1902 mahan alfred thayer. subordination in historical treatment

8/2/2019 1902 MAHAN Alfred Thayer. Subordination in Historical Treatment

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IL SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT.

By ALFRED THAYER MAHAN,President of the American Historical Association.


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SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT."

By ALFRED TIIAYER MAHAN.

Members of the American Historical Association, ladiesand gentlemen: The distinguished office with which 3^011 havehonored me, of being your president for a civil year, involvesthe duty of making an address upon the occasion of ourannual meeting. As time passes, and occasion succeeds occa-sion in multiple series, the difficulty of contributing anythingnew to the thought of our fellow-workers becomes increas-ingly apparent. One can only hope that by searching intohis personal experience, by a process of self-examination,seeking to know and to formulate that which has perhapsbeen undergone rather than achieved, passively receivedrather than actively accomplished, there may emerge fromconsciousness something which has become one's own; thatthere may be recognized, as never before, precisely what hasbeen the guidance, the leading tendency, which has charac-terized intentions framed and shaped conclusions reached.One of the most distinguished of our recent predecessors inthe walks of history, the late Bishop of London, Mandell

Creighton, has said with much force:There is only one thing we can give to another, and that is the principleswhich animate our own life. Is not that the case in private life? Is not

that the case in your relationship with those with whom you come in con-tact? Do you not feel increasingly that the one thing you can give yourbrother is a knowledge of the principles upon which your own life rests?It is assuredly the most precious possession that you have. It is assuredlythe one that is the most easily communicated.Although by him urged with immediate reference to con-

siderations of moral or religious effect, these sentences havein my apprehension their application to influence of every

a President's address before the American Historical Association, December 26, 1902.H. Doc. 461, pt 1 49


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50 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.kind. That which you are in }^ourself that you will be toothers. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth in thelong run speaketh ; and if yon have received the gift of utter-ance, more or less, you will utter most profitably that whichis your own by birthright or which has been made your ownby effort and reflection.To communicate to others that which one's self has acquired,be it much or little, be it money or any other form of humanpossession, is not only a power but a duty, now so commonlyrecognized, so much a note of to-day's philosophy of life ifsomewhat less of to-day's practice as to need no insistencehere. If it be in any measure a reproach to a man to die rich,as has been somewhat emphatically affirmed, it is still more areproach to depart with accumulations of knowledge or expe-rience willingly locked up in one's own breast. For thewealth of mone}7 remains, to receive such utilization as othersmay give it; the man can not carry it away with him; but histhoughts and his treasures of knowledge perish with him, ifhe has not had the unselfish pains to communicate them toothers before he dies. Thus only do they become part of thecommon stock of mankind; like the labors, for example, ofthe great captains of industry, whose works, even when con-ceived and executed in the spirit of selfishness, remain for thebenefit of posterity.Under the pressure of the emergency to make an address,which my momentary office requires, such a line of thoughtis peculiarly forced upon me; for it must be obvious to allwho in a general way know my past profession that the studyof history has been to me incidental and late in life, which ismuch the same as to say that it has been necessarily superfi-cial and limited. It is not possible, under my conditions, toclaim breadth and depth of historical research. I can not beexpected to illustrate in my own person the protracted energy,the extensive delving into materials hitherto inaccessible, thevast accumulation of facts, which have been so forciblydescribed by the late Lord Acton, in his inaugural lecture onthe Study of History, as the necessary equipment of theideal historian to-day. Had I attempted this, beginning whenI did, I must have died before I lifted pen to put to paper;and in necessary consequence it follows that upon this, as upontopics closely related to it, 1 am as unfit to address you as Lord


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SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT. 51Acton was most eminently qualified by his immense stores ofacquirement, the most part of which he unfortunately tookaway with him.

