In due time the reaction came, but it was long before the influence of the dominant spirit was made subordinate to a saner view. Indeed, scarcely before our own generation, since the classical period, have historians been able to cast a clear and unbiased glance across the entire field of history.
Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a school of secular historians with broad views and high aims again arose. Now once more men sought to write world histories not dominated by a single idea. The first great exponents of the movement were Gibbon and Hume in England, Schlozzer and Müller in Germany. They have had a host of followers, of whom the greater number have been Germans.
The attitude of these modern writers is philosophical; they are disposed to recognise in the bald facts of human existence an importance commensurate solely with the lessons they can teach for the betterment of humanity. In this modern view, each fact must be correlated with a multitude of other facts before its true significance can be perceived. Events are, in this view, meaningless unless we know something of the human motives that led to their enactment. The task of the historian is to search for causes, to endeavour to build up from the lessons of history a true philosophy of living. It is really no different a task, as already pointed out, from that which such ancient writers as Polybius had very prominently in view; but there is an emphasis upon this phase of the subject in our time that it did not generally receive in the earlier age. In other words, the philosophy of history of our time is a more conscious philosophy. For a century past the phrase, “philosophy of history,” has been current, and it has been the custom for men who were not primarily historians to discourse on the subject. Latterly, following again the current of the times, we have come to speak even of the “science” of history; indeed, in Germany in particular, history to-day claims unchallenged position as a true science. The word “science” is a very flexible term, yet there are those who deny that it may be properly applied, as yet at any rate, to our aggregation of knowledge of historical facts. The question resolves itself into a matter of definition, the solution of which is not particularly important.
The essential thing is that the modern historical investigator is fully actuated by the spirit of scientific accuracy and impartiality. And since impartiality depends very largely upon breadth of view, it results rather curiously that the minute investigations of the specialist make indirectly for the comprehensive view of the World Historian. Professor Freeman well expressed the idea when he said:
“My position is that in all our studies of history and language—and the study of language, besides all that it is in other ways, is one most important branch of the study of history—we must cast away all distinctions of ‘ancient’ and ‘modern,’ of ‘dead’ and ‘living,’ and must boldly grapple with the great fact of the unity of history. As man is the same in all ages, the history of man is one in all ages. No language, no period of history, can be understood in its fullness; none can be clothed with its highest interest and its highest profit, if it be looked at wholly in itself, without reference to its bearing on those other languages, those other periods of history, which join with it to make up the great whole of human, or at least of Aryan and European, being.”
Such a position as this, assumed by one of the most minute searchers among modern historians, is highly interesting as illustrative of a reactionary tendency which will probably characterise the historical work of the near future. Hair-splitting analysis having been carried to its limits of refinement, there will probably come a reaction in the direction of a more comprehensive study of historical events in their wider relations. The work of the specialist, after all, is really important only when it furnishes material for wider generalisations. All minute workers in the fields of biology, geology, and the allied sciences, in the first half of the nineteenth century were unconsciously gathering material which, interesting in itself, became of real importance chiefly in so far as it ultimately aided in elucidating the great generalisation of Darwin. Perhaps the minute historians of to-day are in similar position.
The special worker, imbued with enthusiasm for his subject, is apt to forget the real insignificance of his labours. Entire epochs are dominated by the idea of microscopic research, and the workers even come to suppose that microscopic analysis is in itself an end; whereas, rightly considered, it is only the means to an end. We are just passing through such an epoch as regards historical investigation. But, as just suggested, it seems probable that we are approaching a new epoch when the work of the specialist will be subordinated to its true purpose, while at the same time proving its real value as a means to the proper end of historical studies—the comprehension of the world-historical relations of events.
CHAPTER II
MATERIALS FOR THE WRITING OF HISTORY
It is obvious that the materials for the writing of history consist for the most part of written records. It is true that all manner of monuments, including the ruins of buried cities, remains of ancient walls and highways, and all other traces of a former civilisation, must be allotted their share as records to guide the investigator in his attempt to reconstruct past conditions. But for anything like a definite presentation of the events of by-gone days, it is absolutely essential, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis pointed out in great detail, to have access to contemporary written records, either at first hand, or through the medium of copyists, in case the original records themselves have been destroyed. Lewis reached the conclusion, as the result of his exhaustive examination of the credibility of early Roman history, that a tradition of a past event is hardly transmitted orally from generation to generation with anything like accuracy of detail for more than a century.
Theoretically, then, no accurate history could ever be constructed of events covering a longer period than about four generations before the introduction of writing. In actual practice the scope of the strictly historic view of man’s progress is confined to very much narrower limits than this, for the simple reason that the earliest written records that might otherwise serve to give us glimpses of remote history have very rarely been preserved. The destruction of ancient inscriptions with the lapse of centuries has led to a great deal of difference of opinion as to the time when the art of writing was introduced among various nations. In reference to the Greeks in particular, the dispute has been ardently waged, many scholars contending that the art of writing was little practised in Greece until the sixth century B.C.
Later discoveries, in particular a knowledge of the inscription on the statue of Ramses at Abu Simbel, have made it clear that the earlier estimates were much too conservative, and it now seems probable that the Greeks had been acquainted with the art of writing for several, or perhaps many, centuries before the one previously fixed upon. It is not to be supposed, however, that the practice of the art of writing was universal in that early day. On the other hand, it was doubtless very exceptional indeed for the average individual to be able to write, and such difficulties as the lack of writing material stood in the way of composition until a relatively late period. But whether the art of writing was much or little practised in the early days does not greatly matter so far as the present-day historian is concerned, since practically all specimens of early writing in Greece disappeared in the course of succeeding ages. No fragment of any book proper, no scrap of parchment or papyrus, no single waxen tablet, from the soil of classic Greece has been preserved to us.
The Greek authors are known to us only through the efforts of successive generations of copyists; and, with the exception of a comparatively small number of Egyptian papyri, there is almost nothing in existence representing the literature of classical Greece that is older than the middle ages. There are, to be sure, considerable numbers of monumental inscriptions dating from classical times. These have the highest interest for the archæologist, but in the aggregate they give but meagre glimpses into the history of antiquity. If we were dependent upon these records for all that we know of Greek history, the entire story of that people might be told, as far as we could ever hope to learn it, in a few pages.