wimiimmmmmmmM im^ hf!ff?I? mim dT^^^ ..^^^ '^ sa3f^^^^" y^dvys/^ v^ ^ i;7>r.5rfJ5^, '^'^/sy3^\^ yM'^^Q/y CAL//>^ % •y . "^ '<''^j^-^ f t/) A. ^^HIT '• "Sfc ^fBR^?:^ A^ 0) > A^ ^ A^ Miil ^ '■^/s.. CD CO l^ /,~_ ->i 'h ii.v* ^0..5* .0 ALMA MATER Photogravure of the Statue by Daniel 0. French Tlie colossal ligiire of Freiicli's Alma Mater adorns ilie fine suite of stone steps leading up to tlie picturesque library building of Cohnnbia University. It is a bronze statue, gilded with pure gold. Tiie female figure typifying " Alma Mater " is represented as sitting in a chair of classic shape, her ell>o\vs resting on the arms of the chair. Botii iiands are raised. Tiie right hand iiolds and is supported by a sceptre. On her head is a classic wreath, and on lier lap lies an open book, from whicli her eyes seem to have just been raised in meditation. Drapery falls in semi- classic folds from her neciv to her sandalleil feet, only the arms and neck being left bare. Every University man cherishes a kindly feeling for his Alma Mater, and the famous American .sculptor, Daniel C French, has been most successful in his artistic creation of the "Fostering Mother" spiritualized — the familiar ideal of the mother of minds trained to thouglU and consecrated to intellectual service. I'1 Jnternational '^■ University Lectures Delivered by the Most Distinguished Representatives of the Greatest Universities of the World At the Congress of Arts and Science Universal Exposition, Saint Louis VOLUME I. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ALLIANCE, Inc. 1909 Copyright, 1909 BY University alliance, Inc. ORGANIZATION OF THE CONGRESS PRESIDENT OF THE EXPOSITION: HON. DAVID R. FRANCIS, A.M., LL.D. DIBECTOE OF CONGRESSES: HOWARD J. ROGERS, A.M., LL.D. Universal Exposition, 1904. ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, Ph.D., LL.D. President of Columbia University, Chairman. WILLIAM R. HARPER, Ph.D., LL.D. President of the University of Chicago. R. H. JESSE, Ph.D., LL.D. President of the University of Missouri. HENRY S. PRITCHETT, PhD., LL.D. President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. HERBERT PUTNAM, Litt.D., LL.D. Librarian of Congress. FREDERICK J. V. SKIFF, A.M. Director of the Field Columbian Museum. OFFICERS OF THE CONGRESS president: SIMON NEWCOMB, PhD., LL.D. Retired Professor U. 8. N. vice-presidents : HUGO MUNSTERBERG, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of Psychology in Harvard University. ALBION W. SMALL, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of Sociology in the University of Chicago. TABLE OF CONTENTS VOIATME I. Puhlisher's Preface. PAGE History of the Congress xi Ey Howard J. Rogers. iNTRODrcTOKY ADDRESS, Evolution of the Scientific Investigator . . 1 By Simon Newcomb, President cf the Congress. HISTORY. Variety and Unity of History 21 By Woodeow Wji.son, President of Princeton University. Science of History in the Nineteenth Century 4& By WiLLiAJi MiLLiGAN Sloane, Profcssor of History, Columbia University. Expansion of Greek History 75 By John Pentland Mahaffy. Professor cf Ancient His- tory, University of Dublin. Problems in Roman History 95 By Ettore Pais, Professor of Ancient History, University of Naples. A Survey of the History of Asia 121 By Henri Cordier, Professor of Oriental Languages, Uni- versity of Paris. Eistoriccl Development of the Science of History (Medieval) 157 By Karl Gotthakt Lamprecht, Professor of History, Uni- versity cf Lejpsic. T CONTENTS— Continued. PACK Modern History of Europe 177 By John B. Bl by. Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University. History of America 195 Bt Er)W.\Ki) Gayi.ord Boi r\e. Professor of History, Yala University. BrBLiOGRAPur: Department of History 215 LANGUAGE. History of Languages 227 By Tno.\i.\s R.vy.vksford Lounsbi.by, Professor of Englisli, Yale University. Indo-Iranian Languages (Sanskrit) 267 By Sii.vAfx T.f.vr, Professor of Sanskrit, College of France. Latin Language 285 Bt Edward Adolf So.vnexschki.x, Professor of Latin and Greek, University of Birmingham. FULL PAGE PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES VOLUME I. Illuminated Symbolic Fkontispiece. PAGE WooDROw Wilson, President of Princeton University 48 University of Paris in the 13th Century 121 Pioneers op American History 212 tU SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THESE INTERNA- TIONAL LECTURES. Education, in its broadest purpose, was never so pow- erfully, substantially and concretely promoted as by the plan which recently culminated in an International Congress of Arts and Science. Every civilized nation has adopted a method of public instruction, and while there is a marked dissimilarity, sometimes offering contrasts, each has an ele- ment of good, and the effects are wholesome. The Interna- tional Congress of Arts and Science was therefore proposed with the view to the bringing together representatives of the various schools, thereby assimilating, in a measure, the experience and results, the theories and practices of the several methods in use. Another purpose, equally promi- nent, was to present by lectures, to be delivered by the most distinguished educators, investigators, and scientists, the de- terminations, discoveries and inquiries in the fields of re- search calculated to advance and exalt the spirit of highest civilization. Never before in history has such a beneficent purpose been so well accomplished, or such a gathering of the world's greatest savants been seen, as distinguished this famous Congress, an assemblage which was possible only through the active aid given by the rulers of participating governments, and the expenditure of a vast sum of money. The series of lectures delivered at this epochal Congress embrace, in a distinctly authoritative way, practically every subject with which both the scientific enquirer and the masses are most concerned. The arrangement also com- mends them to every class of readers, since the lectures are introduced in the order of natural development of edu- ix cation and civilization so as to most clearly describe the progress of man : Thus, beginning with History, the foundation of enquiry, the subjects follow in sequence: Language, Religion, Education, Law, Literature, Art, the Sciences — Geology, Geography, Palaeontology (plants and animals in a fossil state), Archceology (antiquities), Eth- nology (races of mankind). Embryology (the beginning of life), Biology (the science of life), Origin of Species, Evolution (the processes of life development). Sociology — government, national, state, municipal; Technology, espe- cially Engineering; Mathematics, Medicine, Anti-Toxin Treatment, Surgery, Astronomy, Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, ]\Iusic, the Drama, etc. There are also lectures on Commerce, Finance, Transportation, Insurance, Labor, Industrial Problems, Administration, Diplomacy, Farming, Great Social Problems, etc. In brief, the subjects herein treated embrace a variety that covers the field of human study, and in each case the lecturer, representing some one of the most famous universities of the world, has achieved distinction in the particular branch of know^ledge upon which he was invited to speak. This imperfect resume of the contents of the series in- dicates the extraordinary value of the collection, valuable not only to the professional man, but equally so to the masses, for the lectures impart instruction, which is nowhere else obtainable in such compact form, on the up- growth of the race in all pursuits. In its entirety, therefore, the work is a school for children, a college for youth, a university for the graduand, and a text-book for every m^i, woman, girl, and boy who appreciates the benefit and mas- tery which education gives. The University Alliance, Inc. THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS BY HOWARD J. ROGERS A.M., LL,.D. The forces which bring to a common point the thousand- fold energies of a universal exposition can best promote an international congress of ideas. Under national pat- ronage and under the spur of international competition the best products and the latest inventions of man in science, in literature, and in art are grouped together in orderly classification. Whether the motive underlying the exhibits be the promotion of commerce and trade, or whether it be individual ambition, or whether it be national pride and loyalty, the resultant is the same. The space within the boundaries of the exposition is a forum of the nations where equal rights are guaranteed to every rep- resentative from any quarter of the globe, and where the sovereignty of each nation is recognized whenever its flag floats over a national pavilion or an exhibit area. The productive genius of every governed people contends in peaceful rivalry for world recognition, and the exposition becomes an international clearing-house for practical ideas. For the demonstration of the value of these products men thoroughly skilled in their development and use are sent by the various exhibitors. The exposition by the logic of its creation thus gathers to itself the expert rep- resentatives of every art and industry. For at least two months in the exposition period there are present the mem- bers of the international jury of awards, selected specially by the different governments for their thorough knowledge, theoretical and practical, of the departments to which they XII THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS are assigned, and selected further for their ability to im- press upon others the correctness of their views. The renown of a universal exposition brings, as visitors, stu- dents and investigators bent upon the solution of problems and anxious to know the latest contributions to the facts and the theories which underlie every phase of the world's development. The material therefore is ready at hand with which to construct the framework of a conference of parts, or a congress of the whole of any subject. It was a natural and logical step to accompany the study of the exhibits with a debate on their excellence, an analysis of their growth, and an argument for their future. Hence the congress. The exposition and the congress are correlative terms. The former concentres the visible products of the brain and hand of man ; the congress is the literary embodiment of its activities. Yet it was not till the Paris Exposition of 18S9 that the idea of a series of congresses, international in membership and universal in scope, was fully developed. The three preceding expositions, Paris, 1878, Philadelphia, 1876, and Vienna, 1873, had held under their auspices many con- ferences and congresses, and indeed the germ of the con- gress idea may be said to have been the establishment of the International Scientific Commission in connection with the Paris Exposition of 1867; but all of these meetings were unrelated and sometimes almost accidental in their organization, although many were of great scientific interest and value. The success of the series of seventy congresses in Paris in 1889 led the authorities of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 to establish the World's Congress .Auxiliary, designed "to supplement the exhibit of material progress by the Exposition, by a portrayal of the wonderful THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xiii achievements of the new age in science, literature, educa- tion, government, jurisprudence, morals, charity, religion, and other departments of human activity, as the most effect- ive means of increasing the fraternity, progress, prosperity, and peace of mankind." The widespread interest in this series of meetings is a matter easily within recollection, but they were in no wise interrelated to each other, nor more than ordinarily comprehensive in their scope. It remained for the Paris Expositon of 1900 to bring to a perfect organization this type of congress develop- ment. By ministerial decree issued two years prior to the exposition the conduct of the department was set forth to the minutest detail. One hundred twenty-five congresses, each with its separate secretary and organizing committee, were authorized and grouped under twelve sections cor- responding closely to the exhibit classification. The prin- cipal delegate, M. Gariel, reported to a special commission, which was directly responsible to the government. The department was admirably conducted and reached as high a degree of success as a highly diversified, ably admin- istered, but unrelated system of international conferences could. And yet the attendance on a majority of these congresses was disappointing, and in many there was scarcely any one present outside the immediate circle of those concerned in its development. If this condition could prevail in Paris, the home of arts and letters, in the im- mediate centre of the great constituency of the University and of many scientific circles and learned societies, and within easy traveling distance of other European university and literary centres, it was fair to presume that the useful- ness of this class of congress was decreasing. It certainly was safe to assume, on the part of the authorities of the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, that such a series could not be a success in that city, owing to its geographical position XIV THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS and the limited number of university and scientific circles within a reasonable traveling distance. Something more than a repetition of the stereotyped form of conference was admitted to be necessary in order to arouse interest among scholars and to bring credit to the Exposition. This was the serious problem which confronted the Exposition of St, Louis. No exposition was ever better fitted to serve as the ground-work of a congress of ideas than that of St. Louis. The ideal of the Exposition, which was created in time and fixed in place to commemorate a great historic event, was its educational influence. Its appeal to the citizens of the United States for support, to the Federal Congress for appropriations, and to foreign governments for cooperation, v*^as made purely on this basis. For the first time in the history of expositions the educational influence was made the dominant factor and the classification and installation of exhibits made con- tributory to that principle. The main purpose of the Exposition w^as to place within reach of the investigator the objective thought of the world, so classified as to show its relations to all similar phases of human endeavor, and so arranged as to be practically available for reference and study. As a part of the organic scheme a congress plan was contemplated which should be correlative with the exhibit features of the Exposition, and whose pub- lished proceedings should stand as a monument to the breadth and enterprise of the Exposition long after its buildings had disappeared and its commercial achievements grown dim in the minds of men. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONGRESS. The Department of Congresses, to which was to be in- trusted this difficult task, was not established until the latter part of 1902, although the question was for a year previous THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xv the subject of many discussions and conferences between the President of the Exposition, Mr. Francis ; the Director of Exhibits, Mr. SkifT; the Chief of the Department of Education, Mr. Rogers; President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, and President William R. Harper of Chicago University. To the disinterested and valuable advice of the two last-named gentlemen during the entire history of the Congress the Exposition is under heavy obligations. During this period proposals had been made to two men of international reputation to give all their time for two years to the organization of a plan of con- gresses which should accomplish the ultimate purpose of the Exposition authorities. Neither one, however, could arrange to be relieved of the pressure of his regular duties, and the entire scheme of supervision was consequently changed. The plan adopted was based upon the idea of an advisory board composed of men of high literary and scientific standing who should consider and recommend the kind of congress most worthy of promotion, and the details of its development. In November, 1902, Howard J. Rogers, LL.D., was appointed Director of Congresses, and the members of the Advisory (afterwards termed Administrative) Board se- lected as follows : — Chairman: Nichoi^as Murray Butler, Ph.D., LL.D., President Columbia University. William R. Harper, Ph.D., LL.D., President Uni- versity of Chicago. Honorable Frederick W. Holls, A.M., LL.B., New York. R. H. Jesse, Ph.D., LL.D., President University of Missouri. Henry S. Pritchett, Ph.D., LL.D., President Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology. XVI THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS Herbert Putnam, Litt.D. LL.D. Librarian of Con- gress. Frederick J. V. Skife, A.M., Director of Field Colum- bian Museum. The action of the Executive Committee of the Exposi- tion, approved by the President, was as follows : — There shall be appointed by the President of the Exposition Com- pany a Director of Congresses who shall report to the President of the Exposition Company. There shall be appointed by the President of the Exposition Com- pany an Advisory Board of seven persons, the chairman to be named by the President, who shall meet at the call of the Director of Congresses, or the Chairman of the Advisory Board. The expenses of the members of the Advisory Board while on business of the Exposition shall be a charge against the funds of the Exposition Company. The duties of the said Advisory Board shall be: to consider and make recommendations to the Director of Congresses on all matters submitted to them; to determine the number and the extent of the congresses; the emphasis to be placed upon special features; the prominent men to be invited to participate; the character of the programmes; and the methods for successfully carrying out the enterprise. There shall be set aside from the Exposition funds for the main- tenance of the congresses the sum of two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000). The Standing Committee on Congresses from the Expo- sition board of directors was shortly afterwards appointed and was composed of five of the most prominent men in St. Louis : — Chairman: Hon. Frederick W. Lehmann, Attorney at Law. Breckenridge Jones, Ranker. Charles W. Knapp, Editor of The St. Louis Republic. John Schroers, Manager of the Westliche Post. A. F. ShaplEich, Merchant. To this committee were referred for consideration by the President all matters of policy submitted by the Di- THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xvii rector of Congresses. This committee had jurisdiction over all congress matters, including not only the Congress of Arts and Science, but also the many miscellaneous con- gresses and conventions, and a great part of the success of the congresses is due to their broad-minded and liberal determination of the questions laid before them. IDEA OF THE CONGRESS OE ARTS AND SCIENCE It is impossible to ascribe the original idea of the Con- gress of Arts and Science to any one person. It v^as a matter of slow growth from the many conferences which had been held for a year by men of many occupations, and as finally worked out bore little resemblance to the original plans under discussion. The germ of the idea may fairly be said to have been contained in Director Skiff's insistence to the Executive Committee of the Expo- sition that the congress work stand for something more than an unrelated series of independent gatherings, and that some project be authorized which would at once be distinctive and of real scientific worth. To support this view Director Skiff brought the Executive Committee to the view of expending $200,000, if need be, to insure the project. Starting from this suggestion many plans were brought forward, but one which seems to belong of right to the late Honorable Frederick W. Holls, of New York City, contained perhaps the next recognizable step in ad- vance. This thought was, briefly, that a series of lectures on scientific and literary topics by men prominent in their respective fields be delivered at the Exposition and that the Exposition pay the speakers for their services. This point was thoroughly discussed by Mr. Holls and Presi- dent Butler, and the next step in the evolution of the Congress was the idea of bringing these lecturers together at the Exposition at about the same time or all during one xviii THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS month. At this stage Professor Hugo Miinsterberg, who was the guest of Mr. Holls and an invited participant in the conference, made the important suggestion that such a series of unrelated lectures, even though given by most eminent men, would have little or no scientific value, but that if some relation, or underlying thought, could be intro- duced into the addresses, then the best work could be done, which would be of real value to the scientific world. He further stated that only in this case would scientific leaders be likely to favor the plan of a St. Louis congress, as they would feel attracted not so much through the honorariums to be given for their services as through the valuable op- portunity of developing such a contribution to scientific thought. Subsequently Professor Miinsterberg was asked by Mr. Holls to formulate his ideas in a manner to be submitted to the Exposition authorities. This was done in a communication under date of October 20, 1902, which contained logically presented the foundation of the plan afterwards worked out in detail. At this juncture the Department of Congresses was organized, as has been stated, the Director named, and the Administrative Board appointed, and on December 27, 1902, the first meeting of the Director with the Administrative Board took place in New York City. A thorough canvass of the subject was made at this meeting and as a result the following recommendations were made to the Exposition authorities : — (1) That the sessions of this Congress be held within a period of four weeks, beginning September 15, 1904. (2) That the various groups of learned men who may come together be asked to discuss their several sciences or professions with reference to some theme of universal human interest, in order that thereby a certain unity of interest and of action may be had. Under such a plan I THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xix the groups of men who come together would thus form sections of a single Congress rather than separate con- gresses. (3) As a subject which has universal significance; and one likely to serve as a connecting thread for all of the discussions of the Congress, the theme " The Progress of Man since the Louisiana Purchase " was considered by the Administrative Board fit and suggestive. It is be- lieved that discussions by leaders of thought in the various branches of pure and applied science, in philosophy, in politics, and in religion, from the standpoint of man's progress in the century which has elapsed, would be fruit- ful, not only in clearing the thoughts of men not trained in science and in government, but also in preparing the way for new advances. (4) The Administrative Board further recommends that the Congress be made up from men of thought and of action, whose work would probably fall under the fol- lowing general heads : — a. The Natural Sciences (such as Astronomy, Biology, Mathematics, etc.). h. The Historical, Sociological, and Economic group of studies (History, Political Economy, etc.). c. Philosophy and Religion. d. Medicine and Surgery. e. Law, Politics, and Government (including develop- ment and history of the colonies, their government, revenue and prosperity, arbitration, etc.). /. Applied Science (including the various branches of engineering). (5) The Administrative Board recommends further referring to a special committee of seven the problem of indicating in detail the method in which this plan can best XX THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS be carried out. To this committee is assigned the duty of choosing the general divisions of the Congress, the various branches of science and of study in these divisions, and of recommending to the Administrative Board a de- tailed plan of the sections in which, in their judgment, those who come to the Congress may be most effectively grouped, with a view not only to bring out the central theme, but also to represent in a helpful way and in a suggestive manner the present boundary of knowledge in the various lines of study and investigation which the com- mittee may think wise to accept. These recommendations were transmitted by the Di- rector of Congresses to the Committee on Congresses, approved by them, and afterwards approved by the Ex- ecutive Committee and the President. The first four recommendations were of a preliminary character, but the fifth contained a distinct advance in the formation of a Committee on Plan and Scope which should be composed of eminent scientists capable of developing the fundamental idea into a plan which should harmonize with the scientific work in every field. The committee selected were as follows : — Dr. Simon Newcomb, Ph.D., LL.D., Retired Professor of Mathematics, U. S. Navy. Prof. Hugo Munsterberg, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Psychology, Harvard University. Prof. John Bassett Moore, LL.D., ex-assistant Sec- retary of State, and Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Columbia University. Prof. Albion W. Small, Ph.D., Professor of So- ciology, University of Chicago. Dr. William H. Welch, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Pathology. Johns Hopkins University. THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xxi Hon, Euhu Thompson, Consulting Engineer General Electric Company. Prop. George E. Moore, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Comparative Religion, Harvard University. In response to a letter from President Butler, Chairman of the Administrative Board, giving a complete resume of the growth of the idea of the Congress to that time, all of the members of the committee, with the exception of Mr. Thompson, met at the Hotel Manhattan on January 10, 1903, for a preliminary discussion. The entire field was canvassed, using the recommendations of the Admin- istrative Board and the aforementioned letter of Professor Miinsterberg's to Mr. Holls as a basis, and an adjourn- ment taken until January 17 for the preparation of detailed recommendations. The Committee on Plan and Scope again met, all mem- bers being present, at the Hotel Manhattan on January 17, and arrived at definite conclusions, which were embodied in the report to the Administrative Board, a meeting of which had been called at the Hotel Manhattan for January 19, 1903. Plans of the Congress As a basis of discussion two plans were drawn up by members of the Committee and submitted to it. The one, by Professor Miins- terberg, started from a comprehensive classification and review of human achievement in advancing knowledge, the other, by Professor Small, from an equally comprehensive reriew of the great public questions involved in human progress. Professor Miinsterberg proposed a congress having the definite task of bringing out the unity of knowledge with a view of correlat- ing the scattered theoretical and practical scientific work of our day. This plan proposed that the congress should continue through one week. The first day was to be devoted to the discussion of the most general problem of knowledge in one comprehensive discussion and four general divisions. On the second day the congress was to divide into several groups and on the remaining days into yet more specialized groups, as set forth in detail in the plan. XXII THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS The plan by Professor Small proposed a congress which would ex- hibit not merely the scholar's interpretation of progress in scholar- ship, but rather the scholar's interpretation of progress in civiliza- tion in general. The proposal was based on a division of human interests into six great groups: — I. The Promotion of Health. II. The Production of Wealth. III. The Harmonizing of Human Relations. IV. Discovery and Spread of Knowledge. V. Progress in the Fine Arts. VI. Progress in Religion. The plan agreed with the other in beginning with a general dis- cussion and then subdividing the congress into divisions and groups. As a third plan the Chairman of the Committee suggested the idea of a congress of publicists and representative men of all nations and of all civilized peoples, which should discuss relations of each to all the others and throw light on the question of promoting the unity and progress of the race. After due consideration of these plans the Committee reached the conclusion that the ends aimed at in the second and third plans could be attained by taking the first plan as a basis, and including in its subdivisions, so far as was deemed advisable, the subjects proposed in the second and third plans. They accordingly adopted a resolution that "Mr. Miinsterberg's plan be adopted as setting forth the general object of the Congress and defining the scope of its work, and that Mr. Small's plan be communicated to the General Committee as containing suggestions as to details, but without recommending its adoption as a whole." D.\TE OF THE CONGEESS Your Committee is of opinion that, in view of the climatic con- ditions at St. Louis during the summer and early autumn, it is desirable that the meeting of this general Congress be held during the six days beginning on Monday, September 19, 1904, and con- tinuing until the Saturday following. Special associations choosing St. Louis as their meeting-place may then convene at such other dates as may be deemed fit; but it is suggested that learned societies whose field is connected with that of the Congress should meet during the week beginning September 26. The sectional discussions of the Congress will then be continued by these societies, the whole forming a continuous discussion of human progress during the last century. THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xxiii Plan of Addresses The Committee believe that in order to carry out the proposed plan in the most effective way it is necessary that the addresses be prepared by the highest living authorities in each and every branch. In the last subdivisions, each section embraces two papers; one on the history of the subject during the last one hundred years and the other on the problems of to-day. The programme of papers suggested by the Committee as em- braced in Professor Miinsterberg's plan may be summarized as follows: — On the first day four papers will be read on the general subject, and four on each of the four large divisions, twenty in all. On the second day those four divisions will be divided into twenty groups, or departments, each of which will have four papers refer- ring to the divisions and relations of the sciences, eighty in all. On the last four days, two papers in each of the 120 sections, 240 in all, thuB making a total of 340 papers. In view of the fact that the men who will make the addresses should not be expected to bear all the expense of their attendance at the Congress, it seems advisable that the authorities of the Fair should provide for the expenses necessarily incurred in the journey, as well as pay a small honorarium for the addresses. The Com- mittee suggest, therefore, that each American invited be offered $100 for his traveling expenses and each European $400. In addition to this that each receive $150 as an honorarium. Assuming that one-half of those invited to deliver addresses will be Americans and one half Europeans, this arrangement will involve the expenditure of $136,000. This estimate will be reduced if the same person prepares more than one address. It will also be reduced if more than half of the speakers are Americans, and increased in the opposite case. As the Committee is not advised of the amount which the manage- ment of the Exposition may appropriate for the purpose of the Con- gress, it cannot, at present, enter further into details of adjustment, but it records its opinion that the sum suggested is the least by which the ends sought to be attained by the Congress can be accom- plished. To this must be added the expenses of administration and publication. All addresses paid for by the Congress should be regarded as its property, and be printed and published together, thus constituting a comprehensive work exhibiting the unity, progress, and present state of knowledge. This plan does not preclude the delivery of more than one address by a single scholar. The directors of the Exposition may sometimes XXIV THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS find it advisable to ask the same scholar to deliver two addresses, possibly even three. The Committee recommends that full liberty be allowed to each section of the Congress in arranging the general character and programme of its discussions within the field proposed. As an example of how the plan will work in the case of any one section, the Committee take the case of a neurologist desiring to profit by those discussions which relate to his branch of medicine. This falls under C of the four main divisions as related to the physical sciences. His interest on the first day will therefore be centered in Division C, where he may hear the general discussion of the physical sciences and the relations to the other sciences. On the second day he will hear four papers in Group 18 on the subjects embraced in the general science of anthropology; one on its funda- mental conceptions; one on its methods and two on the relation of anthropology to the sciences most closely connected with it. Dur- ing the remaining four days he will meet with the representatives of medicine and its related subjects, who will divide into sections, and listen to four papers in each section. One paper will consider the progress of that section in the last one hundred years, one paper will be devoted to the problems of to-day, leaving room for such contributions and discussions as may seem appropriate during the remainder of the day. Cooperation of Learned Societies Invoked. In presenting this general plan, your Committee wishes to point out the difficulty of deciding in advance what subjects should be included in every section. Therefore, the Committee deems it of the utmost importance to secure the advice and assistance of learned Hocioties in this country in perfecting the details of the proposed plan, especially the selection of speakers and the programme of work in each spction. It will facilitate the latter purpose if such societies be invited and encouraged to hold meetings at St. Louis during the week immediately preceding, or, preferably, the week following the General Congress. The selection of speakers should be made as soon as possible, and, in any case, before the end of the present academic year, in order that formal invitations may be issueJ and final arrangements made with the speakers a year in advance of the Congress. CoNCLiDiNc; Suggestions With the view of securing the cooperation of the governments and leading scholars of the principal countries of Western and Central Europe in the proposed Congress, it seems advisable to send two THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xxv commissioners to these countries for this ourpose. It seems un- necessary to extend the operations of this commission outside the European continent or to other than the leading countries. In other cases arrangements can be made by correspondence. It is the opinion of the Committee that an American of world-wide reputation as a scholar should be selected to preside over the Con- gress. All which is respectfully submitted. (Signed) Simon Newcomb, Chairman; Geobge F. Moore, John B. Mooke, Hugo Munsterbeeg, Albion W. Small, William H. Welch, EUHU Thomson, Committee. The Administrative Board met on January 19 to receive the report of the Committee on Plan and Scope which was presented by Dr. Newcomb. Professor Miinsterberg and Professor John Bassett Moore were also present by invi- tation to discuss the details of the scheme. In the after- noon the Board went into executive session, and the following recommendations were adopted and transmitted by the Director of Congresses to the Committee on Congresses of the Exposition and to the President and Executive Committee, who duly approved them. To the Director of Congresses: — The Administrative Board have the honor to make the following recommendations in reference to the Department of Congresses: — (1) That there be held in connection with the Universal Expo- sition of St. Louis in 1904, an International Congress of Arts and Science. (2) That the plan recommended by the Committee on Plan and Scope for a general congress of Arts and Science, to be held during the six days beginning on Monday, September 19, 1904, be approved and adopted, subject to such revision in point of detail as may be advisable, preserving its fundamental principles. (3) That Simon Newcomb, LL.D., of Washington, D. C, be named xx\T THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS for President of the International Congress of Arts and Science, provided for In the foregoing resolution. (4) That Professor Miinsterberg, of Harvard University, and I*rofessor Albion W. Small, of the University of Chicago, be Invited to act as Vice-Presidents of the Congress. (5) That the Directors of the World's Fair be requested to change the name of this Board from the "Advisory Board" to the "Admin- istrative Board of the International Congress of Arts and Science." (6) That the detailed arrangements for the Congress be intrusted to a committee consisting of the President and two Vice-Presidents already named, subject to the general oversight and control of the Administrative Board, and that the Directors of the Exposition be requested to make appropriate provision for their compensation and necessary expenses. (7) That it be recommended to the Directors of the World's Fair that appropriate provision should be made in the office of the De- partment of Congresses for an executive secretary and such clerical assistance as may be needed. (8) That the following payment be recommended to those scholars who accept invitations to participate and do a specified piece of work, or submit a specified contribution in the International Con- gress of Arts and Science: For traveling expenses for a European scholar, $500. For traveling expenses for an American scholar, $150. (9) That provision be made for the publication of the proceedings of the Congress in suitable form to constitute a permanent memo- rial work of the World's Fair for the promotion of science and art, under competent editorial supervision. (10) That an appropriation of $200,000 be made to cover expenses of the Department of Congresses, of which sum $130,000 be specific- ally appropriated for an International Congress of Arts and Science, and the remainder to cover all expenses connected with the publica- tion of the proceedings of said International Congress of Arts and Science, and the expenses for promotion of all other congresses. In addition to the foregoing recommendations, Professor Miinsterberg was requested at his earhest convenience to furnish each member with a revised plan of his classifica- tion, which would reduce as far as possible the number of sections into which the Congress was finally to be divided. With the adjournment of the board on January 19 the Congress may be fairly said to have been launched upon its definite course, and such changes as were thereafter THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xxvii made in the programme did not in any wise affect the principle upon which the Congress was based, but were due to the demands of time, of expediency, and in some cases to the accidents attending the participation. The organization of the Congress and the personnel of its officers from this time on remained unchanged, and the history of the meeting is one of steady and progressive development. The Committee on Plan and Scope were discharged of their duties, with a vote of thanks for the laborious and painstaking work which they had accom- plished and the thoroughly scientific and novel plan for an international congress which they had recommended. PARTICIPATION AND SUPPORT The general plan of the Congress having been de- termined and the programme practically perfected by May 1, 1903, two most important questions demanded the at- tention of the Administrative Board: first, the participa- tion in the Congress, both foreign and domestic; second, the support of the scientific public. At a meeting of the Board held in New York City April 11, 1903, these points were orjven full consideration. It was determined that the o list of speakers both foreign and domestic should be made upon the advice of men of letters and of scientific thought in this country, and accordingly there was sent to the offi- cers of the various scientific societies in the United States, to heads of university departments and to every prominent exponent of science and art in this country, a printed an- nouncement and tentative programme of the Congress, and a letter asking advice as to the scientists best fitted in view of the object of the Congress to prepare an address. From the hundreds of replies received in response to this appeal were made up the original lists of invited speakers, and only those were placed thereon who were the choice of a XXVIII THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS fair majority of the representatives of the particular science under selection. The Administrative Board resen-ed to itself the full right to reject any of these names or to change them so as to promote the best interests of the Congress, but in nearly every instance it would be safe to say that the person selected was highly satisfactory to the great majority of his fellow scientists in this country. Many changes were unavoidably made at the last moment to meet the situation caused by withdrawals and declina- tions, but the list of second choices was so complete, and in many cases there was such a delicate balance between the first and second choice, that there was no difficulty in keeping the standard of the programme to its original high plane. It was early determined that the seven Division speakers and the forty-eight Department speakers, which occupied the first two days of the programme, should be Americans, and that these Division and Department addresses should be a contribution of American scholarship to the general scientific thought of the world. This decision commended itself to the scientific public both at home and abroad, and it was so carried out. It was further determined that the Division and Department speakers and the foreign speak- ers should be selected during the summer of 1903, and the American participation in the Section addresses should be determined after it was definitely known what the foreign participation would be. In view of the importance of the Congress, it was deemed inadvisable to attempt to interest foreign scientific circles by correspondence, and it was further decided to pay a special compliment to each invited speaker by sending an invitation at the hands of special delegates. Arrangements were therefore made for Dr. Newcomb and Professors MiJnsterberg and Small to pro- ceed to Europe during the summer of 1903, and to present THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xxix in person to the scientific circles of Europe and to the scientists specially desired to deliver addresses the com- plete plan and scope of the Congress and an invitation to particinate. INVITATIONS TO FOREIGN SPEAKERS The members of the Organizing Committee, armed with very strong credentials from the State Department to the diplomatic service abroad, sailed in the early summer of 1903 to present the invitation of the Exposition to the selected scientists. Dr. Newcomb sailed May 6, Professor Miinsterberg May 30, and Professor Small June 6. A general interest in the project had at this time become aroused, and there was assured a respectful hearing. Both the President of the United States and the Emperor of Germany expressed their warm interest in the plan, and the State Department at Washington gave to the Congress both on this occasion and on succeeding occasions its effect- ive aid. The Director of Congresses wishes to express his obligations both to the late Secretary Hay and to Assist- ant-Secretary Loomis for their valuable suggestions and courteous cooperation in all matters relating to the foreign participation. Strong support was also given the Com- mittee and the plan of the Congress by Commissioner- General Lewald of Germany, and Commissioner-General Lagrave of France. Throughout the entire Congress period, both of these energetic Commissioners-General placed themselves actively at the disposition of the Depart- ment in promoting the attendance of scientists from their respective countries. Geographically the division between the three members of the Organizing Committee gave to Dr. Newcomb, France; to Professor Miinsterberg, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland ; and to Professor Small, England, Russia, XXX THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS Italy, and a part of Austria. It was also agreed that Dr. Newcomb should have special oversight of the depart- ments of ]Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Biology, and Technology; Professor Miinsterberg, special charge of Philosophy, Philology, Art, Education, Psychology, and Medicine; and that Professor Small should look after Politics, Law, Economics, Theology, Sociology, and Re- ligion. The Committee worked independently of each other, but met once during the summer at ISIunich to compare results and to determine their closing movements. The public and even the Exposition authorities have probably never realized the delicacy and the extremely careful adjustment exercised by the Organizing Committee in their summer's campaign. Scientists are as a class sen- sitive, jealous of their reputations, and loath to undertake long journeys to a distant country for congress purposes. The amount of labor devolving upon the Committee to find the scientists scattered over all Europe; the careful and pains-taking presentation to each of the plan of the Con- gress ; the appeal to their scientific pride ; the hearing of a thousand objections, and the answering of each; the disappointments incurred ; the substitutions made neces- sary at the last moment ; — all sum up a task of the greatest difficulty and of enormous labor. The remarkable success with which the mission was crowned stands out the more prominently in view of these conditions. When the Com- mittee returned in the latter part of September, they had visited every important country of Europe, delixered more than one hundred fifty personal invitations, and for the one hundred twenty-eight sections had secured one hundred seventeen acceptances. At a meeting of the Administrative Board, which met with the Organizing Committee on October 13, 1903, a full report of the European trip was received and ways THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xxxi and means considered for insuring the attendance from abroad. A list of the foreign acceptances was ordered printed at once for general distribution, and the Chairman of the Administrative Board was requested to address a letter to each of the foreign scientists confirming the action of the special delegates and giving additional information as to the length of addresses, and rules and details govern- ing the administration of the Congress. ASSEMBLY HALLS The highly diversified nature of the Congress and the holding of one hundred twenty-eight section meetings in four days' time rendered necessary a large number of meeting-places centrally located. The Exposition was fortunate in having the use of the new plant of the Wash- ington University, nine large buildings of which had been erected. IMany of these buildings contained lecture halls and assembly rooms, seating from one hundred fifty to fifteen hundred people. Sixteen halls were necessary to accommodate the full number of sections running at any one time, and of this number twelve were available in the group of University Buildings; the other four were found in the lecture halls of the Education Building, Mines and Metallurgy Building, Agriculture Building, and the Trans- portation Building. The opening exercises, at which the entire Congress was assembled, was held in Festival Hall, capable of seating three thousand people. In the assign- ment of halls care was taken so far as possible to assign the larger halls to the more popular subjects, but it often happened that a great speaker was of necessity assigned to a smaller hall. Two of the halls also proved bad for speak- ing owing to the traffic of the Intramural Railway, and there was lacking in nearly all of the halls that academic peace and quiet which usually surrounds gatherings of a XXXII THK HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS scientific nature. This, however, was to be expected in an exposition atmosphere, and was readily acquiesced in by the speakers themselves, and very little objection was heard to the halls as assigned. Every one seemed to recognize the fact that the immediate value of the meeting lay in the commingling and fellowship, and that the ad- dresses, of which one could hear at most only one in six- teen, could not be judged in the proper light until their publication. OPENING OF THE CONGRESS The assembling of the Congress on the afternoon of September 19, in the magnificent auditorium of Festival Hall which crowned Cascade Hill and the Terrace of States, was marked with simple ceremonies and impressive dignity. The great organ pealed the national hymns of the countries participating and closed with the national anthem of the United States. In the audience were the members of the Congress representing the selected talent of the world in their field of scientific endeavor, and about them were grouped an audience drawn from every part of the United States to promote by their presence the suc- cess of the Congress and to do honor to the noted person- ages who were the guests of the Exposition and of the Nation. In conclusion, the editor wishes to express his obliga- tions to the many speakers and officers of the Congress, who have evinced great interest in the publication and assisted by valuable suggestions and advice. In particular, he acknowledges the help of President Butler of Columbia University, Professor Miinsterberg of Harvard University, and Professor Small, of the University of Chicago. Ac- knowledgements are with justice and pleasure made to the Committee on Congresses of the Exposition, and the able THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS xxxiii chairman, Hon. Frederick W. Lehmann, for their un- wavering and prompt support on all matters of policy and detail, without which the full measure of success could not have been achieved. To the efiicient secretary of the Department of Congresses, Mr. James Green Cotchett, an expression of obligation is due for his indefatigable labors during the Congress period, and for his able and pains- taking work in compiling the detailed records of this pub- lication. At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Expo- sition on January 3, 1905, there was unanimously voted the following resolution, recommended by the Admin- istrative Board and approved by the Committee on Con- gresses : — Moved: that a vote of thanks and an expression of deepest obligation be tendered to Dr. Simon Newcomb, President of the Congress, Prof. Hugo Miinsterberg, vice- president of the Congress, and Prof. Albion W. Small, vice-president of the Congress, for their efficient, thorough, and comprehensive work in connection w^ith the programme of the Congress, the selection and invitation of speakers, and the attention to detail in its execution. That, in view of the enormous amount of labor devolving upon these three gentlemen for the past eighteen months, to the ex- clusion of all opportunities for literary and other work out- side their college departments, an honorarium of twenty- five hundred dollars be tendered to each of them. At a subsequent meeting the following resolution was also passed : — Moved: that the Directors of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company place upon the record an expression of their appreciation of the invaluable aid so freely given by the Administrative Board of the Congress of Arts and Science. In organization, guidance, and results the Con- XXXIV THE HISTORY OF THE CONGRESS gress was the most notable of its kind in history. For the important part performed wisely and zealously by the Administrative Board the Exposition Management extends this acknowledgement. Summary of Expenses of the Congress. Office expenses $7,025 82 Travel 3,847 24 Exploitation, Organizing Committee abroad 8,663 16 Traveling expenses, American Speakers . . 31,350 Traveling expenses, Foreign Speakers . . 49,000 Honorariums 7,500 Banquet 3,500 Expenses for editing proceedings .... 5,875 Estimated cost of printing proceedings . . 22,000 $138,761 22 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING EXERCISES AT FESTIVAL HALL BY PROFESSOR SIMON NEWCOMB, PRESIDENT OF THE CONGRESS THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR As we look at the assemblage gathered in this hall, com- prising so many names of widest renown in every branch of learning, — we might almost say in every field of human endeavor, — the first inquiry suggested must be after the object of our meeting. The answer is, that our purpose corresponds to the eminence of the assemblage. We aim at nothing less than a survey of the realm of knowledge, as comprehensive as is permitted by the limitations of time and space. The organizers of our Congress have honored me with the charge of presenting such preliminary view of its field as may make clear the spirit of our undertaking. Certain tendencies characteristic of the science of our day clearly suggest the direction of our thoughts most ap- propriate to the occasion. Among the strongest of these is one toward laying greater stress on questions of the beginning of things, and regarding a knowledge of the laws of development of any object of study as necessary to the understanding of its present form. It may be con- ceded that the principle here involved is as applicable in the broad field before us as in a special research into the properties of the minutest organism. It therefore seems meet that we should begin by inquiring what agency has brought about the remarkable development of science to 1 2 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS which the world of to-day bears witness. This view is recognized in the i)lan of our proceedings, by providing for each great department of knowledge a review of its progress during the century that has elapsed since the great event commemorated by the scenes outside this hall. But such reviews do not make up that general survey of science at large which is necessary to the development of our theme, and which must include the action of causes that had their origin long before our time. The movement which culminated in making the nineteenth century ever memorable in history is the outcome of a long series of causes, acting through many centuries, which are worthy of especial attention on such an occasion as this. In setting them forth we should avoid laying stress on those visible manifestations which, striking the eye of every beholder, are in no danger of being overlooked, and search rather for those agencies whose activities underlie the whole visible scene, but w^hich are liable to be blotted out of sight by the very brilliancy of the results to which they have given rise. It is easy to draw attention to the wonderful qualities of the oak; but from that very fact, it may be needful to point out that the real wonder lies concealed in the acorn from which it grew. Our inquiry into the logical order of the causes which have made our civilization what it is to-day will be facili- tated by bringing to mind certain elementary considera- tions — ideas so familiar that setting them forth may seem like citing a body of truisms — and yet so frefjuently over- looked, not only individually, but in their relation to each other, that the conclusion to which they lead may be lost to sight. One of these propositions is that psychical rather than material causes are those which we should regard as fundamental in directing the development of the social organism. The human intellect is the really active agent THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 3 in every branch of endeavor, — the primiim mobile of civihzation, — and all those material manifestations to which our attention is so often directed are to be regarded as secondary to this first agency. If it be true that " in the world is nothing great but man ; in man is nothing great but mind," then should the keynote of our discourse be the recognition of this first and greatest of powers. Another well-known fact is that those applications of the forces of nature to the promotion of human welfare which have made our age what it is, are of such compara- tively recent origin that we need go back only a single century to antedate their most important features, and scarcely more than four centuries to find their beginning. It follows that the subject of our inquiry should be the commencement, not many centuries ago, of a certain new form of intellectual activity. Having gained this point of view, our next inquiry will be into the nature of that activity, and its relation to the stages of progress which preceded and followed its begin- ning. The superficial observer, who sees the oak but for- gets the acorn, might tell us that the special qualities which have brought out such great results are expert scientific knowledge and rare ingenuity, directed to the application of the powers of steam and electricity. From this point of view the great inventors and the great captains of in- dustry were the first agents in bringing about the modern era. But the more careful inquirer will see that the work of these men was possible only through a knowledge of the laws of nature, which had been gained by men whose work took precedence of theirs in logical order, and that success in invention has been measured by completeness in such knowledge. WLile giving all due honor to the great inventors, let us remember that the first place is that of the great investigators, whose forceful intellects opened 4 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS tlie way to secrets previously hidden from men. Let it be an honor and not a reproach to these men, that they were not actuated by the love of gain, and did not keep utilita- rian ends in view in the pursuit of their researches. If it seems that in neglecting such ends they were leaving un- done the most important part of their work, let us remem- ber that nature turns a forbidding face to those who pay her court with the hope of gain, and is responsive only to those suitors whose love for her is pure and undefiled. Not only is the special genius required in the investigator not that generally best adapted to applying the discoveries which he makes, but the result of his having sordid ends in view would be to narrow the field of his efforts, and exercise a depressing effect upon his activities. The true man of science has no such expression in his vocabulary as " useful knowledge." His domain is as wide as nature itself, and he best fulfills his mission when he leaves to others the task of applying the knowledge he gives to the world. We have here the explanation of the well-known fact that the functions of the investigator of the laws of nature, and of the inventor who applies these laws to utilitarian purposes, are rarely united in the same person. If the one conspicuous exception which the past century presents to this rule is not unique, we should probably have to go back to Watt to find another. From this viewpoint it is clear that the primary agent in the movement which has elevated man to the masterful position he now occupies, is the scientific investigator. He it is whose work has deprived plague and pestilence of their terrors, alleviated human suffering, girdled the earth with the electric wire, bound the continent with the iron way. and made neighbors of the most distant nations. As the first agent which has made possible this meeting of THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 6 his representatives, let his evolution be this day our worthy theme. As we follow the evolution of an organism by studying the stages of its growth, so we have to show how the work of the scientific investigator is related to the ineffectual efforts of his predecessors. In our time we think of the process of development in nature as one going continuously forward through the com- bination of the opposite processes of evolution and dissolu- tion. The tendency of our thought has been in the direc- tion of banishing cataclysms to the theological limbo, and viewing nature as a sleepless plodder, endowed with infinite patience, waiting through long ages for results. I do not contest the truth of the principle of continuity on which ^this view is based. But it fails to make known to us the whole truth. The building of a ship from the time that her keel is laid until she is making her way across the ocean is a slow and gradual process; yet there is a cataclysmic epoch opening up a new era in her history. It is the moment when, after lying for months or years a dead, inert, immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed with the power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was designed. I think it is thus in the development of humanity. Long ages may pass during which a race, to all external observa- tion, appears to be making no real progress. Additions may be made to learning, and the records of history may constantly grow, but there is nothing in its sphere of thought, or in the features of its life, that can be called essentially new. Yet, nature may have been all along slowly working in a way which evades our scrutiny until the result of her operations suddenly appears in a new and revolutionary movement, carrying the race to a higher plane of civilization. 6 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS It is not difficult to point out such epochs in human progress. The greatest of all, because it was the first, is one of which we find no record either in written or geo- logical history. It was the epoch when our progenitors first took conscious thought of the morrow, first used the crude weapons which nature had placed within their reach to kill their prey, first built a fire to warm their bodies and cook their food. I love to fancy that there was some one first man, the Adam of evolution, who did all this, and who used the power thus acquired to show his fellows how they might profit by his example. When the members of the tribe or community which he gathered around him began to conceive of life as a whole, — to include yesterday, to- day, and to-morrow in the same mental grasp — to think how they might apply the gifts of nature to their own uses, — a movement was begun which should ultimately lead to civilization. Long indeed must have been the ages required for the development of this rudest primitive community into the civilization revealed to us by the most ancient tablets of Egypt and Assyria. After spoken language was developed, and after the rude representation of ideas by visible marks drawn to resemble them had long been practiced, some Cadmus must have invented an alphabet. When the use of written language was thus introduced, the word of com- mand ceased to be confined to the range of the human voice, and it became possible for master minds to extend their influence as far as a written message could be carried. Then were communities gathered into provinces; provinces into kingdoms ; kingdoms into the great empires of an- tiquity. Then arose a stage of civilization which we find pictured in the most ancient records. — a stage in which men were governed by laws that were perhaps as wisely adapted to their conditions as our laws are to ours, — in THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 7 which tlic phenomena of nature were rudely observed, and striking occurrences in the earth or in tlie heavens recorded in the annals of the nation. Vast was the progress of knowledge during the interval between these empires and the century in which modern science began. Yet, if I am right in making a distinction between the slow and regular steps of progress, each grow- ing naturally out of that which preceded it, and the en- trance of the mind at some fairly definite epoch into an entirely new sphere of activity, it would appear that there was only one such epoch during the entire interval. This was when abstract geometrical reasoning commenced, and astronomical observations aiming at precision were re- corded, compared, and discussed. Closely associated with it must have been the construction of the forms of logic. The radical difference between the demonstration of a theorem of geometry and the reasoning of every-day life which the masses of men must have practiced from the beginning, and w^hich few even to-day ever get beyond, is so evident at a glance that I need not dwell upon it. The principal feature of this advance is that, by one of those antinomies of the human intellect of which examples are not wanting even in our own time, the development of abstract ideas preceded the concrete knowledge of natural phenomena. When we reflect that in the geometry of Euclid the science of space was brought to such logical perfection that even to-day its teachers are not agreed as to the practicability of any great improvement upon it, we cannot avoid the feeling that a very slight change in the direction of the intellectual activity of the Greeks would have led to the beginning of natural science. But it would seem that the very purity and perfection which was aimed at in their system of geometry stood in the way of any extension or application of its methods and spirit to the INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS field of nature. One example of this is worthy of atten- tion. In modern teaching the idea of magnitude as gen- erated by motion is freely introduced. A line is described by a moving point; a plane by a moving line; a solid by a moving plane. It may, at first sight, seem singular that this conception finds no place in the Euclidian system. But we may regard the omission as a mark of logical purity and rigor. Had the real or supposed advantages of introducing motion into geometrical conceptions been suggested to Euclid, we may suppose him to have replied that the theorems of space are independent of time; that the idea of motion necessarily implies time, and that, in consequence, to avail ourselves of it would be to introduce an extraneous element into geometry. It is quite possible that the contempt of the ancient phil- osophers for the practical application of their science, which has continued in some form to our own time, and which is not altogether unwholsome, was a powerful factor in the same direction. The result was that, in keeping geometry pure from ideas which did not belong to it, it failed to form what might otherwise have been the basis of physical science. Its founders missed the discovery that methods similar to those of geometric demonstration could be extended into other and wider fields than that of space. Thus not only the development of applied geometry, but the reduction of other conceptions to a rigorous mathe- matical form was indefinitely postponed. Astronomy is necessarily a science of observation pure and simple, in which experiment can have no place except as an auxiliary. The vague accounts of striking celestial phenomena handed down by the priests and astrologers of antiquity were followed in the time of the Greeks by observations having, in form at least, a rude approach to precision, though nothing like the degree of precision that THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 9 the astronomers of to-day would reach with the naked eye, aided by such instruments as he could fashion from the tools at the command of the ancients. The rude observations commenced by the Babylonians were continued with gradually improving instruments, — first by the Greeks and afterward by the Arabs, — but the results failed to afford any insight into the true relation of the earth to the heavens. What was most remarkable in this failure is that, to take a first step forward which would have led on to success, no more was necessary than a course of abstract thinking vastly easier than that re- quired for working out the problems of geometry. That space is infinite is an unexpressed axiom, tacitly assumed by Euclid and his successors. Combining this with the most elementary consideration of the properties of the triangle, it would be seen that a body of any given size could be placed at such a distance in space as to appear to us like a point. Hence a body as large as our earth, which was known to be a globe from the time that the ancient Phoenicians navigated the Mediterranean, if placed in the heavens at a sufficient distance, would look like a star. The obvious conclusion that the stars might be bodies like our globe, shining either by their own light or by that of the sun, would have been a first step to the under- standing of the true system of the world. There is historic evidence that this deduction did not wholly escape the Greek thinkers. It is true that the critical student will assign little weight to the current belief that the vague theory of Pythagoras — that fire was at the center of all things — implies a conception of the heliocentric theory of the solar system. But the testimony of Archi- medes, confused though it is in form, leaves no serious doubt that Aristarchus of Samos not only propounded the view that the earth revolves both on its own axis and 10 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS around the sun. but that he correctly removed the great stumbHng-block in the way of this theory by adding that the distance of the fixed stars was infinitely greater than the dimensions of the earth's orbit. Even the world of philosophy was not yet ready for this conception, and, so far from seeing the reasonableness of the explanation, we find Ptolemy arguing against the rotation of the earth on grounds which careful observations of the phenomena around him would have shown to be ill-founded. Physical science, if we can apply that term to an un- coordinated body of facts, was successfully cultivated from the earliest times. Something must have been known of the properties of metals, and the art of extracting them from their ores must have been practiced, from the time that coins and medals were first stamped. The properties of the most common compounds were discovered by al- chemists in their vain search for the philosopher's stone, but no actual progress worthy of the name rewarded the practitioners of the black art. Perhaps the first approach to a correct method was that of Archimedes, who by much thinking worked out the law of the lever, reached the conception of the centre of gravity, and demonstrated the first principles of hydrostatics. It is remarkable that he did not extend his researches into the phenomena of motion, whether spontaneous or pro- duced by force. The stationary condition of the human intellect is most strikingly illustrated by the fact that not imtil the time of Leonardo was any substantial advance made on his discovery. To sum up in one sentence the most characteristic feature of ancient and medieval science, we see a notable contrast between the precision of thought implied in the construction and demonstration of geo- metrical theorems and the vague indefinite character of the ideas of natural phenomena generally, a contrast which THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 11 did not disappear until the foundations of modern science began to be laid. We should miss the most essential i)oint of the differ- ence between medieval and modern learning if we looked upon it as mainly a difference either in the precision or the amount of knowledge. The development of both of these qualities would, under any circumstances, have been slow and gradual, but sure. We can hardly suppose that any one generation, or even any one century, would have seen the complete substitution of exact for inexact ideas. Slowness of growth is as inevitable in the case of knowl- edge as in that of a growing organism. The most essential point of difference is one of those seemingly slight ones, the importance of which we are too apt to overlook. It was like the drop of blood in the wrong place, which some one has told us makes all the difference between a phil- osopher and a maniac. It was all the difference betw^een a living tree and a dead one, between an inert mass and a growing organism. The transition of knowledge from the dead to the living form must, in any complete review of the subject, be looked upon as the really great event of modern times. Before this event the intellect was bound down by a scholasticism which regarded knowledge as a rounded whole, the parts of which w^ere written in books and carried in the minds of learned men. The student was taught from the beginning of his work to look upon author- ity as the foundation of his beliefs. The older the authority the greater the weight it carried. So effective was this teaching that it seems never to have occurred to individual men that they had all the opportunities ever enjoyed by Aristotle of discovering truth, with the added advantage of all his knowledge to begin with. Advanced as was the development of formal logic, that practical logic was want- ing which could see that the last of a series of authorities, 12 IXTRODUCTORY ADDRESS every one of which rested on those which preceded it, could never form a surer foundation for any doctrine than that supplied by its original propounder. The result of this view of knowledge was that, although during the fifteen centuries following the death of the geometer of Syracuse great universities were founded at which generations of professors expounded all the learning of their time, neither professor nor student ever suspecting what latent possibilities of good were concealed in the most familiar operations of nature. Every one felt the wind blow, saw water boil, and heard the thunder crash, but never thought of investigating the forces here at play. Up to the middle of the fifteenth century the most acute ob- server could scarcely have seen the dawn of a new era. In view of this state of things, it must be regarded as one of the most remarkable facts in evolutionary history that four or five men, whose mental constitution was either typical of the new order of things or who were powerful agents in bringing it about, were all born during the fifteenth century, four of them at least at so nearly the same time as to be contemporaries. Leonardo da Vinci, whose artistic genius has charmed succeeding generations, was also the first practical engineer of his time, and the first man after Archimedes to make a substantial advance in developing the laws of motion. That the world was not prepared to make use of his scientific discoveries does not detract from the significance which must attach to the period of his birth. Shortly after him was born the great navigator whose bold spirit was to make known a new world, thus giving to commercial enterprise