Chapter X: Part 10

On the same principle the Popes supported the Exarchs of Ravenna, and the independent duchies of Spoleto and Beneventum. Well or ill ruled, Iconoclast or not, they were necessary to keep Italy divided and weak. And having obtained what they wanted from Pepin and Charlemagne, it was still their interest to pursue the same policy; to compound for their own independence, as they did with Charlemagne and his successors, by defending the pretences of foreign kings to the sovereignty of the rest of Italy. This has been their policy for centuries. It is their policy still; and that policy has been the curse of Italy. This fatal gift of the patrimony of St. Peter--as Dante saw--as Machiavelli saw,--as all clear-sighted Italians have seen,--as we are seeing it now in these very days--has kept her divided, torn by civil wars, conquered and reconquered by foreign invaders. Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions into a strong hereditary kingdom; unable, as the hierophant of a priestly caste, to unite his people in the bonds of national life; unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer the rest of Italy for himself; and form it into a kingdom large enough to have weight in the balance of power; the Pope has been forced, again and again, to keep himself on his throne by intriguing with foreign princes, and calling in foreign arms; and the bane of Italy, from the time of Stephen III. to that of Pius IX., has been the temporal power of the Pope.

But on the popes, also, the Nemesis came. In building their power on the Roman relics, on the fable that Rome was the patrimony of Peter, they had built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself.

Had they been independent of the locality of Rome; had they been really spiritual emperors, by becoming cosmopolitan, journeying, it may be, from nation to nation in regular progresses, then their power might have been as boundless as they ever desired it should be. Having committed themselves to the false position of being petty kings of a petty kingdom, they had to endure continual treachery and tyranny from their foreign allies; to see not merely Italy, but Rome itself insulted, and even sacked, by faithful Catholics; and to become more and more, as the centuries rolled on, the tools of those very kings whom they had wished to make their tools.

True, they defended themselves long, and with astonishing skill and courage. Their sources of power were two, the moral, and the thaumaturgic; and they used them both: but when the former failed, the latter became useless. As long as their moral power was real; as long as they and their clergy were on the whole, in spite of enormous faults, the best men in Europe; so long the people believed in them, and in their thaumaturgic relics likewise. But they became by no means the best men in Europe. Then they began to think that after all it was more easy to work the material than the moral power--easier to work the bones than to work righteousness. They were deceived. Behold! when the righteousness was gone, the bones refused to work. People began to question the virtues of the bones, and to ask, We can believe that the bones may have worked miracles for good men, but for bad men? We will examine whether they work any miracles at all. And then, behold, it came out that the bones did not work miracles, and that possibly they were not saints' bones at all; and then the storm came: and the lie, as all lies do, punished itself. The salt had lost its savour. The Teutonic intellect appealed from its old masters to God, and to God's universe of facts, and emancipated itself once and for all. They who had been the light of Europe, became its darkness; they who had been first, became last; a warning to mankind until the end of time, that on Truth and Virtue depends the only abiding strength.

LECTURE XII--THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE

I no not know whether any of you know much of the theory of war. I know very little myself. But something of it one is bound to know, as Professor of History. For, unfortunately, a large portion of the history of mankind is the history of war; and the historian, as a man who wants to know how things were done--as distinct from the philosopher, the man who wants to know how things ought to have been done--ought to know a little of the first of human arts--the art of killing. What little I know thereof I shall employ to-day, in explaining to you the invasion of the Teutons, from a so-called mechanical point of view. I wish to shew you how it was possible for so small and uncivilized a people to conquer one so vast and so civilized; and what circumstances (which you may attribute to what cause you will: but I to God) enabled our race to conquer in the most vast and important campaign the world has ever seen.

I call it a campaign rather than a war. Though it lasted 200 years and more, it seems to me (it will, I think, seem to you) if you look at the maps, as but one campaign: I had almost said, one battle. There is but one problem to be solved; and therefore the operations of our race take a sort of unity. The question is, how to take Rome, and keep it, by destroying the Roman Empire.

Let us consider the two combatants--their numbers, and their position.

One glance at the map will shew you which are the most numerous. When you cast your eye over the vastness of the Roman Empire from east to west--Italy, Switzerland, half Austria, Turkey and Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, France, Britain--and then compare it with the narrow German strip which reaches from the mouth of the Danube to the mouth of the Rhine, the disparity of area is enormous; ten times as great at least; perhaps more, if you accept, as I am inclined to do, the theory of Dr. Latham, that we were always 'Markmen,' men of the Marches, occupying a narrow frontier between the Slavs and the Roman Empire; and that Tacitus has included among Germans, from hearsay, many tribes of the interior of Bohemia, Prussia, and Poland, who were Slavs or others; and that the numbers and area of our race has been, on Tacitus' authority, greatly overrated.

What then were the causes of the success of the Teutons? Native courage and strength?

