Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844

Never was a juster observation than that the human mind is never quiescent; it may not give the external symptoms of action, but it does not cease to have the internal action: it sleeps, but even then it dreams. Writers innumerable have declaimed on the night of the Middle Ages – on the deluge of barbarism which, under the Goths, flooded the world – on the torpor of the human mind, under the combined pressure of savage violence and priestly superstition; yet this was precisely the period when the minds of men, deprived of external vent, turned inwards on themselves; and that the learned and thoughtful, shut out from any active part in society by the general prevalence of military violence, sought, in the solitude of the cloister, employment in reflecting on the mind itself, and the general causes which, under its guidance, operated upon society. The influence of this great change in the direction of thought at once appeared when knowledge, liberated from the cloister and the university, again took its place among the affairs of men. Machiavel in Italy, and Bacon in England, for the first time in the annals of knowledge, reasoned upon human affairs as a science. They spoke of the minds of men as permanently governed by certain causes, and of known principles, always leading to the same results; they treated of politics as a science in which certain known laws existed, and could be discovered, as in mechanics and hydraulics. This was a great step in advance, and demonstrated that the superior age of the world, and the wide sphere to which political observation had now been applied, had permitted the accumulation of such an increased store of facts, as permitted deductions, founded on experience, to be formed in regard to the affairs of nations. Still more, it showed that the attention of writers had been drawn to the general causes of human affairs; that they reasoned on the actions of men as a subject of abstract thought; regarded effects formerly produced as likely to recur from a similar combination of circumstances; and formed conclusions for the regulation of future conduct, from the results of past experience. This tendency is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in the Discorsi of Machiavel, where certain general propositions are stated, deduced, indeed, from the events of Roman story, but announced as lasting truths, applicable to every future generation and circumstances of men. In depth of view and justness of observation, these views of the Florentine statesman never were surpassed. Bacon's essays relate, for the most part, to subjects of morals, or domestic and private life; but not unfrequently he touches on the general concerns of nations, and with the same profound observation of the past, and philosophic anticipation of the future.

Voltaire professed to elevate history in France from the jejune and trifling details of genealogy, courts, wars, and negotiations, in which it had hitherto, in his country, been involved, to the more general contemplation of arts and philosophy, and the progress of human affairs; and, in some respects, he certainly effected a great reformation on the ponderous annalists who had preceded him. But the foundation of his history was still biography; he regarded human events only as they were grouped round two or three great men, or as they were influenced by the speculations of men of letters and science. The history of France he stigmatized as savage and worthless till the reign of Louis XIV.; the Russians he looked upon as bitter barbarians till the time of Peter the Great. He thought the philosophers alone all in all; till they arose, and a sovereign appeared, who collected them round his throne, and shed on them the rays of royal favour, human events were not worth narrating; they were merely the contests of one set of savages plundering another. Religion, in his eyes, was a mere priestly delusion to enslave and benighten mankind; from its oppression the greatest miseries of modern times had flowed; the first step in the emancipation of the human mind was to chase for ever from the earth those sacerdotal tyrants. The most free-thinking historian will now admit, that these views are essentially erroneous; he will allow that, viewing Christianity merely as a human institution, its effect in restraining the violence of feudal anarchy was incalculable; long anterior to the date of the philosophers, he will look for the broad foundation on which national character and institutions, for good or for evil, have been formed. Voltaire was of great service to history, by turning it from courts and camps to the progress of literature, science, and the arts – to the delineation of manners, and the preparation of anecdotes descriptive of character; but, notwithstanding all his talent, he never got a glimpse of the general causes which influence society. He gave us the history of philosophy, but not the philosophy of history.

