I. THE NATURE OF HISTORY.
1. Meaning of the Term.— The term His tory, in popular usage, has been applied to two somewhat different concepts. It is often used to designate the sum total of human activities, and it is when used in this sense that one often hears the remark at a particularly active or period in human events that °now history s being made.* A more common usage is that which regards history as the record of the events rather than as the events them selves. In this latter generally accepted con notation given to the term history, two defini tions may be offered. In an objective sense history is, to use the words of Professor Robinson, *all we know about everything man has ever done, or thought, or hoped, or felt.* Subjectively or psychologically expressed, his tory may be regarded as a record of all that has occurred within the realm of human con sciousness.
In this sense of a record of the activities of the human race, history has been regarded by some, particularly in earlier periods, as primarily an art — a branch of literature. By a continually increasing of authorities it has tended, however, in its modern form, to be considered as in the main a genetic social science, which is concerned with reconstruct ing the past thoughts and activities of human ity. In the present article history will be re garded in the sense of a science rather than as an art. It is the thesis of the writer that his tory can lay no more claim to being an art than any other branch of social science and that while artistic achievement may be desired in history it is quite subordinate in importance to scientific accuracy and constructive thought. In fact, progress in historical writing may al most be regarded as a development from an art to a science. It is this which constitutes the progress from Livy to Ranke or from Herodo tus to Gardiner.
2. Fallacy of the Term Pre-historic.— Be fore the important developments in anthropology and pre-historic archeology, which have done so much to extend our knowledge of human activities in the distant past, it was the con ventional practice to limit the term history to a record of those events which were described or preserved in literary remains. Now, however,
when archeology tells one much more of cer tain phases of the early life of man than was once known of even more recent periods through literary evidence, it is no longer ac curate nor logical to use the term «pre-his toric," unless it is employed to designate that vague and hypothetical period in the beginnings of human development of which there exists no positive and tangible record, or unless one is limiting his conception to history as a branch of literature. In the place of the now gen erally discarded and discredited term «pre-his toric» there has been substituted the concept of «pre-literary history," as descriptive of the records of that period of human development where the information is revealed by archeol ogical rather than literary evidence. In short, it has been agreed that a fundamental fallacy and contradiction is involved in the use of the term "pre-historic» for any period of which there is any considerable record preserved, whether in writing or in the artifacts of daily life. With recent writers «pre-historic» has followed the term «pre-AdamiteD into that oblivion of discarded categories which is being continually expanded as an inevitable result of the growth of the knowledge of human activi ties in both time and space.
It has been deemed inadvisable at this point in the article to discuss the various interpre tations of what history means or should be mainly concerned with narrating. It is in great part the task of this whole article to reveal the diverse interpretations of history, and this much debated problem of what history means or has been thought to mean will be shown in its historical mutations and transformations.