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THE MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW
twentieth-century preconceptions and modifying the others. The more ambiguities and
pitfalls they find in their evidence, the more
gaps in their knowledge of what they
thought were familiar events, the more complexities in the process of causation, the
safer they are from the temptation to treat
the past in Procrustean fashion. They remain
objective, but experience teaches them to be
cautious and tentative in their conclusions.
The thundering ultimates of a Spengler or a
Toynbee are not for them.
Exploring the past is a never-ending activity. The historian in each generation hunts
for new evidence and reinterprets existing
evidence, to provide fresh details and a fresh
perspective. However stimulating the perspective may be at the moment; it will not
remain indefinitely fresh; it is based on incomplete and conflicting data, and is likely
to contain at most a kernel of lasting value.
Few of the questions that the data raise can
be settled once and for all, either because
the evidence is lacking or because the questions are too large in their implications. Any
segment of history, no matter how narrowly
defined in time and space, is set in a context
that is limitless and therefore cannot be entirely known. Although each researcher
hopes to know a little more of it, to throw a
little more light on the mystery of why a
particular set of men acted as they did, he
realizes that the mystery will remain, and
that for all his efforts he will find only a
partial approximation of truth.
Yet he cannot let the mystery alone, and
involvement with it brings its own reward.
His research may be narrow in scope, transient in value, riddled with unanswerable
questions; it is still inherently exciting. It has
no scale: any problem offers as sure an approach as any other to the underlying historical process, and demands the researcher's
full powers of analysis and empathy. In his
analytic function he is the rationalist, perhaps even the scientist. In his empathic
function he is the artist, and it is research as
art that redeems the drudgery of data-gathering.
This form of art is as exigent as any other.
It requires its practitioner to enter into the
past, to meet people who are very much
alive yet different from him in ways that he
can imperfectly apprehend, to view them objectively for what they were, and then to
portray them in all their vitality. This is so
large an assignment that his reach, he
knows, will exceed his grasp; and why
should it not? Just as the subject matter of
research fascinates him because he will
never be able to do it full justice, so does the
art of research. The requirements of that art
are too stringent for his comfort: they deny
him the illusion that he has nothing more to
learn, and keep him always reaching for
what he cannot quite grasp. His own particular creativity is therefore at full stretch, and
that is perhaps as near to pure joy as an academic can come.
HIBERNATION
The ears of the conies
Are stiff with sleep
In their hayloft
Under the rocks;
But time itself
Will wake them up,
With thunder
At the equinox.
-ERNEST KROLL
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