at they
avowedly write history with a view to effect, either political or
literary. Moralising historians belong to this school, as well as those
philosophers who worship evolution. They sketch every situation with
malice and twist it, as if it were an argument, to bring out a point,
much as fashionable portrait-painters sometimes surcharge the
characteristic, in order to make a bold effect at a minimum expense of
time and devotion. And yet the truly memorable aspect of a man is that
which he wears in the sunlight of common day, with all his generic
humanity upon him. His most interesting phase is not that which he might
assume under the lime-light of satirical or literary comparisons. The
characteristic is after all the inessential. It marks a peripheral
variation in the honest and sturdy lump. To catch only the heartless
shimmer of individuality is to paint a costume without the body that
supports it. Therefore a broad and noble historian sets down all within
his apperception. His literary interests are forgotten; he is wholly
devoted to expressing the passions of the dead. His ideal, emanating
from his function and chosen for no extraneous reason, is to make his
heroes think and act as they really thought and acted in the world.

Nevertheless the opposite happens, sometimes to a marked and even
scandalous degree. As legend becomes in a few generations preposterous
myth, so history, after a few rehandlings and condensations, becomes
unblushing theory. Now theory--when we use the word for a schema of
things' relations and not for contemplation of them in their detail and
fulness--is an expedient to cover ignorance and remedy confusion. The
function of history, if it could be thoroughly fulfilled, would be to
render theory unnecessary. Did we possess a record of all geological
changes since the creation we should need no geological theory to
suggest to us what those changes must have been. Hypothesis is like the
rule of three: it comes into play only when one of the terms is unknown
and needs to be inferred from those which are given. The ideal
historian, since he would know all the facts, would need no hypotheses,
and since he would imagine and hold all events together in their actual
juxtapositions he would need no classifications. The intentions, acts,
and antecedents of every mortal would be seen in their precise places,
with no imputed qualities or scope; and when those intentions had been
in fact fulfilled, the fu