THE STUDY AND TEACHING OF HISTORY.

By Herbert B. Adams, Ph.D.

Professor of History in the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Among all the subjects of college study and college teaching, among all the means of liberal education fitting young men for civic life and public duty not one stands higher than the study and teaching of History.

In my senior year at Amherst College, President Julius H. Seelye gave my class a single lecture on the Philosophy of History. Among other good things he said: "History is the grandest study in the world." That remark made the profoundest impression upon my student imagination. I said to myself, "If History is the grandest study in the world, that is exactly the study I want." The good President proved his statement to my satisfaction by showing the relation of Greek and Roman civilizations to the spread of Christianity and the education of Europe.

In Germany I first learned the true method, and at the same time, the most practicable ways and means of studying and teaching history. Amid a pleasant variety of academic courses by brilliant lecturers like Kuno Fischer, Zeller, Ernst Curtius, Grimm, Treitschke, Droysen, Du Bois Raymond, Lepsius, and others, I somehow felt a lack of educational unity and system. There was need of some backbone to unite the skeleton of human deeds and historic experiences. This I found at last in the teachings of my old master, Dr. J. C. Bluntschli, at Heidelberg. In his lecture courses on the State, on the Constitutional Law, on Politics and on the International Law of Modern Civilized States, I first began to realize that government and law are the real forces which bind society and the world together. I began to see that the true unity of the world's life is to be found in the succession of States, Empires, Federations, and in the International Relations, which are slowly leading to such great aggregations as the United States of America and the United States of Europe. In Germany I learned from a reading of Bluntschli's various writing, including many noble articles in his Staatsworterbuch, that there is such a thing as the World-State now in process of evolution. From the published records of the Institute of International Law, of which Dr. Bluntschli was the president, and from a study of the subjects of Arbitration and International Tribunals, I thought I could dimly discern the beginnings of that Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World, of which the Poet Tennyson sings in his Locksley Hall.

When I came to Baltimore three ideas of study and teaching were uppermost in my mind: (1) the study of the origins of municipal life, in order to find out whether it was Roman or Germanic; (2) the study of the relations of Church and State, from their beginning down to the present, for I had learned to believe in Germany that the separation of civil from religious society is America's greatest contribution to the world's progress; (3) the continued study of art history for its own sake and as illustrating the history of civilization.

Out of the first of these ideas, developed by a reading of the works of Sir Henry Maine, has grown my Historical Seminary and a long series of University Studies in Historical and Political Science (chiefly on Municipal, Economic and Institutional themes). Out of the second idea evolved successive courses of lectures on Church and State, or Religion and Government in the Ancient and Graeco-Roman World, together with my whole system of graduate instruction upon the Early History of Society, Greek and Roman Polities, Jewish and Church History, and certain modern States like Prussia and France. The third idea never had a good chance for development until recent years when I have fairly begun to realize my original conception of illustrating in concrete, artistic ways the progress of civilization.

Goldwin Smith, in his Lecture on History, says there can be no philosophy of history until we realize the unity of the human race and that history must be studied as a whole. Twenty years ago, at the Johns Hopkins University, I began to teach Local History, as representative of Universal History. I began with New England Village Communities, with Plymouth Plantations, Salem and the Massachusetts Bay Towns, those little republics which seemed to me the very protoplasm of State life. The survival, continuity or revival of old Germanic forms of village settlement, with common fields and town commons, impressed my imagination and interested my students. They carried this kind of study into this State of Maryland and original papers by Maryland boys were published upon such subjects as Parishes, Manors, and other local institutions. These lines of inquiry were extended down the Atlantic seaboard to Virginia and the Carolinas. Gradually the field of interest has been widened from towns, plantations, parishes, and counties until now the constitutional, economic and educational history of entire States is in review or contemplation.

While I still believe in Local History and in limited subjects of student research, I now recognize more fully than I used to do, the importance of General History, especially for college students and college graduates in the early part of their course. After all, the great fact in History, as well as in Geography, is that the world is round. You must recognize all human experience on this globe as parts of one great whole, just as you recognize that the continents and outlying islands are but related parts of one vast geographical system. In every properly arranged course of school and college instruction in the domain of History, this doctrine of unity ought to be taken for granted. It is like the doctrine of divine unity in theology or in nature, like the sun in our heavens. It gives light and rationality to any and every course of study.

