Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading. George Park Fisher
same vein. Opposed to this philosophy are GOLDWIN SMITH'S Lectures on the Study of History; C. Kingsley, in his Miscellanies, The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History; Froude, in Short Studies, vol. i., The Science of History; Lotze, as above; also, Flint, and Droysen, Grundriss der Historik. Hegel's Philosophy of History has profound observations, but connected with an a priori theory.
HISTORICAL WRITING.—The beginning of historical writing was in the form of lists of kings, or bare records of battles, or the simple registration of other occurrences of remarkable interest. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chinese, and other nations, furnish examples of this rudimental type of historical writing. More continuous annals followed; but these are meager in contents, and make no attempt to find links of connection between events. The ancient Hebrew historians are on a much higher plane, and, apart from their religious value, far surpass all other Asiatic histories. It was in Greece, the fountain-head of science, that history, as an art, first appeared. Herodotus, born early in the fifth century B.C., first undertook to satisfy curiosity respecting the past by a more elaborate and entertaining narrative. He begins his work thus: "These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and marvelous actions of the Greeks and the barbarians from losing their due meed of glory, and withal to put on record what were the grounds of their hostility." In Herodotus, history, owing to the inquiry made into the causes of events, begins to rise above the level of a mere chronicle, its primitive type. Thucydides, who died about 400 B.C., followed. He is far more accurate in his investigations, having a deep insight into the origin of the events which he relates, and is a model of candor. He, too, writes to minister to the inquisitive spirit of his countrymen, and of the generations that were to follow. He began to write his history of the war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians while it was still going on, in the belief, he says, "that it would turn out great, and worthier of being recorded than any that had preceded it." The attention of historical writers was still confined to a particular country, or to insulated groups of events. Before there could spring up the idea of universal history, it was necessary that there should be a broader view of mankind as a whole. The ancient Stoics had a glimpse of the race as a family, and of the nations as forming one complex unity. The conquests and extended dominion of Rome first suggested the idea of universal history. Polybius, a Greek in the second century B.C., had watched the progress of Rome, in its career of conquest, until "the affairs of Italy and Africa," as he says, "joined with those of Asia and Greece, and all moved together towards one fixed and single point." He tells us that particular histories can not give us a knowledge of the whole, more than the survey of the divided members of a body once endowed with life and beauty can yield a just conception of all the comeliness and vigor which it has received from Nature. To Polybius belongs the distinction of being the first to undertake a universal history. Christianity, with its doctrine of the unity of mankind, and with all the moral and religious teaching characteristic of the gospel, contributed effectively to the widening of the view of the office and scope of history. It is only in quite recent times that history has directed its attention predominantly to social progress, and to its causes and conditions.
History, in its etymological sense (from the Greek, historia), meant the ascertaining of facts by inquiry; then, the results of this inquiry, the knowledge thus obtained. The work of Herodotus was "history" in the strictest sense: he acquired his information by travel and personal interrogation.
The German philosopher, Hegel, has divided histories into three classes: 1. Original histories; i.e., works written by contemporaries of the events described, who share in the spirit of the times, and may have personally taken part in the transactions. Such are the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Anabasis, Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion in England, Caesar's Commentaries. 2. Reflective histories, where the author writes at a later point of time, on the basis of materials which he gathers up, but is not himself a partaker in the spirit of the age of which he treats. 3. Philosophical histories, which set forth the rational development of history in its inmost idea.
Another classification is the following: 1. Genealogies, like the records of Manetho, the Egyptian priest. 2. The chronicle, following the chronological order, and telling the story in a simple, popular way. 3. The "pragmatic" form of writing, which aims to explain by reference to the past some particular characteristic or phase of the present, and uses history to point a special moral lesson. 4. The form of history which traces the rise and progress of "ideas," tendencies, or ruling forces—such as the idea of civil equality in early Rome or in modern France, the religious ideas of Mohammedanism, the idea of representative government, the idea of German unity, etc.
A broad line of distinction has been drawn between "the old or artistic type of history," and the new or sociological type which belongs to the present century. The ancient historians represented the former type. They prized literary form. They aimed to interweave moral and political reflections. Polybius often interrupts his narrative to introduce remarks of this sort. But they were not, as a rule, diligent and accurate in their researches. And, above all, they had no just conception of society as a whole, and of the complex forces out of which the visible scene springs. The Greeks were the masters in this first or artistic form of history. The French Revolution was one stimulus to a profounder and more comprehensive method of studying history. The methods and investigations of natural science have had a decided influence in the same direction.
THE SOURCES OF HISTORY.—History must depend for credence on credible evidence. In order to justify belief, one must either himself have seen or heard the facts related, or have the testimony, direct or indirect, of witnesses or of well-informed contemporaries. The sources of historic knowledge are mainly comprised in oral tradition, or in some form of written records.
Tradition is exposed to the infirmities of memory, and to the unconscious invention and distortion which grow out of imagination and feeling. Ordinarily, bare tradition, not verified by corroborative proofs, can not be trusted later than the second generation from the circumstances narrated. It ceases to be reliable when it has been transmitted through more than two hands. In the case of a great and startling event, like a destructive convulsion of nature or a protracted war, the authentic story, though unwritten, of the central facts, at least, is of much longer duration. There may be visible monuments that serve to perpetuate the recollection of the occurrences which they commemorate. Institutions may exist—popular festivals and the like—which keep alive the memory of past events, and, in certain circumstances, are sufficient to verify them to generations far removed in time. Events of a stirring character, when they are embodied in songs of an early date, may be transmitted orally, though in a poetic dress. Songs and legends, it may be added, even when they do not suffice to verify the incidents to which they refer, are valuable as disclosing the sentiments and habits of the times when they originated, or were cherished. The central fact, the nucleus of the tradition, may be historical when all the details belonging with it have been effaced, or have been superseded by other details, the product of imagination. The historical student is to distinguish between traditionary tales which are untrustworthy throughout, and traditions which have their roots in fact. Apart from oral tradition, the sources of historical knowledge are the following:—
1. Contemporary registers, chronicles, and other documents, either now, or known to have been originally, in a manuscript form.
2. Inscriptions on monuments and coins. Such, for example, are the inscriptions on the monuments of Egypt and on the buried ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Such are the ancient epitaphs, heathen and Christian, in the Roman catacombs. The study of ancient inscriptions of various sorts has thrown much light of late upon Grecian and Roman antiquity.
3. The entire literature of a people, in which its intellectual, moral, and social condition, at any particular era, is mirrored.
4. Material structures of every kind, as altars, tombs, private dwellings—as those uncovered at Pompeii—public edifices, civil and religious, paintings, weapons, household utensils. These all tell a story relative to the knowledge and taste, the occupations and domestic habits, and the religion, of a past generation or of an