Part 23 (1/2)
Have we not here an ill.u.s.tration of what is possible and necessary for the historian? Is it not well, before attempting to decide whether history requires an economic interpretation, or a psychological, or any other ultimate interpretation, to recognize that the factors in human society are varied and complex; that the political historian handling his subject in isolation is certain to miss fundamental facts and relations in his treatment of a given age or nation; that the economic historian is exposed to the same danger; and so of all of the other special historians?
Those who insist that history is simply the effort to tell the thing exactly as it was, to state the facts, are confronted with the difficulty that the fact which they would represent is not planted on the solid ground of fixed conditions; it is in the midst and is itself a part of the changing currents, the complex and interacting influences of the time, deriving its significance as a fact from its relations to the deeper-seated movements of the age, movements so gradual that often only the pa.s.sing years can reveal the truth about the fact and its right to a place on the historian's page.
The economic historian is in danger of making his a.n.a.lysis and his statement of a law on the basis of present conditions and then pa.s.sing to history for justificatory appendixes to his conclusions. An American economist of high rank has recently expressed his conception of ”the full relation of economic theory, statistics, and history” in these words:
A principle is formulated by _a priori_ reasoning concerning facts of common experience; it is then tested by statistics and promoted to the rank of a known and acknowledged truth; ill.u.s.trations of its action are then found in narrative history and, on the other hand, the economic law becomes the interpreter of records that would otherwise be confusing and comparatively valueless; the law itself derives its final confirmation from the ill.u.s.trations of its working which the records afford; but what is at least of equal importance is the parallel fact that the law affords the decisive test of the correctness of those a.s.sertions concerning the causes and the effects of past events which it is second nature to make and which historians almost invariably do make in connection with their narrations.[333:1]
There is much in this statement by which the historian may profit, but he may doubt also whether the past should serve merely as the ”ill.u.s.tration” by which to confirm the law deduced from common experience by _a priori_ reasoning tested by statistics. In fact the pathway of history is strewn with the wrecks of the ”known and acknowledged truths” of economic law, due not only to defective a.n.a.lysis and imperfect statistics, but also to the lack of critical historical methods, of insufficient historical-mindedness on the part of the economist, to failure to give due attention to the relativity and transiency of the conditions from which his laws were deduced.
But the point on which I would lay stress is this. The economist, the political scientist, the psychologist, the sociologist, the geographer, the student of literature, of art, of religion--all the allied laborers in the study of society--have contributions to make to the equipment of the historian. These contributions are partly of material, partly of tools, partly of new points of view, new hypotheses, new suggestions of relations, causes, and emphasis. Each of these special students is in some danger of bias by his particular point of view, by his exposure to see simply the thing in which he is primarily interested, and also by his effort to deduce the universal laws of his separate science. The historian, on the other hand, is exposed to the danger of dealing with the complex and interacting social forces of a period or of a country, from some single point of view to which his special training or interest inclines him. If the truth is to be made known, the historian must so far familiarize himself with the work, and equip himself with the training of his sister-subjects that he can at least avail himself of their results and in some reasonable degree master the essential tools of their trade. And the followers of the sister-studies must likewise familiarize themselves and their students with the work and the methods of the historians, and cooperate in the difficult task.
It is necessary that the American historian shall aim at this equipment, not so much that he may possess the key to history or satisfy himself in regard to its ultimate laws. At present a different duty is before him.
He must see in American society with its vast s.p.a.ces, its sections equal to European nations, its geographic influences, its brief period of development, its variety of nationalities and races, its extraordinary industrial growth under the conditions of freedom, its inst.i.tutions, culture, ideals, social psychology, and even its religions forming and changing almost under his eyes, one of the richest fields ever offered for the preliminary recognition and study of the forces that operate and interplay in the making of society.
FOOTNOTES:
[311:1] Annual address as the president of the American Historical a.s.sociation, delivered at Indianapolis, December 28, 1910. Reprinted by permission from _The American Historical Review_, January, 1911.
[313:1] Van Hise, ”Conservation of Natural Resources,” pp. 23, 24.
[316:1] _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1908, vii, p. 745.
[317:1] [Although the words of these early land debates are quoted above in Chapter VI, they are repeated because of the light they cast upon the present problem.]
[321:1] [I have outlined this subject in various essays, including the article on ”Sectionalism” in McLaughlin and Hart, ”Cyclopedia of Government.”]
[322:1] [It is not impossible that they may ultimately replace the State as the significant administrative and legislative units. There are strong evidences of this tendency, such as the organization of the Federal Reserve districts, and proposals for railroad administration by regions.]
[329:1] [See R. G. Wellington, ”Public Lands, 1820-1840”; G. M.
Stephenson, ”Public Lands, 1841-1862”; J. Ise, ”Forest Policy.”]
[333:1] Professor J. B. Clark, in Commons, ed., ”Doc.u.mentary History of American Industrial Society,” I. 43-44.
XIII
MIDDLE WESTERN PIONEER DEMOCRACY[335:1]
In time of war, when all that this nation has stood for, all the things in which it pa.s.sionately believes, are at stake, we have met to dedicate this beautiful home for history.
There is a fitness in the occasion. It is for historic ideals that we are fighting. If this nation is one for which we should pour out our savings, postpone our differences, go hungry, and even give up life itself, it is not because it is a rich, extensive, well-fed and populous nation; it is because from its early days America has pressed onward toward a goal of its own; that it has followed an ideal, the ideal of a democracy developing under conditions unlike those of any other age or country.
We are fighting not for an Old World ideal, not for an abstraction, not for a philosophical revolution. Broad and generous as are our sympathies, widely scattered in origin as are our people, keenly as we feel the call of kins.h.i.+p, the thrill of sympathy with the stricken nations across the Atlantic, we are fighting for the historic ideals of the United States, for the continued existence of the type of society in which we believe, because we have proved it good, for the things which drew European exiles to our sh.o.r.es, and which inspired the hopes of the pioneers.
We are at war that the history of the United States, rich with the record of high human purposes, and of faith in the destiny of the common man under freedom, filled with the promises of a better world, may not become the lost and tragic story of a futile dream.
Yes, it is an American ideal and an American example for which we fight; but in that ideal and example lies medicine for the healing of the nations. It is the best we have to give to Europe, and it is a matter of vital import that we shall safeguard and preserve our power to serve the world, and not be overwhelmed in the flood of imperialistic force that wills the death of democracy and would send the freeman under the yoke.
Essential as are our contributions of wealth, the work of our scientists, the toil of our farmers and our workmen in factory and s.h.i.+pyard, priceless as is the stream of young American manhood which we pour forth to stop the flood which flows like moulten lava across the green fields and peaceful hamlets of Europe toward the sea and turns to ashes and death all that it covers, these contributions have their deeper meaning in the American spirit. They are born of the love of Democracy.