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1 Anglo-Am. L. Rev. 204 (1972)
The New Zealandess of New Zealand Law

handle is hein.journals/comlwr1 and id is 214 raw text is: ANGLO-AMERICAN LAW REVIEW The New Zealandness of New Zealand Law John L Ryan 1. Introduction* History has been having a bad time of it lately. Edward Albee in his play 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which opened in New York on October 13, 1962, has George the inept historian ask ... . do you believe that people learn nothing from history? Not that there is nothing to learn, mind you, but that people learn nothing? Many today would agree that history is without a function in our present age and to counter this view a number of historians have put pen to paper in a gallant attempt to justify their existence. They haven't been all that successful. For their efforts have been unable to produce a workable definition of their subject. In short the prob- lem remains-what is history? Perhaps Professor Collingwood's answer is the most meaningful, You are thinking historically ... when you say about anything, 'I see what the person who made this (wrote this, used this, designed this, etc.) was thinking'. He suggests that historical knowledge is the re-enactment in the historian's mind of the thought whose history he is studying. What he was aiming at was a method of understanding human affairs. .... from which men could learn to deal with human situations as skilfully as natural science had taught them to deal with situations in the world of Nature? The answer was now clear and certain. The science of human affairs was history.' In its own way legal history is in as much trouble as history generally. There is pressure for the particular while the wider lessons of the subject ** This paper is based on a lecture to welcome students in the faculty of law at the University of Canterbury at the opening of the session. I R. G. Collingwaod Autobiography (1939) 110-115. See also The Idea of History (1945).

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