HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
A. SUBBIAN
“Girded with new strength she (history) has
definitely come out from among her old associates, moral philosophy and
rhetoric, she has come out into a place of liberty, and has begun to enter into
closer relations with the sciences which deal objectively with the facts of the
Universe”– J. B. Bury: “The Science of History”, in Selected Essays.
It is generally admitted that the functions of
the historian are at least two: the salvage of the past, and its rearrangement
in proper perspective. Neither will it be denied that, to produce living
history, his pages must be no mere chronicle, no soulless correlation of time
and event. He must so deal with the dry bones of the dead generations that they
come together, bone to his bone, and the sinews and flesh come again upon them.
The past must achieve a palingenesis in his page. In
other words, the true historian will so mould facts and dates as to make of
them an organic compound, a kind of protoplasm as it were, wherein life is able
to reside and manifest itself. Mankind has now occupied this planet for many aeons, and during that vast
stretch of time has strewn the dead years with an abundant life. Of much of
this life there is no record save that which river,
lake or earth yields up to the patience and industry of the antiquary; but so
soon as the tale of the inscribed symbol begins, so soon does the task of the
historian commence. Of his charity he takes note of mute appeal of those “dead bodies time hath piled up at the Gates of Death.”
But has the historian a
third and more utilitarian function? Should his annals, if properly compiled,
be capable of being used as a prediction or fore-saying of that which is to
come? Or must we merely regard him as “ein ruckwarts gekehrter prophet”, a
prophet reversed–a prophet with his face turned backwards? The question may
also be put in another way. Does history repeat itself, and if so, what is the
nature of repetition? To these questions different answers have been
given in different ages. From the fatalistic East arose the
doctrine of the circle–of “the perpetual return of human affairs to their
starting point”–of an absolute repetition which excludes all idea of progress.
The task of the historian, if this were true, would be merely to describe one
complete cycle and then to write Da Capo,
ad infinitum. But, though this idea, as Croce points out, dominated all
historians of the Renaissance, it had already been rejected by the medieval
historiographers on theological grounds, and long before that, though not
rejected, had been restated with commendable caution by Thucydides. The Greek
historian merely says that he will be satisfied if his narrative be judged
useful by those who desire an exact knowledge of the past as a guide to the
interpretation of the future, which, having regard to man’s nature, will be
like the past or resemble it closely. This view is not in essentials widely
different from that of Coleridge. “Armed with the two-fold knowledge of history
and the human mind”, he says, “a man will scarcely err
in his judgement concerning the sum-total of any future national event.”
The, idea of the circle is of extraordinary
vitality and has hired down all assaults until in our own times, it still survives
in the popular conviction that history repeats itself in a more or less
absolute fashion, Redressed and remoulded, it had not
been without some scientific sanction. Thus Professor Sir Flinders Petrie
states that “civilisation is a recurrent phenomenon”, though there are certain
differences in the recurrencies. Answering those who
object that the conditions of the world are so radically altered that no past
phenomena will be repeated again, he replies: “Hardly so.”
We must now, however, retrace our steps a little
and take up again our thread at a point somewhat farther back than that at
which the last paragraph ends. When, in the course of time the gradual growth
of the belief that the universe is a cosmos, or orderly arrangement, crystallised out into the conceptions of the “uniformity of
nature” and the reign of “law”, many, in their enthusiasm, became the slaves of
phrases, and much confused thinking arose through a too literal, though perhaps
unconscious, acceptance of the implied metaphors. To some of the historians of
the earlier part of the last century nothing seemed plainer than the
possibility that, when sufficient knowledge of natural “laws” had been
accumulated, we should be able actually to trace an unbroken historical
sequence “from the nebula...to the French Revolution.” Buckle hoped to be able
“to accomplish for the history of man something equivalent, or at all events
analogue to what has been effected by other inquirers for the differ branches
of natural science” the “great and final object” of which he characterised as the power of predicting events. It would
not appear from his introduction that he regarded the predictability of
historical events as belonging to any different order from the predictability
of the events with which the chemist and physicist are concerned in their
laboratories. And Winwood Reade
in his sketch of universal history stated with no less assurance that “when we
understand the complex phenomena of life, we shall be able to predict the
future.”
Of recent years, however, there has been a
breakaway from these facile generalisations, until we
find in our own days Mr. H. G. Wells boldly and somewhat crudely asserting that
“History never repeats itself”, and obtaining support from scientists of the calibre of Sir Oliver Lodge and Professor A. S. Eddington, while our latest historian of England, Dr. G. M.
