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Selected Texts from Herodotus to Braudel
Index I) Texts by Historians: 1. Greece | 2. Rome | 3. The Jude-Christian Tradition | 4. The Middle Ages | 5. The Renaissance and the Baroque | 6. The Enlightenment | 7. 19th Century and First Half of the 20th Century Note: We are grateful to Professor Donald R. Kelley for his kind permission to publish here some of the texts he published in his Versions of History: from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1991.
Texts By Historians
Herodotus (ca. 495–425 B.C.). "Thus it appears certain to me, by a great variety of proofs, that Cambyses was raving mad; he would not else have set himself to make a mock of holy rites and long-established usages. For if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages far surpass those of all others. Unless, therefore, a man was mad, it is not likely that he would make sport of such matters. That people have this feeling about their laws may be seen by very many proofs." [Herodotus, Histories. In Kelley, Donald R. (1991). Versions of History: from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, p. 26].
Thucydides (ca. 471–400 B.C.). "With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. And with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire and exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time." [Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 34-35].
Polybius (ca. 198–117 B.C.). "Had previous chroniclers neglected to speak in praise of History in general, it might perhaps have been necessary for me to recommend everyone to choose for study and welcome such treatises as the present, since men have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past. But all historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that the surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others. Evidently therefore no one, and least of all myself, would think it his duty at this day to repeat what has been so well and often said. For the element of unexpectedness in the events I have chosen as my theme will be sufficient challenge and incite everyone, young and old alike, to peruse my systematic history. For who is worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government –a thing unique in history? Or who again is there so passionately to other spectacles or studies as to regard anything as of greater moment than the acquisition of this knowledge?" [Polybius, The Histories of Polybius. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 36-37]. ***** "Fortune has guided almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and has forced them to incline towards one and the same end; a historian should likewise bring before his readers under one synoptical view the operations by which she has accomplished her general purpose. Indeed it was this chiefly that invited and encouraged me to undertake my task; and secondarily the fact that none of my contemporaries have undertaken to write a general history, in which case I should have been much less eager to take this in hand. [...] He indeed who believes that by studying isolated histories he can acquire a fairly just view of history as a whole, is, at it seems to me, much in the case of one, who, after having looked at the dissevered limbs of an animal once alive and beautiful, fancies he has been as good as an eyewitness of the creature itself in all its action and grace. [...] For we can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge of the whole and conviction of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit an pleasure from history." [Ibidem, pp. 38-39].
Plutarch (A.D. 45/50–120/127). "I think that I had better make some kind of outlines, and list, in general terms, the indications by which we can determine whether a narrative is written with malice or with honesty and good will. [...] First, then, the man who in his narrative of events uses the severest words and phrases when gentler terms will serve. [...] Secondly, when something is discreditable to a character, but not relevant to the issue, and the historian grasps at it and thrusts it into his account where there is no place for it, drawing out his story and making a detour so as to include someone’s ill-success or foolish unworthy act, there is no doubt that he delights in speaking ill of people. [...] My fourth sign of ill will in history-writing is a preference for the less creditable version, when two or more accounts of the same incident are current. [...] The historian, on the other hand, if he is to be fair, declares as true what he knows to be the case and, when the facts are not clear, says that the more creditable appears to be the true account rather than the less creditable... [...] Furthermore, with respect to the way in which a deed is accomplished, a historian’s narrative is open to the charge of malice if it asserts that the success was won not by valour but by money (as some say of Philip), or easily and without any trouble (as they say of Alexander), or not by intelligence but by the good luck [...] It is evident that writers detract from the greatness and virtue of the deeds when they deny that they were done in a noble spirit or by hard work or by valour or by a man’s own effort..." [Plutarch, On the Malice of Herodotus. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 63-64].
