A further reason is that, as every lawyer would know, people tend, all too readily, to accept hearsay. 

"Men accept one another's reports of past events ... So impatient of labour are most men in the search for truth, and so prone to jump toready-made conclusions." (Thucydides.)

At any rate, if one subscribes to the skeptical school, all knowledge is but a belief, an opinion, a theory. And while it is so that nothing is for sure, we must, nonetheless, proceed at some point to classify certain of our theories as knowledge. What happens, in real science, in real life, is that we build on our "knowledge" which, in the final analyses, is but a mass of theories that have been held up and exposed to testing, unabated over long periods of time; and, because these theories have never been falsified (as apposed to being proven right, which, in the nature of things, cannot be done) they become part of our store of human knowledge.7(I should say, in passing, that we are obliged to continue to hold up and expose to testing even our most used and trusted knowledge; the plain fact is that there is not a thing we can take for sure, though our collective experience will show that some things are more sure than others.)8

Another reason why history is often wrong is best illustrated by the legal maxim, Nimium alter can do veritas amittitur (By too much altercation truth is lost). The fact of the matter is that the history book you just picked up might well be just a re-write of a re-write. A history writer is bound to go back and in his research and dig out, if they exist, the original documents. On the other hand, contemporary history writers, while fresh to the facts, are often influenced by contemporary pressures.9 A researcher, therefore, is equally bound to come ahead in time and read the historic accounts of related matters; and then, finally, to put the whole matter fully in a historical perspective. Thus, a history may therefore be wrong because it is based, either on the biases of the contemporary writers, or on the inadequate or absent records used by future writers, or simply because it is an inadequate or an improper mix of events. So, as one can see, the writing of history for a conscientious person, becomes, indeed, a most difficult task, one of synchronizing and synthesizing many different accounts of the same and related events.

Whether historians transmit erroneous accounts, or not, is separate from that which people believe to be history. Peoples' perception of history is often wrong because they have accepted fictional accounts (often plainly represented as such) as being the gospel truth. What ever they get out of a popular paperback, or at the movies, or out of the TV: is, for them, the way it is. The stories of many historical figures are wrong, often embellished stories to be sold. Most people today will readily tell you that Kennedy was killed by an army of sharp shooters taken from the ranks of the CIA, all because a film maker by the name of Stone did not either know of the historical facts, or did not care for them. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time, for instance, Shakespeare, gave a false depiction of Caesar as "a pompous, posturing old gentleman without an idea in his head, who for some obscure reason had managed to become the uncrowned king of Rome ..." And the reading of the autobiographies of historical personages, while interesting, may not necessarily give an accurate picture of historical events: memoirs especially need critical reading. Not only have we to bear in mind the proclivity of most memoir-writers to speak well of their friends and ill of their enemies, so too, we must remember that memoir-writers are a select class (not one of the "Dumb Millions, "but one of the speaking thousands).

Then, there are history writers "the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, [who] frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned the habit of making history into the proof of their theories."10One can see that Macaulay was of the same view as Lord Acton when he observed that even the best historians "have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit general principles."11Then there are those historians who were too sentimental and emotional and should have kept there hands out of history altogether. It is not wellfor a historian to be become too impassioned about their historical subjects. Feeling for their subject is important, but it is essential that they should have knowledge of it. "We prefer history to be written by those who know-- if they feel too, so much the better; but the more knowledge they have, the better chance they have of being read. " (Birrell.) It maybe, in the final analysis, that a person with some legal training,or, at least, acquainted the rules of evidence is the type of person who would make the best historian: Macaulay thought so.

LESSONS OF HISTORY:

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I. Mankind is Continuously Struggling; He is Evolving.-

"Every thoughtful student of history is confronted by these alternative interpretations. Is there discernible in history taken as a whole anything which we can call progress, or is the record one of an aimless struggle among a species of higher apes, in which any apparent gain is offset by equal or greater loss? The idea of automatic progress must be ruled outat once. No one is so naive as to maintain that from the mathematics of Egypt and Babylon to the philosophy and art of Greece, the jurisprudence of Rome, the theology of the Middle Ages, and the science and social conscience of the modern world runs a continuous line of advance in which each segment represents a clear gain on the last. On the contrary, it is evident that the emergence of Greek civilization from the background of ancient Asia, the appropriation of the Greek achievement by Rome, the decline and fallof Rome before Gibbon's 'barbarism and religion,' and the overthrow of medieval Catholicism by modern commercial civilization were in each case attended by cruel struggles, and in each case created problems which the succeeding order could not solve without creating new ones in their place."[Archibald Robertson, How to Read History (1952) (New York: Ungar,1963).]

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II. What Counts Over Time is the Aggregate of All the Simple, Regular, and Little Events of Life.-

"The circumstances which have most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to humanity - theseare, for the most part, noiseless revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased to call important events. Theyare not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and recorded in no archives. They are carried on in everyschool, in every church, behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand fire sides." (Macaulay, "The Task of the Modern Historian.")

