Lectures on Modern History - Faculty of Social Sciences

<strong>Lectures</strong> on Modern History/27<strong>Lectures</strong> on Modern HistoryI. Beginning of the Modern StateModern history tells how the last four hundred years have modified themedieval conditions of life and thought. In comparison with them, theMiddle Ages were the domain of stability, and continuity, and instinctiveevolution, seldom interrupted by such originators as Gregory VII orSt. Francis of Assisi. Ignorant of History, they allowed themselves to begoverned by the unknown Past; ignorant of Science, they never believedin hidden forces working onwards to a happier future. The sense ofdecay was upon them; and each generation seemed so inferior to thelast, in ancient wisdom and ancestral virtue, that they found comfort inthe assurance that the end of the world was at hand.Yet the most profound and penetrating of the causes that have transformedsociety is a medieval inheritance. It was late in the thirteenthcentury that the psychology of Conscience was dosely studied for thefirst time, and men began to speak of it as the audible voice of God, thatnever misleads or fails, and that ought to be obeyed always, whetherenlightened or darkened, right or wrong. The notion was restrained, onits appearance, by the practice of regarding opposition to Church poweras equivalent to specific heresy, which depressed the secret monitor belowthe public and visible authority. With the dedine of coercion theclaim of Conscience rose, and the ground abandoned by the inquisitorwas gained by the individual. There was less reason then for men to becast of the same type; there was a more vigorous growth of independentcharacter, and a conscious control over its formation. The knowledge ofgood and evil was not an exclusive and sublime prerogative assigned tostates, or nations, or majorities. When it had been defined and recognisedas something divine in human nature, its action was to limit power bycausing the sovereign voice within to be heard above the expressed will