The Purpose of History

by Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge

Now it is evident that history in this latter sense is purposive and selective. That which has happened is not remembered as a whole or understood as a whole. Not only are details forgotten or neglected, but things and events otherwise important are omitted for the sake of securing emphasis and distinction among the things remembered. Herodotus spoke of "wonderful deeds" and others following this example have regarded history as concerned only with great men and great events. It is true that the little men and the little events tend to disappear, but we should remember that it is the selective character of history which makes them little. Speaking absolutely, we may say that no item, however apparently insignificant, is really insignificant in the historical development of any people or any institution, for in some measure every item is material to that development. But all are not equally material. The absence of any one of them might undoubtedly have changed the whole history, but given the presence of them all, some are of greater significance than others.

The history of the English people may be regarded as a development of personal liberty. It is doubtless more than that, but it is that. As such a development, it is evident that there are many things which an historian of personal liberty will disregard in order that the particular movement he is studying may be emphasized and distinguished. It will be that particular movement which will determine for him what is great and what little. So it comes about that histories are diversified even when they are histories of the same thing. There are many histories of England which differ from one another not only in accuracy, philosophical grasp, and brilliancy, but also in the purpose they discover England to be fulfilling. By purpose here is not meant a predestined end which England is bound to reach, but the fact that her history can be construed as a development of a specific kind. In other words her past can be understood only when it is seen to be relevant to some particular career which has its termination in her existing institutions. Her past has contributed through time to definite results which are now apparent. The things that have happened have not all contributed to these results in the same measure. Some have contributed more, some less. What is true in this illustration appears to be true generally. Every history is a particular career in the development of which some facts, persons, and events have been more significant than others, so that the termination of the career at any time is like an end that has been reached or a consequence to which its antecedents are peculiarly appropriate. That is the sense in which history is purposeful and selective.

The selection is twofold. First, there is selection of the type of career, and secondly, there is selection of the items especially relevant to its progress. We may have the military, the political, the social, the industrial, the economic, or the religious history of England, for instance, and although these histories will overlap and involve one another, each of them will exhibit a career which is peculiar and distinct from its fellows. When reading the industrial history we shall not be reading the religious history. In the one we shall find circumstances and events recorded which we do not find in the other, because all circumstances and events do not have significance equally for the development of industry and religion. Historical selection is, therefore, twofold,—the selection of a career to be depicted and of events and circumstances peculiarly relevant to that career.

Is this selection, we may ask, only a device on the historian's part to facilitate our comprehension, or is it a genuine characteristic of the time process itself? Does the historian read purpose into history or does he find it there? It may assist in answering such questions to observe that if selection is a device of the historian, it is one to which he is compelled. Without it history is unintelligible. Unless we understand events and circumstances as contributing to a definite result and contributing in different measures, we do not understand them at all. The Magna Charta, the British Constitution, the Tower of London, the River Thames, the mines of Wales, the plays of Shakespeare—all these things and things like them are for us quite unintelligible if they illuminate no career or illustrate no specific movements to which they have particularly contributed. Selection is, consequently, not a device which the historian has invented; it is imposed upon him by his own purpose to preserve the memory and promote the understanding of what has happened. The procedure of the historian is not arbitrary, but necessary. It is imposed upon him by the character of the facts with which he deals. These facts are movements from the possible to the actual and are helped and hindered by other such movements. An historical fact is not only spread out in space and exists equally with all its contemporaries at an assignable place in reference to them, it also persists in time, comes before and after other persisting facts, and persists along with others in a continuance equal to, or more or less than, theirs. In a figure we may say, facts march on in time, but not all at the same speed or with the same endurance; they help or impede one another's movement; they do not all reach the goal; some of them turn out to be leaders, others followers; their careers overlap and interfere; so that the result is a failure for some and a success for others. The march is their history.

This is figure, but it looks like the fact. Simple illustrations may enforce it. The seeds which we buy and sow in the spring are not simply so many ounces of chemical substances. They are also so many possible histories or careers in time, so many days of growth, so much promise of fruit or flower. Each seed has its own peculiar history with its own peculiar career. The seeds are planted. Then in the course of time, soil and moisture and atmosphere and food operate in unequal ways in the development of each career. Each is furthered or hindered as events fall out. Some careers are cut short, others prosper. Everywhere there is selection. Everywhere there is adaptation of means to ends. The history of the garden can be written because there is a history there to write.

