to which the nations are subsidiary. Their story will be told, not for their own sake, but in reference and subordination to a higher series, according to the time and the degree in which they contribute to the common fortunes of mankind."
The influence of this attitude was at once wholesome and profound. It is true that Seeley had expressly guarded himself against all views of history that were narrow and insular. But Acton was the incarnation of universal history. As a writer in the Athenæum put it:—
No glorified encyclopædia, no aggregate of unrelated facts confronted the inquirer who interrogated Lord Acton, but a soul in whom spoke, as it seemed, the wisdom of the ages, and from whose depths there issued the very oracles of history, shining with the light that comes of absolutely single love of truth, penetrating even the gloom of the future by an illuminative knowledge of the past. To be with Acton was like being with the cultivated mind of Europe incarnate in its finest characteristics. In the deep tones of his voice there seemed to sound the accents of history. In those unflinching phrases we heard the impersonal estimate of posterity weighing in unerring balance the thoughts and deeds of the actors of the present or past, with a knowledge that knew no gap. We do not of course mean that Acton knew everything, but that he thoroughly understood the operation of forces—religious, political, social, economic—which create from what without them would be the sandheap of individual caprice and personal interest, the enduring bonds of secular and religious society.[1]
Now it may safely be said that the main purpose of historical study, apart from any value it has as a mental gymnastic, is to produce this frame of mind. It is because he had it in a supereminent degree that Acton would remain a great historian, even though he had never written a line. And it was because he had it that he helped forward so materially the cause of truly historical thinking in Cambridge. His wide acquaintance among foreign scholars and his knowledge of Continental
- ↑ Cf. Athenæum, April 16th, 1904, Review of Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone.