I am therefore forced to introspection, if 1 am to say any-thing the least worthy of the recognition which you have toogenerously accorded me by your election. I have to do formyself what but for this call I probably should never haveattempted, namely, to anatyze and formulate to my own con-sciousness the various impressions the " unconscious cere-bration," to use a current phrase sufficiently vague for mypurpose which have formed my mental experience as a writerof history and have probably been reflected in my treatmentof materials. Do not, however, fear that I propose to inflictupon you a mental autobiography. What I have so far saidhas been explanatory of shortcomings and apologetic, at leastin intention; I trust, also, in impression. Being now finallydelivered of it, I hope to get outside and clear of myself fromthis time forth, and to clothe such thought as 1 may give youin the impersonal terms which befit an attempted contribu-tion to a perennial discussion concerning the spirit whichshould inform the methods of historical writing.There are certain fundamental factors upon which I shallnot insist, because they need only to be named for acceptance.They are summarized in thoroughness and accuracy of knowl-edge; intimate acquaintance with facts in their multitudinousramifications; mastery of the various sources of evidence, ofthe statements, usually conflicting, and often irreconcilable,of the numerous witnesses who have left their testimony. Thecritical faculty, so justty prized, is simply an incident to thisascertainment of facts. It plays the part of judge and juryin a trial; not establishing the facts, but pronouncing uponthe evidence. It needs not therefore to be separate!}7 classi-fied, as something apart, but is truly embraced under the gen-eral expression of " knowledge," exact and comprehensive.In like manner the diligence and patience required for exhaus-tive examination of witnesse^, though proper to name, formno separate class. They are, let us say, the lawyers, the ad-vocates, whose business is to bring fully out the testimony bywhich the verdict shall be decided; but, like the critical equip-ment, they simply subserve the one bottom purpose of clearand demonstrated knowledge.


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52 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.Knowledge thus established is, I apprehend, the material

with which the historian has to deal ; out of which he has tobuild up the artistic creation, the temple of truth, which aworthy history should aim to be. Like the material of thearchitect it will be found often refractory ; not because truthis frequently unpleasant to be heard, especially by prepos-sessed ears, but because the multiplicity of details, often con-tradictor}^ not merely in appearance but in reality, do notreadily lend themselves to unity of treatment. It becomesthus exceedingly difficult to present numerous related truthsin such manner as to convey an impression which shall be thetruth. Not only may the formless mass of ill-arranged par-ticulars affect the mind with the sense of confusion, like thatproduced by a room crowded with inharmonious furniture;not only may it be difficult to see the wood for the trees, butthere may be such failure in grouping that the uninstructedreader may receive quite erroneous impressions as to the rel-ative importance of the several incidents. As 1 have hadoccasion to say, in reviewing a military history, fidelity ofpresentation does not consist merely in giving every fact andomitting none. For the casual reader emphasis is essentialto due comprehension: and in artistic work emphasis consistsless in exaggeration of color than in the disposition of details,in regard to foreground and background, and the groupingof accessories in due subordination to a central idea.Of the difficulty here existing history bears sufficient proof.Not merely the discovery of new evidence, but different modesof presenting the same facts, give contradictory impressions

of the same series of events. One or the other is not true;neither perhaps is even closely true. Without impeachingthe integrity of the historian, we are then forced to impeachhis presentment, and to recognize by direct logical inferencethat the function of history is not merely to accumulate facts,at once in entirety and in accuracy, but to present them insuch wise that the wayfaring man, whom we now call the manin the street, shall not err therein. Failing here, by less ormore, the historian, however exhaustive his knowledge, by sofar shares the fault of him who dies with his treasures ofknowledge locked in his own brain. He has not perfectlycommunicated his gifts and acquirements to his brethren.This communication is not a mere matter of simple narra-


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SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT. 53tive, nor oven of narrative vivid and eloquent. All of usknow histories which by the amplitude of their details and thechronological sequence of occurrences produce in the endmuch the same vague generality of impression which isreceived from watching a street movement from a window.Here and there an incident out of the common, yet often ofthe most trivial in itself, catches the attention, perhaps sticksin the memory; but of the entirety nothing remains but asuccession of images substantially identical, to which there isneither beginning nor end. Such may be a valid enough con-ception of the life of a city street, or of the general externalaspect of an historic generation. Such to me is the interestof Froissart. Having the gift of pictorial utterance, he passesbefore you a succession of vivid scenes, concerning any one ofwhich it is quite immaterial whether it be directly true tohistory. It is true to nature. You have realized on the out-side one dominant aspect of the life of that bustling, seem-ingly inconsequent generation, through true portrayal and fre-quent iteration; but there is neither beginning, middle, norend, only surface ebullition. Take the incidents of the sameperiod selected and grouped by Stubbs in his ConstitutionalHistory, and you see order emerging from chaos, the contin-uous thread of life which was before Froissart, which under-ran his time though it does not appear in his narrative andwhich flows on to our own day.In this interrelation of incidents, successive or simultaneous,

