92 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY 

 HISTORIANS. 



The address of Mr. Thomas Ford 

 Rhodes, president of the American His- 

 torical Association, on the subject of 

 history, delivered before the midwinter 

 meeting of that body, and published in 

 the 'Atlantic Monthly' for February, has 

 gone forth to the world with a high de- 

 gree of authority and impressiveness. 

 Nevertheless, there are some members 

 of the Association — the writer humbly 

 trusts enough to make a large ma- 

 jority — for whom the president does not 

 speak, and who dissent widely from his 

 views. 



Mr. Rhodes begins by representing 

 himself as an advocate 'holding a brief 

 for history,' and proceeds to make im- 

 portant concessions to those who re- 

 fuse it a place in the front rank of sub- 

 jects of human thought. "It is not the 

 highest form of intellectual endeavor; 

 let us at once agree that it were better 

 that all the histories ever written were 

 burned than for the world to lose Homer 

 and Shakespeare." One more concession 

 yields "to the mathematical and physical 

 sciences precedence in the realm of in- 

 tellectual endeavor over history." But, 

 having admitted so much, Mr. Rhodes 

 is still of the opinion that the his- 

 torian's place in the field remains se- 

 cure. Why he thinks so ia not 

 made quite clear. It is true enough 

 that there has never been 'so propitious 

 a time for writing history as in the last 

 forty years ' ; that 'there has been a 

 general acquisition of the historic 

 sense ' ; that 'the methods of teaching 

 history have so improved that they may 

 be called scientific'; and that 'the 

 theory of evolution is firmly estab- 

 lished.' There is, however, in all this 

 nothing to attract the youth conscious 



of intellectual strength and brimming 

 with energy and courage to a study 

 which cannot claim to rank among the 

 highest forms of intellectual endeavor. 

 Shall we suppose that the historian's 

 'place in the field remains secure' only 

 because the giants do not care to wan- 

 der that way? If so, those who love 

 history better than they love the his- 

 torians will find little satisfaction in 

 this security. 



But, following Mr. Rhodes further, 

 one finds the apparent gist of his con- 

 tention to be that the new thought 

 throughout the country, which has re- 

 sulted in better work in almost every 

 direction, has had no such result in 

 historiography; that "with all our ad- 

 vantages" we do not "write better his- 

 tory than was written before 1859, 

 which we may call the line of demar- 

 cation between the old and the new," 

 and that Thucydides and Tacitus are 

 still the best models for the historian. 

 The whole address appears to breathe 

 the spirit of a somewhat over-reverent 

 devotion to the Classics, and the hearers 

 may well have imagined that they were 

 listening to an appeal for the study of 

 Greek and Latin. When the Lord of 

 the vineyard comes, there will no doubt 

 be a sufficiently grave indictment 

 against the keepers of the historical 

 portion for the waste they have made 

 of the last eighteen hundred years; but 

 it is hard to believe that they will be 

 found guilty of having failed to im- 

 prove on the methods of the classical 

 writers. 



Has science, then, done nothing for 

 history? Somewhat, even according to 

 Mr. Rhodes himself. In addition to 

 acknowledgments already quoted, he 

 goes on to say: "The publication of 

 the 'Origin of Species,' in 1859, converted 

 it (the theory of evolution) from a 