The ardent genius and pictorial eye of Gibbon rendered him an incomparable delineator of events; and his powerful mind made him seize the general and characteristic features of society and manners, as they appear in different parts of the world, as well as the traits of individual greatness. His descriptions of the Roman empire in the zenith of its power, as it existed in the time of Augustus – of its decline and long-protracted old age, under Constantine and his successors on the Byzantine throne – of the manners of the pastoral nations, who, under different names, and for a succession of ages, pressed upon and at last overturned the empire – of the Saracens, who, issuing from the lands of Arabia, with the Koran in one hand and the cimeter in the other, urged on their resistless course, till they were arrested by the Atlantic on the one side, and the Indian ocean on the other – of the stern crusaders, who, nursed amid the cloistered shades and castellated realms of Europe, struggled with that devastating horde "when 'twas strongest, and ruled it when 'twas wildest" – of the long agony, silent decay, and ultimate resurrection of the Eternal City – are so many immortal pictures, which, to the end of the world, will fascinate every ardent and imaginative mind. But, not withstanding this incomparable talent for general and characteristic description, he had not the mind necessary for a philosophical analysis of the series of causes which influence human events. He viewed religion with a jaundiced and prejudiced eye – the fatal bequest of his age and French education, unworthy alike of his native candour and inherent strength of understanding. He had profound philosophic ideas, and occasionally let them out with admirable effect; but the turn of his mind was essentially descriptive, and his powers were such, in that brilliant department, that they wiled him from the less inviting contemplation of general causes. We turn over his fascinating pages without ever wearying; but without ever discovering the general progress or apparent tendency of human affairs. We look in vain for the profound reflections of Machiavel on the permanent results of certain political combinations or experiments. He has led us through a "mighty maze;" but he has made no attempt to show it "not without a plan."

Hume is commonly called a philosophical historian, and so he is; but he has even less than Gibbon the power of unfolding the general causes which influence the progress of human events. He was not, properly speaking, a philosophic historian, but a philosopher writing history – and these are very different things. The practical statesman will often make a better delineator of the progress of human affairs than the philosophic recluse; for he is more practically acquainted with their secret Springs: it was not in the schools, but the forum or the palace, that Sallust, Tacitus, and Burke acquired their deep insight into the human heart. Hume was gifted with admirable sagacity in political economy; and it is the good sense and depth of his views on that important subject, then for the first time brought to bear on the annals of man, that has chiefly gained for him, and with justice, the character of a philosophic historian. To this may be added the admirable clearness and rhetorical powers with which he has stated the principal arguments for and against the great changes in the English institutions which it fell to his lot to recount – arguments far abler than were either used by, or occurred to, the actors by whom they were brought about; for it is seldom that a Hume is found in the councils of men. With equal ability, too, he has given periodical sketches of manners, customs, and habits, mingled with valuable details on finance, commerce, and prices – all elements, and most important ones, in the formation of philosophical history. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to the man who has rescued these important facts from the ponderous folios where they were slumbering in forgotten obscurity, and brought them into the broad light of philosophic observation and popular narrative. But, notwithstanding all this, Hume is far from being gifted with the philosophy of history. He has collected or prepared many of the facts necessary for the science, but he has made little progress in it himself. He was essentially a sceptic. He aimed rather at spreading doubts than shedding light. Like Voltaire and Gibbon, he was scandalously prejudiced and unjust on the subject of religion; and to write modern history without correct views on that subject, is like playing Hamlet without the character of the Prince of Denmark. He was too indolent to acquire the vast store of facts indispensable for correct generalization on the varied theatre of human affairs, and often drew hasty and incorrect conclusions from the events which particularly came under his observation. Thus the repeated indecisive battles between the fleets of Charles II. and the Dutch, drew from him the observation, apparently justified by their results, that sea-fights are seldom so important or decisive as those at land. The fact is just the reverse. Witness the battle of Salamis, which repelled from Europe the tide of Persian invasion; that of Actium, which gave a master to the Roman world; that of Sluys, which exposed France to the dreadful English invasions, begun under Edward III.; that of Lepanto, which rolled back from Christendom the wave of Mahometan conquest; the defeat of the Armada, which permanently established the Reformation in Northern Europe; that of La Hogue, which broke the maritime strength of Louis XIV.; that of Trafalgar, which for ever took "ships, colonies, and commerce" from Napoleon, and spread them with the British colonial empire over half the globe.