history has a continuity in which consists its utility as ateaching power, resting upon experience. To detect theserelations in their consecutiveness, and so to digest the massof materials as to evolve in one's own mind the grouping,the presentation, which shall stamp the meaning of a periodupon the minds of readers, with all the simple dignity oftruth and harmony, answers to the antecedent conception bythe architect of the building, into which he will put his stonesand mortar. Facts, however exhaustive and laboriouslyacquired, are but the brinks and mortar of the historian;fundamental, indispensable, and most highly respectable, butin their raw state they are the unutilized possession of theone, or at most of the few. It is not till they have under-gone the mental processes of the artist, by the due selectionand grouping of the materials at his disposal, that there is


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54 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.evolved a picture comprehensible by the mass of men. Thenonly are they in any adequate sense communicated, made partof the general stock. Work thus done may be justly calleda creation; for while the several facts are irreversibly inde-pendent of the master's fabrication or manipulation, the wholetruth, to which they unitedly correspond, is an arduous con-ception. To attain to it, and to realize it in words, requiresan effort of analysis, of insight, and of imagination. Thereis required also a gift of expression, as often baffled as is theattempt of the painter to convey to others his conceptionof an historic scene, which, indeed, he may find difficulty inclearly realizing to his own mental vision. This process,however, does not create history; it realizes it, brings outwhat is in it.Of such artistic presentation it is of course a commonplace

to say that essential unity is the primary requirement. Itmust be remembered, however, that such unity is not that ofthe simple, solitary, unrelated unit. It is organic. Like thehuman body, it finds its oneness in the due relation and pro-portion of many members. Unity is not the exclusion of allsave one. The very composition of the word unity impliesmultiplicity; but a multiplicity in which all the many thatenter into it are subordinated to the one dominant thoughtor purpose of the designer, whose skill it is to make each andall enhance the dignity and harmony of the central idea. Soin history, unity of treatment consists not in exclusion ofinterest in all save one feature of an epoch, however greatlypredominant, but in the due presentation of all; satisfied that,the more exactly the relations and proportions of each areobserved, the more emphatic and lasting will be the impres-sion produced by the one which is supreme. For instance,as it is now trite to observe, in the Iliad, amid all the abund-ance of action, the singleness, the unity, of the poet's con-ception and purpose causes the mighty deeds of the severalheroes, Greek or Trojan, to converge ever upon and to exaltthe supreme glory of Achilles. It would have been quitepossible, to most men only too easy, to narrate the sameincidents and to leave upon the mind nothing more than avague general impression of a peculiar state of society, inwhich certain rather interesting events and remarkable char-acters had passed under observation Froissart, in short.


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SI'HORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT. 55I speak rather from the result of my reflections than from

any instance on my own part of a conscious attempt to realizemy theories in an historic work, but I conceive that it wouldminister essentially to the intrinsic completeness of thehistorian's equipment, and is yet more important to his use-fulness to others his usefulness as a teacher if, after accu-mulating his facts, he would devote a considerable period tohis preliminary work as an artist. I mean to the mental effortwhich I presume an artist must make, and an historian cer-tainly can, to analyze his subject, to separate the several parts,to recognize their interrelations and relative proportions ofinterest and importance. Thence would be formed a generalplan, a rough model; in which at least there should appeal-distinctly to himself what is the central figure of the whole,the predominance of which before teacher and reader must bepreserved throughout. That central figure may indeed be theconflict of two opposites, as in the long struggle betweenfreedom and slavery, union and disunion, in our own land,but the unity nevertheless exists. It is not to be found infreedom, nor yet in slavery, but in their conflict it is. Aroundit group in subordination the many events, and the warriorsof the political arena, whose names are household wordsamong us to this day. All form part of the great progress asit moves onward to its consummation; ail minister to its effect-iveness as an epic; all enhance some more, some less themajesty, not merely of the several stages, but of the entirehistory up to that dire catastrophe- that fall of Troy whichposterity can now see impending from the first. This, in truehistor}T , is present throughout the whole; though the eyes ofmany of the chief actors could neither foresee it in their daynor lived to behold. The moral of fate accomplished is therefor us to read; but it belongs not to the end only but to thewhole course, and in such light should the historian see andmaintain it. Can it be said with truth that the figure of LadyHamilton throws no backward shadow, no gloom of destiny,over the unspotted days of. Nelson's early career? A criticimpatiently observed of my life of the admiral that this effectwas produced. I confess that upon reading this I thought 1had unwittingly achieved an artistic success.

