The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1890-03-22
THE USES OF HISTORY.
It Is the Record OF Facts Bearing on Or
ganized Mnsses of Mon.

ganized Masses of Men.
+ In his eloquent address before tho
New York Historical Society on the oc-
casion of its eigbty-fifth anniversary,
November 81, 1889, the Rev. John Hall,
d. 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
tinctness. 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, inquiring, hoping,
regarding the future. The exercise
that strengthens this original faculty
which reproduces the past, and places it
beside the living present--is good in
itself provided we keep the power so en-
larged at work on fruitful fields. In
the careful analysis of the mental
powers by DIR. Noah Porter we have
sense perception ana consciousness,
making first presentation Of objects to
the mind. Then we have the repre-
sentative faculty acting lin part without
the wilI, making second presentation
of the objects. But will-power comes in,
and is employed in keeping represented
20 the mind what is desired, and so at
once employing and strengthening 1t.
Good history furnishes the material on
~, l., tod
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
luences of individuals are portrayed,
and single lives stand out in their dis
tinctness before community so that
we seem TO live, and toll, and suffer
with them. 7 am ready to own the
pleasu a d the profit have drawn
from the ruitful field of biography,
which is the his ory 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-
BILE. Constantine the Great can not be
rightly estimated without a careful con-
sideration of the condition, social, po-
litical and religious, of the nations
with which he had to do. When Prof
Pasquale Viliari would depict the man
who moved Italy, from Florence as a
center, in the end of the fifteenth CEN
tury, no 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 a 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