et up masters whom, in their proper sphere,
he could obey. The many excellent dissertations in which he
displayed this art, though his successors in the next generation
matched his skill and did still more thorough work, are the best
introduction from which we can learn the technical process by
which within living memory the study of modern history has been
renewed. Ranke's contemporaries, weary of his neutrality and
suspense, and of the useful but subordinate work that was done by
beginners who borrowed his wand, thought that too much was made
of these obscure preliminaries which a man may accomplish for
himself, in the silence of his chamber, with less demand on the
attention of the public #69. That may be reasonable in men who are
practised in these fundamental technicalities. We, who have to
learn them, must immerse ourselves in the study of the great
examples.

Apart from what is technical, method is only the reduplication of
common sense, and is best acquired by observing its use by the
ablest men in every variety of intellectual employment #70. Bentham
acknowledged that he learned less from his own profession than
from writers like Linnaeus and Cullen; and Brougham advised the
student of Law to begin with Dante. Liebig described his Organic
Chemistry as an application of ideas found in Mill's Logic, and a
distinguished physician, not to be named lest he should overhear
me, read three books to enlarge his medical mind; and they were
Gibbon, Grote, and Mill. He goes on to say, "An educated man
cannot become so on one study alone, but must be brought under
the influence of natural, civil, and moral modes of thought." #71
I quote my colleague's golden words in order to reciprocate them.
If men of science owe anything to us, we may learn much from them
that is essential #72. For they can show how to test proof, how to
secure fulness and soundness in induction, how to restrain and to
employ with safety hypothesis and analogy. It is they who hold
the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error
ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails #73.
Theirs is the logic of discovery #74, the demonstration of the
advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the
earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are
the charter of progress and the vital spark in history. And they
often give us invaluable counsel when they attend to their own
subjects and addres