The site of ancient Troy, as supposed to be identified by the
excavations of Dr. Schliemann.
See ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES;
also, TROJA, and HOMER.
----------HISTORY: Start--------
HISTORY:
Definitions.
"With us the word 'history,' like its equivalents in all
modern languages, signifies either a form of literary
composition or the appropriate subject or matter of such
composition—either a narrative of events, or events which
may be narrated. It is impossible to free the term from this
doubleness and ambiguity of meaning. Nor is it, on the whole,
to be desired. The advantages of having one term which may,
with ordinary caution, be innocuously applied to two things so
related, more than counterbalances the dangers involved in two
things so distinct having the same name. … Since the word
history has two very different meanings, it obviously cannot
have merely one definition. To define an order of facts and a
form of literature in the same terms—to suppose that when
either of them is defined the other is defined—is so absurd
that one would probably not believe it could be seriously done
were it not so often done. But to do so has been the rule
rather than the exception. The majority of so-called
definitions of history are definitions only of the records of
history. They relate to history as narrated and written, not
to history as evolved and acted; in other words, although
given as the only definitions of history needed, they do not
apply to history itself, but merely to accounts of history.
They may tell us what constitutes a book of history, but they
cannot tell us what the history is with which all books of
history are occupied. It is, however, with history in this
latter sense that a student of the science or philosophy of
history is mainly concerned. … If by history be meant
history in its widest sense, the best definition of history as
a form of literature is, perhaps, either the very old one,
'the narration of events,' or W. von Humboldt's, 'the
exhibition of what has happened' (die Darstellung des
Geschehenen).
{1648}
The excellence of these definitions lies in their clear and
explicit indication of what history as effectuated or
transacted is. It consists of events; it is das Geschehene. It
is the entire course of events in time. It is all that has
happened precisely as it happened. Whatever happens is
history. Eternal and unchanging being has no history. Things
or phenomena considered as existent, connected, and
comprehended in space, compose what is called nature as
distinguished from history. … Probably Droysen has found a
neater and terser formula for it in German than any which the
English language could supply. Nature he describes as 'das
Nebeneinander des Seienden,' and history as 'das Nacheinander
des Gewordenen.' … The only kind of history with which we
have here directly to deal is that kind of it to which the
name is generally restricted, history par excellence, human
history, what has happened within the sphere of human agency
and interests, the actions and creations of men, events which
have affected the lives and destinies of men, or which have
been produced by men. This is the ordinary sense of the word
history. … To attempt further to define it would be worse
than useless. It would be unduly to limit, and to distort and
pervert, its meaning. In proof of this a few brief remarks on
certain typical or celebrated definitions of history may
perhaps be of service. The definition given in the Dictionary
of the French Academy—'l'histoire est le récit des choses
dignes de mémoire' [Transcriber: "the story of things worth
remembering"]—is a specimen of a very numerous species.
According to such definitions history consists of exceptional
things, of celebrated or notorious events, of the lives and
actions of great and exalted men, of conspicuous achievements
in war and politics, in science and art, in religion and
literature. But this is a narrow and superficial conception of
history. History is made up of what is little as well as of
what is great, of what is common as well as of what is
strange, of what is counted mean as well as of what is counted
noble. … Dr. Arnold's definition—'history is the biography
of a society'—has been often praised. Nor altogether
undeservedly. For it directs attention to the fact that all
history accords with biography in supposing in its subject a
certain unity of life, work, and end. … It does not follow,
however, that biography is a more general notion than history,
and history only a species of biography. In fact, it is not
only as true and intelligible to say that biography is the
history of an individual as to say that history is the
biography of a society, but more so. It is the word biography
in the latter case which is used in a secondary and analogical
sense, not the word history in the former case. … According
to Mr. Freeman, 'history is past politics and politics are
present history.' This is not a mode of definition which any
logician will be found to sanction. It is equivalent to saying
that politics and history are the same, and may both be
divided into past and present; but it does not tell us what
either is. To affirm that this was that and that is this is
not a definition of this or that, but only an assertion that
something may be called either this or that. Besides, the
identification of history with politics proceeds, as has been
already indicated, on a view of history which is at once
narrow and arbitrary. Further, it is just as true that
mathematical history is past mathematics and mathematics are
present history, as that political history is past politics
and politics are present history. … The whole of man's past
was once present thought, feeling, and action. There is
nothing peculiar to politics in this respect."
_R. Flint,
History of the Philosophy of History: France, etc.,
pages 5-10._
HISTORY:
The subjects and objects of History.
"The position for which I have always striven is this, that
history is past politics, that politics are present history.
The true subject of history, of any history that deserves the
name, is man in his political capacity, man as the member of
an organized society, governed according to law. History, in
any other aspect, hardly rises above antiquarianism, though I
am far from holding that even simple antiquarianism, even the
merest scraping together of local and genealogical detail, is
necessarily antiquarian rubbish. I know not why the pursuits
of the antiquary should be called rubbish, any more than the
pursuits of the seeker after knowledge of any other kind.
Still, the pursuits of the antiquary, the man of local and
special detail, the man of buildings or coins or weapons or
manuscripts, are not in themselves history, though they are
constantly found to be most valuable helps to history. The
collections of the antiquary are not history; but they are
materials for history, materials of which the historian makes
grateful use, and without which he would often be sore put to
in doing his own work. … It is not too much to say that no
kind of knowledge, of whatever kind, will be useless to the
historian. There is none, however seemingly distant from his
subject, which may not stand him in good stead at some pinch,
sooner or later. But his immediate subject, that to which all
other things are secondary, is man as the member of a
political community. Rightly to understand man in that
character, he must study him in all the forms, in all the
developments, that political society has taken. Effects have
to be traced up to their causes, causes have to be traced up
to their effects; and we cannot go through either of those
needful processes if we confine our studies either to the
political societies of our own day or to political societies
on a great physical scale. The object of history is to watch
the workings of one side, and that the highest side, of human
nature in all its shapes; and we do not see human nature in
all its shapes, unless we follow it into all times and all
circumstances under which we have any means of studying it.
… In one sense it is perfectly true that history is always
repeating itself; in another sense it would be equally true to
say that history never repeats itself at all. No historical
position can be exactly the same as any earlier historical
position, if only for the reason that the earlier position has
gone before it. … Even where the reproduction is
unconscious, where the likeness is simply the result of the
working of like causes, still the two results can never be
exactly the same, if only because the earlier result itself
takes its place among the causes of the later result.
Differences of this kind must always be borne in mind, and
they are quite enough to hinder any two historical events from
being exact doubles of one another. … We must carefully
distinguish between causes and occasions. It is one of the
oldest and one of the wisest remarks of political philosophy
that great events commonly arise from great causes, but from
small occasions.
{1649}
A certain turn of mind, one which is more concerned with
gossip, old or new, than with real history, delights in
telling us how the greatest events spring from the smallest
causes, how the fates of nations and empires are determined by
some sheer accident, or by the personal caprice or personal
quarrel of some perhaps very insignificant person. A good deal
of court-gossip, a good deal of political gossip, passes both
in past and present times for real history. Now a great deal
of this gossip is sheer gossip, and may be cast aside without
notice; but a good deal of it often does contain truth of a
certain kind. Only bear in mind the difference between causes
and occasions, and we may accept a good many of the stories
which tell us how very trifling incidents led to very great
events. … When I speak of causes and occasions, when I speak
of small personal caprices and quarrels, as being not the
causes of great events, but merely the occasions, I wish it to
be fully understood that I do not at all place the agency of
really great men among mere occasions: I fully give it its
place among determining causes. In any large view of history,
we must always be on our guard against either underrating or
overrating the actions of individual men. History is something
more than biography; but biography is an essential and a most
important part of history. We must not think, on the one hand,
that great men, heroes, or whatever we please to call them,
can direct the course of history according to their own will
and pleasure, perhaps according to their mere caprice, with no
danger of their will being thwarted, unless it should run
counter to the will of some other great man or hero of equal
or greater power. … On the other hand, we must not deem that
the course of history is so governed by general laws, that it
is so completely in bondage to almost mechanical powers, that
there is no room for the free agency of great men and of small
men too. For it is of no little importance that, while we talk
of the influence of great men on the history of the world, we
should not forget the influence of the small men. Every man
has some influence on the course of history."
_E. A. Freeman,
The Practical Bearings of European History
(Lectures to American Audiences),
pages 207-215._
HISTORY:
The Philosophy of History
"The philosophy of history is not a something separate from
the facts of history, but a something contained in them. The
more a man gets into the meaning of them, the more he gets
into it, and it into him; for it is simply the meaning, the
rational interpretation, the knowledge of the true nature and
essential relations of the facts. And this is true of whatever
species or order the facts may be. Their philosophy is not
something separate and distinct from, something over and
above, their interpretation, but simply their interpretation.
He who knows about any people, or epoch, or special
development of human nature, how it has come to be what it is
and what it tends to, what causes have given it the character
it has, and what its relation is to the general development of
humanity, has attained to the philosophy of the history of
that people, epoch, or development. Philosophical history is
sometimes spoken of as a kind of history, but the language is
most inaccurate. Every kind of history is philosophical which
is true and thorough; which goes closely and deeply enough to
work; which shows the what, how, and why of events as far as
reason and research can ascertain. History always participates
in some measure of philosophy, for events are always connected
according to some real or supposed principle either of
efficient or final causation."
_R. Flint,
Philosophy of History,
introduction._
HISTORY:
The possibility of a Science of History.
Mr. Buckle's theory.
"The believer in the possibility of a science of history is
not called upon to hold either the doctrine of predestined
events, or that of freedom of the will; and the only positions
which, in this stage of the inquiry, I shall expect him to
concede are the following: That when we perform an action, we
perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that
those motives are the results of some antecedents; and that,
therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the
antecedents, and with all the laws of their movements, we
could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their
immediate results. This, unless I am greatly mistaken, is the
view which must be held by every man whose mind is unbiased by
system, and who forms his opinions according to the evidence
actually before him. … Rejecting, then, the metaphysical
dogma of free will and, the theological dogma of predestined
events, we are driven to the conclusion that the actions of
men, being determined solely by their antecedents, must have a
character of uniformity, that is to say, must, under precisely
the same circumstances, always issue in precisely the same
results. And as all antecedents are either in the mind or out
of it, we clearly see that all the variations in the
results—in other words, all the changes of which history is
full, all the vicissitudes of the human race, their progress
or their decay, their happiness or their misery—must be the
fruit of a double action; an action of external phenomena upon
the mind, and another action of the mind upon the phenomena.
These are the materials out of which a philosophic history can
alone be constructed. On the one hand, we have the human mind
obeying the laws of its own existence, and, when uncontrolled
by external agents, developing itself according to the
conditions of its organization. On the other hand, we have
what is called Nature, obeying likewise its laws; but
incessantly coming into contact with the minds of men,
exciting their passions, stimulating their intellect, and
therefore giving to their actions a direction which they would
not have taken without such disturbance. Thus we have man
modifying nature, and nature modifying man; while out of this
reciprocal modification all events must necessarily spring.
The problem immediately before us is to ascertain the method
of discovering the laws of this double modification."
_H. T. Buckle,
History of Civilization in England,
chapter 1._
"Buckle is not the first who has attempted to treat the
unscientific character of History, the 'methodless matter,' as
an ancient writer names it, by the method of exhibiting vital
phenomena under points of view analogous to those which are
the starting-point of the exact sciences. But a notion which
others have incidentally broached under some formula about
'natural growth,' or carried out in the very inadequate and
merely figurative idea of 'the inorganic; what still others,
as Comte in his attractive 'Philosophie Positive,' have
developed speculatively, Buckle undertakes to ground in a
comprehensive historical exposition. …
{1650}
He purposes to raise History to a science by showing how to
demonstrate historical facts out of general laws. He paves the
way for this by setting forth that the earliest and rudest
conceptions touching the course of human destiny were those
indicated by the ideas of chance and necessity, that in all
probability' out of these grew later the 'dogmas' of free-will
and predestination, that both are in a great degree
'mistakes,' or that, as he adds, 'we at least have no adequate
proof of their truth.' He finds that all the changes of which
History is full, all the vicissitudes which have come upon the
human race, its advance and its decline, its happiness and its
misery, must be the fruit, of a double agency, the working of
outer phenomena upon our nature, and the working of our nature
upon outer phenomena. He has confidence that he has discovered
the 'laws' of this double influence, and that he has therefore
elevated the History of mankind to a science. … Buckle does
not so much leave the freedom of the will, in connection with
divine providence, out of view, but rather declares it an
illusion and throws it overboard. Within the precincts of
philosophy also something similar has recently been taught. A
thinker whom I regard with personal esteem says: 'If we call
all that an individual man is, has and performs A, then this A
arises out of _a + x, a_ embracing all that comes to the
man from his outer circumstances: from his country, people,
age, etc., while the vanishingly little _x_ is his own
contribution, the work of his free will.' However vanishingly
small this _x_ may be, it is of infinite value. Morally
and humanly considered it alone has value. The colors, the
brush, the canvas which Raphael used were of materials which
he had not created. He had learned from one and another master
to apply these materials in drawing and painting. The idea of
the Holy Virgin and of the saints and angels, he met with in
church tradition. Various cloisters ordered pictures from him
at given prices. That this incitement alone, these material
and technical conditions and such traditions and
contemplations, should 'explain' the Sistine Madonna, would
be, in the formula A = _a + x_, the service of the
vanishing little _x_. Similarly everywhere. Let
statistics go on showing that in a certain country so and so
many illegitimate births occur. Suppose that in the formula A
= _a + x_ this _a_ includes all the elements which
'explain' the fact that among a thousand mothers twenty,
thirty, or whatever the number is, are unmarried; each
individual case of the kind has its history, how often a
touching and affecting one. Of those twenty or thirty who have
fallen is there a single one who will be consoled by knowing
that the statistical law 'explains' her case? Amid the
tortures of conscience through nights of weeping, many a one
of them will be profoundly convinced that in the formula A =
_a + x_ the vanishing little _x_ is of immeasurable
weight, that in fact it embraces the entire moral worth of the
human being, his total and exclusive value. No intelligent man
will think of denying that the statistical method of
considering human affairs has its great worth; but we must not
forget how little, relatively, it can accomplish and is meant
to accomplish: Many and perhaps all human relations have a
legal side; yet no one will on that account bid us seek for
the understanding of the Eroica or of Faust among jurists'
definitions concerning intellectual property."
_J. G. Droysen,
Outline of the Principles of History
pages 62-64 and 77-79._
HISTORY:
History as the root of all Science.
Lost History.
"History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the
first distinct product of man's spiritual nature; his earliest
expression of what can be called Thought. It is a looking both
before and after; as, indeed, the coming Time already waits,
unseen, yet definitely shaped, predetermined and inevitable,
in the Time come; and only by the combination of both is the
meaning of either completed. The Sibylline Books, though old,
are not the oldest. Some nations have prophecy, some have not:
but of all mankind, there is no tribe so rude that it has not
attempted History, though several have not arithmetic enough
to count Five. History has been written with quipo-threads,
with feather-pictures, with wampum-belts; still oftener with
earth-mounds and monumental stone-heaps, whether as pyramid or
cairn; for the Celt and the Copt, the Red man as well as the
White, lives between two eternities, and warring against
Oblivion, he would fain unite himself in clear conscious
relation, as in dim unconscious relation he is already united,
with the whole Future and the whole Past. A talent for History
may be said to be born with us, as our chief inheritance. In a
certain sense all men are historians. Is not every memory
written quite full with Annals, wherein joy and mourning,
conquest and loss manifoldly alternate; and, with or without
philosophy, the whole fortunes of one little inward Kingdom,
and all its politics, foreign and domestic, stand ineffaceably
recorded? Our very speech is curiously historical. Most men,
you may observe, speak only to narrate; not in imparting what
they have thought, which indeed were often a very small
matter, but in exhibiting what they have undergone or seen,
which is a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off
from Narrative, how would the stream of conversation, even
among the wisest, languish into detached handfuls, and among
the foolish utterly evaporate! Thus, as we do nothing but
enact History, we say little but recite it: nay rather, in
that widest sense, our whole spiritual life is built thereon.
For, strictly considered, what is all Knowledge too but
recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which;
therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and
Passion, are essential materials? … Social Life is the
aggregate of all the individual men's Lives who constitute
society; History is the essence of innumerable Biographies.
But if one Biography, nay our own Biography, study and
recapitulate it as we may, remains in so many points
unintelligible to us; how much more must these million, the
very facts of which, to say nothing of the purport of them, we
know not, and cannot know! … Which was the greatest
innovator, which was the more important personage in man's
history, he who first led armies over the Alps, and gained the
victories of Cannæ and Thrasymene; or the nameless boor who
first hammered out for himself an iron spade? When the oak
tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred
acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.
{1651}
Battles and war-tumults, which for the time din every ear, and
with joy or terror intoxicate every heart, pass away like
tavern-brawls; and, except some few Marathons and Morgartens,
are remembered by accident, not by desert. Laws themselves,
political Constitutions, are not our Life, but only the house
wherein our Life is led: nay they are but the bare walls of
the house; all whose essential furniture, the inventions and
traditions, and daily habits that regulate and support our
existence, are the work not of Dracos and Hampdens, but of
Phœnician mariners, of Italian masons and Saxon metallurgists,
of philosophers, alchymists, prophets, and all the
long-forgotten train of artists and artisans; who from the
first have been jointly teaching us how to think and how to
act, how to rule over spiritual and over physical Nature. Well
may we say that of our History the more important part is lost
without recovery."
_T. Carlyle,
On History
(Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, volume 2)._
HISTORY:
Interpretation of the Past by the Present.
"But how, it may be asked, are we to interpret the Past from
the Present, if there are no institutions in the present
answering to those in the past? We have no serfs, for example,
in England at the present time, how then are we to understand
a state of Society of which they were a component element? The
answer is—by analogy, by looking at the essence of the
relation. Between a modern master and his lackeys and
dependents, the same essential relation subsists as between
the lord and serf of feudal times. If we realise to ourselves
the full round of this relationship, deepen the shades to
correspond with the more absolute power possessed by a lord in
early times, allow for a more aristocratic state of opinion
and belief, the result will be the solution desired. This
method of interpreting the Past from the Present has been
followed by Shakespeare in his great historical dramas, with
such success as we all know. He wishes, for example, to give
us a picture of old Roman times. He gets from Plutarch and
other sources the broad historical facts, the form of
Government and Religion, the distribution of Power and
Authority: this is the skeleton to which he has to give life
and reality. How does he proceed? He simply takes his stand on
the times in which he himself lived; notes the effects
existing institutions have on his own and other minds; allows
for the differences in custom, mode of life, and political and
religious forms; and the result is a drama or dramas more real
and lifelike, more true and believable, an insight into the
working of Roman life more subtle and profound, than all the
husks with which the historians have furnished us."
_J. B. Crozier,
Civilization and Progress,
page 35._
HISTORY:
The Moral lessons of History.
"Gibbon believed that the era of conquerors was at an end. Had
he lived out the full life of man, he would have seen Europe
at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed the
world had grown too civilized for war, and the Crystal Palace
in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles
bloody as Napoleon's are now the familiar tale of every day;
and the arts which have made greatest progress are the arts of
destruction. … What, then, is the use of History, and what
are its lessons? If it can tell us little of the past, and
nothing of the future, why waste our time over so barren a
study? First, it is a voice forever sounding across the
centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners
change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on
the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous
deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the
price has to be paid at last; not always by the chief
offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone
endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived,
but doomsday comes at last to them, in French revolutions and
other terrible ways. That is one lesson of History. Another is
that we should draw no horoscopes; that we should expect
little, for what we expect will not come to pass."
_J. A. Froude,
Short Studies on Great Subjects,
pages 27-28._
HISTORY:
The Educational and Practical value of History.
"It is, I think, one of the best schools for that kind of
reasoning which is most useful in practical life. It teaches
men to weigh conflicting probabilities, to estimate degrees of
evidence, to form a sound judgment of the value of
authorities. Reasoning is taught by actual practice much more
than by any a priori methods. Many good judges—and I own I am
inclined to agree with them—doubt much whether a study of
formal logic ever yet made a good reasoner. Mathematics are no
doubt invaluable in this respect, but they only deal with
demonstrations; and it has often been observed how many
excellent mathematicians are somewhat peculiarly destitute of
the power of measuring degrees of probability. But History is
largely concerned with the kind of probabilities on which the
conduct of life mainly, depends. There is one hint about
historical reasoning which I think may not be unworthy of your
notice. When studying some great historical controversy, place
yourself by an effort of the imagination alternately on each
side of the battle; try to realise as fully as you can the
point of view of the best men on either side, and then draw up
upon paper the arguments of each in the strongest form you can
give them. You will find that few practices do more to
elucidate the past, or form a better mental discipline."
_W. E. H. Lecky,
The Political Value of History,
pages 47-49._
"He who demands certainties alone as the sphere of his action
must retire from the activities of life, and confine himself
to the domain of mathematical computation. He who is unwilling
to investigate and weigh probabilities can have no good reason
to hope for any practical success whatever. It is strictly
accurate to say that the highest successes in life, whether in
statesmanship, in legislation, in war, in the civic
professions, or in the industrial pursuits, are attained by
those who possess the greatest skill in the weighing of
probabilities and the estimating of them at their true value.
This is the essential reason why the study of history is so
important an element in the work of improving the judgment,
and in the work of fitting men to conduct properly the larger
interests of communities and states. It is a study of
humanity, not in an ideal condition, but as humanity exists.
The student of history surveys the relations of life in
essentially the same manner as the man of business surveys
them. Perhaps it ought rather to be said that the historical
method is the method that must be used in the common affairs
of everyday life.
{1652}
The premises from which the man of business has to draw his
conclusions are always more or less involved and uncertain.
The gift which insures success, therefore, is not so much the
endowment of a powerful reasoning faculty as that other
quality of intelligence, which we call good judgment. It is
the ability to grasp what may be called the strategic points
of a situation by instinctive or intuitive methods. It reaches
its conclusions not by any very clearly defined or definable
process, but rather by the method of conjecturing the value
and importance of contingent elements. It is the ability to
reach correct conclusions when the conditions of a strictly
logical process are wanting. To a man of affairs this is the
most valuable of all gifts; and it is acquired, so far as it
comes by effort, not by studying the rigid processes of
necessary reasoning, but by a large observance and
contemplation of human affairs. And it is precisely this
method of studying men that the historical student has to use.
His premises are always more or less uncertain, and his
conclusions, therefore, like the conclusions of every day
life, are the product of his judgment rather than the product
of pure reason. It is in the light of this fact that we are to
explain the force of Guizot's remark, that nothing tortures
history more than logic. Herein also is found the reason why
the study of history is so necessary a part of a good
preparation for the affairs of politics and statesmanship.
Freeman has said that history is simply past politics, and
politics are simply present history. If this be true—and who
can deny it?—the study of history and the study of politics
are much the same. The kind of involved and contingent
reasoning necessary for the successful formation of political
judgments is unquestionably the kind of reasoning which, of
all studies, history is best adapted to give. It may also be
said that the most important elements of success are the same
in all practical vocations. The conditions, whether those of
statesmanship or those of industry and commerce, have been
essentially the same in all ages. Society is, and has been,
from its first existence, a more or less complicated organism.
It is a machine with a great number of wheels and springs. No
part is independent. Hence it is that no man can be completely
useful if he is out of gear with his age, however perfect he may
be in himself."
_C. K. Adams,
A Manual of Historical Literature,
pp. 15-16._
"To turn for a moment to the general question. I should not
like to be thought to be advocating my study on the mere
grounds of utility; although I believe that utility, both as
regards the training of the study and the information attained
in it, to be the highest, humanly speaking, of all utilities;
it helps to qualify a man to act in his character of a
politician as a Christian man should. But this is not all;
beyond the educational purpose, beyond the political purpose,
beyond the philosophical use of history and its training, it
has something of the preciousness of everything that is
clearly true. In common with Natural Philosophy it has its
value, I will not say as Science, for that would be to use a
term which has now become equivocal, but it has a value
analogous to the value of science; a value as something that
is worth knowing and retaining in the knowledge for its own
and for the truth's sake. And in this consists its especial
attraction for its own votaries. It is not the pleasure of
knowing something that the world does not know,—that
doubtless is a motive that weighs with many minds, a motive to
be accepted as a fact, though it may not be worth analysis. It
is not the mere pleasure of investigating and finding with
every step of investigation new points of view open out, and
new fields of labour, new characters of interest;—that
investigating instinct of human nature is not one to be
ignored, and the exercise of it on such inexhaustible
materials as are before us now is a most healthy exercise, one
that cannot but strengthen and develop the whole mind of the
man who uses it, urging him on to new studies, new languages,
new discoveries in geography and science. But even this is not
all. There is, I speak humbly, in common with Natural Science,
in the study of living History, a gradual approximation to a
consciousness that we are growing into a perception of the
workings of the Almighty Ruler of the world. … The study of
History is in this respect, as Coleridge said of Poetry, its
own great reward, a thing to be loved and cultivated for its
own sake. … If man is not, as we believe, the greatest and
most wonderful of God's works, he is at least the most
wonderful that comes within our contemplation; if the human
will, which is the motive cause of all historical events, is
not the freest agent in the universe, it is at least the
freest agency of which we have any knowledge; if its
variations are not absolutely innumerable and irreducible to
classification, on the generalisations of which we may
formulate laws and rules, and maxims and prophecies, they are
far more diversified and less reducible than any other
phenomena in those regions of the universe that we have power
to penetrate. For one great insoluble problem of astronomy or
geology there are a thousand insoluble problems in the life,
in the character, in the face of every man that meets you in
the street. Thus, whether we look at the dignity of the
subject-matter, or at the nature of the mental exercise which
it requires, or at the inexhaustible field over which the
pursuit ranges, History, the knowledge of the adventures, the
development, the changeful career, the varied growths, the
ambitions, aspirations, and, if you like, the approximating
destinies of mankind, claims a place second to none in the
roll of sciences."
_W. Stubbs,
Seventeen Lectures on the Study of
Medieval and Modern History,
lectures 1 and 4._
"There is a passage in Lord Bacon so much to this purpose that
I cannot forbear quoting it. 'Although' (he says) 'we are
deeply indebted to the light, because by means of it we can
find our way, ply our tasks, read, distinguish one another;
and yet for all that the vision of the light itself is more
excellent and more beautiful than all these various uses of
it; so the contemplation and sight of things as they are,
without superstition, without imposture, without error, and
without confusion, is in itself worth more than all the
harvest and profit of inventions put together.' And so may I
say of History; that useful as it may be to the statesman, to
the lawyer, to the schoolmaster, or the annalist, so far as it
enables us to look at facts as they are, and to cultivate that
habit within us, the importance of History is far beyond all
mere amusement or even information that we may gather from
it."
_J. S. Brewer,
English Studies,
page 382._
{1653}
"To know History is impossible; not even Mr. Freeman, not
Professor Ranke himself, can be said to know History. … No
one, therefore, should be discouraged from studying History.
Its greatest service is not so much to increase our knowledge
as to stimulate thought and broaden our intellectual horizon,
and for this purpose no study is its equal."
_W. P. Atkinson,
On History and the Study of History,
page 107._
HISTORY:
The Writing of History.
Macaulay's view.
"A history in which every particular incident may be true may
on the whole be false. The circumstances which have most
influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners
and morals, the transition of communities from poverty to
wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to
humanity—these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions.
Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are
pleased to call important events. They are not achieved by
armies, or enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no
treaties and recorded in no archives. They are carried on in
every school, in every church, behind ten thousand counters,
at ten thousand firesides. The upper current of society
presents no certain criterion by which we can judge of the
direction in which the under current flows. We read of defeats
and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable
amidst victories and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the
fall of wise ministers and of the rise of profligate
favourites. But we must remember how small a proportion the
good or evil effected by a single statesman can bear to the
good or evil of a great social system. … The effect of
historical reading is analogous, in many respects, to that
produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, is
transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions.
He hears new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by
contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of
manners. But men may travel far and return with minds as
contracted as if they had never stirred from their own
market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of
many battles and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet
be no wiser. … The perfect historian is he in whose work the
character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He
relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his
characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient
testimony. But, by judicious selection, rejection, and
arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which have
been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due subordination
is observed: some transactions are prominent; others retire.
But the scale on which he represents them is increased or
diminished, not according to the dignity of the persons
concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they
elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. He
shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he shows us
also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of
manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant for his
notice which is not too insignificant to illustrate the
operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to mark
the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be
described, but will be made intimately known to us."
_Lord Macaulay,
History
(Essays, volume 1)._
HISTORY:
The Writing of History.
Truthfulness in Style.
"That man reads history, or anything else, at great peril of
being thoroughly misled, who has no perception of any
truthfulness except that which can be fully ascertained by
reference to facts; who does not in the least perceive the
truth, or the reverse, of a writer's style, of his epithets,
of his reasoning, of his mode of narration. In life our faith
in any narration is much influenced by the personal
appearance, voice, and gesture of the person narrating. There
is some part of all these things in his writing; and you must
look into that well before you can know what faith to give
him. One man may make mistakes in names, and dates, and
references, and yet have a real substance of truthfulness in
him, a wish to enlighten himself and then you. Another may not
be wrong in his facts, but have a declamatory, or sophistical,
vein in him, much to be guarded against. A third may be both
inaccurate and untruthful, caring not so much for any thing as
to write his book. And if the reader cares only to read it,
sad work they make between them of the memories of former
days."
_Sir A. Helps,
Friends in Council,
volume 1, pages 199-200._
HISTORY:
Historical Romance and Romantic History.
Sir Walter Scott.
"The prodigious addition which the happy idea of the
historical romance has made to the stories of elevated
literature, and through it to the happiness and improvement of
the human race, will not be properly appreciated, unless the
novels most in vogue before the immortal creations of Scott
appeared are considered. … Why is it that works so popular
in their day, and abounding with so many traits of real
genius, should so soon have palled upon the world? Simply
because they were not founded upon a broad and general view of
human nature; because they were drawn, not from real life in
the innumerable phases which it presents to the observer, but
imaginary life as it was conceived in the mind of the
composer; because they were confined to one circle and class
of society, and having exhausted all the natural ideas which
it could present, its authors were driven, in the search of
variety, to the invention of artificial and often ridiculous
ones. Sir Walter Scott, as all the world knows, was the
inventor of the historical romance. As if to demonstrate how
ill founded was the opinion, that all things were worked out,
and that originality no longer was accessible for the rest of
time, Providence, by the means of that great mind, bestowed a
new art, as it were, upon mankind—at the very time when
literature to all appearance was effete, and invention, for
above a century, had run in the cramped and worn-out channels
of imitation. Gibbon was lamenting that the subjects of
history were exhausted, and that modern story would never
present the moving incidents of ancient story, on the verge of
the French Revolution and the European war—of the Reign of
Terror and the Moscow retreat. Such was the reply of Time to
the complaint that political incident was worn out. Not less
decisive was the answer which the genius of the Scottish bard
afforded to the opinion, that the treasures of original
thought were exhausted, and that nothing now remained for the
sons of men. In the midst of that delusion he wrote
'Waverley'; and the effect was like the sun bursting through
the clouds."
_Historical Romance
(Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1845)._
{1654}
"Those sticklers for truth, who reproach Scott with having
falsified history because he wilfully confused dates, forget
the far greater truth which that wonderful writer generally
presented. If, for his purposes, he disarranged the order of
events a little; no grave historian ever succeeded better in
painting the character of the epoch. He committed errors of
detail enough to make Mrs. Markham shudder. He divined
important historical truth which had escaped the sagacity of
all historians. A great authority, Augustin Thierry, has
pronounced Scott the greatest of all historical divinators."
_G. H. Lewes,
Historical Romance
(Westminster Review, March, 1846)._
"The novel of Ivanhoe places us four generations after the
invasion of the Normans, in the reign of Richard, son of Henry
Plantagenet, sixth king since the conqueror. At this period,
at which the historian Hume can only represent to us a king
and England, without telling us what a king is, nor what he
means by England, Walter Scott, entering profoundly into the
examination of events, shows us classes of men, distinct
interests and conditions, two nations, a double language,
customs which repel and combat each other; on one side tyranny
and insolence, on the other misery and hatred, real
developments of the drama of the conquest, of which the battle
of Hastings had been only the prologue. … In the midst of
the world which no longer exists, Walter Scott always places
the world which does and always will exist, that is to say,
human nature, of which he knows all the secrets. Everything
peculiar to the time and place, the exterior of men, the
aspect of the country and of the habitations, costumes, and
manners, are described with the most minute truthfulness; and
yet the immense erudition which has furnished so many details
is nowhere to be perceived. Walter Scott seems to have for the
past that second sight, which in times of ignorance, certain
men attributed to themselves for the future. To say that there
is more real history in his novels on Scotland and England
than in the philosophically false compilations which still
possess that great name, is not advancing any thing strange in
the eyes of those who have read and understood 'Old
Mortality,' 'Waverley,' 'Rob Roy,' the 'Fortunes of Nigel,'
and the 'Heart of Mid-Lothian.'"
_A. Thierry, Narratives of the Merovingian Era,
Historical Essays, etc., essay 9._
"We have all heard how the romances of Walter Scott brought
history home to people who would never have looked into the
ponderous volumes of professed historians, and many of us
confess to ourselves that there are large historical periods
which would be utterly unknown to us but for some story either
of the great romancer or one of his innumerable imitators.
Writers, as well as readers, of history were awakened by Scott
to what seemed to them the new discovery that the great
personages of history were after all men and women of flesh
and blood like ourselves. Hence in all later historical
literature there is visible the effort to make history more
personal, more dramatic than it had been before. We can hardly
read the interesting Life of Lord Macaulay without perceiving
that the most popular historical work of modern times owes its
origin in a great measure to the Waverley Novels. Macaulay
grew up in a world of novels; his conversation with his
sisters was so steeped in reminiscences of the novels they had
read together as to be unintelligible to those who wanted the
clue. His youth and early manhood witnessed the appearance of
the Waverley Novels themselves. … He became naturally
possessed by the idea which is expressed over and over again
in his essays, and which at last he realized with such
wonderful success, the idea that it was quite possible to make
history as interesting as romance. … Macaulay is only the
most famous of a large group of writers who have been
possessed with the same idea. As Scott founded the historical
romance, he may be said to have founded the romantic history.
And to this day it is an established popular opinion that this
is the true way of writing history, only that few writers have
genius enough for it. … It must be urged against this kind
of history that very few subjects or periods are worthy of it.
Once or twice there have appeared glorious characters whose
perfection no eloquence can exaggerate; once or twice national
events have arranged themselves like a drama, or risen to the
elevation of an epic poem. But the average of history is not
like this; it is indeed much more ordinary and monotonous than
is commonly supposed. The serious student of history has to
submit to a disenchantment like that which the experience of
life brings to the imaginative youth. As life is not much like
romance, so history when it is studied in original documents
looks very unlike the conventional representation of it which
historians have accustomed us to."
_J. R. Seeley,
History and Polities
(Macmillan's Magazine, August, 1879)._
HISTORY:
How to study History.
"The object of the historical student is to bring before his
mind a picture of the main events and the spirit of the times
which he studies. The first step is to get a general view from
a brief book; the second step is to enlarge it from more
elaborate books, reading more than one, and to use some system
of written notes keeping them complete. The next step is to
read some of the contemporary writers. Having done these three
things carefully, the historical student carries away an
impression of his period which will never be effaced."
_Prof. A. B. Hart,
How to Study History
(Chautauquan, October, 1893)._
HISTORY:
The Importance of a knowledge of Universal History.
"When I was a schoolmaster, I never considered a pupil
thoroughly educated unless he had read Gibbon through before
he left me. I read it through myself before I was eighteen,
and I have derived unspeakable advantage from this experience.
Gibbon's faults of style and matter have very slight effect on
the youthful mind, whereas his merits, his scholarship, his
learning, his breadth of view, his imagination, and his
insight, afford a powerful stimulus to study. … I … wish
to urge the claims of two subjects on your attention which
have hitherto been unaccountably neglected. The first of them
is universal history, the general course of the history of the
world. It seems natural to think that no subject could be more
important for the consideration of any human being than the
knowledge of the main lines which the race has followed since
the dawn of history in reaching the position which it has now
attained. The best way of understanding any situation is to
know how affairs came into that position. Besides the
satisfaction of legitimate curiosity, it is only thus that we
can be wise reformers, and distinguish between what is a mere
survival of the past and an institution which is inherent in
the character of the community.
{1655}
Our German cousins are fully aware of this truth; a German
parlour, however meagerly furnished, always contains two
books, a Bible and a Weltgeschichte. I suppose that during the
present century from a hundred to a hundred and fifty of these
universal histories have made their appearance in Germany. In
England I only know of two. In Germany, Italy, and Austria,
and, I believe, in France, universal history forms an
essential part of education for nearly all classes. It is
taken as a subject under certain conditions in the
Abiturienten-Examen. I once had the privilege of reading the
notes of a viva voce examination of a student in this subject
who did not pass. It covered the whole range of ancient,
mediæval, and modern history. I was astonished at what the
student did know, and still more at what he was expected to
know. I should like to see the subject an essential part of
all secondary education in England, just as the knowledge of
Bible history was in my young days and may be still. If proper
text-books were forthcoming, to which I again direct the
attention of enterprising publishers, there would be no
difficulty in making this subject an accompaniment of nearly
every literary lesson. … The advantage would be the
enlargement of the mind by the contemplation of the majestic
march of human events and the preparation for any future
course of historical study. 'Boys come to us,' said a German
professor once to me, 'knowing their centuries.' How few
English boys or even English men have any notion of their
centuries! The dark ages are indeed dark to them. I once asked
a boy at Eton, who had given me a date, whether it was B. C.
or A. D. Being hopelessly puzzled, he replied that it was B.
D. Many of us, if we were honest, would give a similar
answer."
_O. Browning,
The Teaching of History in Schools
(Royal Historical Society, Transactions,
new series, volume 4)._
HISTORY:
The Importance of Local History.
"From a variety of considerations, the writer is persuaded
that one of the best introductions to history that can be
given in American high schools, and even in those of lower
grade, is through a study of the community in which the school
is placed. History, like charity, begins at home. The best
American citizens are those who mind home affairs and local
interest. 'That man's the best cosmopolite who loves his
native country best.' The best students of universal history
are those who know some one country or some one subject well.
The family, the hamlet, the neighborhood, the community, the
parish, the village, town, city, county, and state are
historically the ways by which men have approached national
and international life. It was a preliminary study of the
geography of Frankfort-on-the-Main that led Carl Ritter to
study the physical structure of Europe and Asia, and thus to
establish the new science of comparative geography. He says:
'Whoever has wandered through the valleys and woods, and over
the hills and mountains of his own state, will be the one
capable of following a Herodotus in his wanderings over the
globe.' And we may say, as Ritter said of the science of
geography, the first step in history is to know thoroughly the
district where we live. … American local history should be
studied as a contribution to national history. This country
will yet be viewed and reviewed as an organism of historic
growth, developing from minute germs, from the very protoplasm
of state life. And some day this country will be studied in
its international relations, as an organic part of a larger
organism now vaguely called the World State, but as surely
developing through the operation of economic, legal, social,
and scientific forces as the American Union, the German and
British Empires are evolving into higher forms. American
history in its widest relations is not to be written by any
one man nor by anyone generation of men. Our history will grow
with the nation and with its developing consciousness of
internationality. The present possibilities for the real
progress of historic and economic science lie, first and
foremost, in the development of a generation of economists and
practical historians, who realize that history is past
politics and politics present history; secondly, in the
expansion of the local consciousness into a fuller sense of
its historic worth and dignity, of the cosmopolitan relations
of modern local life, and of its wholesome conservative power
in these days of growing centralization. National and
international life can best develop upon the constitutional
basis of local self-government in church and state. … If
young Americans are to appreciate their religious and
political inheritance, they must learn its intrinsic worth.
They must be taught to appreciate the common and lowly things
around them. They should grow up with as profound respect for
town and parish meetings as for the State legislature, not to
speak of the Houses of Congress. They should recognize the
majesty of the law, even in the parish constable as well as
the high sheriff of the country. They should look on selectmen
as the head men of the town, the survival of the old English
reeve and four best men of the parish. They should be taught
to see in the town common or village green a survival of that
primitive institution of land-community upon which town and
state are based. They should be taught the meaning of town and
family names; how the word 'town' means, primarily, a place
hedged in for the purposes of defence; how the picket-fences
around home and house-lot are but a survival of the primitive
town idea; how home, hamlet, and town live on together in a
name like Hampton, or Home-town. They should investigate the
most ordinary thing for these are often the most archaic. …
It would certainly be an excellent thing for the development
of historical science in America if teachers in our public
schools would cultivate the historical spirit in their pupils
with special reference to the local environment. … A
multitude of historical associations gather around every old
town and hamlet in the land. There are local legends and
traditions, household tales, stories told by grandfathers and
grandmothers, incidents remembered by 'the oldest
inhabitants.' But above all in importance are the old
documents and manuscript records of the first settlers, the
early pioneers, the founders of our towns. Here are sources of
information more authentic than tradition, and yet often
entirely neglected. … In order to study history it is not
necessary to begin with dead men's bones, with Theban
dynasties, the kings of Assyria, the royal families of Europe,
or even with the presidents of the United States. These
subjects have their importance in certain connections, but for
beginners in history there are perhaps other subjects of
greater interest and vitality.
{1656}
The most natural entrance to a knowledge of the history of the
world is from a local environment through widening circles of
interest, until, from the rising ground of the present, the
broad horizon of the past comes clearly into view. … A study
of the community in which the student dwells will serve to
connect that community not only with the origin and growth of
the State and Nation, but with the mother-country, with the
German fatherland, with village communities throughout the
Aryan world,—from Germany and Russia to old Greece and Rome;
from these classic lands to Persia and India."
_H. B. Adams, Methods of Historical Study
(Johns Hopkins University Studies, Second Series, 1-2),
pages 16-21._
----------HISTORY: Start--------
HITCHITIS, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MUSKHOGEAN FAMILY.
HITTIN, Battle of (1187).
See JERUSALEM: A. D. 1149-1187.
HITTITES, The.
The Hittites mentioned in the Bible were known as the Khita or
Khatta to the Egyptians, with whom they were often at war.
Recent discoveries indicate that they formed a more civilized
and powerful nation and played a more important part in the
early history of Western Asia than was previously supposed.
Many inscriptions and rock sculptures in Asia Minor and Syria
which were formerly inexplicable are now attributed to the
Hittites. The inscriptions have not yet been deciphered, but
scholars are confident that the key to their secret will be
found. The two chief cities of the Hittites were Kadesh on the
Orontes and Carchemish on the Euphrates; so that their seat of
empire was in northern Syria, but their power was felt from
the extremity of Asia Minor to the confines of Egypt. It is
conjectured that these people were originally from the
Caucasus. "Their descendants," says Professor Sayee, "are
still to be met with in the defiles of the Taurus and on the
plateau of Kappadokia, though they have utterly forgotten the
language or languages their forefathers spoke. What that
language was is still uncertain, though the Hittite proper
names which occur on the monuments of Egypt and Assyria show
that it was neither Semitic nor Indo-European."
_A. H. Sayee,
Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments,
chapter 5._
"We may … rest satisfied with the conclusion that the
existence of a Hittite empire extending into Asia Minor is
certified, not only by the records of ancient Egypt, but also
by Hittite monuments which still exist. In the days of Ramses
II., when the children of Israel were groaning under the tasks
allotted to them, the enemies of their oppressors were already
exercising a power and a domination which rivalled that of
Egypt. The Egyptian monarch soon learned to his cost that the
Hittite prince was as 'great' a king as himself, and could
summon to his aid the inhabitants of the unknown north.
Pharaoh's claim to sovereignty was disputed by adversaries as
powerful as the ruler of Egypt, if indeed not more powerful,
and there was always a refuge among them for those who were
oppressed by the Egyptian king. When, however, we speak of a
Hittite empire, we must understand clearly what that means. It
was not an empire like that of Rome, where the subject
provinces were consolidated together under a central
authority, obeying the same laws and the same supreme head. It
was not an empire like that of the Persians, or of the
Assyrian successors of Tiglath-pileser III., which represented
the organised union of numerous states and nations under a
single ruler. … Before the days of Tiglath-pileser, in fact,
empire in Western Asia meant the power of a prince to force a
foreign people to submit to his rule. The conquered provinces
had to be subdued again and again; but as long as this could
be done, as long as the native struggles for freedom could be
crushed by a campaign, so long did the empire exist. It was an
empire of this sort that the Hittites established in Asia
Minor. How long it lasted we cannot say. But so long as the
distant races of the West answered the summons to war of the
Hittite princes, it remained a reality. The fact that the
tribes of the Troad and Lydia are found fighting under the
command of the Hittite kings of Kadesh, proves that they
acknowledged the supremacy of their Hittite lords, and
followed them to battle like the vassals of some feudal chief.
If Hittite armies had not marched to the shores of the Ægean,
and Hittite princes been able from time to time to exact
homage from the nations of the far west, Egypt would not have
had to contend against the populations of Asia Minor in its
wars with the Hittites, and the figures of Hittite warriors
would not have been sculptured on the rocks of Karabel. There
was a time when the Hittite name was feared as far as the
western extremity of Asia Minor, and when Hittite satraps had
their seat in the future capital of Lydia. Traditions of this
period lingered on into classical days."
_A. H. Sayee,
The Hittites,
chapter 4._
ALSO IN:
_W. Wright,
The Empire of the Hittites._
See, also,
AMORITES; and ITALY, ANCIENT: EARLY ITALIANS.
HIVITES, The.
The "Midlanders," who dwelt in the middle of Canaan when the
Israelites invaded it.
See AMALEKITES.