It should scarcely be necessary to observe that artisticinsistence upon a motive does not consist in reiteration of it


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56 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.in direct words, in continual pointing of the moral which thetale carries. That true art conceals its artfulness is a cheapquotation. It is not by incessantly brandishing Achillesbefore our eyes, or never suffering him to leave the stage,that his preeminent place is assured in the minds of the audi-ence. Nevertheless, the poet's sense of his own motive mustbe ever present to him, conscious or subconscious, if his themeis not to degenerate from an epic to a procession of incidents;and this is just the danger of the historian, regarded not as amere accumulator of facts, but as an instructor of men. In areview of a recent biography occurs the following criticism:"The character and attainments of the man himself" whosurely is the appointed center in biography "arc somewhatobscured by the mass of detail. This is indeed the worst dan-ger incurred by the modern historian. Where his predecessordivined, he knows, and too often is unable to manage hisknowledge. To consult State papers is not difficult; to sub-ordinate them to the subject they illustrate is a task ofexceeding delicacy, and one not often successfully accom-plished. The old-fashioned historian thought it a point ofhonor to write in a style at oiice lucid and picturesque. Themodern is too generally content to throw his material into anunshapely mass;" content, in short, with telling all he knows.As in war not every good general of division can handle ahundred thousand men, so in history it is more easy duly torange a hundred facts than a thousand. It appears to methat these observations, of the validity of which I am per-suaded, are especially necessary at the present day. Theaccuracy of the historian, unquestionably his right arm ofservice, seems now in danger of fettering itself, not to say thehistorian's energies also, by being cumbered with over-muchserving, to forgetfulness of the one thing needed. May notsome facts, the exact truth about some matters, be not onlybeyond probable ascertainment, but not really worth the evi-dent trouble by which alone they can be ascertained?

I once heard of a seaman who, when navigating a ship,pleased himself in carrying out the calculated definement ofher position to the hundredth part of a mile. This, togetherwith other refinements of accuracy, was perhaps a harmlessamusement, only wasteful of time; but when he proceeded tospeak of navigation as an exact science, he betrayed to my


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7SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT. 57mind a fallacy of appreciation, symptomatic of mental defect.I speak with the utmost diffidence, because of my already con-fessed deficiency in breadth and minuteness of acquirement;but I own it seems to me that some current discussions notmerely demonstrate their own improbability of solution, butsuggest also the thought that, were they- solved, it reallywould not matter. May we not often confound the interestof curiosity with the interest of importance? Curiosity iswell enough, as a matter of mental recreation; truth is alwaysworth having; but it may in many cases be like the Giant'sCauseway to Dr. Johnson worth seeing, but not worth goingto see. It is troublesome enough to handle a multitude ofdetails so as to produce clearness of impression; but to addto that difficulty a too fastidious scrupulosity as to exhaustingevery possible source of error, by the accumulation of everyimaginable detail, is to repeat the navigator's error by seek-ing to define an historical position within a hundredth of amile. Neither in history nor in navigation do the observa-tions, and what is called the personal equation, justify theexpectation of success; and even could it be attained, thequestion remains whether it is worth the trouble of attaining.Lord Acton's " Study of history" is in this respect a kind ofepic, dominated throughout in its self-revelation by the ques-tion why so learned a man produced so little. May not theanswer be suggested by the vast store of appended quotationslavished upon the several thoughts of that one brief essay ?

