Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/14

 "Sine historia caecum esse jurispruaentiam." .

"I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resoimded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day. There is no age, or state of society, or mode of action, in history to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. . . . History must be this or it is nothing: Every law which the State enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason for every fact,—see how it could and must be. We assume that we under like influence should be alike affected, and should achieve the like; and we aim to master intellectually the steps, and reach the same height or the same degradation that our fellow, our proxy, has done. All inquiry into antiquity is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now.", Essay on History.

"For the true historian, two attitudes (as I opine) are requisite. On the one hand, he must find interest and pleasure in the truth of individual facts,—must value details for their own sake. If he possesses genuinely this avidity for the pursuit of truth in its manifold variety, for the bare facts of human life, then he will surely attain satisfaction in his research, regardless of their larger interpretations and tendencies,—just as he takes pleasure in the flowers, without attempting to solve the problems of their botanical classification. Yet, on the other hand, the historian must cultivate breadth of view,—the faculty of generalization. He is not to proceed a priori, like the metaphysician. But, while he observes and describes the unfolding of the details, he is to let their general trend be made manifest,—their inter-actions, their developments, their epochs. One after another, the events appear before him; the series unites; it culminates in an Epoch. That distinction between dates which we term an Epoch lies in this, that out of the struggle of the two great opposing forces—the predetermined causation of the past, and the spontaneous variability of the present—new conditions, and thus new periods, gradually emerge. And out of a series of Epochs is built up the whole. . . . Thus, while each separate event of history has its intrinsic value, is worth investigation for its own sake, yet—in view of the direction which modern research is taking (and must indeed insist on taking, if we desire accurate knowledge)—it is fair to say that we run some danger of ignoring the larger aspects, that broad outlook for which every one has a legitimate yearning. Thus to unravel the full trend and meaning of events, while remaining steadfast to the strict principles of scientific research, will indeed be always an unattainable ideal. Yet a true scholarship recognizes that the two processes may and must go hand in hand. Facts without their philosophy are but barren and frigid chronicles. And philosophies of history not built on a rigid basis of fact are but delusive fancies.", World History, Part IX, Sect. II, The Epochs of Modern History, Introduction.