Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/588

584 perhaps in all, of the Greek cities, chroniclers were also at work. Wherever language has been reduced to writing men have appeared who kept records. Sometimes they were public officials, sometimes private persons who wrote for reasons which they could probably not themselves have explained. It is known that Herodotus used materials collected by municipal chroniclers when compiling his historical work. He tells the reader that he published his researches in the hope of preserving from decay "the remembrance of what men have done and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory." When he adds that he wants "to put on record what were the grounds of their feud," he enters upon the field of philosophical if not of scientific history.

Except in the quantity of materials collected the modern "local paper" may be regarded as the successor of the old-time chronicles. Its object is to record events from day to day, without taking into account their connection with each other, even when there is such connection. All local newspapers are unreliable except in so far as they publish proceedings of municipal councils, of courts and of other public bodies. None of them print anything that would put a "leading citizen" in a bad light. We may be sure that most of the records of the olden time, except in rare cases, partook of this character. It is evident that any person endowed with ordinary common sense who has a fair education can write a history. All he needs is materials upon which to base his conclusions. But a history written with no other object in view than to set forth facts nobody would read except from a sense of duty or as an act of penance. The work of the historian worthy of the name requires not only judgment in the scrutinizing of evidence, but likewise in the sifting and arrangement of materials and the final form that is given to the narrative. It is probable that in the matter of artistic form the models set up by the Greeks and Romans will never be surpassed. But the range of their discussion is either very narrow, or their statements full of errors. They are chiefly concerned with wars or with those things that pertain to war; they fail to tell us much that we should like to know, and of which they could give us trustworthy information because it came under their immediate observation. They omitted what they considered of no importance; they lacked the point of view of the scientist, to whom nothing that exists is unimportant. It is probable that Professor Freeman formulated his definition of history as "past politics" from a study of the works of the ancients. This definition is now regarded as grossly inadequate because the reading public has come to realize more and more fully that in states which claim to be civilized only a small part of the people are directly engaged in war or politics. Except in rare instances the proportion has never been much larger. Nor does any man now agree with Xenophon that the only