“Did you see the literary supplement of the Globe, Mauney?” she asked. “Well, here’s a half column that ought to cheer you up a little. Read it.”
Taking the proffered journal he read the portion indicated under the Book Review section:
“Thoughts on the Teaching of History, by Mauney Bard, (Locke & Son, 8vo, cloth, $2.50). It is some time since so refreshing a volume has appeared, dealing with a subject of technical education. In style, Mr. Bard, whose voice is heard for the first time, has achieved pleasing success. Most technical treatises have at least a few chapters that challenge the reader’s patience, but the one under review has apparently none. It is the work of one undoubtedly in love with his subject, and if there are sentiments expressed which, perhaps, can receive nothing but criticism from established authorities, yet all differences of opinion will be excused by reason of Mr. Bard’s delightful affection for history and all that pertains to it.
“While not acclaiming history as the only considerable subject on university time-tables, he nevertheless supports his argument that it is one of the most important, and shows graphically certain methods and mental attitudes which are calculated to improve the teacher’s success. To him, history is not merely a tool to be used for nurturing a strong national spirit, although it serves this function, but is, par excellence, a door to the understanding of human nature. Some of his remarks are worth repeating, as for example, the following passage from his chapter on the Substance of History:
“‘History is a record of the conduct of our human predecessors, considered en masse, a record, which, taking groups of people as its working unit, is necessarily sketchy and can approach the human past only in fairly broad outlines. But there is one perfect history. Locked up in our thoughts, hidden in our bodies, reposes still some influence of every act, mental or physical, performed by every one of our ancestors. The history obtained from books is dead. Man is the living history. He is the living past!
“‘There is no apology for this individualization of the conception of history, for it has assisted to unify the various departments of education which are so frequently considered separate—religion, politics, sociology, science, literature. In a university the need is still great for emphasis on the importance of the individual. Man, heir to all that has been, claiming all that is to be, is the real and only unit. Politics is his mode of mass regulation; sociology, his study of his own relations to his fellows; science, his weapon of advance against the frontiers of unacquired knowledge; literature, his graphic record of experience, and religion, his visualization of a constant, unattained good.
“‘There is a temptation to the student of history, wearied by the technicalities of his work, to approach life more closely than he can do with his books, a temptation to jump out of their pages into the current life around him and study the more accurate, though less decipherable, history to which I have referred—the individual. Such a temptation, coming to the student, is perhaps the greatest sign of successful tutoring. If the teaching of history awakens a warm, eager interest in humanity, it has not failed.
“‘I have wished, in a fanciful mood, that there existed a separate history book written about every individual who ever lived, telling his total life experience. If one could roam in that vast library he would notice that few of those histories would boast more than a page or two, if only historical data were recorded. But if these individual records went further, if they enumerated and described the events, the thoughts, the perplexities, the struggles, the victories, which seemed great to those forgotten men, then what building on earth would house that library? Yet such a collection of tomes would form the world’s most precious treasure, for such experiences of men and women are the very substance proper of history.
“‘We are taught wars, revolutions, social and political experiments. We are led by our teachers to believe that these constitute the bases of the subject. This movement or that movement is vaunted as novel or important. But underneath them all lies the insinuating power of individual thought. All are formed by it, promulgated by it, controlled by it. The greatest movement of this century was also the greatest movement of the last century and of all centuries from the very dawn of history—namely, the movement of the individual mind, by struggle, through perplexity, to a greater, simpler life.’”