Outline of Universal History | Page 8

and of the nations as forming one complex unity. The
conquests and extended dominion of Rome first suggested the idea of
universal history. Polybius, a Greek in the second century B.C., had
watched the progress of Rome, in its career of conquest, until "the
affairs of Italy and Africa," as he says, "joined with those of Asia and
Greece, and all moved together towards one fixed and single point." He
tells us that particular histories can not give us a knowledge of the
whole, more than the survey of the divided members of a body once
endowed with life and beauty can yield a just conception of all the
comeliness and vigor which it has received from Nature. To Polybius
belongs the distinction of being the first to undertake a universal
history. Christianity, with its doctrine of the unity of mankind, and with
all the moral and religious teaching characteristic of the gospel,
contributed effectively to the widening of the view of the office and
scope of history. It is only in quite recent times that history has directed
its attention predominantly to social progress, and to its causes and
conditions.
History, in its etymological sense (from the Greek, historia), meant the
ascertaining of facts by inquiry; then, the results of this inquiry, the
knowledge thus obtained. The work of Herodotus was "history" in the
strictest sense: he acquired his information by travel and personal
interrogation.

The German philosopher, Hegel, has divided histories into three classes:
1. Original histories; i.e., works written by contemporaries of the
events described, who share in the spirit of the times, and may have
personally taken part in the transactions. Such are the works of
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Anabasis, Clarendon's History of
the Great Rebellion in England, Caesar's Commentaries. 2. Reflective
histories, where the author writes at a later point of time, on the basis of
materials which he gathers up, but is not himself a partaker in the spirit
of the age of which he treats. 3. Philosophical histories, which set forth
the rational development of history in its inmost idea.
Another classification is the following: 1. Genealogies, like the records
of Manetho, the Egyptian priest. 2. The chronicle, following the
chronological order, and telling the story in a simple, popular way. 3.
The "pragmatic" form of writing, which aims to explain by reference to
the past some particular characteristic or phase of the present, and uses
history to point a special moral lesson. 4. The form of history which
traces the rise and progress of "ideas," tendencies, or ruling
forces,--such as the idea of civil equality in early Rome or in modern
France, the religious ideas of Mohammedanism, the idea of
representative government, the idea of German unity, etc.
A broad line of distinction has been drawn between "the old or artistic
type of history," and the new or sociological type which belongs to the
present century. The ancient historians represented the former type.
They prized literary form. They aimed to interweave moral and
political reflections. Polybius often interrupts his narrative to introduce
remarks of this sort. But they were not, as a rule, diligent and accurate
in their researches. And, above all, they had no just conception of
society as a whole, and of the complex forces out of which the visible
scene springs. The Greeks were the masters in this first or artistic form
of history. The French Revolution was one stimulus to a profounder
and more comprehensive method of studying history. The methods and
investigations of natural science have had a decided influence in the
same direction.
THE SOURCES OF HISTORY.--History must depend for credence on

credible evidence. In order to justify belief, one must either himself
have seen or heard the facts related, or have the testimony, direct or
indirect, of witnesses or of well-informed contemporaries. The sources
of historic knowledge are mainly comprised in oral tradition, or in
some form of written records.
Tradition is exposed to the infirmities of memory, and to the
unconscious invention and distortion which grow out of imagination
and feeling. Ordinarily, bare tradition, not verified by corroborative
proofs, can not be trusted later than the second generation from the
circumstances narrated. It ceases to be reliable when it has been
transmitted through more than two hands. In the case of a great and
startling event, like a destructive convulsion of nature or a protracted
war, the authentic story, though unwritten, of the central facts, at least,
is of much longer duration. There may be visible monuments that serve
to perpetuate the recollection of the occurrences which they
commemorate. Institutions may exist--popular festivals and the
like--which keep alive the memory of past events, and, in certain
circumstances, are sufficient to verify them to generations far removed
in time. Events of a stirring character, when they are