We live in an age of intense specialization. A few generations ago we heard of men of universal knowledge. Not so now. The volume of knowledge has become so vast that no man, even the wisest, can do more than to touch its skirts. In no department of study is the trend of specialization more active than in the interpretation of history. In the hunt after the subtle causes that have lurked in the bosom of society and have flamed into consuming fire, from time to time, the patient historian, the student of sociology, has grouped tendencies, impulses, transitional waves of popular feeling, into generalizations. Especially is this statement true of German scholars, with whom specialization has often been reduced to infinitesimal analysis. Thus one school of writers dwells upon the economic interpretation of history. In their view, most popular upheavals have been synchronous with the poverty of the masses. It is when the people have been ground into hunger by excessive taxation and public extravagance that they have risen, like the blind giant pulling down the temple of Gaza, and swept away dynasties and royal pageantry. Such, it is said, was the mainspring of the French Revolution—one of the most dramatic events in history. Undoubtedly the economic problem has always been, and always will be, a powerful agent in the genesis of history.
Others give us the religious interpretation of history. They tell us of those epochs when great masses of men, impelled by a wave of religious enthusiasm, moved to fiery zeal, their imaginations touched, their moral sense deeply stirred, have become knights of the faith, missionaries armed with fire and sword; the scourges of God. Such causes impelled the Saracenic invasion of Africa and Europe, and the Crusades.
Other historians have studied the great migratory movements that have swept vast bodies of men away from their native environments, and precipitated new elements into history. Such were the migrations of the tribes of Northern Europe, and of the Asiatic hordes, which were a powerful element in the overturn of the Roman Empire.
In late years there has been an increasing interest in the biographies of the great men who have moved the world. No view of history is more interesting than this study of personalities. It has sometimes been pushed to an absurd extent, in the attempt to reverse historical verdicts, to rehabilitate tarnished reputations, and in the exaggeration of hero-worship. The relation of great men to their times has been a fascinating theme for the historian to dwell upon in every age.
All these, and many more inquiries, are worthy of the most painstaking study. We cannot know too much about them. They are all a part of "the moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race." But the moral lesson of history is larger than any exceptional episodes.
Whatever way governments began, they have been, they are, and they will be, until human nature and human needs undergo a tremendous transformation. As has been said, stable governments have been rare. Some of the forces of modern civilization may make the crystallization of society into localized governments possibly more unstable than ever. In favor of the permanence of any existing order however, there has always been one conserving factor—habit. Prof. J. M. Baldwin in his instructive work, "Mutual Development," calls authority "that most tremendous thing in our moral environment," and obedience "that most magnificent thing in our moral equipment." Psychologists also tell us that habit, one of the phenomena of consolidation, indicates downward growth. With the race, as with the individual, habit, or what Bagehot calls "the solid cake of custom," has been one of the impediments to progress. Yet, governments have progressed from generation to generation. There has always been enough of the vis viva to leaven social heredity. Little by little, that part of the race, whose progress has not been arrested, has outgrown the superstition of a divinity that "doth hedge a king." More and more the functions once held by king-craft have been grasped by the people; the race steadily moving toward the ideal self-government. Every agency that made for enlightenment and uplift led to this goal. The great social heritage of the past has been the evolution of law and order. There has been through the ages a sweep of collective forces that has taught men self-control, and has constantly raised the ethical standard. A damnosa hereditas of ferocity, selfishness, and brutality, has been a part of the heritage; but there has been enough of salt in the general character to rescue liberty and justice even in the most reactionary times.
The Democratic Ideal is based upon the three great principles of liberty, equality of rights and opportunities, and justice. In spite of indolence, apathy, inveterate conservatism, superstition, ignorance, out of these principles has flashed the day-star which the path of civilization has followed.
Liberty is no longer a vagrant. "The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion," says Matthew Arnold. That instinct is always operative.
Yet liberty is not an entity; it is only a state. Unregulated, discharged from the ethical obligations which we owe to each other, liberty is lost in anarchy, which is only consummate egoism.
"The most aggravated forms of tyranny and slavery arise out of the most extreme form of liberty," says Plato.