Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ...and he still values, his interesting distinction between historic and prehistoric man, and more particularly he is still disposed to treat nature and man, or natural man and civilized man, as independent sources for the explanation of historical phenomena, and accordingly he hesitates to accept a view that is doubtful, even about the methodological worth of these distinctions. But certainly, to justify this doubt at once, in the use of them only as methods there lurk real dangers, since they hide fact. Distinguish nature from man, separate prehistoric man from historic man, identify human life only with its records and institutions and visible signs generally, and you rob it of its very vitality. The prehistoric man, the natural man, the nature with which man is at one, lives now, not merely then, and lives in and with the human creature of history, not outside of him. Of course, the new history,so called, if I do not misunderstand it, resorting as it does to such sciences as psychology and sociology and anthropology, and to still more distinctly natural sciences, such as geology and meteorology and geography, may be said to be admitting prehistoric and natural man to history; but the new history is far from being every historian's history, and it is not itself fully awake to its own presuppositions. So the historian may protest; but the cue for the right reply to him really comes from the recent developments in his own field. The proper study of history is man as man, not man merely as then or now, and man as natural in being human. Some may still choose history as a mere story, which is only better for being told artistically, of specific men and specific deeds; some may prefer history as a great museum of authentic facts from all times and places; but su...
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
