Pioneering of the Past
THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The...
...tory, on the contrary, the complexity and multitude Shea's monumental work, The History of the of facts is such that they resist any attempt to submit Catholic Church in the United States, will probably them to scientific processes...
...But what strikes the student who base upon it whole inverted pyramids of conwho turns to it fresh from the highly spiced histories jecture, does our respect grow for the humble, devoted for which one famous English biography seems to have workers who take their wages and royalties in the set the troublesome fashion, is its sobriety and a qual- consciousness of a task conscientiously performed...
...361 Machinery on the Farm Books Henry Longan Stuart, Claude William Everett Cram 363 C. Washburn, Bertram C. A. Windle, Lichen (verse) Kenneth Slade Ailing 364 Benjamin R. C. Low 369 The Return of the Devil...
...Volume IV New York, Wednesday, August 18, 1926 Number 15 CONTENTS Pioneering of the Past 355 Poems Helene Mullins, Margaryr add Week by Week 357 Ritter, Joseph Kinney Collins, , E. fi The Spectre of Simplicity 359 Chandler, S. Bert Gook' Mexico and American Ideals 36o John Rose GiTd u Many Years in Mexico Communications Thomas Robinson Dawley, Jr...
...Leaving out of the make no excuse for repeating them question for the moment the obvious and gross re- "Only men who write history are aware how greatly turns that lie in "popular" treatment, there is no doubt truth is indebted to the labors of men who are conthat, to the philosophical and synthetic mind, the tent to be 'annalists.' They delve into obscure and temptation to use history as a mere theme for the musty files...
...They can neither be reconnever be superseded as a work of sheer erudition...
...They proalways be historians with a strong sense of continuity, vide the scientific historian with his material, and the to whom, in the words of Professor Robert Flint of protester against untruth with his weapons...
...ciled with any generalization nor subjected to any Even his style, which the younger historians, far law...
...they ransack archives inaccessible to the weaving of plausible theory, and to exclude by a general public...
...and not seldom preceded, should remain to refute In history, not only are the elements necessary for slander and correct misconception...
...In its proper shelves of public libraries within a year or six months, place this week, The Commonweal is reviewing a are the preferred and trusted guides of the popular short biography of one of the bravest, least worldly mind through a realm which bristles with misdirect- and most honest historians who ever lived, and one ing sign-posts and paths that lead to nowhere...
...experimentation largely obscure, partial, and even, in The picture which this devoted scholar and his- some cases, missing altogether, but the deductions torian, who literally died with the pen in his hand, must necessarily be carried out by a mind so differenwas forced to draw a year before the close of his tiated from the mind of the past by its acquired knowllife, is heartrending...
...In the brief but very compre- edge, perceptions and memory, that, to pay the scienhensive biography which Dr...
...The are so applicable to his self-sacrificing career that we prospects are not very bright...
...The double danger to which history is exposed, of Glib writers with nothing at their command but a f%Z ',-ig into the hands of the theorist or the scenario facile pen, the vogue that comes from being constantly writs, should not discourage those who are striving before the reading public, and the sort of second- to maintain it in its traditional function as the memhand information that may be gleaned from the open ory, or even the conscience, of our race...
...Cabanes, discourtesy which positively take the breath away, who is also a doctor of medicine, has lately concluded, and for which, most humiliating of all to be forced "is a system of generalizations, whose end is to reduce to admit, the short-sighted dignitaries of his own everything to general laws...
...While the records, printed and a process of continual essays in the unknown...
...In the domain of hisChurch were far too often responsible...
...THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, and Public Affairs...
...is happily (or unhappily) unaware how many a joker When John Gilmary Shea made his first public apis concealed from it by the false air of erudition that pearance before the Catholic Institute of New York, writers of "popular history" catch so plausibly and to read a modest paper upon The_ Early Catholic Miseasily...
...But at a time that vary according to time and place, permitting us like our own, when history was never in the making to identify, under an immense variety of forms, cer- more rapidly and more intensively, it will do no harm tain permanent laws which are the laws of the human to the most fugitive recorder of current events to spirit...
...The ity which Dr...
...they rescue from oblivion . . . preprocess that is often unconscious, awkward facts that cious items that are all the more convincing for being do not fit the thesis, is almost irresistible...
...Cuthbert Wright 365 The Quiet Corner 373 PIONEERING OF THE PAST H ISTORY, at the present moment, is exposed to rend the tissue of legend as a broom breaks a web, peril on two sides...
...keener upon the track of the telling antithesis than In proportion, indeed, as our respect wanes for the of the unalloyed truth, would probably consider stilted ready writers who use historical material as stimuand oratorical, has a merit of lucidity which mere lus for their imaginations and for the heavy thinkers cleverness often misses...
...speaking of a contemporary historiographer, Mr...
...Yet, in manuscripts, of America's Puritan settlement, were having verified them, say, a thousand times, under being treasured, 'reprinted and commented like in- conditions that he is in a position to control and respired books, carelessness and niggardliness were peat, and...
...There will written in the naive language of their day...
...A public which chuckles place not very far from the galaxy of American hisas each hoax is exposed-none the less indulgently torians where Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, and Parkbecause the joke is at the expense of its own wits- man are fixed and shining lights...
...It seems to need saving both become apparent when some obscure situation, such from its friends and its enemies, and perhaps from as the present clash between Church and "state" in its friends the most...
...The zation, the reproduction of their form and movement experimental scientist proceeds to his discoveries by -this is history as truth would have it written...
...Science," a French historian, Dr...
...Public complaisance for plausible and confi- sions of the United States, few seem to have realized dent statement-public indifference to facts that would that the hour had produced its man and produced 356 THE COMMONWEAL August 18, 1926 him none too soon...
...Peter Guilday has just tific symbolist back in his own coin, they might be repwritten under the imprint of the United States His- resented by temperature, humidity or aridity, and imtorical Society, there are instances of vandalism and munity...
...Edinburgh, the story of mankind is "an immense cru- It is not given to all to reproduce the unworldlicible, in which the phenomena of the lives of peoples ness and utter indifference to applause that were the and individuals are made manifest under situations characteristics of John Gilmary Shea...
...found the result a constant, he can be as doing their utmost to ensure that no Catholic records certain as it is humanly possible to be that a law prewhatever of the vast effort which had accompanied it, sides over phenomena that recur again and again...
...The whose repute, as time passes, and its neglects are "novelized" biography, the dubious diary, have be- remedied, is more and more coming to take its fitting come fashions of the time...
...For one robust critic who joins Mexico, demands the service only history can give, the wizard of Detroit in denouncing it roundly as and not one correspondent familiar with any docu"bunk," scores may be found who believe it may be ment, record or piece of reliable evidence prior to saved by elevation to the rank of a speculative science, i 830, nor one unbiased history written in English that and hundreds who are only too anxious to popularize -ould supply them is discoverable...
...it by ridding it of its troublesome husk of scholarship...
...Will the writing of history ever regain this objec- Michael O'Brien, upon whom the mantle of the detivity without which, or, rather, unless grounded upon voted Shea may justly be considered to have fallen, which, its highest feats are mere empiricism...
...Guilday happily terms "unfailing ob- words used by The Commonweal six months ago when jectivity...
...remember that he too may well be providing future A moment's consideration will demonstrate to any writers with their historical material and so to bear mind that thinks clearly and without the artful aid himself as to merit Guizot's definition of the honest of visual images, how inapplicable to the writing of craftsman true history is such a comparison, borrowed from an- "Sedulous search for facts, the study of their organiother branch of human knowledge altogether...
Vol. 4 • August 1926 • No. 15
