Tertiary

“ The history of the middle ages—a subject of which lectures are promised at some future period—is a theme replete with the interest to every one who would trace the moral and political progress of society. It was then that the elements which compose our present political system, though still in a state of fusion, were beginning to shape themselves into order. ”

“ Year has followed year and century has followed century, and through it all, surely, slowly, often torn and twisted out of shape but always growing, evolving, moving onward, the law has followed the safe appeal of truth to time, toward this great goal. ”

“ Nowadays we may see the office of historical research as that of explaining, and therefore lightening, the pressure that the past must exercise upon the present, and the present upon the future. Today we study the day before yesterday, in order that yesterday may not paralyze today, and today may not paralyze tomorrow. ”

“ On the contrary, the higher, over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, — politics, industry, science, literature, art — imply a differentiation among men that in spite of its significance would defy classification. ”

“ Throughout it was essentially one phase of human organization. When one comes to examine the final result, it is astonishing to remark the small amount of essential change, of positively final and irreparable alteration, in the conditions of the common life. ”

“ Historical continuity and mobility.—Historical continuity, which maintains the identity of the present with the past, implies the existence of a body of tradition which is transmitted from the older to the younger generations. Through the medium of tradition, including in that term all the learning, science, literature, and practical arts, not to speak of the great body of oral tradition which is after all a larger part of life than we imagine, the historical and [Pg 284] cultural life is maintained. ”

“ All the dreary questions of the precise order in which history should be taught—whether backwards or forwards, local first or the reverse, may be brought up if one chooses to do so. But after all, these questions are not very fruitful. What we need most is the historical spirit. ”

“ These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of the present age, and they the character of the men now living. ”

“ King, lords, and aristocrats; landholders, tithe-collectors, church and state, thank God, will soon be overthrown, and the golden age revived—the millennium—the true millennium—not what your poor mother talked about. ”

“ The motion which I have the honor to lay before your lordships has a double aspect—it passes judgment on the past, and expresses an opinion with regard to the policy of the future. Some people receive with considerable impatience the idea that, at the present crisis of our country’s destiny, we should examine into the past, and spend our time in judging of that which can not be recalled. ”

“ Yes, I will welcome the new man, although I shall see more of the old one in him than you perhaps think,—nor would I have it otherwise. We don't change the bases of our lives, after all: the forces are differently combined, otherwise developed, but they hang, I fancy, to the same roots. ”

“ But the eighteenth century, notwithstanding its nearness in time, and the immense mass of information that we have about it, appears strangely remote, separated from us as it is by the great gulf of the French Revolution. The century of which men still vigorous have known many living representatives impresses us as markedly different in temper and point of view from our own. ”

“ The rapid changes through which the institutions of the country are now passing, and the still more stupendous revolutions in the opinions of men, remind us that we stand to-day upon the outer verge of a great historic cycle, within which a completed past will shortly be enclosed. ”

“ When I come in touch with this atmosphere of political activity, I feel the old fire of 1848 coursing in my veins as fresh and young as ever. I feel that the true vocation of my life lies where my endeavor will reach out to universal problems. ”

“ How it is that we have in Part I odes of comparatively few of the states into which the kingdom was divided, and that the odes of those states extend only over a short period of their history:—for these things we cannot account further than by saying that such were the ravages of time and the results of disorder. We can only accept the collection as it is, and be thankful for it. ”

“ If recent history, then, gives new meaning to past events, if it has to deal with the rise into a commanding position of forces, the origin and growth of which may have been inadequately described or even overlooked by historians of the previous generation, it is important to study the present and the recent past, not only for themselves but also as the source of new hypotheses, new lines of inquiry, new criteria of the perspective of the remoter past. ”

“ In a word, we must look to the Thirteenth Century for the origin, or at least the definite acceptance, of most of those conventions which make for kindly courtesy among men, and have made possible human society and friendly intercourse in our modern sense of those words. ”

“ Then arose a stage of civilization which we find pictured in the most ancient records—a stage in which men were governed by laws that were perhaps as wisely adapted to their conditions as our laws are to ours—in which the phenomena of nature were rudely observed, and striking occurrences in the earth or in the heavens recorded in the annals of the nation. ”

“ You have shone upon a mighty host of leaders and their followers. You shine indifferently upon our passing shows and remain to shine when we are gone, mocking our longest efforts. Ah, how does that Eternity of the Past outdo the little Eternity of the Future of which poor man has dreamed! ”

“ Side by side, my brother, we have studied modern history, meditating over those great catastrophes which are at once lessons to rulers and a warning to the people. Side by side, we have also thought over and formed a common judgment that every century ought to have, and actually has, its legitimate necessities and natural aspirations. ”

“ TRUTH.
“A century is a formula; an epoch is an expressed thought. One such thought-expressed civilization passes to another. The centuries are the phrases of civilization; what she says here she does not repeat there. But these mysterious phrases are linked together: logic—the logos—is within them, and their series constitutes progress. In all these, phrase expressions of a single thought, the divine thought, we are slowly deciphering the word fraternity.
“All light is at some point condensed into a flame; likewise every epoch is condensed in a man. ”

