Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIII.—April, 1852.—Vol. IV.

History is Philosophy teaching by Example

The thought has been deemed so profound as to give rise to some discussion respecting its origin. As a definition, however, the maxim is liable to serious objection. It presents, rather, the uses, or the chief use, of history, than the essential idea. The individual memory may also be said to be philosophy teaching by example; but then it becomes only another name for that experience which is but the application of remembered facts to the guidance of the future life. So history may be called the World's Memory – the memory of a race – of a nation – of a collective humanity.

It is in vain, then, for us to say what facts, in themselves, ought to constitute history. The matter is settled. It is not what any philosophy, or any theology, or any science of history may deem worthy of remembrance, but what has actually been thus remembered, or is now so entering into the common mind as to form the ground of memory in the future. The parallelism in this respect between the individual and this national, or common mind, is striking and complete. The true history of each man is not so much what he has done, as what he has thought and felt. The thought is the form of the feeling, and the act merely the outward testimony by which both are revealed. It is not, therefore, every act, or doing, which enters into his history – not even those which have formed the greater part of his constant daily exercise – but simply such as for any reason have made the deepest impression on the inner man, and which, therefore, stand out in the records of his memory when all else has perished. What this chronicles is the man's veritable history. However important other parts of his conduct may appear externally, this is his true spiritual life. It is the record, the imperishable record of that which has reached and stirred the depths of his soul, while other acts, and other events, have had their lodgment only in the outward un-emotional existence.

Such memory, or such history, may not be what it ought to have been; it may not be the measure of accountability. All that we insist upon is the fact, that, whether right or wrong, it is the true history of the individual, because it is his real life. But then there are degrees of memory. It is not always, in all its parts, either present to the mind, or capable of recall at will. Still, what has once in this manner truly affected his soul, has by this become a part of it, and can, therefore, never be lost. Like some old historical record it may be laid aside for a season, but sooner or later must it come forth, and claim its place as belonging to that individual personality into which it enters as a constituent and inseparable portion.

The parallel may be traced to almost any extent. Like the memory of our earliest years, so is the dawning history of a young world or nation, except so far as positive revelation has shed its light upon it. Both are mythical. In other words, facts are remembered, not as they are in themselves, but as seen through the magnifying and coloring influence of the emotional medium with which they are ever afterward associated. Like stars observed through a densely refracting atmosphere, they stand apart, each in its own seclusion, and hence they loom upon the vision without any of those mutually connecting associations that belong to our subsequent thinking. There is, too, in both cases, the same chronicler – the pure remembrance, a tradition unaided by any of those outward helps that are afterward employed. At a later period more regular annals succeed this mythic handing down of isolated facts. The state has its formal remembrancer, its συγγραφεύς, or historical arranger of events in a connected story, and in their mutual relations. Corresponding to this, then, arises in the individual that orderly habit of thinking which produces associations, having a similar effect in causing a stricter union between the outer and inner relations of the soul.

Again, there are times when the man gets to himself what may be called an artificial memory. He would change the natural flow of thought, and determine what he will remember, and what he ought to remember – forgetting that before he can effectually do this he must be changed himself in the innermost springs of his being. He studies mnemonics. He manufactures new laws of association. But this effort ever fails in the end. Nature will have her way. The old course of memory will return; and with it the spiritual history of the man will go on as before.

So, too, the state or nation may have its artificial periods, and its systems of political mnemonics. The mythical, the epic, the heroic, and not only these, but the later, yet not less thrilling chronicles of stirring events that carried with them the whole heart of the national humanity, give way to statistics, and documents of trade, or tables of revenue, or in a word, to what are deemed the more important records of political economy. Here, too, there may be an attempt to change the course of nature, and make that to be history which never can be such, except at the expense of some of those attributes, which, although liable to great and dangerous perversions, are still the noblest parts of our humanity.