Trevelyan, mournfully concludes: “Of the future, the
historian can see no more than others. He can only point like a showman can see
no more than others. He can only point like a showman to the things of the past
with their manifold and mysterious message.” Yet there is much hesitation even
among the holder agnoethics, and many are in two
minds over the matter. The movement of history often perplexes the thoughtful
historian, at one moment inspiring in him the hope of being able in some sort
to foretell the future, at another plunging him into despair. The role of the
prophet is a fascinating one, and it is not in the nature of man’s mentality
lightly to abandon it. Even if, with Dean Inge, we
agree that “prophecy is only an amusement”, yet it is an amusement of almost
universal appeal. Hence it need occasion no surprise when, for example, we find
that Mr. Wells began to hedge, and to desire apparently both to have his cake
and to eat it. In his Outline of History he tells us: “History is no
exception among the sciences: as the gaps fill in, the outline simplifies; as
the outlook broadens, the clustering multitudes of details dissolve into
general laws.” Even Mr. Trevelyan made on occasion a
statement which is tinctured by prophecy, as when he said: “Moderate may well
be both to begin wars, for it is always extremists who end them.” It is clear,
therefore, that the whole question will bear re-examination. It may be that the
modern dictum that “History never repeats itself” is one of these too “blunt”
truths which require sharpening a little before we can work with them.
It need scarcely be said that we are not here concerned with historical repetition in the special sense indicated by Croce in his famous passage: “The deed of which the history is told must vibrate in the soul of the historian...the past fact does not answer to a past interest but to a present interest, in so far as it is unified with an interest of the present life...Every true history is contemporary history.” The historian does himself repeat history, i.e., causes it to repeat in him. In that sense no one will deny that history repeats itself not only in the spirit of the historian, but also in that of every intelligent reader of history. But it is not into the nature of this kind of repetition which we have to inquire, but into the possibility of a more concrete and objective repetition of historical events. Neither with it he doubted that the crude idea of the circle must be abandoned, for it is now plain that there is at least one sense in which history does not and cannot repeat itself. Time, so far as we can tell, does not turn back upon itself, and its steering, like that of a well-made car, is irreversible. The same event cannot happen twice, and, indeed, it is only by hedging around an event by duration that it can be said to happen even once. All this was perfectly well known to Heraclitus, whose “law”, “change is universal”, prime in importance, and earliest in enunciation was a statement of one of the fundamental laws–perhaps the only fundamental law–of the universe.
If history is to be regarded as a science at
all, it can only be regarded as a branch of biology, though a descriptive
rather than an experimental branch when viewed from our standpoint. The
experiments are beyond our control and are performed in a more spacious
laboratory than we have at command. They are the reactions of time and
circumstance upon the bodies and minds of the human race, and all we can do is
to observe and record them. History, too, is subject to all the puzzling
discontinuities that are so familiar to students of other branches of biology,
and there are historical “sports” as dramatic as any of those with which students
in other branches of the life sciences are so familiar. The predictability of a
biological event, that is to say, prediction can rarely be except on general
lines and cannot, as a rule, be carried into particulars. The popular dictum
could only possibly be true if it were written; History repeats itself with
a difference. Like all sciences dealing with living organisms; its record
is that of a “creative evolution.” This is profoundly true of history itself,
and if we apply the principles here enunciated we shall find that a flood of
light is thrown upon the perplexing problem with which we have here to deal.
However, we have already committed ourselves to
the statement that history does repeat itself, with a difference, and we must
now proceed both to justify that statement and to explain the nature
of difference. Even if we agree with Bergson’s main
contention it by no means follows that we are compelled to hold the
view that it is beyond possibility to predict from the past the general lines
upon which a future biological event will run. That is altogether too narrow a
view, even though we are fully impressed with the limitations which horn us on
every side. An event, of any kind, is merely a particular case of possibility
which has undergone the “formality” of happening. If we could know the
conditions which have determined the eventuation of a particular case of
possibility in the past, we might expect, that, should those conditions, or
something like them, once more obtain, an event similar to the past event would
again occur. In the biological sciences we must admit that neither are these
past conditions perfectly known nor are they likely to be exactly reproduccd, and this is still more true of the massed
biological events with which history deals. Yet the life force is not anarchic
and, provided we remember our myopia and are content with short
forward glances, it is possible to predict certain generalities and even,
occasionally, to make a good guess as regards particulars. As to the most
promising method to adopt, we cannot do better than to quote the remainder of a
passage from Coleridge.
“On every great occasion I endeavoured
to discover in past history the event that most nearly resembled it. I
procured, whenever it was possible, the contemporary historians, memorialists and pamphleteers. Then
fairly subtracting the points of differences from those of likeness as the
balance favoured the former or the
latter, I conjectured that the result would be the same or different...A man
will scarcely err in his judgement…if he had been able to procure the original
documents of the past, together with authentic accounts of the present,
and if he had a philosophic tact for What is truly important in facts.”
