Herbert Butterfield Quotes

A man who has written a single lyric may outlast the centuries, living on in perpetual youth; but the author of a hundredweight of heavy historical tomes has them piled upon his grave, to hold him securely down.

It is not clear that continental countries, which have had their revolutions, followed by counter-revolutions, have greatly improved on the English rate of progress, in spite of what they paid in havoc and bloodshed precisely for the sake of speed.

Much as it may hurt us, we really have no choice but to move further to a more positive kind of internationalism, which welcomes the new world with open arms, prepares changes in the status quo before the cry for them becomes desperate, and greets the rise of new nations with unreserved joy. If the western world has to be ranged against the world behind the Iron Curtain, surely it is to our interest to see the Middle East, and indeed the whole Afro-Asian block, rise as quickly as possible to real equality and independence, so that they play a genuinely autonomous part in the world's diplomacy. Since the Asiatic countries are so exposed to the threat of Communism, it is difficult to believe that their power—freely exercised—would not operate to our own benefit.

It is more clear that two world wars in the twentieth century were largely responsible for the success of Communism over one great part of the globe, and the speeding up of egalitarianism over another great area. I remember feeling shocked when I found Ranke arguing that, in spite of Goethe, German culture and German cultural influence gained their great momentum with the rise of German power and confidence in the nineteenth century. Yet when I reflect on the cultural leadership which the United States and Russia have come to enjoy since the Second World War—and when I compare this with the situation twenty years ago—I am staggered to see how such matters are affected by a mere redistribution of power. The Golden Age of Spain at one time, of Holland at another time, and of France in the age of Louis XIV seem to give support to the same argument.

It was said in the middle ages that God uses intermediate agents to make the material world, mere animal life and the human body; but he creates every human soul with His own hands. Human beings, though fallen from the state of innocence, move as gods and bear the image of God; they are not part of the litter of the earth, to be left uncounted like the sands of the sea. Each is a precious jewel, each a separate well of life, each we may say a separate poem; so that, without taking them in the mass, every single one of them has a value incommensurate with anything else in the created universe. In the light of this doctrine, the riches of human personality, the possibilities that lie in human nature and the fulness of the word humanity itself, were fostered and treasured by the teaching of the church. Even if only a shadow of the Christian tradition still hangs across our path, we can hardly surrender to the mythology of the deified state.

And when we are told to consider the glories of the French Revolution let us not forget that there is a secret treasure of subtle riches which England enjoys as a result of the continuity of her history. Great changes have occurred in this country while deep below the surface the continuity has been maintained as a living thing. And when a cleavage has been made it has not been a matter of mere indifference that—instead of glorying in the cleavage—we have sent the shuttles backwards and forwards in order to tie up the past with the present again.

If history can do anything it is to remind us of those complications that undermine our certainties, and to show us that all our judgements are merely relative to time and circumstance. ...we can never assert that history has proved any man right in the long run.

When the sins and errors of an age have made the world impossible to live in, the next generation, seeking to make life tolerable again, may be able to find no way save by surrender of cherished ideals, and so may find themselves compelled to cast about for new dreams and purposes. An important aspect of the historical process is the work of the new generation... being driven to something like a creative act for the very reason that life on the old terms has become impossible.

Whatever we may feel about the defects of our own Whig interpretation of history, we have reason to be thankful for its influence on our political tradition; for it was to prove of the greatest moment to us that by the early seventeenth century our antiquarians had formulated our history as a history of liberty.

Perhaps only in the shock of 1940 did we realize to what a degree the British Empire had become an organization for the purpose of liberty. What power is in this English tradition which swallows up monarchy, toryism, imperialism, yet leaves each of them still existing, each part of a wider synthesis. And how cunningly did the whig interpretation assert itself in all the utterances of Englishmen in 1940—throbbing and alive again, and now projected upon an extended map.

Let us praise as a living thing the continuity of our history, and praise the whigs who taught us that we must nurse this blessing—reconciling continuity with change, discovering mediations between past and present, and showing what can be achieved by man's reconciling mind. Perhaps it is not even the whigs that we should praise, but rather something in our traditions which captured the party at the moment when it seemed ready to drift into unmeasurable waters. Perhaps we owe most in fact to the solid body of Englishmen, who throughout the centuries have resisted the wildest aberrations, determined never for the sake of speculative ends to lose the good they already possessed; anxious not to destroy those virtues in their national life which need long periods of time for their development; but waiting to steal for the whole nation what they could appropriate in the traditions of monarchy, aristocracy, bourgeoisie and church.

Macaulay refers to the fact that England has always taken particular pride in the maintenance of her institutional continuity. Our statesmen and lawyers have been under the influence of the past to a greater degree than those of other countries. From the 17th century our greatest innovators have tried to show that they were not innovators at all but restorers of ancient ways. And so it is that even when we have a revolution we look to the past and try to carry it out in accordance with ancient precedents. It is different in France as Macaulay explains—different especially since the Revolution of 1789. A Frenchman has no need to exaggerate the power of Louis XIV or underrate the ancient rights of the Parlement of Paris. He can take the view that the year 1789 rules a line across the story, he can say that modern France has a new start at the Revolution; while in modern England, if an unusual problem arises, the procedure may have to be determined upon precedents that go back to the middle ages. So in all English controversies both parties have referred to history in order to discover what they wished to discover—both parties have had a colossal vested interest in the historical enquiries that were taking place

When men parted first from their Christianity and then from their deism, the deification of the state was bound to be achieved in a comparatively short space of time; for no system can pretend to face all weathers when it has been reduced to naked individualism and the mere assertion of individual rights. Men make gods now, not out of wood and stone, which though a waste of time is a comparatively harmless proceeding, but out of their abstract nouns, which are the most treacherous and explosive things in the world.

The raconteur knows too well that, if he investigates the truth of the matter, he is only too likely to lose his good story.”

I wonder nowadays whether the neglect of military history and war does not have the effect of giving some people an anaemic and unreal idea of the deeper processes of mundane history. Indeed, it is possible that our conventional history-teaching underestimates the part played by war in the development of our civilisation and our economy, as well as in the rise of the modern state. It has been noted that great constitutional concessions were won from English kings who were usually unsuccessful in their foreign policy; and certainly it is not easy to know what would have happened if King John or Charles I or James II had been more fortunate in this field. Ranke thought that the disgrace suffered by the French monarchy in its foreign policy had much to do with the outbreak of the French Revolution.