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On the 
 Philosophy of History 
 
 ^Address 
 
 Delivered to the Historical Society 
 
 University of Glasgow 
 
 January 8, 1909 
 
 By 
 
 WILLIAM PATON KER, LL.D. 
 
 Glasgow 
 James MacLehose and Sons 
 
 Publishers to the University 
 1909 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING NETT 
 
TO 
 
 RICHARD LODGE 
 

 
On the Philosophy of History 
 
 ONE of the stories in the life of Hegel tells how 
 another philosopher asked him to ' deduce his quill 
 pen,' i.e. to prove and justify on metaphysical grounds 
 a particular accidental thing. The problem, it is held, 
 was ridiculous, and showed in the other philosopher 
 a misapprehension of the scope of philosophy. Yet 
 when Hegel deals with history, one is reminded of 
 this frivolous problem, and led to ask whether the 
 Philosophy of History is not the same kind of im- 
 possibility a deduction, a metaphysical proof, of 
 particular contingencies, which are in their nature un- 
 reasonable. The dilemma seems to be obvious. The 
 philosopher in dealing with history may work out a 
 formula of progress or development ; but to do this 
 effectively and clearly must he not neglect the acci- 
 dents and chances of the mortal life which is the 
 matter of history ? Or on the other hand, if he 
 attends to particular accidents, i.e. if he is an historian 
 a reader and interpreter of the drama of history, of 
 the unreasonable fluctuating human temperaments that 
 make the tissue of history he will get into serious 
 
 5 
 
 265276 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 difficulties \yith his formula. He may be tempted to 
 give it up altogether, to forswear philosophy and 
 become a mere historian. 
 
 Hegel does not shirk the difficulty, and it would 
 be a mistake a mistake in history, or at any rate in 
 biography to dismiss his work as an abstract a priori 
 construction. He has the dramatic and imaginative 
 interest in character, will and temper, and he makes 
 this plain at the outset in his notes on great men, 
 choosing Alexander, Caesar ' and Napoleon as his 
 instances. No imaginative writer, neither Carlyle in 
 his Heroes nor Mr. Hardy in The Dynasts, has a 
 stronger interest than Hegel in the persons who seem 
 to be in the most extreme contradiction to all abstract 
 and summary formulas of history. The achievements 
 of the men of destiny may indeed be summarised, 
 but that sort of work, however philosophical, is not 
 enough for Hegel. They are the instruments and 
 vehicles of the meaning of the world, but they have 
 an independent meaning and value of their own, 
 besides ; Caesar is Caesar still, something different from 
 his effect in history, and Napoleon is Napoleon, as 
 they are known roughly to common sense, and more 
 thoroughly to the dramatic imagination. 
 
 This is one of the strong points of Hegel, an essen- 
 tial part of his own character, that everywhere he 
 recognises and appreciates character, in the sense which 
 the word has for the reader of novels and plays, and 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 quite apart from any moralising judgment. What 
 he admires in Dante is the distinct and individual 
 impression made by everyone in the poem, the in- 
 dependence and sufficiency of each character, whatever 
 his place and surroundings may be : like Farinata, 
 thinking meanly of Hell : 
 
 Come avesse lo inferno in gran dispitto. 
 He does not reduce Shakespeare to a play of ideas, 
 and does not wish to improve him. Ancient Pistol 
 is good enough as he is, and Hegel laughs and 
 applauds. 
 
 Sometimes one is inclined to think ' how great a 
 critic was in Hegel lost ' : he is so inspiriting in his 
 judgment of character, so sound in his policy towards 
 Romance ; his sane appreciation (like Goethe's) being 
 quite another thing from coldness. But possibly his 
 digressions and escapades of criticism are all the better 
 as they are, being unprofessional and unexpected. 
 
