On the Reading of History


Let me at the beginning of this short article present two facts to the
reader. Neither can be disputed, and that is why I call them facts and
put them in the forefront before I begin upon my theories.

The first fact is that the record of what men have done in the past and
how they have done it is the chief positive guide to present action. The
second fact is that most men must now receive the impression of the past
through reading.

Put these two facts together and you get the fundamental truth that upon
the right reading of history the right use of citizenship in England
today will depend. It will of course depend upon other things as well:
chiefly upon the human conscience; for if you were to pack off to an
island a hundred families as ignorant as any human families can be of
tradition, and wholly ignorant of positive history, those families would
yet be able to create a human society and the voice of God within them
would give just limits to their actions.

Still, of those factors in civic action amenable to civic direction,
conscious and positively effective, there is nothing to compare with the
right teaching and the right reading of history. Now teaching is today
ruined. The old machinery by which the whole nation could be got to know
all essential human things, has been destroyed, and the teaching of
history in particular has been not only ruined but rendered ridiculous.