l(o 
 
WHAT IS HISTORY? 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 PROFESSOR E. P. CHEYNEY, '83. C. 
 
 BEFORE THE GRADUATE SCHOOL. 
 
 October 3, 1907. 
 
 (Reprinted from the Alumni Register^ University of Pennsylvania, 
 Philadelphia, November, 1907.) 
 
Gift 
 Tha University 
 
What IS History? 
 
 Address of 
 
 PROFESSOR E. P. CHEYNEY, "83 C. 
 
 Before the Graduate School, October 3, 1907. 
 
 What is history? Let us go to the Father of History and 
 ask hini. Herodotus introduces his work by saying, "This is a 
 publication of the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in 
 order that the actions of men may not be effaced by time, nor the 
 great and wondrous deeds displayed both by Greeks and barba- 
 rians deprived of renown, and why the Greeks and barbarians 
 waged war on one another." 
 
 His object, that is to say, is to recount the actions of men 
 and the causes of them. It is true that the actions which he is 
 to recount are only the great actions, and the men whose deeds 
 are thought worthy of notice are only the great men. All 
 the rest of mankind with all their doings are relegated to a 
 dim and misty obscurity. Nevertheless, the main idea of Hero- 
 dotus is clear. He does not want a good story to be lost and 
 forgotten, therefore he will tell us what happened. He looks 
 upon history simply as a tale of the doings of men. 
 
 Other Greek and later historians have looked upon the 
 matter differently. Thucydides says, "Perhaps the lack of won- 
 derful stories in my work will make it less pleasing to my 
 readers ; but it will be enough for me if it proves to be useful to 
 those who want to have a clear knowledge of the past, and 
 thereby of that which, according to the course of human events, 
 will happen again." According to Thucydides, therefore, history 
 is not merely a narrative, it should be useful. Polybius, like- 
 wise, criticizing Herodotus, says, "It is not enough merely to 
 describe the course of events, one must seek to understand the 
 why and the wherefore of them, in order to draw instruction 
 therefrom." A German historian of the seventeenth century says, 
 "History is that which teaches the reader what things in life are 
 useful and to be followed, or injurious and to be avoided." A 
 modern English historian says, "History is a voice forever 
 sounding across the centuries the law of right and wrong. ' 
 
That is to say, history, according to this view of the case, is 
 meant to instruct. It should teach some lesson. The lesson may 
 be a political one or a moral one or a religious one. But it is 
 always history with a purpose, — its justification is ethical. 
 
 Far and wide through historical writing can be f>and this 
 ideal. Sometimes it is consciously and strongly held. There is a 
 work in eight volumes in the University Library with the title, 
 "The History of England on Christian Principles." Sometimes 
 it is less consciously and clearly acknowledged, and yet the his- 
 torian none the less tells his story under its influence. Macaulay 
 is a devotee of the Whig party and is teaching its doctrines 
 when he is writing his history of the seventeenth century as 
 much as when he is speaking or voting in Parliament in the 
 nineteenth. Froude uses his history of England to teach the 
 evils of the Roman Catholic Church and to discredit Anglican 
 clericalism, exactly as he uses any of his other forms of writing. 
 
 The moral purpose of the historian often appears as a 
 patriotic purpose. Bancroft wrote his history in such a way 
 that Americans should think well of their country, much as 
 Gilbert Stuart painted Washington in such a way that Amer- 
 icans should feel universal admiration for the Father of his 
 Country. Livy in writing the history of Rome is obviously 
 trying to teach his readers devotion to it. 
 
 Tliis patriotic sentiment is not only the most familiar form 
 of history with a moral purpose, but it has lent much spirit and 
 interest to historical writing. Green's "History of the English 
 People" is permeated by a gentle and sincere patriotism that 
 conciliates his readers and casts a glamour over the whole of 
 English History. Thiers's admiration for Napoleon and devo- 
 tion to France have infused a fire into his "Consulate and Em- 
 pire" that have led to their constant republication in France and 
 other countries. Treitschke and Syhel have given a genuine 
 popular defense for the modern Prussian state in their great 
 histories of Germany in the nineteenth century. 
 
