Note 71 — Chapter I · THE COLLECTIVE TASK OF MANKIND AND THE THREE-FOLD REVERENCE

I may here point out the bearings of this general point of view on the much-mooted and confused question of the value of the study of history. Ranke holds that the aim of the historian should be to reproduce factually the occurrences of the past. Robinson insists on the uses of history. But uses to what end? The history of the past is fragmentary and full of gaps. The data with respect to some of the most important periods are irrecoverable. The attitude of the human race towards its own history, I take it, should be like that of an individual towards his past. I cannot really resuscitate my past. Memory is treacherous. Much has been forgotten. The events of my youth are discolored when seen in the perspective of later years. I should try to know myself as far as I can, but with a view of pressing on and realizing with such light upon myself as I have, the ethical aim. The same applies to mankind. And the important point is in the review to disengage the ideas that controlled the principal social institutions in the past, and to appraise these ideas from the standpoint of our present ethical insight. Thus, in treating the history of the family, we should single out the ideas that controlled the family relation, the idea of the patria potestas, the feudal idea, or the connection of the family with landed property. In writing the history of the organs of education, we should bring into view priestly education as among the Brahmins, musical or æsthetic education as among the Greeks, the idea of princely education, the idea of preparation for the government of an empire, which accounts for the system of the English universities, the controlling idea of the German universities. And then at the end of our survey we shall be in a better position to discern what is to be the ideal of school and university education in an ethical democracy. The same applies to the controlling ideas of the state, and of the remaining social institutions.