It appears to me sometimes that the elaboration of researchpredicated by some enthusiastic devotees of historical accu-rac}^, who preach accuracy apparently for its own sake, is notunlike that of the mathematicians who launched a maledictionagainst those who would degrade pure mathematics by apply-ing it to any practical purpose. Mathematics for mathematicsalone, accuracy only to be accurate, are conceptions that needto be qualified. An uneasy sense of this is already in the air.Since writing these words I find another reviewer complain-ing thus: "The author is content simply to tell facts in theirright order, with the utmost pains as to accuracy, but withhardly any comment on their significance. Of enthusiasmthere is only that which specialists are apt to feel for any factin spite of its value." There is a higher accuracy than theweighing of scruples; the fine dust of the balance rarely turns


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58 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.the scale. Unquestionably, generalization is unsafe wherenot based upon a multitude of instances; conclusion needs awide sweep of research; but unless some limit is accepted asto the number and extent of recorded facts necessary to infer-ence, if not to decision, observation heaped upon observationremains useless to men at large. They are incapable of inter-preting their meaning. The significance of the whole mustbe brought out by careful arrangement and exposition, whichmust not be made to wait too long upon unlimited scrutiny.The passion for certaintj may lapse into incapacity for deci-sion a vice recognized in military life, and which needsrecognition elsewhere.

I have likened to the labor of the artist the constructivework of the historian, the work by which he converts theraw material, the disconnected facts, of his own acquirementto the use of men; and upon that have rested the theory ofhistorical composition, as it appears to my own mind. Thestandard is high, perhaps ideal; for it presupposes faculties,natural gifts, which we are prone to class under the term ofinspiration, in order to express our sense of their rarity andlofty quality. This doubtless may be so; there may be as fewhistorians born of the highest order as there are artists. Butit is worse than useless to fix standards lower than the bestone can frame to one's self; for, like boats crossing a current,men rarely reach as high even as the mark at which they aim.Moreover, so far as my conception is correct and its develop-ment before you sound, it involves primarily an intellectualprocess within the reach of most, even though the fire ofgenius, of inspiration, may be wanting. That informing spiritwhich is indispensable to the highest success is the inestima-ble privilege of nature's favored few. But to study the factsanalytically, to detect the broad leading features, to assign tothem their respective importance, to recognize their mutualrelations, and upon these data to frame a scheme of logicalpresentation all this is within the scope of many whom weshould hesitate to call artists, and who yet are certainly capa-ble of being more than chroniclers, or even than narrators.

In fact, to do this much may be no more than to be drylylogical. It is in the execution of the scheme thus evolvedthat the difficulty becomes marked; like that of the artist \vhofalls short of reproducing to the eyes of others the vision


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SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT. 59revealed to himself. Nevertheless, simply l>y logical presen-tation the keenest intellectual gratification may be affordedthe gratification of comprehending what one sees but has nothitherto understood. From this proceeds the delineation ofthe chain of cause and effect; the classification of incidents, atfirst sight disconnected, by a successful generalization whichiwoals their essential unity; the exposition of a leading gen-eral tendency, which is the predominant characteristic of anepoch. These processes do not, however, end in mere grati-fication; they convey instruction, the more certain and endur-ing because of their fascinating interest.To conceive thus the work of the historian is perhaps naturalto my profession. Certainly, from this same point of view,of artistic grouping of subordinate details around a centralidea, I have learned to seek not only the solution of theproblems of warfare, but the method of its history ; whetheras it concerns the conduct of campaigns, which we call.strategy, or in the direction of battles, which we definetactics, or in the design of the individual ship of war. Unityof purpose exclusiveness of purpose, to use Napoleon'sphrase is the secret of great military successes. In usingthis word exclusiveness, which reduces unity to a unit, Napo-leon was not weighing scrupulously the accuracy of his terms.He was simply censuring the particular aberration of theofficer addressed, who was so concerned for a field of opera-tions not immediately involved as to allow his mind to wanderfrom the one predominant interest then at stake. But, thoughexaggerated, the term is not otherwise incorrect, and theexaggeration is rather that of emphasis than of hyperbole.Other matters may need to be considered, because of theirevident relations to the central feature; they therefore maynot be excluded in a strict sense, but equally they are not tousurp the preeminence due to it alone. In so far its claim is"exclusive," and their own exist only as ministering to it.The military historian who is instructed in the principles ofthe art of war finds, as it were imposed upon him, the neces-

