ow to Read andUnderstand History

The Past as the Key to the FutureBy BERTRAND RUSSELL

How!oUnderstand

nd·s!ory

The Past as the Key to the FutureBy BERTRAND RUSSELl

BERTRAND RUSSELL'S CAREER

Trinity College, Cambridge. Fellow, 1895-1901. Lecturer,1910-1916. Visiting Professor at Harvard, 1914. Professor atGovernment University of Peking, 1920-21. Lecturer at Cam­bridge, 1926. Special lecturer at the London School of Eco­nomics and Political Science, 1937, and the University ofOxford, 1938. Visiting professor of philosophy at the Univer­sity of Chicago, 1938-39. Professor of philosophy at the Uni­versity of California at Los Angeles, 1939-40. Fellow of theRoyal Society. Nicholas Murray Butler Medal of ColumbiaUniversity, 1915. Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society, 1932.De Morgan Medal of the London Mathematical Society. 1932.

HALDEMAN-JULIUS PURl tc TIOGIRARD KA

Copyright, 1943By E. Haldeman-Jullus

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BERTRAND RUSSFLl

·How 1:0 Read and Undersl:and

Hisl:ory

It is not of history as a subject of academic instruction that I wishto wrue. The newspapers say that the young do not know enough his­tory when they leave school; the young, after cramming for exam­ina.ions, feel .hat they know too much, and set to work to forget whatthey have learnt as soon as possible. In universities, professional histo­rians give lectures of two kinds: survey courses, which are rememberedonly long enough to secure credits, and advanced courses for those whomean to spend their lives teaching history to people who will teachhistory to ... All this is no doube very valuable. but it is not the subjectof this essay. My subject is history as a pleausre, as an agreeable andprofitable way of spending such leisure as an exacting world may permit.I am not a professional historian, but I have read much history as anamateur. M:; purpose is to try to say what I have derived from history,and what rua ny others, I am convinced. could derive without aiminga t becoming specialists.

No in I: l i -st place, if history is not necessary to your career.there is no poin: in reading it unless you enjoy it and find it interest­ill'~. I do not mean that the only point of history is to give pleasure-s­far from it. It has many other uses, which I shall try to explain in thecourse of this essay. But it will not have these uses except for thosewho enjoy it. The same is true of such things as music and paintingand poetry. To study these things either because you must, or becauseyou wish to be cultured, makes it almost impossible to acquire whatthey have to offer. Shakespeare wrote with a view to causing delight,and if you have any feeling for poetry he will delight you. But if hedoesn't vou had better let him alone. It is a dismal thing to inflict hImupon school children until they hate the sound of his name; it is aninsult to him and an injury to them. The opportunity to enjoy himshould be offered to them, and will frequently be successful if it takesthe shape of performing a play: but those to whom he is merely a boreshould be allowed to occupy their time in some other way. History isno' quite in the same case, became a modicum of history must be taughtin schools. But whatever goes beyond this modicum should only belearnt by those who wish to know it, and even the modicum ought to bemade as entertaining and pleasant as possible. Most children wish toknow things un il they go to school; in many cases it is bad teachingthat makes them stupid and uninquiring.

There is history in the large and history in the small: each hasits value, but their values are different. History in the large helps usto understand how the world developed into what it is; history in thesmall makes us know interesting men and women, and promotes aknowledge of human nature. Both should be learnt concurrently fromthe first. The method, in the early stages, should be largely by movieswith explanatory talk.

History in the large answers (as far as may be) the question "howdid things get here?" which is Interesting to most intelligent children.It should begin with the sun throwing off planets, and should show theearth as a fiery ball. gradually cooling, with earthquakes, volcanoes,boiling seas and deluges of hot rain. Then gradually the various forms

HOW TO READ AND UNDERSTAND HISTORY

of life should be shown in the order of their appearance-forests offerns, flowers and bees, odd fishes, vas' reptiles fighting furious battlesin the slime, awkward birds just learning to fly, mammals, small atfirst, but gradually growing bigger and more successful. Then comesearly man-Pithecanthropus Erectus, the Piltdown man, the Neander­thal man, the Cro-Magnon man. He should be shown flying from wildbeasts to the tops of trees, discovering fire and thereby acquiring safetyin caves, escaping from sabre-toothed tigers into lake-dwellings, catch­ing mammoths in pits, gradually perfecting his weapons and makinghimself. by Intelligence, not strength, the Lord of Creation.

Then comes the beginning of civilization-agriculture in the NileValley and in Babylonia, the growth of the art of pottery, the evolutionfrom stone to bronze, and thence, at last, to iron. At the same timecould be shown the first civilized governments and religions-Egyptiankings and their pyramids and toiling slaves, mysterious dark templeslit up only once a year by the rising sun at the summer solstice, armiesand the pomp of palaces. All this, in pictures, would delight almost anychild. and would bring him, by easy stages, to the point where recordedhistory begins.

There is one aspect of history in the large in which there has beenenormous increase In our knowledge during the last hundred years-Imean the history of the very earliest civilizations. This subject has agreat deal of fascination. both in itself, and because of the detectiveability that it calls for. The first great step was the deciphering ofcueiform, the writing of the Babylonians and Persians. Through tabletsthat have been excavated, a great deal Is now known about the lawsand customs and business methods of ancient Mesopotamia. Then thereis the astonishing Minoan civilization of Crete, of which in classicalGreece only a few legends survived. Unfortunately the Cretan scriptcannot, so far, be read, but from architecture and sculpture a great dealcan be learnt. It seems that the Cretan upper classes were luxuriousand rather decadent, fond of bull fights in which they employed femaletoreadors who performed the most astonishing acrobatic feats. It isonly in modern times that nations have discovered how to be civilizedwithout being decadent. The Cretans, rendered effeminate by luxury,appear to have been swept away by Greek pirates, who were then stillbarbarians. But for the victories of the Greeks over the Persians amillennium or more after the fall of Crete, Greek civilization might havedisappeared as completely as that of the Minoan age.

Thc history of the development of arts and crafts, in its broadoutlmes. can be made interesting to very young children if it is pre­senteri in pictures with explanatory talk. The development of housing,of locomotion, or ships, and of agriculture is worth knowing somethingabout before any detailed study of history begins; it gives a generalsense of technical progress, slow at first. and then gradually more andmore rapid, and it helps to form an imaginative picture of daily life inepochs very remote from our own. The part played by great rivers mthe beginning of civilization is something which an intelligent childof six or seven years old can understand. It is a mistake to begin educa­tion entirely from what is familiar; children have more free imaginationthan adults have, and they enjoy imaginative pictures of things verydifferent from what they are used to. This is shown in the pleasurethat almost all children find in playing Indian.

The later stages of history in the large are, in the main, less suitablefor very young children than the earlier stages; probably, in most cases,they ought to wait until about the age of ten. It could then be explainedthat there have been three great ages of progress: the first, when agri­culture was discovered, when kings became powerful and States beganto grow. when vast buildings were erected in honor of kings and gods,when the art of writ in" was invented. the Babylonians discovered therudiments of mathematics, and the arts of peace and war passed outof the barbarian stage. Next. after thousands of years of ossification.

WW TO k>:AD A. D l DERSTA. D HISTORY

came the rea t 0 G"' ec e. from he time of Homer (whenever thatwas) to the de. A'"" i.medr-s at the hands of a Roman soldier. Thenanother Ion ) " . ,. a id d rkne S, followed by the incrediblyrapid progr '5 h C rturv a the present day. Throughoutrecorded hi o: been he exception, not the rule: but whenIt has come. hiland deci ive.

Throug 10 .', er ain important principles should emergewithout be in e. IP I. si ed. Periods of stagnation are thoseduring which . c. ctu I' feol powerless; periods of progress are thoseduring whl h n nih great achievements are possible. and thatthey wish to ha e 'Ie r rare. There has been In r cent times a dan­gerous tendency. no unconnected with totalitarianism, to think only Interms of whole communities, and to Ignore the contributions of Indi­viduals. But consid r: some man or men invented the Wheel, but Inthe American Con i1ent It was unknown until the white men introducedit. Probabli it not one man who made the Invention, but severalmen, startin 1 r rot nd lozs used as rollers; however that may be,the dilferen ~ the e men made to civilization is Immeasurable.The need of ;1 I enlus is shown by the fact that the Mayas andthe Incas ho re 'ays highly civilized, never hit upon this sim-ple invenr: 1 crenee between our world and the world beforethe indu m Is d e to the discoveries and inventions of asmall nun. . ) if, by some misfortune, a few thousand men ofexception J hI perished in infancy, the technique of productionwould nov . f different from what it was in the 18th Century.Individuals ca . great things and the teacher of history oughtto make 'h.- J .s pupils. For without hope nothing 01 import-ance i accui '!J

History sho at the spread of civilization to new areas, as opposedto its intensification in a given region, has usually been due to militaryconquest. When a more civilized group conquers one which is less civil­lzed, the conquered, if they are not too far beneath their conquerors,learn before long whatever their masters have to teach. But the con­verse also happens: when the conquerors are less civilized, if the warof conquest has not been too long or too destructive, they are apt tolearn from their bjects. Greek civilization was diffused throughoutthe East by Alexander's victorie. , but throughout the West by the defeatsinflicted on the Gr ek by the Romans. Gaul and Spain were civilizedby becoming sub er to Rome; the Arabs, conversely, "ere civilized byconquering the E er par IOns of the Roman Empire. But althoughconquest has had, r at effect in increasing the area of civilization. ithas usually dam, e it quality. Greece was less clvUized arter Alexan­der than before, ,. Ron e 1 a never as civilized as Greece had been.

