INTRODUCTION. 



lasting. It is hardly doubtful that, after hundreds or 

 thousands of years have passed, the simple, detailed, and 

 perhaps contradictory, narratives of contemporary wit- 

 nesses will outlive those more elaborate and artistic 

 efforts of the historian which are so largely inspired and 

 coloured by the convictions of another viz., his own 

 age. For as Goethe has remarked : " History must from 

 time to time be rewritten, not because many new facts 

 have been discovered, but because new aspects come into 

 view, because the participant in the progress of an age 

 is led to standpoints from which the past can be re- 

 garded and judged in a novel manner." 1 



Most of the great historians whom our age has pro- 

 duced will, centuries hence, probably be more interesting 

 as exhibiting special methods of research, special views 

 on political, social, and literary progress, than as faith- 

 ful and reliable chroniclers of events ; and the objectivity 12. 

 on which some of them pride themselves will be looked objectivity 



of histor- 



upon not as freedom from but as unconsciousness on their ians - 

 part of the preconceived notions which have governed 

 them. But where the facts recorded and the mind which 

 records them both belong to the same age, we have a 

 double testimony regarding that age. The events, and 

 the contemplating mind, supplement each other to form 

 a more complete picture, inasmuch as the matter and the 

 medium through which it is viewed belong to the same 

 time. And so it comes to pass that historians like 

 Thucydides, Tacitus, and Machiavelli are looked upon as 



1 ' Materialien zur Geschichte der 

 Farbenlehre,' Werke, 2te Abtheil- 

 ung, Band 3, p. 239. I quote from 



the new edition, brought out by 

 the German Goethe Society. 