I used to think that it was the first duty of a boy to know the history of his own State and country; but I am now persuaded that he should know the history of mankind and of the world. Nobody would study geography or geology from a purely local point of view. You must have a consciousness of the whole in order to appreciate the parts of any subject. It is a mistake to imagine that a boy or girl cares most for what is nearest and most familiar. Children are always gifted with imagination. They rejoice in the thought of lands that are far off, of men who lived in olden times. They take the greatest pleasure in heroic tales of Cyrus and of Hannibal, of Horatius and of the great twin brethren, Castor and Pollux. Mythology, minstrelsy, Bible stories, and lives of great wariors, explorers, discoverers, inventors, these are of supreme interest to boys and girls. American History should be taught to American youth, but chiefly the heroic, the romantic, the biographical, in short the more human sides of our colonel and national life.

History begins and ends with Man. Biographical approaches to the world's life are the oldest, and best beaten paths for youth to follow. Carlyle and Froude are among the champions of the biographical method of studying and teaching History. When Froude succeeded Freeman at Oxford the biographical idea was at once brought to the front. Froude quoted Carlyle as saying: "The history of mankind is the history of its great men; to find out these, clean the dirt from them, and place them on their proper pedestals, is the true function of the historian." And Froude, the new professor, entered at once upon those splendid and inspiring courses of lectures, in which the personal and biographical elements entered so strongly.

Every American student should read Froude's lectures on "English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century," that brilliant account of Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and the great captains of England who gained a new world for Elizabeth and defeated the Spanish Armada. You should also read Froude's Lectures on the "Life and Letters of Erasmus" if you would understand the relation of the great religious reform to the new learning, which Erasmus represented.

Is it not wonderful that by reading a brief biography, which perhaps occupies our leisure hours for a week, we can grasp and understand the life-work of a great man? Think of it! A whole life in one book. A whole history is in one of Plutarch's chapters. By turning to that new series of biographies called "Heroes of the Nations," you can study or teach the lessons derived from the lives and characters of such great men as Pericles, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Julian the Philosopher, Theodoric the Goth, Wyclif, the first of the English reformers, Prince Henry the Navigator, Henry of Navarre, Sir Philip Sidney, Gustavus Adolphus, Napoleon, Nelson, and Lincoln. Another excellent biographical series is that called "English Men of Action," published by Macmillan, and containing such noble lives as those of Wolfe, the conqueror of Quebec; David Livingstone, the Explorer of Africa, Lord Lawrence and Sir Henry Havelock, the saviors of India; General Gordon, the Hero of Khartoum. If your taste runs toward literature, you should read select biographies in the series called "English Men of Letters," embracing such characters as Gibbon, Carlyle, Byron, Shelly, and Hume. There is a corresponding American series, edited by Charles Dudley Warner, and embracing such men as Washington Irving, J. Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe. But among all biographies for boys and young men I know nothing better than the Autobiography of Franklin. This has encouraged and quickened many young Americans to a desire of knowledge and self-culture.

But let no student or teacher believe for one moment that historical biography is the full equivalent of History. Not all the biographies that have ever been written could possibly contain the world's great life. As the poet Tennyson truly says: "The individual withers, but the world is more and more." There must be great men in Church and State, to lead society forward, but there must be unnumbered thousands, yea millions, of good men and true, and of faithful, devoted women, in order to support good leadership and carry humanity forward from generation to generation. It is often the biography of some plain man or self-sacrificing woman that affords the greatest encouragement and incentive to ordinary humanity. But we must remember that no man, no woman is worthy of biographical or historical record, unless in some way he or she has contributed to the welfare of society and the progress of the world. Only those deeds which affect our fellow men in some noteworthy manner are fit for commemoration. What you do as a private individual, what you ate for breakfast, what you do in the seclusion of your own room, is not necessarily historic; but whether Napoleon was able to eat his breakfast on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, or whether an army has been properly fed, may have the greatest historic significance.