Such artificial records of history may be highly useful in their connection with the interests of particular classes and occupations. The time also may come in which they may gather around them an antiquarian value, blending with some of the more universal emotions of our common nature. But aside from this, although they may furnish rich materials for other departments of useful knowledge, they are not history, simply because they lack that catholic element, by which alone they enter into the common memory, and thus become a part of the common national mind.

Some say the world has heretofore been all wrong in the matter. History has been but a record of wars, of tumultuous national movements, of theological dogmas, of religious and political excitements. It has been but the biography of monarchs and royal families, or a narrative of popular commotions as connected with them. It has presented us only with names of isolated pre-eminence. The time has now come when we "must change all that." The daily pursuits of the masses, and all the statistics of ordinary life – these ought to have been history, and good writers will henceforth make them so, not only for our times, but for the periods that are past. "The history of the world," it has been said, "is yet to be written." But, alas! for these plausible and philanthropic reforms, there are two serious obstacles in the way. In the first place, the records of such matters as they would make the grounds of history are too scanty and uncertain, because they never have had that catholic interest which would give them an abiding place in the common national memory. In the second place, it will be equally difficult to secure for them such lodgment in the universal thinking of the present age, or of ages yet to come. Not that the world will always continue the same, or that there will not be ever new matters of genuine historical interest. The course of things and thinking may greatly change. Wars may cease. Monarchy may expire. Even democracies may become obsolete. Such changes may be for the better or the worse. Faith may go out. Those religious dogmas and discussions, which politicians and political economists have regarded as such useless and troublesome intruders into the province of history, may lose their hold upon the mind. Still our essential position remains unchanged. It will not be what the masses severally do but what moves the masses, not their several occupations and pursuits, but what has a deep and moving interest for the common national soul, that will constitute history. The wars of the White and Red Roses were the true history of England for that period, because they were the only subjects that could be said to occupy all minds alike. It was not because the chronicler forgot the masses, and thought only of the great, but because he wrote for the masses, and for the masses not only of his own time, but of times to come.

Events may have more or less of a personal connection with monarchs, but it would not follow from this that the history which records them is a history alone of kings and statesmen. It is only so far as they and their acts were the representatives of the national heart, and the national thought, that they came down in the national memory, and the national records. The separate ordinary pursuits of men may, in one sense, occupy more of our ordinary thinking, but the other or historic interest we recognize as being of a higher, a more exciting, and even a more absorbing kind, because belonging to us, and felt by us in common with multitudes of other souls. The mechanic or farmer may consult books of a professional or statistical nature, but as history they will be ever unreadable. Even in the workshop and in the field, although the habitual current of his thoughts may be upon what would seem to him the nearest, and therefore the more important concerns of life, these other elements of history will yet have the greater charm, and occupy a higher place both in his feelings and his intelligence.

It is what he thinks with others that constitutes the higher life of his being. Hence the tendency of the popular mind, in all ages, to be absorbed in the recital of deeds most remote from the daily associations of ordinary life. Hence the popularity of the rhapsodist, the minstrel, the chronicler, and, in our own age, of the Magazine and the Newspaper. Hence, too, in the more free and popular governments of modern times, the universal devotion to what is called politics. Why is the farmer more excited by an election than by the sale of his wheat? Most false as well as unphilosophical is the view which would ascribe this to any calculating patriotism, to any utilitarian vigilance, or to what is commonly called an enlightened self-interest. The mechanic thinks more of politics than of his trade; for the same reason that led his ancestor to the crusade or the tournament. Instead of being the offspring of utilitarian views, this public spirit is often most blindly destructive of the private interest, and most directly opposed to all the teachings of that political economy which recognizes its own utilities as alone the true and rational ends of human action. In a much higher sense, too, is all this true, when a religious element enters into the common or catholic feeling.

