Capitolo 30
supernaturally acute; he has a spiritual acumen and senses
practiced to discern.... He possesses the doctrine of original sin;
necessarily that doctrine puts him/it on its watch against
aspects, sustain its apprehension under the perplexity, and
prepare him/it wherever for recognising what he knows to be
everywhere." #100 there are a popular motto of de of Mrs. Stael that
we forgive anything that we really understand. The paradox has been
advisedly pruned by his/her descendant, the de of Duke Broglie, in the
words: "You looks from too much explaining, so that not we end from too much
excusing." #101 history, says Froude, you teach that right and badly
it is the true distinctions. Opinions alter, mannerses change, creeds
increase and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of
eternity #102. And if there are moments when we can withstand the
teaching of Froude, we rarely have the opportunity to withstand to when
he is sustained by the Mr. Smith of Goldwin: "A historical sound
morality will sanction strong measures in the bad durations; selfish
the ambition, disloyalty murder, forsworn it will never sanction in
the worse one of times, for these the things that make times are
bad--the Justice has been the justice, mercy has been the mercy, honour has
is honour, good faith has been the good faith, truthfulness has
is the truthfulness from the beginning." The doctrine that, as Lord
It says Thomas Browne, morality is not ambulatory #103, it is express as
it follows from Burke that, when true to him, it is more anymore the
intelligent of our instructors: The "my principles train me to form
my judgment on men and actions in history, in the moment in which them face in
common life; and it didn't form out of events and characters, or
present or past. History is a founder of the prudence, not of
principles. The principles of true politics are those of
morality widened; and me neither I now do, neither it will ever admit of
some other." #104
Whatever the notions of a man of these later centuries are, so, in
the principal, the man himself will be. Under the name of History,