Some of tho e I a -rite hi tory m the large are actuated by adesire to demon tr te ome' philosophy" of history; they think theyhave discovered on formula according to which human events develop.The most notable re Hegel, Marx, Spengler, and the Interpreters ofthe Great Pyramid nd i . "divine message." Various huge tomes (someof which I have po d have been written about the Great Pyramid,show ing that it pre dieted the main outlines of history from the timewhen it was built to the dote of publication of the tome in question.Soon after that date, there was to be fighting in Egypt, the Jews wereto return to Palestine, and then there was to be the Second Coming andthe end of the world. There has been fighting In Egypt, and the Jewsare retruinlng to Palestine, so the situation Is alarming. However,there are still a good many Jews outside Palestine, so perhaps themessage of the C a, Pvramid Is not for the immediate future.

Hegel's theorv 0 'ory is not a whit less fantastic. According tohim, there is orne hin. called "The Idea," which Is always strugglingto become The Ab . e Idea. The Idea embodies Itself first in onenation, then in anu hPI". It began with China, but finding it couldn'tzet verv far there. ir migrated to India Then It tried the Greeks and

HOW TO READ A.'D U. DERSTA. D HISTORY

then the Romans. It \\ as very pleased with Alexander and Caesar-c-it isnoteworthy that it always prefers military men to intellectuals. Butafter Caesar it began to think there was nothing more to be done withthe Romans. so after hesitating for four centuries or so It decided onthe Germans. whom it has loved ever since, and still loved in the timeof Hegel. However, their dominance is not to be eternal. The Ideaalways travels westward, and after leaving Germany it will migrate toAmerica, where is will inspire a great war between the United Statesand Latin America, After that, if it continues to travel westward, Isuppose it will reach Japan, but Hegel does not say so. When it hastravelled round the world, the Absolute Idea wll! be realized, and man­kind will be happy ever after. The Absolute Idea corresponds to theSecond Coming.

It is odd that this fantastic theory-just as absurd. in its way. athe superstition about the Great Pyramid-should have been acceptedas the acme of wisdom by innumerable professors, not only in Germany.where it appeals to national vanity, but in England and America, whereit has no such adventitious advantage. What is stll! more surprising Isthat it underlies the doctrine of Marx, which is lauded by his disciplesas the last word in all that is scientific. Marx made, it is true, a fewchanges: the "Idea" was replaced by the mode of production, thesuccessive nations embodying the Idea were replaced by successiveclasses. But there was still the old mythological machinery, The Com­munist Revolution replaced the Second Coming, the dictatorship of theproletariat represented the rule of the saints, the Socialist Common­wealth was the emotional substitute for the millennium. Like the earlyChristians, Marx expected the mll!ennium very soon; like their succes­sors, his have been disappolnted--once more, the world has shown itselfrecalcitrant to a tidy formula embodying the hopes of some section ofmankind.

But not all general formulae professing to sum up the course 01past and future history are optimistic, Spengier has revived in ourday the Stoics' doctrine of recurring cycles, which, if taken seriously,reduces all human effort to complete futility. According to Spengler.there are a series of civilizations, each repealing in considerable detailthe pattern of its predecessors, each rising slowly to maturity and thcnsinking into inevitable decay; the decay of our civilization began In1914, and nothing that we can do will arrest the march of our worldtowards senility. This theory, fortunately, is as groundless as it isgloomy. The previous cycles require a very artificial arrangement ofhistory, with too much emphasis on some facts and too little on others.Even if this were not the case, the instances of past civillzalions aretoo few to warrant an induction. And it ignores the qualitative noveltiesintroduced by science, as well as the quantitative novelty resultingfrom the world-wide character of modern wars, involving the possibilityof a world-wide domination of the victors. Thc Preacher said there Isno new thing under the sun, but he would not have said so lf he couldhave seen a large power station or a battle in the stratosphere. Thesethings, it must be confessed, might not have prevented him from saying"ail is vanity," but that is a different question.

There are things to be learnt from history. but they are not simplegeneral formulae. which can only be made plausible by missing outhalf the facts. The men who make up philosophies of history may bedismissed as inventors of mythologies, There remain two very differentfunctions that history can perform, On the one hand it may seek forcomparatively small and humble generalizations such is might form abeginning of a science (as opposed to a philosophy I of history. On theother hand. it can, by the study of individuals, seek to combine themerits of drama or epic poetry with the merit of truth. I am not pre­pared to put either of these two functions above the other, They arevery different, they appeal to different types of mind, and they demandrlifferent methods. Onr- mig ht take "Midrlletown" and Plutarch's Lives

HOW TO READ A:-In tmnERSTA.·n HISTORY

as illustrative of the two types of history. I should not wish to bedeprived of either. but the satisfactions that they offer are as farasunder as the poles. The one views man objectively, as the heavenlybodies are viewed by an astronomer; the other appeals to imagination.and aims at giving us the kind of knowledge of men that a practicedhorseman has of horses-a knowledge felt rather than expressed, whichit would be impossible to translate into the language of science, butwhich is none the less useful in practical affairs.

Scientific history is a modern invention. Let us therefore leave Itaside for the present, and consider what is to be gal ed by readingsome of the great historians of the past.

Herodotus. who is called the Father of History, is worth readingfor a number of reasons. In the first place, he is full of amusing stories.Almost at the beginning of the book, there is the story of the vain kingCandaules, who regretted that no one but himself knew fully the beautyof his Queen, for which he wished to be envied. So he hid his PrimeMinister Gyges behind a curtain, where he would see the Queen goingnaked to the bath. But she saw his feet sticking out. and complainedthat he had offered her a mortal indignity. Then and there she madehim a speech: "Only two courses are open to you to expiate youroffense," she said, "either you must die the death, or you must kill theKing and marry me." Gyges had no difficulty in making his choice.and became the founder of the dynasty that ended with Croesus.Hedodotus is full of such stories, from which he is not deterred by anyscruples as to the dignity of history. Nor does respect for fact causehim to abstain from drama; the account of the defeat of Croesus byCyrus is a fascinating tale, though obviously in part legend rather thanhistory.

To anyone who enjoys anthropology, Herodotus is interesting fromhis description of various barbarian customs as they existed in his day.Sometimes he is merely repeating travellels' tales, but very often he isconfirmed by modern research. His survey of the nations and racesknown to him is leisurely and ample, and affords an admirable intro­duction to the ancient world for a previously ignorant reader.

The main theme of his history is the conflict of Europe and Asia,culminating, for his time, in the defeats of the Persians at Marathonarid Salamis. Throughout all the subsequent centuries this swayingbattle has continued. Salamis marked the end of the westward expan­sion of the Asiatics in Greek times; then came European conquest ofAsia by the Macedonians and Romans, culminating in the time ofTrajan, and followed by a long period of Asiatic ascendency. Limits wereset to the extent of Asiatic conquest by the defeat of Attila at Chalons inthe 5th Century and of the Moors at Tours in the 8th; the last greatAsiatic victory was the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. In subse­quent centuries, Europe had unquestioned superiority through scientifictechnique; the first sign of a contrary movement was the defeat ofRussia by the Japanese in the war of 1904-5. How far this contrarymovement will go it is impossible to guess, for, though Japan will nodoubt be defeated, China and India will succeed to it as champions ofAsia. All these vast secular movements come within the frameworksuggested by Herodotus.

