Virgil left history to Livy and when Tacitus had become possible Lucan was a rather absurd anachronism. In each case the steady growth of specialization has rendered such combination now impossible. There was a more recent time still-the time of Holland’s leadership in arms and arts-when one of the two or three greatest world painters put his genius at the service of anatomists. There was a more recent time, at the opening of Rome’s brief period of literary splendor, when poetry was accepted by a great scientific philosopher as the appropriate vehicle for teaching the lessons of science and philosophy. There was a time-we see it in the marvellous dawn of Hellenic life-when history was distinguished neither from poetry, from mythology, nor from the first dim beginnings of science. There is, however, a real basis for conflict in so far as science claims exclusive possession of the field. Moreover, as regards part of the discussion, the minds of the contestants have not met, the propositions advanced by the two sides being neither mutually incompatible nor mutually relevant. As with most such discussions, much of the matter in dispute has referred merely to terminology. There has been much discussion as to whether history should not henceforth be treated as a branch of science rather than of literature. From the American Historical Review 18, no. Annual address of the president of the American Historical Association, delivered at Boston, December 27, 1912.
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