6. These are instances of the deceptions that are likely to arise
from the two fertile sources that have been specified. There can
be no doubt that the existence of errors arising from the former
source--misapprehension of the meaning of words--is very generally
admitted, and effectual remedies have been supplied by modern scholars
for those who will make use of them. Errors arising from the latter
source are not so entirely recognized, or so securely guarded against.
But what has just been said surely shows that it is of no use reading a
writer of a past age with merely modern conceptions; and, therefore,
that if such a man's works are worth study at all, they must be read
with the help of the light thrown upon them by contemporary history,
literature, laws, and morals. The student must endeavour to divest
himself, as far as possible, of all ideas that are the result of a
development subsequent to the time in which his author lived, and to
place himself in harmony with the life and thoughts of the people of
that age: sit down with them in their homes, and learn the sources of
their loves, their hates, their fears, and see wherein domestic
happiness, or lack of it, made them strong or weak; follow them to the
market-place, and witness their dealings with their fellows--the honesty
or baseness of them, and trace the cause; look into their very hearts,
if it may be, as they kneel at the devotion they feel or simulate, and
become acquainted with the springs of their dearest aspirations and most
secret prayers.
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