On the Charms of History and the Future of the Past, Aldous Leonard Huxley
On the Charms of History and the Future of the Past
There are best sellers among the history books, and archaeology is actually news. From an editor’s point of view, the finding of yet another of Tutankhamen’s hidden art nouveau table-centres is an event at least as important as an Atlantic flight. We are all interested in history now.
But ‘history,’ Mr Henry Ford assures us, ‘is bunk.’
Therefore, if Mr Ford is right, we are all interested in bunk. Is he right? Up to a point, I think, he is. For most of what passes for history is really perfectly insignificant and trivial. Why, then, are we interested in it? Because we like insignificances and trivialities—prefer them (bottomlessly frivolous as we are) to the significant things which demand to be taken seriously, to be judged and thought about. Moreover, historical insignificances and trivialities, besides being intrinsically delightful (a history book is often more entertaining than a novel), are also Culture. We are therefore morally justified in being amused by them, as we are not morally justified in being amused by novels. For novels, unless they happen to be by dead writers, are not Culture.
Culture, as Emmanuel Berl has pointed out in one of his brilliantly entertaining pamphlets, is like the sum of special knowledge that accumulates in any large united family and is the common property of all its members. ‘Do you remember Aunt Agatha’s ear trumpet? And how Willie made the parrot drunk with sops in wine? And that picnic on Loch Etive, when the boat upset and Uncle Bob was nearly drowned? Do you remember?’ And we all do; and we laugh delightedly; and the unfortunate stranger, who happens to have called, feels utterly out of it. Well, that (in its social aspect) is Culture. When we of the great Culture Family meet, we exchange reminiscences about Grandfather Homer, and that awful old Dr Johnson, and Aunt Sappho, and poor Johnny Keats. ‘And do you remember that absolutely priceless thing Uncle Virgil said?
You know. Timeo Danaos . . . Priceless; I shall never forget it.’ No, we shall never forget it; and what’s more, we shall take good care that those horrid people who have had the impertinence to call on us, those wretched outsiders who never knew dear mellow old Uncle V., shall never forget it either. We’ll keep them constantly reminded of their outsideness. So pleasurable to members of the Culture Family is this rehearsal of tribal gossip, such a glow of satisfied superiority does it give them, that the Times finds it profitable to employ some one to do nothing else but talk to us every morning about our dear old Culture-Aunties and Uncles and their delightful friends. Those fourth leading articles are really extraordinary. ‘ “How the days draw in!” as the Swan of Lichfield used mournfully to exclaim. The sere and yellow leaf, the sanglots longs des violons de l’automne fill some hearts with a certain “sweet sorrow” and bring to some eyes the lacrimae rerum. But there are others—quot homines, tot disputandum est—who find the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” not only cheering, but actually, unlike poor Cowper’s afternoon cup, inebriating. For “give to the boys October!” as we used to sing in the Auld Lang Syne of our Harrow days. Sad recollections! Nessun maggior delore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria. Those beautiful lines of Lactantius rise spontaneously to the lips:
‘A ab absque, coram, de;
Palam clam, cum ex et e;
Sine tenus, pro et prae . . .’
I confess, I thoroughly enjoy reading this sort of thing when it is well put together. I take a real pleasure in recognizing some Culture-Uncle’s quip, and am overcome with shame when I read of avuncular words or exploits, with which I ought to be familiar, but inexcusably am not. I am even very fond of writing this sort of family gossip myself.
All the more picturesque figures of history are our Culture-Uncles and Culture-Aunties. If you can talk knowingly about their sayings and doings, it is a sign that you ‘belong,’ that you are one of the family. Whereas if you don’t know, for example, that ‘Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother’ was fond of watching the mating of her mares and stallions, if you don’t know that Harrington was convinced that his perspiration engendered flies and actually devised a crucial experiment to prove it—well, obviously, you’re a bit of an outsider.
