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and commercial, military powers and maritime, wealthy countries and poor ones, monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies, with every imaginable form and combination of each and all; states overpeopled and underpeopled, old and new, and in every circumstance of advance, maturity, and decline. So rich was the experience which Aristotle enjoyed, but which to us is only attainable mediately and imperfectly through his other writings; his own record of all these commonwealths, as well as all other information concerning the greatest part of them, having unhappily perished. Nor was the moral experience of the age of Greek civilization less complete. By moral experience I mean an acquaintance with the whole compass of those questions which relate to the metaphysical analysis of man's nature and faculties, and to the practical object of his being. This was derived from the strong critical and inquiring spirit of the Greek sophists and philosophers, and from the unbounded freedom which they enjoyed. In mere metaphysical research the schoolmen were indefatigable and bold, but in moral questions there was an authority which restrained them: among Christians the notions of duty and of virtue must be assumed as beyond dispute. But not the wildest extravagance of atheistic wickedness in modern times can go further than the sophists of Greece went before them; whatever audacity can dare and subtilty contrive to make the words “ good" and "evil" change their meaning, has been already tried in the days of Plato, and by his eloquence, and wisdom, and faith unshaken, has been put to shame. Thus it is that while the advance of civilization destroys much that is noble, and throws over the mass of human society an atmosphere somewhat dull and hard; yet it is only by its peculiar trials, no less than by its positive advantages, that the utmost virtue of human nature can be matured. And those who vainly lament that progress of earthly things which, whether good or evil, is certainly inevitable, may be consoled by the thought that its sure tendency is

to confirm and purify the virtue of the good: and that to us, holding in our hands not the wisdom of Plato only, but also a treasure of wisdom and of comfort which to Plato was denied, the utmost activity of the human mind may be viewed without apprehension, in the confidence that we possess a charm to deprive it of its evil, and to make it minister for ourselves certainly, and through us, if we use it rightly, for the world in general, to the more perfect triumph of good.

I linger round a subject which nothing could tempt me to quit but the consciousness of treating it too unworthily. What is miscalled ancient history, the really modern history of the civilization of Greece and Rome, has for years interested me so deeply, that is it painful to feel myself after all so unable to paint it fully. Of the manifold imperfections of this edition of Thucydides none can be more aware than I am; but in the present state of knowledge these will be soon corrected and supplied by others and I will at least hope that these volumes may encourage a spirit of research into history, and may in some measure assist in directing it; that they may contribute to the conviction that history is to be studied as a whole, and according to its philosophical divisions, not such as are merely geographical and chronological; that the history of Greece and of Rome is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and forgotten intitutions, but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much for the curiosity of the scholar, as for the instruction of the statesman and the citizen.

Fox How, Ambleside,
January 1835.

ON THE

DIVISIONS AND MUTUAL RELATIONS

OF

KNOWLEDGE.

LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTE AT RUGBY, IN 1838.

D D

ADVERTISEMENT.

I HAVE been induced to publish this Lecture in consequence of the efforts which have been lately made by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, to organize the several Mechanics' Institutions now existing throughout the kingdom, and to encourage the establishment of others. The Society has also published a Manual, containing amongst other things a Catalogue of Books recommended as fit for such Institutions and for Apprentice's Libraries: and this Manual is farther submitted to "the friends of adult education," as being intended to promote their great object. Wishing most earnestly to serve the cause of "adult education," and feeling that while it was desirable on the one hand to encourage Mechanics' Institutions on account of the good which they can do, it was no less important to call attention to their necessary imperfections, and to notice that great good which they cannot do, I have thought that the following Lecture might be generally useful, if printed in its original form, as it was actually addressed to the Members of the Institution of Rugby. Only a very few corrections and alterations have been made in it, for I did not wish to give it a more pretending character than belonged to it as it was originally written.

RUGBY, September, 1839.

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