 Patriotic history, when mi.xed with certain other ingredients, 
 forms excellent poetry. Kipling makes his two English children 
 standing on a Sussex hillside learn their history from the fairy 
 Puck as he points out to them its visible marks around them. 
 
See you tlie dimpled track that runs, 
 
 All hollow through the wheat? 
 O that was where they hauled the guns 
 
 That smote King Philip's fleet. 
 
 See you our little mill that clacks, 
 
 So busy by the brook? 
 She has ground her corn and paid her tax 
 
 Ever since Domesday Book. 
 
 See you our stilly woods of oak. 
 
 And the dread ditch beside? 
 O that was where the Saxons broke, 
 
 On the day that Harold died. 
 See you the windy levels spread 
 
 About the gates of Rye? 
 O that was where the Northmen tied. 
 
 When Alfred's ships came by. 
 
 See you our pastures wide and lone. 
 
 Where the red oxen browse? 
 O there was a City thronged and known. 
 
 Ere London boasted a house. 
 And see you, after rain, the trace 
 
 Of mound and ditch and wall? 
 O that was a Legion's camping-place, 
 
 When Caesar sailed from Gaul. 
 
 And see you marks that show and fade. 
 
 Like shadows on the Downs? 
 O they are the lines the Flint Men made. 
 
 To guard their wondrous towns. 
 
 Trackway and Camp and City lost, 
 
 Salt marsh where now is corn, 
 Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease. 
 
 And so was England born I 
 
 How much of long-past and recently-past history is re- 
 flected in the present poet-laureate's fine appeal of England to 
 Ireland : 
 
 Spouse whom my sword in the olden time won me, 
 
 Winning me hatred more sharp than a sword — 
 Mother of children who hiss at or shun me. 
 
 Curse or revile me, and hold me abhorred — 
 Heiress of anger that nothing assuages, 
 
 Mad for the future and mad for the past — 
 Daughter of all the implacable ages, 
 
 Lo, let us turn and be lovers at last! 
 
Lovers wliom tragical sin hath made equal, 
 
 One in transgression and one in remorse, 
 Bonds may be severed, but what were the sequel ? 
 
 Hardly shall amity come of divorce. 
 Let tlie dead Past have a royal entombing. 
 
 O'er it the future built white for a fane ! 
 I that am haughty from much overcoming 
 
 Sue to thee, supplicate — nay. is it vain? 
 
 Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness, — 
 
 Could we but see one another, 'twere well! 
 Knowledge 'is sympathy, charity, kindness. 
 
 Ignorance only is maker of hell. 
 Could we but gaze for an hour, for a minute, 
 
 Deep in each other's unfaltering eyes. 
 Love were begun — for that look would begin it — 
 
 Born in the flash of a mighty surprise. 
 
 History no doubt can be written, has been frequently 
 written, in prose as lofty as poetry, in such a way that certain 
 moral or religious or political principles, broad and fundamental, 
 or narrow and contentious, are brought out. In the vast mass 
 of historical facts the historian will naturally find those that he 
 seeks, and he may, if he will, arrange his materials and make 
 moral reflections upon them in accordance with his beliefs and 
 preconceptions. 
 
