guided me while working at this history, I have hardly a word to say. I know of no others, except those that proceed naturally from the supreme principle of regard for historical truth and faith. That I write from the standpoint of a Bohemian is a fact for which I could only be blamed, if it rendered me unjust either to the Bohemians or to their opponents. I hope, however, that my sincere craving for truth, my respect for all laws, divine and human, my zeal for order and legality, my sympathy with the weal and woe of all mankind, will preserve me from the sin of partiality. With God's help, these principles will continue to guide me in my task."[1]
Of late, however, historians, like Mandell Creighton, have come to see, what Bradley pointed out thirty years ago, that "a history without so-called prejudications is a mere delusion." [2]The perception of this fact must of necessity bring the historian to inquire anew, and with a more open mind, into the nature and office of historiography. Now, the result of such an inquiry shows, in the first place, that historiography stands in a unique relation to the spirit of nationality. The historian is memory's mouthpiece for his countrymen; and history is the inspiration of the patriot. So conceived, history (that is, historiography) is a form of literature, a genre which claims a high seriousness in its devotees, and which evokes a deep response in the hearts of men. Furthermore, the result of an inquiry into the nature of historiography reveals it as standing in an important relation to the highest aspirations of the human spirit. The historian, from considering the history of his own country, passes on to describe the rise and decline of empires; he presents, in his ultimate synthesis, momentous occurrences that have affected
- ↑ As quoted in Count Lützow 's Lectures on the Historians of Bohemia (London, 1905), p. 94.
- ↑ F. H. Bradley, The Presuppositions of Critical History (Oxford, 1874), pp. 5, 6. "The historian," he says, "is not and cannot be merely receptive, or barely reproductive. It is true that he may not actually add any new material of his own, and yet his action, in so far as he realises that which never as such has been given him, implies a preconception, and denotes in a sense a foregone conclusion. The straightening of the crooked rests on the knowledge of the straight, and the exercise of criticism requires a canon. This is not the only difficulty which historical writing in its practice brings to the theory of passivity. . . . With every fresh standing-ground gained by the growth of experience, with every rise of the spirit to a fuller life comes another view of the far-lying past from a higher and a new level, and a fresh and corresponding change in the features of the object recognised."
