xxxvi
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
sources, treating both of the institutions which secured it, the persons who fought for it, and the ideas which expressed it, and taking note of all that scholars had written about every several portion of the subject, was and is beyond the reach of a single man. Probably towards the close of his life Acton had felt this. The Canzbridge Modern Hzstory, which required the co-operation of so Inany specialists, was to him really but a fragment of this great project. Two other causes limited Acton's output. Towards the close of the seventies he began to suspect, and eventually discovered, that he and Döllinger were not so close together as he had believed. That is to say, he found that in regard to the crimes of the past, DölIinger's position was more like that of Creighton than his own- that, while he was willing to say persecution was always wrong, he was not willing to go so far as Acton in rejecting every kind of mitigating plea and with medi- æval certainty consigning the persecutors to perdition. Acton, \vho had, as he thought, learnt all this from Döllinger, was distressed at what seemed to him the weakness and the sacerdotal prejudice of his master, felt that he was now indeed alone, and for the time surrendered, as he said, all views of literary work. This was the time when he had been gathering materials for a History of the Council oj Trent. That this cleavage, coming when it did, had a paralysing effect on Acton's productive energy is most probable, for it made him feel that he was no longer one of a school, and \vas \vithout sympathy and support in the things that lay nearest his heart. Another cause retarded production-his determination to know all about the work of others. Acton desired to be in touch with university life all over Europe, to be a ware, if possible through personal knowledge, of the trend of investigation and thought of scholars working in