that impetus which was so power- ful an agent in bringing about a revolution in the thoughts of men. The birth of Columbus was soon followed by that of THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 13 Copernicus, the first after Aristarchus to demonstrate the true system of the world. In him more than in any of his contemporaries do we see the struggle between the old forms of thought and the new. It seems almost pathetic and is certainly most suggestive of the general view of knowledge taken at that time that, instead of claiming credit for bringing to light great truths before unknown, he made a labored attempt to show that, after all, there was nothing really new in his system, which he claimed to date from Pythagoras and Philolaus. In this connec- tion it is curious that he makes no mention of Aristarchus, who I think will be regarded by conservative historians as his only demonstrated predecessor. To the hold of the older ideas upon his mind we must attribute the fact that in constructing his system he took great pains to make as little change as possible in ancient conceptions. Luther, the greatest thought-stirrer of them all, prac- tically of the same generation with Copernicus, Leonardo, and Columbus, does not come in as a scientific investigator, but as the great loosener of chains which had so fettered the intellect of men that they dared not think otherwise than as the authorities thought. Almost coeval with the advent of these intellects was the invention of printing with movable type. Gutenberg was born during the first decade of the century, and his asso- ciates and others credited with the invention not many years afterward. If we accept the principle on which I am basing my argument, that we should assign the first place to the birth of those psychic agencies which started men on new lines of thought, then surely was the fifteenth the wonderful century. Let us not forget that, in assigning the actors then born to their places, we are not narrating history, but studying a special phase of evolution. It matters not for us that 14 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS no university invited Leonardo to its halls, and that his science was valued by his contemporaries only as an ad- junct to the art of engineering. The great fact still is that he was the first of mankind to propound laws of motion. It is not for anything in Luther's doctrines that he finds a place in our scheme. No matter for us whether they were sound or not. What he did toward the evolution of the scientific investigator was to show by his example that a man might question the best-established and most vener- able authority and still live — still preserve his intellectual integrity — still command a hearing from nations and their rulers. It matters not for us whether Columbus ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. His work was to teach that neither hydra, chimera, nor abyss — neither divine injunction nor infernal machination — was in the way of men visiting every part of the globe, and that the problem of conquering the world reduced itself to one of sails and rigging, hull and compass. The better part of Copernicus was to direct man to a viewpoint whence he should see that the heavens were of like matter with the earth. All this done, the acorn was planted from which the oak of our civilization should spring. The mad quest for gold which followed the discovery of Columbus, the questionings, which absorbed the attention of the learned, the indignation excited by the seeming vagaries of a Para- celsus, the fear and trembling lest the strange doctrine of Copernicus should undermine the faith of centuries, were all helps to the germination of the seed — stimuli to thought which urged it on to explore the new fields opening up to its occupation. This given, all that has since followed came out in regular order of development, and need be here con- sidered only in those phases having a special relation to the purpose of our present meeting. So slow was the growth at first that the sixteenth cen- THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 15 tury may scarcely have recognized the inauguration of a new era. Torricelli and Benedetti were of the third genera- tion after Leonardo, and GaHleo, the first to make a sub- stantial advance upon his theory, was born more than a century after him. Only two or three men appeared in a generation who, working alone, could make real progress in discovery, and even these could do little in leavening the minds of their fellow men with the new ideas. Up to the middle of the seventeenth century an agent which all experience since that time shows to be necessary to the most productive intellectual activity was wanting. This was the attraction of like minds, making suggestions to each other, criticising, comparing, and reasoning. This element was introduced by the organization of the Royal Society of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris. The members of these two bodies seem like ingenious youth suddenly thrown into a new world of interesting objects, the purposes and relations of which they had to discover. The novelty of the situation is strikingly shown in the questions which occupied the minds of the incipient investigator. One natural result of British maritime enter- prise was that the aspirations of the Fellows of the Royal Society were not confined to any continent or hemisphere. Inquiries were sent all the way to Batavia to know "whether there be a hill in Sumatra which burneth con- tinually, and a fountain which runneth pure balsam " The astronomical precision with which it seemed possible that physiological operations might go on was evinced by the inquiry whether the Indians can so prepare that stupefying herb Datura that " they make it lie several days, months, years, according as they will, in a man's body without doing him any harm, and at the end kill him without missing an hour's time." Of this continent one of the inquiries was whether there be a tree in Mexico that l(i INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS yields water, wine, vinegar, milk, honey, wax, thread, and needles. Among the problems before the Paris Academy of Sciences those of physiology and biology took a prominent place. The distillation of compounds had long been prac- ticed, and the fact that the more spirituous elements of certain substances were thus separated naturally led to the question whether the essential essences of life might not be discoverable in the same way. In order that all might participate in the experiments, they were conducted in open session of the Academy, thus guarding against the danger of any one member obtaining for his exclusive personal use a possible elixir of life. A wide range of the animal and vegetable kingdom, including cats, dogs, and birds of various species, were thus analyzed. The practice of dis- section was introduced on a large scale. That of the cadaver of an elephant occupied several sessions, and was of such interest that the monarch himself was a spectator. To the same epoch with the formation and first work of these two bodies belongs the invention of a mathematical method which in its importance to the advance of exact science may be classed with the invention of the alphabet in its relation to the progress of society at large. The use of algebraic symbols to represent quantities had its origin before the commencement of the new era, and gradually grew into a highly developed form during the first two centuries of that era. But this method could represent quantities only as fixed. It is true that the elasticity in- herent in the use of such symbols permitted of their being applied to any and every quantity; yet, in any one applica- tion, the quantity was considered as fixed and definite. But most of the magnitudes of nature are in a state of con- tinual variation ; indeed, since all motion is variation, the latter is a universal characteristic of all phenomena. No THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 17 serious advance could be made in the application of alge- braic language to the expression of physical phenomena until it could be so extended as to express variation in quantities, as well as the quantities themselves. This ex- tension, worked out independently by Newton and Leib- nitz, may be classed as the most fruitful of conceptions in exact science. With it the way was opened for the unimpeded and continually accelerated progress of the last two centuries. The feature of this period which has the closest relation to the purpose of our coming together is the seemingly unending subdivision of knowledge into specialties, many of which are becoming so minute and so isolated that they seem to have no interest for any but their few pursuers. Happily science itself has afforded a corrective for its own tendency in this direction. The careful thinker will see that in these seemingly diverging branches common ele- ments and common principles are coming more and more to light. There is an increasing recognition of methods of research, and of deduction, which are common to large branches, or to the whole of science. We are more and more recognizing the principle that progress in knowledge implies its reduction to more exact forms, and the ex- pression of its ideas in language more or less mathematical. The problem before the organizers of this Congress was, therefore, to bring the sciences together, and seek for the unity which we believe underlies their infinite diversity. The assembling of such a body as now fills this hall was scarcely possible in any preceding generation, and is made possible now only through the agency of science itself. It differs from all preceding international meetings by the universality of its scope, which aims to include the whole of knowledge. It is also unique in that none but leaders have been sought out as members. It is unique in that so 18 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS manv lands have delegated their choicest intellects to carry on its work. They come from the country to which our republic is indebted for a third of its territory, including the ground on which we stand; from the land which has taught us that the most scholarly devotion to the languages and learning of the cloistered past is compatible with leader- ship in the practical application of modern science to the arts of life; from the island whose language and literature have found a new field and a vigorous growth in this religion ; from the last seat of the holy Roman Empire ; from the country which, remembering a monarch who made an astronomical observation at the Greenwich Ob- servatory, has enthroned science in one of the highest places in its government ; from the peninsula so learned that we have invited one of its scholars to come and tell us of our own language; from the land which gave birth to Leonardo, Galileo, Torricelli, Columbus, Volta — what an array of immortal names ! — from the little republic of glorious history which, breeding men rugged as its eternal snowpeaks, has yet been the seat of scientific investigation since the day of the Bernoullis ; from the land whose heroic dwellers did not hesitate to use the ocean itself to protect it against invaders, and which now makes us marvel at the amount of erudition compressed within its little area; from the nation across the Pacific, which, by half a century of unequaled progress in the arts of life, has made an important contribution to evolutionary science through demonstrating the falsity of the theory that the most ancient races are doomed to be left in the rear of the advancing age — in a word, from every great centre of intellectual activity on the globe I see before me eminent representatives of that world advance in knowledge which we have met to celebrate. May we not confidently hope that the discussions of such an assemblage will prove preg- THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 19 nant of a future for science which shall outshine even its brilliant past? Gentlemen and scholars all ! You do not visit our shores to find great collections in which centuries of humanity have given expression on canvas and in marble to their hopes, fears, and aspirations. Nor do you expect institu- tions and buildings hoary with age. But as you feel the vigor latent in the fresh air of these expansive prairies, which has collected the products of human genius by which we are here surrounded^ and, I may add, brought us together; as you study the institutions which we have founded for the benefit, not only of our own people, but of humanity at large; as you meet the men wdio, in the short space of one century, have transformed this valley from a savage w^ilderness into what it is to-day — then may you find compensation for the want of a past like yours by seeing with prophetic eye a future world-power of which this region shall be the seat. If such is to be the outcome of the institutions which we are now building up, then may your present visit be a blessing both to your posterity and ours by making that pow-er one for good to all mankind. Your deliberations will help to demonstrate to us and to the w^orld at large that the reign of law must supplant that of brute force in the relations of the nations, just as it has supplanted it in the relations of individuals. You will help to show that the war which science is now waging against the sources of diseases, pain, and misery offers an even nobler field for the exercise of heroic quali- ties than can that of battle. We hope that when, after your all too fleeting sojourn in our midst, you return to your own shores, you will long feel the influence of the new air you have breathed in an infusion of increased vigor in pursuing your varied labors. And if a new im- petus is thus given to the great intellectual movement of 20 IXTRODUCTORV ADDRESS the past century, resulting: not only in promoting- the unifi- cation of knowledge, but in widening its field through new combinations of effort on the part of its votaries, the pro- jectors, organizers, and supporters of this Congress of Arts and Science will be justified of their labors. THE VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY BY WOODROW WILSON [WooDROW WrrsoN, President of Princeton University, b. Staunton, Virginia, December 28, 1856. A.B. Princeton University, 1879; A.M. 1882. Pli.D. Johns Hopkins, 1886. Litt.D. Yale, 1901. LL.D. Wake Forest College, 1887; Tulane University, 1897; Johns Hop- kins, 1901; Rutgers College, 1902; University of Pennsylvania, 1903; Brown University, 1903. Post-graduate, University of Vir- ginia and Johns Hopkins University. Associate Professor History and Political Economy, Bryn Mawr College, 1885-88. Professor History and Political Economy, Wesleyan University, 1888-90. Professor Jurisprudence and Politics, Princeton University, since 1890. Member American Institute of Arts and Letters, American Historical Association, American Economic Association, Ameri- can Academy Political and Social Science, American Philosophi- cal Society, Southern History Association. Corresponding Mem- ber Massachusetts Historical Society. Author of Congressional Government; An Old Master and Other Essays; George Washing- ton; A History of the American People.] We have seen the dawn and the early morning hours of a new age in the writing of history, and the morning is now broadening about us into day. When the day is full we shall see that minute research and broad synthesis are not hostile but friendly methods, cooperating toward a common end which neither can reach alone. No piece of history is true when set apart to itself, divorced and isolated. It is part of an intricately various whole, and must needs be put in its place in the netted scheme of events to receive its true color and estimation; and yet it must be itself individually studied and contrived if the whole is not to be weakened by its imperfection. Whole and part are of one warp and woof. I think that we are in a temper to realize this now, and to come to happy terms of harmony with regard to the principles and the objects which we shall hold most dear in the pursuit of our several tasks. I know that in some quarters there is still a fundamental difference of opinion as to the aim and object of historical 31 22 HISTORICAL SCIENCE wriiing. Some regard history as a mere record of expe- rience, a huge memorandum of events, of the things done, attempted, or neglected in bringing tlie world to the present stage and posture of its affairs, — a book of precedents to which to turn for instruction, correction, and reproof. Others regard it as a book of interpretation, rather, in which to study motive and the methods of the human spirit, the ideals that elevate and the ideals that debase; from which we are to derive assistance, not so much in action as in thought; a record of evolution, in which we are not likely to find repetitions, and in reading wdiich our inquiry should be of processes, not of precedents. The two views are not. upon analysis, so far apart as they at first appear to be. I think that we shall all agree, upon reflection and after a little explanation of the terms we use, that what we seek in history is the manifestation and development of the human spirit, whether we seek it in precedents or in processes. All of the many ways of writing history may be reduced to two. There are those who write history, as there are those who read it, only for the sake of the story. Their study is of plot, their narrative goes by ordered sequence and seeks the dramatic order of events ; men appear, in their view, always in organized society, under leaders and subject to common forces making this way or that ; details are for the intensification of the impression made by the main movement in mass ; there is the unity and the epic progress of The Decline and fall, or the crowded but always ordered composition of one of Macaulay's can- vases ; cause and effect move obvious and majestic upon the page, and the story is of the large force of nations. This is history embodied in "events," centering in the large transactions of epochs or of peoples. It is history in one kind, upon which there are many variants. History in the VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 23 other kind devotes itself to analysis, to interpretation, to the illumination of the transactions of which it treats by lights let in from every side. It has its own standard of measurement in reckoning transactions great and small, bases its assessments, not upon the numbers involved or the noise and reputation of the day itself in which they occurred, so much as upon their intrinsic significance, seen now in after days, as an index of what the obscure men of the mass thought and endured, indications of the forces making and to be made, the intimate biography of daily thought. Here interest centres, not so much in what hap- pened as in what underlay the happening; not so much in the tides as in the silent forces that lifted them. Economic history is of this quality, and the history of religious be- lief, and the history of literature, where it traces the map of opinion, whether in an age of certainty or in an age of doubt and change. The interest of history in both kinds is essentially the same. Each in its kind is a record of the human spirit. In one sort we seek that spirit manifested in action, where effort is organized upon the great scale and leadership displayed. It stirs our pulses to be made aware of the mighty forces, whether of exaltation or of passion, that play through what men have done. In the other sort of history we seek the spirit of man manifested in conception, in the quiet tides of thought and emotion making up the minor bays and inlets of our various life of complex cir- cumstance, in the private accumulation of events which lie far away from the sound of drum or trumpet and constitute no part of the pomp of great affairs. The interest of human history is that it is human. It is a tale that moves and quickens us. We do not approach it as we approach the story of nature. The records of geology, stupendous and venerable as they are, written large and small, with 24 HISTORICAL SCIENCE infinite variety, upon the faces of great mountains and of shadowed canons or in the fine shale of the valley, buried deep in the frame of the globe or lying upon the surface, do not hold us to the same vivid attention. Human history has no such muniment towers, no such deep and ancient secrets, no such mighty successions of events as those which the geologist explores; but the geologist does not stir us as the narrator of even the most humble dealings of our fellow men can stir us. And it is so with the rest of the history of nature. Even the development of animal life, though we deem its evolution part of ours, seems remote, impersonal, no part of any affair that we can touch with controlling impulse or fashion to our pleasure. It is the things which we determine which most deeply concern us, our voluntary life and action, the release of our spirits in thought and act. If the philosophers were to convince us that there is in fact no will of our own in any matter, our interest in the history of mankind would slacken and utterly change its face. The ordered sequences of nature are out- side of us, foreign to our wills, but these things of our own touch us nearly. It is the honorable distinction of historical writing in our day that it has become more broadly and intimately human. The instinct of the time is social rather than political. We would know not merely how law and gov- ernment proceed but also how society breeds its forces, how these play upon the individual, and how the individual affects them. Law and government are but one expression of the life of society. They are regulative rather than generative, and historians of our day have felt that in writing political and legal history they were upon the sur- face only, not at the heart of affairs. The minute studies of the specialist have been brought about, not merely by the natural exigencies of the German seminar method of VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 25 instruction, not merely by the fact that the rising tide of doctors' theses has driven would-be candidates for degrees to the high and dry places, after all the rich lowland had been covered, but also by a very profound and genuine change of view on the part of the masters of history them- selves with regard to what should be the distinctive ma- terial of their study. Before our modern day of specializa- tion there was virtually no history of religion, or of law, or of literature, or of language, or of art. Fragments of these things were, of course, caught in the web of the old narratives, but the great writers of the older order looked at them with attention only when they emerged, gross and obvious, upon the surface of affairs. Law was part of the movement of politics or of the patent economic forces that lay near the interests of government. Religion was not individual belief, but as it were the politics of an institu- tion, of the church, which was but the state itself in another guise. Literature concerned them only as it became the wind of opinion beating upon the laboring ship of state, or when some sudden burst of song gave a touch of im- aginative glory to the domestic annals of the nation which was their theme. Art came within their view only when it was part of the public work of some Pericles or became itself part of the intricate web of politics, as in the Italian states of the Renaissance. Language concerned them not at all, except as its phrases once and again spoke the tem- per of an epoch or its greater variations betokened the birth of new nations. And all this because their interest was in affairs of state, in the organized and coordinated efforts of the body politic, in opinions and influences which moved men in the mass and governed the actions of kings and their ministers of state at home and abroad. In brief, their interest was in " events." It is curious and instructive to examine what 26 HISTORICAL SCIENCE we mean by that much-used word. \\q mean always, I take it, some occurrence of large circumstance, — no private affair transacted in a corner, but something observed and open to the public view, noticeable and known, — and not fortuitous, either, but planned, concerted. There can, properly speaking, be no " event " without organized ef- fort : it is not a thing of the individual. Literature is excluded, by definition, and art, and language, and much of religion that is grounded in unobserved belief, and all the obscure pressure of economic want. A history of " events " cannot be a history of the people ; it can only be a history of the life of the body politic, of the things which statesmen observe and act upon. The specialist has taught us that the deepest things are often those which never spring to light in events, and that the breeding-ground of events themselves lies where the historian of the state seldom extends his explorations. It is not true that a community is merely the aggregate of those who compose it. The parts are so disposed among us that the minority governs more often than the majority. But influence and mastery are subtle things. They pro- ceed from forces which come to the individual out of the very air he breathes: his life is compounded as the lives of those about him are. Their lives play upon his, he knows not how, and the opinion he enforces upon them is already more than half their own. And so the analysis of the life of the many becomes part of the analysis of the power of the few — an indispensable part. It is this that the specialist sees. He sees more. He sees that individual effort as well as aggregate must be studied, the force that is in the man as well as the air that is in the community. The men who give voice to their age are witnesses to more things than they wot of. Mr. Ruskin, in the preface to the little volume on Vene- VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 27 tian art, to which he has given the name St. Mark's Rest, propounds a theory which will illuminate my meaning. " Great nations," he says, " write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, — the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others ; but of the three the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good for- tune; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children; but its art only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race. Again, the policy of a nation may be compelled, and, therefore, not indicative of its true character. Its words may be false, while yet the race re- mains unconscious of their falsehood ; and no historian can assuredly detect the hypocrisy. But art is always in- stinctive ; and the honesty or pretense of it are therefore open to the day. The Delphic oracle may or may not have been spoken by an honest priestess, — we cannot tell by the words of it ; a liar may rationally believe them a lie. such as he would himself have spoken ; and a true man, with equal reason, may believe them spoken in truth. But there is no question possible in art: at a glance (when we have learned to read), we know the religion of Angelico to be sincere, and of Titian, assumed." Whether we agree with all the dicta of this interesting passage or not, the main truth of it is plain. It is to be doubted whether tlic " genius of a few of its children " suffices to gi\-e a nation place in the great annals of litera- ture, and literary critics would doubtless maintain that the book of a nation's words is as naif and instinctive as the book of its art. Here, too, the sincere and natural is easily to be distinguished ("when we have learned to read") from the sophisticated and the artificial. Plainly the auto- biography of Benjamin Franklin is separated by a long 28 HISTORICAL SCIENCE age from the autobiography of Benvenuto CelHni, and the one is as perfect a mirror of the faith of the man and the manner of the age as the other. But these questions are not of the present point. Undoubtedly the book of a nation's art and the book of its words must be read along with the book of its deeds if its life and character are to be comprehended as a whole ; and another book, besides, — the book of its material life, its foods, its fashions, its manufactures, its temperatures and seasons. In each of these great books the historian looks for the same thing : the life of the day, the impulses that underlie government and all achievement, all art and all literature, as well as all statesmanship. I do not say that the specialists who have so magnified their office m our day have been conscious of this ultimate synthesis. Few of them have cared for it or believe in it. They have diligently spent their intensive labor upon a few acres of ground, with an exemplary singleness of mind, and have displayed, the while, very naively, the provincial spirit of small farmers. But a nation is as rich as its sub- jects, and this intensive farming has accumulated a vast store of excellent food-stuffs. No doubt the work would have been better done if it had been done in a more catholic spirit, with wider sympathies, amidst horizons. The broader the comprehension the more intelligent the insight. But we must not ask for all things in a genera- tion or expect our own perfection by any other way than the familiar processes of development. Perhaps we are near enough the time of synthesis and coordination to see at least the organic order and relation- ship of the several special branches of historical inquiry which have been grouped in this Division of our Congress. All history has society as its subject-matter; what we jx)nder and explore is, not the history of men, but the his- VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 29 tory of man. And yet our themes do not all lie equally close to the organic processes of society. Those processes are, of course, most prominent in political and economic history, least prominent, perhaps, in the history of lan- guage. I venture to suggest that the organic order is : Politics, economics, religion, law, literature, art, language. So far as the question affects religion and law, I must admit that I am not clear which of the two ought to take precedence, — in modern history, certainly law ; but most history is not modern, and in that greater part which is not modern clearly religion overcrows law in the organic, social process. I know that the word religion, in this connection as in most others, is of vague and mixed significance, covering a multitude of sins ; but so far as my present point is con- cerned, it is easy of clarification. Religion, as the historian handles it, involves both a history of institutions, of the church, and a history of opinion. As a history of opinion it perhaps lies no nearer the organic processes of society than does the history of literature; but from the beginning of recorded events until at any rate the breaking up of foundations which accompanied and followed the French Revolution, it concerns the church as an institution as definitely as the history of politics, with its various records of shifting opinion, concerns the state, and the organic life of the body politic. In such a view, religion must take precedence of law in the organic order of our topics. From the remotest times of classical history, when church and state, priest and judge, were hardly distinguishable, through the confused Middle Age, in which popes were oftentimes of more authority than kings and emperors, down to the modern days, when priests and primates were, by very virtue of their oi^ce, chief politicians in the plot of public policy, the church has unquestionably played a 30 HISTORICAL SCIENCE part second only to the state itself in the organization and government of society, in the framing of the public life. Law occupies a place singular and apart. Its character is without parallel in our list. It has no life of its own apart from the life of the state, as religion has, or litera- ture, or art. or language. Looked at as the lawyer looks at it. it is merely the voice of the state, the body of regula- tions set by government to give order to the competiti\e play of individual and social forces. Looked at from the historian's point of view, it consists of that part of the social thought and habit which has definitely formed itself, which has gained universal acquiescence and recognition, and which has been given sanction and backing of the state itself, a final formulation in command. In either case, whatever its origin, whether in the arbitrary will of the law- maker or in the gradually disclosed and accepted conven- ience of society, it comes, not independently and of itself, but through the mouth of governors and judges and is itself a product of the state. But not of politics, unless we speak of public law, the smaller part, not of private, the greater. The forces which created it are chiefly economic, or else social, bred amidst ideas of class and privilege. It springs from a thousand fountains. Statutes do not contain all of it; and statutes are themselves, when soundly conceived, but generalizations of experience. The truth is that, while law gets its formulation and its compulsive sanction from the political governors of the state, its real life and source lie hidden amidst all of the various phenomena which his- torians are called upon to explore. It belongs high in the list I have made, because it so definitely takes its form from the chief organ of society. To put literature before art in the organic order I have suggested, is not to deny Mr. Ruskin's dictum, that art more than literature comes " by the general gifts and com- VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 31 mon sympathies of the race," by instinct rather than by deliberation ; it is only to say that more of what is passing through a nation's tliought is expressed in its literature than in its art. As a nation thinks so it is ; and the his- torian must give to the word literature a wider significance than the critic would vouchsafe, tie must think not merely of that part of a nation's book of words upon which its authors have left the touch of genius, the part that has been made immortal by the transfiguring magic of art, but also of the cruder parts which have served their pur- pose and now lie dead upon the page, — the fugitive and ephemeral pamphlets, the forgotten controversies, the dull, thin prose of arguments long ago concluded, old letters, futile and neglected pleas, — whatever may seem to have played through the thought of older days. Of the history of language I speak with a great deal of diffidence. My own study of it was of narrow scope and antedated all modern methods. But I know what interest it has for the historian of life and opinion ; I know how indispensable its help is in deciphering race origins and race mixtures ; I know what insight it affords into the processes of intellectual development; I know what subtle force it has had not only in moulding men's thoughts, but also their acts and their aspirations after the better things of hope and purpose. I know how it mirrors national as well as individual genius. And I know that all of these data of organic life, whether he take them at first hand or at second, throw a clarifying light upon many an obscure page of the piled records that lie upon the his- torian's table. I fancy that the historian who intimately uses the language of the race and people of w4iich he writes somehow gets intimation of its origin and history into his ear and thought whether he be a deliberate student of its development or not; but be that as it may, the historian 32 HISTORICAL SCIEx\CE of language stands at his elbow, if he will but turn to him, with many an enlightening fact and suggestion which he can ill afford to dispense withal. It is significant, as it is interesting, that the students of language have here been definitely called into the company of historians. May the alliance be permanent and mutually profitable! My moral upon the whole list is, that, separated though we may be by many formal lines of separation, sometimes insisted on with much pedantic punctilio, we are all part- ners in a common undertaking, the illumination of the thoughts and actions of men as associated in society, the life of the human spirit in this familiar theatre of co- operative effort in which we play, so changed from age to age and yet so much the same throughout the hurrying centuries. Some of the subjects here grouped may stand high in the list of organic processes, others affect them less vigorously and directly; but all are branches and parts of the life of society. In one of the great topics we deal with there is, I know, another element which sets it quite apart to a character of its own. The history of religion is not merely the history of social forces, not merely the history of institutions and of opinions. It is also the history of something which transcends our divination, escapes our analysis, — the power of God in the life of men. God does, indeed, deal with men in society and through social forces, but he deals with him also individually, as a single soul, not lost in society or impoverished of his individual will and responsibility by his connection with the lives of other men, but himself sovereign and lonely in the choice of his destiny. This singleness of the human soul, this several right and bounden duty of individual faith and choice, to be exercised oftentimes in contempt and defiance of society, is a thing no man is likely to overlook who has noted the genesis of our modern liberty or assessed the forces of VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 33 reform and regeneration which have lifted us to our present enhghtenment ; and it introduces into the history of re- ligion, at any rate since the day of Christ, the master of free souls, an element which plays upon society like an independent force, like no native energy of its own. This, nevertheless, like all things else that we handle, comes into the sum of our common reckoning when we would analyze the life of men as manifested in the book of their deeds, in the book of their words, in the book of their art, or in the book of their material arts, consumption, needs, desires; and the product is still organic. Men play upon one another whether as individual souls or as political and economic partners. What the specialist has discovered for us, whether he has always discovered it for himself or not, is, that this social product which we call history, though produced by the interplay of forces, is not always produced by definite organs or by deliberation: that, though a joint product, it is not always the result of concerted action. He has laid bare to our view particular, minor, confluent but not conjoint influences, which, if not individual, are yet not deliberately cooperative, but the unstudied, ungeneraled, scattered, unassembled, it may be even single and individ- ual expression of motives, conceptions, impulses, needs, desires, which have no place within the ordered, corporated ranks of such things as go by legislation or the edicts of courts, by resolutions of synods or centred mandates of opinion, but spring of their own spontaneous vigor out of the unhusbanded soil of unfenced gardens, the crops no man had looked for or made ready to reap. Though all soils from which human products suck their sustenance must no doubt lie within the general sovereignty of society, and no man is masterless in our feudal moral system, these things which have come to light by the labor of those who 34 HISTORICAL SCIENCE have scrutinized the detail of our Hves for things neglected have not been produced within the immediate demesnes of the crown. Historians who ponder public policy only, and only the acts of those who make and administer law and determine the relationships of nations, like those who fol- low only tiie main roads of literature and study none but the greater works of art, have therefore passed them by unheeded, and so, undoubtedly, have missed some of the most interesting secrets of the very matters they had set themselves to fathom. Individuals, things happening obscure and in a corner, matters that look like incidents, accidents, and lie outside the observed movements of af- fairs, are as often as not of the very gist of controlling circumstances and will be found when fully taken to pieces to lie at the very kernel of our fruit of memory. I do not mean to imply that the work of the specialist is now near enough to being accomplished, his discoveries enough completed, enough advertised, enough explained, his researches brought to a sufficient point of perfection. I daresay he is but beginning to come into his kingdom : is just beginning to realize that it is a kingdom, and not merely a congeries of little plots of ground, unrelated, un- neighborly even; and that as the years go by and such studies are more and more clarified, more and more wisely conceived, this minute and particular examination of the records of the human spirit will yield a yet more illuminat- ing body of circumstances and serve more and more di- rectly and copiously for the rectification of all history. What I do mean, and what, I daresay, I am put here to pro- claim, is, that the day for synthesis has come ; that no one of us can safely go forward without it ; that labor in all kinds must henceforth depend upon it, the labor of the specialists no less than the labor of the general historian who attempts the broader generalizations of comment and narrative. VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 35 In the English-speaking world we have very recently witnessed two interesting and important attempts at syn- thesis by cooperation in Mr. H. D. Traill's Social England and Lord Acton's Cambridge Modern History, the one now complete, the other still in course of publication. We have had plans and proposals for a somewhat similarly constructed history of the United States. Mr. Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America hardly furnishes an example of the sort of work attempted in the other series of which I have spoken. Aside from its lists and critical estimates of authorities, it is only history along the ordinary lines done in monographs, covering topics every historian of America has tried to cover. Mr. Traill's volumes, as their general title bears evidence, run upon a wider field, whose boundaries include art, literature, lan- guage, and religion, as well as law and politics. They are broader, at any rate in their formal plan, than Lord Acton's series, if we may judge by the three volumes of the Cam- bridge Modern History already published. The chapter- headings in the Cambridge volumes smack much more often of politics and public affairs than of the more covert things of private impulse and endeavor. Their authors write generally, however, with a very broad horizon about them and examine things usually left unnoted by historians of an earlier age. The volumes may fairly be taken, there- fore, to represent an attempt at a comprehensive synthesis of modern historical studies. Both Mr. Traill's volumes and the Cambridge Modern History are constructed upon essentially the same general plan. The sections of the one and the chapters of the other are monographs pieced together to make a tessellated whole. The hope of the editors has been to obtain, by means of carefully formulated instructions and suggestions issued beforehand to their corps of associates, a series of 36 HISTORICAL SCIENCE sections conceived antl executed, in some general sen'^e, upon a common model and suitable to be worked in to- gether as parts of an intelligible and consistent pattern; and, so uniform has been our training in historical re- search and composition in recent years, that a most sur- prising degree of success has attended the effort after homogeneous texture in the narrative and critical essays which have resulted ; a degree of success which I call sur- prising, not because I think it very nearly complete, but because I am astonished that, in the circumstances, it should have been success at all and not utter failure. It is far from being utter failure; and yet how far it is also from being satisfactory success! Allow me to take, as an example of the way in which these works are con- structed, my own experience in writing a chapter for the volume of the Cambridge Modern History which is de- voted to the United States. In doing so I am far from meaning even to imply any criticism upon the editors of that admirable series, to whom w^e are all so much in- debted. I do not see how, without incredible labor, they could have managed the delicate and difficult business in- trusted to them in any other way; and I am adducing my experience in their service only for the sake of illustrating what must, no doubt, inevitably be the limitations and drawbacks of work in this peculiar kind. I can think of no other way so definite of assessing the quality and serviceability of this sort of synthesis. I was asked by Lord Acton to write for his volume on the United States the chapter which treats of the very painful and important decade 1850-1860, and I undertook the commission with a good deal of willingness. There are several things con- cerning that critical period which I like to have an oppor- tunity to say. But I had hardly embarked upon the inter- esting enterprise, which I was bidden compass within thirty VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 37 of the ample pages of the Cambridge royal octavos, before I was beset by embarrassments with regard to the manner and scope of treatment. The years 1850-18()0 do not, of course, either in our own history or in any other, constitute a decade severed from its fellows. The rootages of all the critical matters which then began to bear their bitter /ruitage are many and complex and run far, very far, back into soil which I knew very well other writers were farm- ing. I did not know what they would say or leave unsaid, explain or leave doubtful. I could take nothing for granted ; for every man's point of view needs its special elucidation, and he can depend upon no other man to light his path for him. I therefore wrote a narrative essay, in my best philosophical vein, on the events of the decade assigned me, in which I gave myself a very free hand and took care to allow my eye a wide and sweeping view upon every side. I spoke of any matter I pleased, harked back to any transaction that concerned me, recking nothing of how long before the limiting date 1850 it might have occurred, and so flung myself very freely, — should I say very insolently? — through many a reach of country that clearly and of my own certain knowledge belonged to others, by recorded Cambridge title. How was I to avoid it? My co-laborers were not at my elbow in my study. Some of them were on the other side of the sea. The editors themselves could not tell me what these gentlemen were to say, for they did not know. The other essays intended for the volume were on the stocks being put together, as mine was. I must conjecture that the other writers for that volume fared as I did, and took the law into their own hands as I did ; and their experience and mine is the moral of my criticism. No sort of cunning joinery could fit their sev- eral pieces of workmanship together into a single and con- 38 HISTORICAL SCIENCE sistent whole. Xo amount of uniform type and sound binding can metamorphose a series of individual essays into a book. I may be allowed to express my surprise, in passing, that some individual historians should have tried to compound and edit themselves in the same way, by l)inding together essays which were conceived and ex- ecuted as separate wholes. The late Mr. Edward Eggleston furnished us with a distinguished example of this in his Beginners of a Nation, whose chapters are topical and run back and forth through time and circumstance without integration or organic relation to one another, treating again and again of the same things turned about to be looked at from a different angle. And if a man of capital gifts cannot fuse his own essays, or even beat and com- press them into solid and coherent amalgam, how shall editors be blamed who find the essays of a score of minds equally intractable? No doubt the Cambridge volumes are meant for scholars more than for untrained readers, though Mr. Traill's, I believe, are not; but even the docile scholar, accustomed of necessity to contrast and variety in what he pores upon and by habit very patient in reconciling inconsistencies, plodding through repetitions, noting varia- tions and personal w^himsies, must often wonder why he should thus digest pieces of other men's minds and eat a mixture of secondary authorities. The fact is, that this is not synthesis, but mere juxtaposition. It is not even a compounding of views and narrati\cs. It is comjjilation. There is no whole cloth, no close texture, anywhere in it. The collected pieces overlap and are sometimes not even stitched together. Events — even events of critical conse- fjuence — are sometimes incontinently overlooked, dropped utterly from the narrative, because no one of the writers felt any particular responsibility for them, and one and another took it for granted that some one else had VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 39 treated of them, finding their incKision germane and con- venient. But if we reject this sort of cooperation as unsatis- factory, what are we to do? Obviously some sort of cooperation is necessary in this various and almost bound- less domain of ours; and if not the sort Mr. Traill and Ivord Acton planned, what sort is possible? The question is radical. It involves a great deal more than the mere determination of a method. It involves nothing less than an examination of the essential character and object of history, — I mean of that part of man's book of words which is written as a deliberate record of his social ex- perience. What are our ideals ? What, in the last analysis, do we conceive our task to be? Are we mere keepers and transcribers of records, or do we write our own thoughts and judgments into our narratives and interpret what we record? The question may be simply enough asked, but it cannot be simply answered. The matter requires elab- oration. Let us ask ourselves, by way of preliminary test, what we should be disposed to require of the ideal historian, what qualities, what powers, what aptitudes, what pur- poses? Put the query in another form, more concrete, more convenient to handle: how would you critically dis- tinguish Mommsen's History from a doctor's thesis? By its scope, of course ; but its scope would be ridiculous if it were not for its insight, its power to reconceive forgotten states of society, to put antique conceptions into life and motion again, build scattered hints into systems, and see a long national history singly and as a whole. Its masterly qualities it gets from the perceiving eye, the conceiving mind of its great author, his divination rather than his learning. The narrative impresses you as if written by one who has seen records no other man ever deciphered. 40 HISTORICAL SCIENCE I do not think Mommsen an ideal historian. His habit as a lawyer was too strong upon him : he wrote history too much as if it were an argument. His curiosity as an anti- quarian was too keen : things very ancient and obscure were more interesting to him than the more commonplace things, which nevertheless constitute the bulk of the human story. But his genius for interpretation was his patent of nobility in the peerage of historians ; he would not be great without it ; and without it would not illustrate my present thesis. That thesis is, that, in whatever form, upon whatever scale you take it, the writing of history as distinguished from the clerical keeping of records is a process of interpre- tation. No historical writer, how small soever his plot of time and circumstance, ever records all the facts that fall under his eye. He picks and chooses for his narrative, determines which he will dwell upon as significant, which put by as of no consequence. And that is a process of judgment, an estimation of values, an interpretation of the matter he handles. The smaller the plot of time he writes of, the more secluded from the general view the matters he deals with, the more liable is he to error in his interpreta- tion; for this little part of the human story is but a part; its significance lies in its relation to the whole. It requires nicer skill, longer training, better art and craft to fit it to its little place than would be required to adjust more bulky matters, matters more obviously involved in the general structure, to their right position and connections. The man with only common skill and eyesight is safer at the larger, cruder sort of work. Among little facts it requires an exceeding nice judgment to pick the greater and the less, prefer the significant and throw away only the neg- ligible. The specialist must needs be overseen and cor- rected with much more vigilance and misgiving than the national historian or the historian of epochs. VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 41 Here, then, is the fundamental weakness of the cooper- ative histories of which I have spoken by example. They have no wholeness, singleness, or integrity of conception. If the several authors who wrote their section or chapters had written their several parts only for the eye of one man chosen guide and chief among them, and he, pondering them all, making his own verifications, and drawing from them not only, but also from many another source and chiefly from his own lifelong studies, had constructed the whole, the narrative had been everywhere richer, more complete, more vital, a living whole. But such a scheme as that is beyond human nature, in its present jealous con- stitution, to execute, and is a mere pleasing fancy, — if any one be pleased with it. Such things are sometimes done in university seminars, where masters have been known to use, at their manifest peril, the work of their pupils in making up their published writings ; but they ought not to have been done there, and they are not likely to be done anywhere else. At least this may be said, that, if master workmen w^ere thus to use and interpret other men's ma- terials, one great and indispensable gain would be made: history would be coherently conceived and consistently explained. The reader would not himself have to com- pound and reconcile the divergent views of his authors. I daresay it seems a very radical judgment to say that synthesis in our studies must come by means of literary art and the conceiving imagination; but I do not see how otherwise it is to come. By literary art, because interpreta- tion cannot come by crude terms and unstudied phrases in WTiting any more than pictorial interpretation can come by a crude, unpracticed, ignorant use of the brush in painting. By the conceiving imagination, because the historian is not a clerk but a seer : he must see the thing first before he can judge of it. Not the inventing imagination, but the con- 42 HISTORICAL SCIENCE cciving imagination, — not all historians have been careful to draw the distinction in their practice. It is imagination that is needed, is it not, to conceive past generations of men truly in their habit and manner as they lived? If not, it is some power of the same kind which you prefer to call by another name : the name is not what we shall stop to discuss. I will use the word under correction. Nothing but imagination can put the mind back into the past ex- periences not its own, or make it the contemporary of institutions long since passed away or modified beyond recognition. And yet the historian must be in thought and comprehension the contemporary of the men and afifairs he writes of. He must also, it is true, be something more: if he would have the full power to interpret, he must have the ofifing that will give him perspective, the knowledge of subsequent events which will furnish him with multi- plied standards of judgment: he should write among records amplified, verified, complete, withdrawn from the mist of contemporary opinion. But he will be but a poor interpreter if he have alien sympathies, the temperament of one age when writing of another, it may be contrasted with his own in every point of preference and belief. He needs something more than sympathy, for sympathy may be condescending, pitying, contemptuous. Few things are more benighting than the condescension of one age for another, and the historian who shares this blinding senti- ment is of course unfitted for his office, which is not that of censor but that of interpreter. Sympathy there must be, and very catholic sympathy, but it must be the sympathy of the man who stands in the midst and sees, like one within, not like one without, like a native, not like an alien. He must not sit like a judge exercising exterritorial jurisdiction. It is through the imagination that this delicate adjust- VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 43 meiit of view is effected, — a power not of the understand- ing- nor yet a mere faculty of sympathetic appreciation, or even compounded of the two, but mixed of these with a magical gift of insight added, which makes it a thing mere study, mere open-mindedness, mere coolness and candor of judgment cannot attain. Its work cannot be done by editor- ship or even by the fusing of the products of different minds under the heat of a single genius ; its insight is with- out rule, and is exercised in singleness and independence. It is in its nature a thing individual and incommunicable. Since literary art and this distinctive, inborn genius of interpretation are needed for the elucidation of the human story and must be married to real scholarship if they are to be exercised with truth and precision, the work of making successful synthesis of the several parts of our labors for each epoch and nation must be the achievement of individual minds, and it might seem that we must await the slow maturing of gifts Shakespearean to accomplish it. But, happily, the case is not so desperate. The genius required for this task has nothing of the universal scope, variety, or intensity of the Shakespearean mind about it. It is of a much more humble sort and is, we have reason to believe, conferred upon men of every generation. There would be good cause to despair of the advance of historical knowledge if it were not bestowed with some liberality. It is needed for the best sort of analysis and specialization of study as well as for successful synthesis, for the par- ticular as well as for the general task. Moreover, a certain very large amount of cooperation is not only possible but quite feasible. It depends, after all, on the specialists whether there shall be successful synthesis or not. If they wish it, if it be their ideal, if they construct their parts with regard to the whole and for the sake of the whole, syn- thesis will follow naturally and with an easy approach to 44 HISTORICAL SCIENCE perfection; but if tlie specialists are hostile, if their en- thusiasm is not that of those who have a large aim and view, if they continue to insist on detail for detail's sake and suspect all generalization of falseness, if they cannot be weaned from the provincial spirit of petty farmers, the outlook is bad enough, synthesis is indefinitely postponed. Synthesis is not possible without specialization. The special student must always garner, sift, verify. ]\Iinute circum- stance must be examined along with great circumstance, all the background as w^ell as the foreground of the picture studied, every part of human endeavor held separately under scrutiny until its individual qualities and particular relations with the rest of the human story stand clearly revealed ; and this is, of necessity, the w'ork of hundreds of minds, not of one mind. There is labor enough and honor enough to go around, and the specialist w^ho puts first-rate gifts into his task, though he be less read, will not in the long estimate of literature earn less distinction than the general historian. It is a question of the division and cooperation of labor: but it is more; it is also a question of the spirit in which the labor is done, the public spirit that animates it, the general aim and conception that under- lies and inspires it. As a university teacher I cannot help thinking that the government of the matter is largely in the hands of the professors of history in our schools of higher training. The modern crop of specialists is theirs : they can plant and reap after a different kind if they choose. I am convinced that the errors and narrownesses of specialization are chiefly due to vicious methods and mistaken objects in the training of advanced students of history in the uni- versities. In the first place, if I may speak from the ex- perience of our American universities, students are put to asks of special investigation before they are sufficiently VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 45 grounded in oeneral history and in the larger aspects of the history of the age or nation of whicli they are set to elaborate a part. They discover too many things that are already known and too many things which are not true, — at any rate, in the crude and distorted shape in which they advance them. Other universities may be happier than ours in their material, in the previous training of the men of whom they try to make investigators; but even when the earlier instruction of their pupils has been more nearly adequate and better suited to what is to follow, the training they add is not, I take the liberty of saying, that which is likely to produce history, but only that which is likely to produce doctors' theses. The students in their seminars are encouraged, if they are not taught, to prefer the part to the whole, the detail to the spirit, like chemists who should prefer the individual reactions of their experiments to the laws which they illustrate. I should think the mischievous mistake easy enough of correction. It is quite possible to habituate students to a point of view, and to do so is often, I daresay, the best part of their preparation. When they come to the ad- vanced stage of their training, at which they are to be set to learn methods of investigation, they should not be set first of all to the discovery of elaboration of facts, to the filling in of the hiatuses easily and everywhere to be dis- cerned, by their preceptors at any rate, in the previous study of detail. They should, rather, be set to learn a very different process, the process of synthesis : to establish the relations of circumstances already known to the general history of the day in which they occured. These circum- stances should not all be political or economic or legal ; they should as often concern religion, literature, art, or the development of language, so that the student should at once become accustomed to view the life of men in society 46 HISTORICAL SCIENCE as a whole. Heaven knows there is enough original work waiting to be done in this kind to keep many generations of youngsters profitably employed. Look where you will in the field of modern monographs, and it is easy to find unassociated facts piled high as the roofs of libraries. There is not a little fame as well as much deep instruction to be got out of classifying them and bringing them into their vital relations with the life of which they form a part. It were mere humanity to relieve them of their loneliness. After they had been schooled in this work, which, believe me, some one must do, and that right promptly, our advanced students of history and of his- torical method would be ready to go on, if it were only after graduation, after the fateful doctor's degree, to the further task of making new collections of fact, which they would then instinctively view in their connection with the known circumstances of the age in which they happened. Thus, perhaps thus only, will the spirit and the practice of synthesis be bred. If this change should be successfully brought about, there would no longer be any painful question of hierarchy among historians : the specialist would have the same spirit as the national historian, would use the same power, display the same art, and pass from the ranks of artisans to the ranks of artists, making cameos as much to be prized as great canvases or heroic statues. Until this happens his- tory will cease to be a part of literature, and that is but another way of saying that it will lose its influence in the world, its monographs prove about as vital as the speci- mens in a museum. It is not only the delightful pre- rogative of our studies to view man as a whole, as a living, breathing spirit, it is also their certain fate that if they do not view him so, no living, breathing spirit will heed them. We have used the wrong words in speaking of our art and VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 47 craft. History must be revealed, not recorded, conceived before it is written, and we must all in our several degrees be seers, not clerks. It is a high calling and should not be belittled. Statesmen are guided and formed by what we write, patriots stimulated, tyrants checked. Reform and progress, charity, and freedom of belief, the dreams of artists and the fancies of poets, have at once their record and their source with us. We must not suffer ourselves to fall dull and pedantic, must not lose our visions or cease to speak the large words of inspiration and guidance. It were a shame upon us to drop from the ranks of those who walk at the van and sink into the ranks of those who only follow after, to pick up the scattered traces of the marching host as things merely to pore upon and keep. We cannot do this. We will return to our traditions and compel our fellow historians of literature to write of us as of those who were masters of a great art. WOOBliOW WILSON. Ph.D., LLD. Prenident of Princeton Unioersity THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY IN THE NINE- TEENTH CENTURY. BY WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE [William Milligan Sloane, 3eth Low Professor of History. Colum- bia University, since 1896. b. November 12, 1850, Richmond, Ohio. A.B. Columbia, 1868; Ph.D. Leipsic, 1876; L.H.D. Colum- bia, 1885; LL.D. Rutgers, 1900; Princeton, 1903. Post-graduate, University of Berlin, 1872-75; University of Leipsic, 1875-76. Classical Master Newell Institute, 1868-72. Professor of Latin, Princeton, 1877-82; History, 1882-96. Member Academy of Po- litical Science, American Historical Association, National Insti- tute of Arts and Letters. Author of The French War and the Revolution; Napoleon Bonaparte; The French Revolution and Religious Reform; and editor of The American Historical Re- view.] The scientific study of history seeks to find in the past the means of determining both the evokition occurring under our eyes and the probabihties of the future. No preconception may distort the facts ; but, the facts once determined, they may not be considered except in the Hght of reason. This by the rhetorical figure of " anticipation " we call, the Science of History. There is no claim that as yet this is other than an empirical science: we hope that one day it may become fairly complete; exact, within cer- tain limits. Freeman, Morley, Acton, Comte, Renan, Taine; Waitz, Ranke, Mommsen, — these are some of the men who during the century just past have labored to make history scientific. One and all they ridiculed the wild ex- aggeration of mere reason as the final arbiter, apart from the affections, the imagination, and the moral sense; one and all they distrusted the " vague and sterile philan- thropy," which is so often a plague to normal social con- ditions. Freethinkers as were most of them, yet, liberal and orthodox alike, they believed in the merits and bene- 49 50 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY factions of the Christian Church as a vital factor in their science. In their cathoHc spirit they were truly scientific. It is assumed that the scientific study of history has entirely displaced history as literature; or literary history, as many style it. There have, indeed, been many men of light and learning, whose style and trained imagination have transmuted history into literature: there have been others who sought, even in the study of texts and in the interpretations of philology, to secure the material of novels, tales, or poetry, to find examples for the inspira- tion and consolation of contemporary life. For such works the public has a passion, and no wonder; with the delight of literature we seem to combine learning and education. We savor and love the mixture of fact, philosophy, and poetry; the invention, the charm, the power. Yet this is not and never was history; something perhaps higher, but not history. There may even be literary science; but for all that science is not literature nor literature science. These twain cannot be made one flesh. Each may modify the other, but there is no transmutation. For the scientific study of history we must have minds subtle, conscientious, and accurate — minds with a power and aptitude for minutiae, with a patience and endurance which know no bounds, honest minds incapable of even self-deception, and in particular with the linguistic gift that makes no language impossible of acquisition or foreign to the learner's aptitudes. Only for the mind thus equipped can history and philology be scientific. The generations of men endowed with the imaginative faculty have seen and will ever see, in the labors of such minds, the most splendid form of applied art, the highest known form of prose literature possibly, but certainly the nearest approach to scientific history that can be made. In ours as in other disciplines there is trouble; and the HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 51 trouble, as elsewhere, arises among the men who are desti- tute, or nearly so, of the imaginative power which is so well designated as the scientific imagination. Honest men of this sort, proud of their devotion and accuracy, become pedantic, claim infallibility, and despise all others: in the presence of the most august of all terrestrial things, — the origins, rise, and evolution of a state, the supreme social unit, — the mere investigator secures no large view but becomes a stern, contemptuous materialist. Only worse than these are the ignorant and impatient, who disdain the accuracy of truth, and are indifferent to the orderly arrangement of facts: the chain of causation in human affairs they can neither understand nor appreciate, being dazzled by speculation, imagery, and rhetoric. Shallow and inaccurate, they prate about history as literature, and deny the possibility of a science of history. In the closing years of the nineteenth century there was much strife about the question as to whether or not there could be science in history. The question now is : How much science and of what kind is there in history? As some help toward a reply, we are forced to an historical retrospect of the efforts to secure and apply a method. The eighteenth century is by many regarded as the period when history was born anew into the realm of science. The reason given is that it coincided with the final over- throw of ecclesiasticism, and the chief names adduced in proof are these of Vico (1G68-1744), Gibbon (1737-94), Voltaire (1G94-1778), and Burke (1729-97). It was felt that humanity was, if not its own first cause, at least its own demiurge, and men were determined to discover, if possible, what were the processes by which mankind had formed itself and made its home. Without a doubt there was for this reason a passionate study of nature, and it may have been a necessary complement that both the statics 52 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY and dynamics of social phenomena were examined with a new purpose and from a new angle. But in spite of all eft'orts to establish this contention and to trace an historical continuity in the science of " histories " from then until now, there lie athwart the argument difficulties so porten- tous and so serious as almost if not entirely to vitiate its conclusions. It is true that Vico was the first to ask why, if there be a science of nature, we have no science of history? It is consequently true that he was the first historical evolution- ist. To him the story of a nation was the record of an ever completer realization in fact of certain remnants of a pre-natal revelation, of the primitive concrete notions of justice, goodness, beauty, and truth : the development, as he phrased it, of this poetic wisdom into the occult wisdom of law and government, into the realization of abstract and impersonal justice, was for him the subject-matter of history. This was a sublime idea, pregnant with great possibilities. But its author could not see the conclusions. Conceiving of three stages — divine, heroic, and human — he announced three corresponding civilizations, ending in an unstable democracy, whence society abandoned to license always relapses into barbarism, only to emerge once more by a law of cycles into a renewal of the process. This, of course, is a flat denial of progress. Moreo\-er Vico never had a glimpse, much less a vision, of scientific order in his- tory beyond the record of a single folk, and never conceived of general history in a scientific aspect. For these reasons he was a prophet without honor, either contemporaneous or posthumous, and left no influence behind to mould either his own or succeeding ages. The method which Voltaire announced was alike more simple and more scientific. It was based on the theory that most details of history are mere baggage, and that when HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 53 the lumber of the antiquary, as Bolingbroke called it, is disengaged from capital events, you may study in these last the vital human power and its workings. Wars, diplomacy, and the personal minutiae of the political hierarchy, he relegated to the garret of the chronicler and collector : laws, arts, and manners, he conceived to be the essentials of his- tory. Equipped with this doctrine, he turned to account such portions of his time as he could spare from literature, politics, and attacks on ecclesiasticism to the composition of philosophical history. By the sheer force of historic doubt he destroyed many a myth, by the seductions of a graceful style and the stings of a biting sarcasm he rele- gated the millinery of human life to the rummage chambers where it belongs, and finally in his great essay on manners he drew the plan and established the proportions for a con- cept of unity in history which in another land and age was destined to revolutionize the pursuit. Either he never knew or he had forgotten a vital point. Jejune and embryonic as Aristotle's Politics appear when applied to our problems, his experience having been con- fined to the petty states of Greece, he nevertheless found and set forth the vital principle of society as an organism. On this were based the ancient concepts of economics. The embryo of modern economics was begotten by Jean Bodin (1580), a lawyer of the sixteenth century, who formulated the ideas of progress, law, and causation in history. Had he combined with his own thoughts (Methodus ad facilcm Historiarum Cognifioncm) the one great thought of Aris- totle, he would have been even more famous than he is, he would have been the father of scientific history as well as of scientific economics. His objective, external attitude toward history was that of all the great, down to the nine- teenth century; it was the basic concept and starting-point of Bossuet, of Vico, of Bodin, and even of Montesquieu. 