MR. LECKY ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY.
THE criticism we feel disposed to pass on Mr. Lecky's ex- cellent lecture on " History," delivered on Wednesday before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, is that he expects too much of ordinary men. Students of history who can give to it a large portion of their lives will be benefited by his advice, but ordinary persons, such as mast have made up the greater portion of his audience, will only be repelled by it from—as we entirely agree with Mr. Lecky in thinking— one of the most instructive of all studies. If all that is necessary, they will say, we must just leave history to the experts. Mr. Lecky, in fact, is thinking rather of the his- torians, among whom he himself holds so high a rank, than a those to whom their work is to be beneficial. He does not decry the old method of studying history as a series of exciting dramas, with great actors on the stage, whose conduct excites or warns, elevates or degrades the spectators, but he evidently thinks it an insufficient method. He prefers that which has arisen later, by which the student is compelled to investigate the causes of events, to learn about peoples instead of their rulers, the "physiology of nations" instead of the characteristics of their leading men, or the results of their great conflicts in arms. He would not dwell on Miltiades, but on the causes of the development of the Athenian force; would pass by the Persian Kings to ascertain why their huge hosts were, in crucial operations, so liable to defeat. He would not have history " a series of biographies," but " a really intelligent study. One of the first tasks that every sincere student should set before himself is to endeavour to understand what is the dominant idea or characteristic of the period with which he is occupied ; what forces chiefly ruled it ; what forces were then rising into a dangerous ascendency, and what forces were on the decline; what illusions, what exaggerations, what false hopes and unworthy influences chiefly prevailed. It is only when studied in this spirit that the true significance of history is dis- closed." That is a large demand on the student, and that is not all, for Mr. Lecky demands also another set of studies :— " Another branch of history which I would especially commend to the attention of all political students is the history of institu- tions in the constantly fluctuating conditions of human life. No institution has ever remained for a long period unaltered. Sometimes with changed beliefs and changed conditions institutions lose all their original utility. They become simply useless, obstructive, and corrupt; and though by mere passive resistance they may continue to exist long after they have ceased to serve any good purpose, they will at last be under- mined by their own abuses. Other institutions, on the other hand, show that true characteristic of vitality, the power of adapting themselves to changed conditions and new utilities. Few things in history are more interesting and more in- structive than a careful study of these transformations. There is probably no better test of the political genius of a nation than the power which it possesses of adapting old institutions to new wants." That is most excellent advice for a tenth per cent. of all men, those who mean really to know history, so that, if they wrote it, they could add to the know- ledge of the world ; but if it is addressed to even the majority of the class that learns something, their acceptance of it will simply end in their knowing no history. Even the regular students of the subject, if they have but three years to give to it, are compelled, if they learn on this method, as almost all now do, to restrict the area of their studies, and come out of the Universities, knowing not history, but " periods." They under- stand the time, say, of Henry VIII., as well as Mr. Lecky does, know what institutions were flourishing, and what dying away, what was the condition of the people, and what their aspira- tions, and even, if they are very intelligent, what were the speculative ideas which dominated leading English minds ; but of how they all came there, what made England, what manner of men they were who did these deeds, and thought these thoughts, and sighed for these Utopias, real and unreal, they know nothing whatever. They have not the time, on the "better method" of study, to learn the great outline of the narrative of the world, and emerge into active life very much in the position of doctors who should know all that concerned the stomach or the heart or the brain, but had no conception of the relation of the bones, or even of the muscles, which give the skeleton its only effective powers. They have learned too well what they know to have left themselves time or energy to acquire even a dim comprehension of that mass of facts which
is essential before their knowledge can develop any breadth of thought. If they could realise Mr. Lecky's dream, they would indeed have acquired wisdom ; but they cannot realise it, and they have acquired, instead of wisdom—or, rather, the enlarged power of deduction which history should confer—a set of isolated facts which may or may not be applicable to the history daily transacting round them. Suppose they know, even profoundly, the history of the Reformation, but do not know the history of Christianity, how much will that help them to comprehend the conflict between the Church and Nonconformity, or to decide in their own minds the result on religion of widely extended suffrage ?
