te, and that even
documents themselves do not reveal motives. Of course, the perfect
combination would be to have great erudition, great common sense and
justice, and great enthusiasm and vigour as well. It is obviously a
disadvantage to have a historian who suppresses vital facts because
they do not fit in with a preconceived view of characters. But still I
find it hard to resist the conviction that, from the educational point
of view, stimulus is more important than exactness. It is more
important that a boy should take a side, should admire and abhor, than
that he should have very good reasons for doing so. For it is character
and imagination that we want to affect rather than the mastery of
minute points and subtleties.

Thus, from an educational point of view, I should consider that Froude
was a better writer than Freeman; just as I should consider it more
important that a boy should care for Virgil than that he should be sure
that he had the best text.

I think that what I feel to be the most desirable thing of all is, that
boys should learn somehow to care for history--however prejudiced a
view they take of it--when they are young; and that, when they are
older, they should correct misapprehensions, and try to arrive at a
more complete and just view.

Then I go on to my further point, and here I find myself in a still
darker region of doubt. I must look upon it, I suppose, as a direct
assault of the Evil One, and hold out the shield of faith against the
fiery darts.

What, I ask myself, is, after all, the use of this practice of
erudition? What class of the community does it, nay, can it, benefit?
The only class that I can even dimly connect with any benefits
resulting from it is the class of practical politicians; and yet, in
politics, I see a tendency more and more to neglect the philosophical
and abstruse view; and to appeal more and more to later precedents, not
to search among the origins of things. Nay, I would go further, and say
that a pedantic and elaborate knowledge of history hampers rather than
benefits the practical politician. It is not so with all the learned
professions. The man of science may hope that his researches may have
some direct effect in enriching the blood of the world. He may fight
the ravages of disease, he may ameliorate life in a hundred ways.

But these exponents of learning, these restorers of ancient texts,
these disentanglers of grammatical subtleties, these divers among