Thucydides, the second of the great htstorlans, has a smaller themethan that of Herodotus. but treats it with more art and also with amore careful regard for accuracy. His subject is the conflict of Athensand Sparta in the Peloponnesian war. His history, as Cornford haspointed out, is modeled on Greek tragedy: Athens, his own beloved city,which was finally defeated. is like the typical hero, driven by Fate andoverween ing pnde to a disastrous but not inglorious end. His writingis severe. and confined strictly to what is relevant; there are no gossipydigressions. and there is little that is amusing. But there is a presenta­tion, full of epic grandeur, of the spectacle of men driven by Destinyinto folly, choosing wrongly over and over again when a right choice

HOI\' 1 () RFAll A. D UNDERSTAND HISTOltY

woul.. n I e brought victory, becoming wicked through exasperation,and lllru; at last into irretrievable ruin. The theme is one thatappealed LO he Greek mind. A great impersonal Power, called indiffer­ently Fate or Justice or Necessity, ruled the world, and was superiorto the gods. Whatever person or country or thing overstepped theordained boundaries suffered the punishment of pride. This was thereal reli ion of the Greeks, and Thucydides in his history maanincentlyillustrated It.

Plutarch, ever since the renaissance, has been the most influentialof ancient historians, not indeed among the" riters on hi tory. for heis by no means reliable, but among practical state men and politicaltheorist. To take only two examples: Rousseau and Alexander Hamiltonowed the bent of their minds largely to him; his maxims supplied Rous­. eau with doctrine, and his heroes supplied Hamilton with ambitions.A reader to whom he has hitherto been merely a great name is likelyto be surprised to find that he is an easy-going gossipy writer, "thocannot resist a good story, and except in a few instances is quite willingto relate and even exaggerate the weaknesses of his heroes. He tellsfor ins ance how Mark Antony, "hen he was already an importantofficial, gave offense by travelling everywhere with a third-rate actress,"hom he inflicted even upon the most rigidly respectable provincials.(This was before he had reached the point at which he could aspire toQueens.) He tells how Caesar, as a young man, got into trouble forreading a love-letter from Brutus's mother during a meeting of theSena te, where no one was allowed to read anything. And then he goeson to portray Caesar in the aspect of slightly ridiculous pomposity thatShakespeare has preserved. His heroes are not statuesque figures ofperfection; they are concrete men, who could have existed even ifthey never in fact did.

There are many admirable ways of writing history; three of themare illustrated by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch; a fourth is illus­trated by Gibbon. Gibbon, it must be admitted, has grave defects. Hiserudition, by modern standards, is inadequate; his characters, evenwhen they are barbarians, have an 18th Century flavor, like Voltaire'scannibals; princes, wars, and politics crowd out common men andeconomic facts more than the modern reader could wish. But when allthis is allowed he remains both a great and a delightful writer.

His wit and irony-partciularly when he uses them to contemnsuperstition-are inimitable. But his chief virtue is that, although hisportraits of individuals are often disappointing, his sense of the marchof great events is sure and unerring. No one has ever presented thepageant of history better than he has done. To treat in one book thewhole period from the 2nd Century to the 15th was a colossal under­taking, but he never lost sight of the unity of his theme. or of the propor­tions to be preserved among its several parts. This req uired a graspof a great whole which is beyond the power of most men, and which,for all hi shortcomings, puts Gibbon in the first rank among historians,

But it is not enough to read the great histor.ians; much that isimportant, much that is delightful and amusing, is only to be discov­ered by discursive reading of biographies and memoir. The professorsmust not prevent us from realizing that history is full of fun. and thatthe most bizarre things really happen. I have found that the greatestpleasures to be derived from history come only after one knows someperiod rather 'ell, for then each new fact fits into i s place in thejig-saw puzzle. Until one knows much intimate detail about a prominentman, if i impos ible to judge whether he was really as great as heappear or not. Some great men beeome greater the more they arestudio r: I should men ion Spinoza and Lincoln as instances, Napoleon,on tl' 0 her hand, becomes, at close quarters, a ridiculous figure.Perhaj sit, as no his fault that on the night of his wedding to Jose­phine her pug-dog bit him in the calf as he was getting into bed, buton many occasions on which he appeared in an unfavorable light the

HUll' ro l<I<:All A.'lJ uxuenst -\1'11) lllSTlJl(\

whole blame was clearly his, In the course of one of his many quarrelswith Talleyrand, he twitted his foreign secretary with being a crippleand having an unfaithful wife; after he was gone, Talleyrand shruggedhis shoulders, turned to the bystanders, and remarked: "What a pitythat such a great man should have such bad manners:' His marriageto Marie Louise was celebrated by proxy, and he travelled to the frontiersof France to meet her, A magnificent ceremonial was arranged, includ­ing a state banquet at which all the great men and grand ladies inNapoleon's orbit were to be present, The dinner-hour came; it passed,and still the Emperor and Empress did not appear. The Court Cham­berlain was in perplexity and despair. At last. by discreet inquiries. hediscovered that Napoleon could not wait till after dinner to enjoy thefavors of an Emperor's daughter. The Czar Alexander took his measure.and deceived him completely by pretending to be a simple-mindedyouth. At the height of his apparent friendship with Napoleon, hewrote to his mother to say, "he laughs best who laughs last." In thccorrespondence of the two Emperors. all the skill is on the side ofAlexander, all the bombast on the side of Napoleon. It is a pity thathistorians have failed to emphasize the ridiculous sides of Napoleon,[or he became a myth and a legend, inspiring admiration of militaryconquest and the cult of the military superman, His effect was partic­ularly bad on the Germans, who at the same time admired him andwished for revenge on account of the humliations which he had infiictedon them. If they could have laughed at him, they could have had theirrevenge at less cost to mankind.

The meetings of eminent men of very different types are oftenam using and sometimes surprising. No two men could have been fur­ther apart than Robert Owen and the Czar Nicholas. Robert Owen wasthe founder of Socialism, a passionate Atheist, and during part of hislife a subversive agitator. Nicholas was a ferocious tyrant, whose reignwas one of black reaction; it was he who sent Dostoyevsky to Siberiaand Bakunin to the prison of Peter and Paul. One would not haveexpected these two men to like one another, and yet their one and onlymeeting was most cordial; it is true it took place before Nicholas hadbecome an Emperor and Owen a Socialist. Nicholas travelled all theway to New Lanark in Scotland to visit Owen's model factory, saw every­thing, approved everything, and invited the philanthropist to foundsimilar factories in Russia. Owen was so charmed that he gave all hisplate to his distinguished visitor-to the no small indignation of Mrs.Owen. What they thought of each other in later life history does notrecord.

On the other hand. Goethe and Beethoven, who might have beenexpected to like each other, did not, because, when the composer visitedthe poet at Weimar, the poet tried to give instruction as to court eti­quette. and Beethoven indignantly insisted on behaving as he chose.

A great deal of nonsense has been written about Aristotle andAlexander, because, as both were great men, and Aristotle was Alex­ander's tutor, it is supposed that the tutor must have greatly influencedthe pupil. Hegel goes so far as to say that Alexander's career showsthe value of philosophy, since his practical wisdom may be attributedto his teacher. In fact there is not the faintest evidence that Aristotlehad any effect at all on Alexander, who hated his father, and wasrebellious against everyone whom his father set in authority over him.There are certain letters professing to be from Alexander to Aristotle,but they are generally considered spurious. In fact, the two menignored each other. While Alexander was conquering the East, andcausing the era of City States to be succeeded by that of great empires,Aristotle continued to write treatises on polities which never mentionedwhat was taking place. but discussed minutely the constitutions ofvarious cities which were no longer important. It is a mistake tosuppose that great men who are contemporaries are likely to be quickto recognize each other's greatness; the opposite happens much more

110\\ ro RE. 0 A. IJ L". DERSIA.·O IlISTOR\ 11

frequently. Voltaire and Frederick the Great. after a brief frtendship,became bitter enemies. Frederick wrote French verses which Voltairepraised insufficiently; Voltaire made fun of Maupertuis, \I hom Frederickhad made perpetual President of the Berlin Academy; and finally Vol­taire fled to France carrying with him a manuscript volume of Fred­erick's lampoons on Madame de Pompadour. After these events, Vol­taire's penchant for monarchs vented itself in adulation of Catherinethe Great.

History Is invaluable in increasing our knowledge of human nature,because it shows how people may be expected to behave in new situa­tions. Many prominent men and women are completely ordinary Incharacter, and only exceptional in their circumstances. The behaviorof the ordinary married woman is closely circumscribed by prudentialconiderations. She wishes to be more respected than her neighbors;she must not bring disgrace on her husband for fear of loss of Income;she cannot lll-treat her children in any overt way, for fear of getting abad name. There have, however, been a few women who could do asthey chose; they were Empresses regnant. If they are to be taken asshowing what women would do if they dared, we ought to be thankfulfor social restraints. Most of them have murdered or imprisoned theirsons, and often their husbands; almost all have had innumerable lovers.Catherine the Great-"The Semiramis of the North," as Voltaire calledher-when she grew too old and fat had to pay her lovers enormoussalaries. Even then they would attempt to fly across the frontier, but Ifthey were caught it was the worse for them. It is interesting to speculateas to which of our respectable neighbors would behave In this way ifthey \I ere Empresses.

