IX

HISTORY AND OTHER STUDIES

(Introductory Lecture to Historical Students of Newnham College) FOR people beginning any new undertaking, or opening up for themselves a new path of life and thought, with new difficulties, interests, and ideals, it is a good thing to stop first and see where they are and what they want to do, in order that they may do it as well as possible. Now I would not imply that history is a new subject of study to any of you here. But there is and ought to be a difference between the school study of history and that followed at a university, though, of course, good school preparation counts for a great deal in enabling one to follow a university course satisfactorily.

I am inclined to think that there are many different ways in which one may approach the subject of one's university course which may be more or less good-though there are some which are undeniably bad. Any one who has been accustomed to regard any branch of knowledge as a kind of racecourse, in which one's object is to cover ground somehow, and enable oneself to answer the kind of questions that an examiner is likely to set, has made a bad beginning. It is

always a comfort to the teacher to realize that the mercenary idea of learning, even from a mercenary point of view, is unproductive. My experience of examiners and examinations, which is of many years' standing, leads me to believe that -except where barbaric methods survive-good places are generally obtained by students who work on good lines, while well-merited disappointment falls to the lot of those who keep examination results in view all through their course. I do not recommend so heroic a course as that of a total ignoring of future examinations by teachers and students. It is our business to consider carefully how your work should be arranged with a view to university standards and requirements, and the less you think about the subject the better, both for your own education and even for your future careers.

But leaving these low and mean considerations -where they safely may be left, on one side, I want to say a few words as to the relation of historical studies to the other studies pursued at this university. I think it is a great advantage for you that in this college, as in the university, you are always in the society of students, and of students working at other subjects than your own. It is, I fear, an exploded error that the university took its name from being a place of universal or all-round study. But though this notion is based on false etymology, it points to a true and fruitful principle: that all studies help one another, and that all kinds of students may

help one another. For we cannot, as in the good old times when the fields of knowledge were few and scantily cultivated, accomplish, each one individually, the whole course of knowledge-the trivium first and then the quadrivium. But it is a pity that we should lose the broader outlook on life and things that some of the old-world scholars had. Specialism in studies, if carried beyond a certain point, must tend to narrowness unless somehow counteracted. There are two ways in which it may be resisted: by a broad basis of all-round teaching in schools; and by comradeship of adult students in different departments. And this second means we have in the studies pursued here. We benefit in two ways: by learning to apply in our particular fields the methods and principles which are chiefly used in some other; and also by intercourse with minds which are of a somewhat different type from our own.

I do not mean, by this last suggestion, to imply that all the minds of those who take up any line of study are of the same type. A great many other things than natural bent decide us as to our several courses. Even in the case of one subject, such as history, one may be drawn to it from very different points of view. Some people have chiefly the antiquarian liking for history. They are attracted to it by a desire to know how certain things have come to be as they are now, just as the geologist seeks to know how the different kinds of rock have come to occupy their present positions, or the botanist wants to account for

the distribution of flora. To know the causes of things is the great desire of the scientific mind, irrespectively of the use to which that knowledge may be turned. Others, again, are drawn to historical studies by the hope that they may throw light on the path of political or civic duty, whether for those actually engaged in governmental work or for private citizens. Or, again, there are those -perhaps a larger proportion than the others-to whom the attraction is personal and human. They want to increase their field of human acquaintances, and to share sympathetically in the life of other times and societies; they read history from the same motives that make them want to go to parties, or to visit fresh places. This class includes all those whose interest in history is of the romantic kind; who find present life monotonous and often ugly, and who feel refreshed by the vision of stirring times and characters and picturesque manners and situations.

Now I do not think that any of these attractions is to be despised, but we all need to come under the influence of them all, at least to a certain extent. The purely scientific historian, without practical or human interests, is likely not only to prove dull to less scientific persons, but to fail on his own ground, because, in order to establish his general principles, he needs a vast number of details, and details are not easily collected nor adequately appreciated, in human affairs, except by such as have warm human sympathies, It is said that a large measure of

imagination is necessary to make any great scientific discoverer, and I am sure that it is wanted to make a good historian. Then, again, the practical or political historian is likely to fail lamentably if he has not a good deal of the scientific spirit, and also a wide acquaintance with human beings and institutions, both of the past and of the present. One is tired of seeingespecially in the daily press-warnings and suggestions supposed to be drawn from historical experience (e.g. as to land valuation), but which a deeper study of historical conditions would show to be quite irrelevant. But, after all, the human student of history (if I may use the expression) needs to learn to take the scientific standpoint, and again his subject tends to become remote or unactual if he does not also, occasionally at least, look at things on the practical side.

Of course there are some historical philosophers who would entirely exclude this "human" class of readers from the ranks of serious students. The late Professor Seeley, whose influence on historical studies at Cambridge was at one time very strong, used to warn such people off the fields of history, and bid them keep to romances. But I think he overlooked the fact that it makes an immense difference to the way in which we regard things whether or no we believe in the veracity of a story, be it ever so interesting. In fact, the interest is immensely increased, for the normal mind, by the probability or certainty that