The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-05-02
THE USES OF HISTORY.
1t Is the Record of Facts Bearing on Or
ganized Masses of Men,

It Is the Record of Facts Bearing on Or
ganized Masses of Men.
In his eloquent address before the
New York Historical Society OF the oc-
casion of its eighty-fifth anniversary,
November 81, 1889, the Rev. John Hall,
ID. d., said: ''When memory was given
by the Creative hand as one of the
powers of the mind, it was evidently
meant that the past should have to do in
the mental experiences of the present.
To the Infinite One, past, present and
future make one picture of perfect dis
tlnctness. The finite man falls i'm
measurably below this capacity, but
there is still lingering vestige of like
ness to the image of the infinite in that
we can learn and remember something
of what is behind us, and in that we can
not help wondering, in9uiring, hoping,
regarding the future. The exercise
that strengthens this original faculty
which reproduces the past, and places it
beside the living presents good in
itself provided we keep the power so en-
larged at work on fruitful fields. In
the careful analysis of the mental
PO"OAc ny LII. ANOdn OrbcE We nave
sense perception and consciousness,
making first presentation of objects to
the mind. Then we have the repre-
sentative faculty acting Tin part without
the will, making a second presentation
of the objects. But will-power comes in,
and is employed in keeping represented
TO the mind what is desired, and so at
once employing and strengthening it.
Good history furnishes the material on
which this representative power can
work, exercising in part other faculties,
and so far giving vigor, direction, and
versatility to that which constitutes the
man. For what is history? There is
most valuable-one might say, invalu-
able-department of literature, in which
the makeup, the career, and the in
huences of individuals are portrayed,
and single lives stand out in their dis
tinctness before a community, so that
we seem to live, and toll, and suffer
with them. l am ready to own the
pleasure and the profit 1 have drawn
from the fruitful field of biography,
which is the history of individuals. But
you can not look at individuals without
keeping under your eye the throngs be-
tween whom and them action and re-
action are more or less distinctly visi-
bic. Constantine the Great can not be
rightly estimated without careful con-
sideration of the condition, social, po-
litical and religious, of the nations
with which he had to do. When Prof.
Pasquale Villari would depict the man
who moved Italy, from Florence as a
center, in the end of the fifteenth CEN
fury, he writes the Life and Times of
savOnarola. On the other hand, we can
not explain the conditions of things
throughout Christendom for centuries
without taking Constantine into account;
nor can you get just view of the sway
of the Medicis, and the relations of
France and Italy at that time, not to
speak of great later movements, without
some knowledge of Savonarola. An in
dividual, however interesting person
ally, becomes historical only when he
influences, directly or Indirectly, the
conditions of masses of his fellOw-men,
and affects their joint movements.
''History, then, is the record of facts
not as things done and done with, but
as things making or marring, telling for
good or evil, on organized masses of
men, facts-not like pretty and interest
ing Koenig-Sees and Inter-Sees, but like
the sources of the Rhine, or the Danube,
which, though men may come and men
may go, themselves go on forever, their
direction indeed affected by circum-
stances outside, with which history has
nothing to do" Magazine of American
History