 Dealing with historical characters, he is at some 
 pains to put the moralist in his right place, and to 
 show the irrelevance of moralising with regard to 
 Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon. He does not want 
 any sermons on the vanity of human wishes ; the 
 preacher with his commonplaces about the pitiful 
 deaths of great men seems to Hegel only to be say- 
 ing : ' Look at me ! Take example by me ! I am 
 not Alexander the Great ; I am not ambitious ; do 
 not be Alexander ! I any not Julius Caesar ; he was 
 AS 7 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 killed in the Capitol ; Brutus killed him ; do not be 
 Caesar ! ' 
 
 Hegel was a moralist himself, and those remarks 
 of his bring out a great difference, which may be 
 observed elsewhere, between the moralists who judge 
 conduct, and the others who think mainly of char- 
 acter. With the former class the heroes are frequently 
 dismissed as bad men. The second order of judges 
 often seem to be rather antinomian if not anarchical 
 in their sentences. Wordsworth is one of them ; read 
 what he says of Tarn o' Shanter in his Letter to a 
 Friend of Robert Burns, and in the same context his 
 appreciation of the ' clachan yill ' : ' How happily 
 does he lead his reader into that tract of sensations ! * 
 Principal Shairp, with the other standard, makes a 
 different sort of estimate, and is pained by The Jolly 
 Beggars. In the writings of Mr. Holmes, the Police 
 Court Missionary, there is a standard of judgment 
 which is nearer to that of Wordsworth, and which 
 finds an infinite variety in human beings, apart from 
 the record of their vices. Another instance was given 
 me lately by a friend of mine who is both historian 
 and moralist ; the difference of opinion about that 
 wonderful piece of Diderot's which Goethe translated, 
 Le Ne-veu de Rameau. Rameau's nephew is a black- 
 guard musician of genius, without a rag of decent 
 conduct (something like the goliardeis in Piers Plow- 
 man), who is taken by Diderot to confound all 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 respectability and pedantry by the miracle of his lively 
 spirit. The God of the old Comedy has had few 
 more glorious triumphs in modern times. But Lord 
 Morley of Blackburn, who also has translated Ra- 
 meaus Nephew in his Diderot, can hardly endure him, 
 and takes the value of the piece to lie in its exposure 
 of that corrupt world, which (in the words of a 
 classical translator) so soon was to meet * the severe, 
 the very severe chill of a hostile public executioner/ 
 Or, in another figure, to quote exactly : c We see the 
 rotten material which the purifying flame of Jacobin- 
 ism was soon to consume out of the land with fiery 
 swiftness/ 
 
 History has often been turned into a Mirror for 
 Magistrates, or Gesta Romanorum, a stock of instances, 
 and illustrations with the edifying conclusion : c And 
 this, my friends, ought to teach us ! ' No doubt the 
 study of history has flourished, in a way, through this 
 moral application of it ; the preachers give it a recog- 
 nised and appreciable value. It is not a thing to be 
 scoffed at or condemned ; many a one would be glad to 
 know as much history as Montaigne, to read and 
 remember Plutarch in Plutarch's own spirit; to enjoy, 
 on any terms whatever, such acquaintance with the 
 lives of famous Greeks and Romans as was common 
 in the easy old-fashioned days. 
 
 But at the same time it can hardly be denied that 
 the moralising use of history, while it may have 
 
 9 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 encouraged the study of history in one way, also 
 tended to make it distasteful in another. It is easily 
 degraded into mechanical rhetoric, and those who 
 have used it best Juvenal and Dr. Johnson have 
 seen this most clearly. The moral historian is too 
 closely related to the sophist, the tutor who teaches 
 the art of essay writing with the proper number of 
 heads, the right openings and amplifications. History 
 of this sort is parasitic, with no proper root of its 
 own. One of the most notable events or changes in 
 the eighteenth century was the abandonment of this 
 old-fashioned way in favour of genuine history. We 
 know Dr. Johnson's views. A conversation is re- 
 ported, at dinner in Mr. Cambridge's house at 
 Twickenham, April 18, 1775 : 
 
