River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1889-08-22
STUDY OF HISTORY.
How 1t should BE Pursued I'm Order e
Obtain Good Results.


How IT should BE Pursued I'm order 20
obtain Good Results.
It is of course always allowed that it
is necessary in any course of education
to give an important place to the con-
sideration of history, but there re-
mains still much TO be done before
there viii be any proper and general
appreciation of the great Importance
of this branch of knowledge. This is
largely due to the fact that history has
too often been taught as mere dry
and repelent collection of dates and
uninteresting details Perhaps nine
men out of ten are in their youth so
strongly repeled by the method in
which an attempt Is made 10 cram
history down their threats that they
never get TO any thing like fair COM
ception of the interest and richness of
the study; and of those who are more
fortunate there are not many who I'M
derstand what the true object OF study
ing history should be.
This is especially unfortunate in a
country like ours. where all the people
are supposed to take an intelligent in
terest in the affairs of state, and where
every individual is more or less likely
to come sooner or later into active par
ticipation, at least by his vote, in the
gravest issues which present them
selves for the solving. To know what
should be done in any situation it is
necessary to know both what others
have done, and what was the result of
the course which they took. The tried
adage that history repeats itself is at
least so far true that it is not easy to
find problem in government to-day
which has not at some time and in
some place presented itself before, and
we have the advantage, if we are but
wise enough to avail ourselves of it, of
living in an age so late in the recorded
history of the human race that there is
waiting for us the accumulated expert
ence of mankind for thousands of years
in graphing with the very problems
that trouble and challenge us to-day.
If our predecessors have not solved
them all, they have at least eliminated
many of the solutions which might
present themselves, and spared us the
labor of proving many things false that
are to the eye speciOus and alluring.
No better illustration of this could
be found than the so-called National
istn movement, which is making a
somewhat brave show to-day. One
has only TO study history to discover
that the greater part of its proposed
reforms have been thoroughly tried
before and their fallacy proven beyond
peradventure. 1t is certainly not the
part of wisdom to go over the same
ground again, merely to demonstrate
once more the truth that socialism is
not the solution of the riddles which
have vexed man from the dawn of civ
ilization. 1t is pitiful waste of hui
man energy to thrash anew the straw
that has already been again and again
so thoroughly beaten that there mas
not a grain of wheat been left clirging
to the bare huslIs.
The unframed mind is always liable
to fall into the error of supposing that
because fact or a theory is new to it,
it is new to mankind; and one of the
most important uses of the study of
history is to correct this natural mis-
take. In the painful zeal which earn
est souls feel to right all that may be
wrong, or which may seem to be
wrong, upon this complicated planet,
they are almost inevitably led into
this danger. No man should dabble
with the social and moral regeneration
of the race until he has made himself
at least tolerably familiar with the ex-
periments of his predecessors; and
many Al prophet would have been
spared much fruitless and the world
much mischievous preaching had
ne but taken the precaution to assure
himself that the revelation he brought
forward as new was not in reality an
old and long-disproved dream of the
theorist.
History must be studied with mind
unprecedented and willing TO receive
the truth, even although it demand
the sacrifice of the dearest of theories.
1t is useless to go to history with the
determined purpose TO establish some
cunningly-devised scheme, as it is
useless to go to nature to collect facts
to prove some theory framed before
hand. II must be examined, more
over, as a record of human experience
and not as a chronicle of the doings of
unreal puppets playing their parts
marionette-like upon the stage. His
tory is not dates and wars and migra-
tions; it is the record of human strug-
giles TO solve the riddle of existence.
The dilemma has been the same
throughout the ages, and it can only
approach solution by the bringing to-
gether the experiences of mankind,
and taking advantage of all that has
been done before. How often this
principle is forgotten or disregarded,
no one need be told who studied the
history of social and economic the
cries, which perhaps afford the most
striking illustrations of the sad results
of such course. Clumsily handled,
nothing could be more senseless than
the study of history; rightly consid-
cred, there is nothing more impor-
tant, nothing more pregnant with good
results. Boston Courier.
GOWNS FOR BUSY WOMEN.