ough indulgences and otherwise, for the remission
of that punishment, which the clergy could, if they would, inflict; and
worst of all, that out of the whole theory sprang up that system of
persecution, in which the worst cruelties of heathen Rome were imitated
by Christian priests, on the seemingly irrefragable ground that it was
merciful to offenders to save them, or, if not, at least to save others
through them, by making them feel for a few hours in this world what they
would feel for endless ages in the next.

LECTURE IX--THE MONK A CIVILIZER

Historians are often blamed for writing as if the History of Kings and
Princes were the whole history of the world. 'Why do you tell us,' is
said, 'of nothing but the marriages, successions, wars, characters, of a
few Royal Races? We want to know what the people, and not the princes,
were like. History ought to be the history of the masses, and not of
kings.'

The only answer to this complaint seems to be, that the defect is
unavoidable. The history of the masses cannot be written, while they
have no history; and none will they have, as long as they remain a mass;
ere their history begins, individuals, few at first, and more and more
numerous as they progress, must rise out of the mass, and become persons,
with fixed ideas, determination, conscience, more or less different from
their fellows, and thereby leavening and elevating their fellows, that
they too may become persons, and men indeed. Then they will begin to
have a common history, issuing out of each man's struggle to assert his
own personality and his own convictions. Till that point is reached, the
history of the masses will be mere statistic concerning their physical
well-being or ill-being, which (for the early ages of our race) is
unwritten, and therefore undiscoverable.

The early history of the Teutonic race, therefore, is, and must always
remain, simply the history of a few great figures. Of the many of the
masses, nothing is said; because there was nothing to say. They all ate,
drank, married, tilled, fought, and died, not altogether brutally, we
will hope, but still in a dull monotony, unbroken by any struggle of
principles or ideas. We know that large masses of human beings have so
lived in every age, and are living so now--the Tartar hordes, for
instance, or the thriving negroes of central Africa: comfortable folk,
getting a tolerable living, son after father, for many generations, but