Letters to His Son/How History Should Be Read
Dear Boy, — Your reflections on the conduct of France from the treaty of Münster to this time are very just; and I am very glad to find by them, that you not only read, but think and reflect upon what you read. Many great readers load their memories without exercising their judgments, and make lumber-rooms of their heads instead of furnishing them usefully; facts are heaped upon facts without order or distinction, and may justly be said to compose that
"——Rudis indigestaque moles
Quam dixere chaos."
Go on, then, in the way of reading that you are in; take nothing for granted upon the bare authority of the author, but weigh and consider in your own mind the probability of the facts, and form your opinion upon the greater or lesser degree of probability arising from the whole,—which in my mind is the utmost stretch of historical faith, certainly (I fear) not being to be found. When a historian pretends to give you the causes and motives of events, compare those causes and motives with the characters and interests of the parties concerned, and judge for yourself whether they correspond or not. Consider whether you cannot assign others more probably; and in that examination do not despise some very mean and trifling causes of the actions of great men; for so various and inconsistent is human nature, so strong and so changeable are our passions, so fluctuating are our wills, and so much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies, that every man is more the man of the day than a regular consequential character. The best have something bad, and something little; the worst have something good, and sometimes something great,—for I do not believe what Velleius Paterculus (for the sake of saying a pretty thing) says of Scipio, "Qui nihil non laudandum aut fecit, aut dixit, aut sensit." As for the reflections of historians with which they think it necessary to interlard their histories or at least to conclude their chapters,—and which in the French histories are always introduced with a tant il est vrai, and in the English, so true it is,—do not adopt them implicitly upon the credit of the author, but analyze them yourself, and judge whether they are true or not.