 4 The common remark as to the utility of reading 
 history being made : Johnson. " We must consider 
 how very little real history there is ; I mean real 
 authentic history. That certain kings reigned and 
 certain battles were fought we can depend upon as 
 true, but all the colouring, all the philosophy of 
 history is conjecture." Boswell. " Then, Sir, you 
 would reduce all history to no better than an 
 almanac, a mere chronological series of remarkable 
 events." Mr. Gibbon, who must at that time have 
 been employed upon his history, of which he pub- 
 lished the first volume in the following year, was 
 present, but did not step forth in defence of that 
 
 10 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 species of writing. He probably did not like to 
 trust himself with Johnson/ 
 
 Before this (in the spring of 1772) Johnson had 
 said : ' There is but a shallow stream of thought in 
 history.' BoswelL ' But surely, Sir, an historian has 
 reflection.' Johnson. c Why, yes, Sir, and so has a 
 cat when she catches a mouse for her kitten.' 
 
 He never desired to hear of the Punic War while 
 he lived. Mrs. Thrale asked him about ' the conver- 
 sation powers ' of one of their acquaintance. ' He 
 talked to me at club one day/ replies our Doctor, 
 4 concerning Catiline's Conspiracy ; so I withdrew my 
 attention and thought about Tom Thumb/ His use 
 of history in the old-fashioned way is splendidly seen 
 in the well-known passages of The Vanity of Human 
 Wishes ; Wolsey and Charles XII. of Sweden : 
 
 His fall was destin'd to a barren strand, 
 
 A petty fortress and a dubious hand ; 
 
 He left the name at which the world grew pale, 
 
 To point a moral, or adorn a tale. 
 
 It is true that there is much more history in Dr. 
 Johnson than is commonly supposed. In spite of 
 his disparaging remarks he was willing to give advice 
 about the reading of history. His depreciation means 
 that he is tired of historical rhetoric and has a better 
 ideal in his mind, and he, himself, is the author of 
 one of the most original historical works in the 
 language A Journey to the Western Islands of Scot- 
 
 ii 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 land. In ordinary history he felt the want of evi- 
 dence, the uncertainty. See what he says about 
 Robertson : 4 Robertson paints ; but the misfortune is, 
 you are sure he does not know the people whom he 
 paints ; so you cannot suppose a likeness.' But 
 when he gets his chance in the Journey, he shows 
 himself a true historian. His account of the economic 
 and social condition of the Highlands, the change 
 from Status to Contract, from the patriarchal system 
 to competition and the cash nexus, brings to mind 
 the description of a similar change at the beginning 
 of More's Utopia, and anticipates Coleridge's Lay Sermon 
 and Carlyle's Past and Present. This historical work 
 of Johnson, penetrating and illuminating, is carried 
 out in no pretentious form. The method is that of 
 Herodotus ; it is history in the old sense of curious 
 enquiry; it is 'Natural and Civil History,' a subject 
 of which there was formerly a Chair in the University 
 of St. Andrews. Herodotus and Dr. Johnson under- 
 stood history in that comprehensive and miscellaneous 
 way : 
 
 ' One of the birds that frequent this rock has, as 
 we were told, its body not larger than a duck's, and 
 yet lays eggs as large as those of a goose. This 
 bird is by the inhabitants named a coot. That which 
 is called coot in England is here a cooter.' 
 
 ' Mr. Boswell caught a cuddy. The cuddy is a 
 fish of which I know not the philosophical name.' 
 
 12 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 So Herodotus could leave the World's Debate 
 between Europe and Asia in order to stalk the cro- 
 codile or the phoenix, and take notes about the 
 sources of the Nile. 
 
