THE VARIETY AND UNITY OF HISTORY 19 



to be set to learn methods of investigation, they should not be set 

 first of all to the discovery or elaboration of facts, to the filling in of 

 the hiatuses easily and everywhere to be discerned, by their precept- 

 ors at any rate, in the previous study of detail. They should, rather, 

 be set to learn a very different process, the process of synthesis: to 

 establish the relations of circumstances already known to the general 

 history of the day in which they occurred. These circumstances 

 should not all be political or economic or legal ; they should as often 

 concern religion, literature, art, or the development of language, so 

 that the student should at once become accustomed to view the life 

 of men in society as a whole. Heaven knows there is enough original 

 work waiting to be done in this kind to keep many generations of 

 youngsters profitably employed. Look where you will in the field of 

 modern monographs, and it is easy to find unassociated facts piled 

 high as the roofs of libraries. There is not a little fame as well as much 

 deep instruction to be got out of classifying them and bringing them 

 into their vital relations with the life of which they form a part. It 

 were mere humanity to relieve them of their loneliness. After they 

 had been schooled in this work, which, believe me, some one must do, 

 and that right promptly, our advanced students of history and of 

 historical method would be ready to go on, if it were only after 

 graduation, after the fateful doctor's degree, to the further task of 

 making new collections of fact, which they would then instinctively 

 view in their connection with the known circumstances of the age in 

 which they happened. Thus, perhaps thus only, will the spirit and 

 the practice of synthesis be bred. 



If this change should be successfully brought about, there would 

 no longer be any painful question of hierarchy among historians: 

 the specialist would have the same spirit as the national historian, 

 would use the same power, display the same art, and pass from the 

 ranks of artisans to the ranks of artists, making cameos as much to 

 be prized as great canvases or heroic statues. Until this happens 

 history will cease to be a part of literature, and that is but another 

 way of saying that it will lose its influence in the world, its mono- 

 graphs prove about as vital as the specimens in a museum. It is not 

 only the delightful prerogative of our studies to view man as a whole, 

 as a living, breathing spirit, it is also their certain fate that if they do 

 not view him so, no living, breathing spirit will heed them. We have 

 used the wrong words in speaking of our art and craft. History must 

 be revealed, not recorded, conceived before it is written, and we 

 must all in our several degrees be seers, not clerks. It is a high calling 

 and should not be belittled. Statesmen are guided and formed by 

 what we write, patriots stimulated, tyrants checked. Reform and 

 progress, charity and freedom of belief, the dreams of artists and the 

 fancies of poets, have at once their record and their source with us. 



