42 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



dust and ashes. With history, however, as a science these have 

 nothing to do. From a scientific standpoint they have worked 

 incalculable harm in the past, and are, I believe, one of the chief 

 obstacles in the way of historical progress to-day. 



I must confess here that I am by no means confident that many of 

 you will sympathize with what I have been saying. To some of you 

 the incompatibility of literary ideals and expedients with conscien- 

 tious historical writing will seem so obvious as scarcely to merit seri- 

 ous discussion. You will urge that a great part of our more serious 

 treatises, especially those which we owe to Germany, are free from 

 the malign influence which I seem here to be perversely exaggerating. 

 On the other hand some among you will see in what has been said only 

 the promise of another dreary tribute to Dr. Dryasdust with whom 

 Scott vainly expostulates at the opening of Ivanhoe. The following 

 illustrations will, however, as I trust, meet, to some extent, the quite 

 pardonable objections to which my general thesis would seem to be 

 open. 



Among the scientific principles which should guide the historical 

 student, there is none more important than the conception of the 

 continuity or unity of history. The antithesis of the unity of history 

 is the inveterate habit of dividing the past into periods, epochs, eras, 

 and ages, with apparent disregard of the now generally conceded 

 unity and continuity. Few serious students of general history to-day 

 would feel tempted to defend any of the schemes of periodizing 

 which, from the days of St. Jerome down, it has pleased historical 

 writers to devise. With few exceptions they are so obviously literary 

 or theological in their origin that they have only an archaeological 

 interest. We are, nevertheless, still under the potent spell of the older 

 writers. For instance, Professor Bury, in the introduction to his 

 excellent edition of Gibbon's great work, says: " Not the least import- 

 ant aspect of the Decline and Fall is its lesson in the unity of history. 

 . . . The title displays the cardinal fact that the empire founded by 

 Augustus fell in 1453; that all the changes which transformed the 

 Europe of Marcus Aurelius into the Europe of Erasmus had not 

 abolished the name and memory of the Empire." Here one of our 

 most patient and exacting scholars discards the proposition that 

 Rome fell in 476 as a purely literary one without scientific justifica- 

 tion. But he applauds Gibbon for fixing another definite date still 

 more arbitrary than the first for its destruction. 



While we are ready to acknowledge the law of continuity as fun- 

 damental, we equally seek excuses for disguising its importance, 

 both in our teaching and writing. This must be attributed primarily 

 to the exigencies of effective presentation. The steady and placid 

 current of a river rarely makes the deep impression that is produced 

 by a cataract. We have an innate love of the dramatic. Harnack 