They had these: but you must recollect what I have told you, that those very qualities were employed against them; that they were hired, in large numbers, into the Roman armies, to fight against their own brothers.

Unanimity? Of that, alas! one can say but little. The great Teutonic army had not only to fight the Romans, but to fight each brigade the brigade before it, to make them move on; and the brigade behind it likewise, to prevent their marching over them; while too often two brigades quarrelled like children, and destroyed each other on the spot.

What, then, was the cause of their success? I think a great deal of it must be attributed to their admirable military position.

Look at a map of Europe; putting yourself first at the point to be attacked--at Rome, and looking north, follow the German frontier from the Euxine up the Danube and down the Rhine. It is a convex arc: but not nearly as long as the concave arc of the Roman frontier opposed to it. The Roman frontier overlaps it to the north-west by all Britain, to the south-west by part of Turkey and the whole of Asia Minor.

That would seem to make it weak, and liable to be outflanked on either wing. In reality it made it strong.

Both the German wings rested on the sea; one on the Euxine, one on the North Sea. That in itself would not have given strength; for the Roman fleets were masters of the seas. But the lands in the rear, on either flank, were deserts, incapable of supporting an army. What would have been the fate of a force landed at the mouth of the Weser on the north, or at the mouth of the Dnieper at the west? Starvation among wild moors, and bogs, and steppes, if they attempted to leave their base of operations on the coast. The Romans saw this, and never tried the plan. To defend the centre of their position was the safest and easiest plan.

Look at this centre. It is complicated. The Roman position is guarded by the walls of Italy, the gigantic earthwork of the Alps. To storm them, is impossible. But right and left of them, the German position has two remarkable points--strategic points, which decided the fate of the world.

They are two salient angles, promontories of the German frontier. The one is north-east of Switzerland; the Allman country, between the head- waters of the Danube and the Upper Rhine, Basle is its apex. Mentz its northern point, Ratisbon its southern. That triangle encloses the end of the Schwartzwald; the Black Forest of primaeval oak. Those oaks have saved Europe.

The advantages of a salient angle of that kind, in invading an enemy's country, are manifest. You can break out on either side, and return at once into your own country on 'lines of interior operation;' while the enemy has to march round the angle, three feet for your one, on 'lines of exterior operation.' The early German invaders saw that, and burst again and again into Gaul from that angle. The Romans saw it also (admirable strategists as they were) and built Hadrian's wall right across it, from the Maine to the Danube, to keep them back. And why did not Hadrian's wall keep them back? On account of the Black Forest. The Roman never dared to face it; to attempt to break our centre, and to save Italy by carrying the war into the heart of Germany. They knew (what the invaders of England will discover to their cost) that a close woodland is a more formidable barrier than the Alps themselves. The Black Forest, I say, was the key of our position, and saved our race.

From this salient angle, and along the whole Rhine above it, the Western Teutons could throw their masses into Gaul; Franks, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, following each other in echellon. You know what an echellon means? When bodies of troops move in lines parallel to each other, but each somewhat in the rear of the other, so that their whole position resembles an echelle--a flight of steps. This mode of attack has two great advantages. It cannot be outflanked by the enemy; and he dare not concentrate his forces on the foremost division, and beat the divisions in detail. If he tries to do so, he is out-flanked himself; and he is liable to be beaten in detail by continually fresh bodies of troops. Thus only a part of his line is engaged at a time. Now it was en echellon, from necessity, that the tribes moved down. They could not follow immediately in each other's track, because two armies following each other would not have found subsistence in the same country. They had to march in parallel lines; those nearest to Italy moving first; and thus forming a vast echellon, whose advanced left rested on, and was protected by, the Alps.

But you must remember (and this is important) that all these western attacks along the Rhine and Rhone were mistakes, in as far as they were aimed at Rome. The Teutons were not aware, I suppose, that the Alps turned to the South between Gaul and Italy, and ran right down to the Mediterranean. There they found themselves still cut off from Rome by them. Hannibal's pass over the Mont Cenis they seem not to have known. They had to range down to the Mediterranean; turn eastward along the Genoese coast at Nice; and then, far away from their base of operations, were cut off again and again, just as the Cimbri and Teutons were cut off by Marius. All attempts to take Rome from the Piedmontese entrance into Italy failed. But these western attacks had immense effects. They cut the Roman position in two.

And then came out the real weakness of that great ill-gotten Empire, conquered for conquering's sake. To the north-west, the Romans had extended their line far beyond what they could defend. The whole of North Gaul was taken by the Franks. Britain was then isolated, and had to be given up to its fate. South Gaul, being nearer to Italy their base, they could defend, and did, like splendid soldiers as they were; but that defence only injured them. It thrust the foremost columns of the enemy on into Spain. Spain was too far from their base of operation to be defended, and was lost likewise, and seized by Vandals and Suevi. The true point of attack was at the other salient angle of our position, on the Roman right centre.

