The Irony of Mormon History

The Irony of Mormon History

BY PAUL M. EDWARDS

IN AN EARLY Dialogue there appears a remarkable article by Richard L. Bushman called "Faithful History." It seems too appropriate to be coincidental that in the same issue—though separated by what the second author will call the "divided payoff"—is an article by Samuel W. Taylor called "How to Read a Mormon Scholar." The juxtaposition of these two articles and their content is characteristic of the topic I wish to address, which is the idea of faithful history and some of the complexities and ironies arising when Mormons and historians open Pandora's box of mixed loyalties.

Perhaps I should clarify two points in order to preclude unnecessary confusion and judgments. My concern is with the Mormon movement in its widest perspective and with that wide historical search within Mormonism. We share so much in common it seems unnecessary at this point to be alerted to theological and social differences be they real or imagined.

Another definition concerns the term irony. I use the word "irony" to refer to the incongruity between that which is expected and that which occurs. Adopting its dramatic usage, I am also referring to the fact that the audience is often more aware of the incongruity than the characters who voice it. Unlike some who use this word, I am not implying any metaphysical character to the irony and do not consider the situation to be negative or necessarily hopeless.

First, I would like to consider the concept of the faithful historian about which so much has been written and so little said. Leonard J. Arrington in his tribute to President Joseph Fielding Smith introduces the question. He reports President Smith saying: "The chronicler of important events should not be deprived of his individuality; but if he willfully disregards the truth, no matter what his standing may be, or how greatly he may be respected, he should be avoided." I agree wholeheartedly.

Professor Arrington goes on to say that " 'Objectivity' for President Smith meant seeing that the history of the Church was presented in a positive light, rejecting the extreme and irresponsible charges of the Church's enemies." This is less clear; for it suggests that either the church (the larger Mormon movement in our case) is always positive, that extremes are necessarily wrong, or that nonpositive statements about the church are either extreme or irresponsible. These positions do not seem defensible. My concern is not with President Smith or with Dr. Arrington—far from it. What does concern me, however, are these questions: questions of integrity and the integrity of questions.

Richard Bushman in his article, "Faithful History," brings the issue further to a head by saying that when a professional historian is being a good historian, he is being religious. I agree. I would also assert that when a professional plumber is being a good plumber he is being religious. The common term in both these cases is "good," not historian or plumber. To suggest that the religious convictions of the historian alter history is a fallacy; such convictions may well change the shape of the future, but they only confuse the understanding of the present. History which is dependent upon an individual's faith is a statement of convictions, not a statement of the conviction of his or her inquiry. If we are interested in the former rather than the latter, then we should be searching for a pastor—not a historian.

We might profit here from making a distinction between a fairy story and historical interpretation. The fairy story represents permanent longings and concerns both traditional and unchallengeable convictions which are true despite evidence to the contrary. History begins with a willingness to consider the evidence, to challenge the story, to question the values, and to deal with the end as direction rather than as conclusion. These two are often confused, and the confusion creates fallacies which denigrate the value of each.

Let me construct a hypothetical case aimed at no one but threatening us all. Many of the best things being done in Mormon history are being done by professional historians who have made their mark on areas other than Mormon history. This is understandable for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is economic. These persons built their reputations because they played according to discipline rules to which they were subject or to rules which they had publicly offered as their own. They played, in either case, according to a defined system which was subject to criticism and was internally defined by others playing the same game. Then these professionals turned their attention to the Mormon movement taking their credentials with them. In their new role they have given their attention to the concerns arising from their religious background and have produced works in a variety of media, all labeled "historical."

Because of their reputations we listen and open our minds to their presentations, assuming all the while that they will bring the same level of responsibility and respectability to their inquiry into Mormonism. Instead, we often find that they are using their faith as a club with which to beat their perceptions. They involve themselves in methodologies and interpretations that deny their training and reputation. They answer the questions of their inquiry with straw men who weep in the face of contradiction, and they seem to believe in order not to be forced to know. We find these historians have gone into history in search of a text for their sermons rather than for an understanding of the past.

