History Repeats Itself

A. SUBBIAN
Annamalai University, Annamalainagar

“Girded with new strength she (history) has definitely come out from among her old associates, moral philosophy and rhetoric, she has come out into a place of liberty, and has begun to enter into closer relations with the sciences which deal objectively with the facts of the Universe”– J. B. Bury: “The Science of History”, in Selected Essays.

It is generally admitted that the functions of the historian are at least two: the salvage of the past, and its rearrangement in proper perspective. Neither will it be denied that, to produce living history, his pages must be no mere chronicle, no soulless correlation of time and event. He must so deal with the dry bones of the dead generations that they come together, bone to his bone, and the sinews and flesh come again upon them. The past must achieve a palingenesis in his page. In other words, the true historian will so mould facts and dates as to make of them an organic compound, a kind of protoplasm as it were, wherein life is able to reside and manifest itself. Mankind has now occupied this planet for many aeons, and during that vast stretch of time has strewn the dead years with an abundant life. Of much of this life there is no record save that which river, lake or earth yields up to the patience and industry of the antiquary; but so soon as the tale of the inscribed symbol begins, so soon does the task of the historian commence. Of his charity he takes note of mute appeal of those “dead bodies time hath piled up at the Gates of Death.”

But has the historian a third and more utilitarian function? Should his annals, if properly compiled, be capable of being used as a prediction or fore-saying of that which is to come? Or must we merely regard him as “ein ruckwarts gekehrter prophet”, a prophet reversed–a prophet with his face turned wards? The question may also be put in another way. Does history repeat itself, and if so, what is the nature of repetition? To these questions different answers have been given in different ages. From the fatalistic East arose the doctrine of the circle–of “the perpetual return of human affairs to their starting point”–of an absolute repetition which excludes all idea of progress. The task of the historian, if this were true, would be merely to describe one complete cycle and then to write Da Capo, ad infinitum. But, though this idea, as Croce points out, dominated all historians of the Renaissance, it had already been rejected by the medieval historiographers on theological grounds, and long before that, though not rejected, had been restated with commendable caution by Thucydides. The Greek historian merely says that he will be satisfied if his narrative be judged useful by those who desire an exact knowledge of the past as a guide to the interpretation of the future, which, having regard to man’s nature, will be like the past or resemble it closely. This view is not in essentials widely different from that of Coleridge. “Armed with the two-fold knowledge of history and the human mind”, he says, “a man will scarcely err in his judgement concerning the sum-total of any future national event.”

The, idea of the circle is of extraordinary vitality and has hired down all assaults until in our own times, it still survives in the popular conviction that history repeats itself in a more or less absolute fashion, Redressed and remoulded, it had not been without some scientific sanction. Thus Professor Sir Flinders Petrie states that “civilisation is a recurrent phenomenon”, though there are certain differences in the recurrencies. Answering those who object that the conditions of the world are so radically altered that no past phenomena will be repeated again, he replies: “Hardly so.”

We must now, however, retrace our steps a little and take up again our thread at a point somewhat farther than that at which the last paragraph ends. When, in the course of time the gradual growth of the belief that the universe is a cosmos, or orderly arrangement, crystallised out into the conceptions of the “uniformity of nature” and the reign of “law”, many, in their enthusiasm, became the slaves of phrases, and much confused thinking arose through a too literal, though perhaps unconscious, acceptance of the implied metaphors. To some of the historians of the earlier part of the last century nothing seemed plainer than the possibility that, when sufficient knowledge of natural “laws” had been accumulated, we should be able actually to trace an unbroken historical sequence “from the nebula...to the French Revolution.” Buckle hoped to be able “to accomplish for the history of man something equivalent, or at all events analogue to what has been effected by other inquirers for the differ branches of natural science” the “great and final object” of which he characterised as the power of predicting events. It would not appear from his introduction that he regarded the predictability of historical events as belonging to any different order from the predictability of the events with which the chemist and physicist are concerned in their laboratories. And Winwood Reade in his sketch of universal history stated with no less assurance that “when we understand the complex phenomena of life, we shall be able to predict the future.”

