Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/100

 precious lessons of the two are not those in which the approximate continuity maybe traced: the continuity lies in the less important, the great contributions of either to the world's growth lie in the less continuous influences; in the ancient world in a perished civilisation, in the modern world in one in which all the fresh springs are, by God's grace, in the new races.

You will, I hope, acquit me now of any desire to undervalue any kind of culture; but, put upon our defence, we must maintain the strong point, as it seems to us, of our position; and it is our duty, as well as our right, to say what we think. Most successful teachers of Modern History have passed through the gate of the ancient lore; but if they would look the truth in the face, they would see that the help which that ancient lore gave to the study of the modern, was first in the discipline of the mind, for which it furnishes an incomparable exercise, and secondly in the wealth of illustration with which it provides them; but the illustrations are not links in an historic chain, and the fact that the discipline of the mind has been beneficial by no means implies that the powers cultivated in the two studies are the same, or the method of the one applicable without much modification to the exploration of the other. And this is a point which is scarcely less important than the more ostensible and obvious one on which I have dwelt so long.

The method of historic investigation is different in the two or three regions which we have been comparing. Of that I have said something in reference to original sources, and I may have to say something more in reference to the educational view of Historic study. I will not therefore dwell upon it now; but rest content to base my argument on what I have said; that is, the Unity and Continuity are only traceable in the high regions which belong to other sciences and other studies, or in the lower departments of minute archæology; it is well to abstract, and well to make our own generalisations in the realms that are common to the two, but it is a poor result if, after fixing our thoughts on the things in which they agree arid excluding those in which they differ, we find that we have come to generalisations that might