 It is pleasant to see how Dr. Johnson in the 
 Journey feels the want of that minute accuracy which 
 in Rasse/as he had treated as unnecessary for the 
 poet : 
 
 ' The business of a poet,' said Imlac, c is to examine 
 not the individual but the species ; to remark general 
 properties and large appearances : he does not number 
 the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different 
 shades in the verdure of the forest/ 
 
 But in the Journey the explorer wishes he could 
 remember things more clearly. ' He who has not 
 made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to 
 require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely 
 believe how much a few hours take from certainty 
 of knowledge and distinctness of imagery ; how the 
 succession of objects will be broken, how separate 
 parts will be confused, and how ' many particular 
 features and discriminations will be compressed and 
 conglobated into one gross and general idea/ And 
 it was the despiser of history who wrote the famous 
 passage on historical associations : the patriotism of 
 Marathon, the piety of lona. 
 
 Johnson's Journey is a proof that the historical 
 instinct and genius may be latent and unsuspected, 
 
 13 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 and may be brought out almost accidentally, by the 
 mere impulse of curiosity, the old wanderer's motive, 
 to see new lands and learn the manners of other 
 men. Dr. Johnson's historical raid is a thing that 
 makes the pomp of methodical historians ridiculous. 
 This picture of the meeting of two ages in the 
 Highlands the old traditional clan system and the 
 economics of the nineteenth century is drawn appar- 
 ently by a casual observer untrained in any historical 
 school. But we know Dr. Johnson's own Spanish 
 proverb : ' He who would bring home the wealth of 
 the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with 
 him ' ; and we see that he had been storing up all 
 his life for this adventure. Ne fait pas ce tour qui 
 veut. The moral seems to be that history needs no 
 justification, and that Herodotus is never out of date;, 
 the motive of history is that impulse, stronger than 
 prudence, which takes Ulysses and his companions 
 out through the pillars of Hercules : 
 
 < Our eyes are wakeful only for a little space ; let 
 us win for them a sight of the unpeopled world > 
 South of the Sun.' * 
 
 1 O frati, dissi, che per cento milia 
 Perigli siete giunti all' occidente, 
 A questa tanto picciola vigilia 
 De' vostri sensi ch' e del rimanente 
 Non vogliate negar 1' esperienza 
 Diretro al sol del mondo senza gente. 
 
 Dante, Inf. xxvi. 1 1 2 
 14 
 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 If one is to make a fair estimate of Johnson's 
 talent for history, his political essays should not be 
 forgotten, with their scornful insight : ' how is it 
 that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the 
 drivers of negroes ? ' And his latest work is historical: 
 the Lives of the Poets. 
 
 All these things are a long way from the moral 
 application of history, the examples of the vanity of 
 human wishes. But they do not efface the difference 
 between Johnson and Gibbon. Johnson's good sense, 
 his keenness and curiosity, may be turned to history, 
 as we have seen ; but he has not the frame of history 
 as it disclosed itself to Gibbon or to Burke, the idea, 
 more or less vague, of a general continuous life, of 
 historical progress. It is this new fashion of regarding 
 history that makes the second half of the eighteenth 
 century so different from the first. There is an implicit 
 philosophy of history in every modern historian, 
 even when like Gibbon or Macaulay he may seem 
 for the time to have no interest beyond the narrative. 
 At any rate it may be said that the idea of a continuous 
 impersonal life is necessary to the story of the Roman 
 Empire or of England, and this vague conception is 
 on the way to become philosophical ; it calls for 
 philosophical criticism to determine what is implied, 
 in such terms as ' national life ' or the ' spirit of the 
 age/ 
 
 Historians are naturally inclined to be suspicious 
 
 15 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 or unrespectful about the philosophy of history. They 
 regard it as an amateurish and, at the same time, 
 pretentious way of cutting the difficulties. What 
 there is good in it is history ; what is not history 
 in it is superfluous. This opinion is not unreasonable. 
 The short cuts in history are many of them deceptive 
 and unprofitable. Taine 'deduced' the English genius 
 from the English mutton ; and therefore is thought 
 by some to have had a philosophy of history. Hegel 
 is full of historical good things, like his description 
 of the Middle Ages ; but is their goodness beyond 
 the reach of the historian, does it need philosophy ? 
 As in his remarks on heroes, already quoted, Hegel 
 seems often to be working as a man of letters, using 
 imagination and common sense, without any meta- 
 physics at all. In many of his lectures, especially 
 on the Philosophy of Art, he appears to be escaping 
 from metaphysics, and giving his hearers criticism 
 and history ; the results of his reading in the Nibel- 
 ungen or the ballads of the Cid, his impressions of 
 Shakespeare or Cervantes. 
 
