Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/221

 whatever side he may take, or, even if he turn his back altogether on the line of study along which I have tried to lead him, he will approach questions of the day with a more balanced judgment; he will be less disposed to see all good on one side of the great questions, and all evil on the other; he will come to the strife of politics with his weapons more carefully chosen, better handled and better sharpened than if he had never passed through the training

Medieval History is a history of rights and wrongs; modern, History as contrasted with medieval divides itself into two portions ; the first a history of powers, forces, and dynasties; the second, a history in which ideas take the place of both rights and forces. The point of time at which we should mark the separation in the latter is the first French revolution. There is a continuity of life through the three; the fundamental principle, which still holds its ground in the struggle of ideas, is distinctly traceable in the primitive struggle of rights and wrongs; and far more and more distinctly in the more modern struggle of the balance of power; but in the first and second period, ideas have little weight compared with rights and forces; in the first rights are more potent than force, in the second forces are more potent than rights; and now rights, forces, and ideas are matched in the arena of modern politics in such a way as to make right and force themselves ideas. At this moment—I use an illustration which ought properly to grow out of something that must show further on—Austria may be regarded as representing the more ancient form of right, Russia as representing the form of force, and Germany, Italy, and France different forms of leading idea. I do not mean that Austria is justified on appeal to right, or that Russia relies solely on force, or that the other three states have not ample grounds, both in right and force, for their present position, but that historically those are distinctions essentially characteristic.

You may wonder at my temerity in the use of such very abstract terms, and you have a right to bid me define more clearly the historical periods of which I am speaking I will then define medieval history for our present purpose as