HISTORY, in the most correct use of the word, means the prose narrative of past events, as probably true as the fallibility of human testimony will allow. This definition takes no account of chronicles in verse which were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. With this exception the definition is fairly exact, both in what it comprehends and what it excludes. Obviously prose narrative is not history when it deals with fictitious events, as in the case of the novel; and verse narrative, even when it deals with true events (as in the account of the battle of Salamis in the Persæ of Æschylus, or Guillaume le Breton’s metrical chronicle of the reign of Philip Augustus), is either more or less than history, and in any case a sub-species by itself.
In practice, the line between history and mythus is often not easy to draw; but the theoretical distinction is plain. History reposes, however remotely, on contemporary witness to the fact related. Written records are not absolutely indispensable, as tradition may supply their place and represent authentic contemporary testimony. But tradition is very insecure and apt to be equally inventive and oblivious. It is in the half light of tradition that mythus is born of the creative fancy of man, and the difficulty of separating fact from fiction in this border-land of mingled fable and reality very often amounts to impossibility.
But even authentic facts alone are not sufficient to constitute history. Many facts and dates are recorded with reference to China, Egypt, and Assyria in olden times, which in all probability are true; but these facts and dates are not enough to give those countries a history. The bare fact that a certain king reigned in a certain year, and conquered or was defeated in battle with a neighbour, is perhaps chronologically valuable, but it is not history. History only attains its full stature when it not only records but describes in considerable fulness social events and evolution, when it marks change and growth, the movement of socicty from one phase to another.
The field of history is in consequence very limited, both in time and space, in proportion to the length of human existence and the area of the earth’s surface occupied by man. Primitive and savage man has no history, because the struggle for existence consumes all his energies, and has neither time nor faculty to think of himself as a social being, much less to make record of social events. But even when partially civilized, mankind is often incapable, not only of writing history, but of furnishing the materials of it. Under a system of caste, or conservative theocracy, or oppressive tradition, as in India, Egypt, and China respectively, the social evolution is so slow that it hardly seems to move at all. The grandson lives among conditions hardly differing from those of the grandfather. In such a state of things the very subject-matter of history is wanting. Nothing attracts less notice than immobility, and large populations have often lived under conditions which for whole generations did not seem to vary. The vast and vacant annals of the East show that the arts of peace and war may attain considerable development without history or its materials being produced in consequence.
If these views be correct we can only allow a period of about 4000 years as the limit of genuine history in point of time. The beginning would be with the historical books of the Old Testament. Before the Jewish records fail us the Greek have begun. The Romans follow in immediate succession, and the historical thread has never been broken since, though thicker and stronger in some epochs than in others. As regards area, history long dwelt exclusively on the shores of that inland sea which, if not the birthplace of the human race, have at least been the chief training-ground of its early youth and vigorous manhood. Civilization subsequently spread from the Mediterranean to remote islands and continents unknown to the ancients, and history has followed it. No doubt in time both will be coextensive with the globe; but that time bas not yet come. It is still useful to remember that the materials of history now rapidly accumulating in the far West, the far South, and even the far East, owe their origin to that antiquity of which we are the heirs, to the civilization which took its rise in those ever memorable centres named Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem.
Early history is never critical and painstaking in the investigation of facts. Neither the historian nor his readers or hearers have reached a stage of culture in which accuracy is highly valued. Early history is essentially artistic, its object is much more to charm the fancy aud warm the emotions than to instruct the understanding. A good story, pathetic or humorous, is appreciated for its own sake independently of its truth. Striking pictures, dramatic situations, often told in dialogue, scenes in which virtue and vice are depicted on a colossal scale—these are the chief objects of the early historical writer, who mingles fact and fiction with the same naiveté as his brethren, the writers of the early epos and drama. Indeed, their subjects are often the same,—the heroes whose prowess saved or achieved the national existence, the odious foreign foe who was beaten back; in either case characters appealing strongly to the imagination and the feelings, which would resent cold criticism, but gladly welcome eloquence and passion. History written under these circumstances has much of the character of the prose poem,—carmen solutum, as Quintilian called it. The artistic or imaginative element predominates in it rather to excess. Such is history as written by Herodotus and Froissart. The growth of accurate knowledge in other departments, the increased practice of affairs, the substitution of the political for the heroic and chivalrous sentiment, lead to a more sober and scrutinizing style of history without sacrifice of artistic form. Such is history as written by Thucydides and Tacitus.
Even a most hasty survey of so vast a subject as the historical literature of the world will be helped by its division.
History is of two kinds,—the old or artistic type of history, and the new or sociological type. The artistic type, invented by the Greeks, remained the ideal of history till comparatively recent times. Its aim was perfection of literary form, weight and dignity of language, depth of moral and sagacity of political reflexion. It was habitually careless and indifferent as regards research. But its chief distinction from the new history was a negative one; it had no conception of society as an organism, no suspicion of the depth and variety of the social forces which underlie and originate the visible events which it describes, often with admirable power. The new history is to a great extent characterized by opposite qualities, Its preoccupation about literary form is secondary, moral reflexion it rather avoids, but it is laborious beyond precedent in research, and above all it is pregnant with the notion that society is a great aggregate of forces moving according to laws special to it, and similar to those producing evolution and growth analogous to what we see in other forms of life. The remainder of this article could not perhaps be better employed than by a short examination of these two types of history, including some reference to the causes which brought about a transition from one to the other.
