Historical research

“ Then for later periods, no country of the Western world possesses such magnificent materials for history as our own. In the vast quantity of public and private documents which are gradually being made accessible to the student there exists material for the illustration and elucidation of almost every side and every period of national life, and no branch of historical research is more fruitful of results than the comparison of the records of the professed historian with the documents which have not come from the historian's hands. ”

“ Histories of the people have for the first time been written, and the outreach of historical research has been made to cover institutions, manners and customs, morals and superstitions, and a thousand things neglected by older authors. ”

“ But if history means, as it did originally, research, and knowledge of real events based on such research, then the events of which we are going to speak are as real and as truly historical as the battle of "Waterloo." ”

“ There are books of great research and erudition which one would have wished to have been all re-written by some writer of real genius who could have given order, meaning and vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously sifted learning. The great prominence which it is now the fashion to ascribe to the study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true value and perspective of history. ”

“ Whatever connection the historical novel may have with the history that men write and build up out of their conscious studies, or with History, the past as it really happened, the thing that is the object of study and research, it certainly has something to do with that world, that mental picture which each of us makes of the past; it helps our imagination to build up its idea of the past. ”

“ Local history, family history, the possession of important documents such as may be found in every country house, and almost every parish register or court roll, open ways of access to historical interest of a varied kind, in which the extent of research may be almost unbounded, in which a critical spirit may be trained and disciplined, and the results of which are sure to be valuable, certainly invaluable to the worker himself. ”

“ In venturing to open a new path in historical researches on the earth and mankind, it is incumbent on the bold pioneer to state his views, or at least to furnish adequate reasons for deviating so far from the usual track.
While every science and branch of knowledge is improving, and has, with rapid strides, made continual advances for fifty years past or more, is the noble muse of history to be kept stationary forever, by compilers and classical plodders? and for America by the foes of the ancient and modern nations of a whole hemisphere? ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the development and organisation of historical science, the profounder historic sense of the age was displayed in the scientific investigation of history, in the study of social life and its development. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Invention, discovery, experience in all the ways of life, scientific research, etc., all have lifted him into a serener and more reflecting atmosphere than his brother of the dim and cloudy past, enjoyed. ”

“ Robertson remarks sensibly enough that “No great research or reflection is needed to make it clear that certain commonplaces of ethics as well as of theology are equally inevitable conclusions in all religious systems that rise above savagery. Four hundred years before Jesus, Plato declared that it was very difficult for the rich to be good; does anyone believe that any thoughtful Jew needed Plato’s help to reach the same notion?” ”

“ We live in a period so enlightened, that to display the use of History would be superfluous labour. It would be the mere repetition of what has already been expressed, by eminent authors, on various occasions. They have told us that History is the science of human nature ”

“ These, and perhaps other ways in which Literature may illustrate History, are tolerably obvious, and need no farther exposition. There is, however, a higher and somewhat more subtle service which Literature may perform towards illustrating History and modifying our ideas of the Past.
What the historian chiefly and finally wants to get at, through all his researches, and by all his methods of research, is the mind of the time that interests him, its mode of thinking and feeling. ”

“ The object which he proposes to himself is, to prove that history may be reduced to a science. To comprehend the full meaning of this proposition we must ask, what is "history," and what is "science"? History is a generalised account of the personal actions of men united in bodies for any public purposes whatever ; and science is the combination of a great mass of similar facts into the unity of a generalisation, a principle, or a law, which principle or law will enable us to predict with certainty the recurrence of like events under given conditions. ”

“ A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It should describe it in its larger and more various aspects. It should be a study of causes and effects, of distant as well as proximate causes, and of the large, slow and permanent evolution of things. It should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw, the social, the industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere political changes, and it should be pre-eminently marked by a true perspective dealing with subjects at a length proportioned to their real importance. ”

“ The last century has seen the birth and growth of a new science—the Science of Historical Criticism.... The whole world of profane history has been revolutionised....
If these utterances were true when they fell from the lips of a Bampton lecturer in 1859, with how much greater force do they appeal to us now, when the immense labours of the generation now passing away constitute one vast illustration of the power and fruitfulness of scientific methods of investigation in history, no less than in all other departments of knowledge. ”

