148 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE 



false perspective and receive undue attention on account of the 

 adjacent obscurities. We can survey and attempt syntheses; but 

 syntheses without fully articulated knowledge are no more than 

 vague shots in the direction of a dimly seen object. And the only 

 syntheses possible in such conditions are insignificant generalities, 

 bloodless abstract conceptions, like the d/tevT/va Kaprjva of Homer's 

 world of shades. The interpretation of history that shall be more 

 than a collection of plausible labels must grasp the vital process, 

 perceive the breath and motion, detect the undercurrents, trace the 

 windings, discern the foreshado wings, see the ideas traveling under- 

 ground, discover how the spiritual forces are poised and aimed, 

 de-termine how the motives conspire and interact. And it is only for 

 the history of the last three or four hundred years that we possess 

 material for investigating this complicated process. 



And it is for the development of the nineteenth century that our 

 position in some respects is most favorable. It is commonly said that 

 recent history cannot be profitably studied, on the ground that we 

 are too near to the events to be able to treat them objectively and see 

 them in the right perspective. Admitting the truth of the objection, 

 recognizing fully that recent events are seen by us "foreshortened 

 in the tract of time," we must nevertheless remember that there is 

 a compensation in proximity which it is disastrous to ignore. For 

 those who are near have opportunities of tracing the hidden moral 

 and intellectual work of an age which subsequent generations cannot 

 reach, because they are not in direct relation. De Tocqueville said: 

 "What contemporaries know better than posterity is the mental 

 movement, the general passions and feelings of the time, whereof 

 they still feel the last shuddering motions (les derniers frfmissements) 

 in their minds or in their hearts." If this is so, it is one of the most 

 pressing duties to posterity that men in each generation should 

 devote themselves to the scientific study of recent history from 

 this point of view. 



We may go further, and declare that, in this light, modern history 

 as a whole possesses a claim on us now, which does not belong either 

 to antiquity or to the Middle Ages. We have ourselves passed so 

 completely beyond the spiritual boundaries of the ancient and 

 medieval worlds that we can hardly suppose that we possess any 

 greater capacity for a sympathetic apprehension of them than our 

 descendants will possess a thousand years hence. Whereas, on the 

 other hand, we may fairly assume that we are in a much better 

 position than such remote posterity for sympathetic appreciation of 

 the movements the emancipatory movements of the sixteenth, 

 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It therefore devolves upon 

 us before we have drifted too far away to do what may be done to 

 transmit to future generations the means of appreciating and com- 



