The serious study of history is characteristic of a certain maturity of mind. For the intellectually young, the world is too new and attractive to arouse in them a very absorbing interest in its past. Life is for them an adventure, and the world is a place for excursions and experiences. They care little about what men have done, but much about what they might do. History, to interest them, must be written as a romance which will fire their imagination, rather than as a philosophy which might make them wise. But maturity, somewhat disciplined and disillusioned, confirms the suspicion, which even youth entertains at times, that the world, while offering an opportunity, hedges the offer about with restrictions which must be understood and submitted to, if effort is to be crowned with success. The mature may thus become eager to understand life without ceasing to enjoy it.[Pg 2] They may become philosophical and show their wisdom by a desire to sympathize with what men have done and to live rationally in the light of what is possible. They may study history, convinced that it enlarges their sympathies and promotes rational living.

We might, therefore, conclude that the prevailing interest in historical studies is a sign that the age is growing in maturity and is seeking an outlook upon life which is both sane and encouraging. This may well be true. But even if the study of history indicate a certain maturity of mind, it is not a guarantee that history will not be studied in the spirit of youth. History may do little more than afford a new world for wild adventure and undisciplined experience. Moreover, maturity is not necessarily wise. Disgust, revolt, and loss of sympathy are not always strangers to it. Historical studies may be pursued with little comprehension of their aim or meaning; and history may be taught with little reflection on its philosophical significance. It would appear, therefore, that the study of history itself affords an opportunity for philosophical inquiry, and may profitably stimulate questions about the character of those facts with which history is concerned.

[Pg 3]

In these lectures I intend to deal with the purpose of history. I would not, however, be misunderstood. My aim is not, by making another attempt to find the increasing purpose running through the ages, to win permanently the laurel which, hitherto, ambitious philosophers have worn only for a season. There is, no doubt, a kind of rapture in seeing history as St. Augustine saw it,—the progress of the City of God from earth to heaven; and there is a kind of pride not wholly ignoble, in seeing it as Hegel did,—the vibrating evolution from the brooding absolution of the East to the self-conscious freedom of one\'s own philosophy embraced and made universal by the civilizing energy of one\'s own state. My aim is more modest. It is not romantic, but technical. Metaphysics rather than poetry is to be my domain, although I cherish the hope that poetry may not, therefore, be misprized. If it may ultimately appear, not only as an ornament to living, but also as an exemplary method of living well, I may even now invoke the Muses to my aid, but Clio first, and, afterwards, Calliope. It is my aim, through an examination of what the historian himself proposes, to discover in what sense the idea of purpose in history is appropriate, and to what ideas[Pg 4] we are led when we think of history as the record of human progress.

The conclusions I hope to clarify, I may here anticipate. There is discoverable in history no purpose, if we mean by purpose some future event towards which the whole creation moves and which past and present events portend; but there is purpose in history, if we mean that the past is utilized as material for the progressive realization, at least by man, of what we call spiritual ends. More generally, history is itself essentially the utilization of the past for ends, ends not necessarily foreseen, but ends to come, so that every historical thing, when we view it retrospectively, has the appearance of a result which has been selected, and to which its antecedents are exclusively appropriate. In that sense purpose is discoverable in history. But this purpose is not single. History is pluralistic and implies a pluralistic philosophy. There are many histories, but no one of them exists to the prejudice of any other. And, finally, progress is not aptly conceived as an evolution from the past into the future. Evolution is, rather, only a name for historical continuity, and this continuity itself is a fact to be investigated and not a theory which explains anything, or affords a[Pg 5] standard of value. The past is not the cause or beginning of the present, but the effect and result of history; so that every historical thing leaves, as it were, its past behind it as the record of its life in time. Progress may mean material progress when we have in mind the improvement in efficiency of the instruments man uses to promote his well-being; it may mean rational progress when we have in mind the idealization of his natural impulses. Then he frames in his imagination ideal ends which he can intelligently pursue and which, through the attempt to realize them, justify his labors. Such are the conclusions I hope to clarify, and I shall begin by considering the purpose men entertain when they write histories.