“ In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore, in which so many of us at present are agreed to believe, which is, indeed, the common meeting point of all the thousand sects into which we are split, it is with saddened feelings that we see so little of it in so large a matter. ”

“ When considering the past one is inclined to ask the question: “Does the history of mankind represent an unbroken line of progress, or, on the contrary, does it reflect a series of alternating periods of development and decay?” ”

“ In this province, for the first time, the historical Art, the fundamental principle of which we have stated above, comes into play for the discovery and collection of facts; and to enable us to comprehend clearly and completely the actual condition of the Present Time, particularly in so far as it may lead us to the discovery of previous facts, as well as to perceive distinctly under the condition of what earlier facts alone the present can be understood. ”

“ Here is the point: the Law designs periods of ascendency for each people in its turn, that it may acquire these qualities; and it appoints for each people in its turn Periods of subordination, poverty and sorrow, that it may develop the opposite qualities of patience, humility, and orderly effort. ”

“ If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society requires from its government which is not included in the idea of Progress, we must define Order as the preservation of all kinds and amounts of good which already exist, and Progress as consisting in the increase of them. ”

“ The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development—years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century—the wonderful century. ”

“ The principle of the Third Age,—that Age which we have undertaken to describe,—is now sufficiently apparent:—this, namely,—to accept nothing whatever but that which it understands. The Comprehensible is its highest Idea;—it is thus Scientific in its form ”

“ Are you not yourselves every day, in your efforts to illumine the darkness of antiquity, cutting and hewing with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts, that whole ancient and rugged forest of your laws? ”

“ It makes it possible for us to see not only how to-day is growing out of yesterday, and this year out of last, but how the nineteenth century prepared the way for the twentieth, the eighteen for the nineteenth, and so on, back and back to the very beginnings of man's lineage. ”

“ We have now seen in many directions how great are the changes in the constitution of society, which are brought about by a succession of small movements, each of which imperceptibly bears its share in the change. ”

“ Believe me, your glory and the safety of the commonwealth, your own interests, as well as ours, require that there be no delay. You are still young, but time is flying; and old age will come and take you by surprise when you are at least expecting it. ”

“ Not only does the Third Stage bring illumination, intuitive understanding of processes in Nature and Humanity, sympathy with the animals, artistic capacity, and so forth, but it necessarily brings a new Order of Society. ”

“ The institutions of the middle ages, a celebrated modern historian has said, are intelligible to him that has entered into the spirit of those days, and who thinks, feels, and believes as did the people of those bygone centuries. ”

“ But in order to know what state will best suit our end, we must reflect. We must interrogate the experience of our past falls, the causes of our sins, the nature of our aptitudes, the excellences, the advantages, the dangers, of the several states of life. ”

“ These men, by employment of modern means and appliances, and by contribution of their own genius and learning, not only added to the rich stores of ancient times, but prepared the way for the pre-eminence of the succeeding century—the century which followed the Council of Trent. ”

“ The infinite multiplication of these groups, their jealousies and continual jarrings and collisions, made the Republic all the more indispensable to them, all the more the object of their hopes and love. ”

“ The times are so close at hand that the relations between events and tendencies force themselves upon our attention. We have had to deal with the connections of geography, industrial growth, politics, and government. With these we must take into consideration the changing social composition, the inherited beliefs and habitual attitude of the masses of the people, the psychology of the nation and of the separate sections, as well as of the leaders. ”

“ It seems to me to be inevitable, that, in this matter, the Old World should follow the example of the New; it moves towards the same end under the influence of peculiar causes, and it is irresistibly driven onward by what is commonly called the force of events, that is, by the decree of providence. ”

“ The great division of history into phases by Turgot and Comte first affirmed this law in its outlines by asserting the unity of progress, for a mere phase interrupts no growth, and nature shows innumerable such phases. ”

“ Our historians divide the entire revolutionary epoch--from the close of the war, or the beginning of the seventies, to the establishment of the present order early in the twentieth century--into two periods, the incoherent and the rational. ”

“ If we wish to explain our actual modern states, we must study ancient states, and also the inferior contemporary groups which they resemble in so many particulars. It is only by exact knowledge of the past that we can interpret the present and look into the future. ”

“ In great affairs I have always dreaded the counsels of the young. Youthful ignorance and inexperience have been the ruin of many empires. I, therefore, learn with pleasure that you have named a council of elders, to whom you have confided this affair. ”

“ But in due time another conflict had to be sustained, not by the masses, but by great men, the consequence and the completion of that which had gone before. ... The discipline of action precedes the effort of reason. ... So it came to pass that the period during which this second conflict of the Faith was waged was, roughly speaking, from the middle of the second to the middle of the third century. ”

“ The eighteenth century called all things in question; it is the task of the nineteenth to conclude and speak the last word; and the last word of the nineteenth century has been for realities—realities which live however and move. ”

“ We take up the story in the early years of the tenth century, when the Dark Ages had not yet run their course. We end it in the closing years of the thirteenth century, when the choicest flowers of mediæval civilisation were already in full bloom. ”

“ They, however, insisted upon making history, turning a change of base into a nominal retreat, and begetting in themselves a brass-bound and untamable spirit which it took vast wealth and several years to humble. ”