54 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY It was likewise the radical vice of Voltaire, as in a still higher degree it was that of Gibbon. The foundations of the social union may not be studied in collection of his- torical, legal, or even social facts, nor in brilliant general- izations therefrom, like those which cause the pages of Montesquieu to flash and scintillate. The true science of history shows us not merely the operations, what has been called the " play and function " of the social organs, it exhibits under the scalpel the organs themselves. Negative criticism has its rights, no doubt, but it is scanty fare for the hungry soul, and the idea of constructive, productive criticism was far better dexeloped in Thucydides than in Voltaire ; the most that can be said of the latter is that he saw in a glass darkly the concept, not of the unity of history, but of European history as a totality. What then of Gibbon ; has he too been weighed in the balances and found w^anting? His erudition was immense, his pen facile and powerful, his grasp gigantic and his method sound. Let us apply the supreme test. Do scholars read him? or, if they read him, is it for any other motive than a learned curiosity? They copiously correct and an- notate him, and freely explore the mazes of his thought: they conspire with publishers to issue new editions of his books, and the public buys edition after edition ; but so like- wise do they buy edition after edition of Rollin's Universal History! The sets look well on the shelves, but the man who reads either is hard pressed to kill time. There is more light thrown on the Decline and Fall by the short treatise of Fustel than by all the ponderous and erudite rhetoric of Gibbon. We have gleaned, not a few, but many facts, which Gibbon had not, even though the truth of fact is on all his pages; his method struggles to combine the ideas of evolution and of organism, but his logic is after all felt to be futile and his conclusions antiquated. HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 55 Like the other historians of his epoch, though the move- ment of his style is Hke that of the Roman triumph, he has not left to the world a " possession forever." Scholars can find all his information elsewhere, the use he makes of it they neither admire nor approve. Readers of discrimina- tion have better use for their time than to peruse the pages of an unsympathetic formalist, the eulogist of heathen effeminacy, an apologist for pagan morality. In truth, the eighteenth century is very remote from the nineteenth. The same facts no longer wear the same faces, and another method has gradually supplanted that which, though respectable, was nevertheless outworn. A restless evolution renews during every few generations all history in all its aspects, and never halts in the process. It is the fiat that history must be rewritten as knowledge grows, as epoch succeeds epoch. This is because readers have lived; have lived themselves into a world that is new scientifically and psychologically, and which has perspectives of which the past knew nothing. Viewed from the heights of our modern achievements in learning, the vaunted historical science of the eighteenth century, method and all, seems little better than a dangerous pseudo-science like phrenology or astrology. The first reaction against what was after all a phantom, stately though it were, sprang rather from feeling than from knowledge; it was a rebound of logic and not of reason. This premature revolt is probably best illustrated in the case of Niebuhr. Though powerful, the mind of the great Danish diplomat was dry and disdainful: contempt- uous of the practical and judicial. In his field of ancient history he substituted for painstaking research and for con- crete reasoning a method based on gratuitous assumptions, a method which destroyed traditional reality, to erect in its place a baseless fabric of credulous negations. It has been 56 POLITICAL AND ECOxNOMIC HISTORY the task of his successors, beginning with Mommsen and ending with Taine's fine treatise on Livy, to dissipate his airy structure of so-called analytic criticism. Considerate as they have been, they have left upright only a very few of his original contentions, and these the least important, wherewith to uphold, for shame's sake, the vanishing re- nown of his name. The indications of archaeological dis- covery at this hour all point to the ultimate annihilation of every principle and position which he enunciated. Could his shade be seen strolling to-day across the excavated Roman Forum, and its crowding reflections be recorded for our benefit, the muttered syllables of its vanitas vanitatum would instruct our generation how superior is even the older notion of history as a compound of poetry and phil- osophy to the substitute, which merely dissects and com- pares abstractions, which begets negations and brings forth only specious presumptions. It will appear, I think, on dispassionate examination, that the beginning of fruitfully scientific study in history, the initiation of the modern method, is to be found in Heeren. Unlike Niebuhr, he builded with new materials. Beginning as a philosopher, he applied in ancient history the Socratic method, and discovered that the states of antiquity could be understood only in the light of their institutions and their politics. Entering on a profound in- vestigation of these, he found them so interlaced with their foreign relations that he examined under compulsion both Greece and Rome in their connection alike with Egypt and with Carthage. Even with the imperfect information of the time, he brought to light the momentous principle of mutation as dependent not merely on outward form but on internal structure (morphology). His is the vital notion of comparing contemporary histories in short periods, as opposed to the elucidation of single ones in long succeeding HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 57 cycles of time. For this is essential to our later doctrine of the unity of history, without which no true science of the same, however rudimentary, is at all possible. With a consciousness of this grand truth as probably applicable to every period of history, he essayed it in following epochs and evolved the concept which revolutionary then, is now the corner stone of modern history, that of the state-system of Europe, the basis upon which Macaulay erected the great reputation which he deserves. It may be asserted of Heeren now, as was hinted by a French critic in his lifetime, that he avoided every pitfall into which cumbrous thoroughness throws its German votaries, and escaped every trap which over-confident logic sets for its acrobatic French disciples. The fine sense of limit and proportion exhibited by Heeren were in glaring contrast to the shoreless ocean of speculation on which both Herder and Hegel were sailing almost simultaneously. Alike they taught that the earthly realization of reason in history is a necessity, that whether by men, or in spite of man, all obstacles are leveled until humanity, freed from every hindrance, realizes the divine ideal. Alike therefore they landed on the quicksands of what may be to some a buoyant, but is to most a very gloomy fatalism, as the only basis for progress, being alike unmindful of Kant's almost self-evident but nevertheless glorious declaration that progress is a moral product purely. From the position of these transcendentalists the thought which has dominated the latter years of the nine- teenth century, that of the ]>ure evolutionists, does not essentially budge one jot; both are fatalistic. The latter, it is true, have a concept of progress antipodal to that of their predecessors. They likewise assume, somewhat rashly it seems in the present state of physics, that the laws of science are fixed and immutable; in particular, the taproot of the system, the doctrine of the conservation of energy, 58 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY seems to sit uneasily on crumbling and refractory shale instead of burrowing- ever deeper into fertile soil. It is in the application of this very doctrine that their theory of history emerges. To them it appears that energy being constant and indestructible in the social as in the physical order, every dynamic element works necessarily to associate itself with others, forming under internal influence, by integration, an organism ever more and more complex. Simultaneously and subsequently goes on the process of disintegration, each element dissociating itself from others under external influence, and forming again with other and like busy elements new composites, which in turn inaugurate the next stage of evolution and devolution, of progress and decadence. While these philosophers fail to find the secret of purpose and procedure, yet they never entirely abandoned teleology, and some at least have lately returned to it as essential to their thought, for advance seems to them stronger than retreat, constructive stronger than destructive force. The history of philosophy show^s that every cycle of thought ends in some phase of materialism. There is at this hour such a school of Augustuluses, and they have been fairly influential in high places. They have unraveled evolutionary logic into what is an absurdity and are loosing the slight hold they have had for a time. Theirs is not the agnosticism which is a state of suspended judgment, but the firm conviction of the obscurantist, denying the right of generalization as to fact or principle, scorning the notion of ethical values in history. They reunite the vicious circle, joining hands with Froude and scofling at the idea of science in history, even of an empirical science. For them history is but a mosaic of details, without design or outline, like some cathedral windows in England ; patched and assembled from the shreds to which iconoclasts re- HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 59 duced the glorious and glowing paintings which, by color and orderly arrangement, once conveyed noble and exalting thought. These are the haughty disciples of the mono- graph, the apostles of the " unprinted," the missionaries of chaos. In the wilderness they seek to create, their voice is heard but not heeded. Generous youth has a fine instinct in the matter of barren nonsense. There is science in the sections of the biologist and in the preparation of them, but neither the one nor the other is the science of biology. We are grateful to these painstaking antiquarians for their materials, but we cannot accept the materials in place of the finished edifice. Fortunately there has been a saner evolution than this. On Bacon's great principle have stood those who guide and advance it; the principle, namely, that it is the honor and the glory of history to trace causes and their combination with effects. The most commanding characters of history, like men of common mould, suffer the compulsion of cir- cumstances which they cannot control. It must be admitted and duly emphasized that there is a mystery, a nature of things, which runs with and athwart human purpose; that there is a cosmic order, pregnant with a train of events that are inevitable; there are relation, proportions and links in affairs and in men, which are predetermined. This, when disengaged from the documents, is what has been designated the weft or texture of history. Thereon is drawn and embroidered by man the enduring picture wdiich is the historical record. This is the view of history which lays emphasis neither on collective nor on individual man, but on the personal and race conscience alike and in equal proportion. The law of moral progress has always im- posed itself on societies, and always will, just in proportion as individuals zvill that it shall, and labor without cease tor the purpose. 60 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY It was a great saying which Kant uttered when he said : By struggle and effort ought all human faculties to perfect themsehes ; moral progress is antecedent to all other forms and the source of them ; besides, the conquests of each generation are the capital of the next, so that the sole condition of human perfectibility is the establishment of a civil society founded on justice. The determination to realize existence more completely, to struggle for the ideal, to aspire higher — the larger the number in every society who so feel it, and so behave, the more completely will be overcome the apparently insuperable obstacles to advance, the bondage of the past over the present, the restriction of each people by its contemporaries, the powerful solidarity of habit, of creed, and of inertia among men. This is the view of historical science which, whether right or wrong, was characteristic of the nineteenth cen- tury in all its best and most fruitful work : the recognition of the evolutionary movement, the exhibition of the uses to which men put it ; the display of its organic integration, the proof of its external disintegration by moral forces ; the sloughing of refuse, the renewal of vital powers. This doctrine may not pretend to the high scientific quality of some others, but somehow it satisfies the master workmen and gratifies the aspirations, instincts, and convictions of readers far better than any other. It is the view which still controls the spiritual and intellectual activities of the best men in the highest civilizations. Neglecting the phil- osophical " impasse " of liberty and necessity, it satisfies the requirements of an imperious demand; that for the tangible results f»f human experience. The fruits of science being both a means of enjoyment and a guide to conduct, our attention has naturally been monopolized by the marvelous achievements of physical science. This is incorrect and unjust; the advance and the HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTl'RV <;i results of the humanistic sciences have [)een equally re- markable. The polymath of the eighteenth century, with his unorganized masses of uncouth learning, would to-day be a deformed monstrosity, so far has erudition spread its field and so profound are the investigations of scholars. The comparative method, without which modern science of any sort would be impossible, is itself an invention of the humanists. And I have heard the greatest devotees of pure science in our time yearn for a comparative historian of their disciplines. The entire success of scientific history is due to the achievements of the ancillary sciences ; as revolutionary in method and results as either physics, chemistry, or biology. In particular, history is the hope- less and grateful debtor of comparative sociology, phil- ology, and mythology, of comparative religions, folk-lore and ethnology; and above all of comparative archaeology. One winter spent on the Nile examining the unbroken and unfalsified record of 10,000 years in human evolution under external influences is worth to the student all the meta- physics of history, even when indited by the genius of a Hegel. By this vast erudition the work of the historian has become such that a division of labor is essential. There must be specialists in each and all of these ancillary sciences, and the historian must use their results as his matter. It has become the categorical imperative of scientific history that it should avail itself of its own wherever found. In this way we have reached what would otherwise ha^'e been inaccessible, viz., certain definitions of the task. We have defined the limits, we have fixed the basis, we have as was shown in another connection proved the unity, and we have consequently found the scientific method of history. This is neither the time nor the place further to discuss these, but they are realities. Without these definitions the 62 POLITICAL AXD ECONOMIC HISTORY advance of the nineteenth century would have been as futile as that of the eighteenth. Let us turn and illustrate these contentions in consider- ing four great names of our epoch : perhaps not the great- est, but types at least of the best in four great lands. The names are those of Macaulay, Ranke. Taine, and Bancroft. Once and for all let us say of each and every one of them that he was a man of immense erudition ; of perfect good faith; of enormous, tireless, patient industry; of trained and chastened intellect; fully aware of the canons of his- torical science and determined to use them in his work. Each of them, moreover, marks a stage and a quality of advance, which are not merely noteworthy, but essential to our purpose. The greatest German and the greatest French historians have paid homage to Macaulay as certainly the foremost English historian, as possibly the greatest of all historians since Thucydides, who, of course, in other respects the peer of the modern, far surpasses him in philosophic in- sight. It is this weakness of Macauby which is his strength. He is distinctly, avowedly, a man of his time and place; British of the British, and more than that a Victorian Englishman, an admirer of wealth and rank, proud of his country as the best on earth. It is the pleasant England of his day which interests him, as it interested alike his own countrymen and the contemporary world. Setting out to explain this joyous land, he found and his readers found that the fascinating riddle of its existence could be read clearest in the light of the Whig movements then continuing, of the policies of which he himself was an eminent supporter. Not in any sense a philosopher, the truth as he saw it was not an analyzed and dissected truth, not an abstraction, but a cognizable reality, to be known and judged by the exercise of wholesome common sense. HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY G3 Heeren, as we said earlier, had set forth the characters of the scientific history which reckons with the peoples, the colonies, the economics, the commerce of the world. This had a very direct bearing on the state of the British Empire. Macaulay likewise knew that, to be complete, history must take account of the whole earth within the limits of its period. These conceptions the English his- torian with magisterial power incorporated in his work — the opening chapters are masterpieces of historical gen- eralization. But his genuis went further, it took scientific history from the university into the home; for the lan- guage, the illustrations, were so clear and so interwoven with the tale that plain men felt as if they had a vision of grandeur not vouchsafed hitherto to them or to their predecessors. For years the volumes of Macaulay sold in England as no other book sold, and in America the numbers of copies distributed were second in number only to those of the Bible. There was not an important language of the Con- tinent into which the glowing pages were not translated, and in many there were several rival translations. The truth was made so clear and was so manifestly the truth that the reading world felt a firm foundation beneath its feet. That the author was avowedly utilitarian, openly a British patriot, and intensely a Whig partisan only served to create the effective chiaroscuro in which all his work was done. He had been so unwearied a student of folk- song and folk-lore that he made himself what is now called in art " a primitive " in his conception and understanding of the commonplace, in his admiration of the homely. It is doubtful whether the relativity of knowledge, either the phrase or the notion, was known to Macaulay. For him the plain truth was the truth. In addition, the state was for him no god, mysterious and omnipotent; it was 64 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY a secular association existing only to assure the equality of citizens before the law, to protect life, liberty, and prop- erty. In the enjoyment of political liberty all other liber- ties are assured, and Macaulay is proud of that possession because he sees in it the honor of man and of men. He is a patriot because he has inherited this honor from an ancestry which suffered for it. Taine, who gives solid reasons for his opinion, thinks Macaulay proved all he said as forcibly and directly as he stated it, thus giving the simple, every-day man an unshakable confidence. He not only takes testimony, he weighs the veracity and intelli- gence of his witnesses for the public judgment. Having erected on this foundation a set of plain principles, he draws self-evident conclusions and in his generalization he shows every rung of the ladder as he climbs. His style and dis- cussion are direct and cumulative; the current carries him and his reader right onward in a straight line, gathering ever greater force until the flood is as impetuous as the Amazon and like it, too, as broad as the sea. Facts, ideas, explanations, the enormous mass of scientific material, all are clad in a style which, though harking back to Thucy- dides, Plautus, and Livy, to Petrach, Dante, and Milton, contains an elusive something which is born from none of these, such is its sweeping passion, its irresistible eloquence. This was not inspiration, it was art : the result of infinite painstaking and a set purpose. On a first rough draft he interlined, erased, corrected, inverted, restored, elaborated, until, as in Balzac's proof, the original was overlaid with a mass of words illegible to all except the author, who then at his leisure wrote his printer's copy in a fine, bold, con- fident hand. Prescott saw a few of these original foolscap sheets and says no one could form any conception of the amount of labor that one of them represents. With the HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 65 serenity of a great soul, with a religious faith in the power of truth; confident, like Cervantes, that history was sacred because where truth is, there is God, he carried his own conviction into the millions of readers who were fascinated by his art. This art was impersonal, precise, even cold, because it was based on accuracy, on the personal knowl- edge of contemporaries, and not evolved like that of Carlyle and Froude from the depths of his own consciousness. Macaulay's contribution to the science of history was twofold: the knowledge, the insight, and the sympathy, such as were not possible in the revolutionary epoch pre- ceding iiis, an epoch when, as his predecessors said, " hearts rejoice or bleed " as contemporary events illume the past with a light " from the flames of Tophet " in Carlyle's lurid phrase, — this, and secondly, the ripened fruit for present use, progress along the lines of tradition, the way to preserve and improve what the fathers had won. The second of our great names is that of a man who was still more remote from emotional influence, for he was not a man of affairs, not a statesman, not an acolyte of the social hierarchy, not even an artist, but a scholar, an in- vestigator, and a teacher. Leopold von Ranke revived the past in a spirit which was largely that of an erudite lawyer without a case. His intimate friend was Savigny, and as for him it is the totality of law which had to be studied before further advance could be made, so for Ranke it is the totality of history, carefully studied in the light of laws and institutions, and in the proportions of each part, that determines the relative values of scenes and events, that fixes the style and structural concepts of historical descrip- tion and reconstruction. When Froude's wild theory as to Henry VIII's extraordinary matrimonial conduct was questioned by the critics, he replied in these very words: " The precipitancy with which Henry acted is to me a proof 66 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY that he looked on matrimony as an indifferent official act which his duty required at the moment, and if this be thought a novel interpretation of his motives I have merely to say that I liml it in the statute book!" Ranke had quite another notion of how official documents were to be used, and with their use his name is associated, as is the name of scarcely another. Macaulay's ultimate criterion was not found in the edicts and statutes of rulers, not in the correspondence of princes seeking to deceive each other and to falsify the record; but in the consonance of facts with the great events which, linked one with the other and known by the common sense of mankind, form the chain of history. Though he made a judicious use of documents he had not the blind faith in them which makes their devotees ridiculous. Nor had Ranke, though above all else he was a student of diplomatic correspondence. It was he who brought the archives of foreign offices into the vogue they have since enjoyed among historians, his success being due, of course, to his critical faculties and his sanity : for sane lie was, moderate, modest, and disciplined in the highest degree. Ranke's great renown was firmly founded on his use of a remark- able series of papers, the hitherto unconsidered series of reports addressed to the Council of Ten by the ambassadors of the Venetian Republic. He might easily have been dazzled by so unique a find and have exaggerated its im- portance out of all proportion ; but he knew thoroughly the times antecedent and the times consequent to those he was making his own, and he fell into no errors. The papers in hand fixed dates, places, and circumstances, unerringly: they exhibited the quality, language, and character of the public business so as to permit important deductions; they illuminated their age in the contemporary judgments of very shrewd observers. But Ranke never dreamed that HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY G7 they revealed motives, except by induction : nor that tliey determined the great central channel of events. With the plodding industry of an antiquary he felt, groped, peered around and in the obscure corners of his material and brought forth little particles of fact which, when properly assembled with the great facts, made possible the tracing of sequence and the revelation of design. Philosophically Ranke was inclined to Hegelianism. To the relations of a people with its habitat he paid less atten- tion than his famous contemporary Curtius; the work of Buckle and the physical side of history were indifferent to him. It was the cosmic process with which he was mainly concerned, the working of a universal spirit as revealed by outward manifestations. Of this he strove to be a dispassionate, intelligent onlooker and an accurate, sympathetic observer; a faithful recorder, whether the rec- ord lends itself to literature or not, and in his hands for the most part it did not. Nowhere in his voluminous writ- ings is there any passage which rises to the heights reached by Mommsen in his description of Caesar. Profound as was the scholarship of the latter, he was an avowed adr vocate of imperialism, the cause for which he spent his life, and so at times his passion lifted him to sublimity : the sober Ranke trod the solid earth. His was not merely the science of detail like that of Mommsen, it was an orderly array both of thoughts and of thoughts about thoughts, as well as a marshaling of facts. For this reason his attempts at a universal history bear the stamp of creative art. It is as an historical architect that he becomes ap- proximately an artist; not in rhetoric, imagination, or enthusiasm. Neither an interpreter nor a critic, his style is clear, his characters forcibly modeled, his definition exact. He is bold, but not too bold, for prudence is his forte and his foible. It is thus that he raises the spirit of ijS POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY each successive age and reveals, one by one, the hidden springs of action. His philosophical dogma cannot always restrain him, and there are pages of his which are master- pieces, not only in historical reconstruction, but in historical divination. Extremes meet in the w'orld of history as elsewliere. This is seen when Taine avows himself a disciple of Macaulay, as he virtually does in print and frequently did in private conversation. Antipodal in every respect to the Englishman, the Frenchman yet admired Macaulay as the representative of everything which France and Taine were not. The great French historian was an embodied con- tradiction, having been justly styled a poet-logician and considered to possess a philosophic imagination. What he openly admired in England were its social stratification, its sturdy Protestant common sense, its passion for liberty and for the traditions of its history, its boisterous, proud, and energetic spirit. For Latin, Celtic, ecclesiastical, Roman England he had a contemptuous disdain : it was the England of Macaulay which was the country of his soul. But he could not there abide, so pitiless and merciless was his logic. His philosophical career began in Hegel, passed by way of Spinoza, and ended in a positivism com- pared with which Comtism was a weak decoction. His earliest important paper was the outline of a system whereby the methods of the exact sciences could be applied to history — and from the effort to do so there was no sur- cease until he died. Alone of the pure materialism, who make emotion dependent on the bodily organism and on the nervous system, he carried his conviction, amounting almost to bravado, into the realm of practice. Others have sketched systems, he dared to apply that which he evolved. He was the physiological psychologist in the laboratory of the world. It goes without saying that he struggled to HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 69 the ridge of the universe of man only to fall over it into a gulf of complete helplessness. Avowedly not a pessimist, certainly not an optimist, his studied attitude of impar- tiality turned into a feeling of utter hopelessness and resig- nation which he could not conceal and which seemed to give him no contentment ; not even that of having achieved. Yet, as he marched, he incidentally, like Julius Caesar, besieged and took certain flanking citadels in operations which have made the course of scientific history much safer and surer. His fierce logic minimized the idea of common sense as the norm of reference; his notion of rulers and their dispatches rendered him almost contemptous of state papers. His favorite sources were contemporary memoirs, and these he used in great abundance and with consum- mate skill. What distinguishes him above others is his careful regard for physical elements in history and the penetrating glimpses he gets into its motives by the study of national psychology, clearly mirrored for him in national art and national literature. His famous doctrine of pre- dominant power {faciiltc maitressc) set forth in his splen- did essay on Livy, shows that individuals in a nation are begotten and controlled by primordial forces imposing on all certain common methods of thought and phases of feel- ing. Given the island home a Germanic race, with its peculiar climate and the rude plenty which nature supplies, he boldly sketches step by step the course of English thought and conduct as delineated in her art, her letters, and her institutions. The race, the home, the period — these, if understood, make history almost an exact science in the descriptive sense: and in that only, for prediction is carefully to be avoided ; it is not the function of history. This judgment is based on a passion for the Exact, and is rooted in the philosophy of sensation to which Taine was addicted. As we know nothing except by sensation, so 70 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY we know nothing but phenomena. The only faculties we possess, therefore, are those of analysis and generalization. Given the French people, its environment, and the succes- sion of its states, we can note every phenomenon, explain it, and connect it with its causes and its effects. But we cannot predict; because, although we note the links we cannot know them nor see how they are produced : about them we may learn infinitely almost, but what they are and how they work we may never know. In the sense of prediction there can never be a science of history, because for man there is not and can never be any meta- physic whatsoever. It has been wittily said that in Taine's efforts to follow the mathematical curves of his science, he generally found himself off at a tangent making delight- ful excursions in the open spaces of fancy and of art. Certain it is that his fancy adorns his logic, that in a sys- tem intended to strangle imagination, imagination takes extensive flights ; and, hovering everywhere, induces on the stiffest pages a highly artistic treatment and an attractive style. Taine's very axioms are paradoxes : in the French Revolution the orgasms of liberty beget a despotism fiercer than that of the former days; the fear of centralization getting on the national nerve created in the republic an organism more unitary than that of the displaced mon- archy; the classical spirit was the sire of that abstract idealism which underlies all the maladies of modern French life. To this sort of inverted deduction he is perfectly resigned. He is quite as hopeless in the sphere of the in- dividual man. It is the human beast which still controls and turns the man into the " carnivorous, lascivious " brute we see about us in such overwhelming numbers ; or, at the other pole, into the foolish dreamer with a " diseased mind and disordered body." His detestation for what is loose and disorderly explains what is perhaps the most famous HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 71 of his paradoxes, when he declared that in art he thought the sonata was as beautiful as a syllogism. These three historians all agree that, admitting what one of them would have called the necessitarian, the others the providential forces of history, — that yet, upon the tissue which they weave, the pattern is formed by the will of man in the exercise of the choice which is offered to him and in accordance with his nature. Even so extreme a freethinker as John Morley admits this. Discoursing of Burke's analysis of historic forces, he says : " History has strictly only to do with individual men as the originals, the furtherers, the opponents, or the representatives of some of those thousand diverse forces which, uniting in one vast sweep, bear along the successive generations of men, as upon the broad wings of seA winds, to new and more fertile shores." To originate, to further, to oppose, to represent, an historic force, is quite a sufficient moral responsibility wherewith to burden even the greatest men. So far, what we seem to recognize as the basic considera- tions of these men in regard to scientific history are the following: The field must be considered as a unit; the human factors are no longer heroes, kings, warriors, or diplomats, merely and alone, but the people as well, in all their activities; in and from such complexity of persons and operations it appears possible to disengage not relative but absolute truths and by a suitable system of reasoning to elucidate principles of action which are the ripe fruit amid the leafy perplexity of the boughs; the material of history proves thus to be the results of comparative study of politics above all, but likewise of law. institutions, lan- guage, beliefs, race, and geography. The historian must proceed with impartial mind, as far as his human limits permit, to consider and use both the matter and manner of his science, regarding society as an organism growing 72 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY from within under external influences, which act some- times as checks, sometimes as a stimulus. I venture to think that whatever be our judgment of his practical success, the validity of this procedure was even better and earlier perceived by an American pupil of Heeren than by any of the triad of uncommon men we have been considering. And to all that they possessed he added another element, the profound conviction of God working in history; his reading of "philosophy working by examples " was " God working by examples." This was George Bancroft. Contemporary with Macaulay, Ranke, and Taine, he was their peer as scholar, philosopher, or statesman. He had not perhaps the imagination of one, nor the style of another, nor the dispassionate judgment of another. But he had the insight and sympathy to catch the spirit of his age as Macaulay did — the amazing circu- lation of his volumes in all lands proved it. Utopian and poetic he is, yet his pages neither flash nor dazzle; they commend themselves by sobriety of argument and solidity of research. His use of state papers was as extensive as Ranke's, his appreciation of contemporary memoirs was as keen as Taine's. But he was neither indifferent nor agnostic. The son of a pious Unitarian clergyman, he kept the Puritan spirit untarnished to the end. His instinct for immediacy, for direct touch with the springs of action, made him a philosopher from his youth upward. These are his peculiar qualities and permeate all his work. With the discussion goes the lesson : m all history, truth and justice reign supreme. The writer of history, therefore, must observe two maxims: (1) Distinguish between original authority and historical memorials or aids ; by the former we get a fact recorded at first hand, by the second, a decision of principle or authority; (2) represent every man from his own standpoint, judge him from your own. HISTORY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 73 These acute and far-reaching principles were enough in themselves, when conscientiously applied, to mark his work as original. His philosophy, however, was quite as original. His book may be considered as a treatise on the evolution of liberty along the central axis : this axis is the land desig- nated by Providence as fitted not for freedom's relative but for its absolute development. Its heterogeneous popu- lation brought and brings from all other lands the elements of national character, and by this compulsion of origins the environment, though eliminating all that cannot be assimilated, retains all useful elements, incorporating them into an intricate but orderly whole. Hence Bancroft's studies in universal history, interjected from time to time as tributaries to the main narrative, were written with a xonsummate skill and a thorough knowledge, which found him readers in every important tongue and all over the civilized world. As an exhibit of the divine order, he further holds, history is an organic unity, inspired by con- stant forces. Only within such an organization does the individual secure liberty, since there alone his faculties of will, reason, and emotion find their development in opera- '' tion, with and against the consubstantial faculties of other like individuals. Collective man determines the standards of knowledge and of conduct, and it is therefore only in a democracy that the possibility of human perfectibility may be realized. This attitude of Bancroft's mind may be considered as typically American, and as the capstone of the system used and approved by the nineteenth century in writing history. Either a confidence in the moral order of the universe and in God as its author is the motive power of our rulers, the greatest contemporary history-makers ; or we who profess it and elect them to office are vile hypocrites with a portion among the deceits and mirages of history. 74 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY The conclusions here presented will stand the test of the minutest examination bestowed on the best work by typical inasters other than those we have named. Further, a fair analysis of their theory, procedure, and art, will, I believe, compel the admission that if the age has won anything it has won everything. Grounded in the concept of organic evolution, receptive of all ancillary learning, jealous of its own field and methods, alert for typical movements and truly great men, aiming at a kind of representation which is possibly but not necessarily that of the fine arts, history as now written is scientific, not as a philosophy of social evolution nor as an exact science of nature, human or otherwise, but as a practical form of human biography drawn and modeled in correct proportion and outline. There is boundless room for advance in supplement, com- pletion, illustration, but the plan has been sketched and the basis laid. Some portions of the great advance have even been completely shown to move in perspective and in color. Either this achievement is all, or it is nothing; and our descendants must raze everything in order to begin anew the weary search for truth among the ruins of the past. THE EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY. BY JOHN PENTLAND MAIIAFFY [John Pentlakd Mahaffy, Professor of Ancient History, University of Dublin, since 1871. b. Chaponnaire, on Lake Geneva, Switzer- land, 1839. Trinity College, Dublin, B. A. 1859; M.A. 1863; Fellow, ibid. 18G4; D.D. ibid. 1886; Mus.D. ibid. 1891. Author OF Commentary to Kant's Critique; Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander; Rambles and Studies in Greece; A History of Classical Greek Literature; The Story of Alexander's Empire; The Greek World under Roman Sway; Problems in Greek His- tory; The Empire of the Ptolemies.] Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen. — I feel it no small honor to be selected for the prominent duty of delivering an opening address on this momentous occasion. For we may call it a great intellectual marriage of Europe with America, to which all the sciences, both historical and posi- tive, are invited with equal hospitality. And thus while some are sending their inquiries across vast realms of space, others like ourselves are reaching back across millenniums of time; while some are probing the constitution of the minutest atoms of matter, others like ourselves are explor- ing the rudiments of human society. Both studies are essential to the progress of this our twentieth century. For if the civilized man differs broadly from the savage, in that he is in process of understanding and controlling the forces of nature, he differs more essentially perhaps in this, that he strives with eager interest to comprehend the annals of the past — the long struggles, the successes, the failures of our forerunners to emerge from a condition a little higher than the brute into a condition a little lower than the angels. This vast study is of necessity to be prosecuted in compartments, if for no other reason because our race has been fertile in devising languages, wherever human society began its organization. Their number is enormous. 75 76 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA The best judges. Terrien de la Couperie. Archibald Sayce, •have told me that there are not less than eight hundred known, not to speak of the hundreds that may have dis- appeared. And without knowledge of his speech, we can gain but a superficial knowledge of the speaker. Our happy lot in this Section is to be concerned with Greek — not only the most perfect of all the organs of communica- tion ever devised by man, but one in which our knowledge has in this generation attained an enormous expansion, in- somuch that our investigation of that people and its civiliza- tion has been as progressive as any study that could be named. The number of new texts discovered is such that no living man can know them all. Each one of us that has explored has added scores of new words to the Greek Lexi- con, dozens of new facts to our knowledge of the Greeks; and so we may say with truth, that while the literature of the other great classical language, Latin, has stood still, or gained but trifling increment, Greek is growing by leaps and bounds, giving the lie to the narrow scientist, who would thrust it from its high place in our education, because it has been branded in the false jargon of his crowd as a dead language. My duty here is to show you the relations which have grown up between Greek political history and the sister studies in our day; how fruitful researches and explorations have told upon our knowledge of Greek his- tory, and more especially how the centuries that went before and those that followed after the golden age of Greek cul- ture are emerging both from the gray dawn of obscure origins and the lurid twilight of confused decadence^ into the order and proper sequence of rational history. In at- tempting this huge task I hope I may gain your earnest attention. I know you will vouchsafe me your generous indulgence. I may also forewarn you that, for obvious reasons, Professor Pais, my colleague in the matter, has EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 77 agreed with me that each of us will prosecute that brancli of the subject which he has made the special study of his life. When I was a boy and first plunged into Greek history, the beginning of our knowledge was the Iliad of Homer. We were taught by Niebuhr, and still more explicity by Grote, that all the legends of the Greeks concerning their earlier settlements and expansion were the mere play of fancy, quite possibly pure inventions, in any case only admissible into history as a picture of the national mind in a certain stage, at a certain epoch. Even the facts narrated by Homer were within the range of fiction; the society which he painted was only real in so far as the poet reflected his own times and the life of men around him. And no doubt Grote and his school were perfectly right that the un- corroborated statements of legend by a poet, nay, even the early genealogies which commence with the gods, are but the wreck which the stream of time leaves about some chance obstacle that succeeds in staying its course. Thus we arrived at the skepticism of Sir George Cox and Sir George Lewis, in my youth very active volcanoes, but now happily extinct, that no Greek history is credible till after the middle of the seventh century, b. c; and I myself have contributed my share in showing that the early Olympic Register was not the contemporary and continuous record of early facts, but the fabrication of a learned theorist. And this destructive criticism of mine, bowed aside as a paradox when it appeared, is accepted by the recent his- torians as a pretty obvious deduction from our facts, either with or without the mention of the critic who first ventured to declare it. But have we now no corroboration of our body of early Greek legends, and if we have, from whence did we obtain it ? The man, Schliemann, who opens the last epoch of re- 78 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA search into early Greek history, was not a scholar, or a man of literary habits, but a man of enthusiasm for Homer, and of boundless energy in carrying- out his mind. He had shown his ability by making a large fortune early in life out of nothing but his brains, and when I tell you that he made most of it in this country, and as a stranger, you have at least one measure of his talent which you will easily appreciate. He had the singularity to devote half of that fortune to exploring the Homeric sites, and thus proving the historic value of the Iliad and Odyssey. And he went to work with the spade, at first ignorantly, for he dug holes, which is the most destructive form of inquiry known, in- stead of taking off layers or strata of earth, as he learned to do in his later years. He found less than he expected or believed, so far as he hoped to find and thought he had found the actual tombs of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or any direct evidence of the Homeric story. But when Homer speaks of the fortified Tiryns, the much golden Mykenas, the sacred Ilion, Schliemann found far more than he had ever divined ; for he disclosed to the astonished Hellenists of his day a whole rich primitive civilization, which subsequent exploration found to be not peculiar to Argolis, but spread over most of Greece, being carried by trade oversea across the ^gean, and recurring even in dis- tant Egypt. This Mykenccan civilization, as we now call it, is known by its handicrafts and arts, above all by its pottery, its gold and silver ornaments, its beehive tombs, its elaborate palaces. And so wide were its ranges in transmarine commerce, that we have found not only Egyp- tian scarabs, but ostrich eggs from inner Africa, and Baltic amber among its treasures. Three questions were immedi- ately raised concerning this large discovery : first, how old was it? secondly, was it identical with Homer's civilization, or not? And if not, was it indeed Greek? Its great age EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 79 was settled not merely by the archaic character of its art, and its very small use of iron, but still more clearly by the occurrence of early Eg^yptian articles, dating from about 1400-1200 B. c, and showing that intercourse of Egypt with Greece was far older than the Homeric age. There was also this negative evidence, which I alone had pressed on Schliemann before he commenced his work. I inferred from the total ignoring of Mykense by ^schylus, whose tragedies ought to have been enacted there, that in his day the practical knowledge of the city was gone, and that it had already then been long destroyed. I forewarned him that he would find there no Greek coins or inscriptions. He found no writing of any sort whatever. But as we now know that in the old Cretan remains the inscriptions were on clay tablets, which are easily destroyed by exposure to rain, I think it possible that he may have overlooked some such documents.^ As regards the correspondence of the remains with Homeric pictures, the contrasts seem to me rather greater than the likenesses. The armor was undoubtedly the model of the Homeric weapons ; the tombs have some Greek feat- ures ; but on the whole, the question whether the epoch was one of purely primitive culture, or of something earlier passing into early Greek culture, was left very doubtful. A better knowledge of the Troy that Schliemann has ex- cavated, and of the remains of Cnosos in Crete, now in the act of being recovered for us by the zeal and skill of Mr. Arthur Evans, have thrown much light upon these in- cunabula of Greek history. The most interesting point regarding the Trojan work recovered by Schliemann was its great rudeness, when compared with that of Tiryns and Mykenae. For the Homeric poems had led us to believe that the culture of Troy was fully as advanced as that of 1 That is Mr. Arthur Evans's opinion also. so HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA the invading Greeks. We owe to Dr. Dorpfeld the further discovery that the Ihos of SchHemann was not the sister in time of •Mykense, but an older and deeper stratum, and proDably one thousand years earlier. The Mykenaean stratum, through which Schliemann had pierced without recognizing it^ w-as found on a higher level all around Schhemann's excavations, and was found also in every way to correspond to the Greek work of the Mykenaean period. This proved that an enormously old culture had taken pos- session of the shores of the Mediterranean, and that even the Mykenaean inherited from a long series of spiritual an- cestors the culture which seems to us so archaic.^ The dis- coveries of Mr. Evans not only tended (as usual) to cor- roborate the general features of the Greek legends about King Minos, for example, his sea power, shown by his un- fortified palace near the seaboard, but proved that at this early stage two hitherto unsuspected forms of writing, one in rude pictures, the other in linear script, were in use in Crete, and doubtless therefore throughout the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. If these texts, scratched or im- pressed upon clay tablets, and certainly, I think, not Greek, are ever deciphered, we shall know more clearly the char- acter and the provenance of the race that inhabited these coasts and islands during the second millenium before the Christian era. In my opinion that race will prove to be non-Hellenic, and even non-Aryan, so that the boast of the Athenians and other Greeks that they were an indigenous race wn'll be once more refuted.^ ' Under the lava of a prehistoric eruption from that great submarine and still active volcano, of which Santorin and Therasia (the ancient Thera) form the outward slopes, there were found thirty years ago the remains of what wae aptly called by the French a prehistoric Pompeii — human bones within rude houses, with remains of rude pottery, and even gold ornaments. " But I must warn you that excellent authorities, Rohde, Reisch, think dlf' ferently, and think the Mykenfpan builders the direct ancestors of the Homerli: Greeks. On the other hand Mr. Ridgeway, in his most rmarkable unfinished book, The Early Age of Oreece, while he maintains that the earlier race dif' fered materially from the Achteans of Homer, — he calls them Pelasgians, — yet regards them as Aryan. EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 81 But here the historian has recourse not to artistic remains, to pottery, or to building, but to the evidence of the sister sciences of anthropology, and still more of linguistics. The former science has yielded but poor results. The variety of the physical types of skulls is such that we can only infer a great mixture of races in Greece, without the prodomi- nance of either Aryan or pre-Aryan types. Such at least is the conclusion of Paul Kretschmer, whose work on primi- tive Greece embodies most of the latest knowledge.^ The results of linguistic inquiry are far more important. Start- ing from the fact that there are elements, in the old Greek that we know, still inexplicable, that there are formations of place-names which have all the air of being non-Aryan, Kretschmer has compared the relics we have of the lan- guages of Asia Minor, excluding those of the Aryan type. His conclusion is that inter-related languages of a non- Aryan type were spread all over the seaboard of Asia Minor, and that the features of these languages which re- main are also to be found in Hellenic place-names.^ Hence the science of language warrants us in assuming that Aryan invaders found all over Greece and Asia Minor an earlier population with, if not unity, at least kinship, in the gram- matical structure of their speech, and therefore probably not primitive or savage, but provided with some degree of civilization. Hence the earliest Greek culture, even if Cretan and Mykensean work were Greek, may be re- garded as a composite civilization, and the fascinating task of future inquirers will be to assign to the different layers of population their respective shares in the great result. In such investigations all the sister sciences must lend a hand to the historian — linguistics, anthropolog)', archaeo- logy, and above all he must possess that highest quality in ^ Einleit. in die Oesch. der griech. Sprache (GSttingen, 1896), cap. n. "Op. at. p. 292. 82 HISTORY OF GREECE. ROME AND ASIA any scientific man, the imagination which combines facts, which strikes out theories, which makes research methodical by bringing- it under fixed and leading ideas, which turns the valley of dry bones into the habitation of living men. The ancient times of Greek history are therefore a pro- gressive study, in the truest sense of the word. Grote dis- carded the myths as evidence, he even ignored the living testimony of the everlasting hills and the many voices of the ever-intruding sea, and wrote his great work in a Lon- don study. E. Curtius, a generation later, equipped himself by long residence and travel in the glens and fiords of Greece, and if in political understanding he was far inferior to the English statesman, in picturesqueness, and in his feeling for the real life behind the myths, he made a long step in advance. Another generation passes b}^ and we have, among many able books, the newest and best in the history of Mr. Bury. His opening chapters seem centur- ies ahead of Grote, generations ahead of Curtius. For in the last twenty years exca\'ations in many parts of Greece have added masses of new evidence. Egyptology and gen- eral linguistics have contributed their share, and as the force of genius in the individual brings up from the darkness of the sub-conscious self the long-forgotten lessons of the past, so the power of Minos, the long succession of human homes on the hill of Ilion, the builders of the great fort of Tiryns, are rising from prehistoric night into the morning of Greek history. Let us now return from our odyssey into Cimmerian darkness, and from visiting the shadows of departed heroes, to the shores of historic Greece, and inquire whether mod- ern genius and modern industry have not added something to that more precise knowledge which we owe to the liter- ature of the classical epoch. And here, too, we shall find that the gain is momentous, and the promise of future in- EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 83 crenient fair beyond our hopes. But that is so because our whole method of investigation has been enlarged, and be- cause we have developed the relations of Greek philology and history to many kindred researches. We do not in- deed grow weary of analyzing and commenting on our Greek historians, though that process has been likened to the squeezing of the last drops of juice frum the exhausted lemon. But since we learned from our early travelers, notably from Colonel Leake, that Greek histor}' must be studied in Greece; since the French government, more than half a century ago, took the lead in founding an archaeo- logical school at Athens, the spade and the measuring-rod have been applied to verify and correct the narratives of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. A crowd of in- scriptions have been extracted from the soil, or from medie- val walls into which they were built. The modern writer dare not put his pen to paper without searching the great collections of these inscriptions, to which the learned jour- nals are perpetually adding fresh material. For in imita- tion of the French, the Germans and the Greeks have en- dowed their archaeological schools, and produce their Trans- actions in Athens. The English and the Americans have followed suit with private enterprise, and so a large body of experts has been let loose upon the country, and has added to the capital enterprise of Schliemann at Mykenae and Argos many careful investigations at Athens, Olympia, Delphi, Delos, Megalopolis, the Argive Heraeum, and a dozen other sites. All these have yielded us topographical, historical, and social evidence Our difficulty now is not only to find, but to compass the evidence which is accruing, and which is scattered through a number of learned journals, such as the French Bulletin de correspondence hellenique, the German Mittheilungen des archeologischen Instituts, the English Journal of Hellenic Studies, to mention but 84 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA three out of many. The men who have by universal con- sent done most for the better understanding of Greek his- tory are not llie Greek professors at home, but the brilHant directors of the French and the German schools, v.ho have been able to indulge their genius with ample appointments and with the experience of many years of splendid industry. It is of course imix)ssible for me in this general discourse to turn aside to the particular inc[uiries which have thrown light on particular points of Greek history. The excellence of these studies consists in their minute and accurate detail. I need only quote, as specimens, the masterly analysis of the Greek theatre derived from a comparative study of divers extant remains by Dr. Dorpfeld ; the same author's rehandling of the famous topographical chapter in Thucy- dides concerning the surroundings of the Athenian Acropx- olis, the demonstration by Mr. Grundy that Thucydides could be as fallible as any ordinary writer in his account of the bay of Pylos, of the siege of Plataea, or in his copy of a now extant inscription. If you want to estimate the results in an easy and obvious way, compare any guide-book to Greece of ten years old with the newest editions of the same work. Nothing now gets antiquated so quickly. But if you want larger and more splendid e\idence of what recent research has done for our knowledge of Greece, read Mr. Frazer's monu- mental edition of Pausanias. Twenty years ago, nay, even ten years ago. such a work would have been impossible. Nor could it have been done at any other time ever since the decadence of the Roman Empire, But now Mr, Frazer has been able to go over the cities and monuments described by the old tourist and antiquary of the second century, and gives us, in most cases, if not in all, verifications and illus- trations from the excavations of our own day. It might be imagined that these discoveries affect almost EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 85 exclusively our knowledge of the art side of Greek life. That is not so. The many recovered inscriptions tell us of wars and of treaties, of laws and of rites, and of the social life of the people which we can restore in the ruins of their temples, their theatres, and their homes. And let not the title of this Department, Political and Economic History, blind you to the fact that without the social life and the art of a people history will ever be dull and lifeless. The Hermes of Praxiteles, the bronze charioteer of Delphi, the great tomb of Sidon — all these are as important in under- standing Greek history as are the constitution of Athens or the currency of Rhodes. We live, therefore, in an era of expansion even of the golden age of Greece, an expansion in depth, or in quality of knowledge, even more than in the multiplication of facts, such as Europe has not seen since the Renaissance, and such as may never again recur, when the present still untouched sites have been disclosed and the testimony of statues and of stelae has been exhausted. But of this limit there is no prospect in our generation, or i>er- haps for half a century to come. I have not yet said one word concerning our gains of the last decade in the matter of Greek literature, which is, after all, the department of human culture in which, most of all, the modern world owes great and everlasting obligations to Hellas. The types of the epic, of the lyric poem, of the drama, of the prose dialogue, of the oration, have been fixed by the Greeks forever, and shown to us in specimens of a perfection seldom equaled, never excelled. If I have set down our gains in this literature last, it is not that their importance is not paramount, but because the manner of their recovery leads us to the third part of my discourse — the extension of Greek history into later times and other societies than those of the golden age; for the consideration of our gains will naturally lead us to the manner and 86 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA method by which these gains were made. And in the first place, what have we acquired ? In actual texts complete, or partially complete, we now have the ]Mimes of Herondas, dramatic sketches of low or vulgar life, such as the Dutch Teniers has given us with his brush. We have most of the Constitution of Athens, a tract ascribed to Aristotle and often quoted as such by Plutarch. We have some of the Odes of Bacchylides, the lesser contemporary of Pindar, and, what is far more valuable, among them specimens of the dithyramb, a form of poetry much cited by the ancients, but never understood till this discovery. We have the Persians of Timotheus, another to us novel form of poem composed for an elaborate musical illustration, somewhat like the Italian opera, and rivaling the texts of that opera in its tenth-rate quality. But when music is fitted to verse, it is but seldom the setting of perfect music unto noble words, of which the poet dreams. One partner becomes predomi- nant. Let us hope for the sake of Timotheus, for the sake of the public of whom he was the idol, that in this case, as in that of Richard Wagner, the music was the real attrac- tion. But I must refrain from criticism. The works just named are all incoiuplete or shattered in some part, for the exterior of the papyrus rolls on which they were written could hardl}' fail to have been affected by long centuries of burial or by the hands of ignorant finders. But they give us enough to judge both the works and their authors. Of lesser fragments, stray pages, single scenes of plays, or even of n,usic-hall farces, elegant extracts, epigrams, we have a whole library. Almost every known Greek author, and a great number of unknown, are represented in these newly acquired texts. It is of course known to you all that this treasure comes from Egypt, not Greece, and was preserved by the Greek- speaking population of that important branch of Hellenism, EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 87 from Ptolemaic to late Roman days. The life of these Greek settlements in Eg>-pt, with their language, their books, their traditions all from Greece, are now a vital chai>- ter even in the political and economic history of the nation. Among the literary remains are innumerable business docu- ments, official orders, every-day correspondence, copies of wills and of contracts — all Hellenic in language and origin, and pointing back to the classical culture of the mother country. Here indeed we have a perfectly unexpected and notable specimen of what the conquests of Alexander prcn duced in foreign lands — of that Hellenism which is at last commanding the attention of classical scholars. For there is every reason to think that these Greek settlements, in the midst of a native population, were not exceptional, but typical of what Alexander projected and his followers effected all over the East. Not only on the shores of the Euxine, where there were long since Hellenic cities, which communicated with Greece by sea, but all through the body of Asia Minor, notably in Syria and Palestine, in Mesopo- tamia along the Tigris and Euphrates, nay, even on the OxiiS, and within range of the Turanian steppes, there were established settlements of Greek soldiers and traders, with privileges to attract them there, but also with the duty of guarding the new Greek civilization of the East from moun- tain robbers and from national revolts. I know not what the possibilities are of successful excavations in Syria — on the site of Antioch ruined by so many earthquakes, of Apamea, of Baalbec, of Gerasa. in the Decapolis of Judaea. But of this I feel sure, in that crowd of settlements made under the Seleucid house, both of IMacedonians and of Greeks, the evidences we should find would be of the same character as those of the Fayum. We should find that the Graeco-Macedonian settlers, including the Persians, who were distinctly admitted to the ruling caste, lived in the 88 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA midst of the aborigines, trading with them, intermarrying with them, quarreHng with them, while they were protected from absorption by their Hellenistic speech, and by special courts conducted according to Hellenistic law. The dis- coveries of the last fifteen years, inaugurated, I am proud to say, by the two volumes of Petrie Papyri which it was my unique good fortune to lay before the world, have mani- fested to us an aspect of the Hellenic mind of which we knew but little in former days. True it was that these outlying settlements, living as the Hungarians do among the Slovaks, or the Germans among the Poles, kept up their aristocracy of intellect, as well as of race, by the constant reading of the old Greek masterpieces. It is through the fragments recovered from them that we now know what the texts of Homer, and Pindar, and Euripides, and Plato, and Demosthenes were like in the second and third centur- ies before Christ; and let me add that if there is ample evidence of the considerable rehandling and reediting of the Homeric text in the second century b. c. which tradition long since ascribed to the great Alexandrian critics, we have also indisputable proof that in the rest our medieval copies represent with excellent fidelity the great masters as they were read in these early books. It is not, however, the establishing of our old faith in the great classics against the suspicions of tampering and of corruptionwhich concerns me here. It is rather the new and interesting fact in this fresh appendix (if I may so call it) to our Greek histories, that of these people we have not only the classical books they read, we have the papers of everyday life. We now know how they made their marriage settlements and their wills, their loans and their contracts, their reports and their com- plaints; we have now an insight into their official systems of taxation and administration, their banking and their gen- eral finance. These are commonplace matters. These let- EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 89 ters and reports cannot be called literature. But they are ?iistory, and an expansion of Greek history of the highest interest. There were no doubt Egyptian features, as there were Persian features and Syrian features elsewhere in this civilization, but the whole of it bears the impress of the one great nationality which stamped it upon the world. It has been well shown by more than one modern historian^ that even the oriental reactions against the West, even the Indian and Parthian monarchies that repudiated Hellenism, owed a great part of their strength to the new life which Alexander brought into the disorganized systems of the East; it is perhaps more remarkable that a Prussian government official, examining the bureaus and the red tape of the Greek papyri, can tell us that all the official life of our own day, with the exception perhaps of the transmission of checks through private hands, can be found among the Greeks of two thousand years ago.^ It is an inheritance from them through the Roman Empire, which few of us had suspected. Not till we unearthed the clay figurines from Tanegra did we learn how the ordinary Greek lady dressed, in contrast to our knowledge from many ideal statues by great artists how the Greek goddess — undressed. There is as great a contrast between the stately periods of the studied orator and the curt indorsements of the overworked official. I heard not long ago a great English banker,'' with the self- complacency of his race, attribute the invention of banking to his earliest predecessors in London. He might have learned from the very name "Lombard Street" that he was w^rong; he may now learn from a whole literature on the money and corn banks of Egypt, that there were many "brave men before Agamemnon."* 1 Niese, Gesch. des hellenist, Zeitalters ; Bevan, The House of Seleucus. 2 Preisigke, "Griech. Pap. Urkunden u. Bureaudienst im griech. rom. aegyp- ten," Archiv 'fiir Post u. Telegrnphie, 1904. 3 Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury). * Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona. Horace, Od. iv, 9, 25. 90 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA When we consider the effect of all these studies and dis- coveries upon the general influence which Hellenic civiliza- tion has had, or will have, on the culture of the twentieth century, we must be prepared to meet the objection more widely felt than formulated, that all this study of lesser and later Greek history is likely to dilute the strong impression which the noblest and best epoch made upon our fathers. There was then a strict selection of what was pure ; all that was supposed degenerate and second-rate was neglected, and this is why Greek culture has maintained its supremacy till the present day. Why study Polybius or Diodorus when we have Thucydides and Herodotus? Why study Callimachus when we have Pindar? Are not a few ac- knowledged masters sufficient to maintain the Greek influ- ence on modern culture? These objections are true, indeed, but only true from a special standpoint. For the education of the young in any literature, we are bound, by natural selection, to choose first the great masterpieces. That is a universal rule in this our mortal life, where our powers of comprehension are very limited. If we carry it to its ex- treme limit we arrive at the word of Scripture, or of the Koran : "Seek first the kingdom of Heaven, and its right- eousness, and all other things shall be added unto you." But if our education is to comprehend not merely the perfect form of Greek literature, but the realities of Greek life; if the complete history of that people, whose world-influence waxed rapidly according as the perfection of its artistic life began to wane, be our object, then the view of the school- master and the grammarian must make way for larger con- siderations. Nay, more, this narrow view has misled the world upon the very issues raised by the pedants. What is decadence, and what is inferiority? We will all concede that there is an inimitable grace in the dialogue of Aristo- phanes, which even Menander could not equal, but are there \ EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 91 not other perfections in Greek life? The two masterpieces, for example, that stand out in the Greek sculpture of the Louvre in Paris are the great Nike of Samothrace, and the exquisite Venus of Melos. They both come from the post- classical age. The marble sarcophagus from Sidon, which commemorates some companion of Alexander (probably that Philokles who was Sidonian King, and High Admiral to the first Ptolemy), is the most splendid and perfect speci- men of that kind of art we have yet recovered. That, too, is post-classical. The purest schools had banished from their course, as a writer of decadent Greek, the immortal Plutarch, whom even Shakespeare thought worthy of trans- lation to his stage, with hardly a word of alteration. And when these people conceded to us Theocritus, the great father of the pastoral idyl, as a master, probably because of his difficult Doric dialect rather than his novel subject, why did they conceal from us the exquisite Euboeic adventure (his seventh discourse) of Dion Chrysostom, or the late barn, but not the less precious, Daphnis and Chloc, whose very author is a mystery?^ It is through widely different circumstances that the narratives of the Synoptic Gospels, documents of the highest moral quality, have maintained their fame, yet let none of you imagine that their literary excellence did not contribute largely to this permanent in- fluence. But I need not rest my argument for the expansion of our study of Hellenic into Hellenistic times on these literary grounds, nor is it a mere protest against ignoring great works of literature and of art under the bonds of a narrow and false theory. The political lessons of this later age of Greece have only recently risen into the appreciation of men. When Grote comes to record complimentary votes 1 These matters are set forth in my Silver Age of Greece, in which I have sought to rescue from oblivion these forgotten masterpieces. 