t had seen in the lucid prescience of his last days, he
related at Paris what I scarcely hesitate to call the most astounding
and profound prediction in all political history, where such things
have not been rare.

[Sidenote: RULES FOR THE STUDY OF HISTORY]

I shall never again enjoy the opportunity of speaking my thoughts to
such an audience as this, and on so privileged an occasion a lecturer
may well be tempted to bethink himself whether he knows of any
neglected truth, any cardinal proposition, that might serve as his
selected epigraph, as a last signal, perhaps even as a target. I am
not thinking of those shining precepts which are the registered
property of every school; that is to say--Learn as much by writing as
by reading; be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from
the others; have no favourites; keep men and things apart; guard
against the prestige of great names;[86] see that your judgments are
your own, and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without
testing; be more severe to ideas than to actions;[87] do not overlook
the strength of the bad cause or the weakness of the good;[88] never
be surprised by the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a
skeleton; judge talent at its best and character at its worst; suspect
power more than vice,[89] and study problems in preference to periods;
for instance: the derivation of Luther, the scientific influence of
Bacon, the predecessors of Adam Smith, the mediaeval masters of
Rousseau, the consistency of Burke, the identity of the first Whig.
Most of this, I suppose, is undisputed, and calls for no enlargement.
But the weight of opinion is against me when I exhort you never to
debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but
to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to
suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history
has the power to inflict on wrong.[90] The plea in extenuation of
guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are
met by arguments which go to excuse, to palliate, to confound right
and wrong, and reduce the just man to the level of the reprobate. The
men who plot to baffle and resist us are, first of all, those who made
history what it has become. They set up the principle that only a
foolish Conservative judges the present time with the ideas of the
Past; that only a foolish Liberal judges the Past with the ideas of
the Present.[91]

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