Contemporary history is the only genuine and important history, the
present is the only object of historical knowledge; what the present is
and how, properly conceived, it gives history its unity and justifies
the study of what is past (ancient history); all history is _our_
history, and otherwise without meaning or value to us. The history of
classical antiquity is the history of the youth of the modern world, of
the formation of the now latent but still potent hopes, fears, designs
and thoughts which constitute the substratum of the European mind; how
this still unites a divided Europe and affords a ground of hope for a
restored and deepened union. Our debt to the Greeks: (_a_) the very
notion of civilization, (_b_) the idea of its realization through
knowledge, (_c_) the ideal of freedom as the inner spirit of true
civilization. How the Greeks failed to work all this out in both theory
and practice, and how nevertheless they taught their lesson to the
world; the services of Greece to the world in the creation of Art, the
Sciences, and Philosophy; the Greek ideal of a life beyond 'civilized'
life, but rendered possible by it, and thus giving to civilized life a
new and higher value; defects and merits of this ideal.
The Romans are inheritors of all this; how, while making it more
prosaic, they rendered it more practical and more effectually realized
it. All this most visible in the Imperial period. The Roman ideal:
(_a_) world-wide peace, (_b_) secured and maintained by a centralized
system of laws issuing from and enforced by a single power. Influence of
this ideal on later and modern thought and practice. Causes of its
decline and fall: (_a_) ignorance of the economic substructure of
civilized life, (_b_) neglect of opportunities to extend and defend it,
(_c_) the rise of the idea of nationality. The Revolution as the last
great attempt to reinstate the full Roman ideal in its outworn form.
Lessons still to be learned by us from the study of both the success and
the failure of Greco-Roman civilization; how the consideration of these
may at once sober our expectations and inspire us with hope in the
present. The forces which created it still maintain it and show no signs
of exhaustion. But that they may continue in effect we must study these
forces and learn the lessons the ancient experience of their working
conveys, exerting ourselves first to understand Greco-Roman thought and
practice and then to better their instruction.