Page 1658 - les-miserables

Have these historians of hearts and souls duties at all infe-
rior to the historians of external facts? Does any one think
that Alighieri has any fewer things to say than Machiavelli?
Is the under side of civilization any less important than the
upper side merely because it is deeper and more sombre?
Do we really know the mountain well when we are not ac-
quainted with the cavern?
Let us say, moreover, parenthetically, that from a few
words of what precedes a marked separation might be in-
ferred between the two classes of historians which does not
exist in our mind. No one is a good historian of the patent,
visible, striking, and public life of peoples, if he is not, at the
same time, in a certain measure, the historian of their deep
and hidden life; and no one is a good historian of the inte-
rior unless he understands how, at need, to be the historian
of the exterior also. The history of manners and ideas per-
meates the history of events, and this is true reciprocally.
They constitute two different orders of facts which corre-
spond to each other, which are always interlaced, and which
often bring forth results. All the lineaments which provi-
dence traces on the surface of a nation have their parallels,
sombre but distinct, in their depths, and all convulsions of
the depths produce ebullitions on the surface. True history
being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in
everything.
Man is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse
with a double focus. Facts form one of these, and ideas the
other.
Slang is nothing but a dressing-room where the tongue

1658 Les Miserables