Of recent years, however, there has been a breakaway from these facile generalisations, until we find in our own days Mr. H. G. Wells boldly and somewhat crudely asserting that “History never repeats itself”, and obtaining support from scientists of the calibre ofSir Oliver Lodge and Professor A. S. Eddington, while our latest historian of England, Dr. G. M. Trevelyan, mournfully concludes: “Of the future, the historian can see no more than others. He can only point like a showman can see no more than others. He can only point like a showman to the things of the past with their manifold and mysterious message.” Yet there is much hesitation even among the holder agnoethics, and many are in two minds over the matter. The movement of history often perplexes the thoughtful historian, at one moment inspiring in him the hope of being able in some sort to foretell the future, at another plunging him into despair. The role of the prophet is a fascinating one, and it is not in the nature of man’s mentality lightly to abandon it. Even if, with Dean Inge, we agree that “prophecy is only an amusement”, yet it is an amusement of almost universal appeal. Hence it need occasion no surprise when, for example, we find that Mr. Wells began to hedge, and to desire apparently both to have his cake and to eat it. In his Outline of History he tells us: “History is no exception among the sciences: as the gaps fill in, the outline simplifies; as the outlook broadens, the clustering multitudes of details dissolve into general laws.” Even Mr. Trevelyan made on occasion a statement which is tinctured by prophecy, as when he said: “Moderate may well be both to begin wars, for it is always extremists who end them.” It is clear, therefore, that the whole question will bear re-examination. It may be that the modern dictum that “History never repeats itself” is one of these too “blunt” truths which require sharpening a little before we can work with them.

It need scarcely be said that we are not here concerned with historical repetition in the special sense indicated by Croce in his famous passage: “The deed of which the history is told must vibrate in the soul of the historian...the past fact does not answer to a past interest but to a present interest, in so far as it is unified with an interest of the present life...Every true history is contemporary history.” The historian does himself repeat history, i.e., causes it to repeat in him. In that sense no one will deny that history repeats itself not only in the spirit of the historian, but also in that of every intelligent reader of history. But it is not into the nature of this kind of repetition which we have to inquire, but into the possibility of a more concrete and objective repetition of historical events. Neither with it he doubted that the crude idea of the circle must be abandoned, for it is now plain that there is at least one sense in which history does not and cannot repeat itself. Time, so far as we can tell, does not turn upon itself, and its steering, like that of a well-made car, is irreversible. The same event cannot happen twice, and, indeed, it is only by hedging around an event by duration that it can be said to happen even once. All this was perfectly well known to Heraclitus, whose “law”, “change is universal”, prime in importance, and earliest in enunciation was a statement of one of the fundamental laws–perhaps the only fundamental law–of the universe.

If history is to be regarded as a science at all, it can only be regarded as a branch of biology, though a descriptive rather than an experimental branch when viewed from our standpoint. The experiments are beyond our control and are performed in a more spacious laboratory than we have at command. They are the reactions of time and circumstance upon the bodies and minds of the human race, and all we can do is to observe and record them. History, too, is subject to all the puzzling discontinuities that are so familiar to students of other branches of biology, and there are historical “sports” as dramatic as any of those with which students in other branches of the life sciences are so familiar. The predictability of a biological event, that is to say, prediction can rarely be except on general lines and cannot, as a rule, be carried into particulars. The popular dictum could only possibly be true if it were written; History repeats itself with a difference. Like all sciences dealing with living organisms; its record is that of a “creative evolution.” This is profoundly true of history itself, and if we apply the principles here enunciated we shall find that a flood of light is thrown upon the perplexing problem with which we have here to deal.

However, we have already committed ourselves to the statement that history does repeat itself, with a difference, and we must now proceed both to justify that statement and to explain the nature of difference. Even if we agree with Bergson’s main contention it by no means follows that we are compelled to hold the view that it is beyond possibility to predict from the past the general lines upon which a future biological event will run. That is altogether too narrow a view, even though we are fully impressed with the limitations which horn us on every side. An event, of any kind, is merely a particular case of possibility which has undergone the “formality” of happening. If we could know the conditions which have determined the eventuation of a particular case of possibility in the past, we might expect, that, should those conditions, or something like them, once more obtain, an event similar to the past event would again occur. In the biological sciences we must admit that neither are these past conditions perfectly known nor are they likely to be exactly reproduccd, and this is still more true of the massed biological events with which history deals. Yet the life force is not anarchic and, provided we remember our myopia and are content with short forward glances, it is possible to predict certain generalities and even, occasionally, to make a good guess as regards particulars. As to the most promising method to adopt, we cannot do better than to quote the remainder of a passage from Coleridge.

“On every great occasion I endeavoured to discover in past history the event that most nearly resembled it. I procured, whenever it was possible, the contemporary historians, memorialists and pamphleteers. Then fairly subtracting the points of differences from those of likeness as the balance favoured the former or the latter, I conjectured that the result would be the same or different...A man will scarcely err in his judgement…if he had been able to procure the original documents of the past, together with authentic accounts of thepresent, and if he had a philosophic tact for What is trulyimportant in facts.”