Lucian of Samosata (ca. A.D. 125–200). "History is not of those things than can be put in hand without effort and can be put together lazily, but is something which needs, if anything does in literature, a great deal of thought if it is to be what Thucydides calls ‘a possession for evermore’. [...] The dividing line and frontier between history and panegyric is not a narrow isthmus but rather a mighty wall [...] history cannot admit a lie, even a tiny one, any more than the windpipe, as sons of doctors say, can tolerate anything entering it in swallowing. Again, such writers seem unaware that history has aims and rules different from poetry and poems. In the case of the latter, liberty is absolute and there is one law –the will of the poet... I maintain then that the best writer of history comes ready equipped with these two supreme qualities: political understanding and power of expression; the former is an unteachable gift of nature, while power of expression may come through a deal of practice, continual toil, and imitation of the ancients. These then need no guiding rules and I have no need to advise on them; my book does not promise to make people understanding and quick who are not so by nature..." [Lucian, How to Write History. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 64-65]. ***** "Above all, let him bring a mind like a mirror, clear, gleaming-bright, accurately centered, displaying the shape of things just as he receives them, free from distortion, false colouring, and misrepresentation. His concern is different from that of the orators –what historians have to relate is fact and will speak for itself, for it has already happened: what is required is arrangement and exposition. [...] In general please remember this –I shall repeat again and again–: do not write with your eye just on the present, to win praise and honour from your contemporaries; aim at eternity and prefer to write for posterity: present your bill for your book to them, so that it may be said of you: ‘He was a free man, full of frankness, with no adulation or servility anywhere, but everywhere truthfulness.’ That, if a man were sensible, he would value above all present hopes, ephemeral as they are." [Ibidem, pp. 67-68].
Livy (Titus Livius, ca. 59 B.C.–A.D. 17). "Whether I am likely to accomplish anything worthy of the labour, if I record the achievements of the Roman people from the foundation of the city I do not really know, nor if I knew would I dare to avouch it; perceiving as I do that the theme is not only old but hackneyed, through the constant succession of the new historians, who believe either that in their facts they can produce more authentic information, or that in their style they will probe better than the rude attempts of the ancients. Yet, however this shall be, it will be a great satisfaction to have done myself as much as lies in me to commemorate the deeds of the foremost people of the world; and if in so vast a company of writers my own reputation should be obscure, my consolation would be the fame and greatness of these whose renown will throw mine into the shade. [...] What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that you behold the lessons of every kind of experience set forth as on a conspicuous monument; from these you may choose for yourself and for your own state what to imitate, from these mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result." [Livy, Ab Urbe Condita. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 70-73].
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 B.C.). "In history the standard by which everything is judged is the truth, while in poetry it is generally the pleasure one gives; however, in the works of Herodotus, the Father of History, and those of Theopompus, one finds innumerable fabulous tales." [Cicero, Orator. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 76]. ***** "[The orator] should also be acquainted with the history of the events of the past ages, particularly, of course, of our state, but also of imperial nations and famous kings. [...] To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the record of history? Moreover, the mention of antiquity and the citation of examples give the speech authority and credibility as well as affording the highest pleasure to the audience. [...] And as History, which bears witness to the passing of the ages, sheds light upon reality, gives life to recollection and guidance to human existence, and brings tidings of ancient days, whose voice, but the orator’s, can entrust her to immortality? [...] For who does not know history’s first law to be that an author must make bold to tell anything but the truth? And its second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of malice? [...] Then again the kind of language and type of style to be followed are the easy and the flowing, which run their course with unvarying current and a certain placidity, avoiding alike the rough speech we use in Court and the advocate’s stinging epigrams." [Cicero, De Oratore. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 77-79].
Tacitus, Cornelius (A.D. 56-120). "I think it proper, however, before I commence my purposed work, to pass under review the condition of the capital, the temper of the armies, the attitude of the provinces, and the elements of weakness and strength which existed throughout the whole empire, that so we may become acquainted, not only with the vicissitudes and the issues of events, which are often matters of chance, but also with their relations and their causes." [Tacitus, Annals. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 100].