Montesquieu owes his colossal reputation chiefly to his Esprit des Loix; but the Grandeur et Decadence des Romains is by much the greater work. It has never attained nearly the reputation in this country which it deserves, either in consequence of the English mind being less partial than the French to the philosophy of human affairs, or, as is more probable, from the system of education at our universities being so exclusively devoted to the study of words, that our scholars never arrive at the knowledge of things. It is impossible to imagine a work in which the philosophy of history is more ably condensed, or where there is exhibited, in a short space, a more profound view of the general causes to which the long-continued greatness and ultimate decline of that celebrated people were owing. It is to be regretted only that he did not come to modern times and other ages with the same masterly survey; the information collected in the Esprit des Loix would have furnished him with ample materials for such a work. In that noble treatise, the same philosophic and generalizing spirit is conspicuous; but there is too great a love of system, an obvious partiality for fanciful analogies, and, not unfrequently, conclusions hastily deduced from insufficient data. These errors, the natural result of a philosophic and profound mind wandering without a guide in the mighty maze of human transactions, are entirely avoided in the Grandeur et Decadence des Romains, where he was retained by authentic history to a known train of events, and where his imaginative spirit and marked turn for generalization found sufficient scope, and no more, to produce the most perfect commentary on the annals of a single people of which the human mind can boast.

Bossuet, in his Universal History, aimed at a higher object; he professed to give nothing less than a development of the plan of Providence in the government of human affairs, during the whole of antiquity, and down to the reign of Charlemagne. The idea was magnificent, and the mental powers, as well as eloquence, of the Bishop of Meaux promised the greatest results from such an undertaking. But the execution has by no means corresponded to the conception. Voltaire has said, that he professed to give a view of universal history, and he has only given the history of the Jews; and there is too much truth in the observation. He never got out of the fetters of his ecclesiastical education; the Jews were the centre round which he supposed all other nations revolved. His mind was polemical, not philosophic; a great theologian, he was but an indifferent historian. In one particular, indeed, his observations are admirable, and, at times, in the highest degree impressive. He never loses sight of the divine superintendence of human affairs; he sees in all the revolutions of empires the progress of a mighty plan for the ultimate redemption of mankind; and he traces the workings of this superintending power in all the transactions of man. But it may be doubted whether he took the correct view of this sublime but mysterious subject. He supposes the divine agency to influence directly the affairs of men – not through the medium of general laws, or the adaptation of our active propensities to the varying circumstances of our condition. Hence his views strike at the freedom of human actions; he makes men and nations little more than the puppets by which the Deity works out the great drama of human affairs. Without disputing the reality of such immediate agency in some particular cases, it may safely be affirmed, that by far the greater part of the affairs of men are left entirely to their own guidance, and that their actions are overruled, not directed, by Almighty power to work out the purposes of Divine beneficence.