 But this ideal costs its price. The historian under its influ- 
 ence feels called upon to make ethical judgments of actions and 
 of men, — defending or condemning historical personages and 
 their actions. Men of the past are thought of as models to be 
 followed or warnings of what is to be avoided, or at least as 
 objects of admiration or dislike. This leads to the habit of 
 ascribing extreme historical importance to the character and 
 work of individuals and correspondingly little influence to the 
 general conditions of the time or to the great mass of people. 
 Good and bad motives can be ascribed to persons, not to the 
 conditions of civilization that surround thetn ; certain named 
 persons can be praised or blamed, the great unnamed masses 
 cannot be. So the historian dilates on the psychological and 
 moral characteristics of a few prominent individuals and sup- 
 poses them to have had great freedoin of action and an un- 
 bounded extent of influence. Motley's William of Orange, 
 
and Philip of Spain, Carlyle's Robespierre and Cromwell, 
 Fronde's Henry VIII, Macaulay's William III, and a crowd 
 of lesser heroes of lesser historians owe much of their conspicu- 
 ous position in history to the admiration or condemnation of 
 them in the mind of their historians; and history itself comes to 
 be looked upon as the acts of a few great men using the rest of 
 mankind simply as their instruments. 
 
 But the greatest price we have to pay for this ethical atti- 
 tude toward history is the intense subjectivity it gives to it. 
 Everything comes to the reader as interpreted by the historian. 
 Everything is seen through the medium of his personality. The 
 facts of history when they are used to teach a moral lesson do 
 not reach us in their entirety, nor grouped and generalized 
 according to their internal relations, but selected and arranged 
 according to the overmastering ideal in the mind of the his- 
 torian. The reader is at the historian's mercy. The same set of 
 facts, that is to say the history of the same country or period, 
 comes to us as a Catholic, a Protestant or an Anglican history, 
 according to the lesson that the historian wants to teach. We 
 have histories of the French Revolution from the French, the 
 English and the German, — from the republican and the royalist 
 point of view. A certain series of events will appear entirely 
 different, under this ideal, according as the person who recounts 
 them is a rationalist or a devotee. We must balance Whig 
 against Tory, Northerner against Southerner. The conflicts of 
 the past are perpetuated by the very chroniclers who recount 
 their history. Thus history sells its birthright of truth for a 
 mess of the pottage of partisanship. If the function of history 
 is to teach, it fulfils it but ill when the lesson to be drawn from 
 it depends so largely on the interpreter. 
 
 But let us turn to another ideal. We may find it also among 
 the ancients. Phylarchus is described by a contemporary as 
 "amazing his readers by a series of thrilling anecdotes," as, 
 "studying dramatic propriety like a writer of tragedy." Livy 
 speaks of the new historians of his time as believing that they 
 can "by their skill in the art of writing improve on the rudeness 
 of ancient writers." We have similar modern aphorisms. "His- 
 tory should make the past live again." "A history should always 
 be an epic." This is a literary or aesthetic ideal. Its choice of 
 
subject, its selection of material, its forms of arrangement and 
 statement are dominated by literary, almost by artistic feeling. 
 History is looked upon as a branch of literature. Just as the 
 former view of history was that it should instruct, so this is 
 that it should please. Daunou, in his Cours d'efudes hisforiqitcs, 
 delivered at the College de France seventy-five or eighty years 
 ago, brings out clearly this view of history. He advises the 
 writer of history to read modern novels as examples. He says: 
 "They will teach the method of giving an artistic pose to per- 
 sons and events, of distributing details, of skilfully carrying on 
 the thread of the narrative, of interrupting it, of resuming it, 
 of sustaining the attention and provoking the curiosity of the 
 reader." In as far as the historian is under this inlluence he 
 feels the same intellectual elevation, the same creative activitv 
 as the writer of a literary essay, a work of fiction, a poem. When 
 Motley, for instance, in his "Rise of the Dutch Republic," de- 
 scribes the scene at the punishment of Ghent by the Emperor 
 Charles V; its civic officials in their black robes, the military 
 bodies, the guildsmen thronging the hall and the populace crowd- 
 ing the strcrts, his mind reverts to an<itlicr great epic scene where 
 
 High on a throne of royal slate, which far 
 Outshone the wealth of Ormuz or of Ind, 
 Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand 
 Showers on her kings harbaric pearls and gold, 
 Satan e.xalted sat — 
 
 and he closes his own description with the fine parody, "High 
 on his throne, with the Queen Regent at his side, surrounded 
 by princes, prelates and nobles, guarded by his archers and 
 halberdiers, his crown on his head and his sceptre in his hand, 
 the Emperor, exalted, sat." That is to say, Motley is writing In 
 much the same spirit as Milton, though, of course, on a vastly 
 lower poetic plane. 
 