You know that the Danube as you ascend it lies east and west from the Black Sea to Belgrade; but above the point where the Save enters it, it turns north almost at right angles. This is the second salient point; the real key of the whole Roman Empire. For from this point the Germans could menace--equally, Constantinople and Turkey on the right (I speak always as standing at Rome and looking north), and Italy and Rome on the left. The Danube once crossed, between them and Constantinople was nothing but the rich rolling land of Turkey; between them and Rome nothing but the easy passes of the Carnic Alps, Laybach to Trieste. Trieste was the key of the Roman position. It was, and always will be, a most important point. It might be the centre of a great kingdom. The nation which has it ought to spend its last bullet in defending it.

The Teutons did cross the Danube, as you know, in 376, and had a great victory, of which nothing came but moral force. They waited long in Moesia before they found out the important step which they had made. The genius of Alaric first discovered the key of the Roman position, and discovered that it was in his own hands.

I do not say that no Germans had crossed the Laybach pass before him. On the contrary, Markmen, Quadi, Vandals, seem to have come over it as early as 180, and appeared under the walls of Aquileia. Of course, some one must have gone first, or Alaric would not have known of it. There were no maps then, at least among our race. Their great generals had to feel their way foot by foot, trusting to hearsays of old adventurers, deserters, and what not, as to whether a fruitful country or an impassable alp, a great city or the world's end, was twenty miles a-head of them. Yes, they had great generals among them, and Alaric, perhaps, the greatest.

If you consider Alaric's campaigns, from A.D. 400 to A.D. 415, you will see that the eye of a genius planned them. He wanted Rome, as all Teutons did. He was close to Italy, in the angle of which I just spoke; but instead of going hither, he resolved to go south, and destroy Greece, and he did it. Thereby, if you will consider, he cut the Roman Empire in two. He paralysed and destroyed the right wing of its forces, which might, if he had marched straight for Italy, have come up from Greece and Turkey, to take him in flank and rear. He prevented their doing that; he prevented also their succouring Italy by sea by the same destruction. And then he was free to move on Rome, knowing that he leaves no strong place on his left flank, save Constantinople itself; and that the Ostrogoths, and other tribes left behind, would mask it for him. Then he moved into Italy over the Carnic Alps, and was repulsed the first time at Pollentia. He was not disheartened; he retired upon Hungary, waited five years, tried it again, and succeeded, after a campaign of two years.

Yes. He was a great general. To be able to move vast masses of men safely through a hostile country and in face of an enemy's army (beside women and children) requires an amount of talent bestowed on few. Alaric could do it. Dietrich the Ostrogoth could do it. Alboin the Lombard could do it, though not under such fearful disadvantages. There were generals before Marlborough or Napoleon.

And do not fancy that the work was easy; that the Romans were degenerate enough to be an easy prey. Alaric had been certainly beaten out of Italy, even though the victory of Pollentia was exaggerated. And in 405, Radagast with 200,000 men had tried to take Rome by Alaric's route, and had simply, from want of generalship, been forced to capitulate under the walls of Florence, and the remnant of his army sold for slaves.

Why was Alaric more fortunate? Because he was a great genius. And why when he died, did the Goths lose all plan, and wander wildly up Italy, and out into Spain? Because the great genius was gone. Native Teuton courage could ensure no permanent success against Roman discipline and strategy, unless guided by men like Alaric or Dietrich.

You might fancy the campaign over now: but it was not. Along the country of the Danube, from the Euxine to the Alps, the Teutons had still the advantage of interior lines, and vast bodies of men--Herules, Gepids, Ostrogoths, Lombards--were coming down in an enormous echellon similar to that which forced the Rhine; to force Italy at the same fatal point--Venetia. The party who could command the last reserve would win, as is the rule. And the last reserves were with our race. They must win. But not yet. They had, in the mean time, taken up a concave line; a great arc running round the whole west of the Mediterranean from Italy, France, Spain, Algeria, as far as Carthage. They could not move forces round that length of coast, as fast as the Romans could move them by sea; and they had no fleets. Although they had conquered the Western Empire, they were in a very dangerous position, and were about to be very nearly ruined.

For you see, the Romans in turn had changed front at more than a right angle. They lay at first north-west and south-east. They lay in Justinian's time, north and south. Their right was Constantinople; their left Pentapolis; between those two points they held Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt; a position of wealth incalculable. Meanwhile, as we must remember always, they were masters of the sea, and therefore of the interior lines of operation. They had been forced into this position; but, like Romans, they had accepted it. With the boundless common sense of the race (however fallen, debauched, pedantic), they worked it out, and with terrible effect.

Their right in Constantinople was so strong that they cared nothing for it, though it was the only exposed point. They would defend it by hiring the Barbarians, and when they could not pay them, setting them on to kill down each other; while they quietly drew into Constantinople the boundless crops of Asia, Syria and Egypt.

