Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/97

 For just think how the field of view expands; we can never know one thing perfectly unless we know everything; true, but we can try to learn here and there a thing as perfectly as it can be learned, without knowing everything. In the same sense in which the careful study of ancient history is absolutely necessary to the careful study of modern history, the careful study of the latter is absolutely necessary to that of the former. If you read the second alone, where do you find your causes? If you read the first alone, where do you find your consequences? Just in the same way, it may be said, the external history of man cannot be read without an internal reading of his history; no man can approach History without being a consummate moral philosopher; yet is it so? Then most of the great historians of the world have been great moral philosophers without knowing it. But how can a man pretend to understand the moral conformation of his fellows without knowing their physical conformation? Then the moral philosopher must be an anatomist, and the anatomist a chemist, a botanist and geologist, and the geologist an astronomer; i.e. instead of borrowing, and being content to borrow from the kindred and allied sciences what is necessary for the consistent pursuit of our own. study, we must know the principles of all, like the sophists of old, and we all know what that ends in, κακῶς ἠπίστατο πάντα. But my friend says, exaggeration is no argument, an answer which, by-the-by, may tell either way: ancient, and modern and medieval history, as you call them, have the same subject-matter, they are connected by certain visible and tangible lines of recorded fact, and they are, as yourself admit, acts of one great drama. Granted: first then, ancient history has much that is common with modern in the region of political thought; second then, the ancient Roman civilisation and literature constitute by themselves, and they are but one of many, a sufficient line of continuity to prove essential identity; third, but it is enough for you to admit the continuity of the world's progress.

Now, if I were arguing against the reading of ancient history in connexion with modern, such an answer would be complete; but, as I am merely protesting against the idea that it is