note: JUSTIFICATION OF THE PAST]

The mission of that school was to make distant times, and especially
the middle ages, then most distant of all, intelligible and acceptable
to a society issuing from the eighteenth century. There were
difficulties in the way; and among others this, that, in the first
fervour of the Crusades, the men who took the Cross, after receiving
communion, heartily devoted the day to the extermination of Jews. To
judge them by a fixed standard, to call them sacrilegious fanatics or
furious hypocrites, was to yield a gratuitous victory to Voltaire. It
became a rule of policy to praise the spirit when you could not defend
the deed. So that we have no common code; our moral notions are always
fluid; and you must consider the times, the class from which men
sprang, the surrounding influences, the masters in their schools, the
preachers in their pulpits, the movement they obscurely obeyed, and so
on, until responsibility is merged in numbers, and not a culprit is
left for execution.[92] A murderer was no criminal if he followed
local custom, if neighbours approved, if he was encouraged by
official advisers or prompted by just authority, if he acted for the
reason of state or the pure love of religion, or if he sheltered
himself behind the complicity of the Law. The depression of morality
was flagrant; but the motives were those which have enabled us to
contemplate with distressing complacency the secret of unhallowed
lives. The code that is greatly modified by time and place, will vary
according to the cause. The amnesty is an artifice that enables us to
make exceptions, to tamper with weights and measures, to deal unequal
justice to friends and enemies.

[Sidenote: PHILOSOPHIES OF HISTORY]

It is associated with that philosophy which Cato attributes to the
gods. For we have a theory which justifies Providence by the event,
and holds nothing so deserving as success, to which there can be no
victory in a bad cause, prescription and duration legitimate,[93] and
whatever exists is right and reasonable; and as God manifests His will
by that which He tolerates, we must conform to the divine decree by
living to shape the Future after the ratified image of the Past.[94]
Another theory, less confidently urged, regards History as our guide,
as much by showing errors to evade as examples to pursue. It is
suspicious of illusions in success, and, though there may be hope of
ultimate triumph for what is true, if