#7 In our own history, above all, every step in advance has been at the same time a step backwards. It has often been shown how our latest constitution is, amidst all external differences, essentially the same as our earliest, how every struggle for right and freedom, from the thirteenth century onwards, has simply been a struggle for recovering something old.—FREEMAN, Historical Essays, iv., 253. Nothing but a thorough knowledge of the social system, based upon a regular study of its growth, can give us the power we require to affect it.—HARRISON, Meaning of History, 19. Eine Sache wird nur vollig auf dem Wege verstanden, wie sie selbst entsteht.—In dem genetischen Verfahren sind the Grunde der Sache, auch die Grunde des Erkennens.—TRENDELENBURG, Logische Untersuchungen, ii. 395, 388.
#8 Une telle liberte . . . n'a rien de commun avec le savant systeme de garanties qui fait libres les peuples modernes.—BOUTMY, Annales des Sciences Politiques, i. 157. Les trois grandes reformes qui ont renouvele l'Angleterre, la liberte religieuse, la reforme parlementaire; et la liberte economique, ont ete obtenues sous la pression des organisations extra-constitutionnelles.-OSTROGORSKI, Revue Historique, lii. 272.
#9 The question which is at the bottom of all constitutional struggles, the question between the national will and the national law.—GARDINER, Documents, xviii. Religion, considered simply as the principle which balances the power of human opinion, which takes man out of the grasp of custom and fashion, and teaches him to refer himself to a higher tribunal, is an infinite aid to moral strength and elevation.—CHANNING, Works, iv. 83. Je tiens que le passe ne suffit jamais au present. Personne n'est plus dispose que moi a profiter de ses lecons; mais en meme temps, je le demande, le present ne fournit-il pas toujours les indications qui lui sont propres?—MOLE, in FALLOUX, Etudes et Souvenirs, 130. Admirons la sagesse de nos peres, et tachons de l'imiter, en faisant ce qui convient a notre siecle.-GALIANI, Dialogues, 40
#10 Ceterum in legendis Historiis malim te ductum animi, quam anxias leges sequi. Nullae stint, quae non magnas habeant utilitates; et melius haerent, quae libenter legimus. In universum tamen, non incipere ab antiquissimis, sod ab his, quae nostris temporibus nostraeque notitiae propius cohaerent, ac paulatim deinde in remotiora eniti, magis e re arbitror.-GROTIUS, Epistolae, 18.
#11 The older idea of a law of degeneracy, of a "fatal drift towards the worse," is as obsolete as astrology or the belief in witchcraft. The human race has become hopeful, sanguine—SEELEY, Rede Lecture, 1887. Fortnightly Review, July 1887, 124.
#12 Formuler des idees generales, c'est changer le salpetre en poudre.—A. DE MUSSET, Confessions d'un Enfant du Siecle, 15. Les revolutions c'est l'avenement des idees liberales. C'est presque toujours par les revolutions qu'elles prevalent et se fondent, et quand les idees liberales en sont veritablement le principe et le but, quand elles leur ont donne naissance, et quand elles les couronnent a leur dernier jour, alors ces revolutions sont legitimes—REMUSAT, 1839, in Revue des Deux Mondes 1875, vi. 335. Il y a meme des personnes de piete qui prouvent par raison qu'il faut renoncer a la raison; que ce n'est point la lumiere, mais la foi seule qui doit nous conduire, et que l'obeissance aveugle est la principale vertu des chretiens. La paresse des inferieurs et leur esprit flatteur s'accommode souvent de cette vertu pretendue, et l'orgueil de ceux qui commandent en est toujours tres content. De sorte qu'il se trouvera peut-etre des gens qui seront scandalises que je fasse cet honneur a la raison, de l'elever au-dessus de toutes les puissances, et qui s'imagineront que je me revolte contre les autorites legitimes a cause que je prends son parti et que je soutiens que c'est a elle a decider et a regner.—MALEBRANCHE, Morale, i. 2, 13. That great statesman (Mr. Pitt) distinctly avowed that the application of philosophy to politics was at that time an innovation, and that it was an innovation worthy to be adopted. He was ready to make the same avowal in the present day which Mr. Pitt had made in 1792.—CANNING, 1st June 1827. Parliamentary Review, 1828, 71. American history knows but one avenue of success in American legislation, freedom from ancient prejudice. The best lawgivers in our colonies first became as little children.—BANCROFT, History of the United State, i. 494. Every American, from Jefferson and Gallatin down to the poorest squatter, seemed to nourish an idea that he was doing what he could to overthrow the tyranny which the past had fastened on the human mind.—ADAMS, History of the United States, i. 175.
#13 The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet are due to our increasing knowledge of history and nature. They have been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured nations, in comparatively a short period of time. May we be allowed to imagine the minds of men everywhere working together during many ages for the completion of our knowledge? May not the increase of knowledge transfigure the world?—JOWETT, Plato, i. 414. Nothing, I believe, is so likely to beget in us a spirit of enlightened liberality, of Christian forbearance, of large-hearted moderation, as the careful study of the history of doctrine and the history of interpretation.— PEROWNE, Psalms, i. p. xxxi.
#14 Ce n'est guere avant la seconde moitie du XVIIe siecle qu'il devint impossible de soutenir l'authenticite des fausses decretales, des Constitutions apostoliques, des Recognitions Clementines, du faux Ignace, du pseudo-Dionys, et de l'immense fatras d'oeuvres anonymes ou pseudonymes qui grossissait souvent du tiers ou de la moitie l'heritage litteraire des auteurs les plus considerables.—DUCHESNE, Temoins anteniciens de la Trinite, 1883, 36.
#15 A man who does not know what has been thought by those who have gone before him is sure to set an undue value upon his own ideas.— M. PATTISON, Memoirs, 78.
#16 Travailler a discerner, dans cette discipline, le solide d'avec le frivole, le vrai d'avec le vraisemblable, la science d'avec l'opinion, ce qui forme le jugement d'avec ce qui ne fait que charger memoire.— LAMY, Connoissance de soi-meme, v. 459