30 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



great scholar would not rule out customs, conditions and ideas. 

 Now any one who attemps an original definition of this term 

 will be embarrassed by the reflection that it must include if 

 possible, two elements : the narrative and the thing narrated. 

 The fall of Wolfe in victory, and the organization of the Domin- 

 ion of Canada, were events in Canadian history, but the writings 

 which preserve to vis the facts are also history, and we would 

 like, in the interests of logic and consistency, to offer a definition 

 combining the two. This is impossible, for now when we 

 speak the word we mean the event, and again when we utter 

 it we think of the writing. It is certain therefore that each one 

 constructs his definition from his particular standpoint, as he 

 emphasizes the thing done, or its record. With commendable 

 humility, your essayist would remark, that to define history as 

 literature it would be simple, scientific and comprehensive to 

 term it the Record of Civilization. 



The acceptance of such a definition must lead to the 

 recognition of history as the widest of studies, the most com- 

 prehensive of sciences. It comprehends all human activities. 

 We have parted company forever with the antique notion that 

 history is simply a series of " drum and trumpet " stories, with 

 glittering procession of dynasties and potentates, battles, sieges 

 and armies, dyed in blood and suffocated in smoke. History 

 must take note of these, even dwell upon them at times till the 

 heart is sick with carnage and the head dizzy with tumult, but 

 it does infinitely more. Religion, lav\^, philosophy, science, art, 

 these are revealed ; the customs, institutions, industries, litera- 

 tures of people must engage our attention, while heroes and 

 heroines, nations and races pass in panoramic review before us. 

 This is not to say that the student of history must be master of 

 all this world of knowledge, but it is to take the noble study 

 out of the narrow, superficial lines which it once occupied. 

 Lotze, the great German philosopher, teaches us to view history 

 through five phases of human development : the intellectual, 

 sli owing the progress of truth and knowledge, the industrial, 

 the aesthetic, the religious and the political. Goldwin Smith 

 restricts the elements of human progress to three, viz., the 



