Historical fact

“ While I still believe in Local History and in limited subjects of student research, I now recognize more fully than I used to do, the importance of General History, especially for college students and college graduates in the early part of their course. After all, the great fact in History, as well as in Geography, is that the world is round. You must recognize all human experience on this globe as parts of one great whole, just as you recognize that the continents and outlying islands are but related parts of one vast geographical system. ”

“ It is of almost infinite importance to our history to secure, in their own language and conceptions, and even with their own predilections or prejudices from pioneers still living, all the reminiscent history available. ”

“ As a matter of fact, savages do not entertain these sentiments of the dignity and majesty of nature. On the contrary, a primitive man thinks that he can impose his paltry will on the elements; that he knows how to unchain the wind, to oblige the rain to fall; that he can, like the ancient witches of Thessaly, control sun and moon and stars by all sorts of petty magical rites, incantations, and gestures, as Joshua [19] made the sun stand still till his band of brigands had won the battle. ”

“ The etymology of the ward is an inspiration for both student and teacher. History, from the Greek word historia, is a knowing or learning by inquiry. To study History is to understand by means of research, for History is a science; its very essence consists in knowledge. Historical science is perhaps the most comprehensive and the noblest of all sciences, for it is the self-knowledge of Humanity. The subject of History is Humanity itself; it is the self-conscious development of the human race. History, therefore, does not consist in dead facts, but is itself a living fact ”

“ It is often said that some practical experience in life is necessary for the training of a historian; that only thus can he arrive at a knowledge of human nature and become a judge of character; that, while the theory is occasionally advanced that history is a series of movements which may be described without taking individuals into account, as a matter of fact, one cannot go far on this hypothesis without running up against the truth that movements have motors and the motors are men. ”

“ As the aim of history is truth, and as newspapers fail sadly in accuracy, it is not surprising that many historical students believe that the examination of newspapers for any given period will not pay for the labor and drudgery involved; but the fact that a trained German historical scholar and teacher at a German university should have found some truth in our newspaper files when he came to write the history of our own country, gives to their use for that period the seal of scientific approval. ”

“ SCOPE OF HISTORY.—The rise and progress of culture and civilization in their various constituents is the theme of history. It does not limit its attention to a particular fraction of a people, to the exclusion of the rest. Governments and rulers, and the public doings of states,—such as foreign wars, and the struggles of rival dynasties,—naturally form a prominent topic in historical writings. But this is only one department in the records of the past. More and more history interests itself in the character of society at large, and in the phases through which it has passed. ”

“ Nor are we deterred from believing that they really existed by the fact that, along with some things credible, other things wholly incredible are related of them. Throughout ancient history we must learn to pick and choose. The thesis, therefore, that Jesus never lived, but was from first to last a myth, presents itself at the outset as a paradox. ”

“ But we are acquainted with no history which approaches to our notion of what a history ought to be—with no history which does not widely depart, either on the right hand or on the left, from the exact line. ”

“ All the dreary questions of the precise order in which history should be taught—whether backwards or forwards, local first or the reverse, may be brought up if one chooses to do so. But after all, these questions are not very fruitful. What we need most is the historical spirit. ”

“ It will be impossible to stop investigation and the historian must ever keep in mind the fact that sooner or later his work will be tested by others and his errors brought to light. The value and permanence of all historical work, therefore, is quite in proportion to the amount of truth it contains. "Particularly must he," says one, "guard against careless or incorrect statements about the dead who cannot defend themselves." Every assertion should be susceptible of proof and exact references should be made in foot-notes to the authority upon which a statement is based. ”

“ Preference for the hustlings and the madding crowds rather than for the desk and its quiet enthusiasms must be accepted as a fact, let him who will account for it. Nor is this the place to argue that a local literature is a contradiction in terms. Our desire is to see the day when Mississippi shall have writers whom succeeding generations will delight to number among those who have contributed to the world's best thoughts, adequately expressed. ”

“ History and tradition are in accord, not in conflict; the gaps of history are filled by tradition—that tradition which was suitable and worthy of so great a hero, namely the ancient tradition told of all heroes. ”

“ Such a method of reading the history of a complicated period may, of course, be open to objection from the point of view of absolute historical truth. The effort to give unity to a period of history may easily fall into the inaccuracy of exaggeration. ”

“ Robertson on myths I feel that I ought almost to apologize to my readers for investigating at such length the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus, son of a mythical Mary, and for exhibiting over so many pages its fantastic, baseless, and absurd character. But Mr. Robertson himself warns us of the necessity of showing no mercy to myths when they assume the garb of fact. For he adduces (p. 126) the William Tell myth by way of illustrating once for all “the fashion in which a fiction can even in a historical [43] period find general acceptance.” ”

