THE SOCIAL VALUES OF HISTORY

BY ALBERT E. MCKINLEY

Professor of History

I wish to speak today upon the value which a knowledge of history has in our several communities. And I wish you to consider with me how a respect for the past has influenced local and national events, and how it has been and is of practical value even in the every-day life of the man of affairs.

And at the outset let me state what I mean by history. There have been about as many definitions of history as historians, and many a student of the past has felt himself called upon to give his views upon the matter. Some of these definitions have been cold and scientific; others have been warmly sympathetic; some have been logical, theological, geological, biological or anthropological; while others have been imaginative and even poetic. For our purposes this afternoon, and reserving to each of us the right to frame a more philosophical definition at our leisure, let us think of history as the record of what man as a social being has thought and said and done. This excludes the style of research and literature known as biography, except in so far as the individual man's acts have influenced in a large way the life of the society in which he dwells.

But human society is made up of men and women and children; and it is proper for us first to look at certain principles in the life and development of the individual before we note the forces at work in society as a whole. Our friends the psychologists tell us that we have very few pure sensations; that once a sensation has been experienced it leaves an impress upon mind and brain, so that the second and third time it occurs it is no longer a simple sensation, but one tinged with the memories of the past. Out of this mingled body of sensation and memory comes the ability to refer new experiences to our previous life.

And from these many and varied experiences and memories arise the intellectual powers of apperception and conception on the one hand, and of mental or muscular habits on the other.

It is unnecessary, however, to use the language of the psychologist to call attention to the large part which experience and habit hold in the life of every one of us. Poets and dramatists long before the advent of modern psychology composed their songs and plays to illustrate the good and the evil of habit, and the danger of heedlessly defying experience. The wise saws, fables and legends of every language point the same moral: "As the twig is bent, so the tree is inclined;" "Experience is a good but a stern teacher;" "A rolling stone gathers no moss;" "A burnt child dreads the fire." From Aesop and Confucius down to Benjamin Franklin, Artemus Ward and George Ade, the worldly wise have been seeking to find expression for what the psychologists would name the apperceptive basis of muscular and intellectual activities. It is patent that the ordinary man has great respect for experience, and especially that he demands from those about him a measure of expertness which is a result of long habit.

If habit and experience thus play such a large part in the life of the individual, is it thinkable that they should not equally have a place in the life of man's institutions? Is it conceivable that each man should be guided by a knowledge of his past, and that society, made up of these men, should not be influenced by a knowledge of its history? If, with Macaulay, we call history the "essence of innumerable biographies," shall we not find that the essence contains the same principle as its component parts?

A recent writer has likened history to a line drawn on paper by a moving pencil. The past is the line already drawn, the present is the moving point, and the future is the undetermined direction which the pencil will take the next instant. The analogy is an interesting one, but the author, Prof. Woodbridge, neglects an important fact when he makes the future movement undetermined. He might have carried his analogy further and have shown how a moving pencil or any other moving body has

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its future course determined partly by its own past rate of speed, and partly by the new influences brought to bear upon it. Let us suppose that instead of a pencil drawing a line he had likened history to the wheel-tracks made by a rapidly moving automobile. The past is the track in the road; the present is the moving vehicle; but what is the future? all know that, barring the unlooked-for cataclysm from outside forces, the future marks of the wheels will be determined by two factors; first by the influence of the weight and speed of the machine-what the physicists call momentum; and secondly by the will and skill of the driver. The driver cannot ignore the weight and speed of his machine nor the direction from which it came. He cannot turn it on a right angle without danger of a catastrophe. When he makes up his mind to change his course he can round a corner safely only by considering the momentum of his car.

Human society is not far different from such a vehicle. Always it brings from the past the momentum of previous life and experience. Always in the present conscious guidance is making choices of new roads and new avenues for the future. But the new change in direction is impossible without the momentum of the past. And in most cases the new direction is a compromise between the old forces and the new ideal of conscious endeavor.

This is of course simply stating in terms of twentieth century locomotion the old doctrine of the antagonism of conservative and radical. Every stable society has its respect for the past. Every permanent organization builds upon the facts and experiences already known. But every progressive society is continually making new adjustments to meet new conditions and new environments. A rational progressive society uses the product of the past to meet these new needs. The automobile driver may ignore the momentum of his machine and attempt to turn sharply from his course. If he does not fatally injure himself, he at least will wreck his car, and while he may pursue his way upon the desired road, it will be on foot, perhaps with crutches, and not in the vehicle. So it is with society.

Radicalism and originality are essential to progress; but they can function only when fitted into the historical setting of the surrounding society.

The problem of harmonizing tradition and originality has been a recurrent one as long as human society has existed. Some societies acquired so deep a regard for the past that innovation was impossible. For many centuries tradition and ancestor-worship were so strong in China that advancement and change became almost unthinkable. In the Hawaiian Islands down to the opening of the nineteenth century the rule of tabu governed the actions of king, chiefs and people. The shores of time are strewn with the wrecks of tribes and nations who have adhered to the letter of the past and failed to understand its dynamic spirit. They have sought a social nirvana, which, being found, could be enjoyed only under the sufferance of more active neighbors, or by virtue of unusual natural protective features. A Chinese wall, a mountain chain, a thousand miles of ocean might permit the continuance of such communities.

On the other hand, there have been societies which have sought the new at the expense of the old. Many of these probably disappeared when the new choices did not fit into the needs of the environment, and they have left no record of their existence. Others advanced by an alternation of periods of quiescence and of revolution. Radical and conservative were each intolerant of the other. Victory for one in the state meant death, confiscation of property or exile for the other. Thus for centuries the petty ancient states of Greece struggled with the problem, finally to succumb to the military force of the outsider. Rome solved the problem by placing the power to initiate progress in the hands of military leaders, the body of citizens remaining quiescent. The modern world has met the difficulty by the institution of representative legislative bodies. The courts are the custodians of the old, the past, the law as it is. The popular legislature makes new laws, adapting the old forms to the new social needs and ideals.

In the modern state, therefore, there exists a greater amount

of tolerance than in the earlier communities mentioned. While revolutions still occur and doubtless will occur in the future, they have become less violent and less frequent because we have found a method of using and harmonizing the old and the new, the radical and the conservative-the modern representative assembly. And let me remind you that representative assemblies are not limited to the political field; they are used for new legislation in many religious denominations, in labor unions, in commercial and professional organizations.

And now let us see how far the modern community does use the past. I have talked around my topic in generalizations. To fully appreciate the significance of the past we must treat the subject in a detailed manner. Let us look into the life of the lawyer, the merchant, the railroad man, the newspaper editor or the manufacturer, and see what social values history possesses for such workers.

A sewing machine is a familiar if homely article in the household. It is used as a matter of habit or compulsion, and rarely do we look at it as an inheritance of the ages. Yet even in its most modern and complicated forms it contains vestigia of the earliest days of civilization. The needle was known long before the days of recorded history. Needles, bodkins and skewers of bone have been found in the prehistoric remains of cave dwellers. The use of the wheel dates back not quite so far, and yet it too was known to prehistoric peoples. The treadle and pulley came in with early historic times, four or five thousand years ago. The cloth which is sewn on the machine carries us back before the days of recorded events, to the primitive loom of early woman. Without a knowledge of these five great products of primitive culture the sewing machine of today would be impossible. But you say these things do not make a sewing machine. Of course they do not. It required the inventive genius of a Howe, a Singer, a Wilcox and many others to use in a new way what the past had created. They built upon foundations laid long previously; and later mechanics have in the same way added successively to the work of Howe, Singer and Wilcox.