William Stubbs

“ Nay, I would go further, and say I should like Charles better than Oliver even if his cause were less my own than I conceive it to be. I am ready to stick to my friends and vote against my unfriends: but why should I shut my eyes to the false and foolish things that my friends do, or to the noble aspirations, honesty, and good intentions of those whom I think wrong in their means and mistaken in their ends. Yet, as I began by saying, without some infusion of spite it seems as if history could not be written; that no man's zeal is roused to write unless it is moved by the desire to write down. ”

“ But I am sure that they have a great object—to increase human knowledge in minuteness of accuracy as well as in breadth and firmness of grasp; to perfect the instruments of historic study; to make, perhaps subordinately and subsidiarily, their exploration of our history throw light on the dark places, the obscure passages and flickering popular institutions of their own land. I wish that we should do the same, that we could and would so study not merely the works of Waitz, Sohm, Brunner and the Maurers, but the documentary evidence on which those writers have based their conclusions. ”

“ For I desire to introduce myself to you, not as a philosopher nor as a politician, but as a worker at history. Not that I have not strong views on politics, nor short and concise opinions on philosophy, but because this is my work, and I have taken it up in all sincerity and desire of truth, and wish to keep to my work and to the sort of truth that I can help on in the inquiry; because you have plenty of politicians and plenty of scholars to whom, if they wish to have it, I certainly win not begrudge the name of philosophers. ”

“ Is the task of empires to conquer or to colonise; the task of colonies to extirpate or to develope? Is a commercial or a military policy the surest agent of civilisation? Can a worn-out nation be revived and refreshed and recruited by a bracing treatment? can it be revived at all? Does the difference between European and Asiatic history consist in the vitality of the historic nations in Europe and the inexhaustibleness of the hive in Asia? If not, how is Europe to treat Asia, so that the march of civilisation may affect the lands in which the stream of history seems to have long been stayed? ”

“ Leopold von Ranke is not only beyond all comparison the greatest historical scholar alive, but one of the very greatest historians that ever lived. Unrivalled stores of knowledge, depth of research, intimate acquaintance with the most recondite sources, have been, in his case, supplemented by everything which could be conferred by a long life, continuous study, close association with the great political actors and thinkers of the greatest part of the most eventful century of the world's history. ”

“ There is enough of the idea of liberty and sound government to lift the struggle out of the region of mere legal resistance to mere legal oppression: there is a growth towards liberty in all the vindication of even class rights and special privileges: a growth towards liberty so spontaneous, I had almost said so little self-conscious, as to show that it is a natural, not a factitious growth: it is not taught by philosophers, it is not extorted by agitators, it is the outgrowth of law and a law-abiding spirit, tending by its very nature to freedom and order conjointly. ”

“ I do not anticipate Englishmen ever becoming a nation of researchers. We may come, more of us, to love investigation for its own sake, and to love the study of History for the very exercise that it furnishes to our powers, and for the new regions of interest which expand before us as we proceed. Such study must however continue to be the portion of comparatively few, the few who have leisure, or who have the love in such strength as to enable them to overcome all obstacles. ”

“ I do not indeed suppose that the scholars and students of Göttingen and Vienna are doing as Von Moltke and his agents are said to have done before the war of 1870, collecting plans, and charts, and itineraries, and models of fortresses, and raised maps of provinces, whilst they were training men and officers both at work and play for conquest. I do not believe that they want to take from us anything, not even the pride of knowing more of our own history than they do, or that they want to engross to themselves by conquest the whole domain of historical knowledge. ”

“ If you like, put it the other way, believe in the great Protestant statesman, treat Charles as the overrated fine gentleman, the narrow-minded advocate of a theory which he did not understand, the pig-headed maintainer of the cause you dislike. You may be a partisan, but can you not believe that, if you believe your own side of the question, truth when it is explored will be found on your side? ”

“ Seldom has so much promise, seldom have so great earnests of great work been so sadly or so fatally blighted: we cannot look that his place can ever in all respects be so filled that there will not still be much, very much, to desiderate; for it is not Oxford alone that laments him, nor the cause of Historical study only with which he had identified himself both here and throughout the literary world. ”

“ Let scripture history, classical and ecclesiastical history, medieval history and modern history, be read successively and connectedly, so much the better; but why deny that classical history and medieval and modern can be advantageously studied apart? why confine the thoughts to the points on which they are conterminous, continuous and agreed, to the exclusion of those in which they differ, when it is on the points in which they differ that the great contributions to the real history of man are to be traced? ”

“ In Modern History, on the contrary, you are dealing with the living subject: your field of examination is the living, working, thinking, growing world of to-day; as distinguished from the dead world of Greece and Rome, by the life that is in it, as it is in geographical area and in the embarrassing abundance of the data from which only in their full integrity it is safe, or ever will be safe, to attempt to philosophise. ”

“ History, the knowledge of the adventures, the development, the changeful career, the varied growths, the ambitions, aspirations, and, if you like, the approximating destinies of mankind, claims a place second to none in the roll of sciences. Arising from one of the first and most anciently cultivated instincts, the desire to know how we come to be what we are, and how the world comes to be what it is, the love of history is certainly second in origin to no other sort of love of knowledge. ”

“ So rapid is the progress of political life and opinion that even these great subjects are becoming quickly extinct or lost influences among the crowds of new ones. The Reform History has come to be regarded no longer as a grand revolution, of which its chief agents could predicate perfection and finality, but merely as a single stage in a progress the present velocity of which would have made the projectors dizzy. ”

“ It is not to make proselytes to one system of politics or another that the work of education is to be directed; a university is no political club or propaganda; I desire to use my office as a teacher of facts and of the right habit of using them.
And to do this we must begin at the right end, work from the past forwards, not backwards from the present. Our students ought not to go into the world a prey to newspaper correspondents: they ought not to go into public life ready to be moulded to the political views of the first clique that may catch hold of them. ”

“ Why then should not cycles of history, two, three, or more cycles of history, be allowed to exist, within which all the really important factors have their origin and development, and, it may be, work out their full destiny; successive great dramas of ages, the interest of which is self-contained, although there is enough of common ground between them and those which precede and follow to give them a simple continuity, and although there is doubtless in the divine mind one great plan of cosmical action in which each drama of the human ages serves as a single act or even a single incident? ”

“ And with real political awakening I shall trust that moral and religious progress will do more than keep pace. I go further; if the study of History can really be made an educational implement in schools, it will raise up a generation who not only will know how to vote, but will bring a judgment, prepared, trained, and in its own sphere exercised and developed, to help them in all the great affairs of life. Therefore let us have lectures many and good, books few and good; but above all school teaching fair, honest, and thorough. ”

“ We respect the man who, when he has to vote on any public question, goes to his books to get up the question instead of voting as the party whip would wish him; we would rather that his education had fitted him to do right at once, that he had studied public questions to begin with, or that he had, by the culture of educational reading, exercised his mind to discern between good and evil; but we do not despise him even if he votes wrong in the end. Even an indifferent Cyclopaedia is better than a paid party agent as a guide in doubtful questions. ”