I can understand this hypothetical problem. I think I have been guilty of it. But I deplore it; it cannot be justified. If the answer to historical contradiction is faith—if we believe regardless of the facts at our disposal—then we do not need historians. In fact, we do not need theologians. We already know all we are willing to believe. If the justification for this selective methodology is that the questions being asked are beyond reasons, then readers have the same right of selectivity; for there is no "reason" for asking a reasonable and/or responsible man to interpret an illogical world. If what we want are logs for the fires of our expectation, we who are still unsure need psychiatrists, not historians, in order that history might be constructed in the light of our needs.

Bushman states, "The facts are more like blocks which each historian piles up as he chooses, which is why written history is always assuming new shapes." This adopts the attitude of Froude but not the historical pessimism; for his statement was, "It often seems to me as if history was like a child's box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please. We have only to pick out such letters as we want, arrange them as we like, and say nothing about those which do not suit our purpose." I have no quarrel with Bushman as far as he goes, but it is the second part of Froude's quote that is important. There are a lot of Mormon historians who do not seem in the least chagrined when they discover that all the uncomfortably shaped blocks remain.

Bushman affirms that Mormon history cannot emerge from "theological doctrine." This interesting statement is followed later by, "The Book of Mormon is a source of insight about the nature of history which Mormons have only begun to mine. Since it was written by prophets, we can assume the extraneous cultural influences were largely subordinated to faith. . . ." T This is a rather interesting assumption—one which would be seen by anyone else as a theological doctrine. With such a statement Bushman has already applied as a philosophy of history a theological assumption which is, I believe, inconsistent in terms of the article. The role of the historian is not to prove religion. It is not, I believe, even to record the history of religion. It is to interpret the duration of a people who are, in this case, religious. Joseph's experience in the grove is not to be proven. At this stage it can only be dealt with. The difference, for the Mormon movement, is often the difference between "sanctioned" and "suspicious" histories.

John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty—still the greatest thing ever written on intellectual honesty—suggests to us that freedom of thought must include protection against "the tyranny of prevailing opinion." His argument for the necessity of freedom warned us that silencing an opinion puts us into the position of ignoring the partly true on the grounds that it might also be partly false. "True" histories, when the word means edited and accepted, add to the prevailing opinion of the age. In doing so, they fail to challenge traditions or, more important, to challenge the age with the prospect of growth.

Remember Mill's warning, "All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility." This is the danger of our "positiveness." The greatest harm in persecution, particularly in the written word, is not done to those who are themselves heretics. Instead, as Mill has suggested, it is to those who are not heretics, because the mental development of the latter is stifled by fear of the position of heresy. The danger of manipulated history is not really the danger that this year's history is more myth than narrative, but that this year's historians will come to accept this myth as history's only offering. For thinking people, belief in the potential of their processes is their source of energy. It will die when they find that they can no longer follow the light of their inquiry, carrying with them the belief that it makes a difference. When thinking people discover that they have become simply the connection between yesterday's prevailing concept and today's popular acceptance, they have lost the source of their initial inquiry.

When it becomes necessary to adjust one's thinking to the "truth," there is no way to avoid the corollary consideration that the "truth" is no longer subject to challenge, that it is infallible. The suggestion of infallibility is a strange and ironical position for a movement dedicated to the progressive nature not only of humanity's involvement but, for portions of the movement, to the progressive nature of God.

The faith of historians is not faith that history will prove their point or that they can select events and parade phenomena to evaluate their longings. Nor is it obedience to a creed or a dogma. The faith of the historians of faith is that they believe in the unity of the world in such a way that whatever they discover in humanity, or in gods, good or bad, in support or in criticism of the institutional views, their discoveries cannot help but express the divine nature of things and bring security to the dreams that are within us.

The problem is, however, more than just a question of integrity. It also deals with the integrity of questions. Much of what is being written in Mormon history these days is answers to questions that are no longer being asked. The expanded contribution we can make lies in understanding the nature of the questions to be asked. The concerns are not necessarily grove experiences or missionary activities in England, or lines of succession but are, instead, problems that face the churches— questions which appear to this generation to be suspended in time. If ever a people were in need of understanding both the legality of their doubts and the eternal nature of their paradoxes, it is now.

