TRADITION (from the Latin traders) comprises, ha the widest sense of the word, all that has been handed down (gum tradita aunt) to us concerning the events of the past, and in this sense all history is tradition. In the early ages of mankind and of every nation, when the art of writing was unknown or little used, all history was handed down by oral communication from generation to generation without written records. Afterwards, when the accounts thus propagated were written down and assumed a definite shape, or many shapes, according to the information, the opinions, or the judgment possessed by the person or persons who wrote them down, such accounts were found to differ materially from accounts written by eye-witnesses at or aeon after the times when events happened. Historical criticism distin guishes the two kinds of history by calling the former tradition, in a narrower sense of the word, and the latter history. Those who know how, even in our days, reports are changed and embellished, how some features are omitted and others added during the process of passing from mouth to mouth, and how in the end they frequently assume a totally different aspect from what they originally had, will readily admit that such traditions cannot be received with the same faith as contemporary history. We may add that the more important the occurrence handed down by tradition is, and the more it affects the feelings and passions of men, the greater will be the changes and cor ruptions which it experiences in its progress. The desire, moreover, of seeing things clear and complete is inherent in the human mind ; and hence we find that in innumerable instances where a tradition or a series of traditions was deficient, unclear, or incomplete, man's imagi nation and ingenuity have been at work, to make up an apparently complete account, either by filling up the gaps in the original account with pure fictions, or by transferring and combining events which belong to different times and countries. Such accounts require to be examined with more caution on the part of the historian the more skilfully they are made up, and the more their apparent consistency resembles real history. It is the business of the historian who feels
the want of a positive conviction, and is not satisfied with discovering that a tradition is obscure, inconsistent, or incredible, to find out its historical groundwork, by comparing the traditions about one and the (same subject, by analogies, and by separating such additions and embellishments which have been made with a view to satisfy man's curiosity, or his feelings, either religious or political. The historian who undertakes this task has to guard against two dangerous rocks ; the one is the desire to construct out of a tradition a history according to a preconceived notion or theory, the very thing which in many cases was the cause of the adulterated tradition itself ; and the other is tho so-called rationalistic mode of dealing with tradition, which consists in stripping it of everything poetical or marvellous, and leaving nothing bnt a skeleton, which is considered as history merely because it pre sents nothing that might not happen every day and within our own experience.
In the history of Christianity the term tradition has been applied to the so-called unwritten word of God ; that is, to the doctrines said to have been communicated by Christ to his apostles, which were not written down by them, but were handed down by their oral instruction to their successors. This tradition is preserved in the writings of the ecclesiastical fathers ; and the Church of Rome regards them, next to the Bible, as a source of knowledge which ought to regulate the life and religious observances of Christians. She claims for tradition the same unconditional faith in regard to its divine authority as for t he doctrines of the New Testament. Tho substance of the tradition thus revered by the Church of Rome, however, affects rather the forms of religion than its essence ; and some of these forms, such as the baptism of infants, the celebration of certain festivals, and the like, are retained and observed by the majority of Protestants, while on the whole they reject tradition, and do not consider it binding.