The strength of Constantinople was infinite--commanding two seas and two continents. It is, as the genius of Constantinople saw--as the genius of the Czar Nicholas saw--the strongest spot, perhaps, in the world. That fact was what enabled Justinian's Empire to arise again, and enabled Belisarius and Narses to reconquer Africa and Italy. Remember that, and see how strong the Romans were still.

The Teutons meanwhile had changed their front, by conquering the Western Mediterranean, and were becoming weak, because scattered on exterior lines, to their extreme danger.

I cannot exaggerate the danger of that position. It enabled the Romans by rapid movements of their fleets, to reconquer Africa and Italy. It might have enabled them to do much more.

Belisarius, with great wisdom, began by attacking the Vandals at Carthage on the extreme right. They had put themselves into an isolated position, and were destroyed without help. Then he moved on Italy and the Ostrogoths. He was going to force the positions in detail, and drive them back behind the Alps. What he did not finish, Narses did; and the Teutons were actually driven back behind the Alps for some years.

But Narses had to stop at Italy. Even if not recalled, he could have gone no further. The next move should have been on Spain, if he had really had strength in Italy. But to attack Spain from Constantinople, would have been to go too far from home. The Franks would have crost the Pyrenees, and fallen on his flank. The Visigoths, even if beaten, would have been only pushed across the Straits of Gibraltar, to reconquer the Vandal coast of Africa; while to take troops from Italy for any such purpose, would have been to let in the Lombards--who came, let in or not. There were reserves in Germany still, of which Narses knew full well; for he had seen 5000 Lombards, besides Herules, and Huns, and Avars, fight for him at Nuceria, and destroy the Ostrogoths; and he knew well that they could, if they chose, fight against him.

On the other hand, the Roman Empire had no reserves; while the campaign had just come to that point at which he who can bring up the last reserve wins. Ours were so far from being exhausted, that the heaviest of them, the Franks, came into action, stronger than ever, 200 years after.

But the Roman reserves were gone. If Greece, if Asia Minor, if Egypt, had been the holds of a hardy people, the Romans might have done still--Heaven alone knows what. At least, they might have extended their front once more to the line of Carthage, Sicily, Italy.

But the people of Syria and Egypt, were--what they were. No recruits, as far as I know, were drawn from them. Had they been, they would have been face to face with a Frank, or a Lombard, or a Visigoth, much what--not a Sikh, a Rohilla, or a Ghoorka, but a Bengalee proper--would be face to face with an Englishman. One thousand Varangers might have walked from Constantinople to Alexandria without fighting a pitched battle, if they had had only Greeks and Syrians to face.

Thus the Romans were growing weak. If we had lost, so had they. Every wild Teuton who came down to perish, had destroyed a Roman, or more than one, before he died. Each column which the admirable skill and courage of the Romans had destroyed, had weakened them as much, perhaps more, than its destruction weakened the Teutons; and had, by harrying the country, destroyed the Roman's power of obtaining supplies. Italy and Turkey at last became too poor to be a fighting ground at all.

But now comes in one of the strangest new elements in this strange epic--Mohammed and his Arabs.

Suddenly, these Arab tribes, under the excitement of the new Mussulman creed, burst forth of the unknown East. They take the Eastern Empire in the rear; by such a rear attack as the world never saw before or since; they cut it in two; devour it up: and save Europe thereby.

That may seem a strange speech. I must explain it. I have told you how the Eastern Empire and its military position was immensely strong; that Constantinople was a great maritime base of operations, mistress of the Mediterranean. What prevented the Romans from reconquering all the shores of that sea, and establishing themselves in strength in the Morea, or in Sicily, or in Carthage, or in any central base of operations? What forced them to cling to Constantinople, and fight a losing campaign thenceforth. Simply this; the Mussulman had forced their position from the rear, and deprived them of Syria, Egypt, Africa.

But the Teutons could not have opposed them. During the 7th century the Lombards in Italy were lazy and divided; the Goths in Spain lazier and more divided still; the Franks were tearing themselves in pieces by civil war. The years from A.D. 550 to A.D. 750 and the rise of the Carlovingian dynasty, were a period of exhaustion for our race, such as follows on great victories, and the consequent slaughter and collapse.

This was the critical period of the Teutonic race; little talked of, because little known: but very perilous. Nevertheless, whatever the Eastern Empire might have done, the Saracens prevented its doing; and if you hold (with me) that the welfare of the Teutonic race is the welfare of the world; then, meaning nothing less, the Saracen invasion, by crippling the Eastern Empire, saved Europe and our race.

