Chapter 4: Man as Historical Being

No subject could be more basic for the historian in the practice of his art than that of this essay—man as historical being. In one respect the question, though basic, is simple. If we assume that man is a historical being, is it because historians make him so? Or are historians merely engaged in probing and assessing the nature of this historical being of man? Perhaps, as we shall see, both are true to some extent. But some other questions involved are not so simple.

A clearer example of man as historical being than that provided by the prolonged civil strife in North Ireland during recent years would be hard to find. Both the IRA and the beleaguered Protestant Scotch-Irish express centuries of history in their action. They also manifest the dynamism or power derived from that history. Consciously or unconsciously their very being seems at times living history.