Whether you can earn money from historical knowledge or win the favor of any leader is not the value of historiography itself. Even if someone can use history to get a lot of other things, this is still the case. History is just an academic. It is profound and rigorous in science and as beautiful as art. Among the nine muses in ancient Greek mythology, Cleo is the first, and she is the goddess of history. The artistic charm of historiography is indeed eternal in human society. This charm is not passive water, nor is it a tree without roots. Fundamentally speaking, understanding history is an inherent aspect of human spiritual life.
German philosopher Vendel Ban said, "Man is an animal with history"; British historian Karel once said, "Some primitive tribes can't even count five in arithmetic, but they also have their own history." Even in primitive tribes, there are often people who specialize in telling history, although the content is full of myths and legends. The origin of historiography is almost as old as human society. Legend has it that there were historians in China in the era of the Yellow Emperor, including Cang Xie, who invented writing. There are probably two kinds of early historians that can be determined. One is ignorance of reciting historical facts and genealogy, and they are probably older. The other is a historian who takes notes from documents.
According to Cicero, an ancient Roman political scientist, "If a person knows nothing about history before birth, he has not grown up." Animals don't need to know their own history, which is meaningless to their lives. However, human beings have spiritual life and the need for self-knowledge, and human nature is shaped by history and tradition. One of the important ways for human beings to know themselves is to resort to history. Collingwood said: "Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as humanity. This term refers not to humanity, but to human history. " Karl jaspers's passage also said very well: "For our self-knowledge, no reality is more important than history", which shows the broadest realm of human beings, provides the tradition on which life is based, points out what standards we should use to measure the world, removes the unconscious bondage imposed by "contemporary" and "teaches us to look at people from their highest potential and immortal creativity"
The profound civilization separated by thousands of years is only "contemporary" without "history", and our world is just a thin and poor plane. But humans are not like this. A person's life is 10 million years deep. People should understand all kinds of life styles and cultural forms throughout the ages, and understand the different understandings of truth, goodness, beauty, falsehood, ugliness and ugliness in different times and nationalities. Human beings have accumulated these knowledge and views from generation to generation, and it is their summation that shapes human characteristics and human image, enabling us to break through the "contemporary bondage" and know what we are doing and what we should do.
China people, in particular, have a strong sense of history. History is like an endless river, connecting the past and the future. Only when an individual's life flows into this long river can he achieve eternity. "Being famous in history" is almost the greatest success in life. The sages would rather sacrifice their lives for justice in order to "keep their hearts and follow their history." People are used to finding themselves in history: monarchs imitate Yao and Shun, ministers compare themselves with Zhuge, and military commanders track Yue Fei. The voluminous historical records contain the cultural temperament of the Chinese nation and condense their unique views on the universe, society and life.
History is such an academic discipline, which has its place in human life. Some people will devote themselves to it as their own career, while others will pay attention to their own thinking and exploration. Academic career is not more noble than other professions, but it is not lower; History is not better than other subjects, but it is not low. Of course, learning history needs a little stupidity, because you have to pay the "opportunity cost" and sacrifice another temptation, so most excellent historians come from indifferent and persistent people. But why are they clinging to this? Pursuing the long and distant course of civilization, gaining insight into the inner mystery of the evolution of the crowd, feeling thousands of years of suffering and singing, examining thousands of years of ups and downs and glory, even discovering the existence of an ancient country from an Oracle bone, and clarifying the process of a war from an inscription ..... Are these enough to attract them and make them stick to it?
And what attitude should we take to start studying history? I suggest that history study should not be regarded as employment training, and the history department of Peking University should not be like this. History provides a unique training. We start with some seemingly boring and difficult things, gradually understand an academic realm, master a skill of seeking truth, accumulate a wisdom that runs through the present and the present, and cultivate a concern for human destiny. The cultivation of reason and conscience is beneficial to people for life, and it is also the reason why our campus has become a "spiritual home".