Modern Technique in Historical Development

Extract

We are all aware that the teaching of history today has become a very problematical affair—due as much to the subject as to our times. For centuries and up to a few generations ago the situation was different. In former days the center of gravity of instruction was in ancient history; and this proved itself a magnificent medium for the education of youth. For the history of the Greek-Roman world is understandable to young people as no other area of history; and the ancient historians dispense with the details which preoccupy the moderns. Ancient history is constricted. It can be surveyed completely from its impenetrable dark beginnings to its definitive expiration. We look across the stage from the required distance. The extant source material is limited and of high intellectual content, not loaded up with state proceedings of kingdoms and principalities; the entire development culminates in the two high points—Athens and Rome—and unites them in magnificent harmony. As peers to their subject, the ancient historians have a taste for grand scenes, a taste for the wide contours of world history, for the simplicity and good proportions of form. They do not give too much criticism. They write as moralists and have their firm point of view. They present the universally human, the typical, man and his emotions, not mayhap the individual and his local surroundings; thus as depicted their people remain allied to us; everything can be surveyed and is even accessible to youth without further ado. Ancient history is less fertile than modern, but it is also less full of underbrush. Mighty strides have been made in historical studies since the last century; yet the newer kind is bought with sacrifices. The spirit of criticism has developed the finest methods. Every event of the past has become thoroughly complicated, burdened with controversies; in addition the results shift constantly. Nothing seems to be secure in history. And the spirit of individualization, without which a consideration of historical life can no longer exist, forces us to busy ourselves with the most diverse objects, so that the large outlines are obscured thereby and the integrity of events remains ambiguous.