The invention of written language
accounts, then, we may suppose, for the otherwise incomprehensible
disparity between the blank record of long ages, and the great
achievement of recent history--an achievement none the less striking if
we remember that the historical epoch includes a thousand years of
darkness. Thus, as was said at the Royal Institution in 1907, when
discussing the nature of progress, we may argue in a new sense that the
historians have made history: it is the possibility of recording that
has given us something to record.
Now, it is in terms of this latter kind of progress that our duty to the
past, as we conceive it, may be defined. And in its terms also must we
define the grounds of our veneration for the past. None of us invented
language, spoken or written; nor yet numbers, nor the wheel, nor much
else. We see further than our ancestors because we stand upon their
shoulders, and, as Coleridge hinted, this may be so even though we be
dwarfs and they were giants. Some of us see this. How can we fail to do
so? And the past becomes in our eyes a very real thing, to which we are
so greatly indebted that we should even live for it. But there is a
great danger, dependent upon a great error, here. Let us consider what
is our right attitude towards the past. We are its children and its
heirs. We are infinitely indebted to it. We must love and venerate that
which was lovable and venerable in it.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54