contradictions. In the character of a nation, inconsistency is
impossible. Such, however, is still the backward condition of the
human mind, and with so evil and jaundiced an eye do we approach
the greatest problems, that not only common writers, but even men
from whom better things might be hoped, are on this point involved
in constant confusion. Perplexing themselves and their readers by
speaking of inconsistency, as if it were a quality belonging to the
subject which they investigate, instead of being, as it really is,
a measure of their own ignorance. It is the business of the
historian to remove this ignorance by showing that the movements of
nations are perfectly regular, and that, like all other movements,
they are solely determined by their antecedents. If he cannot do
this, he is no historian. He may be an annalist, or a biographer,
or a chronicler, but higher than that he cannot rise, unless he is
imbued with that spirit of science which teaches, as an article of
faith, the doctrine of uniform sequence; in other words, the
doctrine that certain events having already happened, certain other
events corresponding to them will also happen. To seize this idea
with firmness, and to apply it on all occasions, without listening
to any exceptions, is extremely difficult, but it must be done by
whoever wishes to elevate the study of history from its present
crude and informal state, and do what he may toward placing it in
its proper rank, as the head and chief of all the sciences. Even
then, he cannot perform his task unless his materials are ample,
and derived from sources of unquestioned credibility. But if his
facts are sufficiently numerous; if they are very diversified; if
they have been collected from such various quarters that they can
check and confront each other, so as to do away with all suspicion
of their testimony being garbled; and if he who uses them possesses
that faculty of generalization, without which nothing great can be