The answer appears to be, as Elbert Smith used to say, that we stop setting the sun by our watches. We start to write history honestly. This means using as our restraints, not the dictates of a traditional institution or heritage, but the character of our discipline that has grown and is growing through analysis and self-criticism. Be a faithful person, be a faithful historian, be a faithful creature of God and it is hard, as the saying goes, "to be false to any man."

II

A reevaluation of the questions being asked would alter the trends in the writing of Mormon history. I do not intend here a critique of Mormon historiography. For such a critique I would suggest you consult works like those of Robert Bruce Flanders or Marvin Hill. I wish, however, to make a brief observation about these trends.

The ironic aspect of these trends is that we have not related the lesson of our religion to the value of our discipline. We have not allowed the revolutionary nature of the movement from which we have sprung to make us revolutionaries. The one thing about which we might all agree concerning Joseph Smith is that he was not the usual sort of person. He did not approach life itself—or his religious commitment— in a usual way. Yet, the character of our historical investigation of Joseph and his times has been primarily traditional, unimaginative, and lacking in any effort to find or create an epistemological methodology revolutionary enough to deal with the paradox of our movement. The irony of our position is that many of our methods and interpretations have become so traditional that they can only reinforce the fears of yesterday rather than nurture the seeds of tomorrow's dreams.

A good many historians are asking us, as a matter of pure historical credence, to accept that historical credence as impossible. None of us here knows anything but second or third generation interpretations, and the basis from which we operate is one of historical acceptability. Our very involvement is evidence of the credibility of learning from, and interpreting through, history. We cannot assume our discipline is unchanged by the study of the discipline, or that we can be Mormons and Mormon historians and not be changed by the fact that we are altering our present as we investigate our past.

My observation is that a good portion of our efforts are polemical. These works begin with the assumption that some people and some ideas are valuable in and of themselves as "recognized" masters of thought and action. Our histories are discussions of the correctness of these ideas. They appear designed to challenge, not the idea, but any suspicions that might arise about the ideas. Many discuss developments of the institution from the view that each new thinker, each new idea, must be evaluated as being "good" or "bad" in relation to that initial record. Probably the worst example of this is Inez Smith Davis's book, The Story of the Church, which the RLDS people continue to publish despite all suggestions to the contrary.

One reason for this trend is that we act as if there were no permanent problems in Mormonism. The lack of perennial problems leaves the historian with the tendency to exaggerate individual greatness and to exaggerate the necessary contemporariness of even the most archaic of ideas and positions. A current example of this is Stanley P. Hirshson's The Lion of the Lord. Partial challenges have been the social and cultural histories like those by James Allen and Marvin Hill, and by the writings of Davis Bitton, S. George Ellsworth, Juanita Brooks, and Charles Peterson, and, to a lesser degree, by the articles appearing in Essays in Mormon History.

Another contemporary trend consists of those works designed to tell us what "really happened." These seemingly popular presentations bubble with the effervescence of "good faith." Two varieties are obvious. The first is what I call doxographical history. One example will make my point: Pearson H. Corbett's history Hyrum Smith: Patriarch. This is the cut and paste method of writing pushed to its extreme. It is based on a succession framework in which all that has ever been said by, or about, some person or topic is collected, cut into pieces, and molded into a puzzle of the author's peculiar design. It reports only on what others have said and often tries to repaint old pictures using stiff brushes. They make little new contribution; often they simply confuse the issue, for in them truth appears to depend on the number of scraps of materials that can be collected.

Mark McKiernan's work on Sidney Rigdon is an example of the other extreme of this methodology. It is a valuable collection of information but only rarely a history, for it offers little interpretation. One suspects that each bit of information was collected and given importance simply because Sidney Rigdon's name appears on it.

