ters of literature stand each for some unborrowed point of view. Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Meredith we would not have them alike; each sees life originally, and tries to describe it honestly, and so adds to our knowledge of it.

In its more recent manifestation fiction seems to be so closely engaged in a competition with the kodak that it matters little who writes it; for the personality of the man who holds the camera counts for little. But some of us still prefer a painting to a photograph or a snapshot, not only because a painting has color, but because it has the personality of the painter behind it. We know that Rembrandt or Turner put on his canvas something that the photographic plate could not see.

I say this, not to urge that the historian should make a purely subjective figment of his material, but to remind you that the personal equation may — nay, must — determine the value of the completed book. Whatever our theories which our practices may improve on, no man fit to be called an historian ever finished his work without feeling the inadequacy of his own powers, or of any conceivable human means, to reproduce the little fragment of history which he has chosen. And no historian can work far or deep without being conscious that he is reporting from the heart of human life matters too sacred to be twisted in the narration to suit his private opinion. He is conscious of the manifestation of mighty forces of forces mightier than those which drive the Mississippi from Minnesota to the Gulf or which swing the oceans to and fro in their tidal pendulation. He feels, though he cannot see, Presences which lead the actors of the everlasting human drama on and off the stage; Spirits which teach them their parts and prompt them when they falter; Furies which pursue, punish, and avenge; Fates which accomplish their tasks as dispassionately as heat or cold.

In the calendar of nature, four seasons fill the measure of each year; each merges in the next; and though there may be slight annual variations, no year passes without completing its circuit of spring, summer, autumn, winter. In human evolution there is no such sequence. If there be seasons, they are of such vast duration that we have not yet observed them. There is no recurrent return to the starting-point. Each race passes through the order allotted for all living creatures: first birth, then growth, prime, decrepitude, and death; but no race, in expiring, bequeaths its hoard to another. Generally there is the slow obliteration through blending; and where a race grows strong by conquest, its strength is often sapped by the process of merger with the weaker conquered. The Roman Empire was in no sense the heir of Athens; nor Catholic Spain of the Saracens; nor England of the Northmen who, as Normans from France, conquered the Saxon kingdom. Doubtless the new combinations are conditioned by the remains of the old elements, but there is no lineal descent. In races which at different epochs occupy the same region, there is rather such a law of succession as we find among our forests: when the primeval pines go, oaks shoot up; and after the oaks, beeches and birches follow.

What determines the handing on of the torch from race to race? We assume, because we men are incorrigible optimists, that every transmission means advance; but this is not true. Often a race lower in everything except brute force subdues a higher. There is a deeper principle at work. Sometimes the baffled historian concludes that our human life, and that consecutive essence of it which is history, can be explained only by physical reactions. A drought in Central Asia causes the raid of Tatar hordes into Europe, with all that follows; the Venetian Republic languishes and dies because the discovery of a new ocean route diverts the commerce of the world away from her.

But even as he acknowledges these facts, which seem to reduce man to the level of an automaton, the sport of purely material agents, the historian remembers the saints and heroes before whose spiritual potency matter is as yielding as glass is to sunshine.

This is the high mission of the historian. He starts out to narrate a section of history, aiming only at describing what he sees, without plea or prejudice. Narration is his chief concern, but through it he will reveal, unconsciously it may be, the forces which impel the flow of events, the deeps from which human acts emerge and into which they return and dissolve. He must have no specialty except truth; and yet, though he must write neither as poet nor as dramatist, neither as philosopher nor as man of science, he will need at times the skill of each of them; they will all find in his history, as in life itself, the substance of their specialty. For he is always aware of the Presences invisible and immaterial - ceaselessly passing, shaping, completing, and renewing: not merely weavers at the loom of destiny, but Destiny itself and he seeks in human motives to discover the Transcendent Motive, the Living Will, which causes and sustains the world.

QUICK OR DEAD?

WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER, who died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in September, 1923, has already taken a foremost place as one of America's historians. His Life and Times of Cavour and Life and Letters of John Hay have caused his name to be honored both in his own country and in Europe.

Points of View

1. Is it possible that in teaching history, as in writing it, some attention must be paid to history that is "dead"? The teaching of dates, as dates, is the teaching of "dead history"; yet dates

are important. How would you subordinate such work to the far more important work of making history, as a whole, “alive”?

2. The possibilities of the project, in the teaching of history, are almost unlimited. Would it be possible to cover the history of a whole period by a biographical project say the history of the Civil War period by a project on the life of Lincoln?

3. How can motives be revealed and understood? Dramatic representations and the drawing of cartoons have been used as devices to bring out motives. What other means, less excep

tional, are available?

4. How can pupils in the elementary school, or in the secondary school, safely be allowed to approach history in the effort to seek interpretation rather than information? Are they ready to deal with history as a "resurrection," not an "autopsy"?

5. Where in the curriculum of social science would you place special emphasis upon such graphic methods of teaching as the making of maps, illustrated books, and time-charts, upon dramatization, collections, and field trips? What are some of the values of "emotionalizing" history?

THE CASE AGAINST COMPULSORY LATIN

CHARLES W. ELIOT

A CONSIDERATION of the expediency of continuing to require some knowledge of Latin on the part of all candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts is timely, because many changes in respect to this requirement have already been made, and more seem imminent. A large number of the leading American institutions which confer that degree have already ceased to require Latin of candidates for admission to college, and of candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts within the college. Indeed, from an analysis of the requirements for admission in seventy-six of the leading American colleges and universities, it appears that in a decided majority Latin is no longer an essential for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and that four ninths of the institutions whose practices have been examined make no demand on the secondary schools of the country that they teach Latin.

The position of the institutions which demand some knowledge of Latin of candidates for admission, but none during the college course, is anomalous and undoubtedly temporary. At Harvard University, for example, the wide extension of the elective system led to the abandonment many years ago of the requirement of Latin in college for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The University was conferring during this period a degree of Bachelor of Science, and candidates for this degree were not required to present Latin at admission, while within the University