Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Excerpt from Essays Historical and Literary, Vol. 2: In Favourite Fields
So many cherished traditions have been rudely upset as to produce a widespread feeling of helplessness with regard to historical beliefs. When one is so often proved to be mistaken, can one ever feel sure of being right? Or must we fall back upon the remark, half humorous, half cynical, once made by sainte-beuve, that history is, in large part, a set of fables, which men agree to believe in? The great critic should have put his remark into the past tense. Men no longer agree to believe in fables. All historical statements are beginning to be sifted. But this winnowing of the false from the true, the perpetual testing of facts and Opinions, is not weakening history but strengthening it. After a vast amount of such criticism, destructive as much of it IS our views of the past are not less but more trustworthy than before.
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