Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/32

18 in the immediate past starts from a sound principle,namely, that it is an important function of history to explain the present in the light of the past from which it has come. By a natural reaction from the study which stopped with Marcus Aurelius or the American colonies or the Congress of Vienna, the demand naturally arose for the history of the day before yesterday, which was once declared to be the least known period in human annals. This is quite legitimate if it does not stop here and does not accept the easy assumption that what is nearest us is necessarily most important, even to ourselves. Modern Germany owes more to Martin Luther than to Nietzsche, more to Charles the Great, who eleven hundred years ago conquered and civilized the Saxons and began the subjugation of the Slavs, than to many a more modern figure in the Sieges-allee at Berlin. Our method of reckoning time and latitude by sixtieths owes less to the contemporaries of James Buchanan than to those of Tiglath-Pileser. If we must apply material standards to history, we must consider the mass as well as the square of the distance.

Obviously, too, we must consider distance in space as well as in time. The Boston fire of 1872 did not rouse Paris, and our hearts do not thrill at the mention of the Socialist mayors and Conservative deputies whose names become household words when the streets of French towns are rechristened in their memory. The perspective of Norman history is different for a Norman