He is to
distinguish between cause and occasion, between the influence of
general laws and particular fancies, and he is to remember that the
greatest lessons of the world are contained in history and that it
is the historian's duty to manifest them so as to save nations from
following those unwise policies which always lead to dishonour and
ruin, and to teach individuals to apprehend by the intellectual
culture of history those truths which else they would have to learn
in the bitter school of experience,
Now, as regards his theory of the necessity of the historian's
being contemporary with the events he describes, so far as the
historian is a mere narrator the remark is undoubtedly true. But
to appreciate the harmony and rational position of the facts of a
great epoch, to discover its laws, the causes which produced it and
the effects which it generates, the scene must be viewed from a
certain height and distance to be completely apprehended. A
thoroughly contemporary historian such as Lord Clarendon or
Thucydides is in reality part of the history he criticises; and, in
the case of such contemporary historians as Fabius and Philistus,
Polybius in compelled to acknowledge that they are misled by
patriotic and other considerations.
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