nce, not of principles. The principles of true
politics are those of morality enlarged; and I neither now do, nor
ever will admit of any other."[104]

[Sidenote: HISTORY AND CHARACTER]

Whatever a man's notions of these later centuries are, such, in the
main, the man himself will be. Under the name of History, they cover
the articles of his philosophic, his religious, and his political
creed.[105] They give his measure; they denote his character: and, as
praise is the shipwreck of historians, his preferences betray him more
than his aversions. Modern history touches us so nearly, it is so deep
a question of life and death, that we are bound to find our own way
through it, and to owe our insight to ourselves. The historians of
former ages, unapproachable for us in knowledge and in talent, cannot
be our limit. We have the power to be more rigidly impersonal,
disinterested and just than they; and to learn from undisguised and
genuine records to look with remorse upon the past, and to the future
with assured hope of better things; bearing this in mind, that if we
lower our standard in history, we cannot uphold it in Church or
State.

NOTES

[1] No political conclusions of any value for practice can be
arrived at by direct experience. All true political science is, in one
sense of the phrase, _a priori_, being deduced from the tendencies of
things, tendencies known either through our general experience of
human nature, or as the result of an analysis of the course of
history, considered as a progressive evolution.--MILL, _Inaugural
Address_, 51.

[2] Contemporary history is, in Dr. Arnold's opinion, more
important than either ancient or modern; and in fact superior to it by
all the superiority of the end to the means.--SEELEY, _Lectures and
Essays_, 306.

[3] The law of all progress is one and the same, the
evolution of the simple into the complex by successive
differentiations.--_Edinburgh Review_, clvii. 428. Die Entwickelung
der Voelker vollzieht sich nach zwei Gesetzen. Das erste Gesetz ist das
der Differenzierung. Die primitiven Einrichtungen sind einfach und
einheitlich, die der Civilisation zusammengesetzt und geteilt, und die
Arbeitsteilung nimmt bestaendig zu.--SICKEL, _Goettingen Gelehrte
Anzeigen_, 1890, 563.

[4] Nous risquons toujours d'etre influences par les
prejuges de notre epoque; mais nous sommes libres des prejuges
particuliers aux epoques anterieures.--