I most gladly accept this reproach.The manifold facts of the journals and the realities of the world are far more instructive than philosophical lucubrations such as the Revue is stuffed with.
Philosophers are beginning to see the puerility of such reproaches.It was certainly of the forty volumes of this fastidious publication that Mr.William James was thinking when he wrote that all these dissertations simply represented ``a string of facts clumsily observed and a few quarrelsome discussions.'' Although he is the author of the best known treatise on psychology extant, the eminent thinker realises ``the fragility of a science that oozes metaphysical criticism at every joint.'' For more than twenty years I have tried to interest psychologists in the study of realities, but the stream of university metaphysics is hardly yet turned aside, although it has lost its former force4.Impartiality in History.
Impartiality has always been considered as the most essential quality of the historian.All historians since Tacitus have assured us that they are impartial.
In reality the writer sees events as the painter sees a landscape--that is, through his own temperament; through his character and the mind of the race.
A number of artists, placed before the same landscape, would necessarily interpret it in as many different fashions.Some would lay stress upon details neglected by others.Each reproduction would thus be a personal work--that is to say, would be interpreted by a certain form of sensibility.
It is the same with the writer.We can no more speak of the impartiality of the historian than we can speak of the impartiality of the painter.
Certainly the historian may confine himself to the reproduction of documents, and this is the present tendency.But these documents, for periods as near us as the Revolution, are so abundant that a man's whole life would not suffice to go through them.Therefore the historian must make a choice.
Consciously sometimes, but more often unconsciously, the author will select the material which best corresponds with his political, moral, and social opinions.
It is therefore impossible, unless he contents himself with simple chronologies summing up each event with a few words and a date, to produce a truly impartial volume of history.No author could be impartial; and it is not to be regretted.The claim to impartiality, so common to-day, results in those flat, gloomy, and prodigiously wearisome works which render the comprehension of a period completely impossible.
Should the historian, under a pretext of impartiality, abstain from judging men--that is, from speaking in tones of admiration or reprobation?
This question, I admit, allows of two very different solutions, each of which is perfectly correct, according to the point of view assumed--that of the moralist or that of the psychologist.
The moralist must think exclusively of the interest of society, and must judge men only according to that interest.By the very fact that it exists and wishes to continue to exist a society is obliged to admit a certain number of rules, to have an indestructible standard of good and evil, and consequently to create very definite distinctions between vice and virtue.It thus finally creates average types, to which the man of the period approaches more or less closely, and from which he cannot depart very widely without peril to society.
It is by such similar types and the rules derived from social necessities that the moralist must judge the men of the past.
Praising those which were useful and blaming the rest, he thus helps to form the moral types which are indispensable to the progress of civilisation and which may serve others as models.
Poets such as Corneille, for example, create heroes superior to the majority of men, and possibly inimitable; but they thereby help greatly to stimulate our efforts.The example of heroes must always be set before a people in order to ennoble its mind.
Such is the moralist's point of view.That of the psychologist would be quite different.While a society has no right to be tolerant, because its first duty is to live, the psychologist may remain indifferent.Considering things as a scientist, he no longer asks their utilitarian value, but seeks merely to explain them.
His situation is that of the observer before any phenomenon.It is obviously difficult to read in cold blood that Carrier ordered his victims to be buried up to the neck so that they might then be blinded and subjected to horrible torments.Yet if we wish to comprehend such acts we must be no more indignant than the naturalist before the spider slowly devouring a fly.As soon as the reason is moved it is no longer reason, and can explain nothing.
The functions of the historian and the psychologist are not, as we see, identical, but of both we may demand the endeavour, by a wise interpretation of the facts, to discover, under the visible evidences, the invisible forces which determine them.