Not man alone, but man in organized society, is the subject of History. Man in his relation to his fellows, man as a military, political, social, intellectual, and religious being may become historic. Dr. Thomas Arnold sometimes defined History as the biography of nations. This is a large and noble conception, although not the largest, and it may be profitably emphasized, like human biography in the study and teaching of History. It is the duty of every school and college to lay great stress upon the history of England and of the United States in addition to General History. We all need to know the lives of our own people as well as the lives of great Englishmen like Pitt and Gladstone, and great Americans like Washington and Lincoln. We should teach and study the histories of those nations which are nearest our mother country—Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy. As Germany is now the great seat of culture and of university life for American students who go abroad, so was Italy for wandering English students in the days of the Renaissance. English literature from that time onward is pervaded with Italian elements, with the influences of "all Etruscan three," Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and also with the ideas of Machiavelli and the Italian historians. We cannot understand the literature of England or America without going back to its French and Italian sources. It would be wise for college professors of history to devote special attention to the Italian Renaissance or Revival of Learning, without which an understanding of the German Reformation and modern education is an impossibility.

In reading the biography of men or the biography of nations, teachers and students should note carefully the most interesting and memorial points. If you own the book which you are reading, use for note-taking the fly leaves at the end. Otherwise, use reference cards, like those employed in a library for a card catalogue, or else sheets of note paper. When you have found a fact or illustration which you think will prove useful at some future time, in connection with your work as a teacher or a student, note it briefly on paper with the proper reference to the book and page. Remember Captain Cuttle's advice: "When found, make a note of!" Recall the saying of Lord Bacon: "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory."

In the multitude of modern books and amid all the variety of our modern reading, it is impossible to remember exact quotations and historical details. We must have a good system of note-taking and index-making. Every student and teacher can invent his own system. Mine is the use of fly leaves in books and cards topically and alphabetically arranged for miscellaneous data. I always carry a few of these reference cards in my pocket and make all my notes under appropriate catch words, for example, "Chautauqua" or "Johns Hopkins University," with the name of the writer on this subject and the exact reference or quotation.

Begin to collect a library for yourselves. Students and teachers do not always appreciate the opportunities they enjoy of acquiring good books of History. I would strongly urge students to save their money instead of spending it on poor theaters and variety shows. Buy standard books of literature, art, and history; devote your leisure hours to good reading, always with pen and pencil in hand, and with a dictionary and an atlas beside you. Seize the moment of excited curiosity and look up every point on which you need exact information. One of my former students, Dr. Albert Shaw, now editor of The Review of Reviews, said he was more grateful to me for that advice than for any other one feature of my instruction: Seize the moment of excited curiosity, or it will be lost forever.

An English writer, Langford, in his Praise of Books, well says: "In books the past is ours as well as the present. With them we live yesterday over again. All the bygone ages are with us, and we look on the face of the infancy of the world. We see the first dawning of thought in man. We are present at the beginnings of cities, states, and nations; and can trace the growth and development of governments, policies, and laws. The marvelous story of humanity is enacted again for our edification, instruction, and delight. We behold civilizations begin, struggle, triumph, and decay, giving place to higher and nobler as they pass away. Poet, lawgiver, and soldier sing their songs, make their codes, and fight their battles again, while we follow the never-dying effects of song, of law, and of battle. We sit down with 'princes, potentates, and powers,' watching them, as they think, governing the world.... Shut up in a little room we can witness the whole drama of man's history played on the vast stage of the world. All that he has thought and done from the earliest dawn of recorded time to our own day is enacted before us; and our hopes are strengthened, our faith deepened, in the great destiny yet awaiting mankind; in the higher, holier work yet to be done by those who have accomplished such mighty things, achieved such noble victories. Books which record the history of the past are the infallible and unerring prophets of the future."

"History is the grandest study in the world." My College President, Dr. Julius H. Seelye, was right. There is no art or science comparable to it, for it embraces the whole experience of man in organized society. History takes hold of all the past and points the way to all the future. The French historian, Guizot, in his "History of My Time" (III. 162) says: "Religion opens the future and places us in the presence of eternity. History brings back the past and adds to our own existence the lives of our fathers." Pliny said of History: "Quanta potestas, quanta dignitas, quanta majestes, quantum denique numen sit historiae." Perhaps the highest conception of History comes from the Greek. The etymology of the ward is an inspiration for both student and teacher. History, from the Greek word historia, is a knowing or learning by inquiry. To study History is to understand by means of research, for History is a science; its very essence consists in knowledge. Historical science is perhaps the most comprehensive and the noblest of all sciences, for it is the self-knowledge of Humanity. The subject of History is Humanity itself; it is the self-conscious development of the human race. History, therefore, does not consist in dead facts, but is itself a living fact; it is the self-knowledge of the present with regard to its evolution from the past. Clio is a living muse, not a dead, cold form. She stands upon that very threshold of the future and glances backwards over the long vista Humanity has traversed. In the plastic art of the Greeks you will notice that the muse of History is represented in the attitude of reflection; the pen is uplifted, but the word unwritten.