92 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA passed at Athens to a Macedonian ruler or his officer, he thinks it high time for the historian of Greece to lay down his pen in disgust, and bring his labors to a close. And yet since then Freeman has given us an admirable and instruc- tive volume on Greek Federations; the fourth volume of Hohn's History, and the monumental work of Droysen are on the same epoch. It is not in a mere address, but by the studies of many years, that I have shown my own personal interest in this once neglected period. Freeman, utilizing his Polybius as no one had done before, was the first to show how the idea of federation, long obscure and almost dormant in the Greek mind, came into vogue when the little city states of Greece found great kingdoms rising up around them. To remain isolated after the old Greek fashion meant ruin; some form of combination, some accumulated strength, was necessary to preserve not only the political but the economic existence of small states. This fruitful idea, first carried out on a considerable scale by the leagues of ^tolia and Ach?ea, then with great effect by Rhodes, failed on the whole, and failed on account of the ingrained conviction of the Greeks that every state which voluntarily entered a confederation was entitled to secede from it at any subsequent moment. If it could not be brought back by argument, had the rest any right to bring it back by force? Need I say one word more in this place to enforce the world- importance of this problem? Seeing that the Greek senti- ment, as might be expected from small separate cities, with long traditions of independence, and perpetual jealousies of their neighbors, was always in favor of secession, there remained no other alternative than to combine under a foreign monarchy. For this, while it granted local liberties, from indifference or from policy, defended its subject states by a superior military force, and prohibited those local wars, which were the bane of the Greek world. EXPANSION OF GREEK HISTORY 93 If the history of the rise of federations has at last re- ceived due attention, that is not the case with the resurgence of the idea of monarchy, not merely enforced upon the Greeks by their Macedonian conqueror, but defended in many books and tracts from Xenophon's Cyrus down to the tracts of philosophers about royalty (ire/n fiamXei'a^) of which many fragments and notices remain. This once hateful form of government was not therefore thrust upon a democratic world against its will, but recognized on trial to be the practical solution of difificulties which were bring- ing political ruin upon the Greek world. How far this great change of ideas prevailed appears from the readiness with which even skeptical democracies lavished not only royal titles but divine honors upon the new king. Never was the Divine right of hereditary monarchy so quickly and readily adopted. It was, in fact, far safer to have a distant king, who theoretically could do no wrong, than a present tyranny of pauper fellow citizens, wnth irresponsible power to do practical mischief at every assembly they chose to hold. It was far better for the herald's office to invent a divine pedigree for an adventurer, than to have the Divine right of kings questioned and the novel virtue of loyalty to the reigning house chilled by skepticism. For thus only could even temporary peace, even local liberties, be maintained in that seething and tumultuous age. A new Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth, and the Greek w^orld was red w:th the warring harvest. The anodyne which that world adopted gave the framew^ork of the ideas to Augustus Caesar on which he built up the Roman Empire, and established the Roman Peace. Here I pause, out of breath with the effort to compass so vast a subject, to cover so long a course. In conclusion: There are three great requisites for the further development of this branch of human learniilg. First, the diligent prosecution of the ordering and criticis- 94 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA ing existing materials by a number of specialists, each to his own department. Of this first we may feel quite assured. For our age is indeed a diligent age, and has learned how to collate and to edit. Secondly, more ample endowment for making special and costly researches on famous historic sites. What new material might not accrue to us if we had leave and means to explore Sybaris and Cyrene, Antioch and Alexandria? And here too we may have good hopes, for our age is indeed a generous age, and the princely donors of thousands for modern science may yet be per- suaded that with hundreds devoted to historic research, they will add not less to human knowledge, and ten times more to the gratitude of men.^ For human culture must have many sides, and it will be an evil day when the knowledge of positive science leaves no place for the knowledge of human society. But let no man persuade you that ardent diligence and ample endowment are enough without the last and greatest postulate which I shall make. — the encourage- ment of a bold, constructive imagination, which carries on its inquiries not at haphazard, but in order to verify or to refute some large theory of what things ought to have been, or what men ought to have done. It is this quality which makes the difference between the mere scientific drudge and the great scientific thinker; it marks the greatness of a Champollion and a Hincks, no less than of a Newton and a Laplace. And if it cannot be the inheritance of every student, being indeed the exceptional and precious gift of the gods, remember that it cannot only be encouraged and nurtured, but discouraged and starved by the education of men. Through it. and through it alone, can you under- stand the real meaning of the pregnant apothegm : Priidens interrogatio dimidium scicntiae. ' If. for example, the classical public, who are rot millionaires, would sup- port the Grseco-Roman branch of the Egypt Exploration Fund with numerous subscriptions, the momentous and epoch-making wo'-k of >t"ssrs. Grenfell and Hunt might assume larger proportions, and many texts would be saved by them from the lamentable fate of being dug out and lacerated by ignorant natives, and sold in scraps to equally ignorant travelers. PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY BY ETTORE PAIS [Ettore Pais, Professor of Ancient History, University of Naples, Italy, b. Borgo S. Dalmazzo, Piedmont, Italy, July 27, 1856. Ph.D. Florence, 1878; Post-graduate, Berlin, 1881-83; LL.D. Chicago; Chevalier. Legion d'Honneur de France; Commander of the Prussian Crown; Director of Royal Museum, Sassari, 1879-81; Cagliari, 1883-86; Naples, 1901-04; Professor of Ancient History, University of Palermo, 1886-88; Pisa, 1888-99; Naples, 1900; Madison, Wis., 1905. Member Academy of Lincei, Rome; Academy of Sciences, Munich; Imperial German Archaeology In- stitute, Berlin; Societe d'histoire diplomatique, Paris; Royal His- torical Society, Piedmont; ibid. Romagna; ibid. Marche Venice, etc. Author of History of Siciliy and Great Greece; History of Sardinia; History of Rome; and other noted M'orlvs in history.] Any one who will follow the development of the ancient political history of Greece and Rome, and closely observe what were our conditions from the Renaissance to the close of the eighteenth century, will easily recognize that the nineteenth century, so glorious in the renewing of philo- sophical, natural, and social studies, has not been less great in this conspicuous branch of human knowledge. Thanks to the methodic study of the literary texts, of the genesis of sources, and to the laborious collection of infinite series of monuments; thanks to the works of Boechk, Grote, Niebuhr, Droysen, Mommsen, and of the great number of their followers, the political knowledge of the ancient classi- cal world has advanced so far as to give us an almost com- plete view of that civilization. We have precise narratives, which ought to be of the greatest utility, not only to the professional scholar but also to any cultured man. And close to these narratives, inspired, as in the case of Momm- sen, even by the cult of form, we have a long succession of deep works on all the branches pertaining to kindred sciences; from chronology to numismatics, from public law to the history of art and of philosophical opinions. Any 95 96 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA one, ill fact, who with optimistic views will examine the enormous scientific publications made in Germany, France, England, and America, may almost be drawn to conclude, at first impression, that little is left to be done, and that man's mind, always seeking new problems, may find little to reap in a field so completely cleared. This impression is perhaps less strongly received from the study of Greek political history than from the study of the Roman, where the wonderful energy of a single man appears to have left almost nothing for his fellow workers and future genera- tions to gather. You will understand my allusion to Theodor IMommsen, the man who for half a century has held undisputed the sceptre among all cultivators of history and classical law, the man who has not passed over in silence any of the arguments regarding life of the Roman people. Mommsen, in fact, after having silenced the voices of his opponents, has seen his triumphal chariot followed by the best energies of two generations of learned men. But it looks as if it were an inevitable historical necessity that to the works of learned men should be reserved a fate quite different from that which is decreed to the works of artists. The greatest perfection reached by a poet or a painter has not as its immediate effect the disdaining of his predecessors' work. Human curiosity is, in this case, rather urged to examine and to appreciate the less mature and perfect work which marks a salient point in the artistic development. On the contrary, it is quite rare not to see those same laurels gathered by the greatest scientists, rapidly fade and drop. And the history of science, keeping firmly to the vital ideas and criteria which make the works of the most eminent authors of the greatest importance, gives only a flying glance to the older works, which have spread in their times the ideas which had to produce the new germs. PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 97 The direct efficacy of August Boechk has been now trans- mitted in a great measure to other writers, and though the impression left by Mommsen, who, following close upon Boechk, filled with him all the nineteenth century, is still lasting, it is clear that also through the ideas and infinite researches which emanated from his great mind, we are on the eve of a new and great intellectual movement, a move- ment which is alimented and increased by the new material which is being discovered in every part of the ancient classi- cal world. In these last years we are coming into possession of new Greek histories, which are destined to make the world for- get the ones written by Grote and Curtius; and new ideas and problems are already fermenting in the human brain, which will necessarily lead to new histories of the Republic and of the Roman Empire, quite different from those of Mommsen and Gibbon. The opinion generally accepted that the material of the classical world is now altogether determined and closed, and that the study of historians should be limited to penetrating literary examination, discussed word by word, and to the observing of the old materials under new points of view, has been altogether destroyed by the fortunate discovery of papyri which, thanks, especially, to English diligence and learning, are coming to us from the very bowels of ancient Egypt. And to the papyri which illustrate every part of the public and private life of the ancient world are added the results given by the excavations which illustrate both the mature ages and the first origins of civilization among the classic peoples. One of the most salient characteristics of the nineteenth century has been, in fact, the patient research of the em- bryonic forms of all cosmic life. It was quite natural that from this universal tendency the study of classic history 98 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA should not have been exempt ; a study which, also for the past, has been constantly determined in its genesis and in its ulterior development by the prevailing currents in all the remaining sciences, and by the changing of political and philosophical ideas. The study of classical antiquity from the end of the sixteenth century through the eighteenth, es- pecially in Protestant countries, has been the substratum of political and civil education. When the triumph of liberal ideas was obtained in Europe, the science of antiquity did not become the object of mere erudite curiosity, but was taken as the foundation and the ideal of literary and moral education. And it is in this blind and exclusive admiration of the life of the Greeks and Romans that one must trace the reason why their civilization was considered quite dif- ferent from the Eastern, v^hile the Greek one was supposed autochthonous, sprung by its ow^n virtue, like Athena com- pletely armed from the head of Jove. Thus the declara- tions of the ancients were considered erroneous ; though, far from feeling any shame of this contact with the oriental world, they insisted particularly on it. And the same insist- ence and w-armth, which would be urged to prove the con- stant purity of blood in the lineage of an aristocratic family, was used in attributing a purely Hellenic origin to the myth of Herakles, and to deny the Phoenician descendance of Thales. The merit of having overthrown the theories which have had for so many years the preponderance in the field of European science is undoubtedly due to the various scientific European and American missions, and to many learned Englishmen. And without letting ourselves be blinded by the exaggerations to which every reaction leads, we must follow with great love the discoveries made in Egypt, Crete, Greece, and Sicily, revealing the existence of civilization of the Mykenaean type, which demonstrates to us, with increasing strength, the truth of the aphorism that PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 99 in the world nothing is isolated, but everything is in rela- tionship with preceding or with parallel phenomena. Scien- tists are to-day better disposed to listen to the demonstra- tions of Ginzel on the astronomical discoveries of the people of Babylon, and on their efficacy over the posterior doctrines of Hipparchus and Ptolomaeus, just as they have no more difficulty in recognizing the possibility of ancient political relations between Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt. And it is to be hoped that new discoveries may not only benefit the development of material civilization, but may one day be of great advantage in illustrating the genesis of the Greek con- science, which is still substantially dominating the modern world. The great and luminous discoveries which to-day have thrown light upon the relations between Egypt, Asia Minor, and the countries inhabited by the Hellenes, were to have a necessary rebounding action in the researches regarding the origins of civilization and Italian history. The most recent scientific criticism had refused the mystic narrative of the Pelasgians. It is then clearly understood how some scholars came to defend such traditions. How- ever, it must be added at once that to this day these attempts have not been very fortunte. The excavations at Norba in the territory of the Volscians, with the hope on the part of some to attribute to the Pelasgians the ancient Italic walls, have only served to sustain the position of those critics who assigned those same walls to a much more recent age. And the same results have been obtained from the explorations in Etruscan Volterra. The discoveries of material of the Mykenaean type in Sicily and also at Tarentum are in rela- tion with the commercial diffusion of products, which, in the third Mediterranean basin, reached the first dawn of Greek colonization, that is the beginning of the eighth century. Likewise all attempts to set back, by many cen- 100 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA turies before the eighth, the most ancient historical forms of Italy have completely failed. No wise critic can seriously consider the attempt made by a learned Swede to establish a chronology^ which goes back two thousand years before Christ, by means of various types of bronzes and vases, which lasted in an irregular manner according to the various countries, more or less accessible to new commercial influences, more or less slow on their way to civilization. A few years ago people took into consideration such theories wdiich, basing themselves on the study of ^milian palisades, caused the Italic founders of Rome to come from the north of Italy. The recent dis- coveries in Greece, in the ^gean Islands on the coast of southern Italy, are instead tending to prove that such archaeological discoveries can contribute to establish the his- tory of the commercial relations, but that they have nothing to do with the ethnography of the most ancient Italic races. I do not stop to examine theories already accepted as cer- tain, — of palisades pitched even on dry land for mere reason of rite, and of Ligurians recognized in various parts of Italy merely from the crouching position of the corpses, etc. Common sense knows wdiat value to put on such aberrations. Archaeological excavations tend rather to prove that the Italian civilization, born on the coast of southern Italy, grad- ually spread as far as the plains of northern Italy and quite to the base of the Alps, w^here the less frequent contact with the East, the continuous emigration and imposition of bar- barous elements coming from the north, were maintaining stationary forms of civilization, which had already dis- appeared from the south. Among all the excavations of Italy, those which have been so zealously carried out in the Roman Forum by Giacomo Boni are to be especially mentioned. These excavations have been, for some, the revealing elements of a civilization PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 101 anterior to Romulus himself. But they proved, after all, nothing of the kind. We are lacking all data to establish whether those bronzes and vases should be of the tenth and ninth, rather than the eighth, seventh, or even sixth cen- tury, B. c. Other excavations would seem to prove that the typical forms of the so-called Numa vases lasted till the Empire. The only result altogether certain is the first con- firmation of the ancient texts, which said that at the out- skirts of the Forum there was a Sepulcretum. And from this, even before the excavations, I had obtained the proof, solemnly confirmed to-day, that the Forum was added to the city long after the age of the seven kings. I do not think it is now the moment to speak of the famous Archaic Latin inscription found under the Niger Lapis. All the attempts wdiich have been made to interpret it have been fruitless. Considered from the palseographical side it may belong either to the sixth or fifth century, or even fourth century, while from the external form and for the disposition of the writing it recalls the Capuan monu- ments of the end of the second or more probably at the be- ginning of the first century, b. c. No reasoning of any critic can possibly demonstrate that the rex remembered there is the political rex of the royal age rather than the rex sacrormn of the Republic. As regards history, prop- erly said, the inscription teaches us nothing. The excava- tions of the Forum have, however, demonstrated what I had already affirmed, namely, that the arched eloaca maxima is not a work belonging to the royal age, but rather to the Republic. In order to solve the most ancient problems of the history of Italian civilization, some people have turned to the in- vestigation of linguistics and anthropolog}' rather than of archaeology. It has been easy for an able German linguist to criticise the weak point of the theories founded on cranio- 102 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA logical ami somatological elements. However, it has been easy to a great Italian linguist to find traces of ancient ethnology in the phonetic persistences among the dwellers of various Italian regions ; and the anatomic examination in the structure of the different races in the Peninsula will cer- tainly lead one day to brilliant results. The j>ersistency of , the Celtic reveals the expansion of this people ; and among ' the mountains of the Garfagnana the Ligurian race, which before the Etruscan dominion occupied such large part of the Italian, Gallic, and Iberian regions, still holds compact in its somatological integrity. Thus, on the slopes of the Apennines, surrounding Campania, just where the Sarno takes its start, one finds in the same compact condition an indigenous race unmodified by the successive superimpo- sitions of the Samnitcs and Romans. And I willingly agree with Professor Julian when he says that a corpus of the toponomastic of the ancient world would lead to most bril- liant results. Naturally these studies are not yet perfect, and hurried conclusions may lead to bitter delusions. Certainly a great delusion must have been felt by certain learned men who, after having spoken with all certainty of the immigration of people coming from Asia, basing their affirmations on the presence of jade-axes, were suddenly informed by a min- eralogist that the same rock was to be found in the Alps. Bitter delusions will come to those whom the Etruscan sphinx devours daily; and my opinion is that people insisted with too great facility on the non-Aryan character of the Ligurians, since I have already brought to observation that the etymolog)' of the indigenous name Genoa (knee), as Ancona (the arm). Eryx-Verrucca (the hill), shows the premature character of these conclusions. These delusions must not, however, prove discouraging, since there is no science which has not improved through PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 103 infinite uncertainties and errors. We must, however, admit that regarding the problem of Itahc origin which has at- tracted and still attracts such a great number of studious people, we have not yet reached any series of sure and com- plex results, partly from lack of data, and partly from faulty methods. Many people who busy themselves with the primitive strata which precede the true and real political life ignore classical culture, which is a fundamental guide, and those who represent it are not always in a condition to appreciate the anthropological and social problems. Regarding the archaeological part, researches have not been directed to just aims. The great majority of learned Europeans and Americans, always running after new and more ancient material, turn to the excavating of Samos, Miletus, Crete, and Lycia, whilst Italy is still quite far from being all explored. And yet on the very boundaries of Latium and Campania, where the ancients placed the mythi- cal seat of Circe, and the tombstone of Elpenor, notable ruins exist neglected even from the times of Polybius. There, just as on the little hill standing above the ruins of the Roman Minturnge, are preserved the traces of what is, perhaps, the most ancient stratum of Greek colonization in Italy. The problems relating to the most ancient Greek and Italic civilization are waiting for light from the spade of the excavator; on the other hand, those regarding the most ancient social and political structure wait their light from the comparative study of public law and economy. But even in this respect what a difference there is between the history of ancient Greece and that of ancient Rome! The marbles of the ancient Acropolis permitted Boechk and his followers to reconstruct the financial history and the mari- time hegemony of Athens, the texts of the comedians and 104 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA of the orators have permitted Belok, Poehlman, Francotte, and others to treat the most difficult questions relating to financial and social organizations. Paul Girard has suc- ceeded in writing a good book on the ancient land property in Greece. The material lately illustrated by Wilken proves that new researches may still be made. In the Roman field, instead, there is nothing that can be in any way compared to this. No history whatever on land property during the Republic is to be had, and if we want to be sincere, we must admit we do not possess even a good guide for the more ancient social and political institutions. We have, it is true, ancient and diffused narratives on political struggles, which are the foundation of a long series of modern manuals on law and history. But such narratives are based on spurious material, and even the treaties on Roman political law written by Mommsen (for the period from the age of the kings to the beginning of the Punic wars) is based upon falsified material. I do not insist on this point, as I would find myself obliged to repeat demonstrations already given by me elsewhere. I hope at any rate to be able soon to publish my researches on the value of chronology, on the Fasti and on the public law of the most ancient Roman people, in the only way in which it can be really obtained, namely, through integrations and comparisons. I say in- tegrations and comparisons, since the study of public law and of the social conditions of a nation cannot be made now, as in the past, through the simple knowledge of the material relating to that single people, no matter how minute and deep. If there is a matter which should be deeply known by the student of ancient civilization, it is the comparative history of the law of all peoples beginning from the cus- toms in the savage state, to the true and proper law of most civilized people. Under this aspect Sumner ]Maine's re- searches, though incomplete, have brought a greater advan- PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 105 tage to studies, than the pretentious works of many scholars of Roman Law. And only by such comparison, to which must be added a good knowledge of the classical material, shall we, some day, be the possessors of a treatise on Greek public law, which is generally desired. And the study of law and comparative sociology will evidently give us the history of the ethic development of the classical world, which we lack, and which is the surest foundation in order to understand the reasons of political events. Fortunately for those who will apply themselves to the history of law and of Greek and Roman social institutions, the Egyptian papyri and the discovery of new inscriptions, which explain intimate connections between the two great phases of ancient civilization, will bring new and wished- for materials. Every one knows that an institution like that of auriim coronarkim, of the colonat, and of the frumen- tationcs, finds its precedents in the history of Samos, Miletus, and Alexandria; and the original studies of Mitteis have shown what quantity of material for deep researches there is in the comparison of Roman with Hellenic laws. It looks as if the discovery of the papyri were destined to give results in the Roman and Greek fields. But if the philologists have rejoiced in the discovery of the texts of Aristotle, Bachylides, and Timotheus, the Latinists must be satisfied with a long series of contracts, leases of rustic farms, constitution of dowry, contracts of loans and emphy- teuses. There is no hope of finding a book of Polybius or of some other historian, precious for us, but less cared for by the ancients on account of the style in which it was writ- ten. We have this discouraging outlook also from the examination of the archaeological excavations made in the ancient world. The soil of ancient Italy is certainly not exhausted, but nothing makes one hope for discoveries similar to those of 106 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA Greece and Asia Minor; and the interest of the studious now turned to the oriental world does not find it worth while to explore the adult forms of the Grzeco-Roman civilization which alone is offered by the Peninsula. We deduce from this that the study of Italian history at the time of the free republic does not present anything new for investigation, i while all the periods of Greek history have been, one might say, transformed, and the history of Hellenism, thanks to the works of ]\Iahaffy, Belocph, Niese, Strack, Bouche- Leclercq, and many others, has been rebuilt from the very beginning. Let us guard ourselves, however, from draw- ing too pessimistic conclusions. The study of social and political life in the Roman Repub- lic has not presented any material for new treatises nor any original proceedings, for the reason that the problems which contain the conclusion of the subsequent caroUaria had not been well solved. The life of the Roman people, far from constituting a characteristic phenomenon, as it was con- ceived for centuries, and in part was understood by Momm- sen himself, is but the last and quite mature phase of that civilization which continued and transformed the preceding activity of the East. Laying aside the Roman annals which offer a premature originality obtained through falsification, there remains only a late civilization which grafts itself on the developed Greek world. In Roman civilization there does not exist a political in- stitution or situation where there has not been repercussion or modification of the anterior civilization of Sicily or Magna Graeca, and later of Greece itself and of \\vt Hellen- istic states. Only the full and perfect knowledge of the Greek world permits a clear understanding of the Roman one. Thus it is clearly understood how a Roman history can be properly related only when the great problems of Greek and Hellenistic history will be solved. If, however, PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 107 in the half-centur}- which has succeeded to the first appear- ance of Momnisen's book, there have been pubhshed at rare intervals some works which have enlarged the field of our knowledge, this is not due to a lack of material adapted to problems, but to the want of preparation to solve them. \\'e lack a good history relating to the period of the Gracchi, as well as one on the Social Wars; we have quite incom- plete expositions on the civil wars or on the conditions of the Roman provinces during the Republic, But I do not think I am too much of an optimist when I maintain that the new view that we already have of the Greek world, and of the improved comparison of law and of the institutions of other people, will have the effect of giv- ing us in the near future a new and quite original history of the Roman Republic. The examination of those problems w-hich are treated in the history of the Empire is leading us apparently to en- tirely different results. The wonderful energy of Mommsen, the great compila- tion of Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, the activity of a great number of learned men belonging to all nations who accepted Mommsen's fundamental criteria, seems to have directed the problem of the Empire to a definite solution. To the conception which, on the general progress of the Empire, was given by that prominent scholar, is to be added that of those writers who treated the history of the single provinces. In regard to the technical side, the researches on the ad- ministrative, financial, and military organizations, and on public cult, made under the guidance of Marquardt and Hirschfeld, lead to precise reconstructions which are perfect in many respects. It is true that the Roman w^orld has not yet completed the bringing to light of the epigraphic material hidden in the lOS HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA bowels of the earth or dispersed over lands not yet explored by the historian. It is also true that though papyri have in- creased in a great measure the knowledge of private law, it may from one moment to another give us new and important information also on public law. However, so far as we can see, the general lines of Roman administration will not be much modified. Nevertheless, all these previsions do not lead us to con- sider as solved the problems concerning the political and social reorganization of the Empire. Among modern writ- ers, and especially among those who have followed the ideas of Mommsen, the general tendency has been to glorify the happiness and welfare of the Roman world. They have based themselves on the existence of the colossal ruins scat- tered in all the provinces, on the regularity and perfection of administrative and military organizations, on the ex- tension of commerce, and on the enormous development of riches, rather than on literary texts which do not seem always to help their thesis. The discordant voices of ancient authors are interpreted as interested protests and outbursts of political parties. The happiness of the Roman Peace and of the Imperial gov- ernment contrasts, they say, with the hardness and rapacity of republican oligarchy; and the folly and cruelty of princes is compensated by the upright provincial administration. In all this there is evidently some exaggeration, and a new verification of the problem imposes itself. The grandeur and the diffusion of temples, basilicas, baths, theatres, and aqueducts in all the colonies and municipalities of the vast Empire is not sufficient to prove that the general happiness and welfare were greater there than in the capital, which under the flifferent bad or good emperors continued con- stantly to enrich itself with new edifices. Thus from the wealth and elegance of the Roman churches of the sixteenth PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY lui» to the eighteenth centuries nobody certainly would dare draw proofs in favor of the moral power of the Papacy dur- ing that age, and of the general happiness and dignity of the citizens of that state. And just as it is proved by monu- ments, inscriptions, edifices, and institutions, that the life of the capital was reproduced in a smaller way in the prov- inces, so it is quite natural to think thai also the moral and civil condition should have been reflected there. The plcbs in the capital lived on alms, at the expense of the provinces, and there a municipal nobility composed of a small number of families uses to its advantage the resources of the community. This municipal nobility will enrich the city with monuments because it will find for itself a way of consuming at its leisure the municipal income. In Rome, as in the provinces, they endeavor to repair the loss of the free citizenship by alimentary institutions; but there can never be found a spirit of charity for the poor and the oppressed ; something is lacking to recall even the hospitals which were attached to the cult of Greek ^sculapius. The sportulae handed to the numerous and hungry clients under the show of power, by the disdainful and wealthy patronus, makes one naturally think of the alms wdiich till the latter part of the past century were justifying before the plehs the riches and idleness of the friars in the Italian convents. And when one thinks that Vespasian, certainly one of the best Roman emperors, found nothing better than to redouble the taxes on the provinces, and imprudently to sell absolu- tions, either for the culprit, or for the innocent, in order to restore the finances of the state ; and that he chose as ad- ministrators of the provinces magistrates from whom he would draw, as from sponges, the ill-acquired riches, one may well ask what was the nature of this general welfare. At any rate Hirschfeld's researches have put in evidence how little w^as done during the first three centuries of the no HISTORY OF GREECE. ROME AND ASIA Empire to secure life and property in Italy and in the prov- inces. Tacitus has made us hear the voice of protest of the Roman families only. During the Cesarean despotism all free speech was silenced ; but if the voice of the provincials had reached us, we could know how many base deeds and adulations determined the raising of statues to the good Roman governors. A\'e have not as many honorary inscrip- tions for good emperors as for the wicked Caracalla. In reality, under the Republic as under the Empire the provinces are but the pracdia populi Romani. The Roman provinces and municipalities are only a vast field which a clever administration makes use of to enrich imperial functionaries, and the classes directing the community. To derive from these indications a general happiness would be equivalent to affirming that the remuneration of the workers is great where the shareholders have a large divi- dend, or if. in regarding the economical side, we turn to the noble spheres of letters, of arts and sciences, we see everywhere the signs of a great and rapid decadence. The age which according to general opinion receives its light from Augustus, and which according to the poet's song marks a new century, is but the beginning of the last phase of a great civilization which, already developed with the Greeks in the eighth century, dies with Diocletian and Constantine. Notwithstanding what has been said to the contrary, the traces of decadence are visible not after the Antonines, but with Augustus himself, and with the in- capacity officially and wisely recognized by him of con- quering Britain, restraining the Germans, and taming the Parthians. Such decadence is after a few generations quite visible in art. No great poet succeeds Virgil. Tacitus marks the end of the great Roman historiograph. Art reproduces in large and pompus manner crystallized forms, and the cold and artificial religion of state suffocates and PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY ill dries any frank and noble aspiration in tlie human soul. Free speech is silent everywhere; cold rhetoric and dec- lamation succeed to eloquence. And in sciences, with the exception of the development of great public edifices which, as the history of Apollodorus demonstrates, is always under the high inspiration of Greek doctrine, all is trans- formed in a pure empiricism drying the germs of theoretical speculation. Geometry has become surveying, and medi- cine, judged unworthy of being studied by a Roman citizen, is left to the Greeks. Ethics and philosophy are trans- formed into law and regulation, which obliges all to obey the will of the legislator, who is clever in law, but more so in handling the sword. And the greatest pleasure of the Roman society is not to hear, as in the fine Athenian times, the pricking playfulness of Aristophanes or divine verse of Euripides, but rather to assist at the games of the Circus, where the blood of the dying gladiators and that of the wild beasts stir up voluptuousness and a desire for struggle. There still remains military glory. But patriotism is already changing the career of arms ; Italians are despoiled of their weapons, and the legion, according to an ancient inscrip- tion from Aquileia, becomes barbara. In the Roman society there is no place for the unwealthy, and it is quite natural that the humble and afflicted should rapidly con- tribute to render vigorous the incipient Christian society which, having later become powerful, conquers and then associates itself to the decaying Empire. The love of war and glory still lasting through centuries in Europe, the greatness of the monumental remains, and the inheritance of Roman political organizations also ac- cepted by the Church, the Roman laws which absorbed all the legislative work of the ancient world, the cares for the defense of the Rhine, Danube, and of Asia Minor, the song of Virgil, the prose of Cicero and Livy, are such 112 HISTORY OF GREECE. ROME AND ASIA great events that they could not be entirely forgotten, not even by the rough Ivliddle Ages. The comparison be- tween Romanity and the subsequent barbarism of Europe is enough to explain the reverent admiration which also in these last centuries has existed for the great merits of Roman civilization. But an exact comparison of the origin of all ancient civilization and the ties that the Latin world has had with the Greek naturally leads to a better under- stood and measured admiration. When studying the light we must not neglect the shadows. But still recognizing all the merits of Roman civilization, we must keep in mind all that was done by the preceding nations. Rome civilized the coast of Northern Africa, but we must not forget, as some critic has done, the preparatory work of the Car- thaginians from whom Rome learned for the first time the arts of agriculture. It is Rome that has the merit of having civilized the Gauls, but we must not pass over in silence the extended and beneficial preparatory work of the Greek Massilia, which for its civil institutions and its commerce was once quite superior to Rome, and even during the Empire was justly chosen by Romans as a seat for the moral education of her sons. An exact balance of all that has been produced by the Roman civilization has not yet been struck. This examination will, certainly in many instances, prove of honor to the Italian people, to whom the West owes the transmission of light on the old Hellenic civilization. Many statistics and comparative , works that are still needed, for instance, for the Iberian Peninsula, have not been written. And such researches will have to consider density of the population, the true condition and transformation of slavery, the diffusion of the Eastern cults, and finally of the first Christian society. But among all the problems which have not yet been solved, the most difficult and the most complex is always the one PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 113 on the value of the political work of the Emperors them- selves. Mommsen rightly observed that legend is found just as much in the life of Fabricius as in the ancedote of the Emperor Gains ; and as Willrich has recently demonstrated, many data of Imperial traditions deserve a new revision. But in order to resolve the problem of authenticity in the ancient tales, it is not enough to establish researches, even diligent ones, on the discordance and on the presumable value of the historical sources. Such complex problems can be solved only by the examination of other historical periods. The critic who studies the Empire is immediately impressed by the ferociousness of the degenerate princes. But in the end the cruelty of Tiberius is not greater than that of Sylla, and the intrigues of the courts of the Se- leucids and Ptolemies are useful in making one understand the plotting of the Palatine Imperial Palaces. And without having recourse to the easy but unhealthy remedy of fixed formulas taken from premature treatises on the historical development of all societies, it is clear that in the study of the ancient Germanic races or of the oriental monarchies one will often find material adapted to clear up problems of the ancient classic world. Such study, for instance, can be useful to the solution of the controverted problem of the Script ores Historiae Angnstae, much more than the infinite series of proceedings which will be expounded by the philologist, and more than an analytic dictionary of those texts. At any rate, the history of the Empire contains problems which can be referred also in great part to posterior his- tory. The modern historian lives in an epoch when war is generally considered as an evil to be avoided ; the scholar who is not accustomed to arms spends his time between the documents of the archives and the ruins of the exca- 114 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA vations. He does not feel the necessity of connecting mili- tary events which he is not in a condition to understand. If necessary he turns to the opinion of some military person more or less used to interpret and to understand military texts. Anyhow modern age is tending to solve problems of social character, and critics, generally, if only for the love of novelty, ascertain and follow the tastes of their contemporaries. And more than to the problem of moral conscience, which determines the function of the highest human energies, they try to transport, in the ancient world, those facts which are tormenting modern societies, without sufficiently taking into consideration different conditions in culture and faith, in density of population and in social organisms. An historian of the first order, Polybius, in finding fault with historians given only to the study of books, praised Ephorus for his being in condition to describe a land bat- tle or a naval operation, just as Gibbon's conteinporaries appreciated his military knowledge. Polybius himself, quite an expert in arms as in political management, was not wrong. To narrate the destines of the world, de- termined by the result of military events, without being in a condition to interpret them, is like writing a history of literature and sciences, giving only the names of the authors and the titles of the works, without examining the contents. To speak of Alexander and Hannibal without considering the merits of their strategy and tactical move- ments, means to give up a good part of their work, and not to understand the nature of the military states in which those same events happened, and for w^hich they were written. And this fact holds more for the Roman world which lived always in arms than for the Greek civilization.. Certainly the modern historian must not limit himself to narrate that which, according to the ancients. PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY iir, formed the essence of their history. He has, after all, the duty to retrace those elements of which they had not a full kn()wledge, and which are useful in explaining the complex de\elopment of humanity. But in such a case, besides the study of economic forms, it is necessary to turn one's attention to the development of religious and moral opinion and to the history of arts and sciences. And the investiga- tion of the reasons which determine the reciprocal action of all these elements and the preponderance of one over the other according to the different ages and places, con- stitutes the most complex problem which the historian of the ancient world is called upon to solve. The method of making chapters in literar3% artistic, philosophical history, from the narrative which in sub- stance is constituted of external facts, is now out of date. The history of a people, just as the history of an individual, is subject to transformations which modify its activity. If the history of the Roman people has remained essentially military and political, that of the Greek races presents instead the phenomenon of different elements combining with one another. The literary and artistic history of the Athens of the fifth century balances that more strictly political, but the development of criticism and of sciences constitutes certainly one of the most important character- istics of the age of the Diadochi. Thus for the period of the Spanish preponderance, the Italian nations will very rarely give occasion to speak of arms, but will offer, in- stead, material for art, for the study of the works of Galileo and of Bruno. Politics, military art, law, economy, fine art, science, from the historical point of view, form a complex whole before the history of the ancient and modern world. And since the unlimited increase of knowledge in the branches of learnintf makes this task more and more difficult, it is 116 HISTORY OF GREECE. ROME AND ASIA evident that our education, freed from useless teachings and old prejudices, must be strengthened by the study of the sciences. But it will not be enough to reform the organization of our colleges, we shall have still to break the barriers of our faculties ; because if it is true that no science can improve without long and detailed technical researches, it is also true that the studies of specialists con- tain rarely important results, unless they are guided by large conceptions and are coordinated with various and kindred sciences. And among the sciences which are destined to make future historiography improve, politics comes first. This recommendation may at first seem ingenuous or altogether useless, unless one consider how, after having naturally exempted some famous works, nearly all the modern pro- duction in the field of classic antiquity is due to the activ- ity of the philologist. The necessity of investigating the literary texts, of long and detailed researches on the reci- procal dependence of the sources, of interpreting epigraphic texts, and now more than formerly, also the papyri, render the help of philological training precious and indispensible. But it is also just to recognize that in nearly all the historical production, due to the philological school, the political sense is nearly always missing. It is then necessary to see to it that those who will be called upon to solve the future problems, though dedicat- ing themselves to all the sciences which constitute the his- torical organism, should take part in political life, avoiding, however, becoming victims of those prejudices which guide the parties that are the natural product of the political atmosphere. And of all these preconceptions one of the most damaging is that born of blind patriotism. Few among the human sentiments have contributed so much as patriotism to keep alive the remembrance of historical PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY i]7 facts, and to promote the increment of researches in the past. But it is not less true that tliis sentiment has brought the greatest disadvantage to historical trutli. It is superfluous to recall examples of the first cases; it is much more useful instead to observe in how many instances the objective history of a people has been usefully told by strangers and even by rival nations. If Polybius was able to expose a narrative of Roman events, as no other Italian historian could, this did not arise only from his political culture and clear-sightedness, but also from the fact that, belonging to a conquered nation, he was not blinded by national pride. This greater objectivity dis- tinguished also the political work of Trogus Pompeius from the annals of the Paduan Livy. The horizon of the eloquent Livy did not extend beyond the Urbs and Pa- tavium, while Trogus Pompeius saw the Roman deeds from the point of view of universal history, and therefore gave to them a better proportioned part in the history of the world. If the histories of Theopompus or other authors known to Plutarch had come to us, we should certainly have quite a different history of the Persian wars from that of Herodotus, inspired by the glorification of Athens. Germany, with Ranke's and Von Sybel's, has given the best histories of the Catholic counter-reform and of the French Revolution. And we do not need to men- tion to you the value of Prescott's and Irving's studies on the most brilliant periods of the Spanish domination. The patriotic historian is bound by a thousand prejudices of education, and is not always in condition to judge with perfect clearness the events of his country. Even if he be free from preconceptions, he feels tightly bound by many considerations, and if he says all the truth he exposes him- self to censure. Still the treating of the same agruments with stereotyped views does not lead to any scientific re- lis HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA suits. \\*hat is of advantage to the progress of sciences and arts is freshness of impressions and new energies which substitute themselves for the old ones. And since you Americans, with a new and unfailing impulse of youth, open your universities to the study of all the problems of old Europe, let us hope that with your work a more perfect knowledge of the ancient world may be reached. Like all young and robust organisms, you are naturally inclined to break down the tendency toward routine which too often binds the work of European scholars. From the contact of old with new theories, there will certainly come out sparks which will be destined to throw new light on the infinite problems of the classical world. The study of the early belief and social forms of America has contributed to explain questions of ancient mythology and classical anthropology which remained inexplicable mysteries for generations of learned men. In turn the political study of old Europe, and especially of the classical world, will make more clearly understood the destinies to which the United States of America are called. In fact, the conception that political history should be studied by itself, with no other aim but mere curiosity, must be rejected, as well as the idea that any other science is not destined to have a practical application in life. The purpose of this great Congress, to which you have called all sciences to be represented, pure and experimental, the- oretical and practical, is the best guarantee that the scien- tific, American society will not be lost either among the fogs of abstractions or the vulgarity of empiricism. If among the decadent nations or those about to decay, men who are without ideality and who ignore art or science are put at the helm, in the countries which are destined to a prosperous future public interests are instrusted to those who best understand the history, and therefore the hopes, of their country. PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 119 It is not strange that nearly all Roman historians should have been statesmen; and statesmen were Machiavelli, Ma- caiilay, and Bancroft. Without knowing the biological precedents the cure of an invalid is not possible, just as without a long experience of the past it is not possible to provide for the future of nations. The study of old Europe, its glories, and its errors, is a sacred patrimony which she divides with the United States, which have the task of forming a new and great civilized society. The Roman and Greek civilization is a great part of this patrimony, and is worthy of your cares, because it contains the best part of institutions and tra- ditons which you are called upon to study and partly to follow. The immense space of sea which separates you from Europe and from Eastern Asia, the lack of danger of an invasion from the north, and even less so from the south, seem at first glance to place the United States in a situation quite different from that of the old European civilization. But the speed which will be attained by steamers in the near future will render these distances proportionately smaller than the Ionian and the Tyrrhene seas were once for the Athenians navigating toward Syracuse, and for the Romans fighting against Carthage. Greece and Rome had in the Mediterranean a position which recalls, in part, the interoceanic situation of the United States. They transmitted successively to the West the civilization received from the East, and the United States are already called to take great part in the trans- formation of the yellow races. The economic and social foundation of the Romans was based on slavery: you, instead, have freed the negro from bondage. But the complete participation of the latter in your political counsels constitutes one of the greatest prob- 120 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA lems which you are called to solve. And it will be all your glory if you shall find a better solution than the ancient world. The immense development of your finances, which seems fabulous to us old races, reminds one of the similar enormous development during the Empire. You have the daring and practical mind of the Romans, the greatness of their works, and the firmness of their character. But the love for sciences and arts protects you from the danger which threatens the plutocratic societies. This love for science and art, which causes you to multiply your uni- versities, libraries, and museums, takes, however, its first and more vital inspiration from that brilliant Greek civiliza- tion which transfused itself into the Italian Renaissance. And while in so many parts of Europe old forms of social organizations are still living, you are, on the contrary, destined to maintain brighter than ever the most luminous fiame of the old Greek and Latin civilization. The cult of that freedom which you placed as a glorious symbol just where the Atlantic touches your shores is an omen of unhampered enterprise and active life for all those who, coming to you from distant countries, have the aspiration to share your community. The glorious history of your independence shines through the greatness of Washington and Lincoln. You are worthy of continuing the cult of Pericles, Timoleon, and Scipio ; and permit me, to whom you have given the great honor of speaking about the ancient civilization of the land of Columbus, Amerigo, and Cabot, to recall here my fellow citizen, Carlo Botta; only a few years after your war of independence, the Piedmontese Carlo Botta was the first among Italians to relate your history, glorifying the virtues of Washington, and through your example endeav- oring to stamp a seal of infamy on the tyranny then reign- ing in Europe, and to spur the soul of his citizens to the cult of freedom. THE UmVERSITT OF PARIS IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY Iland-painted Photogravure from a Painting by Otto Knille. Reproduced from a Photograph, of the Painting by permission of the Berlin Photograph Co. Tliis famous painting is now in tlie University of Berlin. Thomas Amiinas, one of liie greatest of tlie scliolasiic pliilo>iopliers, surnanied the "Angelic Doctor.'" is leliverinw a learned discourse before King Louis IX. To the right of the King -lands Joinville, the French clironioler. The Dominican monk with his hand to his face is Guiilaume de Saint Amour, and Vincent de Beauvais and another Dominican are seated with their backs to the platform desk from which Thomas Aquinas is making liis animated address. Tiie picnire is thoroughly characteristic of a University disputation at the close of the Middle Ages. A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF ASIA, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CHINA AND THE FAR EAST. BY HENRI CORDIER [Henri Coediee, Professor of I'Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, 1881, Paris, b. August 8, 1849, New Orleans, Louisiana. A.B. University of Paris; Litt.D. University of Cape Good Hope; Chinese Mandarin of the third class, with decoration of "Precious Star," third degree; Professor at Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, 1886-95; Secretary of the Chinese Educational Mission, 1877-81; President of the Council Societe de Geographie, 1904; Member of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Public Instruction; Honorary Member Royal Asiatic Society; Hon. Cor- responding Member of the Royal Geographical Society; Vice- President of the Societe des Traditions Populaires; Socio della R. Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, etc. At^thor of Histoire des Relations de la Chine avec les Puissances Occidentales ; Atlas Sino Corcen; Bibliotheca Sinica; Marco Polo. Editor and founder of the Revue de VExtrdme Orient and of the T'oung-pas.] In attempting to draw in less than an hour a sketch of the history of Asia, I am fully aware of the difficulty as well as of the grandeur of the task which has been intrusted to me. It cannot be expected that in the short space of time allotted to the lecturer, a complete idea of this vast subject can be given. I can only sum up the main points and designate the landmarks of the unbroken chain of facts which from our days goes back to the most ancient period of the history of mankind. When we search into the remotest past of Asia, the geologist, not the historian, presents a very surprising spectacle to our view : two lands stand opposite; one, to the north, shaping a long arch round what is to-day Irkutsk; the other, to the south, constitutes a portion of the future peninsula of Hindustan ; a large mediterranean sea, to which M. Suess has given the name of Tethys, separates the two continents; this ocean, in 121 122 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA gradually drying up, has by its folds given rise to the Pamirs, the Himalayas, the high Tibetan Tableland, — and its total disappearance and the union of the two, northern and southern, lands gave birth to Asia. If we seek into this vast continent for the territory hav- ing: an authentic record of the oldest times, we find it in the lands of biblical tradition, Chaldea and Elam, where Asia tells again the story of its past with the most irre- fragable evidence in the inscriptions registered on stones which, lying buried for centuries, have withstood the wear and tear of ages; thus has been revealed to us the oldest code of the world, the Law of Hammurabi, discovered at Susa by M. J. de Morgan, and described by the Dominican Father v. Scheil, both Frenchmen. However, if Elam carries us back to a period further than four thousand years before Christ, other countries of Asia, including those which are supposed to possess the most ancient civil- ization, are far from giving the material proof of the high antiquity to which their books and their legends lay an unfounded claim. India cannot boast of a single monument which for age is to be compared with those of Nineveh and of Egypt, and before the eighth century b. c, no solid basis to the history of China is to be found. The perishable quality of the materials used in rearing the edifices of this last country cannot allow us to hope that the zeal of mod- ern archaeologists will unearth the secret of monuments vanished long ago. In the actual state of science, theories only can be im- agined to account for the genesis of Asiatic nations, and a common origin exists but in the fancy of a few learned men. It was very natural to look for the first migrations and the first civilizations about Elam and Chaldea, and from this authentic and venerable source let flow the great HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 123 streams to the various extremities of Asia; it has been possible from isolated facts to build ingenious theories like that of Terrien de Lacouperie, but at the present time noth- ing definite gives us a right to broach an opinion with regard to the primitive inhabitants of Oriental Asia and their cradle. When I was honored with an invitation to come and speak here, I believed it to be expected that I should not delay too much in treating of the ancient times of the history of Asia, and in dealing with facts which are im- portant in themselves, but are nevertheless secondary in their results. What I am expected to give is a general view, an ensemble. I shall try to show the chief influences which gave life to the immense Asiatic Continent and to mark out the place it occupies in the general history of the world, making large allowance for Central Asia and the Far East, which have been the object of my special study. During a long time Europe remained in complete ignor- ance of the steady though irregular movements of the po[)u]ations of Asia, which was really a volcano in erup- tion, the terrible effects of which were felt afar. When the Roman Empire crumbling to pieces was threatened westwards by the barbarians of Germanic race, — Teutonic. Gothic, or Scandinavian, — these, pressed in their turn l)y the wild hordes from Asia, like a rolling wave invaded the Empire, and crushed in by the new-comers founded as far as Spain more or less flourishing kingdoms at the expense of the domain of the Caesars. Tlie march of the Huns from the heart of Asia is in great part the cause of these migrations of people; menacing the Chinese territory, driv- ing away the Yue-chi, a branch of the Eastern Tartars, who, after several halts of which we shall speak further on, carved for themselves an empire on the banks of the Indus at the cost of the occupiers of the valley of this river. 124 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA The invading Huns, like a huge wave, gained gradually on from horde to horde, from tribe to tribe, from people to people, till they reached Europe, which, when struck by the Scourge of God, could not discern whence the blow was first dealt. During the course of the fifth century, the Huns under Attila had not only subdued all the Tartar nations of Cen- tral Asia, but had also brought under the yoke the whole of the German tribes between the Volga and the Rhine. The defeat of the great chief by the allied armies of the Franks, the Visigoths, and the Romans at the battle of the Catalaunic Fields (451), his death two years later, stopped the tide of the Eastern invaders ; as the victory of Charles Martel at Poitiers (732), three centuries later, set bounds to the throng of Arabs, who, after having torn the north of Africa from the Roman Empire, had crossed the sea, destroying the power of the Visigoths, who, after a long migratory period throughout Europe, had apparently found a permanent home in the Iberian Peninsula. The invasion of the barbarians, who flocked together to sliare the spoils of the agonizing Roman Empire in the fifth century, will continue later on with the Mongol raids and till 1453, the year of the capture of Constantinople by the Turkish Osmanlis, which we may consider to mark the climax of the Asiatic encroachments. We shall see the counterpart of these great movements when the Western nations, after doubling the Cape of Good Hope, shall resume the route of India in the course of the sixteenth century. Buddhism, the doctrine of the disciples of Shakyamuni, has no doubt been one of the principal means of facilitating the intercourse of the nations throughout Asia ; it has been the sun at which the civilization of many have lit their torch ; indeed a writer could say — not without some good HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 125 reason — thit the history of Buddhism is in itself the history of Eastern Asia. The spread of Buddhism and its wider diffusion from India to the remainder of Asia was greatly increased by the support received from some princes and by the peregrinations of its devotees. After the death of Alexander the Great, whose cam- paign against Porus brought India into contact with the great Hellenic civilization, one of the lieutenants of the great conqueror, Seleucus, took as his share of the in- heritance the eastern part of the Empire, but as early as 304 he was obliged to surrender the satrapy of India to a man of low condition called Chandragupta by the Buddh- ists and Sandracottos by the Greeks. Chandragupta was the founder in Magadha of a dynasty of princes ; his grand- son Asoka, surnamed Piyadasi (died 240 b. c), in estab- lishing a board of foreign missions, DJiarma Mahamatra, gave a considerable extension to Buddhism, not only in his own dominions, but also in the surrounding countries as far as Deccan. On the other hand, the tribes of Eastern Tartars known to the Chinese as the Yue-chi, driven by force to the west by the Hiung-nu (Huns), divided themselves into two branches ; the Little Yue-chi who settled in Tibet, and the Great Yue-chi who advanced to the banks of the Hi, and in 163 B. c. occupied, in the place of the Sakas, the country south of the Tien-shan where Yarkand and Kashgar now stand. Some years later the Yue-chi, pressed in their turn by the Wu-sun, once more drove the Sakas out of Sog- diana, beyond the Oxus, to the country watered by the Cabul River. About 35 b. c. the leader of these Yue-chi subdued Cabul, Kashmir, and Penjal. The conversion to Buddhism of one of his successors, Kanichka, the greatest chief of the Yue-chi or Indo-Scyths, gave a fresh impulse 126 HISTORY OF GREECE. ROME AXD ASIA to the zeal of the followers of Shakyamuni ; from 15 b. c. to 45 A. D. was held in Kashmir the great oecumenic council which finally revised the canon accepted in the north but rejected by the Church of Ceylon. We may be asked at what time Buddhism reached China. We cannot answer with any degree of certainty. Some savants give 221 and 219 b. c. as the date of the intro- duction of Buddhism into China ; there is nothing really authoritative to support their assertion. We may fairly suppose that the warlike expeditions against the Hiung-nu conveyed to China some knowledge of Buddhist worship. The new doctrine was introduced into China by the way of Central Asia ; one thing is certain, that in the year 2 B. c. an embassy was sent by the Chinese Emperor Ngai to the Ta Yue-chi and that its chief got some oral informa- tion about the new religion. Buddhism was recognized ofiBcially in China by the Han Dynasty ; the dynasty of the Later Han (24-220 a. d.) had dominated in Central Asia, and, though weakened for years, their rule had been main- tained with still more force by Wu Ti, of the Western Tsin (265-290). To this period (269) belong the docu- ments, so interesting for the administration as well as for the religion of this region, discovered during recent years by Dr. M. A. Stein, of the Indian Educational Service, at Uzun Tati, between Khotan and Niya, in the desert of Takkla Makkan, explored by Sven Hedin. Of that time also are the documents dug from the sand-buried town of ,,Lau-lan near the Lob-nor, by Sven Hedin himself. The * Hindu civilization which borders on the desert of Gobi, from Khotan to the Lob-nor, to Hami and to Turfan, vanished rapidly after Wu Ti ; under the great T'ang Dynasty, during the second half of the eighth century, the Tibetans threatened the authority of llie Chinese in the country of the Four Garrisons (Kucha, Khotan, Kara- HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 127 shahr, and Kashgar), namely. Eastern Turkestan. From 791 onwards the Tibetans, masters of Turfan and the sur- rounding countries, had completely ousted the Chinese, whose mandarins had been recalled in 784 by the Imperial Government on account of the hopeless situation in the region. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, eager to get the good word from the source itself, were drawn along the road of High Asia to the valley of the Sacred Ganges in quest of the books giving the Key to the Holy Doctrine; since the fourth century large bodies of pilgrims, while accom- plishing their pious journey, have done at the same time considerable geographical work: Hiuen Tsang, to name the most famous among them, not only takes a place in China with the most revered personages of his church, but stands in the foremost ranks of the great Asiatic travelers, by the side of the illustrious Venetian Marco Polo. How- ever, it was not until 1410, under the Aling Dynasty, that the Chinese obtained at last possession of the full canon of Buddhist Books which serves to millions of adherents in the Far East as a guide for their conduct. From Central Asia, Buddhism spread to China; from China, as early as 372, it entered Korea, and thence in 552 passed on to Japan. In the mean time it had been introduced in 407 to Tibet, where after being severely persecuted, it has achieved its greatest triumphs, the King of Tibet, Srongtsan Gampo, hnving been converted to the new faith by his Chinese and Nepalese wives (640). With its doctrine Buddhism carried along everywhere this subtle art which had felt the influence of the ancient Greeks, brought to the banks of the Indus by the companions of Alexander the Great. From the fourth to the eleventh century, that is to say, between the beginning of the in- roads of the Indo-Scyths and the Mohammedan Conquest 128 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA of India, during the Buddhist ^Middle Ages, the Graeco- Buddhist art was in a highly flourishing state and its influence spread to the Far East. However, in paying a just tribute to this delicate and charming art which played so important a part in the artistic development of the Far East, it would be unfair not to mention that the Chinese, previously to its intro- duction in their empire, had a national art, not despicable in the least degree — witness this fourth century picture of Ku K'ai-che, described by Chinese historians, happily dis- covered and rescued at Pe-king during the events of 1900, and now kept safely in the British Museum, forever we hope.