The second variety of this "really was" view is the retrospective. These works are not just collections of isolated materials forced into new covers, not even the presentation of materials that the historian can mark true or false. In this case, we are talking about the belief that each bit of information is added to the last, like bits of string to a huge ball. The increasing size of the ball of string suggests to us new strength rather than just more string, since we assume each bit of information is "yet more light." Each period is seen as a contribution to the previous; thus the new cannot contradict the old, and all "growth" is seen as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The retrospective works on theories that are too tight. It is too committed to determinism—often even to predeterminism—which is strangely ironic for an institution in which agency is the clue to humanity.

One questionable variety of the retrospection type is the "speedy interpretation" of which Stanley Kimball is a good example. This is an author, called a "skimmer," who tends to run through the forests of facts, making virgin pronouncements before really seeing the trees. An example of the "growth retrospection" is the seven-volume history of the Reorganization which has continued in publication these past years. These volumes do make an important contribution, for the "Reorganites" have never maintained day books or statements of duration. However, they are not histories in the sense we have discussed; they are less than the Reorganization needs and, in my understandably biased opinion, considerably less than the author could contribute if freed from the institutional format he inherited. I am assuming that the proposed sixteen-volume sesquicentennial publication under the general editorship of Leonard Arrington will in fact be a history rather than sixteen isolated narratives. This is an opportunity to pursue some as yet undeciphered and perennially misunderstood characteristics of the movement. Many of these questions show their head only in the unity of problematic history; they are so easily avoided in selective piecemeal accounts.

To explain my point, let me suggest that these volumes will address in their wiser consideration such things as anti-Mormonism as a continuing theme; schematics, or "great dispersions;" the influence and contribution of apostate peoples; state, regional, and local conditions as environments which influenced both local and wide policy; the western contribution as a contribution rather than as a phenomenon; the "tainted saints;" and the juxtaposition of the Mormon nationalists rather than the nationalistic Mormon.

At this point may I encourage, as an alternative, the continuation of, and commitment to, the breakthrough in problematic history of which Max Parkin, Leonard Arrington, Davis Bitton, Robert Flanders, Klaus Hansen, and Warren Jennings have been good examples. By this, I mean the development of the historical investigation which arises from the fact that historians are puzzled human beings who are aware of the confusion of being contemporary man or woman with a memory. These are people who ask themselves, "What is it that we are trying to understand?" and search and interpret in the realization of this query. But it is not just a question of being puzzled. It is more than that. We are talking about what it means to have the feeling of puzzlement. It includes the willingness to seek from the past and from the present and to do so in the hope that the search, even with some error, is the key to tomorrow. These people face the irony of the fact that Mormonism, which is integrated in its complexity, has been studied in such a disjointed fashion.

Such people leave the antiquarianism of their colleagues behind. They no longer delight in facts for facts' sake—in artifacts for artifacts' sake. They leave behind also their scholasticism and have deserted their love for distinctions' sake. And they expose themselves to be the test of doubt in a world of assumed answers. So many Mormons, who would be historians, expend their energies in scholastic antiquarianism.

III

My third observation deals with the philosophy of history. Every attempt to sum up the totals of the past, to comprehend the past as a wdiole, to decipher or impose upon the past some ultimate meaning is a philosophy of history. To wait for an official philosophy of history is itself a philosophy of history. Few historians write from any consistent philosophical system, but their investigations are influenced by implied metaphysical assumptions. This is not the time for an analysis of these implied philosophies, but I would like to make some general observations about Mormon histories, Mormon historians, and philosophies of history.

Let me begin with the obvious by making a distinction between the past and history. The past is yesterday. It is that series of events and reactions to events, as well as memories of the memory of the events, which cannot be retrieved. They belong to the yesterdays; and like the yesterdays, they have no existence, not even their present, save it be through their relation to tomorrow.

History, however, is what has been done to the past by those to whom the past is so meaningful it must be interpreted. The historian is a person who does things to and with the past so that they (the past and the historian) develop significance in the present. The manipulation is not by historians, but of historians, a fact ignored by both Brodie and Hill. The mere massiveness of the past requires the classification and lumping of events and ideas, all of which are invented (like the term "restoration") to simplify, codify, and classify. All of these activities are intuitive and, being so, are not in the same category as the events they are designed to classify and explain. Hence, the irony: the more subjective the system must be, the more objective we are called to be with it.