As soon as you know the general outline of history of some period,i becomes agreeable and profitable to read the letters and memoirs ofhe time. Not only do they contain much intimate detail which makes

i possible to realize that the men concerned really lived, but there isthe advantage that the writers did not know what was going to happen,as the historians do. Historians are apt to represent what occurred asinevitable, so that it comes to seem as if contemporaries must haveforeseen coming events. Everything becomes much more vivid when onesees the mistakes and perplexities of those who could only guess at theoutcome, and often guessed wrong. One is surprised, often, by pre­occupation with small matters when great things are happening. WhenNapoleon's return from Elba compelled the Bourbons to fly, LouisPhillippe wrote innumerable letters of lamentation, not about publicaffairs, but about his children's whooping cough. When Lord GranvllleLevison Gower had to fly from Austerlitz , what worried him most wasthat the roads were rough and his coach had defective springs. WhenCicero sailed from Italy to escape the proscription of the second trium­\ irate, he turned back because he decided that sea-sickness was worsethan death.

But it is time to be done with frivolities and consider some of thegraver aspects of history. There are so many that it is difficult to knowvith which to begin; perhaps at this time it is natural to think first

of military history. I do not mean accounts of the details of battles,of which there is far too much In most books of history; I mean theelfects of changing modes of warfare on the general life of the commu­nity, and the relation between military and other forms of success.War is usually romanticized, but is in fact a business like another. Mostpeople imagine that Joan of Arc had a great deal to do with theI ecovery of France after the defeats inflicted by the English underHenry V. I had thought so myself until I discovered that the real causeof French success was the growing importance of artillery. The Englishhad depended upon their archers, who were capable of defeating theFrench knights; but against cannon they were powerless. Throughoutwestern Europe, during the 60 years or so following Joan of Are, thenew form of warfare enabled kings to subdue the turbulent barons

wno bold caused centuries 01 anarchy. Despotic government and civilorder were both brought into Western Europe by gunpowder. Will bothbe brought to the world as a whole by the aeroplane? Or wlll It bringonly one of the two, and if so which?

The French Revolution Introduced a new kind of war, one in whichthc whole nation participates enthusiastically because it bellevcs thatit has something of value to osrend. Wars had bcen an affair of kingsor of small arrs.ocracles: the armies were composed of mercenaries, andthe general population looked on with indifference. If Louis XIV con­quered some part of Germany, that was unpleasant for a few Princesand their hangers-on, but it made very little difference to most people.But when all the reactionaries of Europe set to work in concert todestroy revolutionary France and restore the Bourbons, every peasantwho had been freed from feudal burdens and had acquired some portionat his seigneur's land felt that he had something to fight for. And allthe scientific intellect of France set to work to devise new methods ofmaking more effective explosives, or otherwise helping the war effort.The result astonished the world, and French successes were welcomedby large sections of Germany and Italy. After Napoleon's tyranny hadturned the former friends of France into enemies, Germany, In thewar of 1313. taught a similar popular war, and this time with morelasting success. From that time until the present day, governmentshave increasingly reallzed the necessity of making wars popular, andhave used the potent weapon of popular education to that end. Democ­racy. as aform of government, has the advantage of making everybodya participant in war. I think it may be doubted (and I see thatGoebbels agrees with me in this) whether a country under an undemo­cratic regime would be as unmoved In disaster as England was in 1940.This is one of the strongest reasons for expecting democracy to survive.

It is sometimes said that victory in war Is always due to superioreconomic resources, but history shows that this is by no means invariablythe case. The Romans, at the beginning of the Punic Wars, had muchsmaller resources than the Carthagtnians, and yet they were victorious.When the Roman Empire fell, it was overrun by German and Arabinvaders who had nothing on their side except valor and greed. Thececadence of Spain in the late 16th and the 17th Centuries must beattributed almost entirely to stupidity and lanaticlsm, not to lack ofresources. In the present war, in spite of superior resources, the UnitedNations ha ee lost France, the Malay Peninsula, Burma, the Philippines.the Dutch East Indies. Rumanian oil and Ukrainian wheat; no doubtthey will recover them, but their loss shows what can be done by nationswhich devote all their energies to war. All that can be said Is that, given"qual skill and equal resolution, the side which has superior economicresources will win In the long run.

Quite recent times have. however, introduced an Important changein warfare. analogous to that brought about by gunpowder. Just asgunpowder gave the king supremacy over the barons, so modern weaponshave given supremacy to the great Industrial nations as compared tothose that are small or un industrialized. In the old days, a small nationmight hold out against a large one for years; now it can hold out forat most a tcw weeks. The great industrial nations, in order of theirindustrial power, are the United States, Germany, Russia. Great Britain,and Japan; the rest are nowhere (except that China has shown aston­ishing strength in defense). All first-class power In war Is concentratedamong these five; If two of them are defeated. It will be concentratedamong three. I think any student of the history of warfare mustconclude that the ultimate issue wlll be the holding of all mllltary powerby one government, which wlll probably be a federation of severalnational governments. There will be prejudices and psychological obsta­cles to be overcome, but the mere pressure of military fact must becomeirresistible In the end-though after how long a time and now manywars I do not venture to predict

1111' [II REALI V'-"lJER JA l'RI ro ,

A parucularty unportunt department ot history 1 ecunonuc historyUnfortunately, it was hardly at all studied in ancient or medieval times,so that the facts are often hard to ascertain, It has, however, as com­pared to older kinds of history, the merit of concentrating on the com­mon man as opposed to the exceptional Individual. Did the Egyptianpeasant at the time when the pyramids were being bullt get enough toeat? How Intolerable was the lot of slaves In Roman times? Who wasexploited to supply the Income that enabled Plato to be bland? Whatwent wrong with the economic structure of the Roman Empire at theend of the 2nd Century A. D.? How well off was the average Inhabitantof a prosperous commercial city in the middle ages? Was the lot ofthe agricultural laborer under a pre-industrial aristocratic regime betteror worse than that of a factory worker in the early stages of indus­trialism? Such questions are Interesting, and economic history suppliesat least hints as to the answers.

The economic historians, it must be said, are somewhat addictedto stereotypes. Almost any book of economic history, no matter whatthe region and the period dealt with, wlll contain some pages of lamen­tation to the following effect: "At this period the ancient yeomanrywas sinking Into decay; the land was mortgaged to rapacious urbanmoney-lenders, to whom the cultivators of the soli became actually orvirtually enslaved. The old aristocracy, which, for all Its faults, hadhad some sense of public responslblllty, was being replaced by a newplutocracy, ignorant of agricultural needs, and anxious only to extractthe maximum of revenue in the shortest possible time. Ruined anddispossessed yeomen flocked into the cities, where they became anelement of proletarian unrest, and apt material for the machinationsof demagogues. The old simple pieties decayed, to be replaced by skepti­cism and violence." You will find this, or something like it, in accountsof Greece at any time from that of Hesiod onwards; again in descrip­tions of Italy after the Punic Wars; again in accounts of Englandunder the Tudors. In our day writers are more diffuse; the correspond­ing account of California fllls two long books, "Grapes of Wrath" andNorris's "Octopus." What the historians say is no doubt true In the mainas regards the evlls of their own period, but it is often mistaken Insupposing other periods to have been better.

This point of view is in part a product of specialization. A man whoknows much about a certain period, and little about the immediatelypreceding period, Imagines-partly because of a well tstablished literaryconvention-that the evils he observes in the period with which he isfamlliar were new. In fact, agriculturists have at all times been liableto fall into debt, as a result of optlmi m and bad harvests. The menwho can lend money during a famine are likely to be urban, since other­wise they also would be poor. Aristocracies at all times have beenaddicted to certain Vices, such as gambling, flghting, and over-building.which have compelled them to part with their land to new men. Theold simple pieties were never so simple or so pious as historians pretend.Throughout the middle ages, barons and eminent ecclesiastics borrowedfrom Jews, and when they could no longer pay the interest they insti­tuted a pogrom. At the beginning of the modern age, capital becamelargely Christian, and therefore pogroms of capitalists were no longertolerated. To describe this change as a decay of the "old simple pieties"is somewhat misleading. It had, however, the Important effect of caus­ing abandonment of the condemnation of "usury" (I. e. Interest), acondemnation which, though supported by the authority of Aristotle.ceased to be effective as soon as creditors were no longer mainly Jews.But Nazi Germany shows that it is still possible to revive the medievalpattern; the party programme. like the churchmen of the middle ages.condemns alike Jews and Interest.