To illustrate the view we have endeavored to present, let us select some particular date – say the 5th day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy. What was the history of our own country for that day? What the masses were doing would be the answer which some of the new school would promptly make. But even could this be ascertained it would not be history. On that day the three millions of our land were engaged in the various avocations connected with their ordinary life and ordinary interests. On that day, too, there was a particular, and, perhaps, ascertainable state of agriculture, of the mechanic arts, of education, &c., such as might furnish the ground of a most valuable statistical essay. There were also, doubtless, thousands of striking incidents every where transpiring. But none of these constituted the then history of our country. This was all taking place in one narrow street of one single city, away off in one remote corner of our land. A quarrel had arisen between a few foreign soldiers and a collection of exasperated citizens, in the course of which some few of the latter were slain. In this event was centred, for the time, the whole history of the English colonies in North America, and of what afterward became the great American nation. Among all the acts and states, and influences of that day, this alone was history, because it alone, whether right or not, entered into the universal national memory. It was thought by all, felt by all, and therefore became, for the time in which it was so thought and felt, the one common history of all. Again – on the 19th day of April, 1775, the one fact which afterward formed the common thought and the common memory, was the battle of Lexington. On the 4th of July, 1776, it was the Declaration of American Independence. On the 23d day of September, 1780, there might have been seen, in a secluded valley of the Hudson, three rustic militia men busily examining the dress of a British officer. One of them is in the act of taking a piece of paper from the prisoner's boot. This, in a most emphatic sense, was American history for that day; may we not say the history of Europe also, and of the world. And so in other departments. A single man is standing before a company of statesmen and ecclesiastics. It is Luther before the Diet of Worms. This is the one common thought which represents that momentous period in the records of the Church. The subject tempts us with further illustrations, but we call to mind that our Drawer and Easy Chair are waiting impatiently for the delivery of their contents. It is time, therefore, to exchange the prosings of the Editor's Table for their more varied, and, as we trust the reader will judge, more attractive materials.

Editor's Easy Chair

Our ow, when we write, stands morally as far off from what will be ow to our readers, when this sheet comes before them, as though the interval measured half the circumference of the Ecliptic, instead of being bounded between these dull March days and the bright April morning, when our Magazine will be lying by many an open window from Maine to Georgia. Our Easy Chair chit-chat must take its coloring from our ow, and not from that of our readers.

The town has just woke up from its wintry carnival of sleighs and bells, and wears much the aspect of a reveler who is paying the penalty for too free over-night potations. Broadway no longer flows along like a stream of molten silver, but resembles nothing so much as the mud-river of Styx – "darker far than perse" of the great Florentine; and instead of the fairy-like sleighs of the month gone by, is traversed only by the lumbering omnibuses, scattering far and wide the inky fluid. To cross the street dry-shod is not to be thought of, save at one or two points where philanthropic tradesmen, mindful of the public good – and their own – have subsidized a troop of sweepers to clear a passage in front of their doors. We accept the favor with all gratitude, and do not inquire too closely into the stories of silver goblets, presented by grateful ladies to these public benefactors. Under such circumstances all lighter matters of gossip are things of the past – and of the future, let us hope.

Into the current of graver talk several pebbles have been thrown, which have rippled its surface into circlets wider than usual. The meeting in commemoration of Cooper was a worthy tribute to the memory of one who has shed honor upon his country by adding new forms of beauty to the intellectual wealth of the world. It was singularly graceful and appropriate that the funeral discourse of the greatest American Novelist, should have been pronounced by the greatest American Poet – and should we say the greatest living poet who speaks the tongue of Milton and Shakspeare, who would dare to place another name in competition for the honor with that of Bryant?

