Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/41

Rh works of the leading artists are of no interest, history should not be tedious. Polybius, the most modern in spirit of the ancient Greek historians, spoke scornfully of the mere bookworm historian who lacked human experience and spent all his hours "reclining on his couch," studying documents from a neighboring library and "comparing the mistakes of former historians without any fatigue to himself." To him the dignity of history seemed to require both literary genius and

History is, after all, and always will be, despite dry-as-dust research and writing, the most human of sciences.

Since history treats of all sorts of men in different times and varied places, three fundamental questions confront us at the start: how to classify mankind, how to distinguish different localities, and how to measure time. To these introductory queries anthropology, geography, and chronology give answers. It is now recognized, however, that it is no simple operation to divide men into distinct races. Various methods have been tried and classifications have been made according to the color of the skin, or the shade and curl of the hair, or the measurements of the skull,—a handy method in the case of men of the past,—or the language spoken. But these classifications run counter to one another. Entire peoples adopt a foreign language for their own, so that tribes who are physically alike are found to speak totally different languages, while utterly different physical types are found to have a common speech. Moreover, men have lived for so long upon the earth and have wandered so widely that probably all peoples found to-day represent racial mixtures. Also it has recently been asserted that the shape of the skull and other physical traits alter when the individual or tribe moves to a new and different environment and climate. The past, however, has probably seldom seen such rapid immigration and mixing