Lectures on Modern History - Faculty of Social Sciences

<strong>Lectures</strong> on Modern History/5Inaugural LectureOn the Study of History[Delivered at Cambridge, June 1895 ]Fellow students—I look back today to a time before the middle of thecentury, when I was reading at Edinburgh and fervently wishing to cometo this University. At three colleges I applied for admission, and, asthings then were, I was refused by all. Here, from the first, I vainly fixedmy hopes, and here, in a happier hour, after five-and-forty years, theyare at last fulfilled.I desire, first, to speak to you of that which I may reasonably callthe Unity of Modern History, as an easy approach to questions necessaryto be met on the threshold by any one occupying this place, whichmy predecessor has made so formidable to me by the reflected lustre ofhis name.You have often heard it said that Modern History is a subject towhich neither beginning nor end can be assigned. No beginning, becausethe dense web of the fortunes of man is woven without a void;because, in society as in nature, the structure is continuous, and we cantrace things back uninterruptedly, until we dimly descry the Declarationof Independence in the forests of Germany. No end, because, on thesame principle, history made and history makinp are scientifically inseparableand separately unmeaning.“Politics,” said Sir John Seeley, “are vulgar when they are notliberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when it losessight of its relation to practical politics.” Everybody perceives the sensein which this is true. For the science of politics is the one science that isdeposited by the stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of ariver; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by