History as literature, and other essays

BOOKS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
HISTORY AS LITERATURE AND OTHER ESSAYS
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1913
Copyright, 1913, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Published September, 1913 Reprinted in December, 1913
In this volume I have gathered certain addresses I made before the American Historical Association, the University of Oxford, the University of Berlin, and the Sorbonne at Paris, together with six essays I wrote for The Outlook , and one that I wrote for The Century .
In these addresses and essays I have discussed not merely literary but also historical and scientific subjects, for my thesis is that the domain of literature must be ever more widely extended over the domains of history and science. There is nothing which in this preface I can say to elaborate or emphasize what I have said on this subject in the essays themselves.
Theodore Roosevelt.
Sagamore Hill, July 4, 1913 .
There has been much discussion as to whether history should not henceforth be treated as a branch of science rather than of literature. As with most such discussions, much of the matter in dispute has referred merely to terminology. Moreover, as regards part of the discussion, the minds of the contestants have not met, the propositions advanced by the two sides being neither mutually incompatible nor mutually relevant. There is, however, a real basis for conflict in so far as science claims exclusive possession of the field.
There was a time—we see it in the marvellous dawn of Hellenic life—when history was distinguished neither from poetry, from mythology, nor from the first dim beginnings of science. There was a more recent time, at the opening of Rome’s brief period of literary splendor, when poetry was accepted by a great scientific philosopher as the appropriate vehicle for teaching the lessons of science and philosophy. There was a more recent time still—the time of Holland’s leadership in arms and arts—when one of the two or three greatest world painters put his genius at the service of anatomists.