And now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign fought without a general? If Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or Waterloo without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to lead those innumerable armies, on whose success depended the future of the whole human race? Did no one marshal them in that impregnable convex front, from the Euxine to the North Sea? No one guide them to the two great strategic centres, of the Black Forest and Trieste? No one cause them, blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow those rules of war, without which victory in a protracted struggle is impossible; and by the pressure of the Huns behind, force on their flagging myriads to an enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first beyond the powers of mortal men? Believe it who will: but I cannot. I may be told that they gravitated into their places, as stones and mud do. Be it so. They obeyed natural laws of course, as all things do on earth, when they obeyed the laws of war: those too are natural laws, explicable on simple mathematical principles. But while I believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life;--if I be superstitious enough (as thank God I am) to hold that creed, shall I not believe that though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have had a general in Heaven? and that in spite of all their sins, the hosts of our forefathers were the hosts of God?

APPENDIX: THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE AS APPLIED TO HISTORY.

It is with a feeling of awe, I had almost said of fear, that I find myself in this place, upon this errand. The responsibility of a teacher of History in Cambridge is in itself very heavy: but doubly heavy in the case of one who sees among his audience many men as fit, it may be some more fit, to fill this Chair: and again, more heavy still, when one succeeds to a man whose learning, like his virtues, one can never hope to equal.

But a Professor, I trust, is like other men, capable of improvement; and the great law, 'docendo disces,' may be fulfilled in him, as in other men. Meanwhile, I can only promise that such small powers as I possess will be honestly devoted to this Professorate; and that I shall endeavour to teach Modern History after a method which shall give satisfaction to the Rulers of this University.

I shall do that best, I believe, by keeping in mind the lessons which I, in common with thousands more, have learnt from my wise and good predecessor. I do not mean merely patience in research, and accuracy in fact. They are required of all men: and they may be learnt from many men. But what Sir James Stephen's life and writings should especially teach us, is the beauty and the value of charity; of that large-hearted humanity, which sympathizes with all noble, generous, earnest thought and endeavour, in whatsoever shape they may have appeared; a charity which, without weakly or lazily confounding the eternal laws of right and wrong, can make allowances for human frailty; can separate the good from the evil in men and in theories; can understand, and can forgive, because it loves. Who can read Sir James Stephen's works without feeling more kindly toward many a man, and many a form of thought, against which he has been more or less prejudiced; without a more genial view of human nature, a more hopeful view of human destiny, a more full belief in the great saying, that 'Wisdom is justified of all her children'? Who, too, can read those works without seeing how charity enlightens the intellect, just as bigotry darkens it; how events, which to the theorist and the pedant are merely monstrous and unmeaning, may explain themselves easily enough to the man who will put himself in his fellow-creatures' place; who will give them credit for being men of like passions with himself; who will see with their eyes, feel with their hearts, and take for his motto, 'Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto'?

I entreat gentlemen who may hereafter attend my lectures to bear in mind this last saying. If they wish to understand History, they must first try to understand men and women. For History is the history of men and women, and of nothing else; and he who knows men and women thoroughly will best understand the past work of the world, and be best able to carry on its work now. The men who, in the long run, have governed the world, have been those who understood the human heart; and therefore it is to this day the statesman who keeps the reins in his hand, and not the mere student. He is a man of the world; he knows how to manage his fellow-men; and therefore he can get work done which the mere student (it may be) has taught him ought to be done; but which the mere student, much less the mere trader or economist, could not get done; simply because his fellow-men would probably not listen to him, and certainly outwit him. Of course, in proportion to the depth, width, soundness, of his conception of human nature, will be the greatness and wholesomeness of his power. He may appeal to the meanest, or to the loftiest motives. He may be a fox or an eagle; a Borgia, or a Hildebrand; a Talleyrand, or a Napoleon; a Mary Stuart, or an Elizabeth: but however base, however noble, the power which he exercises is the same in essence. He makes History, because he understands men. And you, if you would understand History, must understand men.

If, therefore, any of you should ask me how to study history, I should answer--Take by all means biographies: wheresoever possible, autobiographies; and study them. Fill your minds with live human figures; men of like passions with yourselves; see how each lived and worked in the time and place in which God put him. Believe me, that when you have thus made a friend of the dead, and brought him to life again, and let him teach you to see with his eyes, and feel with his heart, you will begin to understand more of his generation and his circumstances, than all the mere history-books of the period would teach you. In proportion as you understand the man, and only so, will you begin to understand the elements in which he worked. And not only to understand, but to remember. Names, dates, genealogies, geographical details, costumes, fashions, manners, crabbed scraps of old law, which you used, perhaps, to read up and forget again, because they were not rooted, but stuck into your brain, as pins are into a pincushion, to fall out at the first shake--all these you will remember; because they will arrange and organize themselves around the central human figure: just as, if you have studied a portrait by some great artist, you cannot think of the face in it, without recollecting also the light and shadow, the tone of colouring, the dress, the very details of the background, and all the accessories which the painter's art has grouped around; each with a purpose, and therefore each fixing itself duly in your mind. Who, for instance, has not found that he can learn more French history from French memoirs, than even from all the truly learned and admirable histories of France which have been written of late years? There are those, too, who will say of good old Plutarch's lives (now-a-days, I think, too much neglected), what some great man used to say of Shakspeare and English history--that all the ancient history which they really knew, they had got from Plutarch. I am free to confess that I have learnt what little I know of the middle-ages, what they were like, how they came to be what they were, and how they issued in the Reformation, not so much from the study of the books about them (many and wise though they are), as from the thumbing over, for years, the semi-mythical saints' lives of Surius and the Bollandists.

