124 Timehri. 



not be done. As individuals we learn from the results of our errors and 

 the community can do the same from the blunders of some of its members. 

 Because certain things were done and trouble resulted, laws were required 

 and police became necessary. The continuous chain ot antecedents and 

 consequents must be studied by the historian although he will never be 

 able to peer into the dark obscurity of a beginning. He may perhaps 

 trace back a family for a few centuries but there will always be a full- 

 stop in the evidence, though we can be sure that the family did not begin 

 at that place or time. 



Kacial characters have to be considered ; these are often the 

 result of habit, custom and instinct. Although man is generally 

 considered rational there is very little reason in his more common 

 actions. What a negro will do under certain circumstances is not the 

 same as the action of a Chinaman, East Indian or European. The his- 

 torian gets ideas of possibilities and probabilities from different events 

 and can often say what niight be expected from members of each race. 

 It is notable that in our colony negro riots differ much from the troubles 

 among the East Indians who are more rational and therefore attack those 

 only who are supposed to have wronged them. In the one case there is a 

 kind of madness similar to that of the drunken man who smashes his 

 own furniture, in the other a grievance to be redressed. When a dis- 

 turbance is reported we can often get nearer the truth if we know 

 something of racial characters. 



Every person in the community is a historical record and if we knew 

 all about them and their ancestors we should often get over some of the 

 many difficulties we encounter in our studies The plants in our gardens 

 are mostly foreign but few of us know when and how they were brought. 

 Even plant pests are sometimes introduced in soil or on specimens ; many 

 weeds are distributed in fodder or packing materials. When we travel in 

 the interior and find mangoes and bread-fruits we know that they must 

 have been planted later than the time when these trees were introduced 

 and that therefore the land on which they grow was occupied about a 

 century ago. Beads, axes and knives in the hands of native Indians show 

 European contact, even when perhaps the people using them never saw 

 white men. Bush negroes in the forest are peculiarly interesting because 

 they are descended from Africans and have become fitted to a new en- 

 vironment. 



There is a very important matter in connection with our judgment of 

 historical personages. Few of us ever ask ourselves whether a course 

 taken was not the best under the then known circumstances. If a man 

 fails we often say lie was bad or foolish, and if he succeeds he must have 

 been wise. This is not necessarily the right judgment, for with all our 

 thinking wo are bound to make some mistakes. The natural results are 

 consequences, not of motives but of actions, and only good results stand 

 real tests. Sometimes we call a man bad, when all the time he is trying to 

 do what he considers best- There is only one criterion of conduct and 

 that is the ultimate result, which may not come for a long time. 