Public "Lectures," or the "Lyceum," as one of the lecturing notabilities not very felicitously denominates the institution, had begun to assume a somewhat mythical character in the estimation of townsmen, as relics of ages long gone by, of which man's memory – the Metropolitan man's, that is – takes no note. We have indeed had rumors from the "Athens of America," and other far-away places, that Lectures had not fallen into utter desuetude; but we were, on the whole, inclined to put little faith in the reports. During the last few weeks, however, the matter has again forced its way into the town talk. The "Tabernacle" weekly opens its ponderous jaws, for the delivery of the "People's Lectures," where, for the not very alarming sum of one shilling – with a deduction in cases where a gentleman is accompanied by more ladies than one – a person may listen for an hour to the mystic elocution and seer-like deliverances of Emerson, or may hear Kane depict the dreamy remembrances of those Hyperborean regions where sunrise and sunset are by no means those every-day occurrences that they are in more equatorial regions. To us, as we sit in our Easy Chair, it seems as though this system of cheap popular public lectures were capable of almost indefinite expansion. Why should not Silliman or Guyot address three thousand instead of three hundred hearers? Why should they not unswathe the world from its swaddling-clothes before an audience which would fill our largest halls? Why should not Orville Dewey discourse on the great problems of Human Destiny and Progress before an assemblage which should people the cavernous depths of the "Tabernacle," as well as before the audience, relatively small, though doubtless fit, assembled before the frescoes of the Church of the Messiah? We throw these suggestions out lightly, by way of hint; a graver consideration of them would belong rather to our Table than to our Easy Chair discourses.

As a sort of pendant to the nine-days' talk of the Forrest divorce case, we notice the unanimous verdict of approval which has been accorded to the exemplary damages awarded in the case of a savage and cowardly assault committed by one of the principals in that scandalous affair. Though no pecuniary award can make reparation to the person who has suffered the infliction of brutal personal outrage, yet as long as there are ruffians whose only susceptible point is the pocket-nerve, we are glad to see the actual cautery applied to that sensitive point.

If things continue much longer in their present downward course, it will be necessary for any man who hopes to gain acceptance in respectable society to have it distinctly noted on his cards and letters of introduction, that he is not a Member of either House of Congress. The last month has been signalized at Washington by several exhibitions of Congressional scurrility, which in no other city in the Union would have been tolerated beyond the limits of the lowest dens of infamy. In one of these affairs, the summit of impudence was crowned by one of the interlocutors, who, after giving and receiving the most abusive epithets, excused himself from having recourse to the duello, that ultima ratio– of fools – on the plea that he was a member of a Christian church; which plea was magnanimously accepted by his no less chivalrous compeer in abuse. It would be no easy task to decide which was the most disreputable, the "satisfaction" evaded, or the means of its evasion.

This is not the place to discuss the stringent "Maine Liquor Law," which is proposed for adoption in the Empire State; but we can not avoid chronicling the almost sublime assumption of one of its opponents, who challenged its advocates to name any man of lofty genius who was not a "toddy-drinker." As this side of the measure seems sadly in want of both speakers and arguments, we consider ourselves entitled to the gratitude of the opponents of the law, for insinuating to them that the defense of punch by Fielding's hero, that it was "a good wholesome liquor, nowhere spoken against in Scripture," is capable of almost indefinite extension and application.

A somewhat characteristic reminiscence of John Newland Maffitt has been lying for a long while in our mind; and we can not do better than accord to it the honors of paper and ink. It happened years ago, when that eccentric preacher was in the height of his reputation; when he was, or at least thought he was in earnest; before the balance of his mind had been destroyed by adulation, conceit, vanity, and something worse.

During these days, in one of his journeyings, he came to a place on the Mississippi – perhaps its name was not Woodville, but that shall be its designation for the occasion. Now, Woodville was the most notoriously corrupt place on the whole river; it was the sink into which all the filth of the surrounding country was poured; it was shunned like a pest-house, and abandoned to thieves, gamblers, desperadoes, and robbers.

Maffitt determined to labor in this uninviting field. He commenced preaching, and soon gathered an audience; for preaching was something new there; and besides, Maffitt's silvery tones and strange flashes of eloquence would at that time attract an audience any where. Those who knew the man only in his later years know nothing of him.

Day after day he preached, but all to no purpose. He portrayed the bliss of heaven – its purity and peace – in his most rapt and glowing manner. It was the last place which could have any charms for his Woodville audience.

