Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Volume 01 (of 14), 1898Mississippi Historical Society
History
Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Volume 01 (of 14), 1898
Mississippi Historical Society
Mississippi -- History
In Germany I first learned the true method, and at the same time, the
most practicable ways and means of studying and teaching history. Amid
a pleasant variety of academic courses by brilliant lecturers like Kuno
Fischer, Zeller, Ernst Curtius, Grimm, Treitschke, Droysen, Du Bois
Raymond, Lepsius, and others, I somehow felt a lack of educational
unity and system. There was need of some backbone to unite the skeleton
of human deeds and historic experiences. This I found at last in the
teachings of my old master, Dr. J. C. Bluntschli, at Heidelberg. In his
lecture courses on the State, on the Constitutional Law, on Politics
and on the International Law of Modern Civilized States, I first began
to realize that government and law are the real forces which bind
society and the world together. I began to see that the true unity of
the world's life is to be found in the succession of States, Empires,
Federations, and in the International Relations, which are slowly
leading to such great aggregations as the United States of America
and the United States of Europe. In Germany I learned from a reading
of Bluntschli's various writing, including many noble articles in his
Staatsworterbuch, that there is such a thing as the World-State now in
process of evolution. From the published records of the Institute of
International Law, of which Dr. Bluntschli was the president, and from
a study of the subjects of Arbitration and International Tribunals, I
thought I could dimly discern the beginnings of that Parliament of Man,
the Federation of the World, of which the Poet Tennyson sings in his
Locksley Hall.
When I came to Baltimore three ideas of study and teaching were
uppermost in my mind: (1) the study of the origins of municipal life,
in order to find out whether it was Roman or Germanic; (2) the study
of the relations of Church and State, from their beginning down to the
present, for I had learned to believe in Germany that the separation of
civil from religious society is America's greatest contribution to the
world's progress; (3) the continued study of art history for its own
sake and as illustrating the history of civilization.
Out of the first of these ideas, developed by a reading of the works
of Sir Henry Maine, has grown my Historical Seminary and a long series
of University Studies in Historical and Political Science (chiefly on
Municipal, Economic and Institutional themes). Out of the second idea
evolved successive courses of lectures on Church and State, or Religion
and Government in the Ancient and Graeco-Roman World, together with my
whole system of graduate instruction upon the Early History of Society,
Greek and Roman Polities, Jewish and Church History, and certain modern
States like Prussia and France. The third idea never had a good chance
for development until recent years when I have fairly begun to realize
my original conception of illustrating in concrete, artistic ways the
progress of civilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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