Economic history, In one of Its aspects, represents a perennial con­mct between city and country. Culture has at all times been mainlyurban, and piety malnlv rural. In antiquity almost evervthlng of Im-

HOW r« READ., III DEllS].. D HISrOR\

portance to posterity was urban. Greek philosophy and science began inthe rich commercial cities of Asia Minor and Sicily; thence they passedto Athens, and thence, finally, to Alexandria. The Romans who foughtin the Punic wars were largely agriculturists, and had very little culture;but after victory had made the Romans rich, they left agriculture toslaves and subject nations, while they themselves took to Greek cultureand Oriental luxury. Commerce between the different parts of theRoman Empire rapidly increased, and reached a m ximum in the 2ndCentury A. D. Great cities flourished, even in reg ns which are nowdesert; their ruins astonish the traveller in the- parched wastes ofNorth Africa. Throughout the long period from 600 B. C. to 200 A. D.,the City was dominant over the country, which was not the case beforeand after those dates. The changes are reflected in religious concep­tions: Paradise, in Genesis, is rurai, and so is Dante's Earthly Paradise:in the intervening period, men's aspirations are embodied in Plato'sRepublic, the New Jerusalem, and the City of God, all of which are urban.

The barbarian invasions destroyed the Roman roads and madetravel unsafe: they therefore put an almost complete end to commerce,and compelled each small area to raise its own food. At the same timethey established a rural aristocracy of conquerors, who gradually devel­oped the Ieudal system. The lay culture of the middle ages, except inItaly, was rural and aristocratic, not urban and commercial. This ruralcharacter survived in England, Germany, and Russia until quite recenttimes. The tone of English poetry was set by Shakespeare's "nativewood-notes wild"; Bismarck was militantly bucolic; and Tolstoy heldthat all virtue is connected with the land. But the industrial revolutionmade this point of view a mere survival; though John Bull is a farmer,the typical Englishman of the present day is urban.

In Amertca the conflict of town and country begins with the oppo­sition between Hamilton and Jefferson; it continues with AndrewJackson, who s cured a temporary victory for the rural population:passing through the Populists and W. J. Bryan, it persists in our day inthe struggle between the Farm Bloc and the anti-inflationists. In Russia,since the revolution, the conflict has taken fiercer forms. The NewEconomic Policy, in Lenin's last years, was a concession to the peasants,but Stalin, by ruthless methods, fmally secured the victory for theurban party. These conflicts are illuminated by being seen in theirhistorical perspective.

Modern views as to the relation of economic facts to general culturehave been profoundly affected by the theory. first explicitly stated byMarx, that the mode of production of an age (and to a lesser degreethe mode of exchange) is the ultimate cause of the character of itspolitics, laws, literature, philosophy. and religion. Like all sweepingtheories, this doctrine is misleading if accepted as a dogma, but it ISvaluable if used as a means of suggesting hypotheses. It has indubitablya large measure of truth, though not so much as Marx believed. R. H.Tawney's "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism," a most valuable andinteresting book, illustrates with a wealth of illuminating detail a theorywhich is in some sense the converse of Marx's doctrine. Tawney isconcerned to trace a connection between Protestantism and capitalism,in which, largely by way of individualism. Protestantism is the causeand capitalism the effect: laissez-faire in theology may be regarded asthe source of laissez-fatre in business. It is undeniable that moderncapitalism began in Protestant countries, but I doubt whether the con­nection is quite what Tawney represents it as being.

In the 17th Century. England and Holland were the leading commer­cial countries. Both were Protestant, and both had abundant politicalreasons for their Protestantism. The Pope had bestowed the East Indiesand Brazil on Portugal, and the rest of the Western hemisphere onSpain. This did not suit Northern nations that wished to trade withIndia and establish colonies in America. Moreover Spain was a dangerto both; Holland owed its existence to a successful revolt against Spain,

lJU\\ 1'0 HEAll f .!11 r: UEHSIA. V HIS'lOIn 15

nnd England owed it, survival to the defeat of the Spanish Armada.Protestantism went naturally with hostility to Spain, which was theleading Catholic Power. There were therefore ample secular reasons forthe Protestant ism of England and Holland. Their commercial success.however. was due to their excellence as seamen and to their geographicalposition. Perhaps success colored their religion, which was in someways different in temper from German Lutherani m. But I doubtwhether Protestantism was actually in any important degree a causeof the capitalist doctrines which were naturally engendered by commerceand manufactures. In an earlier age, North Italy had led the world111 economic development, but had not quarrelled with the Pope, andhad not acquired what Tawney regards as the Protestant mentality.1 do not deny an element of truth in his thesis but I think it is less'han he suppo e .

To return to Marx: The most Important I' '01' m hi theory, to mymind, is that it ignores intelligence as a cause. Men and apes. in thesame environment, have different methods of ecurmg food: menpractice agriculture. not because of some extra-human dialectic com:pelling them to do so, but because intelligence shows them Its advan­rages, The industrial revolution might have taken place in antiquity ifGreek intelligence had remained what It was at Its best. To this it iscustomary to reply that slave labor, being cheap, removed the incentiveto the invention of labor-saving devices. The facts do not bear out thisview. Modern methods of production began in the cotton industry. notonly in spinning and weaving, which employed "free" labor, but also inthe gathering of cotton, which was the work of slaves. Moreover nosla ves were ever cheaper than the wretched children whom the Lanca­shire manufacturers employed in the factories of the early 19th Century,where they had to work 14 or 16 hours a day, for little more than boardand lodging, till they died. (It must be remembered that the death ofa slave was an economic loss to his owner, but the death of a wage­earner is not.i Yet It was these sam... ruthless employers .who werethe pioneers of the industrial revolution, because their heads werebetter than their hearts. Without intelligence, men would never havelearnt to economize hand labor by the help of machines.

I do not wish to suggest that intelligence is something that arisesspontaneously, in some mystical uneaused manner, Obviously it has itscauses, and obviously these causes are in part to be sought in the socialenvironment. But in part the causes are biological and individual.These are as yet little understood, though Mendelianism has made abeginning. Men of supreme ability are just as definitely congenitallydifferent from the average as are the feeble-minded. And withoutsupreme ability fundamental advances in methods of production cannottake place.

There is a modern school of sociology, which professes to be morestrictly scientific than any other, and which is, at 1 t to some extent,an outcome of Marx's doctrines. According to this school. sociology canonly become truly scientific by observing men in the mass rather thanas individuals, and by observing only their bodily behavior withoutany attempt at psychological interpretation. Up to a point, there ismuch to be said for this school. Undoubtedly pleasure in what Is dra­matic has caused both the readers and the writers of history to laytoo much stress on individuals; undoubtedly, also, there is an element ofrisk in any psychological interpretation of physical behavior. As the poetsays:

It "as all n,'r) "dl to dissemble you r 1mI;'.Hu t "h) did you kick me downst atrs "

The school in question will note only the kicking, and will notinquire whether it was caused by dissembled love or by hatred. At anyrate we can agree so far. that it is a good thing to record the Indubitable

I" 11lJ\\ To ltEAD A D L DEI'TA. r iusrouv

facts of overt behavior before embarking upon the doubtful sea ofinward motivation.

A book such a "Middletown," although its authors do not subscribeto the theory \\ e re examining, is one which the advoc. tes of the theorycan approve. and which shows that much valuable \\ ark may be sug­gested by the theory. Some 50 years ago, Charles Booth's "Life andLabour of the People III London' performed, on a much larger scale,the same sort of task for London; it was an immensely valuable book,which inspired reroi ms that greatly increased the ell-being of thepoorer sections of the population in London. To the reformer, if he isto act wisely, such c urveys of the average lives of tnen, women, andchildren are immeasurably useful.

They are, however, a means, not an end in themselves; whenregarded as an end, they are in danger of losing their usefulness. Tobegin With, the objection to psychological interpretations is foolish.Why do we object to poverty and illness? Because they cause sufferinuwhich is a mental phenomenon To a purely external observation,poverty and illness should be just as satisfactory as prosperity and goodhealth. When the a tronomer observes the stars, he doc not have toconsider whether their condition is "good" or "bad," because we do notbelieve that they c: n feel; but human beings are different, and asociology which ignores their feelings is leaving out \\ hat is rnosessential. We do not wish to reiorm the solar system, but we do Wishto reform the social system if 'e have any sympathy ith suffering.And only psychological considerations can show us what reforms aredesirable.

From a purely cientific point of view, the theory seems to memistaken in minimizing the effect of individuals, It often happens thatlarge opposing social forces are in approximate momentary equilibrium,and that a comparatively small force may decide which shall be victo­rious, just as a very small force on a watershed may decide whetherwater shall flow into the Atlantic or the Pacific, The Russian Revolu­tion would have been very different without Lenin, and it was a verysmall force that decided the Germans to permit his return to Russia.The Duke of Wellington remarked about the battle of Waterloo: "It wasa damned nice thing. I do believe if I had not been there we shouldnot have won." Probably he was right. Such instances show that themain course at great events may sometimes depend upon the actions ofan individual.

