Paul Vinogradoff
Villainage in England
Essays in English Mediaeval History
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664622709
Table of Contents
THE PEASANTRY OF THE FEUDAL AGE.
THE MANOR AND THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY.
INTRODUCTION.
When the time comes for writing a history of the nineteenth century, one of the most important and attractive chapters will certainly be devoted to the development of historical literature. The last years of a great age are fast running out: great has been the strife and the work in the realm of thought as well as in the material arrangement of life. The generations of the nineteenth century have witnessed a mighty revival of religious feeling; they have attempted to set up philosophical systems as broad and as profound as any of the speculations of former times; they have raised the structure of theoretical and applied science to a height which could hardly have been foreshadowed some two hundred years ago. And still it is to historical study that we have to look as the most characteristic feature of the period. Medieval asceticism in its desperate struggle against the flesh, and Puritanism with its sense of individual reconciliation with God, were both more vigorous forms of religious life than the modern restorations of faith and Church, so curiously mixed up with helplessness, surrender of acquired truth, hereditary instincts, and utilitarian reflection. In philosophy, Hegel's metaphysical dialectic, Schopenhauer's transformation of Kant's teaching, and the attempts of English and French positivism at encyclopaedical science may be compared theoretically with Plato's poetical idealism or with the rationalistic schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But it would be difficult to deny, that in point of influence on men's minds, those older systems held a more commanding position than these: Hegel seems too arbitrary and phantastical, Schopenhauer too pessimistic, positivism too incomplete and barren as to ultimate problems to suit the practical requirements of philosophy; and people are already complaining of the decay of philosophical study. In science, again, the age of Darwin is certainly second to none, but it has to share its glory with the age of Newton, and it may be reasonably doubted whether the astronomer, following in the footsteps of Galileo and Kepler, was not actuated by even greater thirst and pride of knowledge than the modern biologist or geologist. It is otherwise with regard to history.
Progress of historical methods.
Students of science are wont to inveigh against the inexact character of historical research, its incoherence and supposed inability to formulate laws. It would be out of place here to discuss the comparative value of methods and the one-sided preference given by such accusers to quantitative analysis; but I think that if these accusers were better acquainted with the subject of their attacks, or even more attentive to the expressions of men's life and thought around them, they would hardly dare to maintain that a study which in the short space of a century has led to a complete revolution in the treatment of all questions concerning man and society, has been operating only by vague assumptions and guesses at random. An investigation into methods cannot be undertaken in these introductory pages, but a general survey of results may