nd benefit here, from the living point of
view, would be equally valid and delightful; and however good or however
bad the universe may be it is always worth while to make it better.

What engages the historian in the reconstruction of moral life, such as
the past contained, is that he finds in that life many an illustration
of his own ideals, or even a necessary stimulus in defining what his
ideals are. Where his admiration and his sympathy are awakened, he sees
noble aims and great achievements, worthy of being minutely studied and
brought vividly before later generations. Very probably he will be led
by moral affinities with certain phases of the past to attribute to
those phases, in their abstraction and by virtue of their moral dignity,
a material efficacy which they did not really have; and his interest in
history's moral will make him turn history itself into a fable. This
abuse may be abated, however, by having recourse to impartial historical
investigation, that will restore to the hero all his circumstantial
impotence, and to the glorious event all its insignificant causes.
Certain men and certain episodes will retain, notwithstanding, their
intrinsic nobility; and the historian, who is often a politician and a
poet rather than a man of science, will dwell on those noble things so
as to quicken his own sense for greatness and to burnish in his soul
ideals that may have remained obscure for want of scrutiny or may have
been tarnished by too much contact with a sordid world.

[Sidenote: Possibility of genuine epics.]

History so conceived has the function of epic or dramatic poetry. The
moral life represented may actually have been lived through; but that
circumstance is incidental merely and what makes the story worth telling
is its pertinence to the political or emotional life of the present. To
revive past moral experience is indeed wellnigh impossible unless the
living will can still covet or dread the same issues; historical romance
cannot be truthful or interesting when profound changes have taken place
in human nature. The reported acts and sentiments of early peoples lose
their tragic dignity in our eyes when they lose their pertinence to our
own aims. So that a recital of history with an eye to its dramatic
values is possible only when that history is, so to speak, our own, or
when we assimilate it to ours by poetic license.

The various functions of history have been generally carried on
simultaneou