Without doubt History obeys, and always has obeyed, in the long run, certain laws. But those laws assert themselves, and are to be discovered, not in things, but in persons; in the actions of human beings; and just in proportion as we understand human beings, shall we understand the laws which they have obeyed, or which have avenged themselves on their disobedience. This may seem a truism: if it be such, it is one which we cannot too often repeat to ourselves just now, when the rapid progress of science is tempting us to look at human beings rather as things than as persons, and at abstractions (under the name of laws) rather as persons than as things. Discovering, to our just delight, order and law all around us, in a thousand events which seemed to our fathers fortuitous and arbitrary, we are dazzled just now by the magnificent prospect opening before us, and fall, too often, into more than one serious mistake.

First; students try to explain too often all the facts which they meet by the very few laws which they know; and especially moral phaenomena by physical, or at least economic laws. There is an excuse for this last error. Much which was thought, a few centuries since, to belong to the spiritual world, is now found to belong to the material; and the physician is consulted, where the exorcist used to be called in. But it is a somewhat hasty corollary therefrom, and one not likely to find favour in this University, that moral laws and spiritual agencies have nothing at all to do with the history of the human race. We shall not be inclined here, I trust, to explain (as some one tried to do lately) the Crusades by a hypothesis of over-stocked labour-markets on the Continent.

Neither, again, shall we be inclined to class those same Crusades among 'popular delusions,' and mere outbursts of folly and madness. This is a very easy, and I am sorry to say, a very common method of disposing of facts which will not fit into the theory, too common of late, that need and greed have been always, and always ought to be, the chief motives of mankind. Need and greed, heaven knows, are powerful enough: but I think that he who has something nobler in himself than need and greed, will have eyes to discern something nobler than them, in the most fantastic superstitions, in the most ferocious outbursts, of the most untutored masses. Thank God, that those who preach the opposite doctrine belie it so often by a happy inconsistency; that he who declares self-interest to be the mainspring of the world, can live a life of virtuous self-sacrifice; that he who denies, with Spinoza, the existence of free- will, can disprove his own theory, by willing, like Spinoza, amid all the temptations of the world, to live a life worthy of a Roman Stoic; and that he who represents men as the puppets of material circumstance, and who therefore has no logical right either to praise virtue, or to blame vice, can shew, by a healthy admiration of the former, a healthy scorn of the latter, how little his heart has been corrupted by the eidola specus, the phantoms of the study, which have oppressed his brain. But though men are often, thank heaven, better than their doctrines, yet the goodness of the man does not make his doctrine good; and it is immoral as well as unphilosophical to call a thing hard names simply because it cannot be fitted into our theory of the universe. Immoral, because all harsh and hasty wholesale judgments are immoral; unphilosophical, because the only philosophical method of looking at the strangest of phaenomena is to believe that it too is the result of law, perhaps a healthy result; that it is not to be condemned as a product of disease before it is proven to be such; and that if it be a product of disease, disease has its laws, as much as health; and is a subject, not for cursing, but for induction; so that (to return to my example) if every man who ever took part in the Crusades were proved to have been simply mad, our sole business would be to discover why he went mad upon that special matter, and at that special time. And to do that, we must begin by recollecting that in every man who went forth to the Crusades, or to any other strange adventure of humanity, was a whole human heart and brain, of like strength and weakness, like hopes, like temptations, with our own; and find out what may have driven him mad, by considering what would have driven us mad in his place.

May I be permitted to enlarge somewhat on this topic? There is, as you are aware, a demand just now for philosophies of History. The general spread of Inductive Science has awakened this appetite; the admirable contemporary French historians have quickened it by feeding it; till, the more order and sequence we find in the facts of the past, the more we wish to find. So it should be (or why was man created a rational being?) and so it is; and the requirements of the more educated are becoming so peremptory, that many thinking men would be ready to say (I should be sorry to endorse their opinion), that if History is not studied according to exact scientific method, it need not be studied at all.

