Abstract

A New Historical Division

All beginnings are make-believe and all historical divisions are arbitrary. The Renaissance author, to show the perfection of his own time, wrote in a patronizing and pitying fashion about the many centuries which had intervened between the enlightened day of Lorenzo the Magnificent and the glorious days of those Greeks and Romans whose artistic and literary inheritance had just been rediscovered. In many countries this Modern History has been succeeded by a "Recent History." At this rate the historian of the year 4000 will have to describe a "Recentest, Latest, and Most Modern History." The historian of the year 5000 will have to invent a new word. There seems no reason why one should continue to teach an historical division which has not even the virtue of an explanatory clearness.