always considers the origin and the germ, and glories in history as
one consistent epic #7. Yet every student ought to know that mastery
is acquired by resolved limitation. And confusion ensues from the
theory of Montesquieu and of his school, who, adapting the same term
to things unlike, insist that freedom is the primitive condition of
the race from which we are sprung #8. If we are to account mind not
matter, ideas not force, the spiritual property that gives dignity and
grace and intellectual value to history, and its action on the
ascending life of man, then we shall not be prone to explain the
universal by the national, and civilisation by custom #9. A speech of
Antigone, a single sentence of Socrates, a few lines that were
inscribed on an Indian rock before the Second Punic War, the footsteps
of a silent yet prophetic people who dwelt by the Dead Sea, and
perished in the fall of Jerusalem, come nearer to our lives than the
ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine on the Hercynian
acorns.

For our present purpose, then, I describe as Modern History that which
begins four hundred years ago, which is marked off by an evident and
intelligible line from the time immediately preceding, and displays in
its course specific and distinctive characteristics of its own #10.
The modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession,
with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a
new order of things, under a law of innovation, sapping the ancient
reign of continuity. In those days Columbus subverted the notions of
the world, and reversed the conditions of production, wealth, and
power; in those days Machiavelli released government from the
restraint of law; Erasmus diverted the current of ancient learning
from profane into Christian channels; Luther broke the chain of
authority and tradition at the strongest link; and Copernicus erected