A very able anonymous writer has lately expressed this general tendency of modern thought in language so clear and forcible that I must beg leave to quote it:--

'Step by step,' he says, 'the notion of evolution by law is transforming the whole field of our knowledge and opinion. It is not one order of conception which comes under its influence: but it is the whole sphere of our ideas, and with them the whole system of our action and conduct. Not the physical world alone is now the domain of inductive science, but the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual are being added to its empire. Two co-ordinate ideas pervade the vision of every thinker, physicist or moralist, philosopher or priest. In the physical and the moral world, in the natural and the human, are ever seen two forces--invariable rule, and continual advance; law and action; order and progress; these two powers working harmoniously together, and the result, inevitable sequence, orderly movement, irresistible growth. In the physical world indeed, order is most prominent to our eyes; in the moral world it is progress, but both exist as truly in the one as in the other. In the scale of nature, as we rise from the inorganic to the organic, the idea of change becomes even more distinct; just as when we rise through the gradations of the moral world, the idea of order becomes more difficult to grasp. It was the last task of the astronomer to show eternal change even in the grand order of our Solar System. It is the crown of philosophy to see immutable law even in the complex action of human life. In the latter, indeed, it is but the first germs which are clear. No rational thinker hopes to discover more than some few primary actions of law, and some approximative theory of growth. Much is dark and contradictory. Numerous theories differing in method and degree are offered; nor do we decide between them. We insist now only upon this, that the principle of development in the moral, as in the physical, has been definitely admitted; and something like a conception of one grand analogy through the whole sphere of knowledge, has almost become a part of popular opinion. Most men shrink from any broad statement of the principle, though all in some special instances adopt it. It surrounds every idea of our life, and is diffused in every branch of study. The press, the platform, the lecture-room, and the pulpit ring with it in every variety of form. Unconscious pedants are proving it. It flashes on the statistician through his registers; it guides the hand of simple philanthropy; it is obeyed by the instinct of the statesman. There is not an act of our public life which does not acknowledge it. No man denies that there are certain, and even practical laws of political economy. They are nothing but laws of society. The conferences of social reformers, the congresses for international statistics and for social science bear witness of its force. Everywhere we hear of the development of the constitution, of public law, of public opinion, of institutions, of forms of society, of theories of history. In a word, whatever views of history may be inculcated on the Universities by novelists or epigrammatists, it is certain that the best intellects and spirits of our day are labouring to see more of that invariable order, and of that principle of growth in the life of human societies and of the great society of mankind which nearly all men, more or less, acknowledge, and partially and unconsciously confirm.'

This passage expresses admirably, I think, the tendencies of modern thought for good and evil.

For good. For surely it is good, and a thing to thank God for, that men should be more and more expecting order, searching for order, welcoming order. But for evil also. For young sciences, like young men, have their time of wonder, hope, imagination, and of passion too, and haste, and bigotry. Dazzled, and that pardonably, by the beauty of the few laws they may have discovered, they are too apt to erect them into gods, and to explain by them all matters in heaven and earth; and apt, too, as I think this author does, to patch them where they are weakest, by that most dangerous succedaneum of vague and grand epithets, which very often contain, each of them, an assumption far more important than the law to which they are tacked.

Such surely are the words which so often occur in this passage--'Invariable, continual, immutable, inevitable, irresistible.' There is an ambiguity in these words, which may lead--which I believe does lead--to most unphilosophical conclusions. They are used very much as synonyms; not merely in this passage, but in the mouths of men. Are you aware that those who carelessly do so, blink the whole of the world- old arguments between necessity and free-will? Whatever may be the rights of that quarrel, they are certainly not to be assumed in a passing epithet. But what else does the writer do, who tells us that an inevitable sequence, an irresistible growth, exists in the moral as well as in the physical world; and then says, as a seemingly identical statement, that it is the crown of philosophy to see immutable law, even in the complex action of human life?

The crown of philosophy? Doubtless it is so. But not a crown, I should have thought, which has been reserved as the special glory of these latter days. Very early, at least in the known history of mankind, did Philosophy (under the humble names of Religion and Common Sense) see most immutable, and even eternal, laws, in the complex action of human life, even the laws of right and wrong; and called them The Everlasting Judgments of God, to which a confused and hard-worked man was to look; and take comfort, for all would be well at last. By fair induction (as I believe) did man discover, more or less clearly, those eternal laws: by repeated verifications of them in every age, man has been rising, and will yet rise, to clearer insight into their essence, their limits, their practical results. And if it be these, the old laws of right and wrong, which this author and his school call invariable and immutable, we shall, I trust, most heartily agree with them; only wondering why a moral government of the world seems to them so very recent a discovery.

But we shall not agree with them, I trust, when they represent these invariable and immutable laws as resulting in any inevitable sequence, or irresistible growth. We shall not deny a sequence--Reason forbids that; or again, a growth--Experience forbids that: but we shall be puzzled to see why a law, because it is immutable itself, should produce inevitable results; and if they quote the facts of material nature against us, we shall be ready to meet them on that very ground, and ask:--You say that as the laws of matter are inevitable, so probably are the laws of human life? Be it so: but in what sense are the laws of matter inevitable? Potentially, or actually? Even in the seemingly most uniform and universal law, where do we find the inevitable or the irresistible? Is there not in nature a perpetual competition of law against law, force against force, producing the most endless and unexpected variety of results? Cannot each law be interfered with at any moment by some other law, so that the first law, though it may struggle for the mastery, shall be for an indefinite time utterly defeated? The law of gravity is immutable enough: but do all stones inevitably fall to the ground? Certainly not, if I choose to catch one, and keep it in my hand. It remains there by laws; and the law of gravity is there too, making it feel heavy in my hand: but it has not fallen to the ground, and will not, till I let it. So much for the inevitable action of the laws of gravity, as of others. Potentially, it is immutable; but actually it can be conquered by other laws.