It is natural to quote Herodotus. The Father of History seems to have been conscious of his purpose and to have expressed it. We are told that he gave his history to the world "in order that the things men have done might not in time be forgotten, and that the great and wonderful deeds of both Greeks and barbarians might not become unheard of,—this, and why they fought with one another." This statement seems to be, in principle, an adequate expression of the purpose of writing histories, even if[Pg 6] Herodotus did not execute that purpose with fidelity. The limitations of its specific terms are obvious. One might expect that the great deeds were mainly exploits at arms, that the history would be military, and that the causes exposed would be causes of war. But the history itself deals with geography and climate, with manners, customs, traditions, and institutions, fully as much as with heroes and battles. Professor Gilbert Murray says of it: "His work is not only an account of a thrilling struggle, politically very important, and spiritually tremendous; it is also, more perhaps than any other known book, the expression of a whole man, the representation of all the world seen through the medium of one mind and in a particular perspective. The world was at that time very interesting; and the one mind, while strongly individual, was one of the most comprehensive known to human records. Herodotus\'s whole method is highly subjective. He is too sympathetic to be consistently critical, or to remain cold towards the earnest superstitions of people about him: he shares from the outset their tendency to read the activity of a moral God in all the moving events of history. He is sanguine, sensitive, a lover of human nature, interested in[Pg 7] details if they are vital to his story, oblivious of them if they are only facts and figures; he catches quickly the atmosphere of the society he moves in, and falls readily under the spell of great human influences, the solid impersonal Egyptian hierarchy or the dazzling circle of great individuals at Athens; yet all the time shrewd, cool, gentle in judgment, deeply and unconsciously convinced of the weakness of human nature, the flaws of its heroism and the excusableness of its apparent villainy. His book bears for good and ill the stamp of this character and this profession."[1]

The history of Herodotus would, then, preserve a record of the world of human affairs as he discovered it and an exposition of the causes and conditions which have influenced human action. He would record what men have done in order that their deeds might be remembered and in order that they might be understood. Like all other historians he had his individual limitations, but for all of them he seems to have expressed the purpose of their inquiries. That purpose may be worked out in many different fields. We may have military history, political history,[Pg 8] industrial history, economic history, religious history, the history of civilization, of education, and of philosophy, the history, indeed, of any human enterprise whatever. But always the purpose is the same, to preserve a faithful record and to promote the understanding of what has happened in the affairs of men. I need hardly add that, for the present, I am restricting history to human history. Its wider signification will not be neglected, but I make the present limitation in order that through a consideration of the writing of human history, we may be led on to the conception of history in its more comprehensive form.

To conceive the purpose of writing history adequately is not the same thing as to execute that purpose faithfully. If Herodotus may be cited in illustration of the adequate conception, he will hardly be cited by historians in illustration of its faithful execution. They have complained of him from time to time ever since Thucydides first accused him of caring more about pleasing his readers than about telling the truth. He is blamed principally for his credulity and for his lack of criticism. Credulous he was and less critical than one could wish, but it is well to remember, in any just estimate of him,[Pg 9] that he was much less credulous and much more critical than we should naturally expect a man of his time to be. He wrote in an age when men generally believed spontaneously things which we, since we reflect, can not believe, and when it was more congenial to listen to a story than to indulge in the criticism of it. He frequently expresses disbelief of what he has been told and is often at great pains to verify what he has heard. With all his faults he remains among the extraordinary men.

