HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS 



BY CHARLES W. COLBY 



[Charles W. Colby, Kingsford Professor of History, McGill University, Montreal. 

 b. Stanstead, Quebec, 1867. A.B. McGill University, 1887; A.M. Harvard 

 University, 1889; Ph.D. ibid. 1890; D.C.L. (Hon.) Bishops College, 1904. 

 Author of Selections from the Sources of English History; also various articles 

 for The Nation, and for American Historical Review and English Historical 

 Review.] 



WHEN Huxley declared that Spencer's idea of a tragedy was a 

 deduction killed by a fact, he minted a phrase which is not without 

 its application to history. The human mind, prone to spin theories 

 and to generalize from the exceptional case, stands ever .in need of 

 such a corrective as is supplied by the record of ancestral experience. 

 Thus it becomes the duty of the historian to go through life with 

 sling in hand and heart steeled to slay the false deduction which is 

 tyrannizing over mankind. Nothing equals the vitality of a lie save 

 the longevity of a legend, and as the deadly facts are sometimes slow 

 to disclose themselves a voluble deduction may for years or genera- 

 tions mislead even the thoughtful. The Hildebrandine scheme of 

 political philosophy which underlies the Dictatus Papae, the excom- 

 munications of Henry IV and the letter to William the Conqueror, 

 had its day and may still claim the support of a party; but for 

 most of us it must stand ultimately condemned by the weakness of 

 its historical basis. How often during the past century has the 

 groundwork of famous theories, whether political, social, theological, 

 or ethical, been modified, if not destroyed, by the solvent of historical 

 fact. On the 24th of April, 1793, Robespierre, drawing his inspiration 

 from a well-known source, exclaimed: "Kings, aristocrats, tyrants, 

 whosoever they may be, are slaves revolted against the sovereign 

 of the earth, which is the human race, and against the law-maker 

 of the universe, which is nature." 1 If this sentiment strikes an 

 answering chord anywhere at the present day, it can hardly be in the 

 heart of an historian. Nor are the deductions against which historical 

 fact makes war confined to large ideas like Gregory VII 's theory of 

 Church and State, or the Jacobin doctrine of social origins. Take, 

 for example, the actual state of the Napoleonic legend w T hich was 

 developed by the French radicals of 1820, and embellished for 

 current purposes under the July Monarchy. Lord Acton went so far 

 as to style Napoleon "the most splendid genius that has appeared 

 on earth," 2 but the Napoleon of the French radicals in 1820 was 

 a liberal who above all other things loved peace. 



1 Orators of the French Revolution, ed. H. Morse Stephens, vol. n, p. 374. 



2 English Historical Review, vol. n, p. 603. 



