or at least it ought to do so, if it would correspond to its high destination. Thus history, if not in itself the most brilliant, is yet the most indispensable link in that beautiful chain, which encompasses man's higher intellectual culture: and history it is which binds the others more closely together. But another and very special motive for the study of history is to be derived from the extraordinary and surprising events of the present times.* Reflection on the mighty past,-the knowledge of it can alone enable us to take a calm steady survey of the present, to measure its greatness or its littleness, and to form a just judgment respecting it. Thus are the simplest things generally the most exalted. History constitutes the apparently easy and first element of all instruction; and yet the more cultivated the mind of a man is, the more multiplied opportunities will he find of applying it and turning it to use, the more will he discern its richness, and divine its deeper sense. Indeed, no thinker is so profound as to be able to anticipate with accuracy the course of history, no scholar so learned as to think he has exhausted it, or has come to the bottom of it, and no sovereign so powerful that he may with impunity disregard its silent teaching. It is a great merit of our age to have renovated the study of history, and to have cultivated it with extraordinary zeal. The English had the honour of leading the way in this noble career. The Germans have followed them with success. It would be easy to name one or two of our great historians who, at least as regards the happy combination of intel * A.D. 1810. |