^ Buddhism, now one of the three state religions in China, after suffering persecutions in Japan from the hands of Nobunaga in the course of the sixteenth century, somewhat somnolent for many years, is at present in a period of magnificent renaissance in the Empire of the Rising Sun, where the labors of Bunyiu Nanjio and of Takakusu se- cure for it an important place. Many Japanese scholars, fascinated by the doctrines of evolution, think these are to be found in Buddhism. Christianity spread at first in Central Asia under the form of Manicheism and of Nestorianism ; only recently the Mo-ni, lost among the numerous religious sects men- tioned by Chinese historians, have been with some degree of certainty identified with the disciples of Manichee, who played but a small part compared with that of the Nes- torians arrived in China in the seventh century, as the cele- brated inscription of 781 discovered in 1625 at Si-ngan-fu, capital of the Shen-si Province, testifies. Under the Mon- gol Dynasty of Chinguiz Khan, in the course of the thir- teenth century, Nestorians through Tangut and Central * Of. Burlington Magazine, January, 1904 ; T'oung-pas, 1904. HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 129 Asia, from Khanbaliq (Pe-king) to Bagdad, held an un- broken line of archbishops and bishops; the innumerable stones which cover their graves, especially in the province of Samiriethie, bear witness to the number and importance of these Nestorians. From the time of St. Louis and the meeting of a Council at Lyons, we trace the great progress of the Missions of the Roman Church. The Catholic world of Central and Western Europe was full of zeal for the propagation of the Gospel in Asia, where the somewhat mythical Christian prince known under the name of Prester John lived, and cherished also the hope to oppose invading Islam with a barrier of Mongol tribes. Hence the missions of the Fran- ciscan brother John of Piano Carpini, sent in 1245 by Pope Innocent IV to the camps of Batu and of Cuyuk Khan, and of the Dominican monk William of Rubruk, dispatched by the King of France, St. Louis, in 1253, to the court of the Great Khan Mangu at Karakorum, whose journeys have been edited with so much skill and care for thv. Hakluyt Society by our President, the Hon. William W. Rockhill. Missionaries were dispatched to Khanbaliq (Pe-king), to the Fu-Kien province, to Central Asia, and bishoprics were created at Khanbaliq, at Zaitun, and at Ili-baliq. All these missions disappeared in the course of the fourteenth century, either destroyed in Central Asia by the influx of Mohammedanism or on account of the accession of the Ming Dynasty to the throne of China in 1368. Missionaries returned to China only in 1579, but the evangelization in this country was in truth the work of the Jesuit Fathers and especially of the celebrated Matteo Ricci, who died at Pe-king in 1610. Christianity, which was very flourishing in the seventeenth century, soon declined, owing to the petty quarrels between religious orders, and the bull 130 HISTORY OF GREECE. ROME AND ASIA of Benedict XIV, B.v quo si)igulari, dealt to the missions a death-blow in 1742, as it proscribed the liberal doctrines advocated by the Jesuits in the worship paid by the natives to Confucius and to their ancestors. Protestant missions in China are of a far more recent origin ; they do not go back further than the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the famous Dr. Robert Mor- rison, author of a great Chinese Dictionary, sent by the London Missionary Society, arrived at Canton in 1807. The number of missionaries is now very great, and many of them are American. I may recall among them the names of two distinguished sinologues : Elijah Coleman Bridgman, of Connecticut, and Samuel Wells Williams, of New York, who was se\'eral times charge d'affaires of the United States at Pe-king. In spite of the zeal, the activity, and the devotion dis- played by both Catholic and Protestant missionaries, we cannot say that their success in China has been considerable or their action deep. The Chinaman is not hostile to Chris- tianity; he is indifferent; he finds in the moral system of his great sage, Confucius, the precepts which guide him in private and public life; he takes in the doctrines of Buddha, the practices of Taoism, the superstitions of Feng-shui, all that is necessary to him in the question of religion. Chris- tianity is still for the Chinaman a foreign religion, the superiority of which has not been made so clear to his eyes as to induce him to adopt it as a matter of course; and though the religion of Christ met with almost unrestricted success among the pagan nations forming the old Roman Empire, or amid the wild tribes of modern Africa, Oceania, and America, it has entirely failed with the Far Eastern peoples, indifferent or atheist. If I dared say what. I think, I should add that the destruction of Chinese society as it exists at present could alone secure the triumph of Chris- HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 131 tianity, and the literati understand this so well that they, and not the people, are hostile to its spread. Though the number of the followers of Islam in China be far inferior to that of the Buddhists, the disciples of Mohammed have nevertheless played a considerable part in the Middle Kingdom. The Arabs called Ta-zi were known to the Chinese, who mention them in the annals of the T'angDynasty (618-907), through Persia, the name of which appears for the first time in the Chinese annals (461) in connection with an embassy sent to the court of the Wei sovereigns. During the eighth century the Bagdad Abbassides and their celebrated Khalif Harun-ar-Rashid joined with the Uigurs and the Chinese against the Tibetans, their common enemy. A fact inter- esting to note, is the presence of Ta-zi in the kingdom of Nan-Chao, a part of the actual Yun-nan Province, as early as 801. The Arabs built at Canton a large mosque, which was burnt down in 758. In the course of the following century, in 875, the Mohammedans transferred their business from Canton to the Malay Peninsula, at Kalah, which inherited the commercial importance of Ceylon in the sixth century. Western visitors at the court of the Mongol Khans mention a number of high Mussulman dignitaries. We shall see that in the eighteenth century K'ien-lung annexed to his empire the T'ien-Shan, part of the share of Jagatai in the inheri- tance of his father, Chinguiz Khan. Without going into the particulars of the rebellions which devastated Central Asia, we shall recall that in 1864, a soldier of fortune, Yakub, captured Kashgar and the other towns south of the T'ien-Shan, thus creating a Mohammedan power in North- western China between the possession newly acquired by the Russians after the storming of Tashkant (June 27, 1865) and the Anglo-Indian Empire. Far some time. 132 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA Yakub was the undisputed and redoubtable sovereign of a real empire, with Yarkand as a capital. England dispatched to Yakub special missions with Sir Douglas Forsyth at their head in 1870 and in 1873; in 1872 the Russian staff-colonel Baron Kaulbars, signed a treaty of commerce with the jMohammedan potentate. Yakub's rule was ephemeral and ended with him when he died on the 29th of May, 1877; in fact, the Chinese general Tso Tsung-tang had subdued a great part of his territory, the conquest of which he com- pleted after the death of the Ameer. Another outburst of the Mohammedans, caused by a quarrel between miners of different creeds and conflicting interests, took place about 1855 in Southwestern China, in the Yun-nan Province, and it led to the creation of a sul- tanate at Ta-li, which lasted till the capture of this strong- hold by the Chinese Imperial troops on the 15th of January, 1873. China, which is the main subject treated of in this general view, was in fact isolated only in the ancient times of her history, when her territory, watered by the Yellow River, hardly extended beyond the right bank of the Yang-tse Kiang. From the fourteenth century the land route to China was closed, and the foreigners who arrived by sea at the beginning of the sixteenth could at Canton only hold any intercourse with the Chinese, who got their scanty in- formation about distant lands from the Canton merchants and the missionaries submerged in the enormous mass of the empire. The Cossacks who came from the north in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries added little or rather nothing to this knowledge. It seems paradoxical, but it is nevertheless exact to say that China was opened to Western civilization and influence by the British gun. In the Middle Ages, China had the benefit of some extraneous ideas through Buddhism imported from India and through the HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 133 Mongols who served as a link between Europe and Asia. China herself broke her own bounds; like the Persian and Arab merchants visiting her ports, her own traders pene- trated to the farthest extremity of the Persian Gulf. At different times she held Annam in bondage; she tried to conquer Burmah and Japan, but failed; her influence was all-powerful in Korea, and she carried on her explorations to the Islands of Sunda, which soon became one of the fav- orite spots of her emigration. With the Chinese Dynasty of the Ming, which replaced in 1368 the Mongol rule in the Middle Kingdom, China assumes the definite form under which she is known hence- forward to the foreigner. The Manchu Conquest in 1644 brings a fresh element into the country, but the new-comers are soon absorbed ; they add to the Chinese E^npire the land from which they come and which constitutes to-day the northeast region of the Empire, the actual theatre of the struggle between Russia and Japan. With the annexation of the T'ien-Shan by the Emperor K'ien-lung in 1759 and the seizure by this prince of the temporal government of Tibet, the Chinese Empire reached the boundaries which it has retained until recent years. It is not speaking with disparagment or injustice to say that the Emperors K'ang-hi and K'ien-lung in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were in every respect equal or even superior to most of the contemporary princes. It is hardly possible to recognize as the heirs of these great men sover- eigns like Kia-K'ing, Tao-Kwang, and especially the stupid and cruel Hien-Fung (died 1861). With the exception of the creation of a Great Council and the superposition of Manchu dignitaries upon Chinese func- tionaries, the Chinese administration stands unchanged, and the moral precepts of Confucius continue to guide the con- duct of all the Chinese from the lowest of the people up to 134 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA the Son of Heaven. The era of inventions is closed, the fine literary productions of the T'ang period, and the great philosophical \vorks of the Sung Dynasty do not find any equivalent during the next centuries. China did not see, and will not see anything; her glance did not extend beyond the seas, nor even beyond her Great Wall; she shut herself up, and living, so to speak, on her own stock, having at an early hour reached a high state of civilization, she stopped in her development. In some manner she became ''crystal- lized," to use Stendhal's expression, and during this opera- tion other nations have grown, have surpassed her, have interfered with her peaceful existence, thus awakening her in her sleep, compelling her to abandon her voluntary isola- tion and to accept a promiscuity which is particularly dis- tasteful and odious to her. The decline of China coincides with the efforts of the Western Powers to break her doors open. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, with the exception of a few Catholic missionaries retained as savants at the court of Pe-king or hidden in the provinces, where they led a pre- carious existence, foreigners were lodged in a quarter of the single port of Canton without the right of moving freely about the city ; moreover, they could only stay at the place the time strictly necessary to the settlement of their affairs, that is to say, during a pretty short portion of the year; afterwards they had to return to the Portugese Colony of Macao, where lived their families, who were not allowed to accompany the cargoes to the Chinese port. Business was not conducted freely with the natives, but through the medium of privileged merchants, called hong merchants, whose monopoly was finally abolished by the fifth article of the treaty signed at Nanking by England August 20, 1842. Wanton vexations were inflicted upon foreigners; it was forbidden to the natives to teach their language to any HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 135 "Western Devil" ( Yang-kvvei-tse) ; the lex talionis, man for man, was applied with all its cruelty and injustice. This state of things lasted till the Opium War, which gave England the means of opening China more widely to the foreign trade and of making the way for the introduc- tion of Western ideas, without abating, however, the arro- gant pretensions of the mandarins. In the course of the sixteenth century began the double march toward China, by the north and the south, by land and by sea, which brought into contact the nations of the Occident and those of the Far East. Ermak's Cossacks were the pioneers of the northern route, Vasco da Gama's sailors and Albuquerque's soldiers were the pilots and the conquerors of the southern route. To the Portuguese we owe the discovery, or more exactly the reopening, of the road of Asia in modern times. The cape discovered by Bartholomew Diaz in 1485, doubled by Vasco da Gama in 1497, was the great port of call from Europe to Asia, until the ancient way of Egypt was re- sumed during the nineteenth century. Masters of the In- dian Ocean, the capture of Malacca in 1511, their first voy- age to Canton in 1514, a wreck in 1542 at Tanegashima, in the Japanese Archipelago, gave to the Portuguese the pos- session of an immense empire and the control of an enor- mous trade which they were not able to keep. The annexa- tion of Portugal to Spain, "The Sixty Years' Captivity," under Philip the Second, was as harmful to the first, drawn by its conqueror into a struggle fatal for her prosperity, as was to the Dutch colonies the absorption of Holland by Napoleon I. The Spaniards settled in the Philippine Islands: the Dutch, with the enterprising Cornelius Houtman, landed in 1596 at Bantam, created the short-lived colony of Formosa, and a lasting empire in the Sunda Islands, where in 1619 136 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA they laid the foundations of the town of Batavia, on the ruins of the old native port of Jacatra. However, one may say that England really opened East- ern Asia to foreign influence, at least by sea, from the day in 1634 when the gun of Captain Weddell thundered for the first time in the Canton River. It was with the accompani- ment of British powder, that during two centuries the coun- tries of the Far East carried on trade with the Western merchants. It was on sea, and of course by the south, that England fought for the supremacy in Asia. A terrible struggle in India against the French, where Clive and Hastings got the benefit of the labors and exer- tions of Frangois Martin, Dumas, Dupleix, and others, three wars against the Mahrats, the conquest of the Punjab, the crushing of the great rebellion of 1858, the suppression of the Empire of the Great Mogul, have secured to Great Britain the possession of the Indies, threatened only as of yore by the northwestern invaders. Three lucky campaigns have given Burmah to England, already master of the greater part of the Malay Peninsula. The treaty signed by Great Britain at Nanking in August. 1842, broke up the Chinese barrier; the various Powers followed in emulation the example of England ; the United States, France, Belgium, Sweden and Norway, by turn signed treaties or conventions with the Son of Heaven. At that time England was truly without a rival in the Far East, but was not far-sighted enough; the pledge she took at Hong Kong, important as it was, was but a small one with regard to the hopes of the future. England gave back to the Chinese the Chusan Islands, which had been in her hands, as the French returned the Pescadores after the set- tlement of the Tonquin question ; of course, loyal and honest acts, but also acts of improvident politics. To-day England has lost the unique situation she held HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 137 sixty years ago. In all the peoples of the world, she has found eager competitors anxious to share with her the prey of which for a long time she was alone covetous, alone cap- able of making the necessary effort to grasp it firmly. France, which had formerly but a moral interest in the Far East, that of the Catholic missions, has now a solid ground of action, as a consequence of the conquest she made of the oriental part of Indo-China, while England subdued the western coast of this peninsula. The colonization or the conquest by European nations tends to diminish, tO' restrict, and especially to modify in Indo-China the effect of the pacific or military invasions of Hindus and of the Sons of Han. The struggle in Indo- China is limited to-day to two champions ; the Chinese and the foreigner, wherever he comes from — England, France, or even Japan. The native, capable of slight or passive resistance only, will have in the scale but the weight of his master, w^ho may not be of his own choice. However, the two facts dominating the political history of the Far East during the last fifty years are the spread of the Russian powder through Asia on the one hand, and the revolution and the transformation of the Japanese Empire on the other. During the reign of Ivan IV, in the middle of the six- teenth century, to the east of the Ural Mountains began this tremendous march of the Russians which drove them be- yond the sea, since the authority of the Tsar was formerly extended to this side of the Straits of Behring; indeed, it was but in 1867 that the Russian possessions in America, Alaska, were acquired by the United States. The unifica- tion of the states of Great Russia, the conquest of the Tartar Kingdoms of Kazan (1552) and of Astrakhan (1554), removed the boundaries of Russia to the east ; the Russian advance to the Baltic had been stopped by the victories of 138 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA Stephen Bathory; the East only was left open to their enterprise. In 1558 a certain Gregori Strogonov obtained from the Tsar the cession of the wild islands on the Kama River. With some companions he settled in that region, created colonies, and some of the hardy fellows went as far as the Ural Mountains. An adventurous Cossack of the Don, Ermak Timofeevitch, whose services had been secured by Strogonov, crossed the Ural Mountains at the head of eight hundred and fifty plucky men, and advanced as far as the Irtysh and Ob rivers, on the way subduing the Tartar princes. Ermak was the real conqueror of Western Siberia, but if he had the luck and the glory of adding a new kingdom to the states of the prince who has been sur- named the Terrible, to his immediate successors was due the foundation of the first towai in the territory snatched from the Tartars, for Ermak was drowned in the Irtysh in 1584, and Tobolsk dates only from 1587. The effort of the Russians was then directed to the north of Siberia: they did not meet with any resistance until they reached the Lena River; in 1632 they built the fort of Yakutsk oii the banks of this river, and pushed their explorations on to the sea of Okhotsk. In 1636 tidings of the Amoor River were for the first time heard from Cossacks of Tomsk, who had made raids to the south. Vasili Poyarkov (1643-46) is the first Russian who navi- gated the Amoor from its junction with the Zeia to its mouth. In 1643-51, Khabarov led an expedition in the course of which he built on the banks of the river several forts, Albasine among them. In 1654, Stepanov for the first time ascended the Sungari, where he met the Chinese, who compelled him to trace his way back to the Amoor. In spite of all their exertions, after two sieges of Albasine by the Chinese, the Russians were obliged on the 27th of HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 139 August, 1689, to sign at Nerchinsk a treaty by which they were driven out of the basin of the Amoor. The Russians, bound to carry their efforts to the north, subdued Kamchatka. What is perhaps most remarkable in the history of the relations of the two great Asiatic empires is the tenacity of the Muscovite grappling with the cunning of the Chinese, and the comparison between the starting- point of these relations, the Russia of Michael and Alexis and the China of K'ang-hi, and their culminating-point in 1860, when these very nations shall have passed, one through the iron hands of Peter the Great and become the Russia of Alexander II, and the other under the backward government of Kia-K'ing and Tao-kwang and become the China of their feeble successor Hien-Fung. Only on the 18th of May, 1854, did the Governor-General Muraviev navigate again the waters of the Amoor River; on the 16th of May, 1858, he signed at Aigun a treaty which made the Amoor until its junction with the Usuri the boundary be- tween the Russian and Chinese Empires, the territory be- tween the Usuri and the sea remaining in the joint posses- sion of the two Powers, but after the Pe-king Convention (2-14 November, 1860) this land was abandoned to Russia and the Usuri became the boundary. In the meantime, the treaty signed at T'ien-tsin by Admiral Euthymus Putiatin (1-13 June, 1858) secured for Russia all the advantages gained by France and England after the occu- pation of Canton and the capture of the Taku forts. The second Russian move had Central Asia as its aim ; it was the result of the foundation of the town of Oren- burg, the exploration of the Syr-Daria by Batiakov, the building of Kazalinsk (1848) near the mouth of this river; the unsuccessful effort of General Perovsky (1839) turned the enterprise of the Russians to the Khanate of Khokand ; the storming of Tashkend by Colonel Chernaiev on the 27th 140 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA of June, 18G5, was the crowning point of the conquest of Turkestan by the Russians, The road to the T'ien-Shan had already been opened to the Russians by the treaty signed at Kulja (July 25-August 8, 1851) by Colonel Kovalevsky, which, however, was known only ten years later (28 Feb- ruary-11 March 1861). While Yakub Bey had founded, as already seen, a Mo- hammedan Empire in the T'ien-Shan Nan Lu, the Russians took possession of the Hi Territory on the 4th of July, 1871. The retrocession of this territory to China after the death of the Attalik Ghazi was the cause of long and difficult ne- gotiations between Russia and China, which ended with the treaties of Livadia (October, 1879) and of St. Petersburg (February 12-24, 1881). Russia restored the lands which she detained illegitimately, keeping, however, a small por- tion, not the least valuable of the lot. The third Russian move was aimed at the countries be- yond the Caspian Sea, and was the result of the conquest of the Crimea by Potemkin in the name of the great Catherine, and of the treaty of Kutschuk Quainardji (1774), which gave to the Russians the free navigation of the Black Sea. Under the reign of Nicholas I, Putiatin established a per- manent maritime station on the Island of Akurade in the Gulf of Astrabad, and a line of ships on the Caspian Sea, securing from the Persian Government facilities for Russian fishermen and traders on the southern coast of that sea. At last, in 1860, Russia took a definite position on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea in settling at Krasnovodsk. Later on the break-up of the Turkish barrier of Geok-tepe by Skobelev, the occupation of the Oasis of Merv by Alik- hanov, the capture of Samarkand, made of the Transcaspian country a Russian possession, rendered Russian influence paramount in the north of Persia, and threatened Herat and the route of Indian. The railway which the ingenuity and HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 141 tenacity of Annenkov threw across the burning desert, united the Caspian Sea to Bokhara and Samarkand, cross- ing the Oxus at Charjui. The continuation of this railway from Samarkand to Tashkend and the Siberian line was to place the whole of Asia beyond the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea in the hands of the Russians. It seems as if nothing could put a stop to this expansion ; on the contrary, the bold and rapid construction of a railway across the frozen steppes of Siberia was to unite Russia directly with the Far East by an unbroken chain ; the ports of Manchuria and Korea, watered by the seas of China and Japan, being considered the termini of the long line. Work on the western part of the Siberian Railway began on July 7, 1892. Its extension beyond the Baikal Lake was to take it on the one hand to Vladivostock at the eastern extremity of the Russian possessions in Asia, and on the other to Port Arthur in the south of the Liao-tung Penin- sula. It was fair to think that the point where the two lines met, in the very heart of Manchuria, should become a most important centre of industry and population; indeed, this has been realized, and in a few years, in the place of a barren spot, the considerable town of Kharbin (Harbin) has been built in the twinkling of an eye, so to speak. Russia weighs with its enormous mass on the Asiatic Continent like a gigantic polyp, whose head and body press on Siberia and Central Asia, with tentacles stretching toward Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, Afghanistan. Persia, Asia Minor, ready to close them on the prey which she encircles, and which is disputed to her by other nations anxious to take their share of the plunder, thus creating a permanent state of uneasiness throughout the Continent. While Russia was making this enormous extension in the northwest of Asia, Japan was pursuing the series of reforms which were to secure for her a very special position in the 142 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA concert of the nations of the world. Previous to the revo- hition of ISGS, which ahered entirely the state of things in Japan, a real duality in the government existed in this country; while the Tenno, or Mikado, the only Emperor, reigned nominally at Kiota, the power was held in fact by the Shogun, a sort of Mayor of the Palace, residing at Yedo. From lyeyas, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, who gave to feodality the definitive constitution which lasted to our days, the power remained in his house, that of Tokugawa. The foreigners who landed in Japan in the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth cen- tury — Portuguese and English — were expelled in 1G37, and by the end of 1639 the Dutch and the Chinese were the only outsiders allowed to live on the islet of Deshima, in the Bay of Nagasaki, in order to supply the Japanese with the goods they required. This state of things, notwithstanding the attempts vainly made by Great Britain and Russia during the first years of the nineteenth century, was to last until the arrival of the American Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, who in July, 1853, anchored at Uraga at the entrance of the Bay of Yedo, and who signed on March 31, 1854, a Kanagawa, the first treaty concluded between Japan and a foreign power. Was the revolution of 1868 for Japan but one of the numerous crises which troubled its already long and not too serene existence ? Was it a mere accident for that country, progressing by jumps and bounds and not by evolution? or was it the starting-point of a civilization copied from that of Europe? Has she covered only the old culture of Yamato with a superficial varnish? Has she completely destroyed it to replace it by a new one ? I greatly doubt it, or rather I do not believe it, as it cannot be that in some fifty years a radical transformation can reach the deeper layers of the population. The Japanese obey two motives in their HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 143 warlike undertakings; one is dictated by a tradition of war, by an unsurpassed bravery of which they have given un- deniable proofs of centuries; the other by reasons of a purely economic order. Japan is at heart a warlike nation ; in every man of Nippon, the soul of a saiiuirai is asleep. No, a people cannot be modified in a few years. Japan has behind her a past of struggles, heroism, and art, with very little original literature. Endowed with the genius of application more than with that of invention, with no great commercial aptitude, a hero or a pirate according to circumstances, full of imprczm, as his tradition borrowed from strangers does not trace to him a firm line of conduct, the Japanese lives on reminiscences and is, above all, an imitator; he is not gifted with imagination; an artist and a warrior, he is not a philosopher. Does he give us now more than the appearance of a Western civilization? I hope so for the sake of Japan herself, as, if it were other- wise, we should have but a fragile edifice erected by a super- ficial as well as a versatile people. What an interesting and curious sight it offers to the gaze of the observer ! In the midst of the peoples which from the West and the East rush to the assault of the Middle Kingdom, Japan stands as a young and vigorous power which, in 1868, by a revolution without a parallel in the history of mankind, transformed herself from a nation most hostile to foreign intrusion to one of the most progressive of the globe. We may seek in great part the solution of the Asiatic problem in the future of Japan, which acts a part in no way inferior to that of the Westerners, and which finds itself to be the stumbling-block to the ambitious designs of the foreign poweis. Will Japan be at the head of the invaders come from near and far, as at Pe-king in 1900 ? Will she be, on the contrary, having galvanized the old man, the champion of the Asiatic World to repel the common enemy ? 144 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA It is fair to believe, in reviewing the history of the past and in studying the various aspects of present politics, that Japan would prefer the second of these parts, more in ac- cordance with her traditions and her aspirations. It is evident that two nations in full progress, operating in the same field of action, would fatally meet some day. If Russia needs a port free from ice in the Eastern Sea, Japan has a no less imperious necessity of finding room for its population in excess. From five thousand four hundred and forty-three in 1880, the number of the Japanese living out of their country increased in 1902 to one hundred and thirty-nine thousand five hundred fifty-three, scattered chiefly between Korea, Canada, the United States, the Hawaiian Islands, etc. The Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 27, 1895), signed after a glorious war with China, had given to Japan the southern portion of Manchuria, including Port Arthur. The triumph of the Emperor of the Rising Sun made of an Asiatic potentate like the Mikado a sovereign whose voice was heard in the whole of the world ; from a local power, Japan took rank among the great powers of the globe. In the conquest of Manchuria, Germany, France, and Russia perceived a danger to European influence in the Far East, and by a convention on November 8, 1895, obtained the retrocession of Liao-tung by Japan to China. It was no doubt a severe wound to the amour propre of the victor. In the mean time Russia continued to increase her means of action and to strengthen her position in the Far East by the creation at the end of 1895 of the Russo-Chinese Bank, by conventions regarding the Manchurian Railway, and by the signature in 1896 at St. Petersburg by the Viceroy Li Hung-chang of a treaty still secret. After the masscre of two of her missionaries, Germany having taken possession of Kiao-chow on November 14, HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 145 1897, Russia shortly after obtained the cession by lease o£ Port Arthur (December, 1897). England, in gaining a set- tlement at W'ei-Hai-Wei and France at Kwang-chovv-Wan, seemed to begin the partition of the Chinese Empire. At one moment the old Manchu world seemed to awaken to the danger; at one moment the Emperor Kwang-siu had no doubt the real instinct of the situation. He had shown dignity and bravery when he refused to fly to the west, as was suggested to him by his timorous ministers at the time the Japanese threatened his capital in 1895. The demands of the foreigners who appeared to seek the dismemberment of the Empire and threatened to make a new Poland of China, frightened the Manchu monarch, who felt strongly — in so far as his weakened health and a superior will allowed — the wish to transform his country. It was but a flash of lightning in a darkened horizon. In order to succeed, it would have been necessary for Kwang- siu to have at his command, with his handful of bold but busy-body reformers, a solid army, capable of preventing a reaction. But this army was lacking to the Chinese Em- peror, who made the generous but abortive attempt to in- troduce reforms in which he lost at once the power and the appearance of energy which he had for a brief period displayed. On June 10, 1898, Kwang-siu began the series of re- forms, the ephemeral course of which was stopped on Sep- tember 30 of the same year by the Empress Dowager, the reactionary party, with her, retaking the power. What followed, the rebellion of the Boxers; the siege of the foreign Legations at Pe-king, in 1900, is fresh in the mem- ory of all. It is but just to note, as the Japanese Prime Minister, Count Katsura, remarked quite recently, that during all these events Japan has filled her duty as a civilized nation by the side of the Western Powers. 146 HISTORY OF GREECE. ROME AND ASIA The causes of the present gigantic struggle appear forc- ibly to every one's eyes, but to say the least, the place to dis- cuss them is not in a scientific congress; however, it is not forbidden to foresee some of its results and the effects these may have on the general politics of the universe. If Japan is in our days the only nation capable of waging a war for the sake of heroism, a rare virtue in our matter-of-fact societies, it is nevertheless true that in the present struggle economic interests were the main motives ; as we have said already, Japan has neither the room nor the food with which to supply the surplus of her population ; she is compelled to look beyond her own boundaries for the necessaries of com- mon life. Internal motives also dictate pardy her conduct. The extension of nations is in nearly every case directed according to natural though at times cruel laws ; often these are in contradiction to the laws of civilization; so we see, in spite of treaties, in spite of associations for peace, in spite of leagues for promoting fraternity between nations, in spite of arbitration committees or tribunals, war breaks out suddenly, irresistibly, when vital economic interests are at stake. Nations go back to the state of primitive man, and the right of the stronger becomes the rule. It must not be forgotten that if Japan needs an extension of territory for her excess population, she has the need scarcely less important of keeping up her communication witn the various nations among which she desires to hold her rank. The construction of the Siberian Railway, in shortening the time of the journey from Europe to Asia, has also practically shortened the distances. Until the problem- atic project of building a railway to unite the Mediterranean Sea to the Far East by the way of Persia and India shall be carried out, and whatever be the result of the present war, Russia will hold the highway of intercommunication be- tween Europe and Asia; less than any other nation can HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 147 Japan afford to give up the use of this route, and being tlius dependent upon the Russians cannot keep in a state of per- petual hostility with them. During a long time, we had in Europe the bad habit of studying separately the various political problems and of seeing only particular cases in what were really but the secondary effects from general causes. Nowadays, there is not a single problem of foreign politics which can be treated with indifference. Whatever be the part of the globe where the gun thunders, the repercussion of it is felt in the capitals of the whole world ; special questions be- come questions of general interest, and the effort of diplo- macy to avoid a universal conflagration tends to circum- scribe the struggle between those chiefly concerned ; the task is rendered the more arduous in that the multiple treaties or alliances between nations extend the limits of the debates and thus increase the chances of a general conflict. Europe used to consider Asia, except in her western part, as a domain where events rolled on without any distant effect and having therefore but an interest of mere curiosity. China, Bossuet could pass over in silence, that is to say the third of the total population of the globe, in his Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle, a very poor work by the bye, admired only by those who have not read it. However, during the course of the fifth century the invasion of the barbarians, and in the thirteenth the raids of the jMongols, should have opened the eyes of the most blind of observers. And these considerable events were not the result of for- tuitous causes, but the natural consequence of important events which had happened in the interior of Asia, while our ancestors had not the faintest suspicion of them. Moreover, the great navigators of the sixteenth century unraveled the mystery which shrouded the remote coun- tries and helped to make clear the interest Europe had in 148 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA knowing- them better, and let us say, with frank cynicism, in speculating upon them. The first attempts to create factories, then the conquests at the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth cen- turies, showed that Europe had abandoned her majestic in- difference, and was feeHng the necessity of a pohcy which reached beyond the horizon bounded by her small and greedy continent. At the close of the wars of the First Empire, as soon as peace is signed, we see the Western nations resume the routes to Asia, for a short period neglected. England in India and China, the Dutch in the Spice Islands, France in Indo-China, later on the Russians in Central Asia, then in the basin of the Amoor River, all rush to the conquest of new territories; appetites are sharpened, rivalries created; means of more rapid locomotion shorten distances; a new nation, Japan, is born to civilization, or to what it pleases us to call civilization ; and Central and Eastern Asia, being no more isolated, are dragged into the inharmonious concert of universal politics. The Chinese problem, simple in 1842, when England signed the treaty of Nanking, became more complicated from year to year by the introduction of fresh and powerful interests, following in this the ordinary laws of politics. The arrival of the Russians by the north, the transformation of Japan to a modernized empire, the occupation of Indo- China by France and England, the taking possession of two Oceanic archipelagoes by the United States, the newly born colonial ambitions of Germany, new means of transport with a rapidity which could not be foreseen half a century ago, at last the magnificent prey at stake, made the problem, so simple at first, one of increasing complexity. The Chinese question, which is but one of the aspects of the foreign politics of some nations, such as France, the HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 149 United States, and even England, is vital for Japan, to a lesser degree for Russia, which by a check will only be de- layed in her designs for a more or less protracted period. Political problems are interwoven one with another; Far Eastern problems are connected with Oceanic problems, and among the Powers who are to play a part in the Pacific, we must reckon the young and active British Colony, the Com- monwealth of Australia, which is beginning its international life and will one day be called upon for some considerable deeds. In this rapid survey I can make but a passing allu- sion to the certain effect which the accomplishment of the great work of cutting a canal across the Isthmus of Panama will bring into the relations of the whole world. In fifty years the alterations in the ways of intercommuni- cation have completely changed not only the politics of Asia but also of the rest of the world. China, which, in 1842, had to stand but against Great Britain, in 1858 had to reckon, besides this Power, with France, the United States, and Russia. The most audacious people might hesitate to undertake remote expeditions involving a journey of several months by the Cape Route; the way of Siberia, taken again by the Russians led by Muraviev (1856), was long and difficult; the opening of the Suez Canal (1860), coinciding with improvements to the steam-engine, permitted the estab- lishment of more direct and frequent relations between the peoples of the West and those of the Far East ; finally the completion of the Siberian Railway during recent years, placing Pe-king within three weeks from Paris and London, could not longer allow any European country to remain in- different to the fate of Eastern Asia. We see just the re- verse of what happened in the course of the fifth and thir- teenth centuries when we witnessed the movement, the de- layed ebb tide of a wave rolled from the depths of Asia, which will resume its old course in the near future if we may believe in the predictions of ominous prophets. 150 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA The laws which regulate the existence of peoples are simi- lar to those which govern the lives of individuals. Man is born, lives, dies; nations have their periods of growth, climax, transformation, decline, and disappearance; this disappearance is not nothingness, which is meaningless; it is no more total in a nation than in the individual, as, ac- cording to Lavoisier's celebrated formula, "In nature noth- ing is created, nothing is lost" ; the scattered elements go toward the constitution of new nationalities. The adult age of a nation, that is to say the highest pitch it has reached, is the period when it has completed its com- plete unity for which it struggled during the time of its growth. This period of highest prosperity can last a shorter or longer lapse of time, but all bodies which carry in themselves the germs of their development contain also the elements of their decay, which appear sooner or later ac- cordmg to circumstances. China has known brilliant periods in her history, such as that of the T'ang Dynasty from the seventh to the ninth centuries, a time which the Chinese people still remember gratefully; such as that of the Mongol supremacy in the thirteenth century, when the power of the Great Khans ex- tended from the Chinese Sea to the right banks of the Volga. China has even known a period of splendor under the first sovereigns of the present Manchu Dynasty, the great em- perors, K'ang-hi and K'ien-lung; from the River of the Black Dragon to Indo-China, from the Oriental Sea to the Celestial Mountains and the mysterious capital of the Dalai- lama, the name of the Son of Heaven was feared and re- spected ; then shone upon the Flowery Kingdom an incom- parable eclat ignored by the contemporary Westerners, simi- lar in this respect to the Chinese of to-day who do not know the real force of occidental nations. HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 151 Immobility, as is the case with Cliina, when all the others are progressing, is not stability; it is retrogression; rivals and competitors are advancing without any rest. Woe to- day on the people who in the scramble of nations tries to stop; it is drawn forcibly along, uprooted like the proud tree caried in its mad race by the tumultous Hood. Has the decline of China, which began with the nineteenth century, and had increased from reign to reign, reached now the last period of the crisis? I believe it; but we are witnessing an evolution, not a disappearance. In fact, only the system of government and those who administer it are worn out and corrupt and have served their purpose. The Chinaman has always preserved his sterling qualities; hon- esty, sobriety, inclination to work, love of his family, attach- ment to his home, which are his characteristic traits, have given him vitality, increased his longevity, and constituted his real strength. The Chinese absorb their conqucrer, who disappears in the strong individuality of the vanquished, as a stream, less powerful in appearance, often captures the neighboring watercourse, more important but ill-protected against an enemy of whose existence it is unaware. The warlike Mongol of the Middle Ages has become a peaceful shepherd of flocks, and the fierce Manchu invader of the seventeenth century is now but one of the innumerable func- tionaries who crowd the administrative hierarchy of the Celestial Empire. The evolution of China has hardly com- menced as yet; a few isolated reformers can have no real influence upon so vast an empire. Railroads will be the conqueror of China ; the steam-engine will carry through the whole empire ideas — not French, English, German, nay, nor Japanese — but new general ideas which will give to the Chinese a characteristic individuality. After innovation will this great body remain homo- genous ? 152 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA Homogeneity exists in China by virtue of the centraliza- tion of the administration and the common origin of the mandarins, but the points of view of the country and the customs of the races which inhabit it are exceedingly varied ; its different parts are merely placed in juxtaposition; they are not blended into one uniform mass; they are only united by the artificial tie of government. Strip the Chinese of the queue which adorns the back of his head and suppress the shaving of his skull, made compulsory by the victorious Tartar, and one will see the most varied people throughout the Empire. The Chinese of Canton and the Chinese of Pe-king vary almost more one from the other than the English and the French; the Lolo of Se-tch'uan is as un- like the Chinaman as a Volga Kalmuk is unlike a Baltic German; the rough mountains of Yun-nan have nothing of the pleasing appearance of the hills of Che-Kiang; the plain of China, practically the valley of the Imperial Canal, does not recall in any manner the uneven country of the Upper Yang-tse. What will this evolution be, rendered compulsory by the fall of an obsolete and rotten administration, hastened by the construction of railways, and an obligatory contact with peoples differing in their civilization, in their appearance, in their aspirations ? No one can say. There is no place in China for the immigration of foreign- ers who would not certainly seek their livelihood in the sterile parts of the Empire devastated by famine ; but privi- leged or rather favored by chance, merchants, engineers, soldiers will be able to subsist as in the past. Will they exercise some of the influence hitherto refused to the foreign element? I think so, thanks to the economic revolution worked by railways, which cannot fail to be followed by a social revolution. However democratic the system of Chinese adrninistration may be, — an administration all the HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 153 degrees of which are accessible to the most deserving or the most intriguing, — the Chinese dignitaries are nevertheless a backward caste which prevent all progress. But if this state of things has lasted in China during centuries, if the narrow and abusive interpretation of the precepts of Con- fucius has postponed the introduction of reforms, it is only because the means of intercommunication were too slow and too rare between the various parts of this immense Empire. That great events could take place in certain regions without other provinces having the least knowledge of them; that the very existence of the Empire could have been threatened as it was in 1858 and 1860, without the bulk of the nation having the least inkling of the danger, will surprise only those who are ignorant of China. Things will be changed when a net of rapid highroads shall cross the eighteen prov- inces, and bring them into direct relation with the countries where the outer barbarians have settled. The management of affairs will fall into the hands of those who, more clear- sighted than their elders, shall have foreseen the new state of things; the Star of Confucius will vanish in the steam of the locomotive, and fade in the light of the electric spark. Whether China will remain a territorial unit, which I do not believe, the economic interests of the north and the south, of the east and of the west being too divergent; whether she will keep her autonomy, or be dismembered, or held in bondage by foreign chiefs — the prolific Chinese race will ever remain one of the most important factors in the great struggle for life of races and nations, a struggle for which she is assuredly better prepared than many of those who consider her an easy prey, which they may possibly devour, but certainly will not digest. It is not without some intent that till now I have hardly spoken of the United States, whose guest I am to-day ; last but not least. 154 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME AND ASIA The initiative of the trade of the United States with the Far East is not due, as one might be tempted to believe, to the merchants of the western coast, but to the enterprising and spirited merchants of New England, Boston, New York, Baltimore, whose wooden ships doubled Cape Horn to go to Canton. Eight years after the Declaration of In- dependence, on Sunday, February 22, 1784, for the first time an American ship, The Empress of China, set sail at New York for China ; since then an unbroken line of vessels flying the star-spangled banner has crossed the Pacific Ocean and established a communication between Young America and Old Asia ; but the starting-point has been changed, and it is now from the coast of California that the swift steam- ers which connect the two shores are sent, I remember the time, not yet far off, when the American trade almost equaled that of England, and when at Canton and Shang-hai the "Merchant Princes" of Boston and New York did not yield either in their wealth or their influence to those of London and Liverpool. Looking backward, I cannot but think with gratefulness and not without some melancholy of the happy hours I have spent in the house of Messrs. Russell & Co., whose head, Edward Cunningham of Boston, was the most popular, the most esteemed, and the most justly influential citizen of Shang-hai. The civilizing mission which the United States have taken upon themselves has been extended beyond the already large frontiers of their dominion; the occupation of the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands has created new desires in a com- mercial and industrial nation, turned it into a political power which, in the future destinies of this new Mediterranean called the Pacific Ocean, has the right to claim its share of legitimate influence. May I be permitted at the end of this lecture to express my gratitude to those who did me the honor and gave me HISTORY OF ASIA— GENERAL SURVEY 155 the pleasure of an invitation to come among you, and to crave the indulgence of my hearers, ill as I have i>erformed my task. Citizen of the great Sister Republic, I do not forget that being bom on the banks of the mighty Mississippi, at New- Orleans, the first years of my life were spent under the shelter of the star-spangled banner of the Union; I feel happy to speak before fellow countrymen, regretting the absence of the world-renowned traveler and scholar, my friend, the Hon. William Woodville Rockhill. HISTORICAL DEVHLOPMEXT AND PRESENT CHARACTER OP THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY BY PROFESSOR KARI, GOTTIIART LAMPRECHT [Karl Gottiiart Lampreciit. Professor of History, Director of the Historical Seminary and Historico-geographical Institute, Uni- versity of Leipzig; and Privy Councilor to the Court of Saxony, b. 1856, Jessen, Province of Saxony. University of Gottingen, 1874-76; University of Leipzig, 1876-78; University of Munchen, 1879. A.M. and Ph.D. University of Leipzig; 1-L.D. Columbia University. Candidate of Superior Tutorship Friedrich-Wllhelm Gymnasium, Cologne-on-Rhiue, 1879-80; Frivat-docent and Asso- ciate Professor, University of Bonn, 1881-90; Professor of History, University of Marburg. 1890-91; University of Leipzig, 1891 . Member various scientific and learned societies. Author or Editor of Contributions to the History of French Economical History: German Political Econorny in the Middle Ages; Sketches on the History of the Rhine; History of Germany. 8 vols., and many other works of history and historical method.] History is primarily a socio-psychological science. In the conflict between the old and the new tendencies in his- torical investigation, the main question has to do with social-psychic, as compared and contrasted with individual- psychic factors; or, to speak somewhat generally, the understanding on the one hand of conditions, on the other of heroes, as the motive powers in the course of history. Hence, the new progressive, and therefore aggressive point of view in this struggle is the socio-psychological, and for that reason it may be termed modern. The individual point of view is, on the other hand, the older, one that is based on the championship of a long-contested but now. by means of countless historical works, a well-established position. What is, then, the cause of these differences? Personal preference, or the special endowments of individual in- vestigators? The reaction of feeling against the former exaggerations of the one or the other principle? Assimila- tion to other trends of thought, philosophic or scientific, 157 158 MEDIEVAL HISTORY of the science of history? Nothing of the kind. Rather, we are at the turn of the stream, the parting of the ways in historical science. In order to understand better the process tliat is going on, let us consider the following contrasts. Take first a period in which all men, within a relatively small community, such as we see in the beginnings of a nation, are absolutely of the same psychic equality, so much so that they in action and feeling can be said to stand side by side as examples of the same endowments. Then take another age in which, within a given community of much greater extent, each individual differs in kind from all others, so that — even more than is at present the case — his volitions and sensations differ radically from those of his fellow men. It is clear, then, that we have here the two poles of human activity, whose influences must give different results in any study of the currents of life that we call historical psychic existence, the life embraced within the limits of these poles. In the first case the treatment would yield only a delineation of the life of units; for the treatment of the collective psychic existence would produce as a result only a sum of the already known, — the psychic existence of the individual. In the second case we should indeed take a glance first at the psychic life of the unit, from which it would be seen that it by no means included the character of the life of the many, but rather that the collective psychic life fertilized by the marked deviations of the individual within itself is quite a thing in itself, with its peculiar psychic or socio-psychic activity of the individual is in such a manner subordinate as to be dominated by it for the best and highest ends. One sees, therefore, that the first case of the coexistence of persons psychically quite identical would result in a THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 159 purely individual psychology; the second case of coexist- ence of absolutely differentiated persons would result in a radically socio-psychological historical method of treatment. But the instances just given never occur in perfection. However, the connections formed among them constitute principles in the course of history and hisl(jrical science ; the pole of similarly organized persons appears in the be- ginning of cultural development as the principle of lower culture, while the pole of dissimilar units reveals itself as underlying higher cultures, for the simple reason that the trend of evolution is toward progressive differentiation and intergradation of the human soul. If on the results of the examples cited and deduced in a purely psychological manner are based the main principles of every development of historical treatment from the low- est to the highest, one finds corresponding to them, in the various civilizations of the world, the same course of his- tory, descriptive or scientific. It begins always with the individual-psychological investigation of the past, and ar- rives finally at a markedly social-psychological point of view. In a word, it is the course of events which begins with the heroic poem and ends with the history of civiliza- tion. If we paint the panorama of this historiographic development rather more vividly and minutely, it will be seen that the individuals of the lower stages of civilization have as little consciousness of the conditions that are char- acteristic of them, as of the difference between these con- ditions and those of other stages of civilization. The English, French, Italian, and, in particular, the German poet of the golden age of medievalism who worked over the materials of classic antiquity, transferred them un- consciously to the conditions of his own age. .^neas became a knight, and Dido a fair chatelaine. It was only the beginning of modern times, the closing centuries of 160 MEDIEVAL HISTORY dying medievalism, that brought the dawn of a compre- liension of the differences of various cultural conditions, and therefore in our opinion a quickened sense of the his- torical difference of the periods of civilization in general. Similar observations might be made in the history of ancient people and in the cultural phases of Eastern Asia. Everywhere the beginnings of socio-psychological histor- ical comprehension are coincident with the emancipation of individuality from medieval restraint, in order to enter on the so-called new age with the more rapid process of its own differentiation. But before this stage is reached, centuries have elapsed, and centuries in which history was understood only in the individual-psychologic sense, merely as the product of single distinguished individuals. And correspondingly the forms of historical tradition are purely individual. Almost everywhere there appear two forms which may be taken as typical, — genealogy and the heroic poem. A characteristic beginning! Whence arises its dual nature? In both instances we are concerned with the memory of single persons, particularly of ancestors. But in the one case the barren record is taken from the purely prosaic reality of a natural pedigee, in the other the single individual is selected and his deeds immortalized in poetic form with an exaggerated objectivity. How does this difference arise? We are here face to face with a radical division in the historical point of view, one which occurs in all ages in higher as in lower stages of culture. It can be characterized as the difference between naturalism and idealism. In the first instance reality is followed closely, held fast, copied. To this belong the rapid offhand sketches, the journalism of to-day in so far as it serves as the annalistic medium of news; and, finally, statistics. In the other case there intervenes between the simultaneous THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 161 photographic and phonographic impression of occurrences and their collective reproduction, time, and with time, memory. Memory, with its thousand strange associations, abbreviating, rounding off, and admitting of outer in- fluences and inner prejudices; in a word, memory is the artist that individualizes and remodels its subject. For what else is idealism but the retrospective treatment of a theme into which the personal note enters, — indeed with intention, — whereby the floodgates are opend to the whole intellectual current of personality proper? Hence in higher states of culture, in the case of differentiated individuals, the personal style arises, and with it the personal work of art; while in lower states of culture, with individuals of similar proportions, and from the simultaneous work of the many, the impersonal, the typical time-style will arise, and with it the art work of this particular style. This explains, then, for the beginnings of historical tradition the growth of naturalistic and realistic forms side by side. As a naturalistic form there appears by preference the genealogy; as idealistic, the heroic poem. And with this the roots of the contention of ages are laid bare as to whether an historical work is a work of art or not. It will always be a work of art in so far as, even in naturalistic transmission, at least in higher cultural stages, the influence of personal elements cannot be avoided. And it will be peculiarly a work of art as soon as, in the case of an im- portant theme, the imagination can bring forth a compo- sition by means of idealizing retrospection. So that, when the de lege ferenda is uttered, one can only advise that to every historical work of our time, not only unconsciously but consciously, the character of a work of art should be given. But genealogy and the epic are not the only forms of individual-psychic tradition. Together with them and with 162 MEDIEVAL HISTORY increasing cultural growth and intellectual leisure, others come to the fore. If it be possible to follow the progress of human events not only through the forms of tradition, as required in genealogy and epic poetry, but more in- tensively ]:)y means of the written letter, the chisel, and the stylus, pedigrees and epics will be superseded — if, indeed, they do not disappear at once — by annals and chronicles. And even these forms can be improved upon. In the history of every human community, the inevitable moment comes in which reason, based on increasing ex- perience, attempts independently to classify and control the world of phenomena, in which the logical conclusion begins gradually to yield to induction, and the miraculous to the causal principle; and if, with this, there begins a really scientific mastery of the outward world, then this too takes hold of historical tradition. And the direction it follows is both naturalistic and idealistic. In the first instance tradition is ransacked for new sources ; when found, these are brought to light in a clear- cut literary form. With untiring zeal the whole field is worked over, and a careful consideration of isolated events is entered upon, of which the object is to show each single occurrence to be indisputably genuine; it is then polished up, rubbed clear of its rusty casing, and presented to the world. On the other hand, there is great need for the enormous accumulations of the classified and isolated traditional data produced by the unceasing mills of naturalistic criticism : these data must be turned to account as material for a more general positive structure of history with its divisions and emendations. Of course this is to be done under the direc- tion of an authoritative and constructive mind, and not without the aid of the imagination. How else is a control of the enormous material possible? But the mere mem- THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 163 orizing of details and a linking together of particulars, a handling such as was referred to, is clearly proved to be impossible. It is necessary that we employ some means of mechanical combination of the parts of the huge world of facts which knowledge alone can supply, certain forms of criticism to classify the mass of material and thereby control it. And naturally this constructive criticism must deal in the first place with individuals who may still be considered as the only fundamental psychic motor powers of history. If their deeds, their single achievements, and the collective achievements of single persons, — if these can be regarded as parts of a completed series of facts in official service or in an independent profession, they must be grouped according to a system which does not overlook the universal course of things and which makes the whole only the more intelligible. This is the origin of pragmatics. But the Divide ct impera embraced in the application of the pragmatic principle proves itself to be insufficient in the face of the mass of traditional material, continually increasing in scope as it does. Above those groups which pragmatism has thus formed to facilitate the handling of events, above the whole survey of heroic deeds, incidents of war or diplomatic negotiations, we see appearing by degrees the outlines of a better system of classification of material, a system which groups series of events of entire ages within the domain of whole nations and families of nations ; as, for example, the outlines of certain oft-recur- ring incidents in the history of the Papacy, or the types of similar occurrences in the development of the Prussian monarchy, or the main characteristics of religious move- ments in all respects alike and which are to be detected in the piety of all denominations of Protestantism. It is clearly possible to follow these also in the paths of form- ative criticism far beyond the simple domain of prag- 164 MEDIEVAL HISTORY matism. The common landmarks, too. of historical hap- pening-s, especially when pragmatically grouped, can be massed together on the higher plane. \\'ith this accom- plished, the work of the historian begins at the point where the development of the so-caUed historic theon,- of ideas sets in. The term ** idea " arises from the application of the word to the historic elements common to these masses, so that the idea asserts itself as a form of higher thought integration. .\nd in Western culture, as far as investi- gation permits of a time-limit, it is in its purely historio- graphic beginnings to be first found in the historical works of the last half of the eighteenth centur}-.^ One naturally asks here, had these higher forms of integration from the beginning a closer connection with the naturalistic or ideal- istic conception of histor}*? It is of interest to know that these comparatively abstract forms of intellectual activity had, for purely psychological reasons at first, the closest connection with idealistic historical description. Allied with this is the fact that this activit}% having developed along quite primitive lines to a higher plane, was yet capable of assuming at times a transcendental character. The ideas which were made the basis of the understanding of the greatest historical concatenations by isolation and abstraction of the elements common to them, did not appear as human ideas, but were rather divine powers holding sway behind these events, permeating and determining them, as emanative and associative forms of the absolute working through the fates of men. It was a sort of ideal- istic historical treatment which slowly took shape in Ger- many in the course of the second half of the eighteenth centur}', which then, owing to Schelling. passed over into the great idealistic philosophy of German Romanticism, to ^ Ct. of recent date, Heussi, Church History aid its Writing. Johann Lo- Ttnz TOO Moeheims, Ootba, 1904. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 165 which from the point of view of the profoundest tiicory of hfe Ranke paid homage as long as he hved, and which, starting from all these points of the development, hecame a constituent part of all the higher historical training of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile the strictly epistemological character of the theory of the idea had certainly been recognized, and not least clearly at the beginning of the great discussions of historical methods in the early nineties of the last century, and which have not yet entirely ceased. It can truly be said that to-day, practically no one believes in the tran- scendency of historical ideas, — that is, not fully, nor even in the Ranke sense, — but that, on the other hand, the usefulness of the conceptions contained in them for the grouping of the greater individual-psychic series of events is generally conceded. While the individual-psychological treatment of history has been thus gradually developed to the state of perfection which marks it to-day, it had long had its limits, and, as far as the main principles of historical comprehension are concerned, its substitution in the form of socio-psy- chological treatment had begun and had been proved to be necessary. In the course of the latter part of the seventeenth, but more especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, all the peoples of Western European culture passed through stages in which the most marked psychic differentiations took place in the individual members of these communities. A certain time-spirit dominated all these nations in which the civilization of the new American world had its origin ; it is the spirit which may rightly be called that of subjec- tivity. Not uniformity, but variety of the subjective per- fection of the individual, is the ideal of to-day. And the collective culture of our time rests on vast working cor- 166 MEDIEVAL HISTORY porations of individuals who are no less vastly differen- tiated each in themselves. For us it is a well-known state of affairs, this product of nervous acti\ity which has characterized the last six or seven generations, and it is superfluous to describe it in detail. But it would not be inappropriate to trace once and for all, logically and clearly, the consequences of these changes as well for the character of historical science of the present as for that of the immediate future. The result is that for such a time as this only that kind of historical comprehension is adequate which, side by side with the indiA'idual-psychological, admits also the socio-psychological treatment, the consideration of the evolution of the collective psychic products of human com- munities — a treatment which does not merely allude oc- casionally to this admission, but maintains consistently and unconditionally, that for every case of historical investiga- tion the socio-psychological forces are the stronger, and therefore those that properly determine the course of things ; that, consequently, they include the operation of the individual-psychic forces. Granted that this is the universal formulation of the now necessary point of view as it is carried out to-day not only in the field of historio- graphy (in some instances with a clear insight into its con- sequences), but as seen in the new sciences and new methods which it has made to bear fruit, for example, sociology, or prehistoric excavations ; yet it would be a mistake to assume that the revolution in this direction took place suddenly or that it has even now reached its completion. Rather has it gone forward slowly in the course of at least a century and a half, if we reckon according to events in Germany. And the resulting views have been shown, though in steady conflict with the older individual-psychic opinions, to be invincible in spite of the marks of imma- THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 167 turity and a lack of definiteness borne on their face. They stand forth, nevertheless, with a breadth, a logical cohesion, and an inward completeness, which it has been beyond the power of the bitterest hostility to weaken or to remove. If I carry the study further to the contemplation of the evolution of Germany, because this is most familiar to me, and because, I believe, by keeping to a narrower limit, in the short time assigned me we may gain greater clear- ness and a more plastic form, I must not fail to mention the honored name of Herder, the hundredth anniversary of whose death has just been fittingly observed by Germans throughout the w'orld. In the realm of Germanic cultures, and even beyond it. Herder stands as the creator of the conception "folk-soul" (the psyche of the masses). He was the first to admit the importance of the socio-psychic demands for the proper historical comprehension of the most important of all human communities, — nations, — and to draw from these the necessary conclusions. He did it,^ not in a calm, entirely emotionless, and intellectual spirit of research, but rather by leaps, and wnth all the enthusi- asm of the explorer. His was a psychic attitude toward the new-found inexhaustible material of the socio-psychic inter-relations. But to reproach Herder on this score would betray an extremely small socio-psychic under- standing. When communities have made rapid progress toward a higher spiritual existence, it is not in a rational manner or with purely intellectual age-marks of the thought or process. Rather with youthful feelings of an- ticipation, with an esctatic presentiment of dimly felt com- binations, are the portals of a new epoch entered. Science becomes a prophecy, philosophy turns to poetical meta- physics. That was the character of the Great German period of subjectivity that began with Klopstock. and ended 1 See his Ideas concerning the History of Mankind. 168 MEDIEVAL HISTORY in the spreading of the branches of the philosophy of identity — the period to which Herder, as one of its first great phenomena, belongs. Therefore Herder's enthusiastic grasp of the socio-psychic elements of history does not stand alone. It is the property of the whole epoch and dominates the characteristic movement of the time — romanticism. The advance step in all this was a clearer view of the vast combinations of the phenomena of the mass-psyche — an advance which brought one to describe vital points poetically, in part or wholly so. But there was not the clear comprehension of the constituent elements of the mass-psyche or even of the elementary disentangling of combined phenomena. It has been reserved to the so-called history-of-civiliza- tion method to attempt the description of socio-psychic phenomena, and Freytag, Riehl, even Burckhardt, devoted themselves to this task. Since the last decade of the last century, however, this method has gradually grown out of date. That no progress was made in historical method during a long period may be traced to the existence of too great a mass of material to deal with. To this another cause must be added. The first great subjective period, which had begun with 1750, ended about 1820, at latest 1830; then about 1870 to 1880 another epoch begins, the second period of subjectivism. In the interval, however (since 1820, at least), the conquests of the first period began to be not so much developed as intellectualized. Enthusiasm yielded to reflection, the anticipative comprehension of rationalism. It is the rebound in which, in the domain of natural science, the period of natural philosophy was re- placed by the recent development of mechanics ; the change by which, in the field of mental sciences, the old rationalism of the Aufklarung, as it had been developed in the genera- THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 169 tions following 1680, again became conspicuous, though with alterations. The outcome of this movement in the science of history, which had run aground in the impotent epigonism of art and poetry, as in the barren historicism of the mental sciences of the period of 18G0 to 1870, was the reappearance of the individual-psychological method. But the socio-psychological point of view was not yet suf- ficiently well grounded to maintain its supremacy. In the competition of these rival influences, Ranke grew to be a master of his art. This coincidence, in a certain sense most fortunate, and at all events peculiar in its way, gives to him and his works a position all their own. The in- dividual-psychologic point of view now gains the ascend- ency more completely, though not so much because of Ranke as of his disciples, especially Von Sybel. There was no longer any particular importance attached to the efforts of those who thought and worked according to the history-of-civilization method; these were not opposed because they were not considered as of more than passing significance. It was a time of almost purely political activity; the nation yearned with every fibre of its soul for the long-coveted political unity. Such works as the poli- tical history of the old German empire by Giesebrecht, or Droysen's History of Prussian Polity, may be cited as important phenomena in this connection. \\'hy should they not have preferred political history — which, to a certain extent, was the individual-psychologic method — to all other forms of history? This explains for the most part the fact that the advance in the socio-psychological interpretation of events, made in the meantime by other peoples, for example, the French in the philosophy of Comte, met with small acceptance in Germany. But the last decades of the nmeteenth century brought the rebound. The years 1870 and 1871 released men from 170 MEDIEVAL HISTORY their great anxieties concerning the national Hfe and unity; the development of internal culture comes prominently now to the front. And that happened at the very dawn of a new period of modern psychic existence. The rise of political economy and technology, the rapid development of freedom of trade all over the globe, the victories of science in the realm of nature, even to penetrating into the confines of the inner life: all of this and a host of other less important phenomena yielded an untold amount of new stimuli and possibilities of association, and with that an unheard-of extension of psychic activity as then existing. But of this more in another lecture. The result was a marked dif- ferentiation of intellectual activity, and with it the renewed and determining advance of the socio-psychic elements. This was evident along the whole line of scientific en- deavor, especially in the rise of sociology and anthropology during the last decades, with their far-reaching conse- quences and accompanying phenomena. In the domain of history, this meant a fresh start in the writing of histories of civilization in so far as the development of method was energetically taken in hand ; description alone was no longer the watchword, but an intelligent comprehension. It was now a question of following up the complex phe- nomena of the socio-psychic life, the working out of the so-called national soul in its elementary parts. The first step on this path would necessarily lead to the immediate analysis of the phenomena that appeared within the exist- ence of great communities of men, that is to say, chiefly of nations. Hence the proving and detailed characteriza- tion of socio-psychic eras within this domain : this was the next step. We can see how this was done by Burckhardt who, in his history of the culture of the Renaissance, was the first to point out the great psychic difference between the so-called Middle Ages and the periods of high culture. Till', srii'.xci': oi' HISTOID' 171 'Pluis ;i m;iNtiT liaml iKii-rmiiicil and dt'piiU'd one of llir mosi iiiailvi'd pli.iM's ill till- ili\tliniir iiicvi'mnit of tlu' nil till I' I'poilis i)| .1 ii.ilioii. I''ii>iii tlii-^ poiiii tlu- wav inii.t lt"ad on ti> a slaUMiicnl ol tlio rom so of a whole scrii's of niltural a^cs. This has been altcmptod in my dcrnum 1 1 isti'f y. r.iil this is only the hoj^itiuiii};' of an intensive six'io- l»syilioK)};ieal method. In this hloekinj; ont i^\ the eiilture epoehs, the elements tif the scu'lo-psyehie nnnements, as s'rnh, are not anal\/ed, hiil sinipU' ttMiehed npon, and the timi- indicated in wliuh i^umI nio\einents liiul their oiij^in. W lu'ii this is onee well done, the i|nestion arises whelhei" foi' these ap'cs ^^\ inltine there is one eoinmon nnderlyim; psychic mechanism, aiul if so, ol wh.it natnre it is. ami what is tlu" as;^rej;ate oi these inulerlyin<;, yet apparent, psychic eleirents. And if these problems are soKed. theie appears finllier a last \et peiliaps piovisional i|nestii Ik* foniiil in the results of niodi-in ps\clioK\i;'y as hitherto known. 