sity of so constructing his narrative as to present a substantialunity in effect. Such familiar phrase as the u key of thesituation," the decisive point for which he has been taught tolook, upon the tenure of which depends more or less thefortune of war, sustains continually before his mind the idea,


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60 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.to which his treatment must correspond, of a central featureround which all else groups, not only subordinate, but con-tributive. Here is no vague collocation of words, but theconcrete, pithy expression of a trained habit of mind whichdominates writing necessarily, even though unconsciously tothe writer. So the word " combination," than which nonefinds more frequent use in military literature, and which 3^011will recall means to make of two one, reminds him, if heneeds to think, that no mere narrative of separate incidents,however vivid as word painting, fulfills his task. He mustalso show how all lead up to, and find their several meaningsin, a common result, of purpose or of achievement, whichunifies their action. So again " concentration," the watchwordof military action, and the final end of all combination, re-minds him that facts must be massed as well as troops, if theyare to prevail against the passive resistance of indolent men-tality, if they are to penetrate and shatter the forces ofignorance or prejudgment, which conservative impression hasarrayed against them.It is not in the coloring, but in the grouping, that the trueexcellence of the military historian is found; just as the battleis won, not by the picturesqueness of the scene, but by thedisposition of the forces. Both the logical faculty and theimagination contribute to his success, but the former muchexceeds the latter in effect. A campaign, or a battle, skill-fully designed, is a work of art, and duly to describe itrequires something of the appreciation and combinative facultyof an artist, but where there is no appeal be}rond the imagina-tion to the intellect impressions are apt to lack distinctness.While there is a certain exaltation in sharing, through vividnarrative, the emotions of those who have borne a part insome deed of conspicuous daring, the fascination does notequal that wrought upon the mind as it traces the sequence bywhich successive occurrences are seen to issue in their neces-sary results, or causes apparently remote to converge upon acommon end. Then understanding succeeds to the sense ofbewilderment too commonly produced by military events, asoften narrated. Failing such comprehension, there may befairly discerned that "it was a famous victory;" and yet themodest confession have to follow that " what they fought eachother for" what the meaning of it all is "I can not well


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SUBORDINATION IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT. 61make out." No appointed end is seen to justify the bloodymeans.This difficulty is not confined to military history. It exists

in all narrative of events, which even in the ablest hands tendsto degenerate into a brilliant pageant, and in those of lesscapable colprists into a simple procession of passers by amore or less commonplace street scene to recur to a simile Ihave already used. It is the privilege simply of the militaryhistorian that, if he himself has real understanding of the mat-ters he treats, they themselves supply the steadying center ofobservation; for the actions are those of men who had animmediate recognized purpose, which dictated their conduct.To be faithful to them he must not merely tell their deeds, butexpound also their plan.The plan of Providence, which in its fulfillment we call his-tory, is of wider range and more complicated detail than thetactics of a battle, or the strategy of a campaign, or even thanthe policy of a war. Each of these in its own sphere is anincident of history, possessing an intrinsic unity of its own.Each, therefore, may be treated after the fashion and underthe limitations I have suggested; as a work of art, which hasa central feature around which details are to be grouped, butkept ever subordinate to its due development. So, and soonly, shall the unity of the picture be successfully preserved;but when this has been done, each particular incident, andgroup of incidents, becomes as it were a fully wrought andfashioned piece, prepared for adjustment in its place in thegreat mosaic, which the history of the race is gradually fash-ioning under the Divine overruling.

