HISTORY 



4006 



HISTORY 



HISTORY : THE STUDY OF THE PAST 



A. D. limes, M.A., Author of A History of the British Nation 



This article describes the main principles which underlie the study 

 of history, on which subject there are hundreds of articles in this 

 Encyclopedia. These articles include histories of all the nations of 

 the world, both past and present, sketches of Feudalism, the Re- 

 formation, and other intellectual and economic movements, and 

 biographies of kings, soldiers, and statesmen ; also historians 



History is concerned with the in- 

 ception, progress or decay of organ- 

 ized communities, the movements, 

 the events, and the personalities 

 connected, therewith. In the liter- 

 ary sense of the term, it is the 

 written or pictured record of that 

 process of development. In the 

 scientific sense it is the accumula- 

 tion and investigation of the data 

 provided by the past for the science 

 of politics, with which every citizen 

 is vitally concerned in a country 

 where every citizen has a share, 

 however small, in controlling the 

 government of the State, a periodi- 

 cal duty of pronouncing his own 

 judgement upon political ques- 

 tions, and a definite responsibility 

 towards the State of which he is a 

 member. History is the gathered 

 experience of the past in relation to 

 social and political organization, 

 and so for all responsible citizens it 

 is a study of the most serious practi- 

 cal importance. 



Education in Citizenship 



The functions of the historian are 

 threefold to ascertain and accu- 

 mulate facts ; to coordinate and re- 

 late them in true perspective; and to 

 indicate and test the generalisations 

 which may be inferred ; to which 

 may be added the fourth function, 

 that of artistic presentation. For 

 the ordinary citizen cannot himself 

 be a historian ; it is from the his- 

 torians, not from his own re- 

 searches, that he must derive his 

 knowledge of history ; and it is 

 absolutely certain that the his- 

 torians from whom he will derive it 

 will be those who present it in a 

 manner which appeals effectively 

 to the imagination of the student. 

 It is improbable that any histor- 

 ians, however learned, will ever 

 succeed in displacing the concep- 

 tions of historic figures created by 

 the plays of Shakespeare, or the 

 novels of Walter Scott and others, 

 in spite of the knowledge that 

 such works made no profession of 

 historical accuracy ; and while 

 nine educated persons out of ten 

 are aware that Macaulay, Carlyle, 

 and Froude are denounced as mis- 

 leading, the majority will prove in 

 effect to be their more or less un- 

 conscious disciples. 



The study of history provides us 

 with actual precedents, and the 

 data for principles to be applied to 

 present-day problems, though it is 

 necessary to bear in mind the para- 



dox that, although " history re- 

 peats itself " perpetually, it may be 

 said with equal truth that it never 

 repeats itself. The events of the 

 past manifestly have a bearing 

 upon the present, but there is al- 

 ways a danger of forgetting that 

 the nature of a problem may be en- 

 tirely changed by quite unobtru- 

 sive variations in circumstances. 

 Throughout the Great War the 

 best possible antidote alike to a 

 shallow optimism and an egregious 

 pessimism was a tolerably intimate 

 acquaintance with the history of 

 the wars of 1792-1815, and in a 

 less degree those from 1739-63. 

 But pessimism was absurdly fos- 

 tered by the drawing of entirely 

 misleading comparisons between 

 conditions from time to time pre- 

 vailing in the Great War, and in one 

 or other of those wars ; optimism 

 was fostered rather by the failure 

 to note real analogies than by 

 dwelling upon analogies that were 

 misleading. 



On the other hand, it is a matter 

 of common knowledge that the 

 minds of the German people were 

 prepared for the war, educated up 

 to it the intellectual soil was ferti- 

 lised by professorial misrepresen- 

 tations of history, accepted as 

 gospel, which taught them to be- 

 lieve that the craft which keeps no 

 faith and the force which knows no 

 mercy are the sure instruments of 

 victory, and the only instruments 

 by which victory has been or can be 

 achieved. To their total misread- 

 ing of history Roman as well as 

 British, it may be remarked inci- 

 dentally the Germans owed the 

 conviction, doomed to so painful a 

 disappointment, that the British 

 Empire was a feeble tyranny, cre- 

 ated and maintained only by vio- 

 lence and fraud especially fraud 

 which would be shattered as soon 

 as the populations were given an 

 opportunity for bursting their 

 fetters. To this poison the true 

 antidote would have been found in 

 an intelligent study and a true 

 representation of history. 



History and Practical Politics 



There can be equally little doubt 

 that Europe in general, and Great 

 Britain in particular, would have 

 been much better prepared for the 

 war, or at least for the character 

 which it assumed, but for the mis- 

 reading of history, which over- 

 looked the phenomenon known as 



reversion to type, and if it had also 

 been realized that the history of 

 other countries than our own de- 

 mands careful and unprejudiced 

 attention. That error the Ger- 

 mans avoided in part ; they gave 

 the attention, but in a spirit so 

 prejudiced that the result was al- 

 most more misleading than in- 

 attention would have been. 



It may be confidently assumed 

 that the Great War will generate a 

 vast amount of historical reading 

 and historical writing ; that what 

 has been written in the past will be 

 reviewed in the light of these por- 

 tentous events ; that it will be- 

 come at least the primary function 

 of education in history to apply it 

 to a right understanding of other 

 nations. And there will be a 

 development of the tendency, which 

 has made its way so slowly, to 

 dwell upon history less in what may 

 be called its antiquarian aspects, 

 and more as a subject practically 

 and intimately associated with the 

 functions of citizenship. Perhaps 

 the danger is that educationists 

 may be tempted to a too violent 

 reversal, and will neglect the past 

 which makes the recent intelligible. 

 History and Education 



To the youthful mind the prac- 

 tical problems of citizenship, most 

 of the political side of history, are 

 not easily made intelligible and in- 

 teresting, but youth is susceptible 

 to the inspiration of high enthu- 

 siasms, noble ideals, chivalrous 

 sympathies, heroic deeds. For the 

 formation of character, nothing is 

 more essential than to foster such 

 susceptibilities, to train the mind 

 of the child to admire rightly noble 

 men, noble women, and noble 

 deeds, to hate foul deeds and their 

 doers. And therewith it is essential 

 to instil the sense of justice. To 

 this end history rightly handled is 

 an incomparable medium. Every 

 boy or girl is the better for learning 

 to conceive an enthusiastic admira- 

 tion for Leonidas, Regulus, Robert 

 Bruce, Joan of Arc, or Sir Philip 

 Sidney ; the better for learning to 

 be just to Cromwell or Edward I. 

 When the study of history becomes 

 a search for unprejudiced historic 

 truth, there is no finer moral 

 training. 



History in the literary sense 

 came actually into being when men 

 began to concern themselves not 

 merely with recording contem- 

 porary events, but also with com- 

 paring and coordinating, however 

 uncritically, such records as had 

 survived from the past, whether 

 graven, or written, or through oral 

 tradition. The earliest historical 

 literature we possess is that of the 

 Hebrew Scriptures, and it is at 

 least tolerably certain that, in the 



