HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS 159 



devotion and disinterestedness, not permitting political views or 

 the promptings of art to enter their thoughts and works." 1 Here is 

 a case where a man of literary talent and imaginative temperament 

 tries to make himself a pure scientist by dint of erudition and hon- 

 esty. Fustel could not allow that the German invasion of the fifth 

 century had caused any organic changes in the life of Gaul. Writing 

 in the Revue des Deux Mondes, under the date 1872, he observes a 

 studied calmness of phrase, but beneath it we can see his scorn for 

 contemporary historians in Germany, who were equally scientific 

 in their pretensions with himself and equally tenacious of their 

 views. I am not trying to blame Fustel in the least or to conceal my 

 genuine admiration of his great talents. He was not, however, what 

 he deemed himself to be, the impassive mouthpiece of history, 

 and his w T ork might have been even better than it is had he taken 

 his functions less seriously. 



Beside the rebuke of Fustel to his class let us place an utterance 

 which was made only a few weeks ago by a very eminent thinker and 

 man of action, Mr. John Morley. In this case you will observe that 

 there is no express mention of history, but we shall not need to hunt 

 long before finding the application. During the past summer the 

 University of Edinburgh conferred upon Mr. Morley an honorary 

 degree, and as such gifts are encumbered by the servitude of a speech, 

 he made the required remarks. Toward the close of his address he 

 struck the aspiring note, without which an utterance from his lips 

 would lack its wonted character. As his selected epigraph he urged 

 the undergraduates before him to cultivate that liberty of mind 

 which he called the mark of distinction between the educated and 

 the half-educated man. "I have," he continued, "a great friend 

 whose happy fortune it has been to know some of the most prominent 

 and leading men of his time, and he assures me that of those great 

 and prominent men he does not think he could count more than 

 four who are or were really lovers of truth. Of course we are not 

 complimenting ourselves too much when we say that we are all 

 lovers of truth in a sense; but by lovers of truth I mean something 

 more than the sense in which we are all lovers of truth. I mean men 

 who are free from the imprisonment of formula, tolerably detached 

 from the affairs of party in Church and State, with width of appre- 

 hension, power of comprehension, which after all is the true aim 

 of culture." 3 Now the love of truth as thus defined is or should be 

 the badge of the historian. Unfortunately it seems to be rare, since 

 Mr. Morley 7 s friend has discovered it in four cases only among the 

 distinguished men of his generation, and he does not expressly state 

 that any one of the favored few was an historian. 



1 Revue Histarique, vol. XLI, p. 278, 



2 The Times, July 25, 1904. 