That which Bossuet left undone, Robertson did. The first volume of his Charles V. may justly be regarded as the greatest step which the human mind had yet made in the philosophy of history. Extending his views beyond the admirable survey which Montesquieu had given of the rise and decline of the Roman empire, he aimed at giving a view of the progress of society in modern times. This matter, of the progress of society, was a favourite subject at that period with political philosophers; and by combining the speculations of these ingenious men with the solid basis of facts which his erudition and industry had worked out, Robertson succeeded in producing the most luminous, and at the same time just, view of the progress of nations that had yet been exhibited among mankind. The philosophy of history here appeared in its full lustre. Men and nations were exhibited in their just proportions. Society was viewed, not only in its details, but its masses; the general causes which influence its progress, running into or mutually affecting each other, and yet all conspiring with more or less efficacy to bring about a general result, were exhibited in the most lucid and masterly manner. The great causes which have contributed to form the elements of modern society – the decaying civilization of Rome – the irruption of the northern nations – the prostration and degradation of the conquered people – the revival of the military spirit with the private wars of the nobles – the feudal system and institution of chivalry – the crusades, and revival of letters following the capture of Constantinople by the Turks – the invention of printing, and consequent extension of knowledge to the great body of the people – the discovery of the compass, and, with it, of America, by Columbus, and doubling of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama – the discovery of gunpowder, and prodigious change thereby effected in the implements of human destruction – are all there treated in the most luminous manner, and, in general, with the justest discrimination. The vast agency of general causes upon the progress of mankind now became apparent: unseen powers, like the deities of Homer in the war of Troy, were seen to mingle at every stop with the tide of sublunary affairs; and so powerful and irresistible does their agency, when once revealed, appear, that we are perhaps now likely to fall into the opposite extreme, and to ascribe too little to individual effort or character. Men and nations seem to be alike borne forward on the surface of a mighty stream, which they are equally incapable of arresting or directing; and, after surveying the vain and impotent attempts of individuals to extricate themselves from the current, we are apt to exclaim with the philosopher,16 "He has dashed with his oar to hasten the cataract; he has waved with his fan to give speed to the winds."

A nearer examination, however, will convince every candid enquirer, that individual character exercises, if not a paramount, yet a very powerful influence on human affairs. Whoever investigates minutely any period of history will find, on the one hand, that general causes affecting the whole of society are in constant operation; and on the other, that these general causes themselves are often set in motion, or directed in their effects, by particular men. Thus, of what efficacy were the constancy of Pitt, the foresight of Burke, the arm of Nelson, the wisdom of Wellington, the genius of Wellesley, in bringing to maturity the British empire, and spreading the Anglo-Saxon race, in pursuance of its appointed mission, over half the globe! What marvellous effect had the heroism and skill of Robert Bruce upon the subsequent history of Scotland, and, through it, on the fortunes of the British race! Thus biography, or the deeds or thoughts of illustrious men, still forms a most important, and certainly the most interesting, part even of general history; and the perfection of that noble art consists, not in the exclusive delineation of individual achievement, or the concentration of attention on general causes, but in the union of the two in due proportions, as they really exist in nature, and determine, by their combined operation, the direction of human affairs. The talent now required in the historian partakes, accordingly, of this two-fold character. He is expected to write philosophy and biography: skill in drawing individual character, the power of describing individual achievements, with a clear perception of general causes, and the generalizing faculty of enlarged philosophy. He must combine in his mind the powers of the microscope and the telescope; be ready, like the steam-engine, at one time to twist a fibre, at another to propel an hundred-gun ship. Hence the rarity of eminence in this branch of knowledge; and if we could conceive a writer who, to the ardent genius and descriptive powers of Gibbon, should unite the lucid glance and just discrimination of Robertson, and the calm sense and reasoning powers of Hume, he would form a more perfect historian than ever has, or probably ever will appear upon earth.

