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    A Lecture on the Study of History
    A Lecture on the Study of History
    A Lecture on the Study of History
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    A Lecture on the Study of History

    By John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Baron Acton

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    John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO DL (10January 1834 – 19 June 1902)—known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Baronetfrom 1837 to 1869 and usually referred to simply as Lord Acton—was an EnglishCatholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of SirFerdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiralSir John Acton, 6th Baronet. He is perhaps best known for the remark,"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Greatmen are almost always bad men." This idea Jhas been tested in laboratorysettings.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKrill Press
    Release dateMar 2, 2016
    ISBN9781531242398
    A Lecture on the Study of History

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      Book preview

      A Lecture on the Study of History - John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Baron Acton

      A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

      ..................

      Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

      DOSSIER PRESS

      Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.

      This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2016 by Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

      A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

      NOTES

      A Lecture on the Study of History

      By

      Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

      A Lecture on the Study of History

      Published by Dossier Press

      New York City, NY

      First published circa 1902

      Copyright © Dossier Press, 2015

      All rights reserved

      Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      About Dossier Press

      A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

      ..................

      MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

      LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA

      MELBOURNE

      THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

      NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO

      ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

      THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

      TORONTO

      A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

      ..................

      DELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE,

      JUNE 11, 1895

      BY

      LORD ACTON

      LL.D., D.C.L.

      REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY

      MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

      ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON

      1911

      Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,

      BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S. E.,

      AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK

      First Edition, October, 1895.

      Second Edition, January, 1896. Reprinted, 1905, 1911.

      Fellow Students,

      I look back to-day to a time before the middle of the century, when I wasUNITY OF MODERN HISTORY reading at Edinburgh, and fervently wishing to come to this University. At three colleges I applied for admission, and, as things then were, I was refused by all. Here, from the first, I vainly fixed my hopes, and here, in a happier hour, after five-and-forty years, they are at last fulfilled.

      I desire first to speak to you of that which I may reasonably call the Unity of Modern History, as an easy approach to questions necessary to be met on the threshold by any one occupying this place, which my predecessor has made so formidable to me by the reflected lustre of his name.

      You have often heard it said that Modern History is a subject to which neither beginning nor end can be assigned. No beginning, because the dense web of the fortunes of man is woven without a void; because, in society as in nature, the structure is continuous, and we can trace things back uninterruptedly, until we dimly descry the Declaration of Independence in the forests of Germany. No end, because, on the same principle, history made and history making are scientifically inseparable and separately unmeaning.

      Politics, said Sir John Seeley, are vulgar when they are not liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literatureLINK BETWEEN HISTORY AND POLITICS when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics. Everybody perceives the sense in which this is true. For the science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action, and a power that goes to the making of the future. In France, such is the weight attached to the study of our own time, that there is an appointed course of contemporary history, with appropriate textbooks. That is a chair which, in the progressive division of labour by which both science and government prosper, may some day be founded in this country. Meantime, we do well to acknowledge the points at which the two epochs diverge. For the contemporary differs from the modern in this, that many of its facts cannot by us be definitely ascertained. The living do not give up their secrets with the candour of the dead; one key is always excepted, and a generation passes before we can ensure accuracy. Common report and outward seeming are bad copies of the reality, as the initiated know it. Even of a thing so memorable as the war of 1870, the true cause is still obscure; much that we believed has been scattered to the winds in the last six months, and further revelations by important witnesses are about to appear. The use of history turns far more on certainty than on abundance of acquired information.

      Beyond the question of certainty is the question of detachment. The process by which principles are discovered and appropriated is other than that by which, in practice, they are applied; and our most sacred and disinterested convictions ought to take shape in the tranquil regions of the air, above the tumult and the tempest of active life. For a man is justly despised who has one opinion in history and another in politics, one for abroad and another at home, one for opposition and another for office. History compels us to fasten on abiding issues, and rescues us from the temporary and transient. Politics and history are interwoven, but are not commensurate. Ours is a domain that reaches farther than affairs of state, and is not subject to the jurisdiction of governments. It is our function to keep in view and to command the movement of ideas, which are not the effect but the cause of public events; and even to allow some priority to ecclesiastical history over civil, since, by reason of the graver issues concerned, and the vital consequences of error, it opened the way in research, and was the first to be treated by close reasoners and scholars of the higher rank.

      In the same manner, there is wisdom and depth in the philosophy which always considers the origin and the germ, andNOT GOVERNED BY NATIONAL CAUSES glories in history as one consistent epic. Yet every student ought to know that mastery is acquired by resolved limitation. And confusion ensues from the theory of Montesquieu and of his school, who, adapting the same term to things unlike, insist that freedom is the primitive condition of the race from which we are sprung. If we are to account mind not matter, ideas not force, the spiritual property that gives dignity, and grace, and intellectual value to history, and its action on the ascending life of man, then we shall not be prone to explain the universal by the national, and civilisation by custom. A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of Socrates, a few lines that were inscribed on an Indian rock before the Second Punic War, the footsteps of a silent yet prophetic people who dwelt by the Dead Sea, and perished in the fall of Jerusalem, come nearer to our lives than the ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine on the Hercynian acorns.

      For our present purpose, then, I describe as modern history that which begins four hundred years ago, which is markedMEDIÆVAL LIMIT OF MODERN HISTORY off by an evident and intelligible line from the time immediately

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