THE VARIETIES OF BURKE I am now further convinced that there is something to be said in general for studying the history of a lost cause. Perhaps our education would be more humane in result if everyone were required to gain an intimate acquaintance with some coherent ideal that failed in the effort to maintain itself. It need not be a cause which was settled by war; there are causes in the social, political, and ecclesiastical worlds which would serve very well. But it is good for everyone to ally himself at one time with the defeated and to look at the "progress" of history through the eyes of those who were left behind.16 One final thought: It may be that the really important things we have to learn from Burke have less to do with the principles he argued for than how he conducted himself. The lesson that I draw from Robert Nisbet's comments on Burke is that the real value of Burke is as an exemplar, not as (to use Weaver's term) a prophet. When I was teaching modern political thought, I quit assigning The Federalist and began to use Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention, because I wanted my students to experience an example of political thinking in action. I wanted them to see the contingent nature-I could say "accidental nature"-of many of the decisions the delegates stumbled upon17 during debate and that went into making our Constitution, a Constitution later defended by The Federalist as representing reflection and choice as opposed to accident and force. Burke's speeches-and we should remember that all of Burke's political philosophy and principles are embedded in speeches or political writings, not in systematic and abstract philosophical works-provide us the same opportunity to observe a serious political actor struggle with difficult issues and who exercised, 43