1 apprehend that the analogy between military history andhistory in its other aspects political, economical, social, and,so on is in this respect closer than most would be willing atfirst to concede. There is perhaps in military history morepronounced definiteness of human plan, more clearly markedfinality of conclusion, and withal a certain vividness of action,all of which tend to enforce the outlines and emphasize theunity of the particular subject. A declaration of war, a treatyof peace, a decisive victory, if not quite epoch-making events,are at least prominent milestortes, which mark and define thepassage of time: It is scarcely necessary to observe, how-ever, that all these have their very definite analogues in that


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62 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.which we call civil history. The Declaration of Independencemarks the consummation of a series of civil acts; the surrenderof Cornwallis terminates a military record. The Peace ofWestphalia and the British Reform Bill of 1832 are alike con-spicuous indications of the passing of the old and the adventof the new. But yet more, may we not say that all history isthe aggressive advance of the future upon the past, the fieldof collision being the present. That no blood be shed doesnot make the sapping of the old foundations less real, nor theoverthrow of the old conditions less decisive. Offense anddefense, the opposing sides in war, reproduce themselves allover the historic field. The conservative, of that which nowis, holds the successive positions against the progressive, whoseeks change; the resultant of each conflict, as in most wars,is a modification of conditions, not an immediate reversal.Total overthrow is rare, and happily so, for thus the contin-uity of conditions is preserved. Neither revolution, nor yetstagnation, but still advance, graduated and moderate, whichretains the one indispensable salt of national well-being, faith;faith in an established order, in fundamental principles, inregulated progress.Looking, then, upon the field of history thus widened from

the single particular of military events, which I have takenfor illustration to embrace all the various activities of man-kind during a given epoch, we find necessarily a vast multi-plication of incident, with a corresponding complication of thethreads to which they severally belong. Thus not only thetask is much bigger, but the analysis is more laborious: whileas this underlies unity of treatment, the attainment of thatbecomes far more difficult. Nevertheless the attempt mustbe made; that particular feature which gives special characterto the period under consideration must be selected, and therelations of the others to it discerned, in order that in thepreeminence of the one and the contributory subordination ofthe others artistic unity of construction may be attained.Thus only can the mass of readers receive that correct impres-sion of the general character and trend of a period which farsurpasses in instructive quality any volume of details, how-ever accurate, the significance *of which is not apprehended.An example of the thought which I am trying to express isto be found in the brief summaries of tendencies, which Kanke,


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SI HOKDINAT10N IN HISTORICAL TREATMENT. 63in his History of England in the .seventeenth century, inter-poses from time to time in breaks of the narrative. This isnot. I fancy, the most artistic method. It resembles ratherthose novels in which the motives and characters of the actorsaiv explained currently instead of being- made to transpire forthemselves. Nevertheless the line of light thus thrown servesto elucidate the whole preceding and succeeding narrative.The separate events, the course and character of the severalactors, receive a meaning and a value which apart from suchji clew they do not possess.

I conceive that such a method is applicable to all the workof history from the least to the greatest; from the singlestones, if we may so say, the particular limited researches,the monographs, up to the great edifice, which we mayimagine though we may never see, in which all the periodsof universal history shall have their several places and dueproportion. So coordinated, they will present a majesticideal unity corresponding to the thought of the Divine Archi-tect, realized to His creatures. To a consummation so noblewe- may be permitted to aspire, and individually to take pride,not in our own selves nor in our own work, but rather in thattoward which we minister and in which we believe. Faith,the evidence of things not seen as yet, and the needful motiveforce of every truly great achievement, may cheer us to feelthat in the perfection of our particular work we forward theultimate perfection of the whole, which in its entirety can bethe work of no one hand. It may be, indeed, that to someone favored mind will be committed the final great synthesis;but he would be powerless save for the patient labors of theinnumerable army which, stone by stone and section by sec-tion, have wrought to perfection the several parts; while incombining these in the ultimate unity he must be guided bythe same principles and governed by the same methods thathave controlled them in their humbler tasks. He will in factbe, as each one of us is, an instrument. To him will beintrusted, on a larger and final scale, to accomplish the reali-zation of that toward whiqji generations of predecessors havelabored; comprehending but in part and obscurely the endtoward which they were tending, but yet building betterthan they knew because they built faithfully.


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1902 mahan alfred thayer. subordination in historical treatment

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