than in all recorded time before. Every year–sometimes, in war, every
month–some new invention, method, or situation compels a fresh
adjustment of behavior and ideas. – Furthermore, an element of chance,
perhaps of freedom, seems to enter into the conduct of metals and men. We
are no longer confident that atoms, much less organisms, will respond in
the future as we think they have responded in the past. The electrons, like
Cowper’s God [Cowper, William (1731-1800)], move in mysterious ways
their wonders to perform, and some quirk of character or circumstance may
upset national equations, as when Alexander [Alexander the Great, King of
Macedon (r. 336-323 B.C.)] drank himself to death and let his new empire
fall apart (323 B.C.), or as when Frederick the Great [Frederick II the
Great, King of Prussia (r. 1740-86)] was saved from disaster by the
accession of a Czar infatuated with Prussian ways (1762).
Obviously historiography cannot be a science. It can only be an industry,
an art, and a philosophy–an industry by ferreting out the facts, an art by
establishing a meaningful order in the chaos of materials, a philosophy by
seeking perspective and enlightenment. “The present is the past rolled up
for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding”
so we believe and hope. In philosophy we try to see the part in the light of
the whole; in the “philosophy of history” we try to see this moment in the
light of the past. We know that in both cases this is a counsel of perfection;
total perspective is an optical illusion. We do not know the whole of man’s
history; there were probably many civilizations before the Sumerian or the
Egyptian; we have just begun to dig! We must operate with partial
knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities; in history, as in
science and politics, relativity rules, and all formulas should be suspect.
“History smiles at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patterns or
logical grooves; it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our
rules; history is baroque.”
Perhaps, within these limits, we can learn
enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another’s
delusions.
