APPENDIX 415 



report of an event which is extremely interesting to all the 

 witnesses concerned, results in an ideal which comes to be accepted 

 for the literal fact. 



This is perhaps the proper explanation of miraculous occurrences 

 attested by fairly good evidence. The genesis of those potent ideals 

 which give force to religions may, in like manner, be referred to 

 subjective faculties exercised by many witnesses in sympathy. 

 We find it difficult, for example, to interpret the Gospels without 

 postulating the existence of an historical Christ. But given that 

 basis of reality, the large element of idealism in the Gospels can 

 be comprehended by this hypothesis of subjective intervention 

 without ascribing mala fides to the witnesses. In the redaction of 

 several parallel reports to one coherent narrative, the subjective 

 element was not eliminated, but intensified and harmonised upon 

 certain lines. The ideal which formed a factor in each separate 

 report obtained substantiality. In this way four main ideal 

 portraits of Christ were produced, which have been subsequently 

 elaborated into one highly idealised conception by the slow con- 

 tinuous process of centuries. 



II 



Another instance might be chosen from a different region. 

 History has been contemptuously called the chronicle of lies and 

 illusions. In so far as this is true, it results from the impossibility 

 of seeing facts except through our own senses and the reports of 

 other persons. The data of history arrive to us coloured by sub- 

 jectivity ; and the historian, eager as he may be to eliminate the 

 truth, judges the material he has to deal with through the medium 

 of his personal impressibility. Thus a contemporary history, like 

 Kinglake's ' Crimean War,' cannot be written without bias. The 

 greater the art-work, the more energetic the attempt to realise, the 

 keener the effort to extract fact from inferences and statistics, the 

 more imaginative and idealistic will the product be. In this way 

 we are led to the conclusion that the past can never be known to 

 us except in its broadest, simplest outlines. The crossing, blend- 

 ing, interminglement, and quasi-chemical combination of divers 

 subjectivities which any chapter of history implies, render the 

 attempt to reach pure truth impossible. Yet we must not, there- 

 fore, on this account, despair of history. Persistent endeavour in 

 the direction of reality, in the sublimation and elimination of 

 subjective elements, brings us to a residuum which has at least its 

 own generic authenticity. 



