to believe more
evil than I can help of my countrymen who accomplished so beneficent a
work, and in a book written with such convictions the mythical element
cannot be wholly wanting. Even things which immediately surround us,
things which we see and touch, we do not perceive as they are; we perceive
only our own sensations, and our sensations are a combined result of
certain objects and of the faculties which apprehend them. Something of
ourselves must always be intermixed before knowledge can reach us; in
every conclusion which we form, in every conviction which is forced upon
us, there is still a subjective element. It is so in physical science. It
is so in art. It is so in our speculations on our own nature. It is so in
religion. It is so even in pure mathematics. The curved and rectilineal
figures on which we reason are our own creation, and have no existence
exterior to the reasoning mind. Most of all is it so in history, where we
have no direct perceptions to help us, but are dependent on the narratives
of others whose beliefs were necessarily influenced by their personal
dispositions. The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against
his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape their influence. In
judging of the truth of particular statements, the conclusion which he
will form must be based partly upon evidence and partly upon what he
conceives to be likely or unlikely. In a court of justice, where witnesses
can be cross-examined, uncertain elements can in some degree be
eliminated; yet, after all care is taken, judges and juries have been
often blinded by passion and prejudice. When we have nothing before us but
rumours set in circulation, we know not by whom or on what authority, and
we are driven to consider probabilities, the Protestant, who believes the
Reformation to have been a victory of truth over falsehood, cannot come to
the same conclusion as the Catholic, who believes it to have been a curse,
or perhaps to the same conclusion as the indifferent philosopher, who
regards Protestant and Catholic alike with benevolent contempt. For
myself, I can but say that I have discriminated with such faculty as I
possess. I have kept back nothing. I have consciously distorted nothing
which conflicts with my own views. I have accepted what seems sufficiently
proved. I have rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or
prejudice. But whether accepting or rejecting, I have endeavoured to
follo