NATURE'S INSURGENT SON 57 



and tradition. At one time men believed that history 

 repeats itself, and it was thought to be a proper and 

 useful training for one who would take part in public 

 affairs to store his mind with precedents and picturesque 

 narratives of prominent statesmen and rulers in far-off 

 days and distant lands. As a matter of fact it cannot 

 be shown that any statesman, or even the humblest 

 politician, has ever been guided to useful action by 

 such knowledge. History does not repeat itself, and 

 the man who thinks that it does will be led by his 

 fragmentary knowledge of stories of the past into serious 

 blunders. To the fashionable journalist such biographical 

 history furnishes the seasoning for his essays on political 

 questions of the day. But this does not seem to be 

 a sufficient reason for assigning so prominent a place 

 in University studies to this kind of history as is at 

 present the case. The reason, perhaps, of the favour 

 which it receives, is that it is one of the few subjects 

 which a man of purely classical education can pursue 

 without commencing his education in elementary 

 matters afresh. 



It would be a serious mistake 1 to suppose that those 

 who would give a complete supremacy to the study of 

 Nature, in our educational system, do not value and 

 enjoy biographical history for what it is worth as an 

 entertainment ; or further, that they do not set great 

 value upon the scientific study of the history of the 

 struggles of the races and nations of mankind, as a 

 portion of the knowledge of the evolution of Man, 

 capable of giving conclusions of great value when it 

 has been further and more thoroughly treated as a 



1 I desire especially to draw the attention of those who have mis- 

 understood and misrepresented my estimate of the importance of the 

 study of History, to this paragraph, E.R.L. 



