Passages quoted in E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1940) include remarks on value of cultural works for successive generations of civilised people from Lord Acton's Lecture on the Study of History ('A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of Socrates [...] come nearer to our lives than the ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine on the Hercynian acorns').
Forster responds with comment that 'Lord Acton is right, but [...] He forgot that that most people do not respond to culture or intellectual honesty [...] he appears to this generation as an old man lecturung in a cap and gown,' having also noted 'This afternoon (29-2-40) I was at Bishops Cross, where new born lambs were dying in the cold, and Hughie Waterson, a Nazi by temperament, was trying to save them [...] Him the ancestral wisdom inspired.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
[under heading 'Lord Acton Some "shining precepts" for the historical student]
E. M. Forster transcribes passage opening 'Keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names,' and phrase 'The critic is one who, when he lights on an interesting statement, begins by suspecting it,' noting underneath:
'The above are from his lecture "The Study of History" [...] Transcribing them while the planes whirr, I wonder how far Liberalism might have progressed if the world had kept calm.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