Such an illustration can be generalized. Our world is indubitably a world in time. That means much more than the fact that its events can be placed in accordance with a map or dated in accordance with a calendar. It means that they are events in genuine careers, each with its own particular character and its own possibility of a future, like the seeds in the garden. Things with histories have not only structures in space and are, accordingly, related geometrically to one another; they have not only chemical structures and are thus analyzable into component parts; they have also structures in time. They are not now what they will be, but what they will be is always continuous with what they are, so that we must think of them stretched out, so to speak, in time as well as in space, or as being so many moments as well as so much volume. What they become, however, depends not only on their own time structures, but also on their interplay with one another. They are helped and hindered in their development. The results reached at any time are such as complete those which have gone before, for each career is the producer, but not the product of its past.

It seems clear, therefore, that there is purpose in history. But "purpose" is a troublesome word. It connotes design, intention, foresight, as well as the converging of means upon a specific end. Only in the latter sense is it here used, but with this addition: the end is to be conceived not in terms of any goal ultimately reached, but in terms of the career of which it is the termination; and in this career, the present is continually adding to and completing the past. The growing seeds end each in its own specific flower or fruit. They are each of its own kind and named accordingly. It is only because each of them has its specific structure in time that their growth presents that convergence of means toward an end by which we distinguish them and for which we value them. In purpose construed in this way there is evidently no need of design or intention or foresight. In making a garden there is such need. The purposes of nature may be deliberately employed to attain the purposes of men. But apart from beings who foresee and plan there appears to be no evidence of intention in the world. When we speak of nature's designs, we speak figuratively, and impute to her rational and deliberate powers. But we can not clearly affirm that the rain falls in order that the garden may be watered, or that the eye was framed in order that we might see. The evidence for design of that character has been proved inadequate again and again with every careful examination of it. To say, therefore, that nature is full of purpose does not mean that nature has been framed in accordance with some preconceived plan, but rather that nature is discovered to be an historical process, the conversion of the possible into the actual in such a way that there is conserved a progressive record of that conversion.

From the selective character of history it follows that a single complete history of anything is impossible—certainly a single complete history of the world at large. History is pluralistic. This conclusion might be reached as others have already been reached by pointing out how it follows from the purpose of writing history, and how this purpose indicates the character of movements in time. Indeed this has already been done in pointing out that the history of England is its many histories and the history of a garden the history of its many seeds. Always there is a particular career and particular incidents appropriate to it. Any career may be as comprehensive as desired, but the more inclusive it is the more restricted it becomes. The history of Milton contains details which the history of English literature will omit; and the history of the cosmos shrinks to nothing when we try to write it. The only universal history is the exposition of what history itself is, the time process stripped of all its variety and specific interests. Consequently, a single purpose is not discoverable; there are many purposes. When we try to reduce them all to some show of singleness we again do no more than try to tell what a temporal order is like. It is metaphysics and not history we are writing.

To affirm that history is pluralistic is, however, only to reaffirm the selective character of history generally. A history of the world in order to be single, definite, and coherent, must exhibit a single, definite, and coherent purpose or time process. That means, of course, that it is distinguished from other purposes equally single, definite, and coherent. There are thus many histories of the world distinguished from one another by the incidence of choice or emphasis. The flower in the crannied wall with its history fully recorded and understood would, consequently, illustrate the universe. All that has ever happened might be interpreted in illumination of its career. Yet it would be absurd to maintain that either nature or Tennyson intended that the little flower should be exclusively illustrative. The wall would do as well, or its crannies, or the poet. Nature exhibits no preference either in the choice of a history or in the extent of its comprehensiveness. Man may be thought to be, and man is, an incident in the universe, and the universe may be thought to be, and the universe is, the theater of man's career.

The same principle may be illustrated from human history exclusively. We who are of European ancestry and largely Anglo-Saxon by inheritance are pleased to write history as the development of our own civilization with its institutions, customs, and laws; and we regard China and Japan, for example, as incidental and contributory to our own continuation in time. Because our heritage is Christian we date all events from the birth of Christ. Yet we gain some wisdom by pausing to reflect how our procedure might impress an enlightened historian from China or Japan. Would he begin with the cradle of European civilization, pass through Greece and Rome, and then from Europe to America, remarking that in 1852 A.D. Commodore Perry opened Japan to the world? Surely he would begin otherwise, and not unlike ourselves would construe the history of the world in a manner relevant to the progress of his own civilization. Europe and America and Christianity would contribute to that development, but would not constitute its essential or distinctively significant factors. The historian is himself an historical fact indicating a selection, a distinction, and an emphasis in the course of time. His history is naturally colored by that fact. Other histories he can write only with an effort at detachment from his own career. He must forget himself if he would understand others; but he must understand himself first, if he is successfully to forget what he is. He must know what history is, recognize its pluralistic character, and try to do it justice.