 In this place, I remember how Edward Caird 
 seemed to be glad when he came to the Papacy and 
 the Empire in the notes which, in my time, in the 
 Moral Philosophy Class, followed the lectures on 
 Greek Philosophy and led on to the moderns, Descartes 
 and Spinoza. Those historical notes were a surprise 
 
 to many of his hearers, a new sort of interest ; and 
 
 16 
 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 I imagine that Hegel also was unscrupulous, and 
 gave his people a good deal of history because he 
 liked it, without trying too hard at every point to 
 insist on the philosophy. The Philosophy of History 
 has the same place in his works as the Critias of 
 Plato, after the Republic and T'imaeus. The Theory 
 of Justice and the Theory of Nature are followed 
 by the story which shows the adventures of Justice 
 in space and time. There are many things besides 
 philosophy in Plato's story of Atlantis, and the 
 same sort of freedom may be allowed to Hegel. 
 
 One might ask whether Hegel's scheme of history 
 is a thing beyond the reach of ordinary historical 
 method, whether it really needs metaphysics to invent 
 or explain it. The conception of Freedom as the 
 end of all historical progress can be made intelligible 
 without the heavy philosophic apparatus ; and the 
 shifting of the historical centre from Greece to 
 Rome, from the Empire to the modern national 
 state (e.g. Prussia) so far from being new or para- 
 doxical belongs to the oldest type of historical 
 commonplaces, such, for instance, as is explained in 
 Sir David Lyndsay's Monarche, the succession of 
 empires, Chaldee, Persian, Greek and Roman the 
 theory derived from the book of Daniel, which is, 
 as Dr. Driver describes it, ' a religious philosophy of 
 history/ If Prussia, with Hegel, takes the place of 
 the Fifth Monarchy, we may note the fact and 
 
 17 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 perhaps draw inferences, without obscuring the like- 
 ness of the younger to the older doctrine. 
 
 The Philosophy of History may be a work of 
 mixed origin ; partly philosophy and partly the native 
 genius of a great improviser. 
 
 But there is another set of Hegel's lectures where 
 he proves himself philosopher and historian in one. 
 About the historic value of Hegel's History of 
 Philosophy there can be no question. No one who 
 has read those lectures can ever fall back into the 
 state of mind that was possible before they were 
 delivered. Here is history, ' the record of change ' ; 
 and here the change is a movement of thought under 
 its own laws ; the historical succession is a process 
 of logic. 
 
 Now if the merely human and temporal relation 
 of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Leibnitz, can 
 be truly represented in another sphere by the logical 
 sequence of their theories in the history of philosophy, 
 it is at least possible that the much more complex 
 and accidental fabric of ordinary history may be 
 explicable as a process of thought ; and this will be 
 the Philosophy of History. 
 
 An ideal explanation is not necessarily bad science. 
 Goethe explained the metamorphosis of Plants by 
 reference to a sort of Platonic idea of the absolute 
 plant ; he saw in the light of this idea that the 
 Flower and all the parts of the Flower are modifi- 
 
 18 
 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 cations of the Leaf. I understand that this meta- 
 physical theory is still accepted by positive botanists. 
 And in history the power of ideas is not to be 
 denied merely because it is difficult to explain the 
 operation of large impersonal causes. It is possible, 
 of course, to make large and imposing formulas do 
 the duty of explanation. This easy process of fallacy 
 is not to be encouraged. But it is another thing 
 to say that because the ' Spirit of the Age ' and 
 such branches of learning are sometimes unlawfully 
 invoked, therefore there is to be a law, a statute of 
 Praemunire, against all recourse to ideal explanations. 
 