To pass the time and to provide us with Culture-Uncles and Culture-Aunts—these, for most readers, are the two main functions of written history. Mr Ford calls it bunk—no wonder. We can only be surprised at his moderation. Working single-mindedly ad majorem Industriae gloriam (as our Culture-Uncle Loyola might have said), this ascetic missionary and saint of the new dispensation could not fail to hate history. For the reading of history distracts, is a time-killer—thanks to Culture, an accredited and legitimate time-killer; but time is a sacrifice reserved exclusively for the God of Industry. Again, history provides people with standards of culture-snobbery; but the only kind of snobbery permitted to a worshipper of the new divinity is the snobbery of possessions.
The God of Industry supplies his worshippers with objects and can only exist on condition that his gifts are gratefully accepted. In the eyes of an Industriolater the first duty of man is to collect as many objects as he can. Family pride in the possession of Culture-Uncles, and in general all culture-snobbery, interferes with pride in objects, or possession-snobbery. Culture-snobbery is an insult and even a menace to the God of Industry.
The saint of the new dispensation has no choice but to hate history. And not history only. If he is logical he must hate literature, philosophy, pure science, the arts—all the mental activities that distract mankind from an acquisitive interest in objects.
‘Bunk’ was the term of abuse selected by Mr Ford for disparaging history. Bunk: for how can even serious and philosophical history be enlightening? History is the account of people who lived before such things as machine tools and joint-stock banks had been invented. How can it say anything of significance to us, in whose lives machine tools and joint-stock banks play, directly or indirectly, such an enormous part? No, no. History is bunk.
There are arguments, good arguments, I think, against the presumed bunkiness of history. But I cannot go into them here. Here, I am concerned simply with the fact that, bunk or no bunk, we all find history interesting. Interesting because it delightfully kills time, justifies time-killing by being Culture, and, finally, because it deals precisely with those pre-machine-tool men whose actions must seem to any convinced industriolater so ridiculously irrelevant and beside the point. We read about the past, because the past is refreshingly different from the present. A great deal of history is written, whether deliberately or unconsciously, as wish-fulfilment.
The past and the future are functions of the present. Each generation has its private history, its own peculiar brand of prophecy. What it shall think about past and future is determined by its own immediate problems. It will go to the past for instruction, for sympathy, for justification, for flattery. It will look into the future for compensation for the present—into the past, too. For even the past can become a compensatory Utopia, indistinguishable from the earthly paradises of the future, except by the fact that the heroes have historical names and flourished between known dates. From age to age the past is recreated. A new set of Waverley Novels is founded on a new selection of the facts. The Waverley Novels of one age are about the Romans, of another about the Greeks, of a third about the Crusaders or the Ancient Chinese.
The future is as various as the past. The coming world is inhabited at one moment by politicians, at another by craftsmen and artists; now by perfectly rational utilitarians, now by supermen, now by proletarian submen. Each generation pays its money and takes its choice.
Anywhere, anywhere out of the world. We make our exit, forward or backward, by time-machine. (Some people, it is true, still prefer the old-fashioned eternity-machines on which Dante and Milton made their record-breaking trans-cosmic flights; but they are relatively few. For most moderns, the time-machine seems unquestionably more efficient.) Shall we always make the same sort of exits on our time-machines? In other words, what is likely to be the future of the past? And the future of the future? Only a study of the past’s and future’s past and present will permit us to guess with any show of plausibility.
For the five or six hundred years before 1800 the past was almost exclusively Rome, Greece (known indirectly through Rome and then by direct contact), and Palestine.
The Hebrew past remained, throughout all this long period, relatively stable. Associated as it was with the sacred books of the established religion, how could it change?
The Graeco-Roman past was less stable. During the later Middle Ages the Greeks and Romans were, above all, men of science. With the Renaissance appeared that passionate and exclusive admiration for classical art and literature which persisted until well on into the nineteenth century. For more than three hundred years, the Greeks and Romans were the only sculptors and architects, the only poets, dramatists, philosophers, and historians.
During the same period the Romans were the only statesmen.
For the sceptics of the eighteenth century, Greece and Rome were empires of Reason, gloriously unlike the actual world, where prejudice and superstition so manifestly had the upper hand. They used classical examples as