This, of course, is regrettable from the point of view of those whoare impatient to turn history into a science, But in fact. while someaspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it isimportant to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complexto be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centurieto come. There is too much that, to our ignorance, appi ars as chance.and too great a likelihood of the intrusion of incalculable torces. Thereis nothing genuinely scientific in a premature attempt to eem scien tlic.

This brings me to another department of history, namely, thehistory of culture, conceived in its widest sense, to include religion, art,philosophy, and science. This is a fascinating subject, when it is treatedwithout the solemnity and humbug in which it has been steeped bypedantic professors. The official view-which every student must adoptif he is to obtain good grades-is that certain famous men were greatand good, and must on no account be criticized, while certain otherswere clever but wrong-headed, and committed foolish mistakes whichare obvious to every tyro. Yet others, who to an unprejudiced eye appearfar from contemptible, are to be not even mentioned. because theirideas were shocking. Even those who are singled out for the highestpraise must be so misinterpreted as to become dull and acceptable tothe commonplace men whose business it is to praise them. Above all,no idea must be admitted which could cause even a moment's discom­fort to complacent middle age.

HOW TO READ A. D L. 'DERSTA.·D HISTORY 17

Not so are great men to be conceived. and not such Is the monumentto be raised to them in our thoughts. The pedant, convinced that hehimself possesses all wisdom, and comfortable in the security of hisjob, praises the men whom he pretends to study by prc ending that theyagree with him, and specially commends whatever occa ional sententioushumbug they may have permitted themselves. He is convin -ed that thetruly great are always "serene." that they see how, in mysterious ways,good comes out of evil, and that, speaking generally, they help us tobear IV ith fortitude the misfortunes of others. The generous young,exposed in almost every university of the world to this desiccatedabomin ion, are apt to reject with scorn all the conventionally grea;name Take. for example, Shakespeare, whose supposed "serenity" isthe theme of endle academic nonsense. Here are few examples ofhis ere u v:

\\ hen we are born WE' CT~. that w are come

To t hi« g reat sreee of fools.

Again.

\ f1it"!'i to us are we to the god ....The) kill us for their sport.

You taught me language, and my profit unt

I~. [ know to curs-e.

And well known as It is, I cannot omit the great speech in Macbeth:

Tomn r row and tomorrow and tomorrow('r('('IHI in this pet t y pace from day tn day"l'o the last sv liable of recorded ti me,And all our yeaterdaya have Hg hted fool"TIll' W.1Y to dusty death. Out, out, brf ef candle.Life's but a walklng shadow, a poor nlaye r,\\ ho struts and frets his hour upon the stago..\nd then is heard no more. It ilS a taleTold h. an idiot. full of sound and fUT).

Sijtnih ing nothing.

No. the greatest men have not been "serene." They have had, It IStrue, an ultimate courage, a power of creating beauty where naturehas put only horror, which may, to a petty mind, appear like serenity.But their courage has had to surpass that of commen men, because theyhave seen deeper Into the indifference of nature and the cruelty of man.To cover up the e things with comfortable lles is the business of cowards:the bu ine of great men is to see them with inflexible clarity, and yetto think and feel nobly. And In the degree in which we can all be great,this is the bu iness of each one of liS.

But all .hi , 'he reader may feel, is a digression from the historyof culture. I cannot agree. In the history of culture, the material isva t. and olection i necessary. Selection must be guided, at least illpart by a . en e of values: we must have some touchstone by which todecide \ ho deserves to be remembered. This cannot, it is true, be oursale principle of selection; some men must be studied because of theirinfluence. Even if we have no very high opinion of Mahomet (say),we cannot i more him, because a large section oC mankind believes inhim. Bu: even then standards are necessary if the history of cultureis to b . 1 tied IV ith any profit; we must not indiscriminately admire'whoever ha been Influential, Cor if we do we may find ourselves wor­shipin Sa n. The ultimate value of culture is to suggest standardsof good and evil which science alone cannot supply, and this should

18 !lOll TO HEAD A.·D C. ·DER. TA. D HlSTOR\

be remembered III all our study of culture III the past, and 1Il the present.To me, as one whose life has been mainly devoted to phllosophical

speculation, the most interesting part of the history of culture is thehistory of philosophy. particularly in its relation to rellgion. Philosophybegan among the Greeks as a revolt against religion, embodying theskepticism of men who, in the course of commerce, had been broughtinto contact with many. beliefs and customs, and had therefore cometo demand something more than tribal tradition as a basis for theirown creed. Their rationalism was, of course, imperfect; even the mostfree-thinking among them retained the belief in Fate or cosmic justiceof which I spoke earlier. But their rationality, where it existed, wasmore surprising than their irrationality where it survived. They rejectedthe Olympian gods, they formed the conception of universal causation,and they tried to discover ways in which the existing universe couldhave evolved in accordance with natural laws. For the first time Inhuman history, Reason was proclaImed to be paramount, and every­thing was submitted to its scrutiny, in principle if not in fact. Survivingprejudices survived because they were unnoticed; if anyone had pointedout that they were prejudices, the early Ionian phllosophers wouldhave abandoned them.

But Greek philosophy did not continue to live up to this brilliantbeginning; there was a serpent in the phllosophic paradise, and hisname was Pthagoras, The Orphic religion, which had revivallst fea­tures. had captivated many previously rationalistic Greeks, and a formof Orphism was introduced by Pythagoras into phllosophy, which ceasedto be an honest attempt to understand the world, and became a searchfor salvation through intoxication. Orphlsm was an offshoot of theworship of Bacchus. but sought to substitute a spiritual intoxication forthe frankly alcoholic intoxication of the original cult. From that day tothis, there has been thought to be something divine about muddle­headedness, provided it had the quality of spiritual intoxication; awholly sober view of the world has been thought to show a limited andpedestrian mind. From Pythagoras this outlook descended to Plato,from Piato to Christian theologians, from them, in a new form, toRousseau and the romantics and the myriad purveyors of nonsense whollourish wherever men and women are tired of the truth.

There is, however. in our day, a powerful antidote to nonsense,which hardly existed in earlier times-I mean science. Science cannotbe ignored or rejected , because it is bound up with modern technique:it is essential allke to prosperity in peace and to victory in war. This is.perhaps. from an intellectual point of view, the most hopeful featureof our age, and the one which makes it most llkely that we shall escapecomplete submersion in some new or old superstition.

One of the most fascinating studies in the history of culture is thegradual building up of the Catholic synthesis, which was completed inthe 13th Century. In the Church as it existed at the time of the fall ofthe Western Empire (I. e. in the 5th Century) there were elementsderived from three sources, Jewish, Greek and Roman. The Church tookover from the J eves their sacred books and sacred history, their beliefin a Messiah (whom the Christians, but not the Jews, believed to havealready appeared" their somewhat fierce morality, and their intoler­ance of all religions but one. The Hellenic element appeared especiallyin the realm of dogma. St. John, St. Paul, and the Fathers graduallydeveloped, by adaptations of Greek phllosophy, an elaborate theology.wholly foreign to the Jewish spirit. St. John's gospel, unllke Mathew.Mark, and Luke, shows the early stages of Christian Hellenistic philos­ophy. The Fathers, especially Origen and St. Augustine, made Platonisman integral part of Christian thought; it is astonishing how much ofessential Christian doctrine St. Augustine confesses to having found inPlato. As soon as the Empire became Christian, the bishops acquiredadnumstrauve and iudtctnl functions' the oecumenial councils pro-

HOW TO READ A.·O L OERSTA. D HI TOR 19

moted by the Emperors supplied the begmmn: )1 entr: I uuthorrty.though at first only in matters oi doctrine. W hout the strengthderived [rom Roman governmental methods, it is doubtful whether theChurch couid have survived the shock of the barbarian invasion.

In the centuries that followed. the Chu ·ch. t' ough imperfectly,represented Mediterranean culture 'hile tl . 1'1 tocracy repre-sented Northern barbarism. The Ch rch. , arly 10 t its dis-tinctive character, and almost be , ne pat Tel of the feudalsystem. But this was prevented by he 1" dol .( , sit ~ power ofthe Pope, and by papal insistence on clerical c r J, . -htcn preventedChurch lands from descending from father to r. rom the beginningof the 11th to the end of the 13th Century, the Chureh gained rapidlyin power, dlselpllne, and learning; In the latter respect, Cathollcs stll1bow to the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas, \I hose word, on all philo­sophical questions, is law in all Catholic educational Institutions. YetAquinas, in his day, was a bold innovator. Arable influences causedhim to prefer Aristotle to Plato, and on this account he was condemnedby the universities of Paris and Oxford. Th's 0 po ition to Aquinasand Aristotle (who was also condemned) has b en forgotten, andAristotle is now regarded by Cathollcs almost as If he were one of theFathers. It Is perhaps permissible, though in dubious taste, to questionthe efflcacy of his cure for insomnia in elephants, but his mistakes inthe doctrine of the syllogism must not be acknowledged. For this reason,modern logic Is forbidden territory to Cathollcs.

