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sitionist, fighting hard for years to stop the affirmation of the Doctrine of
Papal Infallibility, although with the Vatican decree of 1870 he failed
utterly. Acton was indeed a man attached to "the true scientific spirit and
the disinterested love of truth", but he was also a devout Catholic with
a peculiar loyalty to the Vatican. And his work, heading as it was right
square for the top place on the Catholic Index, would probably (and he
no doubt felt this deeply) have ripped apart the Roman Church in Eng·
land. Acton's was simply a case of intellectual suicide.
It is this pathetic contradiction which makes Acton so interesting,
and even exciting, an historian.
If
Acton found "no thread through history
except the idea of progress towards more perfect and assured freedom and
the divine right of free men", he also found the persecution of the Inquisi·
tion "a true and effective guardian of the morality of the people" (with a
logic reminiscent of modern apologists for purge-minded totalitarianisms).
If
he subscribed to the idea that "truth is the only merit that gives dignity
and worth to history" he subscribed too to the ·vicious Catholic myths of
the happy Middle Ages and the satanic, evil Reformation. The pages of
his collected writings are, to be sure, crowded with shrewd, wise and
realistic
hi~torical
comment. Acton observed the machine-like character
of the state, which was "not fitted on society like a glove, but rather
compressing it, like a thumbscrew, not growing out of society, like its
skin, but put on it from without, like a mould into which society is forced
to pour itselr', even going on to say, "But clearly the state could never
grow out of society as its expression and fruit, unless society were organ·
ized and distributed into distinct classes and corporations"; the idea of
supermen and hero-worship he hated, and Carlyle was for him "the most
detestable of historians"; and of "ruling and leading spirits" he remarked
sharply, "the better we know them, the worse they appear". But by and
large the historian who reacted so violently against the social-equalitarian
tradition of the French Revolution, and who believed that "the possessors
of better knowledge will always have to contend against the ignorant
masses of mankind" has been lost in the shuffling advances of modern
social theory and science.
What remains, however, of Lord Acton is his magnificent vision of
History. The study of historical art and science was for him a kind of
spiritual process, the basis of all real insight into the present, a school
and guide to life: "to perfect his mind and open windows in every direc·
tion, to raise him to the level of his age so that he may know the forces
that had made our world what it is and still reign over it, to guard against
surprises and the constant sources of error within, to give force and full–
ness and clearness and sincerity and independence and elevation and
generosity and serenity to his mind, that he may know the method and
law of the process by which error is conquered and truth is won ..."
And more than that, what also remains is a vivifying spectacle of a great
scholar in action. It used to be said of him that however much you knew
about anything Acton was certain to know more. A colleague claimed
