* * * * *
The intelligent thought of the world is ever advancing to a fuller
appreciation of the worth of the past to the present and the future.
Never before have associations, societies and journals devoted to
historical studies been so numerous. All times and tribes are searched
for memorials; the remote corners of modern, medieval and ancient
periods are brought under scrutiny; and going beyond these again, the
semi-historic eras of tradition and the nebulous gleams from
pre-historic milleniums[TN-1] are diligently scanned, that their
uncertain story may be prefaced to that registered in "the syllables of
recorded time."
In this manner a vast mass of material is accumulating with which the
historian has to deal. What now is the real nature of the task he sets
before himself? What is the mission with which he is entrusted?
To understand this task, to appreciate that mission, he must ask himself
the broad questions: What is the aim of history? What are the purposes
for which it should be studied and written?
He will find no lack of answers to these inquiries, all offered with
equal confidence, but singularly discrepant among themselves. His
embarrassment will be that of selection between widely divergent views,
each ably supported by distinguished advocates.
As I am going to add still another, not exactly like any already on the
list, it may well be asked of me to show why one or other of those
already current is not as good or better than my own. This requires me
to pass in brief review the theories of historic methods, or, as it is
properly termed, of the Philosophy of History, which are most popular
to-day.
They may be classified under three leading opinions, as follows:
1. History should be an accurate record of events, and nothing more; an
exact and disinterested statement of what has taken place, concealing
nothing and coloring nothing, reciting incidents in their natural
connections, without bias, prejudice, or didactic application of any
kind.
This is certainly a high ideal and an excellent model. For many, yes,
for the majority of historical works, none better can be suggested. I
place it first and name it as worthiest of all current theories of
historical composition. But, I would submit to you, is a literary
production answering to this precept, really _History_? Is it anything
more than a well-prepared annal or chronicle? Is it, in fact anything
else than a compilation containing the materials of which real history
should be composed?
I consider that the mission of the historian, taken in its completest
sense, is something much more, much higher, than the collection and
narration of events, no matter how well this is done. The historian
should be like the man of science, and group his facts under inductive
systems so as to reach the general laws which connect and explain them.
He should, still further, be like the artist, and endeavor so to exhibit
these connections under literary forms that they present to the reader
the impression of a symmetrical and organic unity, in which each part or
event bears definite relations to all others. Collection and collation
are not enough. The historian must "work up his field notes," as the
geologists say, so as to extract from his data all the useful results
which they are capable of yielding.
I am quite certain that in these objections I can count on the suffrages
of most. For the majority of authors write history in a style widely
different from that which I have been describing. They are distinctly
teachers, though not at all in accord as to what they teach. They are
generally advocates, and with more or less openness maintain what I call
the second theory of the aim of history, to wit:
2. History should be a collection of evidence in favor of certain
opinions.
In this category are to be included all religious and political
histories. Their pages are intended to show the dealings of God with
man; or the evidences of Christianity, or of one of its sects,
Catholicism or Protestantism; or the sure growth of republican or of
monarchial institutions; or the proof of a divine government of the
world; or the counter-proof that there is no such government; and the
like.
You will find that most general histories may be placed in this class.
Probably a man cannot himself have very strong convictions about
politics or religion, and not let them be seen in his narrative of
events where such questions are prominently present. A few familiar
instances will illustrate this. No one can take either Lingard's or
Macauley's History of England as anything more than a plea for either
writer's personal views. Gibbon's anti-Christian feeling is as
perceptibly disabling to him in many passages as in the church
historians is their search for "acts of Providence," and the hand of God
in human affairs.
All such histories suffer from fatal flaws. They are deductive instead
of inductive; they are a _defensio sententiarum_ instead of an
_investigatio veri_; they assume the final truth as known, and go not
forth to seek it. They are therefore "teleologic," that is, they study
the record of man as the demonstration of a problem the solution of
which is already known. In this they are essentially "divinatory,"
claiming foreknowledge of the future; and, as every ethnologist knows,
divination belongs to a stadium of incomplete intellectual culture, one
considerably short of the highest. As has been well said by Wilhelm von
Humboldt, any teleologic theory "disturbs and falsifies the facts of
history;"[6-1] and it has been acutely pointed out by the philosopher
Hegel, that it contradicts the notion of progress and is no advance over
the ancient tenet of a recurrent cycle.[6-2]
I need not dilate upon these errors. They must be patent to you. No
matter how noble the conviction, how pure the purpose, there is
something nobler and purer than it, and that is, unswerving devotion to
rendering in history the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth.