Part 540

"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.