Whatever a man's notions of these later centuries are, such, in the main, the man himself will be. Under the name of History, they cover the articles of his philosophic, his religious, and his political creed.[105] They give his measure; they denote his character: and, as praise is the shipwreck of historians, his preferences betray him more than his aversions. 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 ourselves. The historians of former ages, unapproachable for us in knowledge and in talent, cannot be our limit. We have the power to be more rigidly impersonal, disinterested and just than they; and to learn from undisguised and genuine records to look with remorse upon the past, and to the future with assured hope of better things; bearing this in mind, that if we lower our standard in history, we cannot uphold it in Church or State. NOTES [1] No political conclusions of any value for practice can be arrived at by direct experience. All true political science is, in one sense of the phrase, _a priori_, being deduced from the tendencies of things, tendencies known either through our general experience of human nature, or as the result of an analysis of the course of history, considered as a progressive evolution.—MILL, _Inaugural Address_, 51. [2] Contemporary history is, in Dr. Arnold's opinion, more important than either ancient or modern; and in fact superior to it by all the superiority of the end to the means.—SEELEY, _Lectures and Essays_, 306. [3] The law of all progress is one and the same, the evolution of the simple into the complex by successive differentiations.—_Edinburgh Review_, clvii. 428. Die Entwickelung der Völker vollzieht sich nach zwei Gesetzen. Das erste Gesetz ist das der Differenzierung. Die primitiven Einrichtungen sind einfach und einheitlich, die der Civilisation zusammengesetzt und geteilt, und die Arbeitsteilung nimmt beständig zu.—SICKEL, _Goettingen Gelehrte Anzeigen_, 1890, 563. [4] Nous risquons toujours d'être influencés par les préjugés de notre époque; mais nous sommes libres des préjugés particuliers aux époques antérieures.—E. NAVILLE, _Christianisme de Fénelon_, 9. [5] La nature n'est qu'un écho de l'esprit. L'idée est la mère du fait, elle façonne graduellement le monde à son image.—FEUCHTERSLEBEN, _in_ CARO, _Nouvelles Études Morales_, 132. Il n'est pas d'étude morale qui vaille l'histoire d'une idée.—LABOULAYE, _Liberté Religieuse_, 25.