With all his generalizing powers, however, Robertson fell into one defect – or rather, he was unable, in one respect, to extricate himself from the prejudices of his age and profession. He was not a freethinker – on the contrary, he was a sincere and pious divine; but he lived in an age of freethinkers – they had the chief influence in the formation of a writer's fame; and he was too desirous of literary reputation to incur the hazard of ridicule or contempt, by assigning too prominent a place to the obnoxious topic. Thence he has ascribed far too little influence to Christianity, in restraining the ferocity of savage manners, preserving alive the remains of ancient knowledge, and laying in general freedom the broad and deep foundations of European society. He has not overlooked these topics, but he has not given them their due place, nor assigned them their proper weight. He lived and died in comparative retirement; and he was never able to shake himself free from the prejudices of his country and education, on the subject of Romish religion. Not that he exaggerated the abuses and enormities of the Roman Catholic superstition which brought about the Reformation, nor the vast benefits which Luther conferred upon mankind by bringing them to light; both were so great, that they hardly admitted of exaggeration. His error – and, in the delineation of the progress of society in modern Europe, it was a very great one – consisted in overlooking the beneficial effect of that very superstition, then so pernicious, in a prior age of the world, when violence was universal, crime prevalent alike in high and low places, and government impotent to check either the tyranny of the great or the madness of the people. Then it was that superstition was the greatest blessing which Providence, in mercy, could bestow on mankind; for it effected what the wisdom of the learned or the efforts of the active were alike unable to effect; it restrained the violence by imaginary, which was inaccessible to the force of real, terrors; and spread that protection under the shadow of the Cross, which could never have been obtained by the power of the sword. Robertson was wholly insensible to these early and inestimable blessings of the Christian faith; he has admirably delineated the beneficial influence of the Crusades upon subsequent society, but on this all-important topic he is silent. Yet, whoever has studied the condition of European society in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, as it has since been developed in the admirable works of Sismondi, Thierry, Michelet, and Guizot, must be aware that the services, not merely of Christianity, but of the superstitions which had usurped its place, were, during that long period, incalculable; and that, but for them, European society would infallibly have sunk, as Asiatic in every age has done, beneath the desolating sword of barbarian power.

Sismondi – if the magnitude, and in many respects the merit, of his works be considered – must be regarded as one of the greatest historians of modern times. His "History of the Italian Republics" in sixteen, of the "Monarchy of France" in thirty volumes, attest the variety and extent of his antiquarian researches, as well as the indefatigable industry of his pen: his "Literature of the South of Europe" in four, and "Miscellaneous Essays" in three volumes, show how happily he has blended these weighty investigations with the lighter topics of literature and poetry, and the political philosophy which, in recent times, has come to occupy so large a place in the study of all who have turned their mind to the progress of human affairs. Nor is the least part of his merit to be found in the admirable skill with which he has condensed, each in two volumes, his great histories, for the benefit of that numerous class of readers who, unable or unwilling to face the formidable undertaking of going through his great histories, are desirous of obtaining such a brief summary of their leading events as may suffice for persons of ordinary perseverance or education. His mind was essentially philosophical; and it is the philosophy of modern history, accordingly, which he has exerted himself so strenuously to unfold. He views society at a distance, and exhibits its great changes in their just proportions, and, in general, with their true effects. His success in this arduous undertaking has been great indeed. He has completed the picture of which Robertson had only formed the sketch – and completed it with such a prodigious collection of materials, and so lucid an arrangement of them in their appropriate places, as to have left future ages little to do but draw the just conclusions from the results of his labours.

With all these merits, and they are great, and with this rare combination of antiquarian industry with philosophic generalization, Sismondi is far from being a perfect historian. He did well to abridge his great works; for he will find few readers who will have perseverance enough to go through them. An abridgement was tried of Gibbon; but it had little success, and has never since been attempted. You might as well publish an abridgement of Waverley or Ivanhoe. Every reader of the Decline and Fall must feel that condensation is impossible, without an omission of interest or a curtailment of beauty. Sismondi, with all his admirable qualities as a general and philosophic historian, wants the one thing needful in exciting interest – descriptive and dramatic power. He was a man of great vigour of thought and clearness of observation, but little genius – at least of that kind of genius which is necessary to move the feelings or warm the imagination. That was his principal defect; and it will prevent his great works from ever commanding the attention of a numerous body of general readers, however much they may be esteemed by the learned and studious. Conscious of this deficiency, he makes scarce any attempt to make his narrative interesting; but, reserving his whole strength for general views on the progress of society, or philosophic observations on its most important changes, he fills up the intermediate space with long quotations from chronicles, memoirs, and state papers – a sure way, if the selection is not made with great judgment, of rendering the whole insupportably tedious. Every narrative, to be interesting, should be given in the writer's own words, unless on those occasions, by no means frequent, when some striking or remarkable expressions of a speaker, or contemporary writer, are to be preserved. Unity of style and expression is as indispensable in a history which is to move the heart, or fascinate the imagination, as in a tragedy, a painting, or an epic poem.