“ Where the historian uses the press or pounder of his historical learning, documentary lore, abstracts, synthesis, statistics, and other professional devices, to squeeze thousands and hundreds of thousands of little vital personal incidents into a dense and arbitrary conglomerate known as "a historical fact," "a social phenomenon," "a mass movement," "evolution," "the mind of the race," or "historical truth" in general, the chronicler sees only the individual cases and even finds them pleasing in themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Far be it from any one loyal to the spirit of science to say a single word in disparagement of work so useful and so necessary. But it would also be wrong to pretend to hope that we can ever construct a science of history merely in this frame of mind, or that the remnants of unpublished manuscripts, or the sweepings of sources of information still left unexploited—however precious—can so broaden the foundations of historical knowledge as to enable us thereupon to raise history to its proper dignity as a science. ”

“ Others, no less able and conscientious, and no less learned, have re-admitted tradition to investigation, and have made it their special care to pick out the historical grain from the chaff of fiction. ”

“ Historical intellectualism has opened the way to the many attempts, made especially during the last two centuries and continued to-day, to discover a philosophy of history, an ideal history, a sociology, a historical psychology, or whatever else a science may be called, whose object is to extract from history concepts and universal laws. ”

“ In an address which I delivered eight or nine years ago before the American Historical Association, I cheerfully conceded that, in the realm of intellectual endeavor, the natural and physical sciences should have the precedence of history. ”

“ The study of history, thus understood, has another advantage; it accustoms us to those patient and disinterested investigations, to those lengthy labors, the positive result of which at first escapes us for a time, only to burst on our eyes, with so much more brilliancy, when rigorous research has succeeded in discovering it. ”

“ With a set of facts about the social conditions of England in the Middle Ages the historian will seek to make a generalisation, to find a formula; the novelist will seek a different sort of synthesis and will try to reconstruct a world, to particularise, to catch a glimpse of human nature. Each will notice different things and follow different clues; for to the historian the past is the whole process of development that leads up to the present ”

“ Lastly, under the names of sociology and the science of culture, are con sidered the origin and development of arts and sciences, opinions, beliefs, customs, laws, and institutions generally among mankind, their course in time being partly marked out by the direct record of history, while beyond the historical limit our information is continued by inferences from relics of early ages and remote districts, to interpret which is the task of prse-historic archaeology and geology. ”

“ It is not merely for the classifiers and abstractors that history is waiting now; it is for the workers who, trained in the methods of comparative science, will add to the present outfit of the historian the equipment necessary to enable him to regard history as the last complex but orderly phase in the evolution of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a history of kings. They looked specially in history for the chain of causes and effects. They undertook to study in the past the physiology of nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large scale to deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on which the well-being of society mainly depends. ”

“ Already science and exact investigation have accomplished the most auspicious and valuable results. The spirit of research has enabled us to unlock many secrets, which have remained sealed up for centuries. History has gleaned largely from the spirit of criticism; Ethnology has already reared a permanent monument to her own intellectual labors, and promises in its results, to unravel the intricate thread of ancient migration, and to untie the gordian knot of nations. ”

“ Now, then, can there be a science of history? Can we ever arrive at such a complete knowledge of all the motives and laws of human conduct as to be able to predict with certainty of any bodies of men what their conduct in given circumstances will be? ”

“ The tendency of historians nowadays is to neglect completely the study of the influences on State of Man's domestic, social, industrial, religious, and intellectual life, and of the diverse effects on human life and institutions of the working of the political machinery. ”

“ The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that this indication is the cause. ”

“ We have, thus, for the state or law or economy or knowledge or art or religion always one science which interprets the historical systems of state, etc., in a systematic and philological way, one science which deals with its function in the historical world and one which studies biographically and nationally the history of state, law, economical life, science, art or religion. ”

“ But the record of history also shows that men have repeatedly interfered and intervened in the historical process by discovery and invention. The historical record is subject to change. Man is not entirely free. Neither is he helplessly bound on the wheel of necessity, presently known as civilization. ”

“ No subject would be more transformed in its teaching by the introduction of method work than history. But what is history? What are the materials with which the student works and what the method by which he arrives at historical truth? What is proof in historical study? The teacher of history must be able to give an answer to these questions, if he would do his work intelligently and effectively.
What is history? How does it differ in its aims and methods from natural science, from political and economic science, from sociology? ”