3. The Judeo-Christian Tradition
Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius, ca. 490-575). "On Christian Historians. In addition to the various writers of treatises, Christian studies also possess narrators of history, who, calm in their ecclesiastical gravity, recount the shifting movements of events and the unstable history of kingdoms with eloquent but very cautious splendour. Because they narrate ecclesiastical matters and describe changes with occur at various times, they must always of necessity instruct the minds of readers in heavenly affairs, since they strive to assign nothing to chance, nothing to the weak power of gods, as pagans have done, but to assign all things to the will of the Creator." [Cassiodorus, Divine and Human Letters. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 137].
Isidore of Seville (ca. 570-636). "Grammas: On history. History is the narration of deeds [res gestae] by which things done in the past are known. In Greek history is derived from see [videre] or know [cognoscere]. According to the ancients, only those wrote history who participated in it, and they wrote only what they had seen. We apprehend by sight better than we learn by hearsay. For things which are seen may be described without exception. This task belongs to grammar, because whatever is worthy of memory must be written down. But the monuments of history are said to be what carry the memory of deeds. Succession [series] comes by derivation from sertis, a wreath of flowers bound together successively. [...] On the use of history. The histories of nations do not deprive readers of useful things. For many wise men included in their histories past deeds of men for the instruction of the present, so that through history the reckoning of past ages and years is understood, and by the succession of consuls and kings many necessary things are made known." [Isidore of Seville, Etymologies. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 141].
Augustine of Hippo (354-430). "But even now it is manifest and clear that there are neither times future nor times past. Thus it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. For these three do coexist somehow in the soul, for otherwise I could not see them. The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation. If we are allowed to speak of these things so, I see three times, and I grant that there are three. Let it still be said, then, as our misapplied custom has it: ‘There are three times, past, present, and future’. I shall not be troubled by it, nor argue, nor object– always provided that what is said is understood, so that neither the future nor the past is said to exist now. There are but few things about which we speak properly –and many more about which we speak improperly– though we understand one another’s meaning." [Augustine, Confessions. Book XI, Chapter XX]. ***** "Further, when the past arrangements of men are recounted in historical narration, we must now consider history itself among those human institutions. For things which have now passed away and cannot be revoked must be considered to be in the order of time, whose Creator and Administrator is God. It is one thing to relate what has been done, but another to teach what should be done. History reports honestly and profitably what has been accomplished. On the other hand, books of the soothsayers and all similar writings endeavour to teach what should be done or heeded, with the presumption of an instructor and not with the reliability of a guide." [Augustine of Hippo, Christian Instruction. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 148].
Bede (673-735). ‘For if history records good things of good men, the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good: or if it records evil of wicked men, the good, religious listener or reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and perverse, and to follow what he knows to be good and pleasing to God. Your Majesty is well aware of this: and since you feel so deeply responsible for the general good of those over whom the divine Providence has set you, you wish that this history may be better know both to yourself and your people. But in order to avoid any doubts as to the accuracy of what I have written in the minds of yourself or of any who may listen to or read this history, allow me briefly to state the authorities upon whom I chiefly depend.’ [Bede, A History of the English Church and People. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 174].
Otto of Freising (d. 1158). "Thus, I think, has been the purpose of all who have written history before us: to extol the famous deeds of valiant men in order to incite the hearts of mankind to virtue, but to veil in silence the dark doings of the base or, if they are drawn into the light, by the telling to place them on record to terrify the minds of those same mortals." [Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 199]. ***** "Even so great a king of the Persians, Ahasuerus or Artaxerxes, although he had not attained to the knowledge of the true light through the worship of the one God, yet, realizing by reason of the nobility of his soul that this was of profit to royal grandeur, commanded that the yearbooks which had been written during his own reign or under his predecessors be examined, and so he gained glory thereby, his purpose being that the innocent should not be punished as if he were guilty and that the guilty should not escape punishment as though he were blameless. [...] For you know that all teaching consists of two things: avoidance and selection. [...] So also the art of the historian has certain things to clear away and to avoid and others to select and arrange properly; for it avoids lies and selects the truth." [Otto of Freising, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 202-204].
