A most common fallacy in the study of history is the blind acceptance of that which has happened as inevitable in the course of events. This is a form of collective fatalism. It reduces history to a study of the dead past with no message for today. This view is the very opposite of democracy. Democracy assumes that the group has control over its actions and that they are not the result of a blind fatalism. To look upon past events as inevitable makes man the victim of forces over which he can have no control. It makes man a slave. This fatalism is incompatible with democracy. The democrat must study history not to discover the forces of fate but to discover more perfect rules of human conduct. Primarily, the study of the past should be to throw light on the present and future, so that we might profit by the wisdom and the mistakes of the past. But to do this we can not accept collective fatalism as our attitude toward history. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the study of history was a study of the Greeks and the Romans. It was a study of the ancients only. Early in the nineteenth century, with the rise of nationalism especially intensified by the French Revolution, all nations began introducing the study of their national history in their elementary schools. The object of this was to teach patriotism. Examine their meaning of patriotism and you find it meant the support of the king on the throne. All texts and instruction exalted the nation to show its superiority to others. Patriotism meant national propaganda. With the rise of democracy patriotism began to shift to mean the support of the group,--pro-group rather than pro-king. This was the cause and the result of the national mind set. Patriotism became international hatred, measured in terms of military service. This attitude toward history caused the teaching and writing of history to be largely national propaganda, by interpreting all the wars of a nation as defensive with the opponent always the offensive nation.