'Phis is not tlu- place to analy/i- or attempt to soUe tlu- (piestions thus raisetl ; hut the means oi lindini;" an answer will he pointed ont in the later lectures, at least in so far as to pro\ e that, \>.''V the mecli.inism ol the i;reat sivio- psNcIiic nuuenients, the same elenients and l.iws hold good i)\ which proof is given in recent psychological investiga- tion, and with that of the discovery of the elementary psychic eneig\' pi"o]ier to the historical minement. At this point there arises, in conse(|uence oi the preceding statement, aiu^ther (piestion. If HKnlern historical science would iHMietrate to the innernu^st springs of universal his- tory, find them to he in certain psychic condititMis. does it act thus in i-onformitv with the universal tendencies of the time, and has it accortlingly the prospect of a wholesome 172 MEDIEVAL HISTORY duration and development? Here is the first difficulty to b< solved. The second is as follows: if modern historical sci ence as thus set forth is in accord with the spirit of the time, what is then its relation to and effect on other sciences? For those who are acquainted with intellectual move- ments of Western Europe, the first question — that a more intensive study of all phenomena, a closer acquaintance with nature — is easy enough to answer. An impression which at first took hold of the external phenomena with a certainty of touch hitherto unknown was followed in the field of mental sciences and imagination by a psychological impressionism that discovered and revealed the depths of the psychic life which till now had lain concealed under the threshold of consciousness. The spirit brought, in regard to natural sciences, an intensity of observation which appeared almost to threaten those mechanical theories which, during centuries of energetic research, had stood as true and sufficient for all further progress in investigation. In this course of psychic progress the his- torical science of socio-psychology takes its place as a mat- ter of course; it is nothing but the application of greater intensity of observation to historical material. And there is prospect, therefore, of a further development of this idea, not only on Western and Middle European soil, but since the new^ psychic existence is due chiefly to the vast extension of association and stimuli which arise from the new technical, economic, and social culture, it will estab- lish itself everywhere where Western civilization prevails, as is actually being shown to-day in the New World and in Japan. If socio-psychological history is of such growing im- portance, the more, then, does its relationship to other sciences call for consideration, even though but few words can be devoted to it. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 173 Foremost and clearest is its connection with psychology. History in itself is nothing but a])i)lie(l psychology. Hence we must look to theoretical psychology to give us the clue to its true interpretation. How often, indeed, has not psychology been named the mechanics of mental science, in particular of the science of history? But the appreciation of this connection and the practical application of it are quite different things. For the latter it is necessary that the i.tudy of historical phenomena be extended to the most elementary occur- rences and processes, — even those processes with which psychology has primarily to do. It is characteristic of the progress of science during the period of subjectivism of about 1750 or that at the beginning, at least, neither his- tory nor psychology was understood. Of how little im- portance was psychology when books like Creutzer's Bssay on the Soul and the fruitful but primitive journalism of the decades of sentimentalism and the " Sturm und Drang " periods tried at least to set it free from the old traditional metaphysical theories. A universal genius like Kant was right to refrain from taking part in such prim- itive beginnings, and this stage of philosophy corresponded to that of history. Psychology and historical science begin to approach each other about 1800, under the influence of the new ideas of the time; but they were as yet far from meeting; between them still lay heavy and bulky masses of scientifically un- analyzed psychic matter. How different it is to-day in the first decade of a new period of subjectivism, which in so many of its parts seems to be a restoration of the old, only in a higher stage of development. To-day psychology looks back on two gen- erations of investigators, who delivered it from the deadly grasp of metaphysics and made it an independent science. 174 MEDIEVAL HISTORY W'undt followed Herbart. And now a younger, a third, generation is at work perfecting and amplifying the results obtained. These results, however they may vary and be- come matters of dispute, according to the direction of investigation, permit a profound insight into the legitimate course of individual-psychic life such as was denied to our predecessors. The most important results of all this in- vestigation for the historical student are recorded in the works of Wundt, Ebbinghaus, Miinsterberg, Lipps, — col- lections of data which have already become indispensable to the allied sciences. This is a condition of things extremely helpful to his- torical science in the socio-psychic direction. If one pene- trates into the depths of historic causation, it will be found that psychology has prepared the way and has become a safe guide to the historian, who wishes to make known his dis- coveries in formulae in which they may be fitly expressed. In this way psychology and historical science entered into partnership. The partition between them is giving way, and certainly one may say — if it may thus be expressed — that psychology increasingly serves as a mechanical force to history. But the relations of the two sciences are by no means thus completely described. Just as along with the psy- chology of the normal adult there must be kept in mind that of childhood and old age in order that the antithetic character of all psychic processes, the full extent and the whole circle of the potentiality of the human psyche, as far as the individual is concerned, may be appreciated and the coresponding biological functions be observed, so it is necessary to obtain a full comprehension of the meaning of the socio-psychological process in history in order to proceed in a manner quite analogous. In this instance psychology is dependent on history, and only from an THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 175 intensive investigation of the cultural periods of man- kind as a whole are the data attainable which will enable one to recognize the antithetic tendencies of the human- mind in its whole empiric compass. Thus we get a starting-point from which the relation of modern historical science to the other mental sciences may be explained. These may be divided into applied, such as theology, jurisprudence, political economy, politics, etc., and into constitutive, history of language, literature, art, etc. It is clear that the constitutive branches simply disappear as parts of modern historical science. For if the latter concerns itself with the investigation of the dominating social psyche of the times in question, and with its changing forms during the various ages of culture, it can only do this by taking a survey of all its embodiments in history from time to time. These are to be found in language, in poetry, and art (that is, style), in science and philosophy, the climax of intellectual attainment, argu- mentation, etc. And correspondingly, socio-psychological history is the universal foundation of all these sciences, and these are related to it as amplifying and special sciences. But even more is the case with relation to the applied mental sciences. For the latter, which have reference to a certain given psyche of a certain cultural period, require a general knowledge of this period, which leads to the socio- psychological science of history. Historical science therefore plays a double part: (1) as the basis of the practical as of the theoretical mental sciences, and (2) as stimulus to an historical method within the range of psychology. It is a position which is quite normally conditioned by the fact that psychic move- ments pass, as regards time, far more rapidly than physi- cal movements, and that the change appears to us qualita- tively different on that account. If in their relations the 176 MEDIEVAL HISTORY psychic developments of a given time had corresponded to the physical, only one mechanism would be needed to domi- nate them both; for they would have shown a hundred thousand and more years ago the same character as they show in the traditional records of to-day. Xow it is well known that where the conception of life is in question, this is not the case ; for example, in animal and plant organ- isms. In human life, that is, in history, a moment of much quicker change of phenomena intervenes. How is it to be controlled? It can only happen in that psychology as a psychological mechanism is allied with a functional idea of the time and becomes at once variable. And this func- tional idea historical science must apply. Through this it grows to be an evolutionistic psychology fully suited to the actual course of things and as such the basis of mental sciences, both theoretical and applied. Is not the relation of the historical to natural science determined by the last few remarks, even if these are only general propositions? I think so, if one does not indeed include physics and chemistrv' in the historic point of view, — sciences the objects of which belong to the passing mo- ment. However, if one does this, nothing remains but to admit that there are biological agencies even in inorganic nature; with this we are driven out of the sphere of science into the atmosphere of h>'pothetic philosophy, into metaphysical mode of thought. It is not necessary to transcend the bounds of our sub- ject, to pass over the border-line that divides philosophy and science. But one thing has been determined by these reflections, — that the modem science of history has opened up for itself a vastly greater field of endeavor and conflict, and that it will require thousands of diligent workers and creative minds to open up its rich and in many respects unknown regions, and to cultivate them successfully. THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF KNOWLEDGE. BY JOHN B. BURY [John B. Bub^. Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University, b. Oct. 16, 1861. B.A. Trinity College, Dublin, 1882; Fellow, ibid. 1885; M. A. ibid. 1885; Professor of Modern History, Dublin Uni- versity, 1893-98; Protessor of Greek, ibid. 1898-1902; Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University, 1902 . Authob or History of the Later Roman Empire, from Arcadius to Irene; Studejit's History of the Roman Empire, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius; History of Greece to Death of Alexander the Great. Editor of Pindar's Isthmian Odes; and Semean Odes; Freeman's History of Federal Government in Greece; Gibbon'$ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.] To define the position which the history of the last four hundred years occupies as an object of study, or to signahze its particular importance as a field of intellectual activity, requires a preliminary consideration of the place which history in general holds in the domain of human knowledge. And this consideration cannot be confined to purely political history. For political history is only an abstraction, — an abstraction which is useful and necessary both practically and theoretically, but is unable to serve as the basis of a philosophical theory. Political development in the chronicle of a society, or set of societies, is correlated with ether de- velopments which are not political ; the concrete history of a society is the collective histor}- of all its various activities, all the manifestations of its intellectual, emotional, and material life, ^^'e isolate these manifestations for the pur- pose of analysis, as the physiologist can concentrate his attention on a single organ apart from the rest of the body : but we must not forget that political history out of relation to the whole social development of which it is a part is not less unmeaning than the heart detached from the body. a77 178 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE The inevitable and perfectly justifiable habit of tracing political development by itself, and making political events chronological landmarks, led to an unfortunate restriction of the use of the v^ord history, which, when used without qualification, is commonly taken to mean political history, and not history in the larger concrete sense which I have just defined. This ambiguity furnishes an explanation and excuse for the view that history is subservient to political science, and that the only or main value of historical study consists in its auxiliary services to the study of political science. This doctrine was propagated, for instance, by Seeley, and gained some adhesion in England. Now if we detach the growth of political institutions and the se- quence of political events from all the other social phe- nomena, and call this abstraction history, then I think Seeley's theory would have considerable justification. His- tory, in such a sense, would have very little worth or mean- ing beyond its use as supplying material for the inductions of political science, the importance of which I should be the last to dispute. But if the political sequence is grasped as only one part of the larger development which constitutes history in the fuller sense, then it is clear that the study of political history has its sufficient title and justification by virtue of its relation to that larger development which in- cludes it, and that it is not merely the handmaid of political science. Political science depends upon its data, and, in return, illuminates it ; but does not confer its title-deeds. But a larger and more formidable wave, threatening the liberty of history, has still to be encountered. It may be argued that the relation of dependence holds good, though it must be stated in a different and more scientific form. It may be said : Political science is a branch of social science, just as political history is a part of general history; and the object of studying general history is simply and solely THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 17:» to collect and furnish material for sociological science. Thus the former theory reappears, subsumed under a higher principle. The study of history generally is subordinate to sociology; and it follows that the study of political history especially is subordinate to that branch of sociology which we call political science. The difference, and it is a very important difference, is that, on this theory, political history is no longer isolated; its relations of coordination and inter- dependence with the other sides of social development would be recognized and emphasized. But the study of general history, including political, would be dependent on, and ancillary to, a study ulterior to itself. Now this theory seems to run counter to an axiom which has been frequently enunciated and accepted as self-evident in recent times, namely, that history should be studied for its own sake. It is one of the remarkable ideas which first emerged explicitly into consciousness in the last century that the unique series of the phenomena of human developn ment is worthy to be studied for itself, without any ulterior purpose, without any obligation to serve ethical or thecv- logical, or any practical ends. This principle of "history for its own sake" might be described as the motto or watch- word of the great movement of historical research which has gone on increasing in volume and power since the be- ginning of the last century. But has this principle a theo- retical justification, or is it only an expedient but inde- fensible fiction instinctively adopted? Is the postulate of "history for its own sake" simply a regulative idea which we find it convenient to accept because experience teaches us that independence is the only basis on which any study can be pursued satisfactorily and scientifically; and while we accord history this status, for reasons of expedience, is it yet true that the ultimate and only value of the study lies in its potential services to another discipline, such as sociology' ? 180 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE It seems to me that our decision of this question must fall out according to the view we take of the relation of man's historical development to the whole of reality. We are brought face to face with a philosophical problem. Our appiehension of history and our reason for studying it must be ultimately determined by the view we entertain of the moles ct machina nuindi as a whole. Naturalism will imply a wholly different view from idealism. In considering the place of history in the kingdom of knowledge, it is thus im- possible to avoid referring to the questions with which the so-called philosophy of history is concerned. If human development can be entirely explained on the general lines of a system such as Saint-Simon's or Comte's or Spencer's, then I think we must conclude that the place of history, within the frame of such a system, is subordinate to sociology and anthropology. There is no separate or in- dependent precinct in which she can preside supreme. But on an idealistic interpretation of knowledge, it is otherwise. History then assumes a different meaning from that of a higher zoology, and is not merely a continuation of the process of evolution in nature. If thought is not the result, but the presupposition, of the process of nature, it follows that history, in which thought is the characteristic and guiding force, belongs to a different order of ideas from the kingdom of nature and demands a different interpretation. Here the philosophy of history comes in. The very phrase is a flag over debated ground. It means the investigation of the rational principles which, it is assumed, are disclosed in the historical process due to the cooperation and inter- action of human minds under terrestrial conditions. If the philosophy of history is not illusory, history means a dis- closure of spiritual reality in the fullest way in which it is cognizable to us in these particular conditions. And, on the other hand, the possibility of an interpretation of history THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 181 as a movement of reason, disclosing its nature in terres- trial circumstances, seems the only hypothesis on which the postulate of "history for its own sake" can be justified as valid. This fundamental problem belongs to philosophy and lies outside the scope of discussion. All that can be done for the present occasion is to assume the validity of that kind of interpretation which is generally called the philosophy of history, and, starting with this postulate, to show the par- ticular significance of modern history. Perhaps it may be said that such interpretation is quite a separate branch of speculation, distinct from history itself, and not neces- sarily the concern of an historical student. That is a view which should be dismissed, for it reduces history to a col- lection of annals. Facts must be collected, and connected, before they can be interpreted ; but I cannot imagine the slightest theoretical importance in a collection of facts or sequences of facts, unless they mean something in terms of reason, unless we can hope to determine their vital con- nection in the whole system of reality. This is the funda- mental truth underlying Macaulay's rather drastic remark that "facts are the dross of history." It is to be observed that the idea of history as a self- centred study for its own sake arose without any conscious- ness of further implications, w-ithout any overt reference to philosophical theory or the systematization of knowledge. It appeared as an axiom which at once recommended itself as part of the general revolutionary tendency of every branch of knowledge to emancipate itself from external control and manage its own concerns. While this idea was gaining ground, a large number of interpretations or "i)hil(i- sophies" of history were launched upon the world, from Germany, France, England, and elsewhere. They were nearly all constructed by philosophers, not by historians; 182 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE they were consequently conditioned by the nature of the various philosophical systems from which they were gener- ated ; and they did a great deal to bring the general idea of a philosophy of history into discredit and create the suspicion that such an idea is illusory. I observe with interest that this Congress, in the Department of Philosophy, assigns a section to the Philosophy of Religion but not to the Philo- sophy of History. I feel, therefore, the less compunction, that my argument compels me to make some remarks about it here. I need hardly remind you that the radical defect of all these philosophical reconstructions of history is that the framework is always made a priori, with the help of a super- ficial induction. The principles of development are super- imposed upon the phenomena, instead of being given by the phenomena; and the authors of the schemes had no thorough or penetrative knowledge of the facts which they undertook to explain. Bossuet bodly built his theory of universal history on the hardly disguised axiom that man- kind was created for the sake of the Church ; but nearly all the speculative theories of historical development fram.ed in the nineteenth century, though less crudely subjective, fall into the same kind of fallacy. Two of the most notable attempts to trace the rational element in the general movement of humanity were those of Hegel and Krause. They are both splendid failures, Hegel's more manifestly so. They are both marked by an insuf- ficient knowledge of facts and details, but in imposing a priori framework Hegel is far more mercilessly Procrus- tean than Krause. It was the modern peri(xl which suffered most painfully through Hegel's attemi)t io screw history into his iron bed. His scheme implies that the modern period represents the completion of historical development, is part of the last act in the drama of the human spirit. THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 183 This implication is preposterous. What we know about the future is that man has an indefinite time in front of him, and it is absurd to suppose that in the course of that time new phases of thought will not be realized, though it is quite impossible for us to predetermine them. This ernjr alone is sufficient to cast suspicion on the whole edifice. For the stages of history, as a revelation of spirit, correspond ex hypothesi to the dialectical stages in the logical evolution of the idea : and if Hegel fixes the terminus of the historical evolution at a point immeasurably distant from the true term, it evidently follows that the correspondences which he has established for the preceding stages with stages in the logical evolution must be wholly or partly wrong, and his interpretation breaks down. The keys are in the wrong locks. Krause's system, which has had considerable influence in Belgium, avoids the absurdity of not allowing for progress in the future, — a consideration which there was no excuse for ignoring, since it had been recognized and emphasized by Condorcet. He divides the whole of human history, in- cluding that which is yet to come, into three great periods, — • the ages of unity, of variety, and of harmony, — and pro- nounces that mankind is now in the third and last stage of the second period. This theory, you perceive, has an ad- vantage over Hegel's in that it gives the indefinite future something to do. But, although this Procrustes is more merciful, the Procrustean principle is the same; there is an a priori system into which human development has to be constrained. I am not concerned here to criticise the method on which Krause proceeds ; I only want to illustrate by two notable examples, that of Hegel who ignores the future, and that of Krause who presumes to draw its horo- scope, how the philosophy of history has moved on false lines, through the illusion that it could construct the develop- 184 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE ment of reason in history from any other source than history itself. By the one example we are taught that, in attempt- ing to interpret history, we must remember there is no such thing as finality within measurable distance : His ego nee metas rerum nee tempora pono; while the other example warns us that in considering the past it is idle to seek to explain it by any synthesis involv- ing speculations on the inscrutable content of the future. It is, indeed, curious to note how the authors of the numerous attempts to present a philosophical construction of history, which appeared during the nineteenth century, assume so naively, that their owni interpretations are final, and that the ideas which are within the horizon of their minds are the ultimate ideas to be sighted by man, the last ports to be visited in his voyage down the stream of time. It is strange how this childish delusion, this spell of the present, has blinded the profoundest thinkers. Hegel thought that the final form of political constitution was something closely resembling the Prussian state, that the final religion is Christianity, that the final philosophy is his own. This was logical in his case, because it was part of his view that the plenitude of time has come; yet we can have very little doubt that this doctrine was prompted psychologically by what I have called the spell of the present. But even those who were able, in phrase at least, to tran- scend the present and look forward to indefinite progress, speak and argue nevertheless as if the ideas which are now accessible and within the range of our vision could never be transcended in the course of the progress which they admit. The absurdity of this v^iew is illustrated by reflecting that the ideas with which these writers conjured — such as hu- manity, liberty, progress, in the pregnant meanings which those words now possess — were be}ond men's horizon a few THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 185 centuries before. We must face the fact that our syntheses and interpretations can have only a relative value, and that the still latent ideas which must emerge in the process of the further development of man will introduce new and higher controlling conceptions for the interpretation of the past. I have pointed out the common error into which philoso- phies of history have fallen, through not perceiving that in order to lay bare the spiritual process which history repre- sents, we must go to history itself without any a priori assumptions or predetermined systems. All that philosophy can do is to assure us that historical experience is a dis- closure of the inner nature of spiritual reality. This dis- closure is furnished by history and history alone. It follows that it is the historian and not the philosopher who must discover the diamond net; or the philosopher must become an historian if he would do so. But not only is it necessary to abandon unreservedly the Procrustean principle ; the method of approach must also be changed. This is the point to which it has been my particu- lar object tO' lead up. The interpreter of the moveinent of history must proceed backward, not forward ; he must start from the modern period. For a through, fully articulated knowledge of the phenomena is essential — not the super- ficial acquaintance with which speculators like Hegel worked ; and such a knowledge is only attainable for the modern period, because here only are the requisite records preserved. Here only can one hope to surprise the secrets of the historical process and achieve a full analysis of the complex movement. The records of ancient and medieval history are starred with lacunae; we are ignorant of whole groups of phenomena, or have but a slight knowledge of other groups ; and what we do know must often be seen in false perspective and receive undue attention on account of 186 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE the adjacent obscurities. We can survey and attempt syntheses ; but syntheses without fully articulated knowledge are no more than vague shots in the direction of a dimly seen object. And the only syntheses possible in such con- ditions are insignificant generalities, bloodless abstract con- ceptions, like the d-ix^vr^vd. xdp-rjva of Homcr's world of shades. The interpretation of history that shall be more than a col^ lection of plausible labels must grasp the vital process, per- ceive the breath and motion, detect the undercurrents, trace the windings, discern the foreshadowings, see the ideas traveling underground, discover how the spiritual forces are poised and aimed, determine how the motives conspire and interact. And it is only for the history of the last three or four hundred years that we possess material for investi- gating this complicated process. And it is for the development of the nineteenth century that our position in some respects is most fav^orable. It is commonly said that recent history cannot be profitably studied, on the ground that we are too near to the events to be able to treat them objectively and see them in the right perspective. Admitting the truth of the objection, recognizing fully that recent events are seen by us "fore- shortened in the tract of time," we must nevertheless re- member that there is a compensation in proximity which it is disastrous to ignore. For those who are near have opportunities of tracing the hidden moral and intellectual work of an age which subsequent generations cannot reach, because they are not in direct relation. De Tocqueville said : "What contemporaries know better than posterity is the mental movement, the general passions and feelings of the time, whereof they still feel the last shuddering motions (les derniers fremissements) in their minds or in their hearts." If this is so, it is one of the most pressing duties to posterity that men in each generation should devote them- THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 187 selves to the scientific study of recent history from this point of view. We may go further, and declare that, in this light, modern history as a whole possesses a claim on us now, which does not belong either to antiquity or to the Middle Ages. We have ourselves passed so completely beyond the spiritual boundaries of the ancient and medieval worlds that we can hardly suppose that we possess any greater capacity for a sympathetic apprehension of them than our descendants will possess a thousand years hence. Whereas, on the other hand, we may fairly assume that we are in a much better position than such remote posterity for sympathetic appre- ciation of the movements — the emancipatory movements — of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It therefore devolves upon us before we have drifted too far away to do what may be done to transmit to future genera- tions the means of appreciating and comprehending. In this sense the study of w'hat we call modern history is the most pressing of all. But I have permitted myself to digress from the argu- ment. I w^as concerned to show that our only chance of tracing the movement and grasping the principles of uni- versal history is to start with the study of the modern age where our material is relatively full, and proceed regress- ively One great mistake of those who have attempted philosophies of history has been that they began at the other end, — not at the beginning, but at whatever point their know-ledge happened to reach back to, perhaps in China, perhaps in the Garden of Eden, — and were consequently obliged to adopt a difficult and precarious synthetic method. Precarious, because in passing on from one stage to another there is no guarantee, owing to our fragmentary material, that we have knowledge of all that is significant, and there- fore the sythesis Avhich expresses the transition to a higher 188 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE stage may be vitiated by incompleteness. We may be ac- quainted only with some of the forces which determine the sequel, and, if we proceed as though we had all those forces in our hands, our conception of the sequel will be inadequate. On the analytic method, on the contrary, we start from a definite terminus, namely the present, — contingent indeed, but not arbitrary, since it is the only possible limit for the given investigator, — and in the first stage we have all the material, so that it is the fault of the investigation and not the result of accident if the analysis is not exhaustive. The problem then is, having grasped the movement of the ideas and spiritual forces which have revealed themselves in the modern period, to trace, regressively, the processes out of which they evolved, with the help of our records. This, at least, is the ideal to which the interpreter would try to ap- proximaite. That, with fragmentary records, the whole historical movement can ever be traced by methods of in- ference, I do not indeed believe; but assuredly it is only in the period where the records exist that we can first detect the secret of the process or begin to discern the figure on the carpet. But the question will be asked : Can we define absolutely the position of the modern period in the secular perspective of history? The field of what we call "modern history" has a roughly marked natural boundary at the point where it starts, towards the end of the fifteenth century. We may say this without any prejudice to the doctrine of continuit)\ But the phrase is used to cover all post-medieval history, and therefore the hither limit is always shifting. For while it is usual to mark ofif the last thirty or forty years as "contemporary history," as years pass on the beginning of "contemporary history" moves forward, and the end of the modern as distinguished from the contemporary period moves forward too. The question arises whether this con- THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY ISO ventional nomenclature is any longer appropriate, whether all post-medieval history can be scientifically classified as a period, with the same right and meaning as the Middle Ages. "Ancient History" is of course a merely conven- tional and convenient, unscientific term; is this true of "Modern History" also? It may be thoughi that the an- swer is affirmative. It may seem probable that the changes which began at the end of the eighteenth century, the great movements of thought which have thrilled the nmeteenth century, the implications of the far-reaching vistas of knowl- edge whicli have been opened, mark as new and striking a departure as any to which our records go back, and con- stitute a Neu-zeit in the fullest sense of the word; that in the nineteenth as in the sixteenth century man entered into a new domain of ideas; that of the nineteenth as much as of the sixteenth are we justified in saying Ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. If so, our nomenclature should be altered. The three cen- turies after Columbus should be called by some other name, such as post-medieval, and "mo<^lern" should be appropri- ated to the period ushered in by the French Revolution and the formation of the American Commonwealth, until in turn a new period shall claim a name which can never be per- manently attached. It would follow that in the Historical Department at this Congress, there should be another sec- tion; the nineteenth century, the more modern modern period, should have a section to itself. In Germany, a dis- tinction of this kind has been adopted. The sixteenth, seven- teenth, and eighteenth centuries are described as die ncucrc Zcit; while the nineteenth is distinguished as die neiieste Zeit. Among the notes which form the stamp and signature of this neneste Zeit is the new historical interest, if I may say 190 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE so, which has become prevalent in the world and is itself an historical fact of supreme importance. It is expressed not only in the enormous amount of research that has been done, but in the axiom of "histor}- for its own sake," and also in the attempts to create a philosophy of history. It is a new force set free, which will have its own place in the com- plex of the driving forces of the world. It is to be taken along with the equally recent development of a conscious- ness of our relations to future generations, which is prac- tically reflected in a growing sense of duty to posterity. Both facts taken together, the interest in human experience and the interest in human destiny, represent a new sense of the solidarity of humanity, linking past ages and ages to come. In other words, the human mind has begim to rise above the immediate horizon of the circumstances and in- terests of the present generation, and to realize seriously, not as a mere object of learned curiosity, the significance of the past and the potentialities of the future. The most familiar of vrords, past and future, have become pregnant with significance; they are charged with all the implications of a new perspective. It is clear that this new sense is inconsistent with the affirmation of Arnold and Seeley that contemporary is superior to preceding history by all the superiority of an end to the means. This doctrine expresses the attitude of the old unregenerate spirit. The theoretical truth which it con- tains is simply this, that contemporary history represents a more advanced stage than any preceding it, or, in other words, there is a real evolution. But for the same reason it is itself inferior to the development which will succeed it; and if past history is to be described as a means, con- temporary history must be equally described as a means, on the same ground. Theoretically, therefore, this teleological argument has no application; it would not become relevant THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 191 till the end of the process has been reached. But what Arnold and Seeley probably had most in mind was the im- portance of comprehending the past for the sake of compre- hending the present for practical i)urix)ses. (This is now so fully understood and recognized that 1 have not thought it riecessary to dwell on it to-day. It is now generally acknowledged, by those whose opinion need be considered, that the practical value of history consists not, as used to be thought, in lessons and example, but in the fact that it ex- plains the present, and that without it the present, in which we have to act, would be incomprehensible. It is modern history, of course, that is here chiefly concerned. Lord Acton said: "Modern history touches us so nearly, it is so deep a question of life and death, that we are bound to find our own way through it, and to owe our insight to our- selves." I venture to think that Lord Acton, in this charac- teristic statement, rather strains the note; but the statement concerns, you observe, the practical not the theoretical value of the subject.) To attempt to define absolutely the significance of modern or recent history in the order of development would be to fall into an error like that for which I criticised Hegel and Krause and others who thought to draw forth Leviathan with a hook. It is much if it can be established, as I think it can, that with the nineteenth century the curtain has risen on a new act in the drama. But we can be more confident in asserting negatives. The ideas and forces which have driven man through the last four hundred years and are driving him now, are not the last words or dooms in the progress of reason. The idea of freedom which the modern world has struggled to realize has been deemed by many the ultima linea rerum; but it is difficult to see how or why it should be final, in the sense of not being superseded by the appearance of higher ideas which its realization shall have 192 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE enabled to emerge. Or again, it is unreasonable to suppose that the idea of nationality which has recently played and still plays a great role, is an end in itself or more than a phase in evolution. We must acquiesce in our incompetence to form any scientific judgment as to the value or position of this stage in the total development. To state briefly the main thesis of this paper. The ansv^^er to the question, "What is the position of modern history in the domain of universal knowledge?" depends in the first instance on our ^'iew of the fundamental philosophical ques- tion at issue between idealism and naturalism. If we are believers in naturalism, then all history, including modern history, has its sole theoretical value in the function of pro- viding material for the investigation of sociological laws. It must accept a position such as Comte assigns to it. But if we are idealists, if we hold that thought is a presupposi- tion of physical existence and not a function of matter, then history as a disclosure of the evolution of thought has an independent realm of its own and demands a distinct inter- pretation, to prepare for which is the aim of historical re- search. The segment of history which we call modern, from the sixteenth century onward, occupies a peculiar place, because here, partly in consequence of the invention of printing, our materials begin to be adequate for a complete analysis. This gives us the theoretical significance of the modern period as an object of study ; it is the field in which we may hope to charm from human history the secret of its rational movement, detect its logic, and win a glimpse of a fragment of the pattern on a carpet, of which probably much the greater part is still unwoven. This Congress is suggestive in many w-ays, suggestive especially of the distance the world has traveled since 1804 or since 1854. There will be many more of its kind; but this is unique as the first. It is not very bold to predict that THE PLACE OF MODERN HISTORY 193 historians of the distant future, in tracing the growth of cooperation and tendencies to a federation of liuman effort, which are one of the transformative influences now affecting mankind, will record this Congress in which we are here met together as a significant point in this particular stage of man's progress toward his unknown destiny. THE RELATION OF AMERICAN HISTORY TO OTHER FIELDS OF HISTORICAL STUDY. BY EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE [Edward Gaylord Bourne, Professor of History, Yale University since 1895. b. June 24, 1860, Stryltersville, New Yorit. B.a! Yale, 1883; Ph.D. ibid., 1892. Lecturer on Political Science and Instructor in History, Yale University, 1886-88; Instructor in History, Adelbert College, 1888-90; Professor of History, ibid. 1890-95; Professor of History, Yale University, 1895 . Mem- ber of Council of American Historical Association; Member of American Antiquarian Society; Corresponding Member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Author ok History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837; Essays in Historical Criticism: Spain in America; Historical Introduction to "The Philippine Islands" ; Editor of Narratives of Hernando de Soto; Voyages and Explora- tions of Champlain.] Ladies and Gentlemen : — The subject assigned for the second paper this morning is the Relation of American His- tory to Other Fields of Historical Study, and the officers of the Congress had most appropriately selected Professor Hart of Harvard University to discuss this theme. That he has found it impracticable to be here owing to a pressure of other work is to be regretted for many reasons. It was, indeed, most fitting that the institution which was the pioneer in this country in developing systematic historical studies as a part of its curriculum, and which is still the leader in that work, should be represented at this gathering; nor was it less suitable that the man to represent Harvard and the study of American history should be the one upon whom as an organizer of historical labors has fallen the mantle of Justin Winsor. In our common usage, the content of the term American history embraces the history of the discovery of the New World, a most cursory glance at the Spanish Conquest, the colonization of the eastern coast by the English, the Amer- 195 196 HISTORY OF AMERICA ican Revolution, and the political history of the United States. Such a restriction of meaning is a natural out- growth of circumstances in this country. In this place, however, near the centre of the continent first explored by the Spaniards, on the great river discov- ered by De Soto, and not so very many hours' ride from a point reached by Coronado from the shores of the Pacific over three hundred and sixty years ago, so narrow a con- struction of American history may rightly give way to one which assigns to the Spanish American world a position more truly in accord with its real historical significance in the history of the race. It is the relation of American his- tory in the broader sense, the history of the activities and achievements of Europeans in the New World, to the history of Europe and the history of the United States, to which I invite your attention. In reflecting upon this subject, my thoughts have grouped themselves around four general inquiries : What should be the attitude of the student of European history to American history? what does American history contribute to the interpretation of European history? in what ways has America affected the development of European life? and, lastly, what advantages may be derived in the United States and in Europe from a more thorough investigation and a more general study of the history of Spanish America? In regard to the first part of my subject, the proper atti- tude of students of European history toward American his- tory, I wish to urge a more general recognition of American history as an integral part of the history of the Western European peoples ; in other words, that the history of Spain, France, and England should embrace the history of the Spanish, French, and English communities in the New World as a natural and essential part of the whole and not as a mere episode that may be neglected. In the study and RELATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 197 writing of English history this point of view lias been more adequately realized than in the case of France and Spain. The considerations that would he urged to prove the essen- tial unity of the history of the English on both sides of the sea are familiar to all students, and need not be recapitu- lated. The case of France I shall pass by, in order to illus- trate that of Spain and Spanish America more fully. It is a not uncommon experience, although notable excep- tions exist, to find in narrative histories of Spain her in- terests in the New World treated incidentally, if at all. rather than regarded as an integral element of profound importance in the national life. Among recent examples of this procedure, one will suffice for illustration. In Martin Hume's Spain, its Greatness and Decay, in the Cambridge Historical Series, there are in the period 1555-17S8, covered by Major Hume's part of the work, not two pages devoted to the Spanish possessions beyond the sea. Such a nar- row, territorial view is devoid of any philosophical perspec- tive, and is a veritable impoverishment of history. In the light of general history, the Spanish conquest of America is the greatest, the most far-reaching in its consequences, of all the achievements in the life of the nation. It is the single event in Spanish history that made Spain a world power, and raised her for a time to a place beside Rome as the mistress of a world and the source of the moral, re- lisfious, and intellectual culture of a continent. To write the history of Spain and to leave out the history of Spanish America is like writing the history of Rome and confining one's view to the Italian peninsula. The power of Spain has lapsed and most of her former over-sea possessions arc independent states, but whatever becomes of her relative position in Europe, her great contribution to the world's history is certain to rise in historical importance with the passage of time. 198 HISTORY OF AMERICA I am aware that these assertions will surprise some and perhaps be dismissed by others as extravagant. I propose, however, to elaborate them somewhat, to bring home per- haps more effectively my point of the essential oneness of American and Western European history. What, in fact, did Spain attempt in the New World and what did she accomplish? She undertook the magnificent if impossible task of lifting a whole race numbering millions into the sphere of European thought, life, and religion. Beside such an enterprise the continental wars of Spain be- come struggles of transitory interest. But I am reminded that she failed. Such is the ready verdict that is pro- nounced in accordance with prevalent opinion. But even if the attempt was in some degree a failure, it was a failure after the fashion of the failure of Alexander the Great to establish a permanent Asiatic Empire, a failure that has left an ineffaceable impress on succeeding ages. Yet the conception was grand, and the effort to realize it called forth the best that was in the men who labored either consciously or unconsciously for its accomplishment. Like all great events in human history it has its dark sides, and unfortunately these dark sides, through the influence of national jealousy and religious prejudice, have commonly been thrust into the foreground by non-Spanish writers. The great permanent fact remains, however, after all qualifications, that during the colonial period the Innguage, the religion, the culture, and the political institutions of Castile were transplanted over an area twenty times as great as that of the parent state. That this culture and religion .seem to the English Protestant inferior to his own is natural ; but while that opinion accounts for some of the prevalent disparagement of the work of Spain in America. its truth or falsity is not relevant to the present question. The essential point is that, outside of the fields of art and REXATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 19!) literature, the great contributions that Sixain made to human progress in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were made in America. In such contributions to the stock of knowledge as are derived from observation in distinction from those obtained by si>eculative thought, she far sur- passed France and England. Immense additions to geo- graphy, lo linguistics, to anthropology, flowed from the activities of her explorers and scholars. Nor were the additions to the national literature that took their rise in the New World slight accessions to the general body of litera- ture informed with the spirit of heroic action. The dis- patches of Cortes, the True History of Bernal Diaz, may fairly claim consideration beside Cesar's Commentaries. Nor can one read the story of De Soto's march, as told by the Gentlemen of Elvas or Rodrigo Ranjel in the pages of Oviedo, without continually recalling the classic narrative of the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks from Cunaxa to the Euxine. Enough has been said, perhaps, to raise a presumption for regarding the history of Spanish America as an in- tegral part of the history of Spain, but its importance for the study of Spanish history does not end here. The work of Spain in the New World, defective as it was and adul- terated with selfish aims, ofifered an extraordinary field for the display of national and individual character. The mod- ern world can have little sympathy with the controlling objects of Spanish policy in European politics in the second half of the sixteenth century. Philip II in Spain seems to be putting forth herculean efforts to stay human prog- ress. In the Indies he shows a fairer figure. The colonial legislation of his reign, whatever its defects, reveals a profound and humane interest in the civilization of his over-sea dominions. It was one thing to try to confine Europe to the intellectual bounds of the Middle Ages and 200 HISTORY OF AMERICA quite another to rai-se primitive America to that level. The long arm of the king was stretched out to protect the weak and the helpless from oppression and from error. It did not always do it, but the honor of the effort should not be withheld. The contrast between Philip II as ruler of the Netherlands and the Philip II who was lord of the Indies may be paralleled by the contrast between the Duke of Alva and Hernando Cortes. The conqueror of Mexico is the more universally known of the two, but the name of no Spanish general of the sixteenth century is more familiar in England and America than that of Alva. That Alva should be popularly considered as a type of Spanish character, and that he should occupy a larger place in his- tories of the Spanish people than Cortes, will seem unfor- tunate, and unjust in exact proportion as the varied great- ness of Cortes's career is appreciated. How one-sided, then, is a national history which finds no adequate recog- nition for the nation's greatest achievements just because the field of their accomplishment was beyond the sea! If these considerations in regard to the history of Spain and of Spanish America are well taken, the essential one- ness of American and Western European history may be granted at least the status of a fair presumption, and I may pass to the next line of inquiry, What does Ameri- can history contribute to the interpretation of European history ? The occupation of the New World by the divergent methods of Spanish and English colonial policy repeated processes of profound importance in the history of civiliza- tion in regard to which we have comparatively little evi- dence. The migration of the English to America was like the diffusion of the Greeks to their colonies, and not a few of the distinctive features of American life and tem- perament that have been noted by foreign observers were RELATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 201 equally characteristic of the Greek colonial societies in Sicily and Italy: the pride in big things; the fondness for the florid in literature, art, and oratory; the absorption in material interests; the self-confidence and the boastfulness. The new conditions facing these I^nglish on the frontiers of their settlements, in the conquest from nature of a home for civilized man, compelled a readjustment of life to its surroundings, a simple and elastic organization of society in which the earlier life of Europe was lived over again. As time went on, the frontier was pushed further out. and in the older settlements society l)ecame more complex and conventional, approaching the stability of the mother coun- try. The thought is a familiar one that on the frontier we have been able to recover the conditions of colonial history, and in recovering these conditions breathe again its atmos- phere. America,* then, has offered the student the singular opportunity of observing successive periods of historical and social development existing almost sid^ by side, so that one could lift the veil of the past by going west. This thought, which has been so richly developed and illustrated by Professor Turner,^ was first fully realized, so far as I know, by that acute Frenchman Talleyrand when sojourn- ing in America. I shall take the liberty to quote his ob- servations, on the chance of contributing to the history of one of the most fertile and instructive contributions ever made to the interpretation of American history. In his memoir on The C ommercial Relations of the United States zvith England, read before the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, March 25, 1797, he says: "Let us look at these populous cities, full of English- men, Germans, Irishmen, and Dutchmen, and also of the native inhabitants; these remote hamlets, so far from one I In his Significance of the Frontier in American History, State HiBtorlcal So- ciety of Wiaconstn, 1894, and other papers. 202 HISTORY OF AMERICA another; these vast untilled stretches of country, traversed rather than hved in by men who have no settled home; what common tie is there to bind together what is so unhke? It is a novel sight for tlie traveler who, starting from a leading town where the social order is matured and settled, passes over in succession all the stages of civiliza- tion and industry as they descend until in a very few days he comes to the crude and shapeless cabin built of freshly felled trees. Such a journey is a kind of practical analysis and living demonstration of the growth of peoples and of states. One starts from a highly complex total and reaches the simplest elements. Day by day one after another of those inventions which our multiplying wants ha\'e made necessary disappears, and one seems to be traveling back- ward in the history of the progress of the human mind."^ Other ways in which in American history the processes of the remote past have been reproduced can be studied in the history of Spanish America, where the conquest of organized societies by alien invaders and the bringing in of a new civilization help us to visualize the process by which Africa became Roman or Syria Greek. Still again the Spanish missions, which from California to Paraguay pushed out among the wild Indians and prepared them for civilized life, will help us to see more clearly the processes by which Christianity made its way slowly into the recesses of Germanic and Slavonic heathenism. There is still another way in which the American colonial communities offer instruction to the student of European history. By their detachment from the main currents of progress they formed, as it were, eddies in which were preserved, still in vigorous life, much that had quite dis- '*■ Mimoiri sur lea relations commerciales dea Etata-Unis arec V Angletcrre ; 1l6moirca de I'Institut National dea Sciencea et Arts; Sciencea Moralea et Poli- tiques, Paris, An vii, t. n, p. 100. RELATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 203 appeared in more progressive centres, and in this respect they may be said to serve as a kind of historical museum. The rigorous sifting of emigration from Spain and its prohibition from other countries, coupled with a close censorship of the press, preserved in Spanish America relatively undisturbed the thought, the life, and the man- ners of Spain just as she emerged from the Middle Ages. Nearly forty years after Luther posted his theses the name Lutheran conveyed no meaning to the people of Mexico. The first auto da fe in that city in 1556 aroused the great- est curiosity, and the English merchant Tomson reported that " there were that came one hundredth mile off, to see the said Auto (as they call it), for that there were never none before, that had done the like in the said country, nor could not tell what Lutherans were, nor what it meant ; for that they never heard of any such thing before."^ The effects of a similar policy survive to the present day in French Canada, wdiere one can still observe the piety of pre-Reformation Europe. In like manner, Puritanism dominated New England over a century after its sway was broken in the mother country. The English traveler who came to Boston in 1692 not only crossed the Atlantic but he went back in time a half a century. Such a tragedy as the witchcraft trials would have been impossible in England in 1692, although in perfect accord with the spirit and beliefs of the time of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth. In fact, the good and evil of English Puritanism are nowhere so marked as in New England. There it was segregated, dominant, and lived out its life. I proposed as the third subdivision of my subject to indicate some of the ways in which America has affected European life by reaction. In the ample scope of the New iHakluyt, Voyages (Goldsmid's ed.), xvi, 146. 204 HISTORY OF AMERICA W'orld the dominant currents of national life found an outlet for a less confined flow, and tendencies restrained or impeded at home from free action were released. The Spanish and French colonial estahlishments were founded at a time when the Crown was aiming to extend and sys- tematize its powers, and in the New World, unhampered by traditions and usages, it became all powerful. The tendency to absolutism at home was effectively reinforced by the exercise of it in the dependencies. England, on the other hand, began the continuous occupation of America when the current was in the opposite direction and the tide was slowly rising against the royal authority, and here again the national drift was accelerated. The large measure of local liberties enjoyed by the English colonies, the free mi- gration of sects, were quite as much the result of the actual condition of English politics at the time as of preconceived convictions. Settled under these circumstances and left mainly to themselves, the colonies became the field for working out social experiments which would have been impossible in Europe, and whose successful issue has pro- foundly influenced all after-life. The most signal instance of this is afforded by the history of religioas toleration. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was a widespread and deeply rooted opinion that religious liberty would undermine society. The social dangers of free thought far outweighed what seem to many to-day the economic perils of free trade. That they were real dangers seemed to be unhappily proved by the aberra- tions of the Reformation in Europe. If abstract reasoning makes little headway to-day in the matter of securing free trade, we may imagine how impotent arguments in favor of free thought must have been. The risks of failure were too great for the experiment to be tried. In America, however, an opportunity was offered through the institu- RELATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 205 tion of the proprietary colonies for a thorough trial, which demonstrated on a considerable scale the safety and ad- vantage of a larger measure of religious liberty. For a colonial proprietor or company to derive any profit, his lands must be sold or rented. To get people was the first need, and the strongest inducements must be offered. In the seventeenth century the prospect of religious freedom made a powerful appeal both in England and Germany. The experiment w^as first tried by Lord Baltimore in Mary- land, and its demonstrated success w-as followed by its adoption by the proprietors of the Carolinas and Jerseys for utilitarian reasons. The harmlessness and advantages of religious toleration were effectively demonstrated in Colonial America, principally in the proprietary colonies. It spread from these till it became characteristic of the United States, and from that vantage-ground so imposing an example of its benefits, powerfully contributed to its adoption throughout Western Europe. Who can affirm that religious liberty with its enormous increment to ordi- nary human happiness could have been attained even in the twentieth century, without the lesson of die experiments in Maryland and Rhode Island, the Carolinas, the Jerseys, New York and Pennsylvania? Still again, in America the theories of Locke seemed to explain the facts of society, and became the people's poli- tical creed. Incorporated in the Declaration of Independ- ence and the State Bills of Rights, these principles exerted an infinitely greater force uix)n France, and through France upon Europe and South America, than could by any pos- siblity have flowed directly from the Tzvo Essays on Gov- ernment. It is needless here to expatiate upon so familiar a topic as the rise of democracy in America and its dif- fusion from these shores, or upon the development of written constitutions and their spread over the world, 206 HISTORY OF AMERICA after the most interesting contributions of Borgeaud to those subjects. Passing now to my concluding thought, I shall try to point out certain advantages to be derived from a more adequate study of the history of Spanish America. Our colonial history in the past has too rarely emerged from a narrow provincialism, and even now it often tends to sink to ancestor worship. If a departure was made from the narrow track of colonial annals, it generally consisted in conventional comments on the Spanish cruelties and thirst for gold and the superior wisdom and natural capacity of the English race for colonization, with little or no attempt at discriminating comparison between the two types of colonial enterprise. More broadly conceived, the study of the European colonization of America becomes the investigation of one of the great instances of the transmission of culture in hum^n history, that process by which the social, intellectual, and rtligious acquisitions of one people are transmitted or imposed upon another, which is thereby lifted to a higher stage of civilization. The conquests of Alexander spread Greek culture far beyond the boundaries of Greek coloniza- tion ; through the expansion of Rome the science of Greece, the jurisprudence of Rome, and the Christian religion became the common possession of the ancient world; through the Norman conquest England was brought into intimate political and social relations with the Continent and shared more fully the heritage of Rome. At the time of the Renaissance Italy was the teacher of Europe in literature, art, politics, and manners; and the vivifying influences flowing from that country fertilized the intel- lectual soil of Germany. France, and England. During the reign of Louis XIV, France, in turn, became the arbiter of manners and set the fashion for literary and artistic RELATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 207 eflfort. Early in the eighteenth century the stream set in from England, when the results of the Spanish Succession War had raised her to the position of the first power in Europe, and in France in particular keen curiosity was aroused in English thought and literature. The American Revolution in a measure shifted the centre of interest across the Atlantic, and American poli- tical ideas and methods became a powerful leaven in France, where the French Revolution gave them a uni- versal hearing and sent forth transforming influences in every direction. Each one of these shifting currents of cultural influences constitutes a rich field of study. The analysis of its parts, the processes by which its work was done, the relative degree of permanence of the results, all these constitute fascinating problems for the historian. If we approach American history from this point of view and make it the study of the transmission of the culture of Western Europe to a new and larger field of development, we find ourselves engaged in the investiga- tion of a most momentous movement in the history of civilization, truly comparable to Alexander's Asiatic empire and to Rome's African and Western European dominion. For the youthful student or for the maturer investigator such a comparative study of the Spanish, French, and English colonization is rich in instruction. It will not only broaden his conceptions of American history but throw a new light on the history of Europe. There are few fields better adapted for the comparative study of the spirit, the capacities, and the character of these great peoples ; nor is it easy to find one where the economic and the human factors which shaped the course of history can be more easily segregated and estimated. Such a study calls first for a survey of the economic and social conditions of the mother country, for a clear grasp of what it aimed 208 HISTORY OF AMERICA to do, and of the physical conditions in the New World which worked for or against those objects. Yet a word of caution is to be uttered against beginning with the com- parison of New Spain and Massachusetts, for almost all the condiiions determining the character of these com- munities were very different. Far more suitable is a com- parison of New Spain and British India, for there you have two imperial systems im^-^sed upon a mass of native populations, and a certain broad similarity at the start. If it is once realized that British India and not Massachusetts is to be compared with the vice-royalties of New Spain and of Peru, the emptiness of many a generalization about the Spanish and English colonial systems is apparent. The proper physical starting-point for such a comparative study is the West Indies. In the West Indies the Spanish, French, and English met on equal grounds, and the com- parison between Cuba, Hayti, and Jamaica is sound and instructive. It is a fruitful inquiry to examine how these three peoples managed the problems of a plantation colony with slave labor; nor is it less interesting to compare the results of their respective policies since the abolition of slavery. A comparison between the respective slave codes of the Spanish, French, and the English colonies is some- what disconcerting to the student of English blood, whose knowledge of Spanish policy has been colored by some echo of Las Casas' denunciations of the early conqidstadores. If the comparison is extended to the criminal legislation in , force in Ihe colonies of these nations, one is again com- pelled to acknowledge that whatever merits are accorded to the English system superior humaneness is not one of them. After such an introductory study we may appropriately compare some phases of Mexico with New England, always keeping in mind, however, in the case of Mexico, the in- RELATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 209 fluence of a climate like the Rocky Mountain Plateau, t)f the rich stores of the precious metals, and of the preserva- tion of the native stocks. If after this comparison we apply the same process to the history of La Plata region and of the Mississippi Val- ley, certain things stand out clearly which may be briefly noted. The stupendous economic development of these vast agricultural regions has been possible only since the application of steam to industry and transportation. This great factor which has revolutionized the relative advan- tages of Argentina and Peru, and enabled Buenos Ayres to become the greatest city in the Spanish American world, has in the same way enormously increased the disparities between Mexico and the United States. A comparison of these two communities before the entrance of this factor shows that in more than one respect New Spain was in advance of New England. This is true in regard to the prosecution of higher scientific studies, the establishment of the institutions of charity, libraries, art, and architec- ture: in a word, in those features characteristic of the life of a wealthy community. I have referred to the Spanish treatment of inferior or dependent races, and intimated that it compares favorably as a whole with the contemporary treatment accorded to such dependents by the English colonists. The belief, of course, is widely prevalent that the story of Spanish Indian policy was merely the tragedy of devastation ; but that view is profoundly mistaken. Its origin is found in the curious fact that national jealousies of Spain three centuries and more ago gave an enormous circulation in the various languages of Western Europe to the impassioned appeals of Las Casas for the protection of the natives. To depict the Indian policy of Spain from the pages of Las Casas would be like drawing the history of Southern slavery from 210 HISTORY OF AMERICA the columns of the Liberator and multiplying the instances by ten. The Indians owed much to Las Casas and history owes him much, but he apparently felt that boundless ex- aggeration in a righteous cause could do no harm and might do good. If we take the confidential report of Juan and Ulloa to the King of Spain in the eighteenth century as to conditions in Peru,^ we find that, dark as they were, they were almost bright as compared with what appear to be to-day the conditions in the Congo State. It is no doubt hazardous in an historical paper to touch upon so delicate a subject as the race question, but I will venture a tew words upon its broader aspects. The race question involves not only the relations between the whites and the colored in our Southern states ; it con- fronts us in the Philippines and Porto Rico. In other aspects it is and will be one of the perennial and absorbing problems in the development of Africa. For the considera- tion, not to say settlement, of a question so complicated and so involved in prejudice and passion and wrong, no light or teaching that history afifords should be neglected. These questions were first faced by the Spaniards of all modern Europeans, and in the four hundred years' history of Spanish America there is a wealth of human experience in the contact of races that may be drawn upon for warning or instruction or possibly for reassurance. If history has lessons for the present, the history of Spanish America assuredly deserves an immensely more careful study than it has yet received. If the study of that history is prosecuted with scientific detachment, penetrating discrimination, and generous liberality of mind, — that free- dom from the distorting influences of race pride and re- ligious prepossession, — it will enrich the history of Spain 1 Noticias Secretaa de America, etc. Sacadas fi, luz por Don David Barry. London. 1826. RELATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 211 and broaden the study of our own colonial history, and contribute to the intelligent appreciation of the race prob- lems of the twentieth century. In this brief essay upon a subject so comprehensive as the relation of American history to other fields of historical study, I have found it hardly practicable to do more than to remind the student of European civilization that his territory extends across the Atlantic, and is not bounded by it, and that the forces and tendencies, the people and the institutions with whose development he is occuiped, have a life over-seas, distinct but not detached from the life in the Old World, and one with whose powerful reactions on the parent civilization he must reckon; and,, lastly, I have ventured to advocate a broader treatment of the history of European colonization in the New World, which will accord to the work of Spain a more appreciative recog- nition, and which may not be without interest and value to us, now that we have undertaken to shape the history of millions of people whose earlier acquisitions of European culture came through Spain, or to those European nations which have the problem of Africa on their hands. SACAJAWEA aUIDINO TEE LEWIS AND CLARE EXPEDITION The Lewis and Clark Expedition was appointed, during Jefferson's first admin- istration, to explore the Missouri river and seek water communication with the Pacific coast. The success of thin expedition was largely due to the services of Sacajawea, the Shoshone Indian slave wife of a French pioneer who was engaged to guide the partv from Mandan through the Rocky Mountains. This remarkable woman endured all the hardships and shared with tlie men all the perils and priva- tions of the expedition, carrying an infant at her back meantime, yet never a com- plaint escaped her lips, and her spirits were ever the lightest. From the head-waters of the Missouri she pointed the way to a pass through the Rocky Mountains, and guided the party through it. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY' ANCIENT HISTORY GENERAL. DUNCKER, M., Geschichte des Alterthuma. Lenormant, F., Histoire Ancienne de I'Orient. Mahaffy, J. P., Prolegomena to Ancient History. 