headlong decline and impending dissolution of
society #11, and governed by usage and the will of masters who were in
their graves, the sixteenth century went forth armed for untried
experience, and ready to watch with hopefulness a prospect of
incalculable change.

That forward movement divides it broadly from the older world;
and the unity of the new is manifest in the universal spirit of
investigation and discovery which did not cease to operate, and
withstood the recurring efforts of reaction, until, by the advent
of the reign of general ideas which we call the Revolution, it at
length prevailed #12. This successive deliverance and gradual
passage, for good and evil, from subordination to independence is
a phenomenon of primary import to us, because historical science
has been one of its instruments #13. If the Past has been an obstacle
and a burden, knowledge of the Past is the safest and the surest
emancipation. And the earnest search for it is one of the signs
that distinguish the four centuries of which I speak from those
that went before. The Middle Ages, which possessed good writers
of contemporary narrative, were careless and impatient of older
fact. They became content to be deceived, to live in a twilight
of fiction, under clouds of false witness, inventing according to
convenience, and glad to welcome the forger and the cheat #14. As
time went on, the atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened,
until, in the Renaissance, the art of exposing falsehood dawned
upon keen Italian minds. It was then that History as we
understand it began to be understood, and the illustrious dynasty
of scholars arose to whom we still look both for method and
material. Unlike the dreaming prehistoric world, ours knows the
need and the duty to make itself master of the earlier times, and
to forfeit nothing of their wisdom or their warnings #15, and has
devoted its best energy and treasure to the sovereign purpose of
detecting error and vindicating entrusted truth #16.

In this epoch of full-grown history men have not acquiesced in
the given conditions of their lives. Taking little for granted
they have sought to know the ground they stand on, and the road
they travel, and the reason why. Over them, therefore, the
historian has obtained an increasing ascendancy #17. The law of
stability was overcome by the power of ideas, constantly varied
and rapidly renewed #18; ideas that give life and motion, that take
wing and