The Henson Journals

[134]

Saturday, December 27th, 1924.

"Carlyle was always trying to get me to write history. Novels were no good. 'Ye must write heestory'. So one day I said, 'Carlyle, do you know what historians remind me of?' 'No'. 'They are like a row of men working in a potato field, with their eyes and noses in the furrow, and their other end turned toward heaven'".

George Meredith as quoted in Ashton's volume

'As I went on My Way'. (Nisbet & Co)

Historians, who may be described thus, will never have gained from their studies what Lord Acton calls 'the gift of historical thinking'. A very different type of historian is indicated by Plutarch when he explains his own method in writing the Lives in the opening paragraph of his account of Alexander. He devoted himself, he says, 'rather to the signs of the soul in men' than to a description of their achievements. He was, in fact, an artist & not merely a recorder. Imagination is an even more essential constituent of the historian than knowledge, for whereas knowledge apart from imagination can never interpret rightly the ways of men, imagination can perceive the true significance of events, of which but a slight knowledge is professed. In the union of the two qualities consists the historical mind.

[135]

It is a wholesome check to false or partial reasonings, to adjourn our controversies from books to life: to correct our dogmatic preferences by the verification of history; and follow the creeds from the wrangling of councils to the silent arbitration of fact and the world……. The Historian, who knows what a system has done, is often a better critic of its worth than the divine, who thinks only of what it is: and a journey through Europe may teach a better theology than a life spent in the study of the Fathers.

Martineau in 1851. (v. Essays ii. 257)

The Essay "Europe since the Reformation" was originally published in the Prospective Review, Feb. 1851, as a criticism of Newman's "Lectures on certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in submitting to the Catholic Church" 2nd edition 1850. It is an extraordinarily brilliant piece of writing, as well as a most acute criticism. Its argument, irresistible at the time, is not so convincing now. The strange decay of Protestantism, which has proceeded side by side with an astonishing revival of Romanism, seems to invalidate some of its assumptions. And the Great War seems to have broken the back of 'national' Christianity, while almost forcing serious Christians to look Romewards.

[136]

Colonel Blackett is a very intelligent man, and with respect to all mining questions very well informed. He writes to me thus:

"I am fearful of next year, for it seems fateful. If we can get through it without 'direct action' and striking in Mines, Rails, and Engineers, then, I think, we shall improve, but I don't somehow feel that we shall. The most vocative men are so selfish & don't care even if the skies do fall provided they can catch larks".

Spooner assures me that "he at least agrees with all I say" in the Charge: but then he is nearly 80: and there is no such fatal approbation than that of octogenarians! Yet I do not see why the judgments of the old should always be mistaken, & the union of youth and wisdom be taken for granted!

Beyond writing a few letters, reading Martineau's Essays (which are really amazingly fresh and relevant after 70 years,) going on with S. John's Gospel with Ernest, and walking round the Park in a pouring rain, I have done nothing today. The weather continues to be unseasonably & unwholesomely mild.

I received a letter from one godson, Gilbert Simpson, and a card from another, Herbert Nicholson.

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