History is a plotted chart of the wake of the race, and it at least tells us something as to the way in which the ship of humanity behaves and steers in smooth water, in storms, and among rocks and shoals. It is true that the seas into which it is about to sail are strange and that we cannot, unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately) be sure that the ship itself is not undergoing modification in structure during its passage and in consequence of its passage. Indeed, it is very probable that some internal changes are going on all the while which will affect both its steering and its reaction to the waves of circumstance. Still, we can by examination predict more or less approximately certain things concerning the next day’s run, so to speak. And when that day’s run has, in turn been entered up in the long and correlated with the previous entries, it may be possible again to make a limited forecast with some approach to accuracy, and so on.

But history repeats itself with a difference. The peculiar nature of historical repetition may best be illustrated by the aid of a simple analogy. A snowball is rolled along the ground and, as it travels, picks up fresh accretions of snow which it takes up and welds into its mass, so that every repetition of its revolution is a repetition with an ever-enlarging diameter. Historical repetitions of a similar kind. The onward march of events, in its roll down the centuries, behaves like our snowball and, picking up and incorporating the events in its path, it turns about with an ever-increasing diameter. Inventing the well-known apophthegm, it may appropriately be said of historical repetition that the more it is the same to more it changes.

The careful student of history will be able to find repetitions enough marked by this peculiar character, this enhancement in  amplitude. The new event resembles the old, yet is unlike it the old has been, as it were, incorporated and digested by the new and forms part of the tissue of the new. To change the simile, and approach the matter from another angle, we may picture the new events as a compound historical repetition of which the factors are a number of simple factors into which he can readily resolve it, and express the relation by placing that alternative methods in the scales of an equation balanced upon the kinfe-edge of the sign of equality. Just so with the historian: or, rather, approximately so, for all analogy is inadequate, and in this case, we have already seen, the new event contributes something of its own originality to its elements. One side of the equation is in the present, and may be represented by an event which appears to bear not the remotest likeness to any occurrence which has taken place before. But the other side may sometimes be found in the past under the guise of a number of more elementary events which, when multiplied together, are seen to have repeated themselves in a complex. We often fail to recog­nise this compound historical repetition because the sign of equality has eluded our search.

But we cannot make a practical use of history, even in this tentative fashion, unless the historian in whom we trust combine in himself certain rather rare qualities. For the historian we have in mind must be an expert in mathematical historians: he must be competent to take to pieces a complex present event and to resolve it into its several component factors in the past and, if he is to assist us in the exercise of any prophetic function, he must be able to multiply events together. He must be able, that is to say, both to recognise the twos in a four and to put two and two together. And he must have a keen eye for the detection of the sign of equality–often faint and illegible which connects the things or now with the things of then. Written in this way, history will be justified, not only of her children, but of all her friends and relations.

It is not, then, altogether without reason that the statesman and the politician have thought that the study of history is not mere fascinating and interesting pursuit, but one of actual use to than in the exercise of their callings. As the statesman and the politician have to live largely from hand to mouth, perhaps for them the greatest value of history lies in its power to confer that ability intelligently to evaluate the present. History is a record of massed experience, but even experience would not teach if events were in such an absolute sense atomistic and unique as the crude dictum, “History never repeats itself”, implies. Historical training “makes possible a sense of perspective”, and at least gives “foresight” if not the gift of prophecy. There is solid ground for the view that a knowledge of history is not to be regarded solely as a concern of the students in his cell, nor as a pleasant relaxation to be indulged in when one is tired of fiction. But there is little doubt that history needs to be written from a new standpoint. As it comes more and more to be regarded as a branch of biology (which includes Psychology)–and this, we contend, is the sound way to regard it–so it will be more and more acknowledged that it is only adequately to be written by an individual who is not only a great scholar, but also a great student of the life sciences. Its practical utility to the man of affairs will increase in proportion as this principle is admitted. This is, we admit, to ask a great deal, perhaps an impossibility, of any single person, and we can but lament with Theophrastus that man is an animal so short lived. Still, the attempt is well worth making, and the deficiencies of a work written by one man of genius with a broad knowledge both of history and of its ancillary life sciences are likely to be less than those of a history composed by a syndicate of specialists. For unity of view is all-important. No successful literary work has ever been done by a committee, save in the case of the authorised version of the Bible or the Kamba Ramayanam, and that miracle is not likely to be repeated.

In conclusion, while we have endeavoured to show that the facile modern dictum that “History never repeats itself” is too crude a presentation of the whole truth of the matter, it is far from our intention to stress, to the exclusion of all else, the more practical purposes that a study of history may be made to serve. In this, as in all other branches of learning, knowledge has other uses than mere usefulness.