Remember also that historians deal with human beings. They deal with those who have commanded the attention of an era and who have emerged as the leaders and the led. They deal with what people are supposed to have done, the thoughts they are supposed to have had, and the decisions they came to—or did not come to.

What historians really want to know, and what they often give the impression that they do know, is forever gone, as is the past about which they abstract. The historians' search for realities is a futile search, for what they find instead are Platonic images dancing on the cave wall. And, their trauma is extended, for they are writing not only about strangers but for strangers. These readers are as incomprehensible in their own time as those about which we would write.

So, to round out the obvious, when historians try to present things they think they can say about the past, they must say it to humans who are strange, incomprehensible, predetermined in part by their environment, and more than a little suspicious. Unless historians write only for other historians (a dangerous vocation at best), they must deal with the influences upon those for whom they write of the history that they are writing.

In Richard D. Poll's timely article in Dialogue he states that the church has no official philosophy of history. Perhaps I read into his statement, but it seems to me he is telling us this fact as if it were in some way tragic. I view it as an evidence of modern miracles. Poll explains that by a philosophy of history he means "a central conception of what history is about. What does the process add up to?" Philosophies of history arise from inquiry into history as a part of the unity of humanity. Surely no one would imply that adequate study has been done in the history of the Mormon movement to suggest an "official philosophy of history," even if one were possible. If, however, we wanted to attach one of the standard theories onto the research process within the movement, then "official" philosophy requires only the recommendation by a person with enough clout to get it accepted.

Poll is very much correct in pointing out that any attempt to draw a philosophy of history from the "doctrine of the Church" has never been done. He makes a beautiful case for the inconsistencies rampant in those doctrines and suggests the position that the LDS have a real tendency to venerations rather than a commitment to a sense of history.

One example that Poll did not mention is the Utopian concept of history which plagues the discipline with self-doubts. This concept anticipates that historical inquiry will support the idea that the source of our end, and the salvation of our times, will in fact arrive outside of history. I do not want to debate the theological aspects. But I believe such an assumption is ironical if not unhistorical. This paradox asks us to discover from our history that in the long run of our history, history has no effect. The role of the personally involved God dealing in history when He feels it necessary may well be true. That is not my question. But if it is true, then history can lay no credit to, nor draw information from, such mundane things as cause and effect, prescription, duration, and certainly not the assumption of historical indeterminism.

The problem is that for many historians not only is God working out His visions on the anvil iron of history but that since those "visions" are recorded as official truth the historian is forced into the role of either anticipating history or remaking history. There is always the temptation as well—succumbed to in such works as Pearl Wilcox's With the Latter Day Saints on the Missouri Frontier—to assume as historical evidence that "God wouldn't do that."

Linked with this Utopian image is another related problem, for one of the dangers inherent in our movement is that Mormon historians take themselves far more seriously than they do their subject. Fawn Brodie, who is open for criticism from a dozen directions, seems to be most suspect when, as Rodman Paul points out, she is being sarcastic. Samuel W. Taylor is not always appreciated for his humor though it seems to me he is laughing at historians, not history. Gordon Mesley's recent sarcasm in Courage has already received more criticism than articles which questioned the Book of Mormon. At this point the primary necessity is not a philosophy of history but a philosophy—or if you prefer—a doctrine of man which, I trust, will include historians.

I believe that a doctrine of man is going to be necessarily understood prior to the time we are able to put together any very significant theories of history at all. In the meantime, we must deal with that approach which arises from our own training and which is expressed within an existing series of philosophical and theological contexts that most of us neither understand nor would accept if we did. History is a very serious subject, but we are not necessarily always seriously dedicated or reverent people. Thus, the humor which speaks truth, even through the vehicle of fiction, has much to say to us.