These faults, when they are sympathetically examined, indicate far less blemishes in the character of Herodotus than they do the practical and moral difficulties which beset the faithful writing of all history. That is why he is so illustrative for our purpose. A faithful and true record is the first thing the historian desires, but it is a very difficult thing to obtain. Human testimony even in the presence of searching cross-examination is notoriously fallible, and the dumb records of the past, with all their variations and contradictions, present a stolid indifference to our curiosity. The questions we ask of the dead, only we ourselves can answer. Herodotus wrote with these practical and moral difficulties at a maximum. We have learned systematically to[Pg 10] combat them. There has grown up for our benefit an abundant literature which would instruct the historian how best to proceed. The methods of historians, their failures and successes, have been carefully studied with the result that we have an elaborate science of writing history which we call historiography. Therein one may learn how to estimate sources, deal with documents, weigh evidence, detect causes, and be warned against the errors to which one is liable. Moreover, anthropology, arch?ology, and psychology have come to the historian\'s aid to help him in keeping his path as clear and unobstructed as possible. In other words, history has become more easy and more difficult to write than it was in the days of Herodotus. The better understanding of its difficulties and of the ways to meet them has made it more easy; but the widening of its scope has made it more difficult. We still face the contrast between the adequate conception of the purpose of writing history and the faithful execution of that purpose. But it would seem that only practical and moral difficulties stand in the way of successful performance. Ideally, at least, a perfect history seems to be conceivable.

It is, indeed, conceivable that with adequate[Pg 11] data, with a wise and unbiased mind, and with a moderate supply of genius, an historian might faithfully record the events with which he deals, and make us understand how they happened. It is conceivable because it has in many cases been so closely approximated. Our standards of judgment and appraisement here are doubtless open to question by a skeptical mind. We may lack the evidence which would make our estimate conclusive. But what I mean is this: histories have been written which satisfy to a remarkable degree the spirit of inquiry. They present that finality and inevitability which mark the master mind. There are, in other words, authorities which few of us ever question. They have so succeeded, within their limitations, in producing the sense of adequacy, that their reputation seems to be secure. Their limitations have been physical, rather than moral or intellectual, so that the defects which mar their work are less their own than those of circumstance. They thus appear to be substantial witnesses that the only difficulties in the way of faithfully executing the purpose of writing history are practical and moral—to get the adequate data, the wise and unbiased mind, and the moderate supply of genius. There are no other difficulties.

[Pg 12]

Yet when we say that there are no other difficulties we may profitably bear in mind that Herodotus has been charged not only with being credulous and uncritical, but also with not telling the truth. At first this might not appear to indicate a new difficulty. For if Herodotus lied, his difficulty was moral. But it is not meant that Herodotus lied. It is meant rather that within his own limitations he did not, and possibly could not, give us the true picture of the times which he recorded. He saw things too near at hand to paint them in that perspective which truthfully reveals their proportions. His emphases, his lights and shadows, are such as an enlightened man of his time might display, but they are not the emphases, the lights and shadows which, as subsequent historians have proved, give us ancient Greece with its true shading. We understand his own age much better than he did because Grote and other moderns have revealed to us what Greece really was. But what, we may ask, was the real Greece? Who has written and who can write its true history? Grote\'s reputation as an historian is secure, but his history has already been superseded in many important respects. We are told that, since its publication, "a great[Pg 13] change has come over our knowledge of Greek civilization." What then shall we say if neither Herodotus, who saw that civilization largely face to face, nor Grote, who portrays it after an exceptionally patient and thorough study of its records, supplemented by what he calls scientific criticism and a positive philosophy, has given us the real Greece? Clearly it looks as if the perfect history is yet to be written, and as if every attempt to write it pushes it forward into the future. And clearly we face, if not a new difficulty, a fact at least which is of fundamental importance in the attempt to understand what history itself is.

So Herodotus becomes again illustrative. His history once written and given to the world becomes itself an item in the history of Greece, making it necessary that the story be retold. In the face of a fact, at once so simple and so profound, how idle is the boast of the publisher who could say of the author of a recent life of Christ[2] that she "has reproduced the time of Christ, not as we............