

Fake memoirs, factual fictions, and the history of history (2008) - benbreen
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/03/24/just-the-facts-maam

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dang
From Lord Chesterfield's letter encouraging his son to study history, a
classic little essay on historical relativism, which he calls Pyrrhonism:

 _Nay, I cannot help carrying my Pyrrhonism still further, and extending it
often to historical facts themselves, at least to most of the circumstances
with which they are related; and every day 's experience confirms me in this
historical incredulity. Do we ever hear the most recent fact related exactly
in the same way, by the several people who were at the same time eyewitnesses
of it? No. One mistakes, another misrepresents, and others warp it a little to
their own, turn of mind, or private views. A man who has been concerned in a
transaction will not write it fairly; and a man who has not, cannot.

But notwithstanding all this uncertainty, history is not the less necessary to
be known, as the best histories are taken for granted, and are the frequent
subjects both of conversation and writing. Though I am convinced that Caesar's
ghost never appeared to Brutus, yet I should be much ashamed to be ignorant of
that fact, as related by the historians of those times. Thus the Pagan
theology is universally received as matter for writing and conversation,
though believed now by nobody; and we talk of Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, etc., as
gods, though we know, that if they ever existed at all, it was only as mere
mortal men. This historical Pyrrhonism, then, proves nothing against the study
and knowledge of history; which, of all other studies, is the most necessary
for a man who is to live in the world. It only points out to us, not to be too
decisive and peremptory; and to be cautious how we draw inferences for our own
practice from remote facts, partially or ignorantly related; of which we can,
at best, but imperfectly guess, and certainly not know the real motives._

[http://books.google.com/books?id=0_4kAAAAMAAJ&dq=do%20we%20e...](http://books.google.com/books?id=0_4kAAAAMAAJ&dq=do%20we%20ever%20hear%20the%20most%20recent%20facts%20related%20exactly%20in%20the%20same%20way&pg=PA274#v=onepage&q&f=false)

or
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3361/3361-h/3361-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3361/3361-h/3361-h.htm),
but you'll have to ctrl+f for the text.

