第32章 LETTER 5(5)

The nice degrees of wisdom and of folly,of virtue and of vice,will not only be undiscoverable in them;but we must be very often unable to determine under which of these characters they fall in general.The sceptics I am speaking of are therefore guilty of this absurdity:the nearer a history comes to the true idea of history,the better it informs and the more it instructs us,the more worthy to be rejected it appears to them.I have said and allowed enough to content any reasonable man about the uncertainty of history.Ihave owned that the best are defective,and I will add in this place an observation which did not,I think,occur to me before.Conjecture is not always distinguished perhaps as it ought to be;so that an ingenious writer may sometimes do very innocently,what a malicious writer does very criminally as often as he dares,and as his malice requires it:he may account for events,after they have happened,by a system of causes and conduct that did not really produce them,though it might possibly or even probably have produced them.But this observation,like several others,becomes a reason for examining and comparing authorities,and for preferring some,not for rejecting all.Davila,a noble historian surely,and one whom I should not scruple to confess equal in many respects to Livy,as I should not scruple to prefer his countryman Guicciardin to Thucydides in every respect;Davila,my lord,was accused,from the first publication of his history,or at least was suspected,of too much refinement and subtlety,in developing the secret motives of actions,in laying the causes of events too deep,and deducing them often through a series of progression too complicated,and too artistly wrought.But yet the suspicious person who should reject this historian upon such general inducements as these,would have no grace to oppose his suspicions to the authority of the first duke of Epernon,who had been an actor,and a principal actor too,in many of the scenes that Davila recites.Girard,secretary to this duke,and no contemptible biographer,relates,that this history came down to the place where the old man resided in Gascony,a little before his death;that he read it to him,that the duke confirmed the truth of the narrations in it,and seemed only surprised by what means the author could be so well informed of the most secret councils and measures of those times.

IV.I have said enough on this head,and your lordship may be induced,perhaps,by what I have said,to think with me,that such histories as these,whether ancient or modern,deserve alone to be studied.Let us leave the credulous learned to write history without materials,or to study those who do so;to wrangle about ancient traditions,and to ring different changes on the same set of bells.Let us leave the sceptics,in modern as well as ancient hi story,to triumph in the notable discovery of the ides of one month mistaken for the calends of another,or in the various dates and contradictory circumstances which they find in weekly gazettes and monthly mercuries.Whilst they are thus employed,your lordship and I will proceed,if you please,to consider more closely,than we have yet done,the rule mentioned above;that,I mean,of using discernment and choice in the study of the most authentic history,that of not wandering in the light,which is as necessary as that of not groping in the dark.

Man is the subject of every history;and to know him well,we must see him and consider him,as history alone can present him to us,in every age,in every country,in every state,in life and in death.History,therefore,of all kinds,of civilised and uncivilised,of ancient and modern nations,in short,all history that descends to a sufficient detail of human actions and characters,is useful to bring us acquainted with our species,nay,with ourselves.To teach and to inculcate the general principles of virtue,and the general rules of wisdom and good policy,which result from such details of actions and characters,comes for the most part,and always should come,expressly and directly into the design of those who are capable of giving such details and,therefore,whilst they narrate as historians,they hint often as philosophers;they put into our hands,as it were,on every proper occasion,the end of a clue,that serves to remind us of searching,and to guide us in the search of that truth which the example before us either establishes or illustrates.If a writer neglects this part,we are able,however,to supply his neglect by our own attention and industry:and when he gives us a good history of Peruvians or Mexicans,of Chinese or Tartars,of Muscovites or Negroes,we may blame him,but we must blame ourselves much more,if we do not make it a good lesson of philosophy.This being the general use of history,it is not to be neglected.Every one may make it,who is able to read and reflect on what he reads,and every one who makes it will find in his degree,the benefit that arises from an early acquaintance contracted in this manner with mankind.We are not only passengers or sojourners in this world,but we are absolute strangers at the first step we make in it.

Our guides are often ignorant,often unfaithful.By this map of the country,which history spreads before us,we may learn,if we please,to guide ourselves.