 Every age has its own fashion, and this is deter- 
 mined by habits of thought, which can be shown to 
 follow their own law. The movement of the world, 
 the progress of thought from one age to another, 
 may be proved and tested often as thoroughly as the 
 history of individual lives. 
 
 The histories of literature and art are sometimes 
 depreciated by political historians c poor despised 
 trades,' as the plumber said to the schoolmaster. 
 Those who take Seeley's view now prevalent in 
 the schools that the business of history is politics, 
 will, of course, regard those other histories as at best 
 merely subsidiary ancillary sciences, Hulfswissen- 
 schaften. But as their matter is itself intellectual, so 
 the changes which they record (one would suppose) 
 must be under some laws of intelligence, and if 
 
 19 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 the changes of literary or artistic fashion correspond 
 to political changes, then the political changes the 
 matter of ordinary history must be to some extent 
 under the same intellectual law. 
 
 The history of art the history of literature may 
 be included in it or taken along with it has one 
 great disadvantage which may partly account for the 
 low opinion held of it by most regular historians. 
 The ordinary historian is not so much exposed to 
 be confronted and outfaced by his subject. His 
 subject is all in the past, and much of his matter is 
 only half articulate. But the historian of art is 
 / dealing with things present and alive, and things 
 whose nature it is to be intelligible. Statesmen and 
 generals are past and gone, and cannot resent their 
 treatment by the historian ; but when the historian 
 is talking about Rembrandt and Milton, he can 
 never be quite safe. Rembrandt and Milton may 
 walk in at any moment, and put out his little light. 
 
 Without attempting to explain them, I mention 
 some things that are made definite by the history of 
 literature, with some bearing on political history. ; 
 
 The Teutonic ' wandering of the peoples,' the 
 migrations and conquests of Goths, Burgundians, 
 Franks, and Northmen are seen in literature to be 
 accompanied, in the tumult of the Dark Ages and 
 through all the confusion of Greek, Latin, Hebrew 
 and Teutonic elements, by the progress of a distinctly 
 
 20 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 Northern type of civilisation, the proof of which is 
 in the scanty remains of old Teutonic poetry so 
 different in their peculiar elaborate art from that 
 which follows in the next great mediaeval period, 
 when the new Latin languages French and Provensal 
 first are the instruments of the ruling fashion in 
 Christendom. The change is about uoo, the time 
 of the first Crusade ; it coincides with a change in 
 the type of the Teutonic languages, from the c Old ' 
 to the c Middle ' stage, so called, and with a general 
 submission of the Teutonic literatures High and Low 
 Dutch, English, Danish to the sway of the Romance 
 dictators. This, and not the classical renaissance, is 
 the beginning of modern poetry ; there is an unbroken 
 succession from the early Proven9al to the first Italian 
 poets, then to Dante and Petrarch, and so to Ariosto, 
 Ronsard and Spenser the new Renaissance ideas 
 taking up and carrying on what had begun before 
 i TOO, before the first extant Proven9al songs. That 
 is a rough summary of part of the literary history 
 which, at least, gives clearness to one's view of the 
 difference between the earlier and the later Middle 
 Ages, and security against the common prejudice of 
 the Renaissance. Without this, the perspective of 
 mediaeval history will go wrong ; for there is little 
 in the political record to bring out that wonderful 
 early Teutonic growth and culmination, that Homeric 
 age of the North. It is through literature, also, that 
 
 21 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 the Irish get their proper place in relation to the 
 rest of Europe. More in detail, many things might 
 be brought out by a comparison of literary and political 
 history. 
 
