LIVING HISTORY.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2617, 26 February 1925, Page 7

LIVING HISTORY.

“The Historian,” says Viscount Haldane. “must resemble a portrait painter rather than a photographer. The great artist does not put on re. cord a simple reproduction of the appearance of his subject at a particular moment: that is the work of the photographer Art, in its highest sense, has to disentangle the significance of the whole from all its details. IVo more narration of details will convey the truth of the living whole.” “It is shallow criticism,” says Roosevelt, "to assert that,imagination tends to inaccuracy. Vast and funda. mental truths .can be presented and. interpreted only by lofty imagination. When we say that a great historian must have Imagination, we use the word as we do when we say that a great statesman must be a man of imagination.” , , . Carlyle used to wax scornful of the methods of old '‘Dry.as-Dust;” and dry-as-dust methods of teaching history, at any rate, have now fallen into discredit. History must he presented as a subject of vital interest and im. portance; and the aim of the lecturer must be to get his hearers almost to ■live through’ the situations and events that he la dealing with. When wc have attended a lecture on, say, Socrates, Alexander, Luther. Cromwell. Bismark or Robert Owen, we ought to fel as though we have known him personally, that we have lived the very life of the age in which he lived, experiencing its hopes and fears, confronting - its difficulties, sharing Its struggles, its disappointments, its triumphs. . This need for history to be made ‘alive’ is nowhere more evident than in connection with the scheme for popular, adult education —the W.E.A. scheme —for which in New Zealand the University Colleges are respom sible. That this is well understood W those who arc responsible for the scheme in the Victoria University District. is shown by the pro,gramme of public lectures- —“Some Outstanding Figures in History”—which will bode. llvered during the coming season.