I9II.] ROBINSON— THE NEW HISTORY. 181 



pies which we find in history, improved by the hvely descriptions 

 and the just explanations or censures of historians/' will, he believes, 

 have a much better and more permanent effect than declamation, or 

 the " dry ethics of mere philosophy." ^Moreover, to summarize his 

 argument, we can by the study of history enjoy in a short time a 

 wide range of experience at the expense of other men and without 

 risk to ourselves. History enables us " to live with the men who 

 lived before us, and we inhabit countries that we never saw. Place 

 is enlarged, and time prolonged in this manner : so that the man 

 who applies himself early to the study of history may acquire in a 

 few years, and before he sets foot in the world, not only a more 

 extended knowledge of mankind but the experience of more cen- 

 turies than any of the patriarchs saw\" Our own personal expe- 

 rience is doubly defective ; we are born too late to see the beginning, 

 and we die too soon to see the end of many things. History sup- 

 plies in a large measure these defects. 



There is of course little originality in Bolingbroke's plea for his- 

 tory's usefulness in makihg wiser and better men and citizens. 

 Polybios had seen in history a guide for statesmen and military 

 commanders ; and the hope that the conspicuous moral victories and 

 defeats of the past would serve to arouse virtue and discourage vice 

 has been urged by innumerable chroniclers as the main justification 

 of their enterprises. To-day, however, one would rarely find a 

 historical student who would venture to recommend statesmen, 

 warriors and moralists to place any confidence whatsoever in histor- 

 ical analogies and warnings, for the supposed analogies usually 

 prove illusive on inspection and the warnings, impertinent. Whether 

 or no Napoleon was ever able to make any practical use in his own 

 campaigns of the accounts he had read of those of Alexander and 

 Csesar, it is quite certain that Admiral Togo would have derived no 

 useful hints from Nelson's tactics at Alexandria or Trafalgar. Our 

 situation is so novel that it would seem as if political and military 

 precedents of even a century ago could have no possible value. As 

 for our present " anxious morality," as Maeterlinck calls it, it seems 

 equally clear that the sinful extravagances of Sardanapalus and 

 Nero, and the conspicuous public virtue of Aristides and the Horatii, 

 are alike impotent to promote it. 