He portrayed the strife and turmoil of the world of woe. Apart from its physical torments – and they felt a sort of wild pride in defying these – they rather liked the picture. At all events, it was much more to their taste than was his description of heaven.

So it went on, day after day. Not a sigh of penitence; not a wet eye; not a single occupant of the anxious seat. His labors were fruitless.

Finally, he determined upon a change of tactics. He spoke of the decay of Woodville; how it was falling behind every other town on the river – "Oh!" said he, "might but the Angel of Mercy be sent forth from before the Great White Throne, commissioned to proclaim to all the region round that there was a revival in Woodville, and what a change there would be! The people would flock here from every quarter; the hum of business would be heard in your streets; the steamers, whose bright wheels now go flashing past your wharf, would stay in their fleet career; these dense forests, which now lour around, would be hewn down and piled up for food for these vast leviathans; and thus a golden tide would pour in upon you; and Woodville would become the wealthiest, the most beautiful, and the happiest place on the banks of the great Father of Waters!"

A chord had been touched in the hitherto insensible hearts of the Woodvillers. Thought, emotion, feeling, were aroused; and soon the strange electric sympathy of mind with mind was excited. The emotion spread and increased; the anxious seats were thronged; and a powerful, and to all appearance genuine revival of religion ensued. The character of Woodville was entirely changed; and from that time it has continued to be one of the most moral, quiet, thriving, and prosperous of all the minor towns upon the Mississippi.

Turning our eye Paris-ward, our first emotion is one of sorrow – for their sakes and our own – at the present sad fate of our French brethren of the quill. The bayonet has pitted itself against the pen, and has come off victor – for the time being. The most immediate sufferers are doubtless political writers, who must stretch their lucubrations upon the Procrustean bed furnished by the Prince-President. But the sparkling feuilletonists who blow up such brilliant bubbles of romance from the prosaic soap-and-water of every-day life, can not escape. How can Fancy have free play when the Fate-like shears of the Censure or the mace of the new press-law are suspended over its head? Besides, the lynx-eye of despotism may detect a covert political allusion in the most finely-wrought romance of domestic life. The delicate touches by which the feuilletonist sought to depict the fate of the deserted girl whose body was fished up from the Seine, may be thought to bear too strongly upon the fate of poor Liberté, betrayed and deserted by her quondam adorer, the Nephew of his Uncle; in which case, the writer would find himself forced to repent of his pathos behind the gratings of a cell, while his publisher's pocket would suffer the forfeiture of the 'caution-money.' Parisian gossip can not, under such circumstances, furnish us any thing very lively, but must content itself with chronicling the brilliant but tiresome receptions of the Elysée.

An occasional claw is however protruded through the velvet paws upon which French society creeps along so daintily in these critical days, showing that the propensity to scratch is not extinct, though for the present, as far as the President and his doings are concerned, "I dare not waits upon I would" in the cat-like Parisian salon life.

The subject of gossip most thoroughly French in its character, which has of late days passed current, is one of which the final scene was Genoa, and the prominent actor unfortunately an American. We touch upon the leading points of this as they pass current from lip to lip.

Our readers have no great cause of regret if they have never before heard of, or have entirely forgotten, a certain so-called "Chevalier" Wykoff, who, a few years since, gained an unenviable notoriety, in certain circles in this country, as the personal attendant of the famous danseuse, Fanny Elssler. Since that time the Chevalier has occasionally shown his head above water in connection with Politics, Literature, Fashion, and Frolic.

In due course of years the Chevalier grew older if not wiser, and became anxious to assume the responsibilities of a wife – provided that she was possessed of a fortune. It chanced that, about these times, a lady whom he had known for many years, without having experienced any touches of the tender passion, was left an orphan with a large fortune. The sympathizing Chevalier was prompt with his condolences at her irreparable loss, and soon established himself in the character of confidential friend.

The lady decides to visit the Continent to recruit her shattered health. The Chevalier – sympathizing friend that he is – is at once convinced that there is for him no place like the Continent.

