The Study of History

Extract

The paramount usefulness of history, with all its ramifications, as a branch of education has not yet met with a full recognition. The real position and dignity of history remains' still a subject of controversy. The point at issue is—whether history may be considered and studied as a science or not. In France and Germany the question has long been decided. In both countries distinguished writers have invested history with a scientific importance—with a preeminence in general education not readily accepted by the practical Anglo-Saxon. In Great Britain, several eminent historians do believe that there are necessary laws regulating the moral as well as the physical world; they believe that the same powers prevail in the moral movement of nations as in the physical world, and that the human as well as the physical world is subjected to invariable rules in its progressive, harmonious, irresistible movement and growth. But a much greater number of English thinkers, and, we believe, the public generally, maintain that humanity advances by a free effort and free will,—that the progress of nations does not advance subjected to invariable laws, and that consequently history cannot be considered as a science until these laws are discovered, proved, and established. They insist on the fact that physical science alone is possible, as material objects are inanimate, whilst a science relating to human actions is impossible, because a man is free, rational, and responsible agent.