CHAPTER 8 HisTorioGRAPHy AS LIBERATION FROM History It is even stranger to find that instead of accurately and profoundly analysing social diseases of the kind we have just mentioned or of other or similar kinds, or isolating them in a sort of ideal hospital, so that they can only harm those who are already incurably contaminated, people commonly turn to blaming historical thought or historicism for the gen- erating of these diseases, by promoting fatalism; by dissolving Jpsolute values, by sanctifying the past, by accepting the bru- tality of facts as facts, by applauding violence, by recom- mending quietness, and, in fact, by removing the impetus and confidence from creative forces, by blunting the sense of duty, and by disposing men to inactivity and lazy compro- mise. All these things have already their appellations in the moral world, they are called spiritual sloth, disintegration of the will, lack of moral sense, superstition about the past, tim- orous conservatism, cowardice which knowingly tries to ex- cuse itself by equivocation and by appealing to historical necessity when the need is for resolution and action accord- ing to moral necessity—and so on. And, although one or other of these things may sometimes be found as in other men, so also in some historlans (as in Hegel, whose error or defection as regards social conservatism and political subjec- tion was thrown into relief by the greatness of his stature as a philosopher and an historian) historical thought as such has nothing to do with them and may be quite contrary to these tendencies.36 HISTORY AS THE STORY OF LIBERTY Ve are products of the past and we imersed in the past, which encompasses us. How can we move towards the new life, how create new activities without getting out of the past and without placing ourselves above it? And how can we place ourselves above the past if we are in it and it is in us? There is no other way out except through thought, which does not break off relations with the past but rises ideally above it and converts it into knowledge. The past must be faced or, not to speak in metaphors, it must be reduced to a mental problem which can find its solution in a proposition of truth, the ideal premise for our new activity and our new life. This is how we daily behave, when, instead of being pros- trated by the vexations which beset us, and of bewailing and being shamed by errors we have committed, we examine what has happened, analyse its origin, follow its history, and, with an informed conscience and under an intimate inspira- tion, we outline what ought and should be undertaken and willingly and brightly get ready to undertake it. Humanity always behaves in the same way when faced with its great and varied past. The writing of histories—as Goethe once noted—is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past. Historical thought transforms it into its own material and transfigures it into its object, and the writing of history liber- ates us from history. Only a strange obscurity of ideas could impede us from recognizing the purifying function which both the writing of history and likewise poetry fulfil: the latter liberates us from servitude to the passions, the former from slavery to events and to the past. Only by an even greater intellectual blunder can that man be called a gaoler who unlocks the door of the cell to which we would otherwise be condemned. Men with a gift for history (not to be confused with monks intent Historiography as Liberation from History 37 ‘on compiling registers and chronicles, nor with the erudite who collect stories and documents, and by their industry pro- duce reliable news, nor with scholarly compilers of historical manuals) have always been labourers in various fields, in- clined to meditate upon situations which have arisen in order to overcome them and to assist others to overcome them by means of new activity: politicians who have written political history, philosophers who have written histories of philoso- phy, artistic spirits who have tried by means of their intelli- gence to distil from the history of art an enjoyment of works of art, men of great civil and moral fervour who have severely scrutinized the history of human civilizations. During peri- ods in which reforms and upheavals are being prepared, at- tention is paid to the past, to that from which a break is to be made, and to that with which a link is to be forged. During uneventful slow and heavy periods, fables and romances are preferred to histories or history itself is reduced to a fable or romance. Similarly, men who shut themselves up within the four walls of their private affections and private economic life, cease to be interested in what has happened and in what is happening in the great world, and they recognize no other history but that of their limited anxieties.