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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 80

V

V

The call to wake up to a view of history which was less purely autobiographical came, as we have seen, to the historians of the last century mainly from the naturalists. The new materials themselves too, no less than the processes by which they were accumulated, resembled closely those of other descriptive sciences, such as geography; and particularly those, like geology and palaeontology, in which the series which the data can constitute are sequences in time. So it need not surprise us that historians have experienced a strong temptation to assimilate the methods and aims of their own study to those of these natural sciences; to insist upon quantities and statistics, uniformities and recurrences; perhaps even to go in search of them; and, in general, to work towards the establishment of broad generalisations, worthy of the name of Historical Laws. This tendency has by no means exhausted its force as yet; and it is important that we should be clear as to its working for it is as true in history as it is in chemistry that, unless you are very careful, you will find what you set out to seek.

History, by common consent, deals with the fortunes of human societies and their members; the performances of individuals, when they do not involve the fortunes of the rest, may be matter for biography, or for a history of morals; but they are not history in the strict unquali- page 25 fied sense. History, I mean, is essentially ethnographic, social and political, rather than ethical and anthropo-graphic. But all societies, as Aristotle knew long ago, γíγνoνται μ∊`ν τoυ∘ν ζν∘ν ˝∊ν∊κ∊ν, ∊ìσì δ∊` δ∊` τoû ∊û ζη∘ν; in their lowest terms they represent Man's alliance with other men against insistent nature; at their highest, his alliance with men against insistent wrong; and there is every gradation between.

Now, the mere struggle for existence against the forces of nature stands, of course, in the same class of occurrences with the struggle of any other animal. It is consequently matter for just such generalisations as are familiar to biologists. There is nothing, either, to prevent us from regarding it from the same impersonal standpoint, the standpoint of nature itself, as any other 'natural' occurrence. It is therefore indifferent to the ethnographer and even to the sociologist whether we are studying the conditions of life, and the course of advancement, in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, or in those of the Mississippi and the Yangtze; in the Mediterranean and the Aegean that we know, or in other Mediterranean Seas—the Carib Sea, and the Great Lakes of North America—or in the giant archipelago and submerged islands of Malaysia. But when we are looking at the higher functions, a difference appears; and a greater difference, in proportion as these functions approach the highest. The Nile and the Euphrates differ profoundly, in value to ourselves, from the Amazon, or even from the Yangtze and the Ganges; the Carib Sea belongs to fiction, to Rousseau, and Man Friday; but the Mediterranean is nearer to us still; as a theatre of history it stands in a place which is unique; for it is the very nursery of our own world, and its human societies are relatives and ancestors of our own. It is the kind of difference which we admit, between this or that old man, and our own grandfather.

It is here, then, that history parts company simultaneously from ethnography and from sociology, the page 26 most intimate and the closest clinging of its associates in the order of the sciences. The anthropologist treats Man just as any other sort of biologist must treat another part of the animal kingdom, sub specie naturae; as an important chapter, truly, but still only as one chapter in the grand treatise π∊ρí ϕúσ∊ως—'On how things grow.' History, on the contrary, treats Man and his works as related to the present and to us. It is essentially anthropocentric; if I may extend my former metaphor a little, not merely are the ancient historians 'in the picture,' but we ourselves too are in the very plane of the canvas; at the junction, that is, of the past with the present.

This is how it comes about that whole cycles of real history—it may be, even of written history—do not find their way as yet into the historian's library, but remain on the shelves of the anthropologist. A good recent instance is Mr. Torday's reconstitution of the political history of the Bushongo. The long history of the Maoris is another, and that of other groups of the Polynesians falls into the same category. 'What s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba'?

Anthropological occurrences however, may, of course, and often do, enter into the historian s consideration as illustrations of occurrences belonging to the Mediterranean or the Nearer East. No one who wishes to come to close contact with the institutions of Sparta, for example, can afford to neglect those of the Iroquois or the East African Masai; or the organisation of Mexico or Peru, if he is concerned with that of ancient Persia. In the same way, both the obscure movements of barbarous peoples across the mountain barrier which limits the Mediterranean region on the North, and the still more obscure movements which we can now trace taking place along it, find close and instructive anologies in the history of the mountain frontiers of Northern India and Persia, and of the page 27 chains of South-East Asia, and of the American Rockies.*

The distinction between the two branches of science is now clear; and we have only to bear it in mind. Never has history been in greater need of a sound sociology, and, for that matter, of a sound anthropology also, if it is to do to-day and to-morrow its Danaid's task of interpreting the past to the present. But for the same reason, never has there been more urgent need for care lest the rival attractions of culture or economics, or politics either, distract the historian from his own proper business, which is that of writing, not sociology or polities, but history.

* It is instructive also to notice how Natural History itself may develop antro-procentric phases as the conception of utility widens. Current developments of bacteriology are cases in point. The old toas, 'Here's to Scientific Discovery, may it never be of use to anybody,' is rapidly passing into a by-word.