Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/118

 Vacation. What value will truth and justice have in the eyes of a man who has read history through such a medium? But again I forbear: one word; it has been said, perhaps the story is apocryphal, that one well-known politician of our own day, one too whose judgment would have been well worth having on present events, once said something to the effect that there was more valuable political training in one column of The Times than in all the pages of Thucydides; I will venture to say that there are English journals now, claiming a worldwide circulation and assuming to be the very interpreters of history and political morality, in preference to whose lessons I should recommend the student to seek for lessons of history and political morality among the arrowheaded inscriptions of Assyria or the papyri of the Neapolitan Museum.

But I have already run into the third division of my subject: that is the popular view of historic knowledge; the aspect of it in which it becomes merely a tool or a stock of tools capable of employment for ulterior purposes; and the methods of teaching it by which with the least trouble the learner can acquire practically useful information. I call this the popular or utilitarian aspect, because it belongs to the catchpenny theory of human life according to which the value of a thing is just as much as it win bring; the theory that despises science and research, that regards politics as a game between Blue and Orange, that places the interest of Great Britain at the crown and apex of national ambitions, and regards education in general not as the training of the human mind for God's service, a development of powers to His glory and the welfare of our fellow-men, but as a means for the acquisition of a certain sum in the funds; the theory that regards human souls as factory hands, and ascribes to parliament the power of making a false statement true. But although it is the vulgar view of education, and in this extreme a very vulgar view, it is founded upon a truth. There are many things which a mere acquaintance with the facts of history, however that acquaintance may have been gained, enables a man to do better than he would do them without it. There is a knowledge of history for ordinary practical purposes which may be acquired without either the love of the subject