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III. There is no Good; There is no Evil.-

We are apt to think that in the great battles of history, it is good that triumphs over evil; but what is presented in history is the winning side's account of the matter. "There is no Persian history of the Graeco-Persian wars. All pagan accounts of the victory of Christianity over paganism have perished." (Robertson, op. cit.)

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IV. Power is the Name of the Game?-

"Long before we reach our generation we see that the same issues are always present, that the same fundamental qualities of thought and character are permanently dividing men, that the struggle for the concentration of power for the limitation and division of power is the mainspring of history."12(Lord Acton.)

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V. In Spite of the Greatest Reverses the Human Spirit continues, Invincible.-

"The lesson of life is, practically to generalize, to believe what theyears and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense. Things seem to say one thing, and say the reverse. The appearance is immoral; the result is moral. Things seem to tend downward to justify despondency, to promoterogues, to defeat the just; and by knaves as by martyrs the just causeis carried forward. Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered. We see now events forced on, which seem to retard or retrograde the civilization of ages. But the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves cannot drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws: and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years, and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams." (Emerson,Representative Men.)

The first challenge to one who would choose a history book is to make a determination as to whether what they have in hand is a true history book, or is it but a fable. Some works, undoubtedly are fables but time has allowed them to be rested on our history shelves.
 
 

"No anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a fact a fact.Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome, are passing already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry thence forward to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign? London and Paris and New York must go the same way." (From Emerson's Essays.)
 
 

Fables can, of course, make for interesting reading; but if one wants a true account of the past one generally must first carry out some research on the historian (just as one should on all writers) before plunging into his books. A person can not go wrong if he or she sticks to the classics, which by definition are those which have been tested with time.13A sampling:
 
 

Edward Gibbon, Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire;

Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England;

Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution;

Francis Parkman, France and England in North America;

George Macaulay Trevelyan, British History in the Nineteenth Century;

Will Durant, The Story of Civilization.

 

 

Through the reading of history we gain knowledge of our past. It can bean exciting and an entertaining adventure; but, importantly, it is one of the primary methods by which we gain knowledge, an essential guide to our future conduct. In the process, as we gain new ones, we are bound,at times, to throw out old beliefs, ones that are often more comfor table and possibly more widely held; but, if it is properly concluded that the old belief is wrong, then throw it out we must. The test for knowledge is whether the particular belief or hypothesis is true, or not; not whether it may or may not be offensive. To initiate the process we must examine the beliefs of other men; history books (as well as good literature) is one of the best sources. But, time is short and books are many; so, first,in the order of things, as I hope I have been able to get across in my pages, one must choose a good history book: best to start (as with any book) by carefully choosing the author: by first getting to know the historian and his reputation.

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^[1] "This history of Herodotus lays stresson the weakness of Persia. This history is indeed what we should now call propaganda propaganda for Greece to unite and conquer Persia." (H.G. Wells, History of the World.)

^[2] History, as Edward Gibbon cynically put it, is no more "than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Tennyson:"The trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns."

^[3] Marxian view can be traced back the French philosopher and founder of the school known as positivism, Auguste Comte (1798-1857). In Comte's aphorism, "Progress is the development of order,"one can see the roots of all socialistic or collectivist thought, viz.,the belief that man is perfectible and through "science" can be "guided" toward a superior state of civilization.

^[4] "A nation is assigned the accomplishment of one of these stages, it flourishes for a while and then gives way to another. It then disappears and another, superior State emerges." [Alphern, An Outline History of Philosophy (Forum House,1969) at p. 168-9.]

^[5] See Popper'sThe Poverty of Historicism. "The fundamental thesis of this book [is that] the belief in historical destiny is sheer superstition, and that there can be no prediction of the course of human history by scientific or any other rational method ... [it is dedicated to] the memory of the countless men and women of all creeds or nations or races who fell victims to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny."

^[6] This, of course, brings Napoleon's declaration to mind: "History is but a fiction agreed upon."

^[7] Except possibly for Euclidian theory (and that has been questioned) nothing can be conclusively proved; one, however, may be able to falsify a proposition. See the works of Sir Karl Popper.

^[8] For anyone who doubts this proposition I need only refer to Newtonian theory which held sway for better than two hundreds years, until, in the 20th century, quantum theory came along.

^[9] It was Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) who said, "Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth."(History of the World, 1614.)

^[10] Lord Acton'sThe History of Freedom.

^[11] "The Task of the Modern Historian."

^[12] Vol. III, p.520.

^[13] There are bound to be current works which are good, but I have not the time to wade through them. Paul Johnson, a history writer with some sense of philosophy and economics, is most readable and invariably full of the most interesting tidbits; check out his works, particularly, Modern Times and The Birth of the Modern.