“ Why may not some Mississippi Lanier sing into fame our rivers, as the Georgia Chattahoochee has been immortalized by its own poet?
Connected with Indian names the investigator will find Indian legends. A rich mine is sure to open before a diligent worker. The fact that there are different versions of the same legend makes the material all the more valuable as a field of study. The student of ethnography as well as the student of literature finds the history of the Biloxi Indians full of interest. ”

“ In the meantime it is well to bear in mind that there is one important department of history which has always been frankly and unhesitatingly accepted as history and yet which has no stronger foundation than tradition, and tradition of the most formal kind. I allude to the early laws of most of the peoples who have become possessed of an historic civilisation. ”

“ The fact that it is so well-known, is so self-evident—causes it to be overlooked. I am quite willing to be found fault with for rehearsing at needless length what everybody knows—provided only my rehearsing will lead to these matters being attended to. ”

“ The marvelous story of humanity is enacted again for our edification, instruction, and delight. We behold civilizations begin, struggle, triumph, and decay, giving place to higher and nobler as they pass away. Poet, lawgiver, and soldier sing their songs, make their codes, and fight their battles again, while we follow the never-dying effects of song, of law, and of battle. We sit down with 'princes, potentates, and powers,' watching them, as they think, governing the world.... Shut up in a little room we can witness the whole drama of man's history played on the vast stage of the world. ”

“ If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England, he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would intersperse the details which are the charm of historical romances. ”

“ We are writing this introduction in an effort to make our word pictures of mankind and its doings correspond with the facts of social history. With the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, it is high time for us to exchange the clouds of fancy and the flowers of rhetoric for the solid ground of historical reality. The word "civilization" must generalize what has been and what is, as nearly as the past and present can be embodied in language. ”

“ 'What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a Mankind, by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts? ”

“ These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of the present age, and they the character of the men now living. ”

“ Besides this there is the wide field of differences in opinions, or conclusions—many being unable to distinguish between a fact and what is properly but their own personal inference from facts, or supposed facts. Still further, different persons will estimate differently the value of events, and give varying proportions to the elements constituting the whole. ”

“ Our national history, of course, has its own great and spreading pattern, which can be seen in its full form and completeness only when the stuff of our national life is laid before us in broad surfaces and upon an ample scale. ”

“ The evidence of historic events which enter into tradition relates principally to the earliest periods, but much of it relates to periods well within the domain of history and yet reveals facts which history has either hopelessly neglected or misinterpreted. ”

“ Modern History is the history of ourselves, of the way in which we came to be what we are, of the education of our nation, of the development of our government, of the fortunes of our fathers, that caused us to be taught and governed and placed as we are, and formed our minds and habits by that teaching, government, and position ”

“ One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots. The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people—the working classes—the backbone of the nation, so to speak—was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times. ”

“ But the feelings of nationality against imperial control by Church or State, the growth of the towns and commerce, the gradual development of representative government, the struggles against despotism—these are things he can understand and appreciate and in connection with which he can see the present emerging from the past. Nor should the great personalities of medieval and modern history be neglected, for they have historical interest and importance and serve to give greater interest and definiteness to movements of which they are a part. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But history is not only philosophy, teaching by example; its true purpose is, also, to illustrate the general progress of society in knowledge and the arts, and the changes of manners and pursuits of men.
There is an imperfection, both in ancient and modern histories, and those of the best masters, in this respect. While they recite public transactions, they omit, to a great degree, what belongs to the civil, social, and domestic progress of men and nations. ”

“ Our own brief history as a nation, and our finding and founding and maintaining of it, left our forefathers little time indeed for the delicate cultivation of the arts and graces of refined and scholarly attainments. ”

“ Nor should we permit ourselves to be deflected in our thought, and from our purpose, by the emphasis which the historian puts, almost exclusively, upon results and by the historian's definition—not merely his interpretation—of facts in the life of men in society. ”

“ In that moment of time that is covered by historical records we have abundant evidence that each generation has believed itself wiser and better than any of its predecessors; that each people has believed itself to have the secret of national perpetuity. ”

“ What is true of history is true of nearly all the rest, and the upshot of the whole matter is that there is not, either in private patronage or in popular demand, a chance for history in modern England. ”

“ We may have the military, the political, the social, the industrial, the economic, or the religious history of England, for instance, and although these histories will overlap and involve one another, each of them will exhibit a career which is peculiar and distinct from its fellows. ”

“ If the accretion of myth around the lives of great historic personages, and the persistence of tradition in historic localities, may be accepted as one phase of the necessary relationship of tradition to history, we may proceed to inquire how far the unattached traditions, the folk-tales pure and simple, contain or are based upon historic details. ”