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Zeixeb, J., Entretiens sur I'Histoire du Moyen Age. J For history of individual r.ountriet, see under Modern History of Eu/rope. BIBLIOGRAPHY 217 MODERN HISTORY (including some universal histories of which individual volumes ARE given under SPECIAL COUNTRIES) Alison, Sir A., History of EXirope, from 1789 to 1815. History of Europe from 1815 to 1852. Andrews, C. M., Historical Development of Modern Europa Annual Register. BuLLE, C, Geschichte der Neuesten Zeit. Cambridge Modern History. Creighton, M., History of the Papacy. Dyer, T. H.. History of Modern Europe. Fisher, G. P., The Reformation. Flaxhe, T., and others. Allgemeine Weltgeschichte. Fyffe, C. a.. History of Modern Europe. Gervinus, G. G., Geschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts. GiNDELEY, A., Geschichte des Dreissigjahrigen Kreiges. Hausser, L., Geschichte des Zeitalters der Reformation, 1517-1648. Heeren, a. H. L., and others. Geschichte der Europaischen Staaten. Helmot, H. F., ed., Weltgeschichte. Lavisse, E., and Rambaud, A. N., Histoire GSnerale du IVe Si^cle k nos Jours. Lowell, A. L., Governments and Parties in Continental Europe. May, Sir T. E., Democracy in Europe. MtJLLER, W.. ed., Politische Geschichte der Gegenwart. Politische Geschichte der Neuesten Zeit. NooRDEN, C. voN, Europaische Geschichte im Achtzehnten Jahrhun- dert. Oncken, W., ed., Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen. Pastor, L., Geschichte der Papste. Ranke, L. von, SS,mmtliche Werke. Weltgeschichte. Raumeb, F. von, Briefs aus Paris zur Erlauterung der Geschichte des 16ten und 17ten Jahrhunderts. Geschichte Europas seit dcm Ende des ISten Jahrhunderts. ScHLOssER, F. C, Geschichte des ISten Jahrhunderts und des 19ten bis zum Sturz des Franzosischen Kaiserreichs. ScHULTHESs, H., ed., Europaischer Geschichtskalender. Seignobos, C, Histoire Politique de I'Europe Contemporalne. Staatengeschichte der Neuesten Zeit. Stern, A., Geschichte Europas, 1815-1871. Weber, G.. Allgemeine Weltgeschichte. Williams, H. S.. ed.. Historian's History of the World, 218 DEPARTMENT OE HISTORY ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND Ashley, W. J.. Introduction to English Economic History and Theory. Brewer, J. S., Reign of Henry VIIL Brown, P. H., History of Scotland. Burton, J. H., History of Scotland. History of the Reign of Queen Anne. Freeman, E. A., History of the Norman Conquest. Reign of William Rufus. Gairdner, J., History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third. Gardiner, S. R.. History of England, 1603-1642. History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649. History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1656. Gneist, R., Englische Verfassungsgeschichte. Geschichte und Heutige Gestalt der Englischen Kommunal- verfassung oder des Selfgovernment. Green, J. R., Conquest of England. Making of England. History of the English People. Hallam, H., Constitutional History of England. Hume, D., History of England. James, W., Naval History of Great Britain. Kemble, J. M., Saxons in England. Lang, A., History of Scotland. Lappenbeeg, J. M., Pauli, R.. and Beosch, M.. Geschichte von Eng- land. Lecky, W. E. H., History of England in the Eighteenth Century. Lingard, J., History of England. Longman, W., Life and Times of Edward IIL Macaulay, T. B., History of England. McCarthy, J., History of Our Own Times. MACKINNON, J., History of Edward the Third. May, Sir, T. E., Constitutional History of England. MoLESwoRTH, W. N., History of England, 1830-1874. NoRGATE, K., England under the Angevin Kings. John Lackland. Paul, H. W., History of Modern England. Pearson, C. H., History of England during the Early and Middle Ages. Ramsay, Sib, J. H., The Foundations of England. Angevin Empire. Lancaster and York. ScoTT, Sib S. D., The British Army. Seebohm, F., English Village Community. BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 Skene, W. F., Celtic Scotland. Stanhope, P. H., History of England comprising the Reign of Queen Anne until the Peace of Utrecht. History of England from Peace of Utrecht to Peace of Versailles. Stubbs, W.. Constitutional History of England. Todd, A., Parliamentary Government in England. Tbaill, H. D., and Mann, J. S.. Social England. ViNOGRADOFF, P., Villainage in England. Walpole, Sir S., History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815. Wylle, J. H., History of England under Henry IV. FRANCE. Adams, C. K., Democracy and Monarchy in France. Baird, H. M., Rise of the Huguenots of France. Huguenots and Henry of Navarre. Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Barante, a. G. p. de. Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne. Blanc, L., Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise. BoDLEY, J. E. C, France. BoNNELL, H. E., Die Anfange des Karolingischen Hauses. BoRDiER, H. L., and Charton, E., Histoire de France. Carlyle, T., The French Revolution. CouBEBTiN, P. DE, L'Evolution Frangaise sous la Troisieme R6pub- lique. Crowe, E. E., History of France. Dareste de la Chavanne, C, Histoire de France. Delord, T., Histoire Hlustree du Second Empire. 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Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise. Palgrave, Sir F., History of Normandy and of England. Pebkins, J. B., France under Mazarin, 1610-1660. France under the Regency, 1661-1723. France under Louis XV, 1723-1774. PicoT, G., Histoire des Etats-Generaux. PoiBSON, A., Histoire du R6gne de Henri IV. Rambaud, a., Histoire de la Civilisation Frangaise. Histoire de la Civilisation Contemporaine en France. RiCHTER, G., Annalen des Frankischen Reichs. SiMOXDE DE SiSMO'Di, J. C. L., Histoire des Frangais. Sloane, W. M.. Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. SoBEL, A., L'Europe et la Revolution Frangaise. Stephens, H. M., History of the French Revolution. Sybel, H. von, Geschichte der Revolutionzeit, 1789-1800. Taine, H. a., Les Origines de la France Contemporaine. Thierry, Am^d^e, Histoire des Gaulois. Thierry, Augitstin, Essai sur I'Histoire de la Formation et des Progrfes du Tiers Etat. Thiers. A., Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise. Histoire du Consulat et de I'Empire. Thubeau-Dangin, p., Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet. Viel-Castel, L. de, Histoire de la Restauration. Viollet, p., Histoire des Institutions Politique et Admlnistratives de la France. Wallon, H. a., St. Louis et son Temps. GERMANY AND AUSTRIA ARM.STR0NG, E., Empcror Charles V. Arnold, W., Deutsche Geschichte. Baumgarten, H., Geschichte Karls V. Cablyle, T., History of Friedrich II of Prussia. CosEL, E., VON, Geschichte des Preussischen Staates und Volkes unter den Hohenzollern'schen Fiirsten. CoxE, W., History of the House of Austria. Dahn, F., Die Konige der Germanen. Deoteen, J. G., Geschichte der Preussischen Politik. ( BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 Ebebty, F., Geschichte des Preussischen Staats. Gebhardt, B., Handbuch der Deutschen Geschichte. Gerdes, H.. Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes und seiiwM- Kultur Im Mittelalter. GiESEBRECHT, W., Geschichte der Deutschen Kaizeizeil. Hausser, L., Deutsche Geschichte vom Tode Friedrichs des Grossen bis zur Griindung des Deutschen Bundes. Hegel, K., Stadte und Gilden der Germanlschen Volker. Henderson, E. F., History of Germany in the Middle Ages. Short History of Germany. Henne-am-Rhyn, 0., Kulturgeschichte des Deutschen Volkes. jAHRBtJCHER DES DEUTSCHEN ReICHES. Janseen, J., Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang dea Mittelalters. Kaufmann, G., Deutsche Geschichte bis auf Karl den Grossen. Kbones von Marchland, F. X., Handbuch der Geschichte Oster- reichs. Lampbecht, K... Deutsche Geschichte. Leger, L., Histoire de I'Autriche-Hongrie. Lindner, T., Geschichte des Deutschen Reiches, vom Ende des 14ten Jahrhunderts bis zur Reformation. LoHER, F., Kulturgeschichte der Deutschen im Mittelalter. Mailath, J., Geschichte des Ostreichischen Kaiserstaats. Maurer, G. L. von, Geschichte des Markenverfassung in Deutsch- land. Geschichte der Dorfverfassung in Deutschland. Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Deutschland. Menzel, W., Geschichte der I>eutschen bis auf die Neuesten Tage. NiTzscH, K. W., Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes. Ozanam, a. F., Les Germains avant le Christianisme. Raumer, F. von, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit, RoBEETSON, W., History of Charles V. Sayous, E., Histoire Generale des Hongrois. ScHAEFER, A., Geschichte des Siebenjahrigen Kreigs. Seeley, J. R.. Life and Times of Stein. SoHM, R., Die Altdeutsche Reichs und Gerichtsverfassung. Spbingeb, a., Geschichte Osterreichs seit dem Wiener Frieden, 1809. Stibling-Maxwell, Sib W., Don John of Austria. Stobbe, O., Geschichte der Deutschen Rechtsquellen. Sugenheim, S., Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes und seiner Kultur. Sybel, H. von. Die Begriindung des Deutschen Reiches. Treitschke, H. von, Deutsche Geschichte im 19ten Jahrhundert TuTTLE, H.. History of Prussia. Waitz, G., Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. 222 DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY Zeixeb, J., Histoire d'Allemagne. ZoPFL, H., Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. ITALY BoTTA, C. G. G., Storia d'ltalia. BuRCKHABDT, J., Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien. CANTtr C, Storia degli Italiana. Dabu, p. a. N. B., Historie de la Republique de Venise. Faraglia, N. F., II Comune nell' Italia Meridionale, 1100-180e. Galluzzi. J. R., Istoria del Granducato di Toscana. Hazlitt, W. C, History of the Venetian Republic. HoDGKiN, T., Italy and her Invaders. Leo, H., Geschichte der Italienischen Staaten. Mabtinengo-Cesaresco, E., Storia della Liberazione d'ltalia, 1815- 1870. Perrexs. F. T., Histoire de Florence. Reuchlin, H., Geschichte Italiens von der Griindung der Regier- enden Dynastien bis zur Gegenwart. Reumont, a. vox, Geschichte Toscana's seit dem Ende des Floren- tinischen Freistaats, 1530-1859. Lorenzo de' Medici, il Magnifico. Simonde de Sismoxdi, J. C. L., Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du Moyen Age. Symonds, J. A., Renaissance in Italy. Tbollope, T. a.. History of the Commonwealth of Florence. ViLLARi, P., I primi due Secoli della Storia di Firenze. La Storia di Girolamo Savonarala e de* suoi Tempi. Niccol6 Machiavelli e i suoi Tempi. ed., Storia Generale d' Italia. NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM. Blok, P. J., Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk. Bosch-Kemper, J. DE, Geschiedenis van Nederland na 1830. Geddes, J., History of the Administration of John De Witt. Juste, T., Histoire de Belgique. Histoire du Congrfis National de Belgique. La R6volution Beige. LEFfe\'BE-PoNTALis, A., Vingt Ann^Bs de RSpublique Parlementaira au 17e Si6cle; Jean de Witt. Motlet, J. L., Rise of the Dutch Republic. History of the United Netherlands. Life and Death of John of Barneveld. NuiJENS, W. J. F., Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk van 1815 tot op onze Dagen. BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 Putnam, R.,> William the Silent, Prince of Orange. Wenzelbubqeb, K. T., Geschichte der Nlederlande. RUSSIA Bebnhabdi, T. von, Geschichte Russlands und der Europalschen Politik. 1814-1831. Kabamzin, N., Histoire de I'Empire de Russie. Leroy-Bealieu, a., L'Empire des Tsars. Rambaud, a., Histoire de la Russie. ScHNiTZLEB, J. H., L'Empire des Tsars au Point Actuel d.^ la Selene. Schuyleb, E., Peter the Great. Stbahl, p., and Herrmann, E., Geschichte des Russischen Staates. Wallace, D. M.. Russia. SCANDINAVIA Allen, C. F., Haandbog i Fsedrelandets Historie. Dahlmann, F. C, Geschichte von Dannemark. Geijeb, E. G., and Carlson, F. F., Geschichte Schwedens. Maureb, K., Island von seiner ersten Entdeckung bis zum Unter- gange des Freistaats. SPAIN Baumgabten, H., Geschichte Spaniens vom Ausbruch der Franzo- sischen Revolution bis auf unsere Tage. Canovas del Castillo, A., Historia General de Espana. CoppfiE, H., History of the Conquest of Spain by the Arab Moors. Dozy, R. P. A., Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne, 711-1110. Dunham, S. A., History of Spain and Portugal. FoENEBON, H., Histoire de Philippe II. Hubbabd, G., Histoire Contemporaine de I'Espagne. Lembke, F. W., and others, Geschichte von Spanien. Lafuente, M., Historia General de Espana. Napieb, Sib W. F. P., History of the War in the Peninsula. Pirala, a., Historia Contemporanea. Pbescott, W. H., History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. History of the Reign of Phillip the Second. Romey, C, Histoire d'Espagne. SWITZERLAND Daguet, A., Histoire de la Confederation Suisse. Dandlikeb, K., Geschichte der Schweiz. DiEBAUEB. J., Geschichte, der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft 224 DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY Henne-am-Rhyn, 0., Geschichte des Schweizervolkes und seiner Kultur. MoKix. A.. Pr6cis de I'Histoire Politique de la Suisse. MtJLLEB, J. VON, and others, Histoire de la Confederation Suisse. VuLLiEMiN. L., Histoire de la Confederation Suisse. TURKEY AND GREECE Engelhabdt, E., La Turquie et le Tanzimat. FiNLAY, G., History of Greece. Hammer-Purgstall, J. VON, Gescliichte des Osmanischen Reiches. Heetzbebg, G. F., Geschichte Griechenlands. Mendelssohn-Babtholdy, K., Geschichte Griechenlands von 1453 biB auf unsere Tage. Prokesch-Ostex, a., Geschichte des Abfalls der Griechen. TBIKOUPES, S., 'ItrropCa r^s 'EAA7)>'i)cJ)s 'ETravacTTao'ea)?, Xenopolu, a. D., Istoria Rominilor din Dacia Traiana. Zinkeisen, J. W., Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches in Europa. HISTORY OF AMERICA Adams, H., History of the United States of America. Aveby, E. M., History of the United States and its People. Banceoft, G., History of the United States. Bancroft, H. H., History of the Pacific States. Battles and Leadebs of the CrviL War. Benton, T. H., Thirty Years' View. Blaine, J. G., Twenty Years of Congress. Bolles, a. S., Financial History of the United States. Bbuce, p. a.. Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century. Bryant, W. C, and others, Scribner's Popular History of the United States. Beyce, James, The American Commonwealth. CuBTis, G. T., Constitutional History of the United States. Davis, Jefferson, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. DoNiOL, H., Histoire de la Participation de la France a, I'Etablisse- ment des Etats-Unis d'Amerique. Doyle, J. A., English Colonies in America. FisKE, J., Discovery of America. Old Virginia and her Neighbours. Beginnings of New England. Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. New France and New England. American Revolution. Critical Period of American History. Hamilton, J. C, History of the Republic of the United States. BIBLIOGRAPHY 5i86 Habt, a. B.. ed., The American Nation. Helps, Sik A., Spanish Conquest in America. HiLDEETH, R., History of the United States of America. HoLSi, H. E. VON, Constitutional and Political History of th» UnlUd States. Lecky, W. E. H., American Revolution. Maclay, E. S., History of the United States Navy. McMastek, J. B., History of the People of the United States. MoiBEAU, A., Histoire des Etats-Unis de I'Amfirique du Nord. Palfrey, J. G., History of New England. Pakis, Comte de, Histoire de la Guerre Civile en Am6rique. Rhodes, J. F.. History of the United States from the Compromls* of 1850. Roosevelt, T., Winning of the West. Ropes, J. C, Story of the Civil War. Schculeb, J., History of the United States of America. Trevelyan, G. O., American Revolution. Weeden, W. B., Economic and Social History of New England. Wilson, H., History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power In America. WiNSOB, J., Cartier to Frontenac, 1534-1700. The Mississippi Basin, 1697-1763. The Westward Movement, 1763-1798. ed., Narrative and Critical History of America. CANADA Chbistie, R., History of the Late Province of Lower Canada. Faillon, M. E., Histoire de la Colonie Frangalse en Canada. Gabneau, F. X., Histoire du Canada. EliNGsroRD, W., History of Canada. Parkman, F., Works. SuLTE, B., Histoire des Canadiens-Frangais. TtJBCOTTE, L. P., Le Canada sous I'Union, 1841-1867.- MEXICO AND SOUTH AMERICA Akkangoiz, F. de, M6jico desde 1808 hasta 1867. Barbos Arana, D., Historia Jeneral de Chile. Domenech, E., Histoire du Mexique. Gay, C, Historia Fisica y Politica de Chile. Mitre, B., Historia de Belgrano y de la Independencia Argentina. Prescott, W. H., History of the Conquest of Mexico. History of the Conquest of Peru. Tobbente, M., Historia de la Revolucion Hispano-Amerlcaua. Zamacois, N. de, Historia de M6jico. THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS OF THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE BY THOMAS RAYNESKORD LOUNSBURY [Thomas Raynesford Lox'xsbiuy. Professor of English, Yale Uni- versity, b. January 1, 1838, Ovid, New York. A.B. Yale Col- lege, 1859; LL.D. ibid. 1892; ibid. Harvard College, 1893; L.H.D. Lafayette, 1895; ibid. Princeton, 1896. Instructor in English. Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, 1870-71. Edited complete edition of Charles Dudley Warner's Works, with bio- graphical sketch. Author of Life of James Feniviore Coop>r: Studies in Chaucer; History of the English Lanyxuiye: ahakis- peare as a Dramatic Artist; Shakespeare and Voltaire; Standard of Pronunciation in English.] It is only within comparatively recent times that the prin- ciples which underlie the development of language have been clearly understood. By those who went before us speech was usually regarded, not as an emanation from us, not as an expression of us, but as something outside of us, a sort of mechanism with which we had to do; which was some- times good, sometimes bad, but having largely an independ- ent life of its own. Hence it could improve or degenerate without much regard to the character or attainments of those who spoke it. All that it behooved these to do was to im- prove it, and so far as that could be done, perfect it. When that happy result was reached care was to be taken that no further changes were to be made in it ; but preserved as much as possible unimpaired, be transmitted to posterity, and so continue the length of years it was permitted to live. For along with this belief existed another. Every lan- guage, it was supposed, went through the same sort of ex- perience as the individuals to whom it was a possession. It had its period of birth, of growth, and of maturity. Then followed the inevitable decay. This could be retarded, but 227 228 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE 't could not be averted. The generally accepted view was expressed by Dr. Johnson in the preface to his dictionary. "Life," he said, "may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated : tongues, like govern;iients, have a natural tendency to degeneration ; we have long pre- served our constitution : let us make some struggles for our language." Undoubtedly traces of this belief still linger among us: but in general it meets no longer with acceptance. We have come to feel, even when we have not come to know, that language has no independent life outside of the life of those who speak it. Their spirit it expresses, their hopes and as- pirations it embodies; and as a consequence it is operated upon by the same influences which affect their action in other ways. It shall be my aim in the present address to point out how it is so thoroughly the reflex of man's nature that even the very agencies which affect the character of its vocabulary and the development of its grammatical struc- ture are essentially like those which determine his conduct and career in other respects. My illustration will naturally be drawn from the speech with which I am most familiar; but parallel illustrations will occur to any one to whom the possession of any cultivated tongue belongs b" right of birth. Language is constantly acted upon by numerous in- fluences, all of which are diverse and some of which are not only different but actually hostile. Speech is really a com- promise between opposing tendencies in the minds of its users. The peculiar character it exhibits in any given case is a result that has been brought about by these various agencies. The time is too short to treat the subject with exhaustive detail. Here it may be sufficient to give a gen- eral idea of its nature by setting forth two or three of these conflicting agencies which are always operating upon the CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 229 users of speech, whether educated or ilHterate, and affect un- consciously their methods of utterance. Then we shall be in a position tO' consider with more advantage the broad dis- tinctions which prevail between the development of culti- vated and uncultivated tongues. The first, to which I call attention, of these contradictory tendencies that are always manifesting themselves in speech, is the disposition to practice economy of utterance and the antagonistic disposition to indulge in prodigality of utter- ance. By the former I am not referring to orthoepy, where its effects have been most frequently noted, tending as they do to induce the speaker to spend as little time as possible in the pronunciation of words, and as a result of this economy of effort, modifying their form. It is the material itself of language, the words as they are weaved into the sentence, that comes here under consideration. The one aim that the user of speech has constantly in mind is to express himself as briefly as possible consistent with easy and full compre- hension. This is a feeling which affects all men in every conceivable stage of intellectual development. Grammatic- ally speaking, we are all endeavoring to convey our mean- ing in any given sentence with the fullest economy of utter- ance. Mark me, I say grammatically speaking, not rhetori- cally. The latter is a personal influence acting upon in- dividuals and not upon the body of speakers as a whole. This practically universal disposition towards economy of utterance has been one— though doubtless not the principal one — of the agencies which have contributed to the develop- ment and diffusion of the sign language. In a rudimentary form this prevails everywhere. We see it exemplified daily in numerous gestures in which the movement of some part of the body indicates to the eye what the lips neglect to put into words. But what concerns us here specifically is the effect of this disposition upon the structure of the sentence. 230 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE No small number of the rules laid down in our grammars are for the purpose of meeting the requirements of the situ- ation produced by the desire of the users of speech to ex- press what they have to say with the least expenditure of effort. Take as one illustration out of many the grammati- cal construction called ap[X)sition. It is called into being for no other purpose than to explain a practice of omitting' words for the sake of economy of utterance, which has es- tablished itself so generally that it has come to seem normal. Hence we never take into account the fact that it denotes nothing more than the abridgement of a complete dependent phrase. This is but a single fact out of the multitude of facts of this sort which the student of the grammar of every tongue meets on every side. In going through the process we call parsing we are constantly under the necessity of declaring some word to be understood. Its presence is not required for comprehension ; but grammar requires it for the explanation of the construction. Language abounds in these short cuts to expression. Every tongue has pecu- liarities of its own in this respect which other tongues, at least some other tongues, will not tolerate at all. We have a striking illustration of this in English in the constant omission of the relative. In such a sentence as "The man you saw yesterday came to-day," no one, w'hether speaking or hearing, feels the absence of the pronoun. It is only when we set out to analyze the sentence grammatically that we recognize the need of dragging into light the suppressed relative. This is a usage to which many languages cannot resort ; but there is probably not a language on the globe in which a single word is not made to do often the duty of a whole sentence. But there is another side of the shield. We find a force at work which impels men not to economize effort, but to put it forth in profusion. They are not content with the CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 2'M fewest words or abridged constructions in ordor to make themselves understood. They aniphfy, they vary, they employ expressions which abstractly may seem unnecessary. Here again I am not referring to the expansion of the thought in the way of adorning it or illustrating it, which belongs to the domain of rhetoric and not of linguistics proper. But the reason for the course indicated as being followed is that the user of speech often feels that with the words sufficient to make his meaning comprehended, it may not after all be fully comprehended. He seeks therefore to add to its clearness by the addition of terms and phrases w'hich will not leave the hearer or reader in the slightest doubt. Hence always has come and always will continue to come into speech an army of expressions which we group under the general names of expletives and redundances. These often cause great grief to the grammarian; but the user of speech cannot be deterred from employing them be- cause he recognizes that the first aim of his utterance is to be distinctly understood. These expressions, in conse- quence, are not really expletives and redundances. So they might be deemed, were men always in a state of mental alertness, so that nothing whatever escapes their attention. But unfortunately the human mind is apt to be inattentive. It often misses the sense, which in theory has been suf- ficiently expressed to be conveyed fully. Therefore in every tongue and at all periods men resort to strictly superfluous words and expressions to prevent their meaning being missed or overlooked. As one illustration out of scores, take in our own tongue the placing of the preposition, from before the adverbs hence, thence, and ivhencc. From the fourteenth century to the present day it has been so em- ployed constantly by the best speakers and writers. Strictly speaking, the preposition is unnecessary. There are places, indeed, where its introduction could be deemed no other than 232 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE an impertinence. There are other places where it adds distinctly to the ease of comprehension. Nor is clearness the only thing aimed at by the users of speech in the employment of what from one point of view is superfluous. There is equally the desire to impart force to expression. Examples of this abound on every side. "Forever and ever" is a phrase that theoretically conveys no more meaning than the simple "forever" ; but it makes more of an impression upon the mind. Linguistically, not morally, the desire to strengthen the expression is the justi- fication of the vast variety of expletives which make up the vocabulary of profanity. When the practice of it is fre- quent, it defeats its own end; but when sparingly indulged in, especially in situations where great interests are at stake, it conveys an intensity of meaning that the mere words, though carrying the full sense, do not even remotely suggest. Let us now proceed to the consideration of two other opposing agencies, always operating upon language, which more especially afYect the inflectional system. They might be called the principles of unity and diversity; but as these words are susceptible of being misunderstood, I shall call them, from the paths they mainly adopt, the principles of analogy and authority. In the matter of inflection there always prevails a disposition in the users of speech to reduce everything to a common procedure. A certain form is not only in use, but it is in far the most common use. The principle of analogy at once asserts itself, for it appeals to every speaker. As most of certain classes of words follow one particular inflection, why not make them all assume it? The tendency manifests itself to have the leading form grow at the expense of the others, and to discard from use all forms which are different from it or in conflict with it. It does not often meet with absolute success, to be sure, but it frequently meets with great success; and the effort to CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 23:j make its success complete never ceases. There is no better illustration of this than the history of the declension of the noun in English. When we first come to the knowledge of our tongue during the Anglo-Saxon period, we find that certain vowel declensions which had once existed had very largely passed away. The comparison of other Teutonic languages reveals what they must have been. The survival of occasional forms leads to the unavoidable inference that there was a time wdien these declensions were flourishing; indeed, they may have been flourishing at the very time itself in some then existing dialect of v\-hich no memorials have been preserved. What these declensions had lost, other declensions had gained, especially the one most pre- dominant. Owing to agencies of which I shall speak later, the process of effacement was temporarily arrested, or at least was largely shorn of its strength. But the moment the restraining power of literature was withdrawn in conse- quence of the Norman Conquest, the principle of analog}' resumed and carried out its work on a grand scale. When English in the fourteenth century emerges with a literature so valuable as to possess an authority of its own. not only have the varying vowel declensions been reduced to the common inflection exhibited by one of them, but even to that has been entirely conformed the single but important con- sonant declension which had once been in wide use. In the case of this last the process has gone on so steadily that English furnishes to-day but the one word ox, with its plural oxen, as the single genuine survival in common speech of a declension which embraced at one time about half the noims of the language. Powerful as is the influence of analogy in reducing diver- sities to a common unity, there is in existence an opposmg agency which furnishes resistance and at times the sturdiest resistance to this leveling tendency. This, which, for the 234 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE lack of a better name, 1 have called the principle of au- thority, cherishes and strives to retain all variant forms of inflection which are actually in existence and makes a deter- mined stand against any charge whatever, whether the change would be for the better or the worse. That which is established has authority simply because it is established. This influence varies distinctly with the intellectual status of the users of speech ; but it is more or less in operation at all times. In cultivated tongues it is exceedingly pow'erful, if not actually dominant. What it saves from the wreck which has been brought about by the principle of analogy, it clings to earnestly, and indeed will never let go, if it can be avoided. Illustrations of this tendency need not be given here; for they will be exemplified in the part of the subject with which we now come to deal. These are some of the agencies which are always operat- ing upon the internal life of a language. They are largely responsible for the changes which take place slowly or rapidly in methods of expression. So far as we can dis- cover, they are true of the speech of the most illiterate and degraded races ; they are certainly true of those which have attamed any degree of intellectual development. This leads us to the next topic, the difference in the agencies which act upon cultivated and uncultivated speech. It is a mere commonplace to say that every living lan- guage constantly undergoes change. It may be little or it may be great ; it may go on very slowly or very rapidly. These are the accidents of circumstance. But so long as it has life, it must undergo modification or alteration as do the persons who speak it. These changes belong generally to two classes, those af- fecting the vocabulary and those aflfecting the grammatical structure. Both of these agencies are always in operation ; but they operate very differently at different periods and CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS L':{r. under different conditions, llcrc arises at once the j;real distinction which exists between the Hfe and ^-rowth of cul- tivated and uncultivatetl speech, or perhaps it would he bet- ter to say more specifically between speech with a literature and speech without one. The processes that are goin^ on in each are precisely the same. Changes are taking place in each both in grammar and vocabulary; but they manifest themselves in ways essentially distinct and they prcKeed at entirely different rates of movement. The differences, in- deed, are so marked that they may be called fundamental. This is not to maintain that there will not be in each class apparent and it may be real exceptions to the rule laid down ; it is only the general principle which is here stated. Now the first point is that in uncultivated speech changes in vocabulary under ordinary conditions take place slowly and on a somewhat petty scale. Very few new words are introduced into the speech, and any extension of meaning in the case of those already existing happens rarely. The reason for this lies on the surface. The users of unculti- vated speech are themselves uncultivated. They have com- paratively little knowledge and few^ ideas outside of the range of those which are brought to their attention by their necessities or limited opportunities for observation. Their vocabulary is not ample, to start with, and as time goes on they do not add to it many words. It is not that any open hostility exists to their adoption. They are not introduced into the speech because they arc not needed. The circle of knowledge and of thought being small, the existing stock of terms is amply sufficient to meet all the demands which are made upon it. Consequently the vocabulary suffers little enlarg-ement, and indeed mav remain practically sta- tionary for an indefinite period, though it is of course liable to be added to whenever the desire for a new word to ex- press something previously unknown cannot be satisfied by 236 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE any new meaning which can be attached to an old word or to a combination of old words. But in the case of the grammatical structure the reverse of this is apt to be true. It is not so necessarily, indeed, but there is no counteracting agency powerful enough of itself to prevent its being so. The one great object of speech which every man, educated or illiterate, sets always before his eyes is to make himself understood. Now if the speaker in an uncultivated tongue succeeds in effecting this, he has secured all that he cares for. In so doing he may discard old forms, old inflections ; or he may unconsciously develop new ones ; or he may confuse wath one another those which already exist. He may vary his expression essentially from the construction which he himself has been wont to use as well as those he is addressing. But about none of these things does he trouble himself, if he can succeed in making himself comprehended. There is no one to find fault with him ; or if such a person could be supposed to exist, the vio- lator of usage does not feel himself under the least obliga- tion to heed the censure he receives. All this implies that in uncultivated speech there is nowhere a standard of au- thority of any sort which any one feels bound to respect. Consequently changes in grammar are effected easily, if they are effected at all. If outside agencies ever operate upon the users of such a speech, if these are subjected to conquest, if they are brought in frequent contact with the speakers of another tongue, and are under the necessity of communicating with them constantly, modifications of the grammatical structure are likely to take place on a grand scale,, though the vocabulary may be affected but slightly. There is no better illustration of this principle than that which has actually happened in the history of our own speech. For more than two hundred years after the Nor- man Conquest the English added scarcely anything to their CONCEPTIONS AND MimiOD^ 237 stock of words from the language of the men of the race to w!iom they had become subject, though w ith them they came into constant contact. On the other hand, during this same period the grammatical structure underwent violent and extensive alteration. Such are the principles which control the development of unlettered speech. In exceptional circumstances these mas- undergo modification, and perhaps in some instances re- versal; but their general applicability to the facts of lin- guistic history cannot well be gainsaid. But the moment a speech comes into the possession of a great literature, this condition of things is changed. The same agencies are at work as in the case of an uncultivated tongue; but they vary distinctly in the influence they exert, and the results in con- sequence are in striking contrast to those just given. In cultivated speech addition to the \ocabulary goes on extensively, goes on rapidly. Furthermore it goes on with little opposition. The hostility to the introduction of new terms is almost invariably directed against particular words, and in the case of these it is often confined to particular persons. It therefore takes the form of an expression of individual prejudice and not that of general aversion on the part of users of speech. In cultivated speech addition to the vocabulary is in truth a necessity of the situation. The circle of knowledge and thought is constantly enlarg- ing. The new facts learned, the new discoveries made, the new inventions originated, the new ideas entertained, the new distinctions set up, all these demand either the use of old words in new senses or the introduction or formation of new words. The latter is the course most usually fol- lowed. It is not, nor is it felt to be objectionable. Men indeed frequently make it a matter of boast that they were the first to hit upon the employment of some term which designates exactly the view of some new fact or theory or 238 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE condition which all recognize but have found difficult to express. The irruption of a large number of words hither- to unknown into a speech is under the circumstances just mentioned not an indication of the corruption or decay of a language, but an evidence of the intellectual health and vigor of its users. Scores and even hundreds of terms will be proposed for admission which find no permanent lodg- ment; for speech can ordinarily be trusted to reject that which is really needless, that which adds nothing to clear- ness or to force of expression ; on the other hand, to choose and to hold fast with an instinct which may almost be deemed unerring that which it requires for its best and full- est development. Consequently in a cultivated tongue the introduction of new words is something that is going on constantly when- ever and wherever intellectual life exists. But when to such a tongue comes the consideration of new grammatical forms or constructions, there ensues at once a complete change of front. The attitude, instead of being one of friendliness or acquiescence, is that of violent hostility. The newcomer meets with examination from everybody and with denun- ciation from many. There is a feeling on the part of the cultivated users of speech that any alteration of grammatical structure cannot be an improvement upon existing usage, as would be conceded by all in the case of the introduction of some new word. Rightly or wrongly the disposition does not prevail to look upon it as a process of evolution. So far as it goes, it is regarded as revolution, and therefore to be resisted. Accordingly no change can take place in the grammar of a cultivated speech which is not compelled to fight its way to acceptance. It never succeeds without go- ing through a struggle w^hich lasts at least scores of years. If it triumphs, it triumphs because it recommends itself to the users of speech as accomplishing something for expres- CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 239 sion which had not previously been secured. If once they become thoroughly imbued with that view, vain are the protests of purists and grammarians ; for the educated users of speech know better what they want than any or all of their self-constituted instructors. The reason for this contrast between the attitudes as- sumed by lettered and unlettered speech is due to a factor which has at all times played an important part in the de- velopment of language, but with the wide diffusion of edu- cation in modern times is destined to play one still more important. This is the creation of literature. Its exist- ence in any tongue tends immediately to weaken or over- throw entirely other influences which have been operating upon the speech. Few even among scholars have learned to appreciate fully the conservative influence which literature exerts over language. Men used to take the ground that speech was always moving away from its sources ; that the longer a tongue continued to live, the more increasingly difficult of comprehension became its earlier form to its later speakers. There is, or at least there may be, a great deal of truth in this view so long as we confine our attention to tongues which can boast of no literary monuments of ex- cellence. It becomes absolutely false, however, after a great literature has been created and has become widely diffused. If the speech then undergoes changes on any great scale, that result will be owing to outside influences and not to any which belong to its own natural development. Yet this belief about the steady recession of speech from its sources has lasted long after any reason for it has dis- appeared. Even to-day it can be heard occasionally ex- pressed. It is therefore not surprising to find it once widely prevalent. By the great authors of the time of Qiieen .^nne and the first Georges dismal forebodings were universally entertained and frequently uttered as to the ruin which was 24Q HISTORY OF LANGUAGE to overtake their own writings, in consequence of the changes constantly going on in English speech. Their works, they complained, could not hope to outlast a century, unless the language became what they called fixed, and they were in perpetual distress of mind because some person or some organization could not be induced to undertake and accomplish that impossible feat. The fact which these men did not perceive at all, and w^hich is none too clearly comprehended now, is that the moment a great literature has been established, the language revolves about it, and, so long as a healthy national life exists, never moves far away from it. The great authors are read and studied everywhere and at all times. They make familiar to the knowledge of their admirers the words and constructions they employ ; and these in turn are repro- duced by their imitators. The operation of this influence has been curiously illustrated in the history of our own tongue. To us the language of the Elizabethan age is much nearer than it was to the men of the eighteenth century, mainly because the authors of that earlier age are now much more read. As a result their words and usages have un- consciously become a part of our own intellectual equipment. Very few would be the men found now who would take the view, widely entertained at the beginning of the eight- eenth century, that a great deal of Shakespeare's language was not merely archaic but practically obsolete. The nu- merous imitators of Spenser later in that same century furnished glossaries to their productions, explaining the antiquated or unusual terms they had employed. In some cases this was needed distinctly ; for the words they used had never any existence outside of their own pages. But they freauently defined those about whose meaning no man of ordinary education would now entertain a doubt. Even the necessity they seemed to have felt themselves under of CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 241 explaining the more purely poetic words excites a certain surprise. What poet would think now of apologizint^. as did Prior in 1706, for using such obsolete words, as he called them, as behest in the carefully defined sense of "com- mand," band in that of "army," / ween in that of "I think." prozvess in that of "strength," and zvhilom in that of "here- tofore." Some of these very definitions show too that in all cases he did not understand the exact meaning of the word he employed. But far more than in the vocabulary is the conserving power of literature — especially of a great literature — ex- hibited in the grammatical structure. The moment it has been in existence long enough to make its influence felt, it at once proceeds to restrict change there within the closest possible limits ; or if it permits any to be made with com- parative ease, its action is directed in such instances to the selection of one out of two or more forms in common use. Let me illustrate its methods in this particular by a reference to the history of the two conjugations of our tongue. After the Norman Conquest English lost the literature she pos- sessed which had attached to it any authority. Though not entirely disused as a written speech, there existed no stanrl- ard to which any one felt bound to conform. In conse- quence a general dissolution of the grammatical structure took place. One of its results was that verbs of the strong conjugation went over to the weak in great numbers. It seemed for a while as if it were merely a question of time when every one of the former would disappear from the language. Analog}- was entirely against them. .Vny new verbs that came in, and a full half, if not the majority, of the old ones formed their preterite by a syllable usually repre- sented in modern English by -ed or -d. Why should not this rule be extended to all? This was a feeling that operated constantly upon men before they came into the 242 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE possession of a literature. So general was the movement, so large were the losses of the strong conjugation, that this early transition has imposed upon the men of later times. There were not wanting in the nineteenth century linguistic scholars of considerable eminence who gravely announced that the strong conjugation was destined to disappear from English speech. As a matter of fact, the moment that literature had been widely enough diffused to exert its full influence, the transition of verbs of the strong con- jugation to the weak ceased entirely. Not an instance can be pointed out where a single one of these verbs has gone over since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Not the least sign of any movement of this nature manifests itself now. On the contrary, the tendency is, if anything, in the reverse direction. But literature does not content itself wnth merely arrest- ing change which is going on in grammatical forms. It presents a hostile attitude to anything which takes the shape of grammatical innovation. That which already exists has been found sufficient by the great writers of the past to do all that is required for expression. What then can be the need of new forms, of new constructions, of which they, far greater than we, did not feel the lack ? To add anything whatever seems therefore of the nature of an attempt to paint the lily. This is the reason why every effort of the nature of innovation meets, in the case of the grammatical structure, with hostility so general and with denunciation so violent. It is the exhortation of literature to stand fast by the ancient ways. But the users of speech are always striving for greater clearness and force of expression. If the existing forms and constructions do not exactly meet their requirements, they will cast about for ways to secure what they are aiming at. Let me illustrate this principle by a further example CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 243 from our speech. For a long period modern ICnglish suf- fered from the lack of a distinct form for tlie passive which would apply to all verbs. The inllection in common use was made up of the substantive verb with the past participle of another verb. This worked very well in many cases, es- pecially so in the case of words wdiich denoted a continuous action or state of mind. The phrase, "the man is loved or is hated," conveys adequately the sense of the sj)eaker when he is referring to the present time. But when the word employed itself denoted a single act, the form just mentioned meant an action fully completed and not one in process of going on. It was really something past which was indicated and not anything present. The phrase "the man is killed" could not possibly suggest the idea that the subject of the verb was merely in danger of death ; it meant that he was actually dead. The form therefore, as applicable to all verbs, broke down. There is hardly anything more interesting in the history of our speech than the various devices to which speakers and writers resorted to get round the difficulty the construction of the passive presented, the efforts they put forth to con- trive something which would be of universal applicability. The various attempts made give us a peculiarly vivid con- ception of the infinite pains that are taken in speech, often unconsciously, to render expression clear. All of these efforts were for a long time unsatisfactory. They involved a change of coustruction or a change of the form of the sentence or they were made ineffective by the clumsiness of circumlocution. At last a way w-as opened. A construc- tion already existed in the speech which, though fully au- thorized, belonged in its origin to the class of so-called cor- ruptions. To certain verbs, but especially to the substantive verb, a verbal noun preceded by the preposition on or in had been added to complete the sense, as, for instance, "he was 244 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE gone on hunting." The form of the connecting preposition was in the first place corrupted into a; finahy it was dropped altogether. This caused the verbal noun, when joined to the substantive verb, to be regarded not as a noun, but as the present participle; but a present participle, not in its usual active signification, but in the sense of a passive. Hence arose such expressions as ''the dinner is preparing," "the house is building." In these the verb is active in form but passive in meaning. But the goal could not be reached in this way. The form suffered from exactly the same em- barrassment which attended the ordinary one with the past participle. Satisfactory with certain verbs, it could not be used with all. The moment an object with life was intro- duced as the subject, the passive sense disappeared. When we hear it said that "a man is eating," we think of him as the doer of an action and not the object of one. It does not occur to us that he himself is undergoing mastication from others. Here, too, in consequence the form broke down. It was to remedy this condition of things that the verb to be was at last united with the compound past participle. This passive form conveyed an unmistakable meaning, and if de- sired could be applied to any verb whatever. When we are told, to use the previous illustration, that "a man is being eaten," there is not the slightest doubt in the mind of any one as to what is actually taking place. This particular form first began to be distinctly noticeable towards the end of the eighteenth century. For a while, however, it attracted but little attention. But no sooner did the sentinels who profess to watch over the purity of speech have their attention called to it, than a violent outcry at once arose. Few at the present day have any conception of the clamor to which this new grammatical form gave rise during the early and middle part of the nineteenth century, and of the denunciation to which it was subjected. Accord- CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 24r. ing to its assailants its introduction and use was a distinct foreshadowing of the ruin that was imix.Miding over the speech. Direful consequences were predicted if the objec- tionable form should succeed in establishing itself in the language. But the construction was too desirable an ac- quisition to be allowed to disappear. Its usefulness pre- vailed over all opposition, and at present it is fully accepted, or meets at least only now and then with a protest from some belated survivor of the conflict which once raged so violently. It must not be forgotten, however, that the hostility to the introduction of new grammatical forms, though sometimes manifesting itself absurdly, is an undeniably healthy hos- tility. So long as it continues, the sijeech can be trusted to remain steadfast to its moorings. It is the existence of this feeling which keeps a language moving not from but about its literature. The vocabulary can be increased almost in- definitely without affecting the character or intelligibility of the tongue which retains in familiar use the words em- ployed by its greatest writers. But the moment its gram- matical construction undergoes a violent upheave!, that moment the language is on the road to decay and death. For additions there, unlike those made to the vocabulary, do not range themselves alongside of the ones already in use. or usurp at best merely a part of the domain of significance. .\ new grammatical form is not long content with standnig side by side w^ith an old one. It first displaces it from its supremacy, and then supersedes it altogether: and this means in process of time a complete change in the character of the tongue. From the hasty consideration which has been given here of the characteristics which attend the development of culti- vated speech, we are enabled to draw certain positive con- clusions. A language cannot be made either to improve or 246 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE degenerate of itself. It is nothing but the reflex of the spirit and aims of the men who employ it, and it will rise or fall in accordance with their intellectual and moral condition. Its continued existence, therefore, depends solely upon the fact whether the men to whom it is an inheritance are cul- tivated enough to enrich its literature, virtuous enough to elevate and maintain its character, and strong enough to uphold and extend its sway. All these conditions are neces- sary to its permanence, but in modern times the last has attained an importance it never before held. The most in- significant of tongues has, it is true, tremendous vitality; it will cling to life long after the most conclusive reasons have manifested themselves for its death. Yet it is a question whether under modern conditions any language can be sure of continued existence which does not have behind it the support of a great nationality. It is a question whether the languages of smaller peoples will not recede before the en- croachments of their powerful neighbors, just as dialects steadily tend to disappear before the advance of the literary speech. At all events the danger which once threatened cultivated languages from the limitation of the knowledge of their literature to a comparatively small number of men, has largely disappeared with the invention of printing and the diffusion of education which increasingly reaches every one in the community, the low as well as the high. Forecasts about the future of any speech and its permanence must therefore now be made subject to conditions which never before prevailed. The one thing only, which has been in- dicated, can be relied upon with certainty. The continuance of any language rests upon the ability, upon the character, upon the strength of the men to whom it belongs. Its literature may be its glory. It may be a source of just pride to the race which has created it or has inherited it. But CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 247 however rich and varied it be, it cannot of itself preserve its life though it may retard its death and hallow its memory. No tongue can depend for its continuance upon the achieve- ments of its past. It can exhibit no more than the vigor, the purity, and the vitality of the men who speak it now, or are to speak it hereafter : and if their vigor, their purity, and their vitality disappear, the language as a living speech will not survive their decay. THE PROGRESS OF THE HISTORY OF LAN- GUAGE DURING THE LAST CENTURY. BY BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER [Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California, b. July 15, 1854, Randolph, Massachusetts. Brown University. 1875; A.M. 1878; Ph.D. Heidelberg, 1885; LL.D. Princeton, 1896; Harvard, 1900; Brown. 1900; Yale, 1901; Johns Hopkins, 1902; University of Wisconsin, 1904; Illinois College, 1904; Dartmouth, 1905. Professor of Comparative Philology, 1886, and of Greek, 1888, Cornell University; Professor of Greek, American School of Classical Studies, Athens, Greece, 1896. Member of American Philological Association, American Oriental Society, The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. Corresponding Mem- ber of Kaiserlichen Archaeologischen Institut. Aitikih of The Greek Noun Accent; Analogy in Language ; Introduction to the History of Language; Dionysos and Immortality ; Organization of the Higher Education in the United States; Life of Alexander the Great, etc.] It cannot be the purpose of this brief address to present even in outHne a history of the science of language in the century past; it can undertake only to set forth the chief motives and directions of its development. A hundred years ago this year (1904) Friedrich von Schlegel was in Paris studying Persian and the mysterious, new-found Sanskrit; Franz Bopp was a thirteen-year-old student in the gymnasium at Aschaffenburg ; Jakob Grimm was studying law in the University of Marburg. And yet these three were to be the men who should find the paths by which the study of human speech might escape from its age-long wanderings in a wilderness without track or cairn or clue, and issue forth upon oriented highways as a veritable science. Schlegel the Romanticist, who had peered into Sanskrit literature in the interest of the fantastic humanism modish in his dav, happened to demonstrate (Ucbcr die Sprachc und Weisheit der Inder, 1808) beyond cavil the existence 249 250 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE of a genetic relationship between the chief members of what we now know as the Indo-European family of lan- guages. Bopp ^ found a way to utiHze this demonstrated fact in a quest which, though now recognized as mostly vain, incidentally set in operation the mechanism of com- parative grammar. Grimm,- under the promptings of a national enthusiasm, sought after the sources of the Ger- man national life, and, finding in language as in lore the roots of the present deep planted in the past, laid the foun- dations and set forth the method of historical grammar. The grafting of comparative grammar upon the stock of historical grammar gave it wider range and yielded the scientific grammar of the nineteenth century. The method of comparative grammar is merely auxiliary to historical grammar; it establishes determinations of fact far behind the point of earliest record, and enables historical grammar to push its lines of descent in the form of " dotted lines " far back into the unwritten past. It was the discovery of Sanskrit to the attention and use of European scholars at the close of the eighteenth century that gave occasion to an effective use of the com- parative method and a consequent establishment of a ver- itable comparative grammar. But in two other distinct ways it exercised a notable influence upon the study of language. First, it offered to observation a language whose structure yielded itself readily to analysis in terms of the adaptation of its formal mechanism to the expression of modifications of thought, and thus gave an encouragement to the dissection of words in the interest of tracing the principles of their formation. Second, the Hindoo national grammar itself presented to Western scholars an illustra- tion of accuracy and completeness in collecting, codifying, * First work: Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache, 1816. 'Deutsche Gramatik, vol. 1 (1819). PROGRESS DURING LAST CI<:XTURY 251 and reporting tlie facts of a language, especially such as related to phonology, inflection, and word-formation, that involved the necessity of a complete revolution in the whole- attitude of grammatical procedure. The discovery of Panini and the Prati(,'akhyas neant far more to the science of language than the discovery of the Vedas. The gram- mar of the Greeks had marked a path so clear, and estab- lished a tradition so strong, guaranteed in a prestige so high, that the linguistics of the West through all the gen- erations faithfully abode in the way. 'i'he grammatical categories once taught and established became the irre- fragable moulds of grammatical thought, and constituted a system so complete in its enslaving power that if any man ever suspected himself in bondage he was yet unable to identify his bonds. The Greeks had addressed themselves to linguistic re- flection in connection with their study of the content and the forms of thought; grammar arose as the handmaiden of philosophy. They assumed, without consciously and expressly formulating it as a doctrine, that language is the inseparable shadow of thought, and therefore proceeded without more ado to find in its structure and parts replicas of the substances and moulds of thought. They sought among the facts of language for illustrations of theories; it did not occur to them to collect the facts and organize them to yield their own doctrine. Two distinct practical uses finally brought the chief materials of rules and prin- ciples to formulation in the guise of a system of descrip- tive grammar: first, the interpretation of Homer and the establishment of a correct text; second, the teaching of Greek to aliens, and the establishment of a standard by which to teach. These practical uses came in. however, rather as fortunate opportunities for practical application of an established discipline than as the motives to its 252 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE creation. With the Hindoos it was the direct reverse. They had a sacred language and sacred texts rescued from earher days by means of oral tradition. The meaning of the texts had grown hazy, but the word was holy, and even though it remained but an empty shell to human under- standing, it was pleasing to the gods and had served its purpose through the generations to bring gods and men into accord, and must be preserved ; likewise the language of ritual and comment thereon, which, as the possession of a limited class, required not only to be protected from overwhelming beneath the floods of the vernacular, but demanded to be extended to the use of wider circles in the dominant castes. Sanskrit had already become a mori- bund or semi-artificial language before grammar laid hold upon it to continue and extend it. But from the outstart the Hindoo grammarian sat humbly at the feet of lanjfuage to learn of it, and never assumed to be its master or its guide. Inasmuch as the language had existed and been perpetuated primarily as a thing of the living voice and not of ink and paper, and had been used to reach the ears rather than the eyes of the divine, it followed, in a measure remotely true of no other grammatical endeavor, that the Hindoo grammar was compelled to devote itself to the most exactingly accurate report upon the sounds of the language. The niceties of phonetic discrimination repre- sented in the alphabet itself, the refinements of observation involved m the reports on accent and the phenomenon of pluti, the formulation of the principles of sentence pho- netics in the rules of sandhi, the observation on the phy- siology of speech scattered through the Pratigakhyas are all brilliant illustrations of the Hindoo's direct approach to the real substance of living speech. None of the national systems of grammar, the Chinese, the Egyptian, the As- syrian, the Greek, or the Arabic, had anything to show PROGRESS DURING LAST CKN'Tl'RV 9,r>?, remotely comparable to this; and up to ilic beginninfj of the nineteenth century, despite all the loi;{^ endeavors ex- pended on Greek and Hel^rcw and Latin, nothinj^ remotely like it had been known to the W'estern world. The Greek grammarians had really never stormed the barriers of writ- ten language ; they were mostly concerned with establish- ing and teaching literary forms of the language. Even when they deal with the dialects, they had the standardized literary types thereof before their eyes rather than the spoken forms ringing in their ears. When the grammars of Colebrooke (1S05), of Carey (1800), and of Wilkins (1808) opened the knowledge of Sanskrit to European scholars, it involved nothing short of a grammatical revela- tion, and prepared the way for an ultimate remodeling of language-study nothing short of a revolution. Though these Hindoo lessons in accurate phonetics as the basis of sure knowledge and safe procedure had their immediate and unmistakable influence upon the scientific work of the first half century, their' full acceptance tarried until the second half was well on its way. Even Jakob Grimm, whose service in promoting the historical study of phon- ology must be rated with the highest, was still so blind to the necessity of phonetics as to express the view that his- torical grammar could be excused from much attention to the " bunte wirrwar mundartlicher lautverhaltnisse," and though von Raumer in his Die Aspiration unci die laut- verschiehung (1837) had not only set forth in all clearness the theoretical necessity of a phonetic basis, but had given practical illustration thereof in the material with which he was dealing, it still was possible as late as 1868 for Scherer in his Gcschichtc dcr deutschcn Sprachc justly to deplore that '' only rarely is a philologist found who is willing to enter upon phonetic discussion." The phonetic treatises 1 Of. H. Oertel. Lectures on the Study of Language, p. 30 ff. (1901). 254 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE of Briicke' (1849 and 18G6) and of Merkel (185G and 1866)- failed, though excellent of their kind, to bring the subject within the range of philological interest, and it remained for Eduard Sievers in his Gnindaiigc dcr Laiit- physiologic (1876) and Grund.ziigc dcr Phonctik (1881), by stating phonetics more in terms of phonology, to bridge the gap and establish phonetics as a constituent and funda- mental portion of the science of language. The radical change of character assumed by the science in the last quarter of the century is due as much to the consummation of this union as to any one influence. But it was not phonetics alone that the Indian gram- marians were able to teach to the W^est ; they had devel- oped, in their processes of identifying the roots of words, a scientific phonology that was all but an historical pho- nology. In some of its applications it was that already, for in explaining the relations to each other of various forms of a given root as employed in different words, even though the explanation was intended to serve the pur- poses of word-analysis and not of sound-history, the gram- marians virtually formulated in repeated instances what we now know as " phonetic laws." The recognition of giina and vrddhi, which antedates Panini, must rank as one of the most brilliant inductive discoveries in the history of linguistic science. The theory involved became the basis of the treatment of the Indo-European vocalism. The first thorough -going formulation, that of Schleicher in his Com- pendium (1861), was conceived entirely in the Hindoo sense, and it was to the opportunity which this formulation offered of overseeing the material and the problems in- volved that we owe the brilliant series of investigations 1 E. Briicke, Untersiichiingcn iiber dieLautbildxing und das natiirliche fiystem der Sprachlaute (1849) ; Grundziige der Physiologie und Systematik der Sprachlaute (1856). - C. L. Merkel, Anatomic und Physiologie des menschlichen Stimm- und Sprachorgans (1856) ; Physiologie der menschlicheti Sprache (1866). PROGRESS DURING LAST CEXTL'RV 2.'ir. by Georg Curtius (Spaltung dcs a-Loutcs, 1864), Ame- lung^ (1871, 1873, 1875), Osthoff {N-Dcclinatiun, 1870 ), Brugmann {Nasalis sonans, 187(5; Gcschkhtc dcr stam- mabstufendcn Declination, 1870), Q,o\\\iz{U cbcr die An- nahmc mchrerer grundsprachlichcn a-laiitc, 1878), Job. Schmidt (Zzvei arischc a-lautc, 1879). which led up step by step steadily and unerringly to the definite proof that the Indo-European vocalisni was to be understood in terms of the Greek rather than the Sanskrit. These articles, written in the period of intensest creative activity the science has known, represent in the cases of four of the scholars mentioned, namely, Curtius, Amelung, Brugmann, CoUitz, the masterpieces of the scientific life of each. Though dealing with a single problem, they combined, both through the results they achieved and the method and outlook they embodied, to give character and directions to the science of the next quarter-century. Karl Verner's famous article, Bine Ausnahme der erstcin Lautverschiehung (KZ. xxiii, 97 fif., July, 1875), which proved of great importance, among other things, in establishing a connection between Indo-European ablaut and accent, belongs to this period; and Brugmann's article, Nasalis Sonans. which served more than any other work to clear the way for the now prevailing view of ablaut, was influenced by Verner's article, which was by a few months its predecessor. Both articles, it is worthy of noting, were distinctly influenced by the new phonetic ; Verner's, it would appear chiefly by Briicke, Brugmann's, through a suggestion of OsthofT's. by Sievers, whose Lautphysiologie had just appeared within the same year. The full efifect upon Western science of the introduction of the Indian attitude toward language-study 'A Amelung Die Bildung der Tempusstamme durch yocalsteigerung im Deutchen Berlin 1S71. Erwlderung. KZ. xxii, 361 ft., completed July. 1873. ?ubSd'l87l! after the author's death. Der Ursprung dcr deutsrhcn a-vo- cole. Haupt's Zeitschr. xviii, 161 ff., 1875. 256 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE appears therefore to have been realized only with the last quarter of the centur\'. More prompt than the response of European science to the teachings of Hindoo phonetics and phonology' had been the acceptance of the Hindoo procedure in word-analysis, especially with relation to suffixes and inflectional endings. The centuries of study of Greek and Latin had yielded no clue to any classification or assorting of this material ac- cording to meaning or function. The medieval explana- tion of dominicus as domini custos was as good as any. Besnier in his essay. La science des Etymologies (1694), counted it the mark of a sound et\Tnologist that he restrict his attention to the roots of words, for to bother with the other parts would be '* useless and ludicrous." And when Home Tooke in the Diversions of Purley, ii, 429 (1786)- 1805), just before the sunrise, wrote the startling words. "All those common terminations in any language , . . are themselves separate words with distinct meanings," and (ii, 454) "Adjectives with such terminations (that is, -ly, -ous, -fill, -some, -ish, etc.) are, in truth, all compound words" ; and when he flung out like a challenge the analysis of Latin iho, " I shall go." as three letters containing three words, namely. / "go" b {^=-!»'Ao,ia'.) "will," a (=ego) " I," no one seems to have been near enough to the need of such instruction to know whether or not he was to be taken seriously : for the words bore no fruit, and only years afterward when Bopp's doctrine had been recognized were they disinterred as antiquarian curiosities. Eleven years later, in the full light of the Sanskrit grammar, Bopp pub- lished his Conjugations-system, and the clue had been found. To be sure Bopp was misguided in his belief that he could identify each element of a word-ending with a significant word, and assign to it a distinct meaning, but he had found the key to an analysis having definite his- PROGRESS DURING LAST CENTURY L'r.7 torical value and permitting the identification of such entities as mode-sign, tense-sign, personal endings, etc. The erroneous portion of his doctrine based upon his con- ception of the Indo-European as an agglutinative type of speech dragged itself as an incumbrance through the first half-century of the science, and, though gasping, still lived in the second edition of Curtius's Vcrbiim (1877.) This, along with many other mechanical monstrosities of its kind, was gradually banished from the linguistic arena by the saner views of the life-habits of language, which had their rise from linguistic psychology as a study of the relations of language to the hearing as well as speaking individual and the relations of the individual to the speech community, and which asserted themselves with full power in the seventies. We shall have occasion to return to this subject later. Bopp had from the beginning devoted himself to lan- guage-study, not as an end in itself, but as we know from his teacher and sponsor Windischniann,' as well as infer from the direction and spirit of his work, he hoped to be able " in this way to penetrate into the mysteries of the human mind and learn something of its nature and its laws." He was therefore unmistakably of the school of the Greeks, not of the Hindoos; for the Greek grammar- ian in facing language asks the question " why." gram- mar being to him philosophy, whereas the Hindoo asks the question, " what," grammar being to him a science after the manner of what we call the " natural sciences." There is indeed but slight reason for the common practice of dating the beginning of the modern science of language with Bopp, aside from the one simple result of his activity, which must in strict logic be treated as merely incidental thereto, namely, that he gave a practical illustration of the * Introduction to Bopp's Conjugationssystem der Sanskrit spr ache, p. 4, 1818. 258 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE possibility of applying the comparative method for widen- ing the scope and enriching the results of historical grammar. As Bopp had tried to use the comparative method in determining the true and original meanings of the forma- tive elements, so did his later contemporary, August Fried- rich Pott' (1802-87), undertake to use it in finding out the original meaning of words. The search for the etymol- ogy or real meaning of words had been a favorite and mostly bootless exercise of all European grammarians from the Greek philosophers down, having its original animus and more or less confessedly its continuing power in the broadly human, though barely on occasion half- formulated conviction, that words and their values by some mysterious tie naturally belonged to each other. In the instinct to begin his task Pott was still with the tradi- tions of the Greeks and the Grasco-Europeans, but in de- veloping it he was guided into new paths by two forces that had arisen since the century opened. Under the guid- ance of the comparative method whereby the vocabularies of demonstrably cognate languages now assumed a de- terminate relation to each other, he came unavoidably to the recognition of certain normal corespondences of sounds between -he different tongues. On the other hand, in almost entire independence hereof, Jakob Grimm in the pursuit of his historical method had formulated the regu- larities of the mutation of consonants in the Teutonic dia- lects, and had set them forth in a second edition of the first volume of his grammar, appearing in 1822. In all this was contained a strong encouragement as well as warn- ing to apply these new definite tests to every etymological postulate, and therewith arose, under Pott's hands, the 1 A. F. Pott, EtymologUche Forschungen, 2 vols. Lemgo, 1833-86 ; 2d ed. 6 TOl*. 