4. Impartiality in History.
Impartiality has always been considered as the most essential
quality of the historian. All historians since Tacitus have
assured us that they are impartial.
In reality the writer sees events as the painter sees a
landscape—that is, through his own temperament; through his
character and the mind of the race.
A number of artists, placed before the same landscape,
would necessarily interpret it in as many different fashions.
Some would lay stress upon details neglected by others. Each
reproduction would thus be a personal work—that is to say, would
be interpreted by a certain form of sensibility.
It is the same with the writer. We can no more speak of
the impartiality of the historian than we can speak of the
impartiality of the painter.
Certainly the historian may confine himself to the
reproduction of documents, and this is the present tendency. But
these documents, for periods as near us as the Revolution, are so
abundant that a man's whole life would not suffice to go through
them. Therefore the historian must make a choice.
Consciously sometimes, but more often unconsciously, the
author will select the material which best corresponds with his
political, moral, and social opinions.
It is therefore impossible, unless he contents himself
with simple chronologies summing up each event with a few words
and a date, to produce a truly impartial volume of history. No
author could be impartial; and it is not to be regretted. The
claim to impartiality, so common to-day, results in those flat,
gloomy, and prodigiously wearisome works which render the
comprehension of a period completely impossible.
Should the historian, under a pretext of impartiality,
abstain from judging men—that is, from speaking in tones of
admiration or reprobation?
This question, I admit, allows of two very different
solutions, each of which is perfectly correct, according to the
point of view assumed—that of the moralist or that of the
psychologist.
The moralist must think exclusively of the interest of
society, and must judge men only according to that interest. By
the very fact that it exists and wishes to continue to exist a
society is obliged to admit a certain number of rules, to have an
indestructible standard of good and evil, and consequently to
create very definite distinctions between vice and virtue. It
thus finally creates average types, to which the man of the
period approaches more or less closely, and from which he cannot
depart very widely without peril to society.
It is by such similar types and the rules derived from
social necessities that the moralist must judge the men of the
past. Praising those which were useful and blaming the rest, he
thus helps to form the moral types which are indispensable to the
progress of civilisation and which may serve others as models.
Poets such as Corneille, for example, create heroes superior to
the majority of men, and possibly inimitable; but they thereby
help greatly to stimulate our efforts. The example of heroes
must always be set before a people in order to ennoble its mind.
Such is the moralist's point of view. That of the
psychologist would be quite different. While a society has no
right to be tolerant, because its first duty is to live, the
psychologist may remain indifferent. Considering things as a
scientist, he no longer asks their utilitarian value, but seeks
merely to explain them.
His situation is that of the observer before any
phenomenon. It is obviously difficult to read in cold blood that
Carrier ordered his victims to be buried up to the neck so that
they might then be blinded and subjected to horrible torments.
Yet if we wish to comprehend such acts we must be no more
indignant than the naturalist before the spider slowly devouring
a fly. As soon as the reason is moved it is no longer reason,
and can explain nothing.
The functions of the historian and the psychologist are
not, as we see, identical, but of both we may demand the
endeavour, by a wise interpretation of the facts, to discover,
under the visible evidences, the invisible forces which determine
them.