 One of the most difficult of all periods is the 
 fifteenth century : the Middle Ages were an uncon- 
 scionable time in dying, and the spectacle is tedious. 
 The exhaustion of the Middle Ages is described by 
 Gaston Paris in the introductory part of his little book 
 on Villon ; the emptiness of the classical renaissance 
 is shown in a few pages (Reflexions sur le Quattrocento] 
 by one of his most eminent scholars, Mr. Alfred 
 Jeanroy ; and those two complementary essays, if one 
 takes them together, will not be without their effect 
 on the political history of France and Italy. How 
 much of the history of the world is included in 
 Rabelais, the hope, the freedom of the new age, the 
 ambition, the glory, the triumph of the Will ! and 
 attending on Rabelais, the narrow clear mind of 
 George Buchanan, with his unshaken faith in Latin 
 verse, and at the same time the utter want of chivalry 
 which was one common effect of the classic revival. 
 For it is not every great clerk who is worthy to be 
 admitted to the Abbey of Thelema, where the rule is 
 freedom, and freedom means honour. 
 
 To take some other examples, does not Mr. Saints- 
 bury's History of Criticism do something to explain 
 the history of the world at large if it were only by 
 
 22 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 showing how vast an amount of time and labour has 
 been spent by the human race in the cultivation of 
 formal rhetoric ? And Rutherford's Chapter in the 
 History of Annotation has the same sort of effect, in its 
 anatomy and physiology of the Commentator. The 
 history of ways of thinking not only of philosophy, 
 but of criticism and commentary is a key to political 
 history as well. 
 
 The great objection to philosophies of history is 
 that they seem to differ little from summaries of his- 
 tory, which may be better made by the historian than 
 the philosopher. On the other hand, summaries well 
 made, like Freeman's General Sketch or Gardiner's 
 outline of English History, may have great philo- 
 sophical value merely because they are synoptic, and 
 keep in view the continuous life of Europe or of 
 England as if it were one person. 
 
 But the summary, however philosophical, is un- 
 satisfying. It chooses certain things countries and 
 heroes and tendencies and aspects for promotion, 
 and leaves out others. Many things are interesting 
 and important for the historian and the humanities 
 which are not in the main line of march. The most 
 philosophical of modern histories Sars's Norway 
 describes the life of a country which lost its rank 
 among the nations in October 1263. Iceland never 
 was a State at all, in the strict sense of the term. 
 Yet the early history of Norway and Iceland, on 
 
 23 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 account of the genius of the people, is valuable out 
 of all proportion to the place of these countries in 
 the political community of Europe. The Orkneys 
 in the twelfth century, just because the story of the 
 Earls (Jar/a Saga, Orkneyinga Saga] was written by 
 some person of spirit and imagination, are still to be 
 seen and understood in a light that seldom falls on 
 any of the more important lands. 
 
 The other day Mr. Nicholson's Literary History of 
 the Arabs achieved what most people would have 
 thought impossible, capturing readers who understand 
 nothing of Arabic, and making them interested in the 
 lives of writers whom they can never know, and the 
 fortunes of a nation with which they have never been 
 concerned. In ways like these, the historians make 
 their appeal in the name of the humanities against 
 the formula of progress. Progress, whatever it may 
 be, does not refute or disannul what once has been, 
 so long as the historian has a chance of recovering 
 and interpreting it. History is ' the record of change'; 
 it is also something more. It is the province of one 
 of the Muses, and of Mnemosyne, their mother, in 
 whose presence it is not becoming to speak of the 
 utility of history. Discussion of the advantages to be 
 found in noble things is seldom edifying or cheerful. 
 The practical uses of history may be proved, no 
 doubt, but not its true value : 
 
 For nothing worthy proving can be proven. 
 
 24 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 If ever the philosophy of history were complete, 
 the historian would still be undismayed. There are 
 other things for him to do ; he might perhaps attend 
 to the history of Ireland, which has probably escaped 
 the notice of the philosopher. The justification of 
 history, if it wants any, may be found in the Journey 
 to the Western Islands, and in the last voyage of 
 Ulysses- 
 Considerate la vostra semenza : 
 
 Fatti non foste a viver come i bruti, 
 Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza. 
 
 Adventure is the motive. And if we may judge from 
 the freedom of some of his casual remarks, the 
 adventurers will find Hegel ready to be of their 
 company and to join in all fresh discoveries. He 
 had faith in the real world. 
 
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