Alas! the cataclysm theories had to die the death, and we
had to comfort ourselves with a dull prosaic dream of forces acting
with infinite slowness, grinding, and evolving through unnumbered
ages, the great laws working themselves out without haste or any
tendency to those picturesque paroxysms which have a certain charm
for us in our nonage. When Sociology shall have risen to the dignity
of a science--and that day may come--I think she too will be chary of
resorting to the cataclysm theory; she and her handmaid History will
hardly smile approval upon pretenders who are anxious to discover a
single efficient cause for results which a million influences have
combined to bring about, or who assume that every new phenomenon must
disturb the equilibrium of the world. To take up with theories first
in the hope, and sometimes with the determination, that facts shall
be found to support them at last, is the vice--I had almost said the
crime--of too many of those who now are styled historians.
* * * * * * *
If at this point I leave to others the further pursuit of a subject
which deserves a more comprehensive treatment than it has yet
received, it is not because I have not much more that I could tell.
If it be true that the proper study of mankind is man, it is at least
as true that the proper study of Englishmen is the history of
England; that, however, means a great deal more than is usually
understood by the words.
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