History is a plotted chart of the wake of the race, and it at least tells us something as to the way in which the ship of humanity behaves and steers in smooth water, in storms, and among rocks and shoals. It is true that the seas into which it is about to sail are strange and that we cannot, unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately) be sure that the ship itself is not undergoing modification in structure during its passage and in consequence of its passage. Indeed, it is very probable that some internal changes are going on all the while which will affect both its steering and its reaction to the waves of circumstance. Still, we can by examination predict more or less approximately certain things concerning the next day’s run, so to speak. And when that day’s run has, in turn been entered up in the long and correlated with the previous entries, it may be possible again to make a limited forecast with some approach to accuracy, and so on.
But history repeats itself with a difference.
The peculiar nature of historical repetition may best be illustrated by the aid
of a simple analogy. A snowball is rolled along the ground and, as it travels,
picks up fresh accretions of snow which it takes up and welds into its mass, so
that every repetition of its revolution is a repetition with an ever-enlarging
diameter. Historical repetitions of a similar kind.
The onward march of events, in its roll down the centuries, behaves like our
snowball and, picking up and incorporating the events in its path, it turns
about with an ever-increasing diameter. Inventing the well-known apophthegm, it may appropriately be said of historical
repetition that the more it is the same to more it changes.
The careful student of history will be able to
find repetitions enough marked by this peculiar character, this enhancement in amplitude.
The new event resembles the old, yet is unlike it the old has been, as it were,
incorporated and digested by the new and forms part of the tissue of the new.
To change the simile, and approach the matter from another angle, we may
picture the new events as a compound historical repetition of which the factors
are a number of simple factors into which he can readily resolve it, and
express the relation by placing that alternative methods in the scales of an
equation balanced upon the kinfe-edge of the sign of
equality. Just so with the historian: or, rather, approximately so, for all
analogy is inadequate, and in this case, we have already seen, the new event
contributes something of its own originality to its elements. One side of the
equation is in the present, and may be represented by an event which appears to
bear not the remotest likeness to any occurrence which has taken place before.
But the other side may sometimes be found in the past under the guise of a
number of more elementary events which, when multiplied together, are seen to
have repeated themselves in a complex. We often fail to recognise
this compound historical repetition because the sign of equality has eluded our
search.
But we cannot make a practical use of history, even in
this tentative fashion, unless the historian in whom
we trust combine in himself certain rather rare qualities. For the historian we
have in mind must be an expert in mathematical historians: he must be competent
to take to pieces a complex present event and to resolve it into its several
component factors in the past and, if he is to assist us in the exercise of any
prophetic function, he must be able to multiply events together. He must be
able, that is to say, both to recognise the twos in a
four and to put two and two together. And he must have a keen eye for the
detection of the sign of equality–often faint and illegible which connects the
things or now with the things of then. Written in this way, history will be
justified, not only of her children, but of all her friends and relations.
It is not, then, altogether without reason that the
statesman and the politician have thought that the study of history is not mere
fascinating and interesting pursuit, but one of actual use to than in the
exercise of their callings. As the statesman and the politician have to live
largely from hand to mouth, perhaps for them the greatest value of history lies
in its power to confer that ability intelligently to evaluate the present.
History is a record of massed experience, but even experience would not teach
if events were in such an absolute sense atomistic and unique as the crude
dictum, “History never repeats itself”, implies. Historical training “makes
possible a sense of perspective”, and at least gives “foresight” if not the
gift of prophecy. There is solid ground for the view that a
knowledge of history is not to be regarded solely as a concern of the
students in his cell, nor as a pleasant relaxation to be indulged in when one
is tired of fiction. But there is little doubt that history needs to be written from a new
standpoint. As it comes more and more to be regarded as a branch of biology
(which includes Psychology)–and this, we contend, is the sound way to regard
it–so it will be more and more acknowledged that it is only adequately to be
written by an individual who is not only a great scholar, but also a great
student of the life sciences. Its practical utility to the man of affairs will
increase in proportion as this principle is admitted. This is, we admit, to ask
a great deal, perhaps an impossibility, of any single
person, and we can but lament with Theophrastus that man is an animal so short
lived. Still, the attempt is well worth making, and the deficiencies of a work
written by one man of genius with a broad knowledge both of history and of its
ancillary life sciences are likely to be less than those of a history composed
by a syndicate of specialists. For unity of view is all-important. No
successful literary work has ever been done by a committee, save in the case of
the authorised version of the Bible or the Kamba Ramayanam, and that miracle
is not likely to be repeated.
In conclusion, while we have endeavoured
to show that the facile modern dictum that “History never repeats itself” is
too crude a presentation of the whole truth of the matter, it is far from our
intention to stress, to the exclusion of all else, the more practical purposes
that a study of history may be made to serve. In this, as in all other branches
of learning, knowledge has other uses than mere usefulness.