History

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is, like the State, embodied history; and as such lives with its own life, a life transcending and embracing that of the individual souls of which it is built. And here, in its combined social and historic character, lie the sources alike of its enormous importance for human life and of its inevitable defects. ”

“ History takes us out of this confined circle of child-like thought; and shows us what are the perennial aims, struggles, and distractions of mankind.
History has always been set down as the especial study for statesmen, and for men who take an interest in public affairs. For history is to nations what biography is to individual men. History is the chart and compass for national endeavour. ”

“ Each human soul in which this power of life is has “its secrets and histories and marvels of destiny, heaven's splendors are over its dead, hell's terrors are under its feet, tragedies and poetries are in it, and a history for eternity.” Every social organism, every grand national aggregation of lives but generalizes the history of the individual, and thus the history of all life and of all living, whether in individuals, families, societies or nations, is one history, and that history the record of its conflicts, its defeats, its victories. ”

“ By Universal History I understand that which is distinct from the combined history of all countries, which is not a rope of sand but a continuous development, not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul. ”

“ When considering the past one is inclined to ask the question: “Does the history of mankind represent an unbroken line of progress, or, on the contrary, does it reflect a series of alternating periods of development and decay?” ”

“ History, the mirror of the past, reflects, with painful fidelity, the dark as well as the bright objects from departed years; and although we may wish to contemplate only the glowing picture of patriotism and prosperity, the gloomy image of civil commotion is still full in our sight, shadowing the background with its solemn admonition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, history serves to give us a knowlege of the universe, and the different nations which inhabit it; their prejudices, their governments, their interests, their commerce, their politics, and the law of nations. It shews us the origin of the illustrious men who have reigned in the world, and given birth to their successors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible. ”

“ INTRODUCTION THOUGHTS ABOUT HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION We may think and talk about civilization as one pattern or level of culture, one stage through which human life flows and ebbs. In that sense we may regard it abstractly and historically, as we regard the most recent ice age or the long and painful record of large-scale chattel slavery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ History, in his view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without history the mountain chain of great men's great moments, which runs through milleniums, could not stand clearly and vividly before me. ”

“ The history of the middle ages—a subject of which lectures are promised at some future period—is a theme replete with the interest to every one who would trace the moral and political progress of society. It was then that the elements which compose our present political system, though still in a state of fusion, were beginning to shape themselves into order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Modern history alone, from its vast scope, from the variety and extent of its duration, offers us the grandest and most complete picture which we could possibly possess of the civilization of a certain portion of the globe. ”

“ The only kind of history with which we have here directly to deal is that kind of it to which the name is generally restricted, history par excellence, human history, what has happened within the sphere of human agency and interests, the actions and creations of men, events which have affected the lives and destinies of men, or which have been produced by men. ”

“ The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We will now leave this extraordinary nation, which has furnished materials for history of the most interesting nature, as it regards the character of man; their civil, political, and religious institutions, and the moral and social ties that connect society. ”

“ They will tell us the age-old history of our past, reveal to us the great problems which they have elucidated and assist us to benefit by the conquests of a civilization beside which our own as yet seems nothing but confusion, ignorance, the lisping of babes and the stammering of savages.... ”

“ History must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. ”

“ History is but the record of the public and official acts of human beings. It is our object, therefore, to humanize our history and deal with people past and present; people who ate and possibly drank; people who were born, flourished, and died ”

“ Again, by the study of history, we have a chance of becoming tolerant travelling over the ways of many nations and many periods; and we may also acquire that historic tact by which we collect upon one point of human affairs the light of many ages. ”

“ So history as a formulated study is but the body of known facts about the activities and sufferings of the social groups with which our own lives are continuous, and through reference to which our own customs and institutions are illuminated. ”

“ But what is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one before had so strongly urged that history should not be treated as a collection of pictures or anecdotes relating to courts or battles, but should be made a record and explanation of the true development of nations, of the causes of their growth and decay, of their characteristic virtues and vices, of the changes that pass over their laws, customs, opinions, social and economical conditions, and over the relative importance and well-being of their different classes... ”

“ But even when we know the general history of thought and the special histories of our own small divisions of human knowledge, we are apt to overlook the fact that, in a large sense, civilization itself is a matter of the moment, which may be viewed in the light of a broader perspective. Civilization we measure by hundreds and thousands of years. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ And there is no history more instructive than yours, because you have concentrated within the narrow scope of a few years that natural process of national life, which elsewhere was achieved only through centuries. ”

“ Modern principles, that mark a new departure in human progress and in its evidence, Civilisation, took their rise during this epoch of transition, and their development underlies the history of the period, and gives the key to its meaning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”