 Such an ideal leads to the selection of dramatic periods for 
 treatment. Froude begins his history with the fall of Wolsey, 
 v/hen the conllict between the English king and the Roman 
 Catholic system was definitely joined, and announces that it is 
 to extend to the death of Elizabeth. But when Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, has been executed, when the Invincible Armada has 
 been conquered, and the great contest lie has been describing 
 
seems to be settled, his dramatic sense tells him that the play, 
 conceiving his period of English history as a play, is over. 
 Therefore, as a draniatist rather than as a historian, he draws 
 down the curtain, closes his book, and leaves the narrative of 
 the last fifteen troubled, difficult and important years of the 
 period he had announced untold. The military conquest of 
 Mexico and Peru by brilliant Spanish conquistadores attracted 
 its historian much earlier than the spread of civilized settlement 
 and peaceful development over the interior of the United States. 
 Periods of war have always attracted more historians than have 
 periods of peace. 
 
 This treatment gives to history the charm possessed by 
 every work of art. Vigor, grace, color, life, flourish under the 
 dominion of the literary spirit and thrive among literary asso- 
 ciations. Macaulay's fine impressiveness, the picturesque de- 
 lineations of Prescott and Irving, the grace and eloquence of 
 the French historians of the early nineteenth century, are due 
 for the most part to the prominence of the literary ideal in the 
 minds of these writers. 
 
 But accompanying these qualities and, unfortunately, 
 almost always characterizing the literary treatment of history, is 
 its weak hold on reality, its incautious use of its materials. In 
 as far as a historian is influenced by this ideal, he is thinking, 
 in reality, first of his reader, only secondarily of his facts. He 
 is striving to produce an aesthetic effect, not to elucidate the 
 past. Therefore he does not look narrowly at what he finds in 
 his contemporary sources. He carelessly misinterprets them, he 
 neglects much that is there but which is not suited to literary 
 uses; he sometimes finds things that are not there at all. His 
 creative imagination is apt to act like that of the poet: 
 
 As imagination bodies forth 
 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 
 A local habitation and a name. 
 
 Such tricks hnth strong imagination. 
 
 The use of the imagination is an absolute necessity in all 
 intellectual production, but it is also the most dangerous of all 
 foes to clear and exact knowledge. We live in hereditary servi- 
 
tude to our imagination. Through a long line of descent it has 
 possessed a supremacy against which the thoughtful man must 
 struggle for intellectual freedom. This is a matter of evolution 
 and is universal in its action. The bird or the rabbit that perceives 
 a dark shadow passing over it, immediately sees or thinks it sees 
 the spreading wings, the curved talons, and the hungry beak of 
 the hawk swooping down on it, as it cowers close among the 
 grass or leaves, although the shadow may be only that of a 
 passing cloud. Primitive man must have learned to spring to 
 shelter at many a harmless crackling among the bushes that 
 nevertheless brought into his mind a picture of some hungry 
 wild beast, or else we, his remote descendants, would not be here. 
 And the brain that we have inherited from him has not forgotten 
 its old trick of self-deception. We, like he did, live in a world 
 of self-created ideas, only kept measurably close to reality by 
 the most rigorous mental habits. The historian is subject to 
 the common temptation ; so in the mind of Motley grows up the 
 picture of an imaginary Philip II, a cruel, calculating, malev- 
 olent being, sitting in his study at Madrid, holding the threads 
 of a great conspiracy against the happiness and well-being of 
 the people of half of Europe and all of America. So Livy and 
 Tacitus and a crowd of other historians, like the poets and the 
 moralists, look back to a purely imaginary early period of virtue 
 and honor and unselfishness. So our historical traditions become 
 full of extraordinarily good and extraordinarily bad people ; 
 certain periods are described as pre-eminently happy and others 
 as unspeakably miserable ; institutions are believed to have 
 existed which would have been destructive to the human race ; 
 historic shadows are apt to fall preternaturally dark and the 
 lights to glow incredibly bright. Imagination plays a brilliant 
 but a deceptive part in history. 
 
