If these thoughts in regard to history, which I have found most easily presented in the way of criticism of other writers far abler than myself, be correct, we have the following data for a definition established: That history belongs to the past, and that it is man's record or narrative of human phenomena, which have been ascertained or verified, as general, important, enduring or vital, and true. In the definition I have proposed to you I have qualified this general statement by certain limitations that seem to me necessary, or at least proper. The reason for adopting Hamilton's limitation of the record of history to "a consecutive series of phenomena" seems evident enough. An unconnected series of phenomena or events would be as idle as the babble of the waves on the beach. It would serve as a mere mental kaleidoscope to amuse the eye of grown up children with its glitter and deceptive symmetry, but with no function to enlist reason, which sustains itself on causation as its constant pabulum and requirement. The limitation of history to the "formal record" of human phenomena may not be so imperative, but it seems to me correct. The infinite material of which history is composed is found everywhere. As I have said before, it is found in science the record of nature. It is found in the stores of archæology, those legacies that humanity and nature, joining hands, have treasured as keys and clues to the unrecorded past. It is found in antiquities, those buzzing flies, which, when they swarm, reveal the presence of organic remains. All human. documents, false, fabulous, or frivolous, may serve a purpose in history, though they are not historical. A series of truths, mathematical truths for instance, is not historical, for truth, though essential to the idea of history, is not its only limitation. Call things by their right names. The place where history is to be found is in histories. The unconscious effort to tell the narrator's thoughts may furnish abundance of material for history; but conscious effort to perpetuate a record of real, actual events, of consecutive human phenomena, is a necessary condition to the production of that which can alone be correctly designated as history. The purpose must be in the writer, and that purpose must be plainly evinced in the form of the document. Hence the use of the word "formal" in the definition. Another point that the definition brings out is that the phenomena of history are "manifested both in the individual and in society." This is not said, however, of individual phenomena unless as qualified by the words that follow, "general, important, enduring, and true." We must not take Kingsley's saying, that "history is the history of men and women and nothing else," as excluding from its scope those generalizations that give it its chief value. It is, in addition, as has been so often said, "philosophy teaching by examples." History must be clearly differentiated from biography. The moral purpose of a biography may be as lofty and its methods as accurate as those of history, but this does not make it history. It is particular, not general. Biography narrates the events of one life in its manifold and interesting relations; it is the record of individual life and character; history is the biography of a race, or of a nation, or of mankind. Biography may not inaptly be called the Mother of History. Yet no number of individual lives, not even a universal encyclopedia of biography, would constitute history. A polygon becomes a circle. only when the number of its sides is infinite. No one man's life can mirror the race, nor, indeed, can any number of persons, viewed as individuals, afford a true picture of humanity. History is not made up of a multitude of biographies, by aggregation or multiplication. The individual is, indeed, the unit of all human phenomena, but he can not exist outside of his relations to other individuals and to society, and hence it is that history, which regards the actual, does not concern itself with him except as part of the social organism. It is said that "history is the essence of innumerable biographies;" and properly conceived, this is true, but the essence is very different from any of its various manifestations. An individual life is a single ray, but in the white light that constitutes the totality of a historical phenomenon, every significant figure, every intellectual activity, every modifying relation and condition must blend. Individual man is a simple cell, but the social organism composed of such units is a very complex body. If this be true of the state, or autonomous community, how much more so is it of that aggregation of social units we call mankind. Dr. Arnold called history "the biography of a society." This is, in effect, the point of of view of Sismondi, who treats it as a branch of moral and political science, and of Gervinus, who limits it to political history, and of Seeley, who calls it "past politics," and of a whole school, indeed the great multitude, of systematic historians, who confine their attention to the ethical and political problems of their narrative. History is the biography of a society, and, more, it is the biography of mankind. It is not a compound, but a resultant of manifold physical, intellectual, and moral forces. History finds its materials in the individual data of biography; and the methods and aims of philosophy are the tools with which it provides a chart for human conduct. History considers the individual, not from an interest in himself, but for that in him which has relation to all outside of him. It is because he stands as a type, mirrors a fragment of the universal, and, by the exercise of his will, influences the totality that he comes within the scope of history. And yet, to accept Herbert Spencer's view, that "the only history of practical value is what may be called descriptive sociology," is to rob it of its highest functions. If it is only valuable in its scientific deductions, and we are to learn nothing from the warnings and examples of its simple narrative, nothing from the oracles that speak in human voice from its pages, then it must be relegated to the closet of the statistician and cease to be the message of all mankind to every man. History treats of the phenomena of the individual man, because it is written for the edification and entertainment of individual men and women. It is only thus that it can speak to mankind. It propounds its legitimate deductions from its phenomena for "the education and pleasure of mankind." I have used these words instead of those employed by the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, "for the instruction and amusement of mankind," because they are fitter and more comprehensive to describe the pith and moment, the power and effect, of the great message of the past to the present. It is needless to dwell upon them, however. Let them go for what they are worth. I shall not in this paper attempt further to define the meaning of history, an idea so central, so vast, so comprehensive that we may well be satisfied if in any degree we approximate it. If this paper shall not prove to contain all that this distinguished body has a right to expect, it yet will have accomplished its purpose if it directs the thought of the members of this Congress to the subject under consideration. |