Historical value

“ 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. ”

“ If I am right in my supposition that Thucydides and Tacitus had a mass of materials, they showed reserve and discretion in throwing a [p17] large part of them away, as not being necessary or important to the posterity for which they were writing. This could only be the result of a careful comparison of their materials, and of long meditation on their relative value. I suspect that they cared little whether a set daily task was accomplished or not; for if you propose to write only one large volume or four moderate-sized volumes in a lifetime, art is not too long nor is life too short. ”

“ Let local Societies be formed and enthusiasm in their work be engendered; let every item of historic interest be put in typewritten or printed form and let copies be sent to the Secretary of the Mississippi State Historical Society and other copies lodged with the local Society. Let us be careful to mark and preserve every object of historic interest and to emphasize its value. Thus we shall show that we are justly proud of our race, our State and the achievements of our ancestors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The degree of certainty that it is possible to attain in history varies greatly in different departments. The growth of institutions and laws, military events, changes in manners and in creeds, can be described with much confidence, and although it is more difficult to depict the inner moral life of nations, the influences that form their characters and prepare them for greatness or decay, yet [7] when the materials for our induction are sufficiently large this field of history may be studied with great profit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fills a decided gap which has existed for the past twenty years in American historical literature. The work is admirably planned and executed, and will at once take its place as a standard record of the life, growth, and development of the nation. ”

“ This, then, is the true standard by which we must [232] measure the value of the history of any nation. The importance of the history of a country depends, not upon the splendour of its exploits, but upon the degree to which its actions are due to causes springing out of itself. ”

“ From hence does history derive its utility; for being, when truly written, a faithful record of the transactions of mankind, and the consequences that flowed from them, we are thence furnished with the means of judging what will be the probable effect of transactions, similar among ourselves. ”

“ Now, however, the historian aims to make us acquainted with the progress of society and the arts of civilization; with the advancement or decline of religion, literature, laws, manners, commerce—every thing indeed, which is connected with the happiness or dignity of man ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 judge a period mainly by its great men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the fortunes of a small class; and the great mass of obscure, suffering, inarticulate humanity, whose happiness is often so profoundly affected by political and military events, almost escapes our notice. It should be the object of history to bring before us past events in their true proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in modern history is the increased [11] attention which is paid to the social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The study of our own history is chiefly valuable for its moral significance and influence. It fixes our attention upon the organization and structure of our society, and carries the influence of other times on into our own. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In this general survey, we must confine ourselves to those mighty and celebrated nations who have attained [73] to a high degree of intellectual excellence; and we shall select and briefly state remarkable traits or extraordinary historical facts illustrative of the manners, social institutions, political refinement, and even political history of every nation, worthy of occupying a place in this sketch, in order the better to mark the progress of the intellectual principle in the peculiar culture and modes of thinking of each. ”

“ The facts of the past, the stuff out of which men write their Histories, are used for many things besides the manufacture of history. The economist, the politician, the musician, the ecclesiastic—in fact, specialists of all sorts, have their own use for the facts that make up history;8 they make themselves more expert in their special departments by studying the historical side of those departments, but they are not historians any more than is the architect who tries to make himself a better architect by finding out how houses used to be ventilated. ”

“ What our classical institutions pretend to give can and actually will be given to our youth with much more fruitful results by competent historical instruction, which must supply, not names and numbers alone, nor the mere history of dynasties and wars, but be in every sense of the word a true history of civilisation. ”

“ It has been said that the output of histories during the nineteenth century has exceeded in bulk and volume the production of all previous centuries. And in all the countries now standing in the forefront of civilisation, the chief product of their serious literature is at this time historical and biographical—for I take authentic biography to be a kind of handmaid of history. ”

“ The duty of the historian is, not to decide if the newspapers are as good as they ought to be, but to measure their influence on the present, and to recognize their importance as an ample and contemporary record of the past. ”

“ Have we not here an illustration of what is possible and necessary for the historian? Is it not well, before attempting to decide whether history requires an economic interpretation, or a psychological, or any other ultimate interpretation, to recognize that the factors in human society are varied and complex; that the political historian handling his subject in isolation is certain to miss fundamental facts and relations in his treatment of a given age or nation; that the economic historian is exposed to the same danger ”

“ Historical particulars can only serve to characterize the inward motives, the prevailing opinions, the decisive moments, the critical points in the progress of human society; and thus place more vividly before our eyes the peculiar character of every age—each step of mankind in intellectual refinement and moral improvement. ”

“ Even the General’s own lifetime—the years of only one man’s life—represented such a marvellous advance in national growth that sometimes I looked upon him almost with awe, wondering how much real value should be attached to antiquity. ”

“ Without reservoirs of wealth there would be no great universities, schools of science, museums, galleries of art, libraries, solid institutions of charity, and perhaps not the wide diffusion of culture which is the avowed aim of modern civilization.
But this in its kind is an old story. It is an experiment that has been repeated over and over. History is the record of the rise of splendid civilizations, many of which have flowered into the most glorious products of learning and of art, and have left monuments of the proudest material achievements. ”

“ 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. ”

“ History is developed by the historical phases of each nation, its progress, its stability, difficulties and high points, it is not due to men in a particular or providential manner. Its historical process and socioeconomic development expresses the historical phase of the nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They, however, insisted upon making history, turning a change of base into a nominal retreat, and begetting in themselves a brass-bound and untamable spirit which it took vast wealth and several years to humble. ”

“ What is historical can only truly be said to belong to us when it is the possession of the nation, to which we ourselves belong, or when we are able to regard the present as in a general way casually connected with the events in question, to whose continuous series the characters or actions represented are united by a bond of essential membership. ”