Dino Compagni (ca. 1264-1324). "The remembrance of the ancient histories has long stirred my mind to write the events, fraught with danger and ill-fitted to bring prosperity, which the noble city, the daughter of Rome, has for many years undergone, and especially at the time of the Jubilee of the year 1300. However, for many years I excused myself from writing on the ground of my own incompetence, and in the belief that another would write: but at last, the perils having do multiplied, and the outlook having become so significant that silence might no longer be kept concerning them, I determined to write for the advance of those who shall inherit the prosperous years, to the end that they may acknowledge that their benefits are from God, who rules and governs throughout all ages." [Dino Compagni, The Chronicle of Dino Compagni. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 197].
5. The Renaissance and the Baroque
Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540). "Some men write discourses on the future, basing themselves on current events. And if they are informed men, their writings will seem very plausible to the readers. Nevertheless, they are completely misleading. For since one conclusion depends upon the other, if one is wrong, all that are deduced from it will be mistaken. But every tiny, particular circumstance that changes is apt to alter a conclusion. The affairs of this world, therefore, cannot be judged from afar but must be judged and resolved day by day... To judge by example is very misleading. Unless they are similar in every respect, examples are useless, since every tiny difference in the cause may be a cause of great variations in the effects. And to discern these tiny differences takes a good and perspicacious eye... […] Past events shed light on the future. For the world has always been the same, and everything that is and will be, once was; and the same things recur, but with different names and colors. And for that reason, not everyone recognizes them –only those who are wise, and observe and consider them diligently." [Guicciardini, History of Italy. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 298].
Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540). "Hence it appears that History took its rise at once with that of men, because it was thus expedient for the human race. It is well to learn the course of history from the beginning of the world or a people continuously right through their course to the latest time for, then, all is more rightly understood and more firmly retained than if we read it in disconnected parts, in the same way that in a description of the whole world, land and sea are placed before the eyes at a glance. For thus it is easier to see the face of the world and the arrangements of its parts one by one, and to understand how each is placed. [...] Thus we should do as far as the diversity in writers will permit us, by employing the method of chronology, than which nothing is more apt and suitable in the study of history." [Juan Luis Vives, On Education. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 257-258].
Jean Bodin (1530-1596). "Although history has many eulogists, who have adorned her with honest and fitting praises, yet among them no one has commended her more truthfully and appropriately than the man who called her the ‘master of life.’ [...] This, then, is the greatest benefit of historical books, that some men, at least, can be incited to virtue and others can be frightened away from vice. [...] But history is placed above all branches of knowledge in the highest rank of importance and needs the assistance of no tool, not even of letters, since by hearing alone, passed on from one to another, it may be given to posterity. [...] Of History, that is, the true narration of things, there are three different kinds: human, natural and divine. The first concerns man; the second, nature; the third, the Father of nature. One depicts the acts of man while leading his life in the midst of society. The second reveals causes hidden in nature and explains their development from earliest beginnings. The last records the strength and power of Almighty God and of the immortal souls, set apart from all else. In accordance with these divisions arise history’s three accepted manifestations –it is probable, inevitable, and holy– and the same number of virtues are associated with it, that is to say, prudence, knowledge, and faith. The first virtue distinguishes base from honorable; the second, true from false; the third, piety from impiety." [Jean Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 382-386].
Jean Mabillon (1623-1707). "Therefore, those who wish to learn the art of criticizing ancient documents must consider themselves experts only after careful and thorough preparation. For if it is difficult for someone without experience in this field to give an authoritative judgement about one single document, how much more arduous and dangerous will it be for him to judge all kinds of documents if he does not have at his guide that experience which cannot be acquired without long familiarity with documents of this kind?" [Jean Mabillon, On Diplomatics. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 417].
Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-17047). "This kind of universal history is to the history of every country and of every people what a world map is to particular maps. In a particular map you see all the details of a kingdom or a province as such. But a general map teaches you to place these parts of the world in their context; you see what Paris or the Ile-de-France is in the kingdom, what the kingdom is in Europe, and what Europe is in the world. In the same manner, particular histories show the sequences of events that have occurred in a nation in all their detail. Bur in order to understand everything, we must know what connection that history might have with others; and that can be done by a condensation in which we can perceive, as in one place, the entire sequence of time. […] But just as, to help our memory in the knowledge of places, we must retain certain principal towns around which to place the others according to their distance, so also, in the succession of centuries, we must have certain times marked by some great event to which we can relate all the rest. That is what we call an epoch, from a Greek word meaning to stop, because we stop there in order to consider, as from a resting place, all that has happened before or after, thus avoiding anachronisms, that is, the kind of error that confuses ages." [Bossuet, Discourse on Universal History. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 426-427].
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). "By means of these principles of ideas and tongues, that is by means of this philosophy and philology of the human race, he develops an ideal eternal history based on the idea of providence by which, as he shows throughout the work, the natural law of the peoples was ordained. This eternal history is traversed in time by all the particular histories of the nations, each with its rise, development, acme, decline and fall. Thus from the Egyptians, who twitted the Greeks for being always children and knowing nothing of antiquity, he takes and puts to use two great fragments of antiquity. One of these is the division of all preceding time into three ages: the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of men. The other is their reduction of the languages spoken before their time to three types, coeval respectively with the three ages. First, the divine, a dumb language of hieroglyphics or sacred characters. Second, the symbolic, consisting of metaphors as the heroic language did. Third, the epistolographic [demotic], consisting of expressions agreed upon for the everyday uses of life." [Vico, The Autobiography of Giambattista Vico. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 476].
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778). "History, n.f., is the account of things represented as true, as contrasted with fable, which is the account of things represented as false. There is history of opinions, which is only the collection of human errors; a history of the arts, perhaps the most useful of all, when it joins the knowledge of the invention and progress of arts to a description of their working; and natural history, improperly called history and actually an essential part of physical science. The history of events is divided into sacred and profane. Sacred history in an account of divine and miraculous operations by which God was formerly pleased to guide the Jewish nation and today guides our faith. I shall not pursue this respectable matter. [...] On the certitude of history. All certitude which is not from mathematical demonstrations in only extreme probability. There is no historical certitude. [...] Of Cicero’s maxim about history, that the historian should never tell anything false, nor hide the truth. The first part of the precept is incontestable, but we must examine the other. If a truth can be of some use to your state, your silence is condemnable. But supposing that you write the history of a prince who has given you a secret, should you reveal it? Should you tell posterity what you would be wrong to tell one man? Does the duty of the historian outweigh a larger duty?" [Voltaire, "Histoire", in [Denis Diderot], Encyclopédie. In Kelley, op. cit., pp. 442, 445-446].
David Hume (1711-1776). "Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human actions and behaviour." [Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals.In Haddock, B. A. (1980). The Idea of History. London: Edward Arnold, p. 88].
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). "That history is a liberal and useful study, and that the history of our own country is best deserving of our attention, are propositions too clear for argument, and too simple for illustration. Nature has implanted in our breasts a lively impulse to extend the narrow span of our existence, by the knowledge of the events that have happened on the soil which we inhabit, of the characters and actions of those men from whom our descent, as individuals or as a people, is probably derived. The same laudable emulation will prompt us to review, and to enrich our common treasure of national glory: and those who are the best entitled to the esteem of posterity, are the most inclined to celebrate their merits of their ancestors. [...] The English will be ranked among the few nations who have cultivated with equal success the arts of war, of learning, and of commerce." [Gibbon, An Address. In Kelley, op. cit., p. 461].
