Коллектив авторов - The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07

Such speeches as we find in Thucydides, for example, of which we can positively assert that they are not bona fide reports, would seem to make against our statement that a historian of his class presents us no reflected picture, that persons and people appear in his works in propria persona … Granted that such orations as those of Pericles—that most profoundly accomplished, genuine, noble statesman—were elaborated by Thucydides, it must yet be maintained that they were not foreign to the character of the speaker. In the orations in question, these men proclaim the maxims adopted by their countrymen and formative of their own character; they record their views of their political relations and of their moral and spiritual nature, and publish the principles of their designs and conduct. What the historian puts into their mouths is no supposititious system of ideas, but an uncorrupted transcript of their intellectual and moral habitudes.

Of these historians whom we must make thoroughly our own, with whom we must linger long if we would live with their respective nations and enter deeply into their spirit—of these historians to whose pages we may turn, not for the purposes of erudition merely, but with a view to deep and genuine enjoyment, there are fewer than might be imagined. Herodotus, the Father, namely the Founder, of History, and Thucydides have been already mentioned. Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand is a work equally original. Cæsar's Commentaries are the simple masterpiece of a mighty spirit; among the ancients these annalists were necessarily great captains and statesmen. In the Middle Ages, if we except the bishops, who were placed in the very centre of the political world, the monks monopolize this category as naïve chroniclers who were as decidedly isolated from active life as those elder annalists had been connected with it. In modern times the relations are entirely altered. Our culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all events into historical representations. Belonging to the class in question, we have vivid, simple, clear narrations—especially of military transactions—which might fairly take their place with those of Cæsar. In richness of matter and fulness of detail as regards strategic appliances and attendant circumstances, they are even more instructive. The French "Memoirs" also fall under this category. In many cases these are written by men of mark, though relating to affairs of little note; they not unfrequently contain such a large amount of anecdotal matter that the ground they occupy is narrow and trivial. Yet they are often veritable masterpieces in history, as are those of Cardinal Retz, which, in fact, trench on a larger historical field. In Germany such masters are rare, Frederick the Great in his Histoire de mon temps being an illustrious exception. Writers of this order must occupy an elevated position, for only from such a position is it possible to take an extensive view of affairs—to see everything. This is out of the question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world through a miserable cranny.

II. The second kind of history we may call the Reflective. It is history whose mode of representation is not really confined by the limits of the time to which it relates, but whose spirit transcends the present. In this second order a strongly marked variety of species may be distinguished.

1. It is the aim of the investigator to gain a view of the entire history of a people, of a country, or of the world in short, what we call universal history. In this case the working up of the historical material is the main point. The workman approaches his task with his own spirit—a spirit distinct from that of the element he is to manipulate.

Here a very important consideration is the principles to which the author refers the bearing and motives of the actions and events which he describes, as well as those which determine the form of his narrative. Among us Germans this reflective treatment and the display of ingenuity which it affords assume a manifold variety of phases. Every writer of history proposes to himself an original method. The English and French confess to general principles of historical composition, their viewpoint being more nearly that of cosmopolitan or national culture. Among us, each labors to invent a purely individual point of view; instead of writing history, we are always beating our brains to discover how history ought to be written.

This first kind of Reflective history is most nearly akin to the preceding, when it has no further aim than to present the annals of a country complete. Such compilations (among which may be mentioned the works of Livy, Diodorus Siculus, Johannes von Müller's History of Switzerland ) are, if well performed, highly meritorious. Among the best of the kind may be included such annalists as approach those of the first-class writers who give so vivid a transcript of events that the reader may well fancy himself listening to contemporaries and eye-witnesses. But it often happens that the individuality of tone which must characterize a writer belonging to a different culture is not modified in accordance with the periods which such a record must traverse. The spirit of the writer may be quite apart from that of the times of which he treats. Thus Livy puts into the mouths of the old Roman kings, consuls, and generals, such orations as would be delivered by an accomplished advocate of the Livian era, and which strikingly contrast with the genuine traditions of Roman antiquity—witness, for example, the fable of Menenius Agrippa. In the same way he gives us descriptions of battles as if he had been an actual spectator; but their salient points would serve well enough for battles in any period, for their distinctness contrasts, even in his treatment of chief points of interest, with the want of connection and the inconsistency that prevail elsewhere. The difference between such a compiler and an original historian may be best seen by comparing Polybius himself with the style in which Livy uses, expands, and abridges his annals in those periods of which Polybius' account has been preserved. Johannes von Müller, in the endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he describes, has given a stiff, formal, pedantic aspect to his history. We much prefer the narratives we find in old Tschudi; all is more naïve and natural than when appearing in the garb of a fictitious and affected archaism.

A history which aspires to traverse long periods of time, or to be universal, must indeed forego the attempt to give individual representations of the past as it actually existed. It must foreshorten its pictures by abstractions, and this includes not merely the omission of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that Thought is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a great victory, a siege no longer maintains its original proportions, but is put off with a mere allusion. When Livy, for instance, tells us of the war with the Volsci, we sometimes have the brief announcement: "This year war was carried on with the Volsci."

2. A second species of Reflective history is what we may call the pragmatical. When we have to deal with the past and occupy ourselves with a remote world, a present rises into being for the mind—produced by its own activity, as the reward of its labor. The occurrences are, indeed, various; but the idea which pervades them-their deeper import and connection—is one. This takes the occurrence out of the category of the past and makes it virtually present. Pragmatical (didactic) reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and indefeasibly of the present, and quicken the annals of the dead past with the life of today. Whether, indeed, such reflections are truly interesting and enlivening depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral reflections must here be specially noticed—the moral teaching expected from history; the latter has not infrequently been treated with a direct view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate the soul and are applicable in the moral instruction of children for impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of people and states, their interests, relations, and the complicated tissue of their affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, statesmen, nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history; yet what experience and history teach is this-that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, nor have they acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events a general principle gives no help.