We sometimes speak of written history and of its standard works as though the essence of that science consisted in books and not in knowledge. "There are no standards of history," said Droysen, a German professor to an American student who had asked his advice respecting the choice of standard works for an historical library. In this caustic saying there lies a profound truth. History is a living, self-developed science, not a collection of fossils. Books like facts, are sometimes dead to history, and historical standards, like historical facts, are grander in their spiritual influence than in their material form. In the onward march of historical science, historians are perhaps the standard bearers of fact and their works may be called the battle-flags of history which kindle the zeal of the ever-advancing present in men and awaken a sense of unity with the great past, which has gone on before us. But written history often becomes shot-riddled by criticism and is set away, at last, like battle-flags, after many honorable campaigns, in some museums of relics or some temple of fame. Unless such trophies continue to awaken in the living present a sort of enthusiasm and a sense of unity with the past experience of our race, then are our historic standards but antiquarian rubbish, indeed, as useless and unmeaning as the banners and symbols of heraldry.

The subject of History is the self-conscious development of the human race, the Ego of Humanity. The realization of this Ego does not lie in any fictitious personality, but in the universal consciousness that man is one in all ages and that the individual human mind may mirror to itself and to others the thought and experience of the race. As the heavens are reflected in a single drop of dew, so in the thoughts of the individual human mind we may sometimes behold a reflection of the self-knowledge of Humanity. For the individual is sometimes the very best expression of the whole with which it stands in connection. The onward march of world-history seems to have concentrated itself in the development of individual peoples like the Jews, Greeks, Romans, and the Germanic peoples. As these nations best typify historic progress and certain world-historic ideas, so the historic thought of manhood may be most fully realized by individual minds. For example, a single historian, like Thucydides, may reflect the self-consciousness of his age, and a single mind, in our own day, may realize, in some measure, at least through the works of history, the self-knowledge, the Ego of Humanity. It should be the aim of every student of History thus to realize in his own consciousness the historic thought of mankind. "The life of each individual," says Dr. W. T. Harris, the American Hegel, "presupposes the life of the race before him, and the individual cannot comprehend himself without comprehending first the evolution of his day and generation historically from the past."

Let us then regard the study of History, not as something wholly objective but as an unfolding panorama of the human self-consciousness, for history is merely the reflecting spirit of mankind in which we ourselves may have an immediate share, which we all may help to perpetuate and in some way enlarge. Let us remember that History is a constant knowing and learning, the self-knowledge and communion of reflecting spirits in all ages and a perpetual "Know Thyself" to advancing time. There is something indescribably solemn in the historic pausing of Man before the temple of the unknown future and seeking to realize in himself the gnothi seauton or "Know Thyself" of Humanity. He glances backward through the long vista he has traversed and as far as the eye can see, his pathway is cumbered with ruins. Crumbling monuments and fallen columns reveal the wreck of all material greatness, while the distant pyramids but remind him of the more than Egyptian darkness out of which Humanity has been mysteriously led unto this mountain of light which we call the Present or that Living Age. Man sees the immense distance he has come and he remembers the perils and disasters he has encountered in his upward way; he is conscious too of having brought a vast wealth of experience to this temple of the Future before which he now stands, but that which fills and overwhelms the historic consciousness of Man is the feeling that the place whereon he stands is holy ground and that there is a mysterious power in his own soul calling him to self-knowledge and to self-judgment before he may lift the veil of the future. This is the supreme moment of History. The facts of human experience become suddenly transfigured in the light of a divine principle, namely the self-consciousness of reason, that God-given spirit which recognizes the purpose of History to be the increasing self-knowledge of Man.

"History is a divine drama, designed to educate man into self-knowledge and the knowledge of God," (Henry James, Sr., on "Carlyle," in Atlantic Monthly, May, 1881.) Tennyson recognized the divine element in human history in that prophetic verse:

It is by this "increasing purpose" that God reveals himself in human history. By the widened thought, Humanity is led forward, as it were by a pillar of fire, unto a higher life, and unto a conscious unity with Divine Reason, the Unseen One, who dwells in a temple not made with hands.