 The borderland between history as a form of literature and 
 historical fiction is a shifting and an uncertain one. Well on 
 one side of the boundary we have fine constructive historical 
 literature ; well on the other, we have admirable historical 
 novels; but between the two there is a debatable land where 
 outlaws continually dwell, — some of the "histories" of Thierry, 
 Froude, and Thomas Watson, for instance ; some of the "novels" 
 of Chateaubriand, Georg Ebers, and Miss Miihlbach and their 
 
congeners, — exiled from the more orderly regions on both sides 
 by the critics, historical or literary, who represent established 
 rule in both realms. 
 
 There are still other historical ideals. One man, a phil- 
 osopher, says that the proper object of history is the training 
 of the time-concept ; that is to say, the life of a single man is so 
 short that it is only by considering the life of the whole human 
 race that we can get any adequate idea of the meaning of the 
 expression "time." I am inclined to believe that more than one 
 of my specialist colleagues in this faculty looks on history as a 
 sort of background of general occurrences and conditions on 
 which his special objects of interest are projected; a sort of 
 Greek chorus to explain and comment, while the development 
 of English or French or German literature, or mathematics, or 
 political economy, or chemistry, or philosophy, occupies the 
 center of the stage. And far be it from me to deny the name of 
 history to any of the forms of writing we have discussed. His- 
 tory is not a definite technical term, like geometry, or chemistry, 
 or logic, or astronomy. It is a broad, general expression, more 
 nearly analogous to the words "science" or "philosophy." In 
 actual usage, even by historians, it connotes little more than the 
 fact that the matters under consideration have occurred in the 
 past, rather than in the present. There are not merely two forms, 
 good history and bad history. There may be many types of 
 reasonably good history. Nor is any one writer entirely under 
 the domination of any one historical ideal ; several may exist 
 coincidently in his mind ; he may at different times be influence.l 
 more largely by one or another conception of his subject ; never- 
 theless the fact remains that the ethical, the literary and the 
 specialist's types of history that have now been reviewed have 
 been ^nd are especially widespread and influential. 
 
 i^/t want now to turn to another ideal, which looks at history 
 from no one of these points of view ; which conceives of it 
 neither as primarily intended to give instruction nor primarily to 
 give pleasure ; which does not place it in the service of any other 
 particular branch of knowledge, but allows it to exist for its own 
 sake. According to this conception of history, the past is looked 
 at simply, directly, objectively; it is conceived of as merely some- 
 thing to be understood and explained. 
 
Just as a geologist studies the physical conformation of a 
 country, its strata and its fossils, endeavors to understand and 
 then to describe the conditions they indicate; just as the astron- 
 omer makes his observations and investigations and reaches the 
 results of his study; just as the student of any branch of knowl- 
 edge approaches his subject, so the historian may approach the 
 past of the human race, study what mankind has done and said 
 and thought, strive to understand, strive to explain. He can 
 look upon his subject as simply a body of facts, to be investi- 
 gated and described for their own sakes ; not with a view of 
 drawing a lesson from them, not with a view of praising or 
 blaming any one, not with a view of so choosing and putting 
 the facts as to give emotional pleasure to the reader, — not, in 
 fact, with any ulterior purpose whatever ; but simply to take 
 human history as his object of study, — just as one might take 
 any other group of phenomena. 
 
