Still, of those factors in civic action amenable to civic direction,
conscious and positively effective, there is nothing to compare with the
right teaching and the right reading of history. Now teaching is today
ruined. The old machinery by which the whole nation could be got to know
all essential human things, has been destroyed, and the teaching of
history in particular has been not only ruined but rendered ridiculous.
There is no historical school properly so-called in modern England; that
is, there is no organization framed with the sole object of extending
and co-ordinating historical knowledge and of choosing men for their
capacity to discover upon the one hand and to teach upon the other.
There is nothing approaching to it in the two ancient universities,
because the choice of teachers there depends upon a multitude of
considerations quite separate from those mentioned, and the capacity to
discover, to know, and to teach history, though it _may_ be present
in a tutor, will only be accidentally so present: while as for
co-ordination of knowledge, there is no attempt at it. Even where very
hard work is done, and, when it concerns local history, very useful
work, history as a general study is not grasped because the universities
have not grasped it.
History is to be had by the modern Englishman from his own reading only;
and I am here concerned with the question how he shall read history with
profit.
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