of its own power, of its own energy, of
its own value? Lo, then they make a god of him, as of Napoleon or
Bismarck. Can this other serve to feed in the mass, odium and scorn
of another party, of a government, of an order of things that it is
desirable to injure? Then they make a monster of him, as happened in
Rome to Tiberius, in France to Napoleon III, in Italy to all who for
one motive or another opposed the unification of Italy.

It is true that after a time the interests that have coloured
certain figures with certain hues and shades disappear; but then the
reputation, good or bad, of a personage is already made; his name is
stamped on the memory of posterity with an adjective,--the great, the
wise, the wicked, the cruel, the rapacious,--and there is no human
force that can dissever name from adjective. Some far-away historian,
studying all the documents, examining the sequence of events, will
confute the tradition in learned books; but his work not only will not
succeed in persuading the ignorant multitude, but must also contend
against the multiplied objections offered by the instinctive
incredulity of people of culture.

You will say to me, "What is the use of writing history? Why spend so
much effort to correct the errors in which people will persist just
as if the histories were never written?" I reply that I do not believe
that the office of history is to give to men who have guided the great
human events a posthumous justice. It is already work serious enough
for every generation to give a little justice to the living,
rather than occupy itself rendering it to the dead, who indeed, in
contradistinction from the living, have no need of it. The study of
history, the rectification of stories of the past, ought to serve
another and practical end; that is, train the men who govern
nations to discern more clearly than may be possible from their own
environment the truth underlying the legends. As I have already said,
passions, interests, present historic personages in a thousand forms
when they are alive, transfiguring not only the persons themselves,
but events the most diverse, the character of institutions, the
conditions of nations.

It is generally believed that legends are found only at the dawn
of history, in the poetic period; that is a great mistake; the
legend--the legend that deceives, that deforms, that misdirects--is
everywhere, in all ages, in the present as in the past--in the present
even more t