Introductory lectures on modern history Author:Thomas Arnold Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: understand his duties rightly, has two principal objects : he must try to acquaint his hearers with the nature and value of the treasure for which they are searc... more »hing; and, secondly, he must try to show them the best and speediest method of discovering and extracting it. The first of these two things may be done once for all; but the second must be his habitual employment, the business of his professorial life. I am now, therefore, not to attempt to enter upon the second, but to bestow my attention upon the first; I must try to state what is the treasure to be found by a search into the records of history : if we cannot be satisfied that it is abundant and most valuable, we shall care little to be instructed how to gain it. In speaking of history generally, I may appear to be forgetting that my proper subject is more limited; that it is not history simply, but modern history. I am perfectly aware of this, and hope not to forget it in my practice: but still at the outset I must trace the stream from its source : I must ask you to remain with me awhile on the high ground, where the waters, which are hereafter to form the separate streams of ancient and modern history, lie as yet undistinguished in their common parent lake. I must speak of history in general, in order to understand the better the character of any one of its particular species. The general idea of history seems to be, that it is the biography of a society. It does not appear tome to be history at all, but simply biography, unless it finds in the persons who are its subject something of a common purpose, the accomplishment of which is the object of their common life. History is to this common life of many, what biography is to the life of an individual. Take for instance any common family, and its members are soon...« less