Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/84

 setting plainly before us, teachers of history, the views which popular opinion and the men who lead popular opinion upon educational matters formulate regarding the pursuit to which we have devoted ourselves. To us a great many of the statements as well as of the theories that find enthusiastic echoes in mixed audiences, are apt to appear either truisms, or fallacies, or both. In many of them there is an apologetic tone which reminds us to some extent of what we used to hear in common rooms when our History school was first started, as if the study was one that needed some vindication as a bona fide study, valuable in itself and in its results, before it could be allowed to compete with other older and more organised departments of learning. And, as usual, when that is defended which needs no defence, the theories of the advocate produce an effect diametrically opposite to that which he intended; he seems to hazard on the strength of some occasional or adventitious argument the claim which on its own merits is indisputable. Now far be it from me to attempt even to gather up or analyse, much less to review, the deliberate and elaborate utterances to which I have referred. I am not going to answer or to refute them where they need refutation, or to use them to strengthen my own theories where I agree with them: it may be enough to say that many of them contain good and sound suggestions which recommend themselves as soon as they are heard; that others are familiar as lecture-room words to all who have any experience in teaching; and that the worst that can be justly said of any of them is that they prescribe, for the general pursuit of the whole study of History, directions which are valuable in their way in relation to particular portions of it, or for particular purposes for which it may have been undertaken. Instead of reviewing them, then, I shall simply accept them as furnishing suggestions for a brief discussion on points on which it is my privilege to speak, and yours to judge whether what I have to say is worth saying. For I also will claim it as a professorial right to be allowed to utter truisms, and will claim, moreover, as one advantage accruing from our common heritage of error, that, if I utter fallacies, I may have the sympathy of