ayed 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.

[Sidenote: METHOD TO BE LEARNT FROM SCIENCES]

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 address their own people. Remember Darwin,
taking note only of those passag