Books in Brief: The Origins of History

The Origins of History, by Herbert Butterfield (Basic Books, 230 pp., $20.95). In this, his last work, Sir Herbert Butterfield takes up the beginning of a story whose end he had covered in Man on His Past, the evolution of the idea of history. He begins in Egypt and Assyria, where men first commemorated military accomplishments, made lists of assorted events, and, finally, looked for the hand of God therein. Next, he looks at the Hebrews, who originated what we may today call history, the practice of recording and studying events with an eye to their sense, history providing for them the very terms of their Covenant with a jealous God. The Greeks, though by nature ahistorical, first examined events scientifically. And the Christians applied the Greek legacy of reason to the Jewish one of the Promise, to develop the idea of God’s Divine Plan. It was at last the “lapsed Christians” of the eighteenth century who “took God out of the picture,” while leaving intact the idea of process that is so widely accepted today. Butterfield’s death in 1979 deprived him of the opportunity to include Islam in this survey as he had intended (though two rather anomalous sections on Chinese history do appear), and what is published here are really only his notes, compiled by his friend Adam Watson. Consequently, the work suffers from convoluted writing and a general deficiency of form. Still, what emerges is at times inspired. Butterfield’s bequest tousisa useful survey of an immense subject. michael moynihan