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deliberate and coherent than the imagination itself can ever be,
and that, as in the long essay on "The Ancient Mariner" with which
his book ends, it makes him seem far more interested in making out
a case for the would-be Christian in Coleridge than for what in the
poem is-if not "pure"-abidingly mysterious. The opposite of Warren's
"sacramental" vision is not, as he suggests in the essay on Conrad, the
"sceptical" vision; it is the imagination working with what cannot be
entirely
construed as ideas and meanings; it is the imagination delighting
in its own power.
Alfred Kazin
THE HI STOR ICAL IMAGINATION
THE PRAGMATIC REVOLT IN AMERICAN HISTORY: CARL BECKER
AND CHARLES BEARD. By Cushing Strout. Yole University Press. $3.50.
When history became a professional academic discipline in
the United States, it was shaped by two major influences. The first was
the great example of the science of the nineteenth century, particularly
of Darwinism, which made historians feel that if history was to have
any sure value and continue to win prestige it must develop methods
and produce results similar to those of natural science. The second
was the example of German academic history and German methods,
which in their own way confirmed the demand for exactness and finality
inculcated by the ideal of scientific history. Hardly any important his–
torian was immune from the influence of this ideal, whose exponents
asserted that the historian could be, and even demanded that he should
be; in some sense "objective," and that his work should have the kind
of detachment and conclusiveness that was believed to be present in
all scientific work. In 1901 Edward Cheyney suggested in his presiden–
tial address to the American Historical Association that if we knew
the laws of history, "we might reason and act with the same intelli–
gence and precision and anticipation of success with which the engineer
acts in conformity with the known laws of physics."
Around the turn of the century a revolt began against the simple
dogmatism of
"wie es eigentlich gewesen."
This "pragmatic revolt," as
Mr. Strout calls it, was started by Frederick Jackson Turner and the
advocates of James Harvey Robinson's "New History," but was carried
to its consummation chiefly by Carl Becker and Charles A. Beard. Mr.