Still another related question concerns the scarcity of Mormon scholarship. Rodman Paul, reflecting surprise that so little first-rate work had been done in Mormonism, suggested that it might be due to lack of curiosity necessary to inspire students. I think an earlier comment in the same article might have been more indicative of the problem. For it is true, as he suggests, that the social scientists have rushed in where historians failed to tread. The problem is that they deal with Mormonism as a movement and then call it history. Thus, what is known about us is descriptive of past behavior and is often considered as prescriptive for future behavior rather than indicative either of present conditions or future extension.

I think, sometimes, these sociological assumptions are decreed to be historical laws and then, in turn, philosophies of history. They are, instead, empirical data, coming as they do from experience and observation of events. They are called historical but are not until they include interpretation. They are only past: empirical past. A philosophy of history is not empirical. It does not try to tie events together by some external connection of these past events. Instead, it tries to deal with all that is known in connection with some larger assumptions. These assumptions are a part of the imaginative nature of historians, assumptions which they cannot ignore, for they work within them to find meaning from the chaos of their factual data. A philosophy of history does not postulate this unity of the process. Instead it formulates consideration of the process.

Likewise, the attempt to support any historical presentation by a philosophy of history which is "proclaimed" rather than emerging is in vain. So far, a distinctive moral judgment cannot be made through any appeal to a trend in human history. We are left, then, with having to arrive at some total moral or ethical judgments apart from our own experience. Until we have valid moral and theoretical judgments for all events, any attempt to evaluate events in terms of a progressive moral movement is in fact only the understanding of one person, not a movement, not an institution, not even a discipline. At best it is a discussion of our own moral and cultural idiosyncrasies.

At the root of most "proclaimed" philosophies of history is the attempt to collect an army of facts and information to proselytize an official view of the past—at least the past as is presently present. Poll suggests some paradoxical characteristics of Mormon theology which will make an "Official Philosophy of History" difficult if not impossible. I would go further to suggest that having once arrived at these truths the problem of an official philosophy of history becomes moot. The very nature of proclaimed truth is unhistorical and, in this case, unphilosophical. Thus individuals rather than institutions should be the source of such systems.

Poll does discuss how he, as an LDS historian, handles some of the questions of faith that stem from his vocation. He affirms that (1) God is present in history as organizer, definer of goals, director and influencer to the extent He keeps us moving toward these goals; (2) divine intervention is to be expected at those points where it can "be no other way." While in no way disparaging Poll, might I suggest that this statement is a theology of history, not a philosophy of history, the difference being that a theology of history is based on an ultimate commitment which one holds in such a way that it is the organizer of evidence, not the result of evidence. A philosophy of history is one of the ultimate concern which leads one to challenge any unsystematic characteristic of paradoxical nature to the answers being given.

Thus, I agree with Poll there is no "official" Mormon philosophy of history. I believe there never should be. Probably there will be few personal philosophies because few of us have learned enough from our own history to leave history alone and allow it to speak.

IV

Finally I would like to present a postulate for consideration. I recognize a good deal of German historicism in the writing of Mormon history. I mean that there appears to be little distinction between the method, the subject matter, and the procedures of the natural and human sciences. This suggests to the readers that historical discoveries are individual events and occurrences which are discovered by themselves with no reference to their unity, nor with reference to their effect on the discipline. Put a different way, I feel we have not found the epistemological method necessary to deal with our history honestly while providing the foundation for historical judgments. Wilhelm Dilthey presented an epistemology that I think might well work for us, but few have recognized it and fewer still have paid any attention to it. Examining its scope and narrowing it in complexity, I would like to comment briefly on it here.

As we have observed, it is impossible to view the past as it "actually was." Nevertheless, we feel some compulsion to deal with that now nonexistent past with some sense of objectivity in order for there to be historical judgments rather than just contemporary opinion. For both Dilthey and John Dewey this objective "empirical" judgment is made on the "inner or conscious side" of the no-longer-present. Professor Arrington introduced Collingwood and this general idea in an early Dialogue. By "inner" here, they mean the objectivity available within our present experience when we are reliving to our fullest that which is no longer present in others. The empirical grounds for our past, says Dewey, must somehow continue to exist; and he found the clue to that in critiquing the momentary experience with the results of long, honest, and assimilated historical experience.

