Mandell Creighton

Mandell Creighton in 1870

Mandell Creighton (5 July 1843 – 14 January 1901) was an English historian and a prelate of the Church of England.

Quotes

• I turn to the past to learn its story without any preconceived opinion what that story may be. I do not assume that one period or one line of study is more instructive than another, but I am ready to recognise the real identity of man's aspiration at all times. Some episodes in history are regarded as profoundly modern; others are dismissed contemptuously as concerned with trifles. In some ages there are great heroes, in others the actors are sunk in indolence and sloth. For my own part I do not recognise this great distinction.
  • The teaching of ecclesiastical history, Inaugural lecture, Dixie Chair of Ecclesiastical History, University of Cambridge (23 January 1885)

• What is tolerance nowadays? Is it a moral virtue in the possessor, or is it a recognition of a necessity arising from an equilibrium of parties? It often seems to me that we speak as if it was the first, when actually it is the second. My Liberalism admits to every man the right to his own opinion, and imposes on me the duty of teaching him what is best; but I am by no means sure that that is the genuine conviction of all my Liberal friends. French Liberalism does not convince me that it is universal.
  • Letter to Lord Acton (9 April 1887), quoted in Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, Volume 1 (1904), p. 374

• The possession of a clear and definite ideal of society seems to me dangerous to its possessors. The Mediaeval Church had such an ideal: the result was the Inquisition, which was generally approved by the common consciousness.
  • Letter to Lord Acton (9 April 1887), quoted in Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, Volume 1 (1904), p. 374

• You judge the whole question of persecution more rigorously than I do. Society is an organism, and its laws are an expression of the conditions which it considers necessary for its own preservation. When men were hanged in England for sheep stealing, it was because people thought that sheep stealing was a crime, and ought to be severely put down. We still think it a crime, but we think it can be checked more effectually by less stringent punishments. Nowadays people are not agreed about what heresy is: they do not think it a menace to society, hence they do not ask for its punishment; but the men who conscientiously thought heresy a crime may be accused of an intellectual mistake, not necessarily of a moral crime. The immediate results of the Reformation were not to favour free thought; and the error of Calvin, who knew that ecclesiastical unity was abolished, was a far greater one than that of Innocent III., who struggled to maintain it. I am hopelessly tempted to admit degrees of criminality, otherwise history becomes a dreary record of wickedness. I go so far with you that it supplies me with few heroes, and records few good actions; but the actors were men like myself, sorely tempted by the possession of power, trammelled by holding a representative position (none more trammelled than popes), and in the sixteenth century especially, looking at everything in a very abstract way. I suppose statesmen rarely regard questions in the concrete. I can rarely follow the actions of contemporary statesmen with much moral satisfaction. In the past I find myself regarding them with pity: who am I that I should condemn them? Surely they knew not what they did.
  • Letter to Lord Acton (9 April 1887), quoted in Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, Volume 1 (1904), pp. 374-375

• The tolerant man has decided opinions, but recognises the process by which he reaches them, and keeps before himself the truth that they can only be profitably spread by repeating in the case of others a similar process to that through which he passed himself. He always keeps in view the hope of spreading his own opinions, but he endeavours to do so by producing conviction. He is virtuous, not because he puts his own opinions out of sight, nor because he thinks that other opinions are as good as his own, but because his opinions are so real to him that he would not anyone else hold them with less reality
  • Persecution and Tolerance, Hulsean Lectures, University of Cambridge (Winter 1893–94)

• Few men, I imagine, who become great started on their career with the intention of becoming so. The intention generally accompanies the unsuccessful. The secret of real greatness seems to be a happy knack of doing things as they come in your way; and they rarely present themselves in the form which careful preparation would enable you to deal with.
  • Heroes, address given to the Social and Political Education League (4 November 1898)

• I do not wish to command so much as to persuade. I wish to induce people to see themselves as others see them, to regard what they are doing in reference to its far-off effects on the consciences of others, to cultivate a truer sense of proportion of things, to deal more with ideas than with the clothing of ideas; to pay more attention to the reason of a thing than to its antiquity; to remember that the chief danger that besets those who are pursuing a high object is to confuse means with ends; to examine themselves very fully, lest they confuse Christian zeal with the desire to have their own way.
  • Lecture at the Diocesan Conference (April 1899)

• [A good teacher] brings knowledge and his pupil into a vital relationship; and the object of teaching is to establish that relationship on an intelligible basis. This can only be done ... by appealing to two qualities which are at the bottom of all knowledge, curiosity and observation. They are born with us, every child naturally develops them, and it is the duty of the teacher to direct them to proper ends.
  • Thoughts on Education: Speeches and Sermons (1902)

• No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.
  • Quoted by Louise Creighton in Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, vol. 2. (1905)

Quotes about Creighton

• ... As for his scepticism, it was of a discriminating kind: it had its limits. It was the scepticism of a man endowed with a strong historic sense, unwilling to dogmatise, who shrank instinctively from defining the undefinable.
  • "Mandell Creighton". The Quarterly Review 193: 584–622. April 1901 (quote on p. 590)