Herder (Johann Gottfried von Herder, 1744-1803). "In order to feel the whole nature of the soul which reigns in everything, which models after itself all other tendencies and all other spiritual faculties, and colours even the most trivial actions, don not limit your response to a word, but penetrate deeply into this century, this region, this entire history, plunge yourself into it all and feel it all inside yourself. Then only will you be in a position to understand; then only will you give up the idea of comparing everything, in general or in particular, with yourself. For it would be manifest stupidity to consider yourself to be the quintessence of all times and all peoples." [Bernard, F.M., ed., Herder on Social and Political Culture (Cambridge 1969, p. 182). In Haddock, op. cit., p. 96].
7. Nineteenth Century and First Half of the Twentieth Century
Leopold von Ranke (1796-1886). "Every act which is truly part of world history, which never consists solely of negation, but rather is able to engender in the fleeting present moment something for the future, includes within itself a full and immediate sense of its own indestructible value." [Ranke, Weltgeschichte, IX, part 1. In Gadamer, H. G. (2006). Truth and Method. London: Continuum Publishing Group, p. 200]. ***** "Let us admit that history can never have the unity of a philosophical system; but it is not without inner coherence. Before us we see a range of successive events that condition one another. When I say ‘condition’ I do not mean with absolute necessity. Rather, the important thing is that human freedom is involved everywhere. The writing of history follows the scenes of freedom. This is its greatest attraction. But freedom involves power, germinal power. Without the latter the former disappears, both in world events and in the sphere of ideas. At every moment something new can begin, something whose sole origin is the primary and common source of all human activity. Nothing exists entirely for the sake of something else, nothing is entirely identical with the reality of something else. But still a deep inner coherence penetrates everywhere, and no one is entirely independent of it. Beside freedom stands necessity. It consists in what has already been formed and cannot be destroyed, which is the basis of all new activity. What has already come into being coheres with what is coming into being. But even this continuity itself is not something arbitrary to be merely accepted, but it has come into existence in one particular way, and not another. It is, likewise, an object of knowledge. A long series of events –succeeding and simultaneous to one another– linked together in this was constitute a century, an epoch..." [Ranke, Weltgeschichte, IX, part 2. In Gadamer, H. G., op. cit., p. 202].
Jules Michelet (1798-1874). "Forgotten! O terrible word! That a soul should perish among souls! Had not he whom God created for life the right to live at least in the mind? What mortal shall dare inflict, even on the most guilty, this worst of deaths –to be eternally forgotten? No, do not believe it. Nothing is forgotten –neither man nor thing. What once has been, cannot be thus annihilated. The very walls do not forget, the pavement will become accomplice, and convey signs and noises; the air will not forget. [...] Yes, each dead person leaves a little goods, his memory, and demands that someone take care of it. For him who has no friends, a magistrate must care for it. For the law, justice is more certain than all our forgetful tendernesses, our tears so quickly dried. This magistrate is History... Never have I in my whole career lost sight of this, the Historian’s duty. I have given to many of the dead too soon forgotten the aid of which I myself will have need. I have exhumed them for a second life (159) [...] Past is never a given fact which he [the historian] can apprehend empirically by perception. [...] The historian must re-enact the past in his own mind." [Michelet, History of the French Revolution. In White, H. (1975). Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 156, 159].
Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903). "The distinction between ancient and modern history, therefore, is no mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chronological convenience. What is called modern history is in reality the formation of a new cycle of culture, connected in several stages of its development with the perishing or perished civilization of the Mediterranean states, as this was connected with the primitive civilization of the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like the earlier cycle, to traverse an orbit of its own. It too is destined to experience in full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, the periods of growth, of maturity, and of afe, the blessedness of creative effort in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the material and intellectual acquisitions which it has won, perhaps also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of contentment with the goal attained. And yet this goal wil only be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit, and may complete its course but not so the human race, to which, just when it seems to have reached its goal, the old task is ever set anew with a wider range and with a deeper meaning." [Mommsen, T. (2008). The History of Rome, Vol. 1. San Diego: Icon Classics, pp. 12-13].
