THE VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 9 



as the lawyer looks at it, it is merely the voice of the state, the body 

 of regulations set by government to give order to the competitive 

 play of individual and social forces. Looked at from the historian's 

 point of view, it consists of that part of the social thought and habit 

 which has definitely formed itself, which has gained universal acqui- 

 escence and recognition, and which has been given the sanction and 

 backing of the state itself, a final formulation in command. In either 

 case, whatever its origin, whether in the arbitrary will of the law- 

 maker or in the gradually disclosed and accepted convenience of 

 society, it comes, not independently and of itself, but through the 

 mouth of governors and judges, and is itself a product of the state. 

 But not of politics, unless we speak of public law, the smaller part, 

 not of private, the greater. The forces which created it are chiefly 

 economic, or else social, bred amidst ideas of class and privilege. 

 It springs from a thousand fountains. Statutes do not contain all of 

 it; and statutes are themselves, when soundly conceived, but gen- 

 eralizations of experience. The truth is that, while law gets its 

 formulation and its compulsive sanction from the political governors 

 of the state, its real life and source lie hidden amidst all of the vari- 

 ous phenomena which historians are called upon to explore. It 

 belongs high in the list I have made, because it so definitely takes its 

 form from the chief organ of society. 



To put literature before art in the organic order I have suggested, 

 is not to deny Mr. Ruskin's dictum, that art more than literature 

 comes "by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race," 

 by instinct rather than by deliberation; it is only to say that more 

 of what is passing through a nation's thought is expressed in its 

 literature than in its art. As a nation thinks so it is; and the his- 

 torian must give to the word literature a wider significance than 

 the critic would vouchsafe. He must think not merely of that part 

 of a nation's book of words upon which its authors have left the touch 

 of genius, the part that has been made immortal by the transfiguring 

 magic of art, but also of the cruder parts which have served their 

 purpose and now lie dead upon the page, the fugitive and ephem- 

 eral pamphlets, the forgotten controversies, the dull, thin prose of 

 arguments long ago concluded, old letters, futile and neglected 

 pleas, whatever may seem to have played through the thought of 

 older days. 



Of the history of language I speak with a great deal of diffidence. 

 My own study of it was of narrow scope and antedated all modern 

 methods. But I know what interest it has for the historian of life and 

 opinion; I know how indispensable its help is in deciphering race 

 origins and race mixtures; I know what insight it affords into the 

 processes of intellectual development; I know what subtle force it 

 has had not only in moulding men's thoughts, but also their acts and 



