and interests, the actions and creations of men, events which have affected the lives and destinies of men, or which have been produced by men. This is the ordinary sense of the word history. … To attempt further to define it would be worse than useless. It would be unduly to limit, and to distort and pervert, its meaning. In proof of this a few brief remarks on certain typical or celebrated definitions of history may perhaps be of service. The definition given in the Dictionary of the French Academy—'l'histoire est le récit des choses dignes de mémoire' [Transcriber: "the story of things worth remembering"]—is a specimen of a very numerous species. According to such definitions history consists of exceptional things, of celebrated or notorious events, of the lives and actions of great and exalted men, of conspicuous achievements in war and politics, in science and art, in religion and literature. But this is a narrow and superficial conception of history. History is made up of what is little as well as of what is great, of what is common as well as of what is strange, of what is counted mean as well as of what is counted noble. … Dr. Arnold's definition—'history is the biography of a society'—has been often praised. Nor altogether undeservedly. For it directs attention to the fact that all history accords with biography in supposing in its subject a certain unity of life, work, and end. … It does not follow, however, that biography is a more general notion than history, and history only a species of biography. In fact, it is not only as true and intelligible to say that biography is the history of an individual as to say that history is the biography of a society, but more so. It is the word biography in the latter case which is used in a secondary and analogical sense, not the word history in the former case. … According to Mr. Freeman, 'history is past politics and politics are present history.' This is not a mode of definition which any logician will be found to sanction. It is equivalent to saying that politics and history are the same, and may both be divided into past and present; but it does not tell us what either is. To affirm that this was that and that is this is not a definition of this or that, but only an assertion that something may be called either this or that. Besides, the identification of history with politics proceeds, as has been already indicated, on a view of history which is at once narrow and arbitrary. Further, it is just as true that mathematical history is past mathematics and mathematics are present history, as that political history is past politics and politics are present history. … The whole of man's past was once present thought, feeling, and action. There is nothing peculiar to politics in this respect."