Having watched the pear till he supposed it fully ripe, the ex-squire to the danseuse proposed to shake the tree. One evening he announced that he must depart on the morrow, and handed the lady a formidable document, which he requested her to read, and to advise him in respect to its contents.

The document proved to be a letter to another lady, a friend of both parties, announcing a deliberate intention of offering his fine person, though somewhat the worse for wear, to the lady who was reading the letter addressed to her friend. This proposal in the third person met with little favor, and the Chevalier received a decided negative in the second person.

The Chevalier, however, saw too many solid charms in the object of his passion to yield the point so easily. The lady returns to London, and lo! there is the Chevalier. She flees to Paris, and thither he hies. She hurries to Switzerland, and one morning as she looks out of the Hospice of St. Bernard, she is greeted with the Chevalier's most finished bow of recognition. She walks by the Lake of Geneva, and her shadow floats upon its waters by the side of that of her indefatigable adorer. He watches his opportunity and seizes her hand, muttering low words of love and adoration; and as a company of pleasure-seekers to whom they are known approaches, he raises his voice so as to be heard, and declares that he will not release the hand until he receives a promise of its future ownership. Bewildered and confused, the lady whispers a "Yes," and is for the moment set at liberty. No sooner is she fairly rid of him than she retracts her promise, and forbids her adorer the house.

She again flies to the Continent to avoid him. He follows upon her track, bribes couriers and servants all along her route, and finally manages at Genoa to get her into a house which he declares to be full of his dependents. He locks the door, and declares that marry him she must and shall. She refuses, and makes an outcry. He seizes her and tries to soothe her with chloroform. Once more she is frightened into a consent.

But the Chevalier is now determined to make assurance doubly sure; and demands a written agreement to marry him, under penalty of the forfeiture of half her fortune, in case of refusal. To this the lady consents: and the ardent admirer leaves the room to order a carriage to convey her to her hotel. She seizes the opportunity to make her escape.

On the day following, the adventurous Chevalier involuntarily makes the acquaintance of the Intendant of Police, and finds that his "bold stroke for a wife" is like to entail upon him certain disagreeable consequences in the shape of abundant opportunity for reflection, while a compulsory guest of the public authorities of Genoa.

Ought not the Chevalier Wykoff to have been a Frenchman?

Editor's Drawer

The following anecdote of a legal gentleman of Missouri, was compiled many years ago from a newspaper of that State. There is a racy freshness about it that is quite delightful:

Being once opposed to Mr. S – , then lately a member of Congress, he remarked as follows to the jury, upon some point of disagreement between them:

"Here my brother S – and I differ materially. Now this, after all, is very natural. Men seldom see things in the same light; and they may disagree in opinion upon the simplest principles of the law, and that very honestly; while, at the same time, neither, perhaps, can perceive any earthly reason why they should. And this is merely because they look at different sides of the subject, and do not view it in all its bearings.

"Now, let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that a man should come into this court-room, and boldly assert that my brother S – 's head" (here he laid his hand very familiarly upon the large "chuckle-head" of his opponent) "is a squash! I, on the other hand, should maintain, and perhaps with equal confidence, that it was a head. Now, here would be difference – doubtless an honest difference – of opinion. We might argue about it till doom's-day, and never agree. You often see men arguing upon subjects just as empty and trifling as this! But a third person coming in, and looking at the neck and shoulders that support it, would say at once that I had reason on my side; for if it was ot a head, it at least occupied the place of one: it stood where a head ought to be!"

All this was uttered in the gravest and most solemn manner imaginable, and the effect was irresistibly ludicrous.

Washington Irving, in one of his admirable sketches of Dutch character, describes an old worthy, with a long eel-skin queue, a sort of covering that was "a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair." This was in "other times;" and here is a "Tail" of that remote period:

"A Tale I'll tell of "other times,"
Because I'm in the mind:
You may have seen the tale before,
I've seen it oft behind.