This is at once an
admission of the power over us of outward circumstances.
In the same way, we allow for the strength of temptations, and the like.
In general, it is perfectly obvious that men do necessarily absorb, out
of the influences in which they grow up, something which gives a
complexion to their whole after-character.
When historians have to relate great social or speculative changes, the
overthrow of a monarchy, or the establishment of a creed, they do but
half their duty if they merely relate the events. In an account, for
instance, of the rise of Mahometanism, it is not enough to describe the
character of the Prophet, the ends which he set before him, the means
which he made use of, and the effect which he produced; the historian
must show what there was in the condition of the Eastern races which
enabled Mahomet to act upon, them so powerfully; their existing beliefs,
their existing moral and political condition.
In our estimate of the past, and in our calculations of the future, in
the judgments which we pass upon one another, we measure responsibility,
not by the thing done, but by the opportunities which people have had of
knowing better or worse.
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