The misfortunes of the Church in the 14th, 15th. and 16th centurieswere so great that its survival might almost be claimed as a miracle.First came the Great Schism, during which here ere two men whoclaimed to be Pope. No one knew which as the true Pope; eachclaimant excommunicated the other. One of the e excommunicationswas valid, but which? Whichever was the true Pope must of coursebe right in proclaiming his rival to be a wicked man, but no one knewwhich was the Holy Father and which was an impudent impostor.This was awkward, and a potent cause of scandal. When at last theSchism was healed, the renaissance began. ana the Popes lost sight of;he interests of the Church to play the zam ) T· li: n power politicsand fight to enlarge their secular dominloi of tree-thtnktng.'ordly, and licentious Popes, who taxer hroughout the

Catholic world to keep up their 0 n po . p, ed Northern piety, s in the end to produce the Reformation.

At first the Reformation carried every hin b -Iore it 111 most coun­. ries north of the Alps. But the Catholic cau e was rescued by Loyola.Charles V, and the Fuggers. Loyola founded the Jesuit Order, whichsecured power by zeal, cunning, and educ tion Charles V happenedIn combine under his sway the Empir Sp in and the Netherlands.The rich banking house of the Fug er re dv _ I I him so muchmoney that his success became vital ere fore backedhim with all their resources, and mad- ,.11 11 . superior to hi.'opponents. In the end they went bank up 1] iding to Haps-Li.rgs. but by that time the Church ns avcd

Does the past history of the Church give any b, for prophecy ato its future? Its misfortunes did not end in the 16th Century. The warsof the 18th Century, and the subsequent expansion of the United States.gave dominion to Protestants throughout all of the American Continentnorth of the Mexican border. France 'a vehemently anti-clerical dur­ing the Revolution, and again at he time of the rehabilltation ofDreyfus. The Russian Revolution was anti-Chr! I n. and the Nazishave done all in their power to de u oy the influer cc of the Church inGermany. Nevertheless, Catholic na, e con id rable grounds for confi­dence in the future. Napoleon found it expedient to make peace withthe Pope, and Napoleon III, until his downfall, pr erved the temporalPO\\ er by a French garrison in Rome. What France will be like after thewar. it is impossible to know; but at present the leaders of all parties

20 HOW TO READ AND l'NDERSTAND HISTORY

are pious Cathollcs. The Russi, n GOVE rnment has abandoned its hostll­ity to religion. and "ill no dot bt. \ lie, e its allies. go further in itsnew direction. In Germany. when \1 e '~zis fall. there will be danger ofchaos. and the C. holic Church \\ ill be one of the few forces makingfor stability. 1'1 e United States. Ca holies are already sufficientlypowerful t) C) 1. r JI education in e York and Boston. and they wereable to compel he Sate Depa ment to be friendly to Franco duringthe Spanish Ci il War. They make many converts. and breed muchfaster than Protestants. Statistics show that, unless some new factorenters in. thev \\ ill have a majority in the United States in about 50years. There is therefore every reason to expect th t their power atthe end of the present century will be greater than at any time sincethe French Revolution. For my part, I view this prospect with alarm.

Consideration of the Church naturally suggests a department ofhistory which. in my opinion, has been too little studied; I mean, thehistory of organizatlons. An organization has a life of its own, and isapt to go through stages of youth, maturity, and old age, analogous tothe stages in the llfe of an individual. I belleve that by the study oforganizations many useful though not infallible generalizations couldbe arrived at. There are organizations of many different kinds: Churches,political parties. educational ins itutlons. business corporations, tradeunions. and so on. In all ages of technical progress, there has been anincrease of organizatIon, and hi is especially true of our own time.The number of things that an Individual does by his own initiativealone is continually diminishing, and the number of things for whichhe depends on some organization is continually increasing. If you arean average citizen, you are born in a hospital and educated by the State;you earn your living by working for a corporation; your newspaper, yourradio, your movie are supplied by rich companies; if you acquire ahouse, you probably borrow the purchase money, not from an individual,but from an organization; when you die, an insurance company relievesyour widow's necessities. As a free and independent citizen of a democ­racy. and a member of the Sovereign People, you have a right, fromtime to time, to express a preference as between two men presented toyou by two organizations called political parties, which jointly representthe interests of professional politicians. As an immortal soul, you canseek salvation in an organization called a Church, which probablyholds property on condition of adhering to dogmas that have been fixedfor centuries; if none of the existing Churches satisfies you, your neigh­bors view you with su pic ion as an eccentric, their wives fight shy ofyour wife. and your business career uffers. From the cradle to thegrave. and even (if the Churches are right) in the life to come, youare in the hands of organizations, which determine the degree to whichyou are permitted to pursue your 0\\ n interests.

Now everyone of these organizations has a twofold purpose, onepublic. and one private. The State, when it educates you. has the publicobject of supplying you with useful knowledge, and the private objectof making you willing to pay taxes for the benefit of corrupt politicians.Your newspaper exists publicly to give the news, privately to give it insuch a way as will further the interests of the proprietors. Your politicalparty has a public program, which is represented as being advantageousto the nation; but if you are neither young nor naive you know that theparty, if victorious, is likely to consider that the program has served itspurpose, which was to secure publlc money for one group of men ratherthan another. As for the Churches-but hush! at this point we mustdraw the line; no Church dignitary, I am sure, ever considers for amoment anything but the eternal welfare of his flock.

The study of the history of organizations shows that, from ignoranceof the laws of their development, the ideallstic efforts of many of thebest and greatest of mankind have been wasted in directions whichproved only harmful. Take, for instance, the Franciscan Order. It wouldbe difficuit to find In all history a more lovable man than St. Francis;

HOI\ TV HEAD A. D L 'DEH~TA. IJ HI. j uln 21

he loved with a spontaneous love not only all mankind, but beasts andbirds, the sun and the stars and the wind; his virtue was so spontaneousthat he was always happy. His t.uth. no doubt, was somewhat simple­minded: he made a long and dangerous journey to see the Sultan, whomhe hoped to convert to Christianity. But at any rate this attempt wasless harmful than the equally futile method of the Crusades. He foundedthe Franciscan Order in the hope of preading his own spirit of brotherlylove; believing that there should be no opportunities of self-seeking, headopted the traditional vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Hisimmediate successor wallowed in luxury and rebelled against the Pope;his successors became recruiting sergeants in the savage wars of Guelfsand Gibellines, and together with the Dominicans administered theatrocious persecutions of the Inquisition. For a time, a minority ofFranciscans, of whom William of Ockham was nearly the last, remainedtrue to the spirit of their founder; but after the 14th Century it wouldbe difficult to point to any benefit that mankind has owed to the exist­ence of the Order.

There is nothing surprising in this development; if the Saint hadhad more worldly wisdom he would have foreseen it. Under the aegisof an honored name abominations are possible which, otherwise, wouldcause disastrous opprobrium. In the minds of many pious Japanese,national misdeeds are excused by the name of Buddha. It is superfluousto speak of the countless pogroms, persecutions, and witch-hunts thathave been considered sanctified by the name of Christ. One might comenearer home, and point out how the name of Lincoln became, in thecorrupt era that followed the Civil War, a shield to protect a gang ofshameless miscreants. All these are gloomy reflections. but I am notcontent to draw a moral of lazy cynicism. The correct moral is thatthe evolution of organizations should be studied, with a view to discov­ering how to avoid the evils that we have been con idering.