 This is the modern scholar's conception of history, as con- 
 trasted with the ethical or the literary conception. It might be 
 called the scientific method of treating history. The scientific 
 method means nothing more than the simple method ; the direct 
 approach to a subject, seeking knowledge for its own sake, 
 without ulterior objects or ultimate expectations of any kind 
 from it, using accurate methods of observation, logical pro- 
 cesses of classification, trained powers of comprehension and 
 explanation, — that is all that a scientific method means, — and it 
 is just as applicable to history as to any other field of knowledge. 
 
 Such an answer to the question, what is history? — such an 
 historical ideal, has, like others, its own rewards and its own 
 demands. It must not be supposed, in the first place, that such 
 historical work is necessarily a thankless or an unappreciated 
 task. More than fifty years ago a fellow-townsman of ours, 
 Mr. Lea, took up the study of the history of mediaeval law and 
 certain mediaeval and early modern institutions, especially those 
 connected with the church. He is still at work in that field, and 
 at this very moment, in all probability, his fine gray head is 
 bending over the proof sheets of the fourth and final volume of 
 his "History of the Spanish Inquisition." He had from the 
 beginning an intense desire to know, and an open mind. He felt 
 no attraction to polemical and secondary discussions, but went 
 
direct to the raw material from which all historical knowledge 
 must be constructed. He has had means that have enabled him 
 to gather in his own library a great body of such sources of 
 history as are published, and to have many manuscripts copied 
 from the libraries of Europe ; he has applied keen mental powers 
 and, infinite industry and perseverance to these materials, and 
 has given to the world just what he has found. This has been 
 embodied in some fifteen volumes, which have been published 
 from time to time during the half century of his labors. They 
 are not, of course, popular history, and their titles are not such 
 as to conciliate popular interest. Nevertheless many thousand 
 copies and repeated editions have been printed, sold and read ; 
 they are to be found in every public and many private libraries ; 
 every scholar interested in the history of the Middle Ages knows 
 and uses them ; every professor of history who teaches that 
 period requires his students to read parts of them ; they have 
 been translated into various languages, and they stand now a? 
 representing the principal body of acquired knowledge in that 
 portion of the history of the world. In many circles in many 
 cities of Europe you might name over the list of Philadelphia's 
 business men, lawyers and physicians, and find that not a name 
 was recognized. The first gleam of recognition to give comfort 
 to our local patriotism would come with the mention of Henry 
 C. Lea. 
 
 We might come still nearer home in our search for a test 
 of appreciation of purely scholarly history. In our midst, I 
 refer to the head of my own department, is one who, when 
 American history was invariably written with one tendency or 
 another, began the writing of it absolutely without partisan- 
 ship ; who, when the romantic episodes of colonial days were 
 familiar but the period since the Revolutionary War relatively 
 unknown, began to tell the great story of our national exist- 
 ence ; who, when the historical material used was only that found 
 in statutes, legislative proceedings, public correspondence and 
 other such official documents, examined and utilized all the 
 sources for the knowledge of our past. With no special lesson 
 to teach or philosophy to maintain, and only interested to find 
 out and to understand and to explain, he entered on the survey 
 of all the varied interests of our nation since we have been a 
 
nation, and in this spirit has written the "History of the People 
 of the United States." It has become one of our "standard" his- 
 tories. Some thirty thousand copies are spread through the 
 community, to exercise with similar modern works a widespread 
 influence. The history of our national period is now at least as 
 well known as that of the colonial period, the times of peace 
 have been raised in general estimation to at least as high a level 
 of interest as those of war, the prevailing attitude toward the 
 study of the first century of our national history is one of non- 
 partisanship, there is no longer any body of historical material 
 which is completely neglected. The influence of such work on 
 methods of study has been even deeper than its addition to our 
 knowledge. Now the mere post-graduate student of American 
 History approaches his subject from a direction, and uses ma- 
 terial that twenty-five years ago the veteran did not know. The 
 very completeness with which the work has been accomplished is 
 apt to blind us to its extent; but it cannot diminish the service 
 performed by, or the honor due to, the pioneer who first hewed 
 out a way for himself and for us. It is not therefore the admi- 
 ration of a pupil for his teacher, it is not loyalty to a colleague, 
 it is no mere attachment to a friend, that leads me to take as 
 an example of not unappreciated and yet purely objective treat- 
 ment of history, calm, impersonal, unprejudiced as to persons 
 or as to parties, dominated by the single object of making clear 
 the past, the work of Professor McMaster. 
 