Inasmuch as this is possible the integrity of the historical inquiry begins with the realization that momentary dropping into history— as is the case with our doxographical authors—prevents us from sensing, knowing, or understanding the consciousness of external events. Since there is no way to avoid the fact that past judgments are based on the contemporary us, it seems that the objectivity must start there with our breadth and scope. This means the protection of our own subjective selves into those external objective events we must consider. It means thinking, feeling, fearing, questioning; it means inventive and imaginative interpretation; it means applying human, personal judgments to those feelings that arise from our study. This is one of the major justifications for Mormons writing Mormon history. Obviously not only Mormons will write Mormon history. But no person who is not moved and affected by the movement can and or will arrive at the inner consciousness that we have considered.

When I use the terms "inventive" and "imaginative," I am not suggesting mystical daydreaming or myth-making. I am talking of imaginative minds as historically informed and molded minds which feel and sense beyond that which they can touch. Mormon historians must, by all means, take advantage of every disciplined means of selfcorrection and judgment possible. But having done that, they must not rest on the assumption that they have now been historians. For their job is not one of collecting but appraising within the responsibility and respectability of their training and the value of their method. There is more to being a historian than ascribing information; historians are people in time and as such they give human meaning and divine involvement in time.

Socrates suggested that the methodology of honest people consists of correcting errors and cleaning up confusion through the relentless exposures of generalities. In the final sense, Socrates engaged in the perpetual testing of all general statements by involvement in the particular instance through which he continually regeneralized in a more disciplined fashion. The particular instance was the testing ground for the significance of the unity, not an end in itself.

History, I maintain, is a liberal art; and its contribution is not what it can find out but what it does to those who study it and are involved in it. True, it must be faithful to its own rules of research and of evidence ; and it must be freed from the multitude of pressures which would twist the evidence, or the historians, to prove some position not subject to the quest. But if this is so, then historians paint upon the canvas of life, they do not either make the canvas or sell it. If historians are people of concern, of commitment, of faith, they will contribute that; they do not need to write history according to policy. This commitment to involvement supports what we already know—that in history as in no other discipline the amateur is vital. For it is the interest, the love of the past, the willingness to become half lost in the imagination of previous days that is the historian's first tool and the one which few graduate students learn to use.

Of this kind of history Leonard Arrington writes, "Interpretation history, must by its very nature be private and not a Church venture." I must agree, but my agreement lies in the fact that the church must always be the collector rather than the interpreter of history. Dr. Arrington goes on to say, "The Church itself must not be burdened with the responsibility of weighing the worth of one interpretation against another. Contrariwise, the historian ought to be free to suggest interpretation without placing his faith and loyalty on the line." Again, I agree, but this seems to be only more evidence against any "official history," for institutional histories are written by people—many times by one person.

In history the act of analysis is the act of synthesis. It is like passing through the countryside. The view is both witnessed and synthesized while passing. The knowledge we seek is to be acquired by penetration into the events; by living in the times; by assuming the doubts, the questions, as well as the joys of those who came before us. It is not, therefore, the result of either general laws of history or official philosophies of history.

There may well be some doubt as to my faith. But let me leave you with this comment. I am both sinner and believer. Suspended as I am between the evils I point out and the visions that I see, I did not come to criticize but to give voice to my faith. I am a faithful historian. I have faith in history. I also have theological faith. As well, I have faith in the intellectual process and in the investigative outcome of that process. I believe that history investigated with integrity, fearlessly questioned, honestly systemized, and fairly presented is a far more ethical and rewarding road to our mutual understanding and significant appreciation than are unchallenged and uninvestigated beliefs. I am not so unfeeling that I cannot understand those who fear the consequences of such open investigation. Yet I must assume such fears really are—paradoxically—their lack of faith. It is not difficult to become confused between faith and truth; but if I may, I would like to leave you with a quote from Liddell-Hart that bears some consideration: "Faith matters so much in times of crisis. One must have gone deep into history before reaching the conviction that truth matters more."

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