R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943). "Historical knowledge is the knowledge of what mind has done in the past, and at the same time it is the redoing of this, the perpetuation of past acts in the present. Its object is therefore not a mere object, something outside the mind which knows it; it is an activity of thought, which can be known only in so far as the knowing mind re-enacts it and knows itself as so doing. To the historian, the activities whose history he is studying are not spectacles to be watched, but experiences to be lived through in his own mind; they are objective, or known to him, only because they are also subjective, or activities of his own. [...] Past is never a given fact which he [the historian] can apprehend empirically by perception. [...] The historian must re-enact the past in his own mind." [Collingwood, R. G. (1986). The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 218, 282].
Marc Bloch (1886-1944). "No one today, I believe, would dare say, with the orthodox positivists, that the value of a line of research is to be measured by its ability to promote action. Experience has taught us that it is impossible to decide in advance whether even the most abstract speculations may not eventually prove extraordinarily helpful in practice. It would inflict a strange mutilation upon humanity to deny it a right to appease its intellectual appetites apart from all consideration of its material welfare. Even were history obliged to be eternally indifferent to homo faber or homo politicus, it would be sufficiently justified by its necessity for the full flowering of homo sapiens." [Bloch, M. (1992). The Historian’s Craft. Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 8]. ***** "For history in not only a science in movement. Like all those which have the human spirit for their object, this newcomer in the field of rational knowledge is also a science in its infancy. Or to explain more fully, having grown old in embryo as mere narrative, for long encumbered with legend, and for still longer preoccupied with only the most obvious events, it is still very young as a rational attempt at analysis. Now, at last, it struggles to penetrate beneath the mere surface of actions, rejecting not only the temptations of legend and rhetoric, but the still more dangerous poisons of routine learning and empiricism parading as common sense. In several of the most essential problems of method, it has passed beyond the first tentative gropings, and that is why Fustel de Coulanges and, even before him, Bayle came very near the truth when they called it ‘the most difficult of all sciences." [Ibidem, pp. 11-12].
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.). "It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen, –what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with metre no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of given character will on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages." [Aristotle, Poetics. In Butcher, S. H. ed. (2008). The Poetics of Aristotle. BiblioBazaar, LLC, p. 35].
Francis Bacon (1561-1626). "[The historian’s task was] to carry the mind in writing back into the past, and bring it into sympathy with antiquity; diligently to examine, freely and faithfully to report, and by the light of words to place as it were before the eyes, the revolutions of times, the characters of persons, the fluctuations of counsels, the courses and currents of actions, the bottoms of pretences, and the secrets of governments." [Spedding, J.; Ellis, R.L. and Heath, D.D., eds., The Works of Francis Bacon (14 vols., London, 1858-74), vol. IV, p. 7. In Haddock, op. cit., p. 27].
René Descartes (1596-1650). "I thought by now that I have spent enough labour on the study of ancient languages, on the Reading of ancient authors, and on their histories and narratives. To live with men of an earlier age is like travelling in foreign hands. It is useful to know something of the manners of the other peoples in order to judge more impartially of our own, and not despise and ridicule whatever differs from them, like men who have never been outside their native country. But those who travel too long end by being strangers in their own homes, and those who study too curiously the actions of antiquity are ignorant of what is done among ourselves to-day. Moreover these narratives tell of things which cannot have happened as if they had really taken place, and thus invite us to attempt what is beyond out powers or to hope for what is beyond our fate. And even histories, true though they be, and neither exaggerating nor altering the value of things, become more worthy of a reader’s attention; hence the things which they describe never happened exactly as they describe them, and men who try to model their own acts upon them are prone to the madness of romantic paladins and meditate hyperbolical deeds." [Descartes. Paragraph on history in the first part of the Discourse on Method. In Collingwood, op. cit., p. 59].
