Book Returns
History Rebuffed
Herbert J. Muller’s The Uses of the Past
by Thomas C. Reeves
In the late 1950s, while Americans for Democratic Action and the American Civil Liberties Union were struggling against the legacy of McCarthyism, and Adlai Stevenson was still at work, after two failed attempts, to extend the New Deal and bring the White House under the control of the articulate and learned, Professor Herbert J. Muller was providing those in the moderate, anti-Communist left with one of the most powerful and persuasive interpretations of history ever written in this country.
A longtime professor of English at Indiana University, in 1957 he published a book that would become the foundation for a series of Muller volumes proclaiming the same theme. The Uses of the Past: Profiles of Former Societies, published by Oxford University Press, was a moving and penetrating statement of the Enlightenment credo, an examination of largely Western history that reflected not only the teachings of the likes of Voltaire and Jefferson but also much of post-war liberalism in the United States.
Progress & Pride
Muller was a secularist and an intellectual who believed that human progress and happiness depended upon reason, learning, individualism, and democracy. What he called “reasonableness” was the key to virtue and wisdom. Principal enemies were the tyrannical church and state, which “claimed absolute authority without enlisting the free consent of their subjects or permitting free criticism of the principles of their authority.”
Unlike Arnold Toynbee, who had claimed that pride was the root evil in human history, Muller declared that pride “may be considered the mainspring of civilization.” When free of superstition and tyranny, the human race could boast of reaching unprecedented heights of knowledge and creativity. “Only with the rise of science did men begin to entertain seriously the possibility of progress.”
Muller’s message was made more persuasive by his admission, from the beginning, that he did not have all the answers. “All in all, we doubtless suffer from too much doubt. But we are likely to suffer much more because too many men are too sure of themselves.” He conceded that much of history involves irony, paradox, mystery, and complexity.
Still, while we lack absolute truth about the human race and the universe, we can make enough sense of the story of history to know what kind of life leads to progress and happiness. Rigorous and honest thought is better than faith; Athens (the “freest, most democratic of the city-states,” which “had no blue laws, no priesthood, no Committee for un-Greek Activities”) is better than Sparta; doubt is better than dogma.
An admission of the principle of relativity and uncertainty “encourages a positive faith in positive values.” These were the values “of liberality, breadth of spirit, hospitality to new ideas, willingness to adventure, humility in admitting one’s own fallibility and the limitations of the human mind—of the tolerance that is indispensable for the pursuit of truth, for social harmony, and for simple humanity.” If they were not the highest of values, they were the values most “essential to the hopes of world order and peace.”
Deadliest Enemy
To Muller, “history itself is the deadliest enemy of the Eternal and Absolute.” He is especially critical of Judeo-Christian teaching.
Thomas C. Reeves is a retired history professor who lives with his wife Kathleen in the Wisconsin countryside. Among his numerous books are biographies of John F. Kennedy and Fulton J. Sheen. His latest book is Distinguished Service: The Life and Times of Wisconsin Governor Walter J. Kohler, Jr. (Marquette University Press).
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Subscribe (Print + Online) 
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Subscribe (Online Only) 
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
14.1—January/February 2001
The Christian Heart of Fatherhood
The Place of Marriage, Authority & Service in the Recovery of Fatherhood by John M. Haas
28.5—Sept/Oct 2015
Remembering Angka & the Idolatry of the Khmer Rouge 40 Years Later by Les Sillars
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
Support Touchstone
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