 Not only is scholarly historical work not unappreciated by 
 others, it is a worthy work for the man who does it. It calls 
 for all the mental powers with which he may be endowed. His- 
 torical investigation is a work of infinite difficulty. Not only 
 must the historian spend "laborious days and wakeful nights," 
 but he must bring to his work ability and training. The ma- 
 terial with which he has to work is enormous in amount, diffi- 
 cult to collect, difficult to classify, difficult to interpret. The 
 geologist, the chemist, the biologist, the student of literature, 
 all make their own observations. The facts they work with are 
 what they have themselves seen or can otherwise test by direct 
 means. The historical facts with which we must deal come to 
 us, for the most part, not through our own observations, but on 
 
13 
 
 the testimony of men who once saw or heard them but are now 
 long dead. We must weigh and measure their credibility, their 
 opportunity and their ability to have observed correctly. Our 
 facts often come to us clothed in dead languages and obscure 
 terms. We must find out just what these mean. 
 
 No power to put ourselves mentally into another's place 
 can be too great for the historian's needs. We read the state- 
 ments of a mediaeval or an ancient chronicler. He was a man 
 of another age than our own, surrounded by institutions which 
 have long since disappeared, ruled by ideas that are not our 
 ideas, using the names of things that we have never seen. How 
 shall we comprehend and interpret what he tells us? Here is 
 the need for the historic imagination ; its normal use is in under- 
 standing and interpreting the sources, not in writing the final 
 draught of the narrative. 
 
 No keenness of mental analysis is too great for historical 
 uses. Historical facts are often the actions, the words, the very 
 thoughts and motives of men, and we must make a psychological 
 judgment of them. No moral powers, no breadth of sympathv, 
 no capacity for entering into the feelings as well as the thoughts 
 of other men comes amiss. For the scholarly historian must 
 understand, and in a certain sense take part with both sides of 
 all the controversies of the past. He must appreciate the horror 
 of the orthodox for heresy and he must sympathize with the 
 heretic who cannot accept the teachings of those in authoritv. 
 He must enter into the slaveholder's point of view, and he must 
 comprehend the antagonism to slavery of the abolitionist. He 
 must rise above the controversial elements in these conflicts and 
 see why each party felt as it did. This can only be done by 
 adding to a knowledge of the circumstances a genuine sym- 
 pathetic comprehension of the feelings or belief of each side. A 
 certain largeness of view is requisite for a study which is con- 
 cerned with the doings of all mankind and with the thoughts 
 and feelings of all representatives of our race. 
 
 No power over our glorious mother tongue can be spared 
 by the scientific historian. Perfect clarity in stating the lesults 
 of his investigations, the choice of the right word to represent 
 every shade of human experience in the past, force to describe 
 past conditions, and even eloquence to describe past events, all 
 
