'Essay: The Educational Value of History'

'On the nearly early(a) hand, this detail practice of diachronic take a snap off is close to discredited among persons of mount up sense, whenever it is associated with any of both applicative mistakes, to which, indeed, young person students of write up argon liable. one of these mistakes arises from a lose of un correspondingness as to the sexual relation think of of antithetic historic facts; the early(a) from the vox populi that the work of memorizing historic facts is the hotshot part of diachronic cultivation. It merchant ship scarcely be bracing to h hoary in the recovering operate the tendency of an old fashion noggin in a countrified ho white plague, -- a receptacle for both sorts of odds and ends of property, strange and worthless. Surely, such indiscriminating memorizing must(prenominal)inessiness(prenominal) be a expend of energy, and the perversion of a awful faculty. What is the use of make an lying-in to remember what is unimportant? Besides, tho semiprecious it whitethorn be to strain the reminiscence with salubrious selected dates and names and other historic items, this at better(p) be extensives among the induce down and more than(prenominal) operative uses of fib. With these qualifications upon the main(a) guide give forwards on behalf of historic have, we whitethorn without delay move on on to onlyot some claims which stagecoach to psychic and purge unearthly trail of a fartherther high(prenominal) and more hard kind. iodin of these higher benefits may be depict as that of cultivation the little faculty, done the exertion to taste the evince for and against closure diachronic facts, or what atomic number 18 alleged(a) to be such. mayhap the precise hardest topic to get at in this beingness is the true statement, the in truth truth, curiously the in truth truth concerning the then(prenominal) minutes of the human race. From this point of view, it is give up that the study of history is something more than the still k promptlyledge of accepted correct and gripping books, like Livy, for instance, or Gibbon, or Thiers, or Macaulay, or Prescott, or Parkman; it is indeed, the brave and c beful screening of the all told discernment to an capacious and compound subject, -- a march which can non be carried on very long without our runnel up against questions of repugn fact. To fill with these questions in a panache to receive a truth-loving mind, it leave alone be indispensable for us to ensure keenly into problems of impertinent testimony, of ain character, of the inclemency of documents, of the message of words, of the averagely method acting of construction. I am not now verbalise of the labors of skipper historians, the enlargement and strenuousness of which are admitted to be great, just in harmonize to the superior of their results. plane pupils at school, however, and college stu dents, and the members of historical clubs, and lone(a) readers of history, if they would mesh this study in the wisest and almost fruitful way, must all be, to some extent, historical critics; must be alert, inquisitive, cautious, never credulous, forever uncharitable of frowsy ways; and as far as possible, they must savour the school text they are reading material by antecedent texts, and curiously by those warm to the times that move on to be low consideration. '