Concerning the True Use and Advantage of the Study of History Let me say something of history,in general,before I descend into the consideration of particular parts of it,or of the various methods of study,or of the different views of those that apply themselves to it,as I had begun to do in my former letter.
The love of history seems inseparable from human nature,because it seems inseparable from self-love.The same principle in this instance carries us forward and backward,to future and to past ages.We imagine that the things,which affect us,must affect posterity:this sentiment runs through mankind,from Caesar down to the parish-clerk in Pope's Miscellany.We are fond of preserving,as far as it is in our frail power,the memory of our own adventures,of those of our own time,and of those that preceded it.Rude heaps of stones have been raised,and ruder hymns have been composed,for this purpose,by nations who bad not yet the use of arts and letters.To go no farther back,the triumphs of Odin were celebrated in runic songs,and the feats of our British ancestors were recorded in those of their bards.The savages of America have the same custom at this day:and long historical ballads of their huntings and their wars are sung at all their festivals.There is no need of saying how this passion grows,among civilised nations,in proportion to the means of gratifying.it.but let us observe that the same principle of nature directs us as strongly,and more generally as well as more early,to indulge our own curiosity,instead of preparing to gratify that of others.The child hearkens with delight to the tales of his nurse:he learns to read,and he devours with eagerness fabulous legends and novels:in riper years he applies himself to history,or to that which he takes for history,to authorised romance:and,even in age,the desire of knowing what has happened to other men,yields to the desire alone of relating what has happened to ourselves.
Thus history,true or false,speaks to our passions always.What pity is it,my lord,that even the best should speak to our understandings so seldom?
That it does so,we have none to blame but ourselves.Nature has done her part.She has opened this study to every man who can read and think:and what she has made the most agreeable,reason cain make the most useful,application of our minds.But if we consult our reason,we shall be far from following the examples of our fellow-creatures,in this as in most other cases,who are so proud of being rational.We shall neither read to soothe our indolence,nor to gratify our vanity:as little shall we content ourselves to drudge like grammarians and critics,that others may be able to study with greater ease and profit,like philosophers and statesmen;as little shall we affect the slender merit of becoming great scholars at the expense of groping all our lives in the dark mazes of antiquity.All these mistake the true drift of study,and the true use of history.Nature gave us curiosity to excite the industry of our minds;but she never intended it should be made the principal,much less the sole object of their application.The true and proper object of this application is a constant improvement in private and in public virtue.
An application to any study that tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and better citizens,is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness,to use an expression of Tillotson:and the knowledge we acquire by it is a creditable kind of ignorance,nothing more.This creditable kind of ignorance is,in my opinion,the whole benefit which the generality of men,even of the most learned,reap from the study of history:and yet the study of history seems to me,of all other,the most proper to train us up to private and public virtue.
Your lordship may very well be ready by this time,and after so much bold censure on my part,to ask me,what then is the true use of history?in what respects may it serve to make us better and wiser?and what method is to be pursued in the study of it,for attaining these great ends?I will answer you by quoting what I have read some where or other,in Dionysius Halicarn,I think,that history is philosophy teaching by examples.We need but to cast our eyes on the world,and we shall see the daily force of example:
we need but to turn them inward,and we shall soon discover why example has this force."Pauci prudentia,"says Tacitus,"honesta abdeterioribus,utilia ab noxiis discernunt:plures aliorum eventis docentur."Such is the imperfection of human understanding,such is the frail temper of our minds,that abstract or general propositions,though ever so true,appear obscure or doubtful to us very often,till they are explained by examples;and that the wisest lessons in favor of virtue go but a little way to convince the judgment,and determine the will,unless they are enforced by the same means;and we are obliged to apply to ourselves what we see happen to other men.Instructions by precept have the further disadvantage of coming on the authority of others,and frequently require a long deduction of reasoning.
"Homines amplius oculis,quam auribus,credunt:longum iter est per praecepta,breve et efficax per exempla."The reason of this judgment,which I quote from one of Seneca's epistles in confirmation of my own opinion,rests,I think,on this;that when examples are pointed out to us,there is a kind of appeal,with which we are flattered,made to our senses,as well as our understandings.