This was the merit of the old and now repudiated method of teaching history. It enabled men, and induced men who -never hoped to be historians, to learn the outlines of it, to put into their minds a general outline of the whole narrative, and to fill that up with details only when imperatively necessary. They were interested in the great personages, they were excited by the great dramas, and they gradually acquired, from curiosity and intellectual interest, rather than careful study, a general idea of the whole movement. Some of their information came from Shakespeare, and some from Scott, some from historians as careful as Gibbon, and some from men as easily satisfied as Rollin ; none of it was quite exact, and for very little of it could they quote first-hand authority ; but still, they had a good general idea, which greatly enlarged their minds, and enabled them instantly to utilise any better piece of information which came to them in after-life. Above all, it enabled them to read with interest and understanding,—an ac- quisition which, so far as we see, is constantly wanting to these students of a period. We saw one the other day trying to get up the history of the Crusades. Being intelligent, he learned a great deal very rapidly, especially about the motive of the Crusades, and the condition of mind which prompted them; but he was hopelessly puzzled by two things. How came the Saracens to be a Power, and to hold Jerusalem, and what in the world placed a Greek Empire, a Christian Empire, yet so hos- tile to the Crusaders, so grand and yet so powerless to resist a few thousand barbarians with no supplies, right across their path P Would it not have been better for that student, quite a real personage, to have known the general outline of history even in its barest form, and when he wanted to explore the Crusades, to have filled in without difficulty all that was acquired by the new reading? It seems at least, to us, that this was the first condition of acquiring from the study any of the wisdom, the acquisition of which, we entirely agree with Mr. Lecky, is the grand object of studying history at all. There is little to be got out of it without know- ledge of detail, but there is nothing without knowledge -of outline ; and the majority, say of Birmingham men, cannot acquire both in youth, unless, indeed, they have that passionate interest in the subject which we should say is excited in ninety-nine men in a hundred only by the dramatic events which the new system passes by with a -certain contempt. Never mind about the scenic catastrophe of Agincourt. Learn only the institutions, habits, and pre- dilections which made of English tenants and tenants' sons such a magnificent body of infantry,—that is the new advice. Well, they will not ; though they might if the battle itself and the personality of Henry V. had first excited their enthusiastic interest. In other words, the old method, which pretty much left the history of Agincourt to Shake- speare, that is, to a well-told and exciting tradition, taught more to one who knew the general outline of the history of the two countries, than an attempt to understand the causes, the institutions, the conditions which led to the result of that great battle would teach. We speak, be it remembered, of the ordi- nary man, the kind of man who is to learn from belonging to a Birmingham Institute, and admit in advance all that can be alleged against the older system. We recognise fully the absurdity in many ways of a mode of -teaching history, which, to this hour, leaves half the educated youths of Europe with an immovable belief that the population of Athens was self-governing, and that Rome was originally a Republic under universal suffrage and an elected Executive, ignor- ing through all ancient history the slave basis upon which society rested. All we contend is, that if the his- tory of Rome is to be learned in the modern way, it will not be learned at all by the majority, and that the few will learn nothing else. It is like the "exhaustive"
method of teaching geography, which ends, for most of those subjected to it, in a minute knowledge of the outlines, rivers, mountains, geology, agriculture, and meteorology of some one country—sometimes, by good luck, their own, as in the United States—but in no general idea of the world, the relation of its countries to each other, their comparative size—just ask any men so trained questions on that—or even its great routes. Japan might be in the Indian Ocean for anything a man really familiar with the shallowness of the seas round Britain, and almost everything else about Britain, could tell you off- band.
What, then, is it we hope from lecturers like Mr. Lecky, when addressing audiences between whose knowledge and their own the chasm is nearly impassable ? First of all, what we do get, and in Mr. Lecky's presence get in the best way,—a statement as from authority that the study of history is of the greatest use. Secondly, a definite injunction, with illus- trations, as to the necessity of acquiring as a foundation a general idea of the history of the world, of the skeleton to which everything that has movement, and charm of form and colour, must always be attached, and must from first to last depend on; and, thirdly, a sketch of the method by which, in the lecturer's judgment, it is possible for a man so equipped to obtain the detailed knowledge he desires or needs. That method can only be picking the brains of authoritative books, as Mr. Lecky, for example, would pick the brains of original authorities. That art is still unknown to the English middle- class man, but he could cultivate it as easily as he learns the information, often recondite, necessary for his trade. He needs, above all, the aid of the bibliographer ; and we believe it would be perfectly possible for a man like Mr. Lecky, in a two-hours' lecture on authorities, to do more to make the study of history facile, and therefore pleasant, than has been accomplished yet by all the advocates of the new method. But the bibliographer is useful only to the man who knows the outline of history as he knows the multiplication-table- He does not learn the latter either by studying the theory of numbers or the gradual growth of the modern system of writing figures down.
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