Historicity

“ By a universal Modern History we mean something distinct from the combined History of all countries—in other words, we mean a narrative which is not a mere string of episodes, but displays a continuous development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The passions, influences and conditions which generate, shape and control events, lend a coloring to their recital, which deep-hued or faint as painted by the writer at the time, are toned down or made stronger by the historian of a future generation, who, unmindful of passions, influences or conditions, and with an eye single to the preservation of history by means of the truth, makes past occurrences stand out in their true light. ”

“ In diction and style, the marks of the true historian are frankness and truth, lucidity and simplicity. The preface should be in proportion to the subject. “The body of the history ... is nothing from beginning to end but a long narrative; it must therefore be graced with the narrative virtues—smooth, level, and consistent progress, neither soaring nor crawling, and the charm of lucidity.” “Brevity is always desirable.” ”

“ The historian presents to you the outward face, the external form of history; Historical Romance would show you the heart of history, and thus bring near to your heart what, else, would stand so far off. ”

“ Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be 'the essence of innumerable Biographies,' will tell us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Biography may do, pleasantly and of its own accord! ”

“ History, under the influence of this conception, is rapidly ceasing to be the record of external incidents, of isolated moments, or of brilliant episodes in the epic of humanity. We have learned to look upon it as the biography of man. ”

“ W WHEN History, properly so called, has emerged from those tales of the feats of kings and heroes and those brief entries in the roll of a temple or a monastery in which we find the earliest records of the past, the idea of composing a narrative which shall not be confined to the fortunes of one nation soon presents itself. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it is of inestimable value to any people to obtain such a narrative, which shall comprehend all epochs, be true to fact and, while resting on thorough research, yet be attractive to the reader; for only by this aid can the nation attain to a perfect self-consciousness, and feeling the pulsation of its life throughout the story, become fully acquainted with its own origin and growth and character. ”

“ We understand by history a record of events that are past, and that it embraces chronology, biography, manners and customs, statistics, governments, and the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations and empires. ”

“ Civil and natural history, the history of art and of literature, must be explained from individual history, or must remain words. There is nothing but is related to us, nothing that does not interest us, — kingdom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all things are in man. ”

“ If classical history has been found to be, is now, and shall continue toe, the concomitant of free institutions and of popular eloquence, what a field is opening to us for another Herodotus, another Thucydides, and another Livy! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The various springs from which human action flows, the various types which human crises produce, the virtues and the vices which great historic conflicts heat into activity—all these features of social motion, never jointly reproduced in works of history, are here drawn in vivid colors and present a historic canvas that is prime in the domain of literature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ History, which, like charity, best begins at home, but, like charity, should not end there, will ramify into anthropology, archaeology, political history, and geography, with the history of the growth of the human mind and of its products in the shape of philosophy, science, and art. ”

“ THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS is the answer to a problem which has long been agitating the learned world. How shall real history, the ablest and profoundest work of the greatest historians, be rescued from its present oblivion on the dusty shelves of scholars, and made welcome to the homes of the people? ”

“ While History is occupied with the public deeds of the great and the mighty of the earth, and with the consequences which result from them, it is the province of Biography to explore the peculiarities of individual disposition, character, and way of thinking ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the teaching of history, the course of instruction which often loses itself in unimportant details—as, for instance, the party struggles of ancient Rome, or the rivalries of emperors and popes in the middle ages—I should like to see more fully illustrated than is usually the case, with general views of the state of civilization, exhibiting the heroes of science, literature, and art. ”

“ True history being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is how history can serve life. Every man and nation needs a certain knowledge of the past, whether it be through monumental, antiquarian, or critical history, according to his objects, powers, and necessities. ”

“ In the light of this idea, the historian felt that he had come to understand all the better ancient civilisation and our own, and that his eyes were able to pierce more deeply into the shadowy depths of human destiny. ”

“ in other words there is properly no history, only biography. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ History has its truth, so has legend. ”

“ For if a fine spun story, consisting merely of fictions told of things done among the spirits below, tends much to the promoting of piety and justice, how much more then may we conclude that history, the most noble assertrix of truth, and very metropolis (as it were) of all philosophy, may adorn the manners of men which principles of justice and honesty? ”

“ For although this great edifice of universal history, where the conclusion at least is still wanting, is in this respect incomplete, and appears but a mighty fragment of which even particular parts are less known to us than others;—yet is this edifice sufficiently advanced, and many of its great wings and members are sufficiently unfolded to our view, to enable us, by a lucid arrangement of the different periods of history, to gain a clear insight into the general plan of the whole. ”

“ Often before have I warned you against the false impression which is created by the use of our so-called historical epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation, and Modern Time. ”

“ The historian of manners and ideas has no less austere a mission than the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the conflicts of crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, great public men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior ”

“ History, as it has often been written, is the genealogy of princes, the field-book of conquerors; and the fortunes of our fellow-men have been treated only so far as they have been affected by the influence of the great masters and destroyers of our race. ”

“ You shall have the simple, accurate presentation of facts from history—and plain reasoning upon these facts—and from Ancient History, rich as it is in proofs, I will draw nothing!—all shall be drawn from the history of modern States—the history of men living under the influence of great religious and political ideas which are active to-day—and among ourselves. ”

“ History is made up of the deeds of great men and the movements of grand events, and there is no better or clearer way to tell the marvelous story of the Nineteenth Century than to put upon record the deeds of its heroes and to describe the events and achievements in which reside the true history of the age. ”

“ Such new lights are thrown upon historic facts and historic characters that the old appear new, and that which had been dull becomes bright and entertaining and interesting. Exceedingly interesting he has made history by the happy use and aid of biography and anecdote. ”

“ You have been studying the history of Greece, Rome, England, and other countries beside your own, and very properly. You have been studying American history, and some of you imagine that ‘history’ is all of the past. The pages that are being made every year are not less important. ”

“ As I have already said, passions, interests, present historic personages in a thousand forms when they are alive, transfiguring not only the persons themselves, but events the most diverse, the character of institutions, the conditions of nations. ”

“ The historical annals are combined with rich and constant illustration, from what in secular literature would be called the poets and orators of the nation. There is everything to stimulate research, even did these remains contain no more than the merely human interest which attaches to the records of any great and ancient people. ”

“ History as written by those, on one hand, who have depicted its scenes most vividly, and by those, on the other hand, who have searched its facts, weighed its evidences, and pondered its meanings most critically and deeply, is given in their own words. ”

“ 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. ”