I really beg your pardon for occupying you here with such truisms: but I must put the students of this University in mind of them, as long as too many modern thinkers shall choose to ignore them.

Even if then, as it seems to me, the history of mankind depended merely on physical laws, analogous to those which govern the rest of nature, it would be a hopeless task for us to discover an inevitable sequence in History, even though we might suppose that such existed. But as long as man has the mysterious power of breaking the laws of his own being, such a sequence not only cannot be discovered, but it cannot exist. For man can break the laws of his own being, whether physical, intellectual, or moral. He breaks them every day, and has always been breaking them.

The greater number of them he cannot obey till he knows them. And too many of them he cannot know, alas, till he has broken them; and paid the penalty of his ignorance. He does not, like the brute or the vegetable, thrive by laws of which he is not conscious: but by laws of which he becomes gradually conscious; and which he can disobey after all. And therefore it seems to me very like a juggle of words to draw analogies from the physical and irrational world, and apply them to the moral and rational world; and most unwise to bridge over the gulf between the two by such adjectives as 'irresistible' or 'inevitable,' such nouns as 'order, sequence, law'--which must bear an utterly different meaning, according as they are applied to physical beings or to moral ones.

Indeed, so patent is the ambiguity, that I cannot fancy that it has escaped the author and his school; and am driven, by mere respect for their logical powers, to suppose that they mean no ambiguity at all; that they do not conceive of irrational beings as differing from rational beings, or the physical from the moral, or the body of man from his spirit, in kind and property; and that the immutable laws which they represent as governing human life and history have nothing at all to do with those laws of right and wrong, which I intend to set forth to you, as the 'everlasting judgments of God.'

In which case, I fear, they must go their way; while we go ours; confessing that there is an order, and there is a law, for man; and that if he disturb that order, or break that law in anywise, they will prove themselves too strong for him, and reassert themselves, and go forward, grinding him to powder if he stubbornly try to stop their way. But we must assert too, that his disobedience to them, even for a moment, has disturbed the natural course of events, and broken that inevitable sequence, which we may find indeed, in our own imaginations, as long as we sit with a book in our studies: but which vanishes the moment that we step outside into practical contact with life; and, instead of talking cheerfully of a necessary and orderly progress, find ourselves more inclined to cry with the cynical man of the world:

'All the windy ways of men,
Are but dust that rises up;
And is lightly laid again.'

The usual rejoinder to this argument is to fall back upon man's weakness and ignorance, and to take refuge in the infinite unknown. Man, it is said, may of course interfere a little with some of the less important laws of his being: but who is he, to grapple with the more vast and remote ones? Because he can prevent a pebble from falling, is he to suppose that he can alter the destiny of nations, and grapple forsooth with 'the eternities and the immensities,' and so forth? The argument is very powerful: but addrest rather to the imagination than the reason. It is, after all, another form of the old omne ignotum pro magnifico; and we may answer, I think fairly--About the eternities and immensities we know nothing, not having been there as yet; but it is a mere assumption to suppose, without proof, that the more remote and impalpable laws are more vast, in the sense of being more powerful (the only sense which really bears upon the argument), than the laws which are palpably at work around us all day long; and if we are capable of interfering with almost every law of human life which we know of already, it is more philosophical to believe (till disproved by actual failure) that we can interfere with those laws of our life which we may know hereafter. Whether it will pay us to interfere with them, is a different question. It is not prudent to interfere with the laws of health, and it may not be with other laws, hereafter to be discovered. I am only pleading that man can disobey the laws of his being; that such power has always been a disturbing force in the progress of the human race, which modern theories too hastily overlook; and that the science of history (unless the existence of the human will be denied) must belong rather to the moral sciences, than to that 'positive science' which seems to me inclined to reduce all human phaenomena under physical laws, hastily assumed, by the old fallacy of [Greek text], to apply where there is no proof whatsoever that they do or even can apply.

As for the question of the existence of the human will--I am not here, I hope, to argue that. I shall only beg leave to assume its existence, for practical purposes. I may be told (though I trust not in this University), that it is, like the undulatory theory of light, an unphilosophical 'hypothesis.' Be that as it may, it is very convenient (and may be for a few centuries to come) to retain the said 'hypothesis,' as one retains the undulatory theory; and for the simple reason, that with it one can explain the phaenomena tolerably; and without it cannot explain them at all.