mTEODUCTION. ] 3 



add, its superiority to the last. We have learned to apply what is 

 historical and genetic methods wherever they are appli- ™°teristic 

 cahle : and the importance of this is very great, not only of this age. 

 in the study of science and of history, but in its practical 

 application to human life. To use expressions which 

 though familiar and hackneyed have a profound meaning, 

 it has made political thought at once more conservative 

 and more liberal. 



The increased importance which we have learned to Conser- 

 attach to historical methods has made political thought ^^ ^^™' 

 more conservative ; for it is impossible that a student of 

 history should despise the past. He may be a believer in 

 indefinite progress ; he may believe that the present is 

 better than the past, and that the future will be better 

 than the present. But he must recognise the truth, that no 

 man or nation can " break with the past ; "^ that the pre- 

 sent is the result and outgrowth of the past, and that the 

 future will be the result and outgrowth of the present ; and, 

 however lightly he may esteem all that has been actually 

 attained by the past and by the present, he must value 

 them for the wealth of data and materials wliich they 

 contain for the future. He may be boldly constructive ; 

 but he must be conservative, inasmuch as he cannot be 

 destructive. The habit of mind which is produced by the 

 historical and genetic study of the deeds and thoughts of 

 men is opposed alike to revolutionary destruction and to 

 what may be called revolutionary construction : I mean 

 the direct application to practice of political and social 

 theories deduced from a priori data, and independently of 

 historical experience, according to the method which was 

 characteristic of the period of the French Eevolution — or 

 perhaps we ought rather to say, of the period which pre- 

 pared for that great revolution, and led up to it. The vast 

 change which has come over the thoughts of cultivated 

 men on this class of subjects may be gauged by comparing Bentham 

 Bentham with Stuart Mill : especially because, not with- Mill."^ "'"' 



I De Tocqiieville, in his "France before the Revolution," has com- 

 pletely disproved the current notion that France, in the great Revolution, 

 succeeded in breaking with the past. 