can be well utilized, so far as gifts or training put them into 
 the possession of the historian. This, you may say, brings us 
 back to history as a form of literature. Far from it. The 
 question with which we have been concerned is of ideals, not of 
 instruments. What I am now pleadin;:,'- for is literary power and 
 effectiveness as a means, not ns an end ; as a tool in the hands 
 of the scholarly historian, not as a final object to be sought for 
 for its own sake. So long as our historical ideal remains the 
 simple and accurate discovery and statement of what has occurred 
 in the past, the use of all the resources of our language is noth- 
 ing more than a wise utilization of all available means to that end. 
 So there need be no fear that this historical ideal will not 
 exercise all the powers that can be Iirought into its service. 
 Moreover, it has its own e.xhilaration and charm. The scientific 
 writer of history builds no Gothic cathedral, full of irregulari- 
 ties and suggestiveness, aspiring arches, niches filled with sacred 
 or grotesque figures, and aisles dim with religious light. — that 
 is work for the literary historian. lUit he builds a classic tem- 
 ple: simple, severe, symmetrical in its lines, surrounded by the 
 clear, bright light of truth, pervaded by the spirit of modera- 
 tion. Every historical fact is a stone hewn from the quarry of 
 past records ; it must be solid and square and even-hued — an 
 ascertained fact. Whether it is a deed, a word, a motive, a 
 custom, a condition, — it must have really existed in the past. 
 And whether the historian is describing the life of some person, 
 or the history of some nation, a short period of time, or a single 
 aspect of the history of some period, the discovery of a country, 
 the foundation of a commonwealth, or the progress of a revo- 
 lution, or it may be only the formation of some treaty, or the 
 inception of some war — he is still a builder. He must examine 
 all his materials ; he must know all the facts which can be ascer- 
 tained concerning his subject; he must select those which are 
 available for his purpose, those which really help to explain his 
 subject; and then he must write his history, erect his structure, 
 build his temple, with what skill he may. His design already 
 exists, the events have actually occurred, the past has really 
 been — his task is to approach as near to the design as he pos- 
 sibly can. 
 
Such is the ideal of history, such is that answer to the ques- 
 tion with which we began, that I should Hke to submit to you 
 as the worthiest — the attitude toward history that it is simply a ^ 
 body of material to be studied, understood and described, exactly 
 as the biologist has his material, the chemist his, the mathe- 
 matician his ; except that it is infinitely more complex, more diffi- 
 cult, more fascinating than any. 
 
 I would suggest that this view of history is especially 
 suited to the purlieus of a great university, where each field of 
 human knowledge and interest has its devotees, animated by 
 just the same spirit, dominated by just the same ideal. I would 
 suggest that it is especially suited to such a university as this, 
 founded without political, religious or social bias ; nurtured in 
 freedom from the control of any party or sect ; at no time failing 
 entirely to hold up the standard of human culture for its own 
 sake ; at the present time granting to its professors and students 
 perfect liberty to investigate and declare the results of their 
 investigations, to seek and to state the truth as they believe they 
 have discovered it. I would suggest that this attitude toward 
 history should especially appeal to post-graduate students. If 
 an objective, direct, scientific habit of looking at one's work is 
 once attained it is not easily lost. It will remain a solid founda- 
 tion under the feet during all subsequent floods of reading, 
 writing and controversy ; a man or woman who has once done a 
 piece of scientific work that is absolutely impregnable to as- 
 saults of criticism on its methods and its material, may after- 
 ward safely add to his later work all the insight, all the powers 
 of interpretation, all the excellences of language, that training 
 and the experiences of life may bring to him. First critical 
 study, then a scientific monograph, and then, if the fates allow, 
 a great history. 
 
 You may say that to take away from the writing of history 
 ethical and patriotic and political teaching as objects, and to 
 depose it from its position as a form of pure literature, is to 
 give it too humble a role to play, that the scholarly historian is 
 made too lowly and too meek in his claims. But remember the 
 beatitude, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
 earth." The earth ! What better inheritance could the his- 
 
i6 
 
 torian wish ? The earth with all its ancient nations, with all its 
 crowding memories, with all the story of the human race that has 
 been lived upon it. The historian may not, like the poet or the 
 philosopher, rise to the heavens or deal with the eternities, but 
 he can well be satisfied to trace the fortunes of humanity, with 
 its joys and sufferings, its conflicts, its failures, its attainments ; 
 with all its keen interest, — because it is, after all, our common 
 humanity.