Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/363



HOEVER has attended but a little to the phenomena of human nature has discovered how inadequate is the clearest insight which he can hope to attain into character and disposition. Every one is a perplexity to himself and a perplexity to his neighbours; and men who are born in the same generation, who are exposed to the same influences, trained by the same teachers, and live from childhood to age in constant and familiar intercourse, are often little more than shadows to each other, intelligible in superficial form and outline, but divided inwardly by impalpable and mysterious barriers.

And if from those whom we daily meet, whose features are before our eyes, and whose minds we can probe with questions, we are nevertheless thus separated, how are the difficulties of the understanding increased when we are looking back from another age, with no better assistance than books, upon men who played their parts upon the earth under other outward circumstances, with other beliefs, other habits, other modes of thought, other principles of judgment! We see beings like ourselves,