, at once le chantre et le heros.

He is to keep before his eyes the fact that chance is merely a synonym
for our ignorance; that the reign of law pervades the domain of history
as much as it does that of political science. He is to accustom himself
to look on all occasions for rational and natural causes. And while he
is to recognise the practical utility of the supernatural, in an
educational point of view, he is not himself to indulge in such
intellectual beating of the air as to admit the possibility of the
violation of inviolable laws, or to argue in a sphere wherein argument is
a priori annihilated. He is to be free from all bias towards friend and
country; he is to be courteous and gentle in criticism; he is not to
regard history as a mere opportunity for splendid and tragic writing; nor
is he to falsify truth for the sake of a paradox or an epigram.

While acknowledging the importance of particular facts as samples of
higher truths, he is to take a broad and general view of humanity. He is
to deal with the whole race and with the world, not with particular
tribes or separate countries. He is to bear in mind that the world is
really an organism wherein no one part can be moved without the others
being affected also. He is to distinguish between cause and occasion,
between the influence of general laws and particular fancies, and he is
to remember that the greatest lessons of the world are contained in
history and that it is the historian's duty to manifest them so as to
save nations from following those unwise policies which always lead to
dishonour and ruin, and to teach individuals to apprehend by the
intellectual culture of history those truths which else they would have
to learn in the bitter school of experience.

Now, as regards his theory of the necessity of the historian's being
contemporary with the events he describes, so far as the historian is a
mere narrator the remark is undoubtedly true. But to appreciate the
harmony and rational position of the facts of a great epoch, to discover
its laws, the causes which produced it and the effects which it
generates, the scene must be viewed from a certain height and distance to
be completely apprehended. A thoroughly contemporary historian such as
Lord Clarendon or Thucydides is in reality part of the history he
criticises; and, in the case of such contemporary historians as Fabius
and Philistus, Polybius is compelled to acknowledge that they are misl