800 K S
241
freedom. Acton, in short, took too many things too seriously at the
same time: History, Revolution, the Moral Law. Thus, he quarreled
with
German "Historicism" although he had learned a good deal from
it; with the great conservatives to whom he himself belonged; with
the Revolution in which he believed. He shared Jacob Burckhardt's
fear of Democracy, his insight into the affinity between mass rule, des–
potism and the total state. But Burckhardt did not care for the idea
of progress; Acton did.
Religion might have offered a solution. In fact, there are pages
in Miss Himmelfarb's analysis which call to mind our own Protestant
philosophers: progress, to be achieved not automatically but through
our moral effort; history ever corrupted not by nature but by the best
and the worst thing given to man, his freedom; high ideals and low
expectations. It sounds like Reinhold Niebuhr. But Niebuhr is not really
an historian; Acton was one, with a great love of things historical, the
keenest curiosity and understanding, an immense knowledge. Also Nie–
buhr, while taking time and change seriously, does not take them so
very seriously after all; he does not expect salvation from them. Acton,
"our contemporary," could not help living in his age which was the
Victorian age. He never gave up the "Whig interpretation of history,"
of that chain of blessed events, beginning in the "forests of Germany"
and leading through the Dutch and English Revolutions to the De–
claration of Independence. The World History which he never wrote
would have been a history of liberty.
Yet for himself he could jot down: "Use of history-no surprises.
He [the historian] has seen all this before. He knows what constant
and invariable forces will resist the truth and the Higher Purpose.
What weakness, division, excess, will damage the better cause. The
splendid plausibility of error, the dazzling attractiveness of sin. And by
what adjustment to inferior motives good causes succeed."
Had Lord Acton been a lesser man, the result would have been
a great confusion. And no doubt the fact that he wrote, so little, or
rather, completed and published so little, has something to do with
the ambiguities of his thought. But the intensity of his writing, the re–
sponsibility and supreme ambition one feels in every page, the sadness,
the beauty and density of his unforgettable formulations have also to
do with them. It is welcome news that an edition of his collected works
is now at long last being prepared. To this enormously interesting and
intricate work Miss Himmelfarb's biography is a worthy introduction.
Golo Mann
