History: A Possession for All Time
By Edwin Robert '21L,
It was history that Thucydides was talking about over two millennia ago when he hoped his life’s work would not be enjoyed, or maliciously misinterpreted, ephemerally. History, he understood, is not for any of us to like or to dislike, agree or disagree with; it is there, always, a possession for all time, for us to learn from. History is ours. From it we obtain knowledge and if fortunate perhaps one day even attain wisdom. The precious fruit of close, and, especially for our own time, fair reading of past examples was not lost on Robert E. Lee. In September of 1870, the final full month of his life, he wrote:
My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them or indisposed me to serve them; nor in spite of failures, which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge; or of the present aspect of affairs; do I despair of the future. The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.[2]
Only one perfect man ever lived. Robert E. Lee was not that man, but His was the example which Lee pursued throughout his life. Neither writer nor reader of the Spectator is without just cause for reproach. Who then is free from criticism? No one. Who is vulnerable to it? All others who have it in their hearts to divide and criticize. I believe that individuals on both sides of the current political climate believe they are promoting what is right, as Lincoln said, “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”[3]
That said, all causes throughout recorded history have included ignominious actors who discredited the good intentions and good actions of an otherwise admirable and honorable movement; even the history of the church tells us this, and my point is reinforced when one takes into consideration the charity which every congregation regularly carries out, as well as the extremism perpetrated by despicable others; yet they all identify with familiar symbols and possess, for all time, like it or not, a shared history. Nevertheless, many of them continue to do good works notwithstanding an imperfect past. Let us judge for ourselves the best course, having been equipped with the best examples.
All secular monuments portray flawed individuals. We, the flawed individuals, after all, are the ones who build and look upon them. From the shortcomings of others we must learn how to do right, lest we risk repeating the same offenses. Livy, in the introduction to his magnum opus advises his reader on the importance of reading and knowing history:
What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that you behold the lessons of every kind of experience set forth as on a conspicuous monument; from these you may choose for yourself and for your own state what to imitate, from these mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result.[4]
Therefore, then, let he that is without sin among us cast the first stone.[5] Let him also be first to topple a statue, deface a building, and demand the renaming of an institution.
No one will deny the presence of racism in our shared history. But it is our history only and not our future. Some would have it forgotten, on account of the new always being better. We must not forget that, while all progress requires change, not all change creates progress. Change for its own sake is dangerous, prone to manipulation, and often driven by opportunism. Without a history to draw examples from as Livy admonishes, a people has no bank of references, no precedent; such a people is susceptible to whatever the latest story is, whatever is flashed before them or listened to a la Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and its dystopian dissemination of misinformation. Every monument toppled, building defaced, and name changed sews the wind to one day reap a whirlwind.[6] The injuries inflicted in the name of racism were long-lasting and painful, but the wound of forgetting our past would be fatal.
Let us be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.[7] Quick to hear the stories of past hardships and how brave Americans persevered and overcame. Slow to speak without reflection and slow to pass judgment on yesterday wholesale with the morals of today in mind. We all need examples worth emulating in our lives, and, as a result we all seek out and find them. How quick we are to ignore their shortcomings and sins, how quick to mention only their best qualities. Supporters of any given cause have long feared that admitting imperfections in their model example would somehow invalidate the individual’s remarkable qualities. But an exception does not cancel the rule, to use a current term, it merely tests it.[8] Times and the people who live in them will continue to change, whether they progress or not, but principles never. If we were to look back for differences throughout our history and note all of its indiscrepancies when compared to modern sentiment, we would make of ourselves, having been blessed with a chance at wisdom, mere bean counters only, piling up points to weigh against each other.
I conclude on behalf of the health and longevity of our still young, growing, and promising Nation, and in defense of my University’s former president, imperfect in thought and deed as we all are and always will be, with the words of two presidents of a different kind; Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln, respectively:
A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about … we have been looking about for expedients and policies and have not been looking about for principles.[9]
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.[10]
Endnotes
1. “History of the Peloponnesian War”Book 1.22.4. Translated by Benjamin Jowett (1881). The quote in full: The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.
2. Letter to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Marshall (1870).
3. Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865).
4. Ab Urbe Condita translated by William Heinemann (1919).
5. John 8:7, KJV.
6. Hosea 8:7, KJV.
7. James 1:19, KJV.
8. The Medieval axiom is literally exceptio probat regulam.
9. Woodrow Wilson “Robert E. Lee: An Interpretation” p. 24 (1913).
10. Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865).