Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: October 1939 Volume 2 Number 4, Frontspiece

Editorial

Historical Studies give the student an understanding of the ways of man. After one has studied carefully one of the events of the past, by reading what other students and writers have said about it, by reading the letters, deeds, and the other contemporary literature, by visiting the site, and by visual restoration of the scene, he gains an understanding of the event. And he develops a sympathy, a tolerance, and an admiration of the actors on the scene. Those qualities in turn, tend to become factors in his judgments and acts upon the current scene. Sometimes one forms a theory and than starts searching for historical evidence to prove it. Rather, the student, finding his interest aroused in some event of the past, should search all evidence available, and in the light of it, form conclusions. Perhaps the conclusions will not be very definite, and so rather unsatisfactory. But the student will later realize that although he has not reached a complete answer, he has gained an understanding of the period, and from that understanding has grown admiration, tolerance, and sympathy.

We distinguish between a "study" and just reading. A well read man should be a broad man. "Reading maketh the full man." What a man reads is what some other man has written. But in making a study, a man depends upon his own initiative, resourcefulness and activity to arrive at the evidence. Then when he visualizes, and writes about the event as he has reconstructed it, the increased breadth of his vision, and consequent development of his personality, are stronger factors in his conduct. Read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by all means I But also make a thorough and exhaustive study of some phase of local history where you can walk the ground. And, it you can't do both, why, do the second. It will give you, for yourself, an understanding of the ways of man that Gibbon can never do for you.

Copyright 1939 by S. Paul Teamer and Howard S. Okie.