False Views of History [pp. 23-48]

24 False Views of History. [J uly,
the nation in a state of progress the commencement of
decline is the era also of stagnation. The age of Louis
XIV. was the era of intellectual activity in France, and
as he truly represented the thought of his countr, he
made her the terror and admiration of Europe. Tat of
his degenerate successor was an era of disgrace and decline, because he had forgotten to keep alive the national
sentiment.
Among the various causes of the uncerta~nty of history,
none is more active than ignorance of the national thought
of a people. The annalist unconsciously pourtrays it, but
having no distinct perception, perhaps no suspicion of its
existence, he reflects without expressing it. Even the national historian, so far from being its exponent, may be its
adversary. We are to find it illustrated only in the pages
of the historian wh~ from the height of a remote period,
laying aside all personai and political prejudices, calmly
investigates the annals of the past, discovers the ruling
passion of a people, the inevitable tendencies of their actions, the motives by which they were made to act, and
from all these deduce the great sentiment which it was
the mission of that people to express and illustrate.
The historian, therefore, should be cautious in the judgment he forms, or the events which he undertakes to relate. There may be an absolute right and an absolute
wrong. But it is questionable whether either is predicable of manl~ind. It is unfair to lay down a standard
which is applicable only to a superior order of beings; it
is worse to adopt one which may exist only in our own imaginations. The standard of right in the nineteenth century
is very different from that which was acknowledged in
the twelfth; and both are far removed from any that may
have existed in preceding ages.
The thought of a people, or of an age, must furnish the
standard by which that pe~pIe or age is to be judged.
The neglect of this rule lies at the bottom of most of the
errors, and of much of the dullness of historians. One
supposes that the first duty of the historian is impartiality, and with conscientious fidelity he relates everything
he knows. Such a writer can hardly escape the reproach
of dullness. Another treats it empirically; he brings every state, in every age, under the category of the political
phases which states may assume in his day. An ancient