Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Vol.ume II. Number 7. THE MAN IN HISTORY AN ORATION FOR THE COLUMBIAN YEAR JOHN CLARK RIDPATH Delivered under the Auspices of the Indiana Historical Society, at Indianapolis, Indiana, October 20, 1892. INDIANAPOLIS: THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY. HONORABLE WILLIAM H. ENGLISH, President Of The Indiana Historical Society. chapter{Section 4THE MAN IN HISTORY. Ladies and Gentlemen: Man and History ! What are the ideas which these two transcendent words bring before the mind of the inquirer? In what manner—by what evolution of thought and imagery—may we justly est1mate the great facts for which they stand, and determine their relations and dependencies in the drama of the world? I am not unaware that for the problems here vaguely suggested some of the greatest m1nds of the ages- have essayed an answer. The thinkers of the Old World and the New, in ancient times and in modern times, have sought with varying degrees of approximation to reach a just concept of the thing called History and of the place which Man has in it. In the luminous thought of the great Greeks the problem of the event and the man—of the maker and the thing made—hung like a haunting shadow. Already by that most intellectual of all the peoples of the earth history was studied both in its facts and its philosophy ; but the bottom questions of the inquiry remained nebulous and unresolved. Then came ages of eclipse and darkness. There were vast reaches of intervening barbarism, flecked with dim patches of light at Alexandria, at Cordova, at Florence, at Rome, and anon at Paris and the Bridge of the Cam. In modern times the mind of man has recurred as best it may to this grandest of all the departments of human inquiry, and has wrestled with thechaos which the warring races of mankind ha... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.