spects
of his philosophy. The fact is, of course, not surprising; he who would
explain the life of man would be unwise to ignore the records of the
past life of the human race. The thinker who examines the present only,
is apt to be narrow in his ideas, to fail to look upon events in their
proper perspective, and to be unduly affected by the spirit of the age
in which he lives--the student of history avoids these pitfalls.

Moreover, man does not become aware of the depth of his own soul, until
he has "lived into" the experience of the past. This is what the
profound investigator of history does; he lives again the life of the
hero, he feels with him as he felt upon special occasions, and in this
way there is revealed to him a profundity and greatness of human
experience, of which he would have been largely unaware if he had
trusted to his own experience alone, and to the superficial examination
he is able to make of the experiences of those living men with whom he
comes into contact. In this way he is able in a sense to appropriate the
experience of the greatest personalities unto himself, and enrich
considerably the contents of his own soul.

Through a study of history, too, we become aware of the intimate
connection that exists between the present and the past. The present
moment is a very transient thing; its roots are in the past, its hopes
in the future. "If all depends on the slender thread of the fleeting
moment of the present, which illumines and endures merely for a
twinkling of an eye, but to sink into the abyss of nothingness, then all
life would mean a mere exit into death.... Without connection there is
no content of life." We are apt to look on the past as something dead,
but it exists in living evidence in our souls to-day. It oppresses us or
stimulates us to action, it tyrannises over us or inspires us to higher
things. It has been customary to look upon the past as irrevocable.
Recent writers, of whom Maeterlinck and Eucken are striking instances,
have endeavoured to show how the past can be remoulded and changed. The
past depends upon what we make of it to-day; if we despise our evil
conduct in former days, then the past itself is changed and conquered.
The mistake that is made is to regard the past as a thing complete in
itself; what appears to be finished is really only completing itself,
and we must take a view of the whole of a thing, and not merely the
parts that have already manifested themselv