442
RICHARD SCHLATTER
role; from the economist and the political scientist and the demographer
he learns the uses of statistics and the calculus of probability ; anthro–
pology, biology, psychology, and the humanities provide fresh matter
and new ideas. One of the essays in the volume illustrates how his–
torians have been freed in recent years to reflect upon the discoveries
of anthropologists. Historians have always known, for example, that
medieval suits of armor prove that medieval man was smaller than
modern man; the anthropologist shows us how to make this knowledge
meaningful. Historians know an enormous amount about the languages
and dialects of the peoples of the past; anthropologists and anthropologi–
cal linguists have shown how much we may safely deduce from this
knowledge. And, as we know, historians discovered the industrial revo–
lution; but anthropologists, studying the impact of modem technology
0n primitive societies, teach us what that revolution did to the psyche
of western man.
A chapter on "History and Psychoanalysis," not only explores what
the historian has borrowed from the analyst-Eric Erikson's
Young Man
Luther
is, of course, a prime model-but goes on to draw a fascinating
parallel between analysis and historical interpretation. In a way, says
Hughes, "psychoanalysis
is
history." Analyst and historian alike seek
an interpretation of the facts which, although not empirically verifiable,
is not disprovable, is probable, and is convincing because it makes the
facts meaningful. Both seek to uncover human motives, rational and ir–
rational, and in both cases the discovery is liberating: personal therapy
for the patient and historical freedom for men, since man is condemned
to repeat his history when he does not understand it. Both analyst and
historian collect and study the facts as scientists; but for both the end
is an imaginative arrangement of the facts in a narrative- case history
or history.
Finally, in the pages of this little book we have an explanation of
one of the most striking intellectual phenomena of our time-the emer–
gence of the historian as a modem Nestor. Historians are officials coun–
selors of Presidents and Prime Ministers; history is the favorite major
for those college students whose intellectual and professional aims arc
as yet unfixed, but who want a broad liberal education. The philosopher
of our era has vacated the chair of speculative thought and no longer
talks about the big questions which interest all thinking men. The literary
critic has a hard job filling the role of universal pundit since so much of
the best literature of our time is esoteric: he inevitably talks mostly
about books and poems which the educated public has not read. The
historian, however, as the scholar whose method is rigorous and in-