Hegel (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831). "That world history is governed by an ultimate design, that it is a rational process... this is a proposition whose truth we must assume; its proof lies in the study of world history itself, which is the image and enactment of reason." "World history is the record of the spirit's efforts to attain knowledge of what it is in itself. The Orientals do not know that the spirit or man as such are free in themselves. And because they do not know that, they are not themselves free. They only know that One is free.... The consciousness of freedom first awoke among the Greeks, and they were accordingly free; but, like the Romans, they only knew that Some, and not all men as such, are free.... The Germanic nations, with the rise of Christianity, were the first to realize that All men are by nature free, and that freedom of spirit is his very essence." "World history... represents the development of the spirit's consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realization of that freedom." [Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. In Nisbet, H. B. (Trans.) (1974). Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 28, 54, 138].
Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873). "History may truly be defined as a famous War against Time; for she doth take from him the Years that he had made Prisoner, or rather utterly slain, and doth call them back into Life, and pass them in Review, and set them again in Order to Battle. But those braw Champions, that in such Lists doth reap the Harvests of Palms and of Laurels, may carry off in their Nief only the most pompous and grandiloquent of their Spoils, embalming in their Inks the Enterprises of Princes and Powers and such qualified Personages, and embroidering with the most delicate Needle of Wit the Threads of God and of Silk, that form a perpetual Tapestry of glorious Actions." [Manzoni, A. (1972). The Betrothed. London: Penguin Classics, p. 19, “Foreword”]. ***** "It might not be out of place to mention that history sometimes also uses the verisimilar, and can do so harmlessly if it uses it properly and presents it as such, thereby distinguishing it from the real. It can do this without impairing the narrative unity, for the simple reason that the verisimilar does not really try to become part of the narrative. It is merely suggested, advanced, considered, in short, not narrated on the same level as or melded with real facts, as is the case in the historical novel... When the mind becomes aware of information that arouses its interest but that is fragmentary or lacking crucial details, it tends to invoke the ideal... History, at such moments, I would say, abandons narrative, but only in order to produce a better narrative. As much when it conjectures as when it narrates, history points to the real; there lies its unity." [Manzoni, A. (1984). On the Historical Novel. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 36-37.]
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). "History lacks the fundamental characteristic of science, namely the subordination of the objects of consciousness; all it can do is to present a simple co-ordination of the facts it has registered. Hence there is no system in history as there is in the other sciences... The sciences, being systems of cognitions, speak always of kinds; history always on individuals. History, therefore, would be a science of individuals, which implies a self-contradiction." [Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (3rd edn., 1859), vol ii, pp. 499-509, Über Geschichte. In Collingwood, op. cit., p. 167].
Karl Marx (1818-1883). "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development, of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead, sooner or later, to the transformation of the whole, immense, superstructure."
Benedetto Croce (1866-1952). "History, therefore, not only may not separate facts into good and bad and periods into progressive and regressive, but only begins when the psychological conditions that permit such antitheses have been overcome and substituted by an act of the spirit that tries to discover what function the fact or period that was earlier condemned has played in the development of history; or what it has brought to that development, and thus produced; and, since all facts and periods are productive in their way, not only is none of them to be condemned in the light of history, but are to be praised and venerated." [Croce, B. (1927). Teoria e storia della storiografia. Bari: Laterza, p. 78. In Gladfelder, H. (1993). “Seeing Black: Alessandro Manzoni between Fiction and History”. MLN, vol. 108, no. 1, p. 67.] ***** "If the course of history is not a movement from evil to good, nor an alternation of good and evil, but a movement from good to better; if history must explain and not condemn; it will pronounce only positive judgments, and will forge chains of good, closely linked and secure enough to prevent the insertion of the smallest link of evil or the opening of empty spaces." [Croce, B. op. cit, p. 75. In Gladfelder, H., op. cit., p. 68.] |
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