HISTORY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 39 



history is an organic unity, inspired by constant forces. Only within 

 such an organization does the individual secure liberty, since there 

 alone his faculties of will, reason, and emotion find their develop- 

 ment in operation, with and against the consubstantial faculties of 

 other like individuals. Collective man determines the standards of 

 knowledge and of conduct, and it is therefore only in a democracy 

 that the possibility of human perfectibility may be realized. This 

 attitude of Bancroft's mind may be considered as typically Ameri- 

 can, and as the capstone of the system used and approved by the 

 nineteenth century in writing history. Either a confidence in the 

 moral order of the universe and in God as its author is the motive 

 power of our rulers, the greatest contemporary history-makers; 

 or we who profess it and elect them to office are vile hypocrites 

 with a portion among the deceits and mirages of history. 



The conclusions here presented will stand the test of the minutest 

 examination bestowed on the best work by typical masters other 

 than those we have named. Further, a fair analysis of their theory, 

 procedure, and art, will, I believe, compel the admission that if the 

 age has won anything it has won everything. Grounded in the concept 

 of organic evolution, receptive of all ancillary learning, jealous of its 

 own field and methods, alert for typical movements and truly great 

 men, aiming at a kind of representation which is possibly but not 

 necessarily that of the fine arts, history as now written is scientific, 

 not as a philosophy of social evolution nor as an exact science of 

 nature, human or otherwise, but as a practical form of human 

 biography drawn and modeled in correct proportion and outline. 

 There is boundless room for advance in supplement, completion, 

 illustration, but the plan has been sketched and the basis laid. Some 

 portions of the great advance have even been completely shown to 

 move in perspective and in color. Either this achievement is all, 

 or it is nothing; and our descendants must raze everything in order 

 to begin anew the weary search for truth among the ruins of the past. 



