INAUGURAL ADDRESS

BY

J. R. SEELEY, ESQ., M.A.,

(Professor of Modern History, Cambridge,)

PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY.

October 6th, 1881.

THE President of a Society of Students in his annual address usually perhaps speaks in the name and as the representative of the Society. He has usually been chosen from among its members as one who has taken a leading share in its work, and it is expected that his address should be a kind of manifesto, in which, while he reviews what has been accomplished, he explains to the world at large the views and intentions of the Society. But this Society is quite in its infancy, and you have invited to be your President one who neither helped to found it nor has hitherto taken any share in its proceedings. You cannot therefore, I am sure, wish on this occasion that I should speak for you or in your name; if you did you would have chosen a President more qualified to do so. You wish that I should speak to you, not for you, since all you know of me is that I have been engaged for more than ten years in the serious, concentrated study of history, and that I have from time to time laid before the public, besides my own contributions to historical research, essays on the true object and the proper method of it. You expect then another such essay. You have convinced yourselves of the importance of the study; you have formed a Society to prosecute it; and you now call me in as an

adviser, to give you the benefit of my thoughts and of my experience.

You want, in a word, advice rather than compliments. And yet I must begin with a compliment. For there could scarcely happen a more important or a more encouraging occurrence for historical study in England than the formation of this Society. Organised as a Scientific Society, and composed of mature men, citizens too of a town famed for the intensity of its political life, it will assert by its very existence that history is as serious a pursuit as science or as politics; no mere entertaining diversion, no mere educational instrument, but worthy of the hours of the most earnest manhood and of the most exact methods.

Now this is just the assertion which history needs above all things, and it needs also that the assertion should be made in this particular way, that is, by creating for history an organisation similar to that by which science is maintained in its seriousness and its rigour. For at present a large province of the historical field is left almost uncultivated, and the cultivation of it is almost impossible, because of the miserable and childish misconception of the function of history which prevails, because history is regarded as a matter of amusement or literary display; this misconception has prevented the study from being properly organised, and its want of organisation, on the other hand, perpetuates the misconception.

The organisation of study is a subject on which much might be said, and which has been far too little investigated. It is enough to say here that science needs a very different organisation from mere literature. Literature requires only two things, the writer and the public of readers; science-I comprehend under this name every kind of serious study-absolutely requires a sort of aristocracy of students, which may stand between the writer and the general public. If this is wanting in any department of it, the effect is not simply that in that department work ceases, but rather that the work is corrupted in quality: what should have been science is spoiled, and turned into a sort of bastard literature.

The poet or novelist writes for the many, and possibly the many

are the true and only legitimate judges of his merit. Like the statesman in a democratic country, the poet asks for a plebiscitum ; he cannot well do without a large number of suffrages. In short, the realm of mere literature is a democracy. But science lives under a wholly different constitution. What does it matter what the general public may think of a Newton or a Faraday? Of such men the public must think just what they are told. And what does it matter whether the discoveries of such men are popular or not? If the public do not like their doctrine, all that can be said is that the public must learn to like it! The majority vote is nothing in science. Science does not seek it, does not know what to do with it, and would be ashamed to appeal to it. Her appeal is made to a small circle who form the aristocracy of this régime. No one there has a vote who is not a student. The franchise there is confined to those to whom truth is a serious matter, and who are ready to devote time and trouble to the investigation of it. This special jury for the investigation of truth may indeed easily give a wrong verdict; many instances of its blindness, narrowness, prejudice, are recorded in the history of science. Nevertheless nothing else can take its place. There can be no appeal from it except to a second hearing by the same court, or to another court of the same kind. And the final opinion of the world at large is dictated to it sooner or later by this select circle of students.

Now a Society like yours may be useful, no doubt, in more ways than one. You increase the number of original investigators; you will yourselves throw new light, doubtless, on history; in your transactions will be stored up researches of which the future historian will make use. But more important still, I take it, just at this moment, is the recognition of history as a serious branch of study which is involved in your enterprise; more important still is your enrolment of yourselves as professed historical students, for thus is formed that aristocracy which is needful, and without which no study has any serious or useful existence. I say this is more important, because history among us is much less advanced than other studies in organisation, because in a great part of its domain

it has never made the all-important step, but still lives under the loose democracy of mere literature. Let me point out how this is so, and what evils flow from it.

Different studies get their needful aristocracy of students in different ways; some from the universities, others from the learned professions. Now both the universities and the professions no doubt accidentally embrace a good part of the department of history. Under the head of classical antiquity the history of the classical nations is included. Theology covers a considerable section both of ancient, mediæval, and modern history; law covers another. And wherever thus indirectly historical study obtains the benefit of a proper organisation, it proceeds in a satisfactory manner and prospers. There would be nothing to complain of if all periods were worked as the ancient Greek and Roman periods have been worked, if investigation everywhere alike imitated the thoroughness and accuracy of Mommsen or adopted the serious method of Grote. Unfortunately this is not the case. Unfortunately there is a large section of history which has been almost forgotten in the organisation of study, not assuredly because it is unimportant, but because accidentally neither the universities nor any learned profession feel particularly responsible for it. I speak of the recent centuries, especially the nineteenth, of which we begin to sight the close, and the eighteenth. This modern period would fare much better if only some important body of men found the study of it necessary to their vocation; and indeed the professorship at Cambridge which I hold, the only chair of modern history which that university possesses, may have been originally founded with some view to the diplomatic service. This is an exception; but in general it has so happened that this great modern period, embracing such vast events, a period in which the march of human affairs grows grander and also more difficult to follow than in former times, has become, in the assignment of studies, a sort of No Man's Land. If it were not for political economy and statistics, studies which make their home in this period and which cannot be separated from history, it might be supposed that these later ages belonged to