Viscount Bolingbroke. 1678-1751.
I have read somewhere or other,—in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think,—that history is philosophy teaching by examples.[304:3]
On the Study and Use of History. Letter 2.
The dignity of history.[304:4]
On the Study and Use of History. Letter v.
It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.[304:5]
Letter to Mr. Pope.
Footnotes
[304:3] Dionysius of Halicarnassus (quoting Thucydides), Ars Rhet. xi. 2, says: "The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples."
[304:4] Henry Fielding: Tom Jones, book xi. chap. ii. Horace Walpole: Advertisement to Letter to Sir Horace Mann. Macaulay: History of England, vol. i. chap. i.
[304:5]
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
Pope: Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 331.
[305]