1859-76. PROGRESS DURING LAST Cl-.X'I'lkV ;.•:.-.. beginnings of a scientific etymology. It was a first pronii.sc of deliverance from a long wilderness of caprice. The positivistic attitude which had been gradually in- fused into language-study under the inihience of the Hin- doo grammar finally reached its extremest expression in the works of August Schleicher (1821-G8). The science of language he treated under the guise of a natural science. Language appeared as isolated from the speaking indi- vidual or the speaking community to an extent unparalleled in any of his predecessors or successors, and was viewed as an organism having a life of its own and laws of growth or decline within itself. Following the analogies of the natural sciences and trusting to the inferred laws of growth, he ventured to reconstruct from the scattered data of the cognate Indo-European languages the visible form of the mother speech. His confidence in the character of language as a natural growth made him the first great systematizer and organizer of the materials of Indo-Eu- ropean comparative grammar {Compendium dcr vcrglcich- enden Grammatik, 1861); as confidence in the unerring uniformity of the action of the laws of sound made Karl Brugmann the second (Gnindriss der vcrglcichcnden Grammatik, 1886-92). It is not by accident that the first one to voice outright the dogma of the absoluteness {Ausnahmslosigkcit) of the laws of sound w^as a pupil of Schleicher, August Leskien {Die Declination in Slavischlitauischcn mid Gcrnianischcn, XXVIII, 1876). The use of this dogma as a norm and test in the hands of a signally active and gifted body of scholars who followed the leadership of Leskien and were known under the title of the Leipziger Schulc or the Junggram- matiker, and the adherence to it in practice of many others w^ho did not accept the theory involved. — a use which was undoubtedly greatly stimulated by Verner's discovery 260 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE (1875) that a great body of supposed exceptions to Grimm's law were in reality obedient to law — gave to the science in the two following decades not only an abundance of results, but an objectivity of attitude and procedure and a firmness of structure that may fairly be said to represent the consummation of that positivist tendency which we have sought to identify with the influence of Hindoo grammar. This movement, however, derived its impulse by no means exclusively through Schleicher. A new stream had meanwhile blended its waters with the current. The psy- chology of language as a study of the relations of language to the speaking individual, that is, of the conditions under w^hich language is received, retained, and reproduced, and of the relations of the individual to his speech community, had been brought into play preeminently through the labors of Heymann Steinthal,^ who though as a psychologist, a follower of Herbert, must be felt to represent in general as a linguist the attitude toward language-study first estab- lished by Wilhelm v. Humboldt. William D. Whitney shows in his writings on general linguistics the influence of Steinthal, as well as good schooling in the grammar of the Hindoos and much good common sense. His lectures on Language and the Study of Language (1867) and the Life and Growth of Language (1875) helped chase many a goblin from the sky. Scherer's Geschichte der deutschen Sprachc (1868) combined, more than any book of its day, the influences of new lines of endeavor, and especially gave hearing to the new work in the psychology as well as the physiology of speech. To this period (1865-80), under the influence of the combination of the psychological 1 H. Steinthal, Der Urprung der Sprache, im Zusammenhang mit den letzten Fragen allcs Wisscns, 1851 ; Charakteristik der hauptsdchlichsten Typen dee Sprachbaues, 1860 ; Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachtoissenschatt, 1881 ; Gesch. der Sprachw. bei den Griechen und Romern, 1863 ; 1890-91. Also editor with Lazarus of the Zeitschrift fiir Volkerpschologic und Sprachtoitsen- schaft, from 1859. PROGRESS DURING LAST CENTURY -lil with the physiological point of view, belongs the establish- ment of scientific common sense in the treatment of lan- guage. By virtue of this, as it were, binocular vision, lan- guage was thrown up into relief, isolated, and objectiviscd as it had never been before. Old half-mystical notions, such as the belief in a period of upbuilding in language and a period of decay, all savoring of Hegel, and the conse- quent fallacy that ancient languages display a keener speech-consciousness than the modern, speedily faded away. The centre of interest transferred itself from ancient and written types of speech to the modern and living. Men came to see that vivisection rather than morbid anatomy must supply the methods and spirit of linguistic research. The germs of a new idea affecting the conditions under which cognate languages may be supposed to have differ- entiated out of a mother speech, and conceived in terms of the observed relations of dialects to language, were infused by Johannes Schmidt's Verivandtschafts-vcrh'alt- nisse der indogcrman. Sprachcn (1S72). The rigid formulas of Schleicher's Stammhaum melted away before Schmidt's Wellcntheoric and its line of successors down to the destructive theories of Kretschmer's Einlcitung in die Geschichtc der gricch. Sprache (1896). Herein, as in many another movement of the period, we trace the results of applying the lessons of living languages to the understanding of the old. A remarkable document thor- oughly indicative of what was moving in the spirit of the times was the Introduction to Osthoff and Brugmann's Morphologischc Untersiichnngen, vol. i (1S78). But the gospel of the period, and its theology, for that matter, was most effectively set forth in Hermann Paul's Principicn der Sprachgeschichte (1st ed. 1S80), a work that has had more influence upon the science than any since Jakob Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik. Paul was the real sue- 262 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE cesser of Steinthal. He also represented the strictest sect of the positivists in historical grammar. As a consequence of the union in Paul of the two tendencies, his work ac- quires its high significance. He established the reaction from Schleicher's treatment of language-science as a natural science; he showed it to be beyond peradventure one of the social sciences, and set forth the life conditions of language as a socio-historical product. The work of the period dominated by Paul and the neo- grammarians, as well as the theories of method proclaimed, show^s, however, that the two factors just referred to had not reached in the scientific thought and practice of the day a perfect blending. A well-known book of Osthoff's bears the title Das physiologische und psychologische Moment in dcr sprachlichcn Formcnhildung (1879). The title is symptomatic of the times. The physiological and the psychological w^ere treated as two ri\al interests vying for the control of language. \Miat did not conform to the phonetic laws, in case it were not a phenomenon of mixture, was to be explained if possible as due to analogy. This dualism could be expected to be but a temporary device, like the setting up of Satan over against God, in order to account for the existence of sin. A temporary device it has proved itself to be. The close of the first century of the modern science of language is tending toward a unitary conception of the various forms of his- torical change in language. The process by which the language of the individual adjusts itself to the community speech differs in kind no w^hit from that by Avhich dialect yields to the standard language of the larger community. The process by which the products of form-association or analogy establish themselves in language ^ differs no whit ' Gustaf E. Karsten, The Psychological Basin of Phonetic Lav) and Analogy, Public. Mod. Lang. Assoc, ix. 312 ff. (1894), first sought a unitary psychologi- cal statement for the two impulses. We are h^re, however, speaking of the establishment of the results of the impulses in linguistic use. TROGRESS DURING LAST CENTURY 263 in kind from that by which new pronunciations of words, that is, new sounds, make their way to general acceptance. The process by which loan-elements from an alien tongue adjust themselves to use in a given language differs psy- chologically and fundamentally no whit from cither of the four processes mentioned. In fact, tlicy all, all five, are phenomena of "mixture in language."^ The process, furthermore, by which a sound-change in one word tends to spread from word to word and displace the old through- out the entire vocabulary of the language is also a process of "mixture,"' and depends for its momentum in last analysis upon a proportionate analogy after the same es- sential model as that by which an added sound or a suffix is carried by analogy from word to word. All the move- ments of historical change in language respond to the social motive; they all represent in some form the absorp- tion of the individual into the community mass. It has therewith become evident that there is nothing physio- logical in language that is not psychologically conditioned and controlled. So then it appears that the modern science of language has fairly shaken itself free again from the natural sciences and from such influences of their method and analogies as were intruded upon it by Schleicher and his period (1860-80), and after a century of groping and experiment has definitely oriented and found itself as a social science dealing wath an institution which represents iSee O Bremer Deutsche Phonetik. Vorwort x fT. (1893): B I. Wbeelor. Caiiet ?fUn!ffr>nUyin Phonetic Change, Transac. Amer. Phllol. Assoc, xx.u. 1 ff. (1901). 3 A point of view involving the recognition of a more recondite form of s,eLzf.^Us that first ^^^^y^^^,^^^,^^::^T^:^i!^';^ f^n^acticai changes in language, and ultimately the differontintion of dlnlo-r. ind even of languages may assume relation to languages of the BUbstraluu, n. tZ^ypt^LelthatJis prior and ^^ ^t^h^er^ire/cnTmUl^^;"^ ff V ^^^^^^^ "^'ec'h^s^ler.-O.r^r,^ 'Z.!;. Hlrt (Znrfo^ Forsr^ur^aen TV 36 fl 1894 a ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^.^ farsS't'o'deal.''we arT'pereuadrd. in the .econd century of it. exi.fnce. 264: HISTORY OF LANGUAGE more intimately and exactly than any other the total life of man in the historical determined society of men. Within the history of the science of language the begin- ning of the nineteenth century establishes beyond doubt a most important frontier. To appreciate how sharp is the contrast between hither and yonder we have only to turn of Latin from Greek, or mayhap to be most utterly scien- to any part or phase of the work yonder, — the derivation tific, from the ^olic dialect of Greek, the sage libration of the claims of Dutch as against Hebrew to be the original language of mankind, the bondage to the forms of Greek and Latin grammar, as well as to the traditional point of view of the philosophical grammar of the Greeks, the subordination of grammar to logic, the hopeless etymol- ogies and form analyses culminating in the phantasies of Hemsterhuis and Valckenaeer, the lack of any guiding clue for the explanation of how sound or form came to be what it is, and the curse of arid sterility that rested upon every effort. All the ways were blind and all the toil was vain. On the hither side, however, there is everywhere a new leaven working in the mass. What was that leaven? To identify if possible what it was has been the purpose of this review. I think we have seen it was not the in- fluence of the natural sciences, certainly not directly; wherever that influence found direct application, it led astray. It was not in itself the discovery ^of the compara- tive method, for that proved but an auxiliary to a greater. If a founder must be proclaimed for the modern science of language, that founder was clearly Jakob Grimm, not Franz Bopp. The leaven in question was comprised of two elements. One was found in the establishment of historical grammar, for this furnished the long-needed clue; the other was found in the discovery of Hindoo grammar, for this dis- PROGRESS DURING LAST CENTURY 2(;r. closed the fruitful attitude for linguistic observation. His- torical grammar furnished the missing clue, because it represented the form of language as created what it is, not by the thought struggling for expression, but by iiis- torical conditions antecedent to it. Hindoo grammar furnished the method of observation because by its fundamental instinct it asked the question how in a given language does one say a given thing, rather than why does a given form embody the thought it does. The germinal forces which have made this century of the science of language are not without their parallels in the century of American national life we are met to cele- brate to-day. Jakob Grimm w'as of the school of the Romanticists, and he gained his conception of historical grammar from his ardor to derive the institutions of his people direct from their sources in the national life. The acquaintance of European scholars with the grammar of India arose from a counter-spirit in the world of the day whereby an expansion of intercourse and rule was bringing to the wine-press fruits plucked in many various fields of national life. Thus did the spirit of national particularism reconcile itself, in the experience of a science, with the fruits of national expansion. After like sort has the Ameri- can nation in its development for the century following upon the typical event of 1803 combined the widening of peaceful interchange and common standards of order with strong insistence upon the right of separate communities in things pertaining separately to them to determine their lives out of the sources thereof. Therein has the nation given fulfillment to the prophetic hope of its great demo- cratic imperialist Thomas Jefferson,^ "I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government." 1 Letter to Mr. Madison, 1809. 266 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE The linguistic science of the second century will build upon the plateau leveled by the varied toils and experiences of the first. More than ever those who are to read the lessons of human speech will gain their power through intimate sympathetic acquaintance wnth the historically con- ceived material of the individual language. But though the wide rangings of the comparative method have for the time abated somewhat of their interest and their yield, it will remain that he who would have largest vision must gain perspective by frequent resort to the extra-mural lookouts. Language is an offprint of human life, and to the student of human speech nothing linguistic can be ever foreign. THE TRANSFORMATION OF SANSKRIT STUDIES IN THE COURSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY SILVAIN LEVI (Translated from the French hy Mabel Bode, Ph.D.) [Sylvain, Levi, Professor of Sanskrit, College de France; Director of Studies at tlie High School, Paris, since 1894. b. Paris, 1863. Litt.F. 1883; Litt.D. 1890. Master of Conferences at the High School, 1885; Assistant Professor in Sanskrit of the Faculty of Letters, Paris, 1889. Member of Asiatic Society, Linguistic Society, Society of Hebrew Studies, etc. Ai'thor and Editor ok The Hindoo Theatre; Traces of the Greeks left on the Monu- ments of the Ancient Hindoos: The Doctrine of Sacrific accord- ing to the Brahmanas; The Nepal.] Among the languages of the Indo-Iranian group Sanskrit takes indisputably the highest place. I shall not make any attempt here to justify this honor which Sanskrit owes to the length of its existence, the wealth of its vocabulary, the vastness of its literature, and to its role in history. It would be an easy task, and one flattering to the heart of an Indianist, to take each of these points in turn and treat each in detail. But I have put before myself another aim, more in keeping with the general spirit of our meeting; I wouUl like to show, in dealing with Sanskrit, that a common im- pulse animates all the efforts of human thought ; the more those studies which I represent seem far-away, indifferent, foreign alike to the passions and the interests of real life, the better they will serve to support the thesis I advance, if it be clearly shown that, in the course of their transformations, they reflect the great ideas which lead humanity toward its unknown goal. The history of Sanskrit studies goes hardly a century back; they came into being with the Independence of the United States and with the French Revolution. In 1785 867 268 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES Charles \\'ilkins published in London a translation of the Bhagavad Gita, prepared in India with the assistance of na- tive scholars; four years later William Jones laid before Western leaders a translation of Cakuntala. Before these initiators, of glorious renown, Euroi^e had already heard of the Sanskrit language. Europeans settled in India had studied it, mastered it, and even used it, but their knowledge had borne no fruit. They were missionaries dedicated to the triumph of the Church, seeking in Sanskrit an instru- ment of controversy or the spread of doctrine. Certainly patience, energy, learning, and dignity of life were theirs, but they lacked the active sympathy necessary for success, the sympathy which animates research and makes it fruitful. Moreover, they had not only the Brahmans to contend with ; outside India they were closely watched by adversaries who forced them to be prudent and paralyzed them. Voltaire and his school witnessed with triumph and joy the fall of the sacred barriers of ancient history at the end of the seven- teenth century. Bossuet analyzed the secret designs of Providence and pointed out their workings without going beyond the world known to the Fathers of the Church ; the Church was the central point of humanity. And, behold, other peoples, other civilizations, and other literatures, un- known to the Scriptures, had come to light, and were laying claim to such antiquity as to eclipse the ancient Jewish tradition. The Brahmans were not sparing with millions or myriads of years in their chronology. The Encyclo- paedia only asked to believe them ; the Church only thought how to contradict them ; there was no one capable of discuss- ing them. But the mind of humanity was ripening; exact criticism was to supplant idle controversy; facts were about to take place of the artifices of disputation. England, mistress of India by the fortune of arms, opened up the Hindu genius to PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT STUDIES ?09 the world and the world to the Hindu genius. France, vanquished on the field of battle, at least competed with honor in the conquest of Asia's past. We know the admir- able history of Anquetil Duperron who went out as a volun- teer to wring from the distrustful dasturs^ the sacred hooks of Zoroaster, which he eventually brought back to France. The Bhagavad Gita of Wilkins, the Cakuntala of Jones ex- cited the imagination of literary Europe; Goethe's celebrated stanza rings in every one's memory. The moment was auspicious; the classical tradition was worn out, since the masterpieces of the seventeenth century; reason, proud of her victory over imagination, too long a hindrance to her progress, had nothing to offer in exchange but an insipid sentimentahsm. Men's minds impatiently desired violent emotions, dazzling pictures, new landscapes, glaring lights ; the senses demanded satisfaction in their turn. The Persian and Arabian poets found translators and imitators. The Egyptian campaign made the East popular. Bonaparte at the Pyramids conjured up a past of forty centuries before his wondering soldiers. But Sanskrit, only lately won from the Brahmans, still remained the privilege of the English of India ; Europe possessed neither books, grammars, nor dic- tionaries. However, the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris possessed a collection of Sanskrit manuscripts and some clumsy rudiments of grammar due to the missionaries. Fas- cinated, like so many others, by reading Cakuntala, Chezy determined to go back, at any cost, to the original. A worthy rival of the first humanists of the Renaissance, he set to work alone to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit. Chezy was the son of a distinguished engineer, and destined originally for his father's profession. It was not long be- fore he deserted the too stern science of mathematics for the iThe learned among the Parsi priests: literally, the chief of a Temple of Fire. 270 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES kindly companionship of the Eastern muses. In him an extreme sensibihty was united with firmness and method ; a fortunate facility made the study of languages mere sport to him. He became the pupil of Sacy and Langles, and was a master of his subject at twenty years of age. He had been appointed to take part in the labors of the Egyptian mission, but was stopped at Toulon by illness. He returned to Paris to seek consolation in the Library among the Oriental manu- scripts. The story of his gropings and success has the poignant interest of a drama in which science is at stake : it was not even without a tragic catastrophe by which he lost the sweet and precious peace of home life. He was forced to sacrifice his conjugal happiness to the jealous demands of research, but his obstinate enthusiasm did not falter ; twenty- five years later, arrived at the goal of his efforts, but over- whelmed with sorrows and filled with bitterness, he crowned the six hundred and fifty pages of the quarto volume, in which he had at last published the text of Qakuntala, with this verse of Walter Scott, where he breathes out his very soul: "That I o'erlive such woes. Enchantress, is thine own!" I have not been able to resist giving in detail the first steps of this heroic pioneer, to whom I may be allowed to offer homage here, as a Frenchman, as a forenmner, and my own predecessor. It is Chezy's chair which I now occupy at the College de France. "On the 29th of November in the year of grace 1814 and the twentieth of the reign," an ordinance of Louis XVIII, signed "at his royal chateau of the Tuileries," created at the same time two new chairs in the College de France ; one, to which Antoine Leonard de Chezy was appointed, was for the teaching of the Sanskrit lan- guage and literature; the other, for the Chinese language and literature, was first occupied by Abel Remusat. Sil- PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT S'PlDll'S 271 vesire de Sacy, the recognized head of iMcncli CJrientalism. pompously thanked "Loiiis-le-Desire," "through whom let- ters flourished under the aegis of peace, in the shade of Minerva's olive-tree." A less fervent royalist might have enjoyed recording that the ancient regime was no sooner restored but it found itself compelled to give its counte- nance, at the outset, to the conquests of the modern spirit in that very asylum which Francis I had thrown open to in- dependent research, opposite the University devoted to tra- dition. In 1530 Greek and Hebrew were sanctioned by the royal will; it was the overthrow of the principle of au- thority represented by the Latin of scholasticism. In IS 14 Sanskrit and Chinese, admitted on equal terms with classical studies, foretold a wider humanity. Chezy had not foreseen the far-reaching results of his work, any more than Sacy or Louis XVIII. He was an Orientalist steeped in classic rhetoric, and he sacrificed to elderly Muses and superannuated Graces. His opening lec- ture seems addressed to the retired magistrates who trans- lated Horace into French verse. "Do not believe, gentle- men, that this literature has treasures only for science and stern reason. No; lively imagination also has a large part, and among no people in the world has brilliant poesy dis- played itself in more magnificent outward garb, or been accompanied by a retmue more lovely and more captivating. From the haughty Epic to the timid Idyll the most varied productions of taste w^ill present themselves in crowds to your enchanted gaze and arouse in you by turns every kind of emotion of which the soul is susceptible." And to prove "the fecundity of the Indian Muses" he enumerated all these kinds "treated with equal success by the Bards of the Ganges." But more vigorous minds were already preparing to re- sume the work and render it fruitful. It was the period m 272 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES which the author of Indian Wisdom, Schlegal, summed up the programme of Sanskritists in three stages, Paris, Lon- don, India. Since 1812 Bopp had settled in Paris, and, without allowing the din of near battles to distract him, patiently collected the materials which his genius was to bring into order. Others before him, since the sixteenth century, had observed the evident relationship of the Sans- krit vocabulary with the classical languages. No European could hear the Sai.shrit names of relationship, pitar, mdtar, bhrdtar, the names of numbers, dvi, tri, etc., the verb "to be" (French etre, Sanskrit, asti), but there awoke in him a far- off echo of his mother tongue or of ancient languages. Comparison, discussion, and speculation had gone on without rule or measure; Bopp created the science of com- parative grammar, classed facts, and recognized laws. Under the varieties of language prevailing in Europe, Iran, and India he pointed out a common stock and succeeded in explaining most of the deviations from it, going back by way of induction to the primitive type. Then appeared a word which soon became current, a compound no less unexpected than expressive, a symbol which summed up the revolution that had been accomplished. India and Europe, which everything seemed to separate till that time, came together and were henceforth fused into one in the accepted expression "Indo-European." The Brahmans, so long mysterious, the obscure peasants of Bengal, the Punjab, Gujerat, had received their heritage from the same linguistic fund as a Homer or a Virgil ; the groups which had been unknown, despised, hated, — the German, Slav, and Neo- Latin, — grouped themselves into a new family of languages. Soon new discoveries filled the gaps and attached to the chain those links which were missing. The deciphering of cuneiform inscriptions brought to light the Persian of the Achaemenidae ; Zoroaster spoke in the Avesta, which was I PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT STUDIES 27:i even explained in the original, and these ancient documents of Iran connected the shores of the Indus with the valleys of the Caucasus. Never had a Plato, a Descartes, a L«.'il)- nitz, in their vastest dreams conceived so large a family within the human species. The learned were dazzled ; even their heads were turned, this time. Then arose a strange and at first puerile sentiment, which proved disastrous later, when it spread to the common people; comparative grammar gave birth to Indo-European chauvinism. The Revolution, borne to the far ends of Europe by Napoleon's wars, had awakened the national conscience in one people after an- other. Allies or adversaries of France, those who had been subjects the day before, awoke suddenly to find themselves citizens; divine right was forgotten; the state ceased to be incarnated in the monarch, and was incorporated in the entire nation. Neither certain of their doctrines, nor of their own inmost essence, but upheld nevertheless by the will to live, the nations grouped themselves with restless fervor around their languages, their institutions, their traditions, which constituted their collective titles of nobility. The national spirit was formed, as in the cities of ancient times, in the struggle with barbarians. When scholars afterwards proceeded to call attention to the linguistic relationships which antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance had neglected or disdained, national pride was willing to lay claim to the kindred groups. Led away by the bewildering charm of a grand discovery, savants, and after them the public, took kinship of language to be a sure indication of common origin. The peoples scattered over the immense area of Indo-European languages saw themselves, in spite of the natural sciences, and on the evidence of their lan- guage, grouped into one single race which received the name of Indo-European or Aryan race. The civilized world which was still within the limits drawn by the prejudices S74 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES current in Europe and the nearer half of Asia, appeared thenceforward as the patrimony and the battle-field of two races eternally hostile, the Aryan and the Semitic races, both pushing forward to conquer the earth. The fierce struggle between the Encyclopedia and the Church was bearing fruit. In his eagerness to bring con- tempt on the Bible Voltaire had already been imprudent enough to accept as genuine testimony from ancient India a pretended Veda, the B^oiir Vcdain, which a nobleman had brought from India and presented to him as a book "trans- lated from the Sanscretan by the high-priest or arch-brah- man of the pagoda of Chiringham, an aged man respected for his incorruptible virtue." In reality the original "Sans- cretan" had never existed, and the arch-brahman was a Jesuit missionary. The author of the clever imitation had hoped to lead the Hindus to the Christian religion by this pious fraud; if he did not succeed in that, he at least suc- ceeding in duping Voltaire, and might rest satisfied. But now the Sanskrit language, studied and taught in Europe, gave access to the real Veda. The Brahmans persisted as long as they could in defending this coveted treasure from the enterprise of profane men of science; their delays and refusals only served to pique curiosity and inflame imagina- tion all the more. According to them the Veda had no date, it went back beyond all time, back to a past impossible to calculate. They easily imposed their conviction on the earliest interpreters. At last the Aryan race had its Bible; an Aryan Bible. But the Veda was not accommodating; written in an archaic tongue which differed from classical Sanskrit even more than Homer from Plato, bestrewn with puzzling forms and disused words, it seemed to defy the sagacity of philologists. The only help afforded by India was a commentary too late to be authoritative. On these ancient texts was expended a wealth of science, of shrewd- PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT STUDIES J.>75 ness, of patience, and almost of genius. But a fciregone con- clusion, an unconscious parti pris, directed and inliuenccd these efforts. There was a desire to gi\c the Aryans uf Europe worthy ancestors. The German scholars wIkj occupied the first rank in philology had naturally suhstituted for the title Aryan or Indo-European a wonl which Hattcreil national amour propre; they spoke of the Imlo-Germanic language, of the Indo-Germanic race. Thenceforward the Vedas were the complement of the Nichelungen. The origins of religion took their place heside the origins of the epic. It was pleasant to picture the singers of the ancient hymns as grave and nohle patriarchs, thoughtful, devout, austere, patriarchs formed on the romantic model; their candid soul, filled with enthusiasm for the grand spectacles of nature, poured itself forth in lyric effusions. Lost in the radiance of the Veda, Indianism forfeited its independ- ence and placed itself like a faithful Achates at the side of comparative grammar. The infatuation of the first days had died out some time before. The public, satiated with the East by the Romantic School, found no further charm in it; the successors of W'ilkins and Jones ])ursned their laborious task without exciting attention. But Sanskrit still remained, by well-established right, the corner-stone of linguistic studies ; perpetuated without alteration for tens of centuries, it surpassed in purity all the languages of the family. Moreover, the Hindu grammarians had been the real creators of comparative grammar; it was in their school that Bopp and his successors had learned the art of rigorous analysis of words, the art of classing their elements, ex- plaining their formation, and tracing their derivation through the vocabulary. The Hindus, who have but little taste for observation of external phenomena, who are but mediocre pupils of their neighbors in the domain of the natural sciences, have given the closest study to the data of 276 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES the inner life; their psychology has penetrated to the un- conscious and prepared the way for modern investigation; their grammar, several centuries before the Christian era, established the study of sounds with almost faultless pre- cision. The glorious name of Panini. even to the present day, hovers over Indo-European linguistic science. Although sheltered under the ?egis of comparative gram- mar, the study of the Veda was nevertheless tending toward a revolution. Linked together from this time forth, the Semitic Bible and the Aryan Bible were doomed to the same fate Criticism, gradually emancipated from the tradition of ag-es, had first tried its hand on Homer, and in spite of the anxious protests of defenders of the past, it had dared to direct a front attack against accumulated prejudices. Em- boldened by success, it seized on the Scriptures, braved the scandal, and subjected them to severe examination. There was no choice but to submit and recognize in the sacred books a late compilation, sacredotal in its origin and inspiration. The shock of the attack reached the Veda. May a disciple of Abel Bergaigne be allowed, upon this high occasion, to recall the name of the master loved with a filial affection and everlastingly regretted, who was the author of this revolution? The liturg}-, when more thor- oughly studied and better known, threw^ a pitiless light on the ancient hymns; those songs in which, as was at first believed, we could almost hear the whimper of humanity in its cradle, betrayed a soulless religion reduced to mere forms, a subtilized religion w'hich confounded the priest with the magician, a priestly poetry which subsisted on old patches and worked to order. The trench which had been ingeniously dug between the Veda and Sanskrit literature narrowed and tended gradually to be filled up. The Veda once Aryan became Hindu. Indianism lost its connection with Indo-Germanic studies; it retired within itself, form- PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT STLlJllCS -:: iiig a mighty, organic unity. The Veda lost nothing hy ilii> ; it continued, by reason of its age and intluencc, to dominate the development of India. Thus transformed, the study of the Veda renewed its youth and entered on a new cia. Among the four great collections (Samliita) which arc ihc foundation of Vedic literature, the Rig-Veda collection had long kept possession of the favor and attention of scholars ; it was the Veda par excellence. This collection, methodic- ally arranged, presented to the view of those prepossessed in its favor an ensemble as noble and correct as could be wished; it was possible to extract passages of lofty reach, picturesque or pathetic or grandiose pieces such as the Aryan Bible demanded. Two other collections, the Sama and the Yajur-Veda, betrayed their liturgic origin too crudely to take rank with the Rig-Veda. The fourth collection, the Atharva-Veda, had nothing edifying about it; the Brah- mans themselves had recognized this more than once. It was a strange combination of charms, spells, speculations, and domestic ritual, in which medicine, sorcery, debauchery, poltical intrigue, and daily life, with its trifling incidents, jostled each other. It was embarrassing for the ideal of Aryan nobility; it was kept at a distance, or at least in the background, like a suspected i>ersonage, like a bastard. However, the world was changing; literary nobility and nobility of birth were sinking together ; la grandc populace et la sainte canaille were claiming their turn. History no longer confined herself to a list of exploits connected with illustrious natnes. Watching the stir in the street, she had guessed at the obscure supernuineraries taking their part ni the human drama; she strove to catch a glimpse of them in the shadows of the past. Folk-lore came into existence, and the Atharva supplanted the Rig- Veda, fallen into dis- credit. Triumphant democracy made its victory apparent in Vedic studies. 278 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES If limited to the study of the Yedas and the orthodox classics, Sanskrit philology was in no danger of exhausting its material too quickly ; the enormous mass of works accu- mulated in the course of twenty centuries by unwearying generations of writers gave promise of a long time to be spent in exploiting them. A great number of these works found favor with literary men by the beauty of their form, with thinkers by the loftiness of their ideas or the boldness of their speculations. But history, for which so much had been expected from the discovery and study of these w^orks, was destined to be disappointed. Blinded by puerile vanity, the Brahmans had detached Indian from the world; they had been wonderfully seconded by nature, which seemed to have isolated the peninsula amid the walls of the Himalayas, the formidable deserts of the Indus, and the yet more for- midable expanse of the sea. They delighted in represent- ing "Hindu wisdom" as a fruit sprung spontaneously from the soil, a miraculous production due to their power alone. Their fascinating spell, which still sways so many candid minds, had already had its effect upon the ancients. Did not Pythagoras, among others, pass for a disciple of the Brahmans? With a consistency so strict that it seems to imply a conscious determination, they had put away in- convenient memories, and if, by chance, tradition forced a real name upon them, they shrouded it in the mists of a false antiquity. If we had to trust to their fantastic chro- nology, a glorious contemporary of Alexander, Candragupta the Maurya (the Sandrakoptos of the Greeks), would be placed seventeen centuries before the Christian Era ! Of Alexander himself and his expedition they naturally re- membered nothing. Up to the time of the Mussulman in- vasion, too positive and too near to be by any possibility denied, they pictured India happy and blissful, enjoying the willing or compelled respect of all the barbarians of the PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT STUDIES 270 earth. The positive and exact testimony of the Greeks and Latins exposed the fraud of the Brahmans; Hellenism, it was well known, has penetrated victoriously into the "Holv Land." But it was not enough to bring to light the in- terested falsehoods of the priestly caste; science undertook the colossal task of restoring to India her lost history. Scat- tered over the vast expanse of the country, steles, pillars, and rocks could still be met with, on which were traced in- scriptions in enigmatic characters, mute witnesses of van- ished epochs. The patience of investigators — a patience of genius — succeeded in breaking through their long silence. After a century of work the political history of the Hindu world begins to appear to us ; still broken up by enormous gap-s, confused, uncertain, calling for cautious judgment. It is still easy to mention dynasties which waver, according to Ihe differing hypotheses, within a space of three cen- turies, the length of time which separates Alexander from Augustus, the discovery of America from the Independence of the United States. But, taken as a whole, the picture is already clear. Political India shows a resemblance to re- ligious India in a continual production of small groups which combine together, now and again, to form a system, and fall apart almost immediately. And this history, which was believed to be as old as the world, does not begin be- fore the morrow of the Macedonian invasion! W^e have not a single line of an inscription which we have the right to date earlier than this. The epigraphy of India begins with the admirable sermons which a Buddhist emperor. Aqoka, caused to be engraved in every corner of his vast dominions toward the year 250 before the Christian Era. A happy chance, perhaps some deep excavations, may open out to epigraphy a more distant horizon ; but at the present time our positive documents do not go beyond the date men- tioned. Sanskrit epigraphy begins still later. It api^ars 280 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES in tentative fashion at about the beginning of the Christian Era, but does not begin to flourish till the middle of the second century. Before this period the authors of the in- scriptions used only dialects, related, no doubt, to Sanskrit, but greatly disfigured and altered. I am far from conclud- ing that the Sanskrit language was not formed till this late epoch ; but it must be admitted on this testimony that Sans- krit was not one of the vulgar tongues of India three cen- turies before the birth of Christ. The grammarians who had lovingly fashioned it had detached it from real life when they gave it fixed forms. Doubtless the divorce only became apparent by degrees ; the difference between the spoken language and the written Sanskrit at first only seemed to lie in slight shades of correctness or purity; when the distance widened, the priestly caste remained faith- fully attached to the privileged language that separated it from the illiterate masses ; it consecrated its own language to religion and imposed it on the orthodox literature. Imagine the Latin of Cicero rescued by the Christian Church, and, under her patronage, accepted as the language of literature by all the peoples of Europe, irrespective of spoken tongues, and you will understand the role of the Sanskrit language and literature in India. The Brahmans had intended to keep the monopoly of Sanskrit ; they flattered themselves that they shared it with the gods alone. But two rebellious churches rose up against Braham pretensions and marked the hour of their triumph by the conquest of Sanskrit. Cultivated by the Buddhists and Jains, the mass, already huge, of Sanskrit literature spread and multiplied in spite of the Brahmans. But Jainism, after a short time of prosperity, sank into a long torpor and was forgotten. Buddhism, receiving a mortal blow by the invasion of Islam, which burnt the convents end massacred or dispersed the communities, dis- PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT STUDll-S :.'M appeared from Hindu soil. The Brahman had his re- venge; he wreaked his jealous hatred on Die remains of the rival who had disputed empire with him; he thought t.. efface the last traces of Buddhism, and preserved the mere name only to execrate it. But again Western science- baffled his calculations. In 1816, by the force of British arms, a British resident, assisted by two subordinates, was established at Nepal among the refractory Gurkhas. Ten years later Hodgson with toilsome perseverance extracted the still immense ruins of Buddhist Sanskrit literature from the libraries of Nepal. At about the same time Ceylon, Burma, and Siam, which had remained faithful to the Law of the Buddha, yielded up to investigators a still more considerable collection of works both religious and profane, written in Pali, an ancient dialect, near to Sanskrit, and sprung from the same soil, but independent. Sanskrit texts and Pali texts, coming from opposite points of the Indian horizon, brought with them, each one. a body of tradition and legend on the life of the Buddha and the destinies of the church. By means of strictly critical comparison it was possible to extract their part of history from these stories. Burnouf, the successor of Chezy at the College de France, undertook this heavy task, undaunted by the multitude of manuscripts and the variety of languages; by dint of sagacity, penetration, justice, and reason he accomplished at the outset a definite work. His Introduction to the History of Indian Bnddhisni remains at the end of half a century of new discoveries and re- searches an authority still safe and still consulted. With Buddhism Sanskrit finally overstepped the fron- tiers of India. The bold enterprise of Csoma de Koros. who had shut himself up for several years in a convent of Ladakh, had brought to light an immense Tibetan library. 282 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES translated, to a great extent, from Sanskrit originals, some of which were preserved in Nepal, others lost. China and Japan, thrown open by degrees to Western research, yielded up in their turn similar collections translated from Sanskrit originals. The history and literature of China added theu- testimony to the power of the movement which, from the beginning of the Christian Era onwards, carried Indian Buddhism in triumphant marches as far as the palace of the Son of Heaven and even to the islands of the sea, fructifying thought, elevating the souls of men, awakening or transforming art. The memoirs of a Fa-hien, a Hiuen- tsang, and I-tsing described the pilgrims fascinated by the "Holy Land," impatient to adore the footprints of the Buddha, braving the sterile sands and treacherous whirl- winds, the brigands, the mountains, and the storms of the ocean in order to study the sacred Sanskrit language and bring back to their own country a reliable translation, with the authentic words of the master or his disciples. So strong a movement of expansion must necessarily leave positive traces; the expansion of Europe at the present day, following the self-same routes, is bringing about by degrees the discovery of the monuments of this long- perished past. No sooner was France mistress of Indo- China than she began her work by an admirable campaign of archaeological discovery; an immense harvest of in- scriptions collected from Cambodia up to Tonkin has re- vived a history which was believed to be utterly wiped out. Sanskrit iiad served for twelve centuries to immortalize the praises of the sovereigns of Cambodia and Champa. The Ecole Frangaise d'Extreme-Orient, founded in 1898, is methodically carrying on the work of the early pioneers ; science profits by the fruitful union of Sanskrit and Chinese, brilliantly accomplished by this school. The rivality of England and Russia in Central Asia has not been less fruit- PROBLEMS IN SANSKRIT STLUll-S ^^3 fill. Since 1800 the attention of Indianists has l)ccn kept awake by a continuous series of discoveries. Under the sands of ^he Takla Makan sleep Pompeiis, half Hindu in character. Treasure-hunters, according to the chances of their adventurous expeditions, have unearthed fragments of ancient manuscripts written in Sanskrit, mingled with fragments in an unknown language; arithmetic, medicine, sorcery, astrology, jostle one another in these incongruous leaves. A French mission has brought from Khotan a man- uscript of the Dhammapada written in a dialect closely resembling Sanskrit and dating, without doubt, at least fifteen hundred years back. Dr. Stein's mission in 1000 was the beginning of a methodical and first-hand explora- tion of the buried ruins; the religious, administrative and artistic history of Central Asia in the first centuries of the Christian Era shines forth with unexpected clearness. The patience of scholars is still busied with these documents, and, behold, new discoveries are already announced, due to the Griinwedel and Huth mission. This time we have to do not with fragments of manuscript, but a text printed on w^ood In the Tibetan manner. The work is in Sanskrit. Avith a marginal title in Chinese, and belongs to the Buddhist Scriptures. What splendid discoveries are wc not justified in hoping for, now, if the convents of Central Asia have multiplied copies of the sacred canon, of the Sanskrit Tripitaka, in print! Thus, a century after its birth, Sanskrit i)hilology sees its field extend to the limit;; of man's horizon. By its origin, by its grammar, by its vocabulary, by its earliest monuments, Sanskrit belongs to the Aryan group, extend- ing from the mouths of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic. By Alexander's expedition and the creation of new kingdoms to the northwest of India. Indian and Hellenic destinies were Imked together for three or four 284 INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES hundred years. By the expansion of Buddhism India dom- inated the poHtics, the thought, and the art of the Fax- East. The childish pride of the Brahmans had thought to exah the dignity of the sacred language by presuming to confine it, like a secret treasure, within the impassable boundaries of India. Science has once more broken down superstitution and revealed a truth grander than falsehood. No more than any other nation of the world has India created or developed her civilization alone. Our civiliza- tions, by whatever particular name we choose to call them, are the collective work of humanity. Far from developing in shy isolation, they are only of worth when they borrow largely. The market of thought, like the business market, is a continual movement of exchange. On whatever point of the globe we may live, we are all legitimate heirs of all the past humanity; the richest are those who claim most of that past. Whether applied to India or other regions, historical studies have grandeur and beauty in so far as they increase the patrimony of man ; they awake in the in- dividual the conscience of the species; they reveal to us our double debt towards the past which has formed us, towards the future which we are forming. Thus they raise the labors of scholarship above a vain dilettantism ; by them her role is carried even into practical life, unjustly dis- dained, and they show her toiling patiently and consciously for harmony and progress. THE RELATIONS OF LATIX BY KDVVARD ADOLF SONNKNSCIIKIN ■^Edward Adolf Soxxensciietx. Professor of Latin and Crppk. Uni- versity of Birmingham, England, b. Loudon. I80L .M.A. Oxford. 1878; D.Litt. 1901; M.A. Birmingham, 19UL Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Birmingham, 1901; Assistant Professor of Humanity. University of Glasgow, 1877-81; Professor of Greek and Latin. Mason College, Birmingham, 1883-90. E.xaminer Classics. Uni- versity of Wales, University of Edinburgh. 1899-1902; Examiner in Greek to the Central Welsh Board, 190."); Hon. Sec of the Classical Association of England and Wales, 1904. Editok ok Plautus's Captivi, MosteUuria, liudcns. Aithoh ok Latin and Greek Orammurs in the Parallel Grammar Series (of which he Is editor in chief); Ideals of Culture; Ora Maritima; I'rv Patria. etc.] I HAVE decided to treat the subject entrusted to ine to- day not from the purely linguistic point of view, — thougli this would have supplied me with a fruitful theme, — but rather from a point of view which would, I suppose, in Germany be called "kulturhistorisch." What I propose to discuss is not the relation of Latin to other languages as languages, but rather the place of Latin in the history of civilization, and the work that it has done in the world as a vehicle of culture. The subject thus opened up is, (^f course, far too great to be embraced in a brief paper; nor do I pretend to be able to deal competently with all its aspects: but it is, perhaps, not inappropriate in scope and magnitude to the present occasion. The history of the Latin language, regarded as an organ of culture, may be divided into three great periods: (1) the period in which it is the organ of a culture moulded mainly by Greece; this period extends from long l)efore the third century b. c. to the latter part of the second century a. d. : (2) the period in which Latin becomes the or- gan of the Christian Church, from the end of the second 285 286 LATIN LANGUAGE century to the end of the fifth century a. d. : (3) the period vaguely spoken of as the "Middle Ages," from the sixth to the end of the thirteenth century of our era. It was a favorite idea of ancient writers to represent the course of history as a succession of cycles, each of which was more or less coincident with its predecessor. That history repeats itself, — even that the atoms of which the universe is composed return after the completion of some magmis annus into the precise position which they occu- pied at its commencement, — this is the common assump- tion of ancient philosophers and poet : Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. If we compare this theory with modern philosophies of his- tory, the broad distinction is that, whereas we proceed on the postulate or working hypothesis that the world is progress- ive, the belief in progress was in ancient times conspicuous by its absence. Development, indeed, they knew; but only development in the downward direction, — degeneration, — and that only within the limits of one cycle. Thus at bottom their philosophy of history was static. The Eleatic conception of "Being" as against "Becoming" expresses the deeply rooted conviction of antiquity. If Plato had been sketch- ing the history of modern Europe he would probably have seen in the period which followed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire the commencement of a new cycle, he would have compared the inroads of the barbarians to the migrations which changed the face of Eastern Europe at the commencement of the Hellenic period ; and he would have ended by predicting a decline and fall of the civiliza- tion of the West, including, perhaps, that of the great Atlantis, whose existence he seems to have divined some nineteen centuries before the time of Columbus. Yet such a conception would have ignored a cardinal frict in the case. It was not in utter nakedness that modern Europe entered THE RELATIONS OF LATIN 287 on her career. Aluch, no doubt, of the spiritual wealtli of ancient Hellas had been lost, many a "cloud of glc^ry" had been dispelled, at any rate for a time, but much oi it lived on in other forms, reborn in the institutions, the art, and the philosophy of Rome. Thus it comes about that so large a part of our spiritual inheritance is Greek. The Renaissance of Greek studies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would not have been able to galvanize into life a culture that was utterly dead; it was because part of that culture was alive, albeit in Roman forms, that its second rebirth was possible. And even for this secoiul rebirth we are indebted principally to the genius of Rome working in Italians like Petrarch, Politian, and Poggio. When we think of these things, how to the same Rome which one of her poets of imperialism apostrophized in the words, — Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam, — we owe also our connection at two points with the intel- lectual conquests of Greece, we may well pause before we accept as final the verdict which one of the greatest of living scholars has summed up in the ungrateful phrase "das seelenmordende Rom." Standing some years ago in Norwich Cathedral, I had the greatness of Rome brought forcibly home to my mind. In the aisles there stretched out a series of groined vaults which carried one straight back to the Colosseum: and at the extreme east end, behind the altar, rose two stately Early English arches, once the entrance to a Lady Chapel of the thirteenth century, but now standing isolated; for the Lady Chapel itself was destroyed in the sixteenth cen- tury. The groined vaults are Romanesque, but the Early English arches are also Roman, only one degree further removed. Let two Roman barrel vaults or two Ro- manesque arches intersect, and you get the arch misnamed 288 LATIN LANGUAGE Gothic. A clear line of structural descent connects the one with the otiier, atul the genius of Rome may claim them both as her own. The relations of Rome \n the Crock and to the modern world may be also illusti-atcd by the history of verse. From C"ireeco Rome borrowed the system of strictly quantitative meter, and discarded in favor of it the native Saturnian. But j^i^radually she adapted it to the conditions of the Latin lauguat^e by j^raftinq- upon it the Italian principle of ac- cent/ the beoinnins^ of certain feet beinj;- marked by the use of an accented syllable, just as in architecture she in- trixlnced the feature of the arch. The effect is prominent in the verse of the poctae novclli of the second century A. 1).; but it is also visible to some extent in much earlier forms of Latin verse. To quote only one example, the second half of the dactylic pentameter of Ovid is subject to the law that it must be as accentual as possible, provided always that it does not end with a monosyllable. This sounds like a paradox; but I believe I could, if not give it proof, at any rate make it jilausible. The dissyllabic end- ing is simply a necessary sacrifice to secure coincidence of "ictus," as it is called, with accent in the other places. Well, in the course of time this accentual feature trans- formed the whole character of Latin verse, yet without in- volving a return to the Saturnian. And just as the pointed Gothic arch developed out of the Romanesque, so the ac- centual principle received such further development in the modern Teutonic \erse based upon Latin models — accent being of course also a Teutom'c principle — as to throw the quantitative principle completely in the shade; so that we now employ a kind of verse which seems at first sight com- parable to Greek verse only by way of contrast. But only ' The differentia of T^atln verse as compared with Greek ia that it is both quantitative or seiui-quantltatlve in some cases, axd at certain points ac- centual ; nor do I accept any purely accentual theory of the Saturnian. THE RELATIONS OF LATIN ogo at first sight. This, too. I have no time to discuss fully to-day; but I will merely say that in my opinion the main difference between English and Lalini/.cd Greek verse is that English is not based upon any system of prosody,— that is, that the (juantities of syllables in English verse are not predetermined, as they are in Latin, by rules repre- senting more or less accurately the prose pronunciation. The English poet in building his rime employs expansible and contractible bricks. Our debt to Greece was finely acknowledged by Shelley, in his preface to Hellas, — a poem inspired by sympathy with the cause of Greek independence. "We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have all their root in Greece." The truth which lies in this state- ment, accompanied by some exaggeration, is becoming clearer to us every day, in proportion as the achievements of ancient Hellas in the fields of letters, or art, of science — aye, even of religious thought and political organization — become better known to us and more justly appreciated. Yet it would probably by truer to say that we are all Romans. For in the first place the Greek influence upon the modern world is mainly indirect, coming to us through Rome; and secondly, there are elements in our culture which are not Greek at all ; other influences have been at work — these, too, mediated by Rome and the Latin lan- guage. As to the former point, no truer word can be spoken than the oft-repeated statement that just as con- quered Greece led her conqueror captive, so conquered Rome imposed on the Teutonic barbarians not only her laws but also her culture and her civilization as a whole. This second mission of Rome, which began with and before the fall of the Western Empire, was continued down to the Renaissance; and that Italy and the Eternal City might continue to hold the position of instructors of the 290 LATIN LANGUAGE nations was the prayer of Marco Vida in the sixteenth century : Artibus emineat semper studiisque Minervae Italia, et gentes doceat pulcherrima Roma Quandoquidem armorum penitus fortuna recessit.i As to my second point, the existence of non-Greek ele- ments in our civihzation, that is a matter for which neither Vida nor Shelly could be expected to have an open eye. But the fact that not only Greece, but also Judea, and at later date Arabia, stood at the back of Rome, and that the triumph of Latin civilization was a triumph for these also, is written large in history. Rome was, in fact, the heir of at least two civilizations; her culture was the common stream into which had flowed the two rills of a universalized Hellenism and Hellenized Judaism. But Latin was the medium of communication ; so that we may fairly describe the complex unity of modern civilization as mainly a Latin unity. There have also been direct influences of Greece upon the modern world, notably at the time of the Humanistic Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and during the last hundred years ; but these have never overthrown, though they have modi- fied, the structure which was erected on a Latin foundation. Just as the political institutions and the law of Rome form a large part of the structure of every modern state, Roman roads playing the part of modern railways in opening up new avenues for civilization, so Roman thought is the predominating partner in the intellectual life of to-day. The first period in the history of the Latin language, so regarded, is the period of Greek influence; and its most important subdivision falls in the middle of the second century b. c, the time when Greeks like Polybius First and Panaetius introduced to the "Scipionic circle" Period 1 Marco Vida (1489-1566), Poetica. u, 11. 63-65. THE RELATIONS OF LATIX 291 at Rome an intenser form of Greek culture than had been known there before. From this time onwards for over three hundred years a new intluence dominates Latin hter- ature, — the influence of Greek pliilosophy and especially of Stoicism. Of all the gifts of Greece to Rome, none was fraught with such far-reaching consequences as the philo- sophy of the Stoa. The fact that it caught the ear of Rome as no other system of philosophy e\er did, that it exercised a profound influence on life ami thought from the middle of the second century u. c. till the end of the second century a. d., that it transformed the whole system of Roman jurisprudence through the idea of the Rights of Man (the Jus Naturcr), that it became nothing less than the religion of the educated classes under the early Empire, — all this is unmistakable testimony to two facts: (1) that there was no absolute breach of con- tinuity between the Greek and the modern world; and (2) that Stoicism was really congenial to the Roman tempera- ment. But what was Stoicism? Not purely Greek, it would seem : every one of its men of note — Such as Zeno. Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Aratus, and at a later date Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater, Pan?etius, Poseidonius, Atheno- dorus (Canaanites) — hailed from the East, and some of them were of Semitic blood : the period at which it sprang into existence w^as that of the decay of the Greek city- states; the atmosphere it breathed was that of the Greater Greece opened up by the conquests of Alexander: the ideals it expressed were those of an epoch of expansion, — ideals of cosmopolitanism (the very word has a Stoic ring).' of the brotherhood of man. of philosophic liberalism and imperialism. Its monism and monotheism stood in marked lit seems to have nome to the Stoics from the Cynic Diogenes: bis answer ((too-MOTToAiVr)?) to the question ttoSottos el, is quoted by Diogenes Laertlua, vi, 63. 292 LATIN LANGUAGE contrast to the dualistic tendencies of Greek philosophy since Anaxagoras. Altogether, though much be explained as development on purely Greek lines, yet the probability, both external and internal, of an Oriental and indeed a Semitic strain in Stoicism seems too strong to be resisted. Greece, in fact, had grozini into Stoicism — but not without contact with Oriental thought. How deep the world's debt to the East is will probably ne^'er be fully known. Stoicism appealed strongly to the Roman character — to its dignity, its piety, its commercial integrity, its dictTc8aciiu',ia. ^ I am speaking, of course, of the Roman character at its best. It is worth remark that the only de- partment of Latin literature, except the literature of Law, which was dintinctly a Roman creation was a special kind of didactic literature, precisely the sphere in which these Stoical qualities had a field for their exercise, though it goes by the name of Satire. If we had adhered to the name chosen by Lucilius and Horace, it might, perhaps, have suggested to us as an English equivalent the word "Ser- mons." What are the Sermones of Horace but lay ser- mons, not without a spice of humor? And though he is fond of drawing caricatures of the Stoics, caricatures which we are too ready to take an grand serieux, he was himself a bit of a Stoic at heart, at any rate when in a moral mood. So were most of the great Roman writers. Virgil seems to have given up his early Epicureanism in favor of a religious view of things in which Stoicism and Platonism were blended, if not indeed one: the doctrine of the world-soul as expressed in the fourth Georgic (219- 227) is, I think. Stoic rather than Platonic; the famous passage in the sixth /Eneid (724-751), with its doctrine of rewards and punishments in the future state, is per- haps Platonic rather than Stoic; for the Stoics believed in 1 Polybius, VI, 56, 10. THE RELATIONS OF LATIN 203 absorption in the r.vzoiia too xonimo {sf^iritus, or auima, mundi), rather than any form of personal ininK^rtaUty.' The coryphaei of the Scipionic circle were, as I have said. all Stoics — Lncilius," Lselius Furiiis T^hihis, Scsevola, and the rest ; so too, perhaps, even Cato the Censor, in his old age. Terence talks Stoicism in the line : Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto (Hcaut. 11). Varro was half a Stoic; Cicero a good deal more than half. Even Sallust preaches Stoicism when he wishes to be impressive. Under the Empire we find Stoicism pro- fessed in Seneca and in Persius, as w^ell as in the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the Phrygian slave Epictetus. It commanded the respect of Liican and Jinenal, whose later Satires are practically Stoic tracts,^ and it would have made a convert of Tacitus, had he not had other axes to grind. The younger Pliny too shows Stoic leanings. Nor was its influence confined to letters : it showed itself under the Republic in the humanistic and socialistic radicalism of the Gracchi — pupils of C. Blossius — and in the assas- sination of Julius Caesar; and under the early Empire in the political martyrdoms of men like Musonius Rufus. Rubellius Plautus, Thrasea Paetus, and many others, who formed the "Stoic opposition." This vogue of Stoicism goes, indeed, so far as to sug- gest a doubt as to whether the Stoicism of Rome was ik^i merely an expression of the Roman character itself. And no doubt the Romans w^ere Stoics by nature as well by 1 The virtues that Virgil admired most were fo';tit" »°"'„i\!*''L*; See the passage in Donatus's Lifr. ch. 18. quoted by Sellar. p. 123. and by Wicliham, Introduction to Horace, Ode i, 21 (p. 73). 2 In my opinion Lucilius was a Stoio ; cf. esperlally the faement 'iboji^ rirfHs (=.wisdom), preserved by Lactantius. The word i«r,',,.s a''l">'-^n. ..i, 4. 1- . Hor. O./. ii. -. 18. Ill, 2, 17 ; Sat. ii, 1, 70, 72 ; Epist. i, 1. 17. 3 1 have not forgotten the passage (13. 121) '° ^hich the Stole Is spoken o^ as differing from the Cynic only in his fufiic. The Stoirs and the Cynks were really akin. 294 LATIN LANGUAGE nurture. Yet Stoicism must have lielped to develop those elements in the Roman character to which it appealed so strongly. The old Roman z-irtus (manliness) came to have a wider sense (wisdom). Xor is it easy to say how much of the later form which Stoicism assumed in the hands of men of affairs like Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius is due to contact with the Roman genius for simplification and adaptation and practical life, and how much to later developments of Stoicism itself, as taught by men like PanjEtius and Poseidonius. One thing is certain, — that neo-Stoicism, if I may so call it, put off something of its arrogance, its dogmatism, its pedantry, and its paradoxes, and became a more human thing than early Stoicism had been. And this gain more than compensated for the losses which it suffered on the purely speculative side. Neo- Stoicism as developed at Rome became a power in the world. There is probably no school of philosophy which has been so hardly judged as Stoicism. Its influence upon the world has been incalculable. The main differentiae of modern society, as compared with ancient, are, I suppose, broadly speaking, three: the passage from the city-state to the empire-state, the abolition of slavery, and the crea- tion of the church as distinct from the state. All these were voiced, or at least anticipated in principle, by Stoicism. As to the third point. Stoicism, like some other Greek schools of philosophy, linked men together in a unity w^hich was independent of the state and in which therefore lay the germs of a church. Again the Stoic theology led to an attitude towards nature w^hich was a new thing in literature, a sense of the mvstery of nature, as the dwelling-place and vesture of deity, the templum deorum immortalium (Seneca, De Benef. vu, 7, 3). It was something like the old Greek THE RELATIONS OI< LATIN !<:. nature-worsliip minus its polytheism. To ilu- loim.ition of our modern attitude towards nature no doubt other elements have contributed, notably the Celtic, as Matthew Arnold held. But Stoicism was the be^innin^' of it. The world at large is little conscious of the debt which it owes to Stoicism as a religious philosophy. The high seriousness and lofty morality taught by this school the world has passed by with a shrug of indifference: its chari- ties, extended to slaves and even to the lower animals, — oira ^d)£i re xai tpret Svrjr 'cri yatav,^ have been put down to "rhetoric" or inconsistency; and men have been contented merely to "shiver at its apathy." But its apathy was, after all, only meant as a protest against emotion in the wrong place. The Stoics objected to bas- ing mercy {dementia) upon mere emotion {miscricordia). May not the reason for this indifference of the world at large towards a noble school of thought be found partly in the fact that Stoicism stands too near to ourselves to be seen clearly? It is said that if you show a man his own likeness in a mirror he will sometimes turn from it in dis- gust. Stoicism is essentially a philosophy not of desi)air, but of confidence and almost defiant optimism. Many of the fundamental ethical ])rinciples which are generally re- garded as specifically Christian had been developed inde- pendently by the Porch. The idea of the fatherhood of God and its corollaries, the brotherhood of man and the law of love, in a word, tb.c wliole idea of basing morality directly upon a religious theory of the universe, is Stoic. The striking phrase, r«0 yap xai yhni; Uidv. quoted by St. Paul, and the use of the word vazr^p in addressing the Deity are common to the Hymn of Cleanthes and the pro- logue to the ^atvofieva of Aratus. 1 Hymn of Cleanthes, third century b. c. 296 LATIN LANGUAGE And this is a new note in literature; there is nothing quite like it in Plato or Aristotle, though Greek literature of the classical age has some analogies/ In view of these facts it is no matter of surprise that Stoicism has contributed to Christianity some of its cardi- nal terms: xveD/ia (spintus), au-^ei8r,aig (conscicntia), aurdpxeca (siifficientia) , in their special religious senses, have come to us through the Stoics, Even Xdyo^ is ultimately- due to them. The phrase noXtTeta rod xoff/iov civitas communis homi- num et dsorum, "city of God," is only one of many links that connect the early Greek Stoics with Cicero and Alarcus Aurelius, and Marcus Aurelius with St. Augustine. Nor did some of the chief of the early fathers of the church, notably St. Augustine, fail to recognize the affinities of Christianity to earlier religious systems. Seneca saepc noster, says Tertullian, Seneca noster, says Jerome: and the recognition went so far as to lead some zealot to man- ufacture a correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul, which was intended to account for their resemblance. Some passages in Seneca are indeed startling enough to awaken a suspicion of some contact. He several times speaks of God as parens noster, and as "within us" (prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est) ; he calls him sacer spirit us {Sacer infra nos spirifus scdct — the same idea as I Corin- thians III, 16, and vi, 19, "your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost in you"). Whether Seneca may not have come into contact with some refined form of Judaism at Rome, it is indeed hard to say. Yet these terms are Stoical prop- erty: the "God within" of Seneca is the same as the domi- nans ille in nobis dens of Cicero, and the divinac particula aurae of Horace. And if Seneca has some striking parallels 1 Plato speaks of God as narnp In the Timaeus, but rather in the sense of the creator — the {ij/niovpyo? — than as standing in an intimate relation to the Foul of man. THE RELATIONS OF LATIX 2J»7 to the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, these are only deductions from that fundamental ethical princi- ple of Stoicism by which it is linked not less with Aristotle than with Christianity: Iwiuiiiciii socialc cuiimal, com- miini bono genitum} "Nur allein der Mensch vermag duN Unmogliciic." The Stoics had seized the grand concep- tion that Reason, man's prerogative, is an emanation from, or part of, the Deity. I know of no better general exposi- tion of this doctrine of the "Indwelling Supreme Spirit" than Emerson's Divinity School Address of 1838. Let us now turn to the second period in the history of the Latin language, the period in which Latin becomes the organ of the Christian Church. In this period, Second which extends from the latter part of the second Period century to the latter part of the fifth century a. d., from Marcus Aurelius to the fall of the Western Emi)ire. Chris- tianity was taking shape: and it brings us to the second great element out of which the composite unity of Latin civilization was developed. The official conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in the fourth century has been called "the miracle of history.'" but there is no need to appeal to miracles in this case. The Gr?eco-Roman world w^as prepared for the reception of Christianity through that shifting of the ancient landmarks which finds expression in Stoicism. And there is als culty to those who believe that Shakespeare had not for- gotten the Latin which he had learnt at Stratford Grainniar School. And Seneca was more read in those days than he is now : witness the enormous influence which his tragedies exercised on the predecessors of Shakespeare. I venture- to commend the study of Seneca's prose works to Shake- spearian scholars. (i ^ ffi 6 .\^ ^^l^hzW '""'''''' s^^v^''^'^. s^t^ i2i:'4« '■'aR^f<^ -*5^i»k ^^f^^'7-y PRINTED IN U.S. A. Ivj -^ .^^•^ iSiT'i* wTh? 4 '4 is/Jr o I iiXiRf^^^-? v.tivas/^ ^•^1 M\' >« ^1^'^Q, q:. ^o X4 n>J V>^ '*c._"^- AA 000 778 561 / ^ or V ^IBHP!^ ^^^j€RS A -I- % '^/s„. X) A. 7 5J c. CAL//^. '^/Syal^V'^ '•"^^dl