Excerpts from Bertrand Russel's 'Portraits from Memory' on History

Hi Blog,
As I told you earlier, there is so much to learn in this book. On the subject of history, Russel has written a chapter named "History as an Art" but has maintained in the chapter that history is both, science and an art. He talks about importance of reading history to get a picture of whole humanity, to think as Man and not man. This will free us from our emotional prejudices. Then he talks about the decrease in number of readers and writers in the domain of history. Towards the end of chapter, he just can't hold it anymore, Russel talks about the condition of humanity in modern world which makes an interesting read. Here is an excerpt:
"I think that in bringing sanity to our intoxicated age, his-

tory has an important part to play. I do not mean that this is

to be brought about by any supposed "lessons of history,"

or indeed by anything easily put into a verbal formula. What

history can and should do, not only for historians but for all

whose education has given them any breadth of outlook, is to

produce a certain temper of mind, a certain way of thinking

and feeling about contemporary events and their relation to the

past and the future. I do not know whether one should accept

 Cornford's thesis that Thucydides modeled his history on

Attic tragedy; but, if he did, the events that he recorded fully

justified his doing so, and the Athenians, if they had seen

themselves in the light of actors in a possible tragedy, might

have had the wisdom to avert the tragic outcome. It is an

ancient doctrine that tragedy comes of hubris, but it is none

the less true for being ancient, and hubris recurs in every age

among those who have forgotten the disasters to which it has

always led. In our age, mankind collectively has given itself

over to a degree of hubris surpassing everything known in

former ages. In the past, Prometheus was regarded as a

would-be liberator, restrained in his beneficent work by the

tyranny of Zeus, but now we begin to wish that there were

some Zeus to restrain the modern followers of Prometheus.

Prometheus aimed to serve mankind: his modern followers

serve the passions of mankind, but only in so far as they are

mad and destructive. In the modern world there are clever

men in laboratories and fools in power. The clever men are

slaves, like Djinns in the Arabian Nights. Mankind collec-

tively, under the guidance of the fools and by the ingenuity of

the clever slaves, is engaged in the great task of preparing its

own extermination. I wish there were a Thucydides to treat

this theme as it deserves. I cannot but think that if the men

in power were impregnated with a sense of history they would

find a way of avoiding the catastrophe which all see approach-

ing and which none desire, for history is not only an account

of this nation or that, nor even of this continent or that; its

theme is Man, that strange product of evolution which has

risen by means of skill to a mastery over all other forms of

life, and even, at great peril to himself, to mastery over the

forces of inanimate nature. But Man, in spite of his cleverness,

has not learned to think of the human family as one. Al-

though he has abolished the jungle, he still allows himself to

be governed by the law of the jungle. He has little sense of

the common tasks of humanity, of its achievements in the

past and its possible greater achievements in the future. He

sees his fellow man not as a collaborator in a common pur-

pose, but as an enemy who will kill if he is not killed. What-

ever his sect or party may be, he believes that it embodies

ultimate and eternal wisdom, and that the opposite party

embodies ultimate and absolute folly. To any person with

any historical culture such a view is absurd. No portion of

mankind in the past was as good as it thought itself, or as bad

as it was thought by its enemies; but, in the past, humanity

could achieve its common purposes in spite of strife, though

haltingly and with temporarily disastrous setbacks. But in our

age the new cleverness is only compatible with survival if

accompanied by a new wisdom. The wisdom that is needed

is new only in one sense: that it must appeal to masses of

men, and above all, to those who control great power. It is

not new in the sense that it has never been proclaimed before.

It has been proclaimed by wise men for many ages, but their

wisdom has not been heeded. Now, the time is past when

wisdom could be treated as nothing but the idle dream of

visionaries. Sometimes in the moments when I am most op-

pressed by the fear of coming disaster, I am tempted to think

that what the world needs is a Prophet who will proclaim,

with a voice combining thunder with the deepest compas-

sion, that the road upon which mankind is going is the wrong

r0 ad a road leading to the death of our children and to the

extinction of all hope but that there is another road which

men can pursue if they will, and that this other road leads to

a better world than any that has existed in the past. But, al-

though this vision of a prophet can afford a momentary

consolation, what the world needs is something more difficult,

more rare. If a prophet were to arise in the East, he would be

 liquidated; if a prophet were to arise in the West, he would

not be heard in the East and in the West would be con-

demned to obloquy. It is not by the action of any one in-

dividual, however great and however eloquent, that the world

can be saved. It can be saved only when rulers and their

followers in the most powerful countries of the world be-

come aware that they have been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp

which is tempting them only toward ignominious death in a

mire of futile hatred. The collective folly is not yet universal.

Some nations stand wholly outside it, some are only partially

victims to it. It is not too late to hope that mankind may have

a future as well as a past. I believe that if men are to feel

this hope with sufficient vividness to give it dynamic power,

the awareness of history is one of the greatest forces of which

the beneficent appeal must be felt."