Some organizations succeed throughout a long period in fulfillingtheir original object; others soon fail. The Royal Society, founded inthe 17th Century for the promotion of science, has continued ever sinceto contain all the best British men of science among its Fellows; on theother hand, the Royal Academy has failed notoriously to recognize thebest painters. In France, similarly, the lnstitut has adequately recog­nized scientific merit, while the Academy has excluded most of thebest literary men. Th,e reason, of course. is that scientific merit is moreindubitable than artistic and literary merit. Saintliness is even harderto recognize than artistic excellence, for hypocrites throughout theages have perfected the technique of protective imitation. Consequentlyan organization which can only do good if its leaders are saints is sureto begin to do harm before long. This is an important truth, whichsaints are slow to realize,

There are three things to be considered about an organization;what it offers to the public, what it offers to its own rank and file,and what it offers to its leaders. The las of these too often, in practice,outweighs the other two. Thts applies in many differcnt fields. A man,let us say, offers for sale the finest soap on the market. By skillfuladvertisement he causes the public to believe him; he then sells hisinvention to a company; the public discovers its mistake and thecompany goes bankrupt, but the inventor of the soap retains his fortune.When I was young, it was the custom in certain South American coun­tries for dictators to plunder the public until they provoked a revolution;they invested the proceeds abroad .and had at all times a fast shipwith steam up waiting for them in the harbor of their capital. At themoment when the revolution began they fled- to Paris and lived happyever after. These dictators were the analogues in politics of our soapmanufacturer in business. But such men are not so harmful as thosewho succeed in retaining their power. Any organization. however ideal­istic its professed aims, may degenerate into a tyranny unless thepublic firmly retains in its own hands some effective means of con-

22 HO" TO READ A D 1 DER TA. LJ Hi,'I' II"

0"1', cy Is the only means so far dtscov ered. but it. ell effective means until it has been broadenerl) romic regions from which as yet it is excluded.

)I his whole subject can only be obtained [rom 1

trolling leader Dwill not be , COl

and extended 0'The essen tial da tstudy 01 hi 0

The question .1 ner a world State, If established, could be stableis one belongin ,) It e sci nee of organizations, and is one. therefore.on which histo y y be expected to throw light. It would be tallactousto argue, as udcnts of history do, that what never has happenednever \ III 1 C 'I II , In the 6th Century B. C., est ablished anempire of 1 (1 ! ragnitude, and was enabled to hold it togetherby the c. j «nt roads. The Roman Empire. which \\ as SI illlarge .., v ible by e\ en better roads. It is obvious that th·aeropla 1 ' higher degree than the Roman roads. ihesame et re.: ,,1 m rger State possible. It is therefore reasonabtr-to expect h u, 1. acilitate the creation of, new political Iorrns. and.in part.icular tha 1 'auld en ble a world State to be stable if it ha Ja monopoly of rur pu ,er. There are grave obstacles to the creation of '\world State, but I do not think it would be difficult to preserve if Itonce existed.

The que. tion <.1 combining discipline with freedom in the bestproportions is Q .' \ hich our a e must solve, and solve quickly, if it isto avoid the oppos; e dangers of anarchy and d ctatorship. There hasbeen, ever since the rise of Greece, an oscillation in this respect. bothin the large 1 ( i 1 he small, but an endless see-saw is surely not thebest that human in Ihgence can compass. What has happened hithertohas been omethin like this: a tribe or nation, under a rigid tradi­tional system. 10 'builds up a compressed energy which at 1.1;breaks it bond': old habits break down first in the sphere of opinion.and then in the sph re of conduct. The greatest creative ages are ihos«where opinion is free. but behavior is still to some extent convem.ional.Ultimately, however, skepticism breaks down moral tabus, socle y be­comes impossibly anarchic, freedom is succeeded by tyranny. and 'Inew tight tradition is gradually built up. In Greece, the Homeric heroeshave a fixed pattern of behavior, and a moral code which even trans­gressors do not question. In Aeschylus the old rigidity, sornewhasoftened, still exists, but the sophists generated doubt, and Eurtpedesis perplexed and uncertain, The result, after a period of extraordinarybrilliance. II a . gel eral decay, first of morals, and then of other formsof excellence, T, e I id Roma . Imposed their yoke, but in turn be .11n.'first In II; • a hen so . Chri tianity, more severe than anyprevious reli .ic n, a', in created a system in which the energies of the­community \\ e. ' hu b, nded bu the individual was stifled. In the Italianrenaissanc the Chrtstran disclplrne broke down. to be succ eueJ by"brief period ,j emus and individualism. soon extinguished by thoSpaniards arid the counter-reformation, Similarly the roman it: movement led up to the dictatorships of our own day, The English-speakingnations, it must be, id, have been less subject to these oscillations thanthe nat ions 0, he ontinent of Europe.

Thc xolt I dilemma between freedom and discipline 111US:obviou ly b. aocmprornise. We cannot admire a social systemwhich a r ! for I drvidual achievement, and ve cannoapprov xce i indlvidualism makes th ocial svster 1unstabl ...... , ~ 19UC hat there is a Iundamcntnl cpposlttoubetw ecu jn '. rd mom!' '. that only stupidity and supers i Ionmakes mr 1)0 hat an intellectually emancipatrd man i boundto be con pu- .'! This, ho ever, is an obscurantist theory, whichtakes a rUI' I ')'h of morality and of intelligence. Where gen-uine and "UI' rsuu.. morality have been hopelessly contused in 1'.l'teaching of the youn , It may be difficult for them to disen tangle thetwo. If you have be n taught that it is as wicked to swear as it is tosteal, you mav, whe vou decide that swearing is permissible. conclude

!lOW TO HEAD AND U,'DERSTA. 'D IIlSTORY 23

that there is no harm in stealing, but if so that only shows that youare not intelligent and that you were taught a foolish morality, Genuinemorality cannot be such as intelligence would undermine, .nor doesintelligence necessarily promote selfishness. It only does so when unsel­fishness has been inculcated for the v.rong reasons, and then only solong as its purview is Iimtted. In this respect science is a useful elementin culture, for it has a stability which mtelligence does not shake, andit generates an impersonal habit of mind that makes It natural toaccept a social rather than a purely individual ethic. But history isperhaps an even better antidote to anarchic individualism as well as toa lifeless traditionalism.

A few societies have perished from excess of individualism andskepticism; of these Greece and renaissance Italy are the ot>ief exam­ples. These, before perishing, produced a great outburst of genius,from which the world has profited ever since; they did far more formankind than if they had survived in humdrum respectability, Andtheir way of perishing is not the usual way, The usual way is to becomesunk in conservatism, awed by precedent, terrified of novelty, completelystereotyped in word and deed. Many more nations have been broughtto destruction by fear of change than by love of it. No nation can longflourish unless it tolerates exceptional individuals, whose behavior isnot exactly like that of their neighbors. Everyone knows that men whoachieve great things in art or literature or science are apt, in youth, tobe eccentric; when eccentricity in youth is not tolerated, there will belittle of great achievement among adult men and women. But althoughthese things are known, it is difficult to cause them to be embodiedin the practice of education. It is right that men should live with somereference to the community, and with some hope of being useful to it,but this does nut mean that all men should be alike, for exceptionalservices require exceptional characters,

I have spoken so far of various ways in which history can be inter­esting and instructive, but in addition to these it has a more generalfunction, perhaps more important than any of them. Our bodily life isconfined to a small portion of time and space, but our mental life neednot be thus limited. What astronomy does to enlarge the spatial habitatof the mind, history does to increase its temporal domain. Our privatelives are often exasperating, and sometimes almost intolerably painful.To see them in perspective, as an infinitesimal fragment in the life ofmankind, makes it less difficult to endure personal evils which cannotbe evaded. Although history is full of ups and downs, there is a generaltrend in which it is possible to feel some satisfaction; we know morethan our ancestors knew, we have more command over the forces ofnature, we suffer less from disease and from natural cataclysms, It istrue that we have not yet learnt to pro ect ourselves from each other:man is as dangerous to man as he ever was, But even in this respectthere are at least the preliminaries of improvement. Violence now ismainly organized and governmental. and it is easier to imagine waysof ending this than of ending the spor die unplanned violence of moreprimitive times.

The perspective of history enables us to see more clearly what eventsand what sorts of activities have permanent importance. Most of thecontemporaries of Galileo saw far more significance in the Thirty YearsWar than in his discoveries, but to us it is evident that the war was"30 years' futility, while his discoveries began a new era. When Gladstonevisited Darwin, Darwin observed afterwards; "What an honor to bevisited by so great a man." His modesty was amiable, but showed a lackof historical perspective. Many occurrences-party contests, for example-rouse at the time an excitement quite out of proportion to their realimportance, whereas the greatest events, like the summits of highmountains, though dominant from far away, are screened by the fore­ground from a nearer view. It is a help towards sanity and calmJudgment to acquire the habit of seeing contemporary events in their

-no TO R~AD A.: D 1 'DER~TA, V HISTIlH\

historical setting. ar.c of Imagining them as they will appear when theyare In the past. ThlOJO ians a sure us that God sees all time as thoughit were present; it, n t In human power to do this except to a verylimited degr e. but in .0 far we can do It, it is a help towards wisdomand contem I l' . live In the present. and In the presentwe must act. bu I Ion, and action Is best when it proceedsfrom a de .\ he pre ent loses the sharpne of Itsemotional il .:C born and die; some leave hardly a trace,others tran good or evil to future ages. The manwhose thou 1 re enlarged by histor will wish to be atransmitter. and so far as may be. hat his successorswill judge to have