FOURTH SESSION, WEDNESDAY, 2.30 p. m., at TULANE UNIVERSITY. EUROPEAN HISTORY. 1. Louis XVI., Machault, and Maurepas. Prof. F. M. Fling. Wednesday, 4 p. m., political science meeting, Tulane Library. FIFTH SESSION, WEDNESDAY, 8 P. M., AT TULANE UNIVERSITY. DIPLOMATIC HISTORY. 1. Relation of Spain, England, and France to the Mississippi Valley, 1789– 1800. Prof. F. J. Turner. 2. Texas Annexation. Prof. G. P. Garrison. 3. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Dr. Jesse S. Reeves. 4. Some Unpublished Papers of Baron von Closen of Rochambeau's Staff (illustrated). Dr. C. W. Bowen. Wednesday, 10 p. m., smoker at the Round Table Club. SIXTH SESSION, THURSDAY, 10.30 A. M., AT TULANE UNIVERSITY. AMERICAN HISTORY. 1. The Compromises of the Constitution. Prof. Max Farrand. 2. The Constitutional Convention of 1864 in Louisiana. Prof. J. R. Ficklen. 3. British West Florida, 1763-1781. Hon. P. J. Hamilton. 4. Popular Sovereignty and the Development of the West. Prof. Allen Johnson. 5. Additional Bibliography of the Fourteen United States Congresses. Gen. A. W. Greely (read by title). 6. Early Disturbances in Carolina. Prof. E. W. Sikes (read by title). Thursday, 3.30 p. m., annual meeting of the Association at the St. Charles. SEVENTH SESSION, THURSDAY, 8 P. M., AT TULANE UNIVERSITY. JOINT MEETING WITH THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION. The Relation of Sociology to History and Economics. Prof. F. H. Giddings. Discussion of the paper by Prof. E. Emerton, Prof. G. L. Burr, and Prof. W. M. West, of the American Historical Association, and Prof. A. W. Small, Prof. C. H. Cooley, and Mr. Lester F. Ward, of the American Economic Association. Thursday, 9.30 p. m., reception to the two associations in the library of Tulane University. Friday, 9.30 a. m., steamboat excursion on the Mississippi, landing at a sugar plantation. II. ETHICAL VALUES IN HISTORY. By HENRY CHARLES LEA, 333 53 ETHICAL VALUES IN HISTORY." By HENRY CHARLES LEA. Circumstances deprive me of the honor of presiding over this meeting of the American Historical Association to which your kindly appreciation has called me, but at least I can fulfil the pleasant duty of addressing to you a few words on a topic which is of interest to all of us, whether students or writers of history. In this I do not pretend to instruct those whose opinions are, to say the least, fully as mature and worthy of consideration as my own, but merely to contribute to a discussion which will probably continue as long as men shall strive to bring the annals of the past to the knowledge of the present. One whose loss we all deplore and whose memory we honor as perhaps the most learned and thoughtful scholar in the English-speaking world-the late Lord Acton-in his wellknown Cambridge lecture, has formally placed on record his opinion on ethical values in history when saying, "I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives lives and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong. The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are met by arguments which go to confuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and to reduce the just man to the level of the reprobate. The men who plot to baffle and resist us are, first of all, those who made history what it has become. They set up the principle that only a foolish Conservative judges the present time with the ideas of the past; that only a foolish Liberal judges the past with the ideas of the present." a The President's address to the American Historical Association, December 29, 1903 The argument with which Lord Acton justifies this exhortation to his students presupposes a fixed and unalterable standard of morality, together with the comfortable assurance that we have attained to that absolute knowledge of right and wrong which enables us to pass final judgment on the men of the past, secure that we make no mistake when we measure them by our own moral yardstick. Every foregone age has similarly flattered itself, and presumably every succeeding one will continue to cherish the same illusion. I must confess that to me all this seems to be based on false premises and to lead to unfortunate conclusions as to the objects and purposes of history, however much it may serve to give point and piquancy to a narrative, to stimulate the interest of the casual reader by heightening lights and deepening shadows, and to subserve the purpose of propagating the opinions of the writer. As regards the inferred premiss that there is an absolute and invariable moral code by which the men of all ages and of all degrees of civilization are to be tried and convicted or acquitted, a very slender acquaintance with the history of ethics would appear sufficient to establish its fallacy. It would be overbold to suggest that morals are purely conventional and arbitrary, yet anthropological research has shown that there is scarce a sin condemned in the Decalogue which has not been or may not now be regarded rather as a virtue, or at least as an allowable practice, at some time or place among a portion of mankind, and no one would be so hardy as to judge with the severity of the Hebrew lawgiver those who merely follow the habits and customs in which they have been trained. We regard the gallows as the rightful portion of him who slays his fellow-creature for gain, yet who among you would inflict the death penalty on the head-hunter of Borneo? You would condemn the superstition which leads him to glory in the deed, but your conscience would acquit him of personal guilt, for he but follows the tradition of his race, and he may in all other human relations lead an exemplary life. The actor in a Corsican vendetta is not to be judged as a common murderer, although his life may rightly pay to society the forfeit arising from his being the survival of an older and ruder civilization. |