Suppose that you are asked to criticize one of Cooper's novels, say _The Last of the Mohicans_. You find in it red men idealized out of the actual, red men such as presumably never existed. You may, then, in disgust throw the book down and damn it with the remark, "The man does not tell the truth!" But you will not thereby have disposed of Cooper. Much better it would be to ask, How came this man to write thus? When did he write? For whom? How did men at that time regard the Indian? In answering these questions you will relate Cooper's novel to the time in which it was written, you will see that before that time the Indian was regarded with unmixed fear, as too often since with contempt, and that at only that time could he have been idealized as Cooper treats him. You would relate the novel to the whole movement of Sentimentalism, which thought that it believed the savage more noble than civilized man, and you would then, and only then, get a proper perspective. Your original judgment, that Cooper's Indians are not accurate portraits of their kind, would not be modified; for the whole work, however, you would have a new attitude.
In the same way, asked for an opinion of the old-style bicycle with enormous front wheel and tiny trailer, you would not summarily reply, "I prefer a chainless model of my own day," but would discover the place that the old style occupied in the total development of the bicycle, would look at it as related to the preceding absence of any bicycle, and would see that, though it may to-day be useless, in its time it was remarkable. Likewise you will discover that the old three-legged milking stool has been in immemorial use in rude byres and stables, since three points--the ends of the legs--always make a firm plane, which four points do not necessarily do. And one hundred years hence, when a critic comes to judge the nature faking of the early twentieth century, he will relate this sentimental movement to the times in which it appeared, and, though he may well finally be disgusted, he will understand what the thing was and meant, how it came about, what causes produced it.
Illustration of the value of this method is found in the following historical account of the American business man. To a European this man sometimes is inexplicable--until he reads some illuminating setting forth of the facts as here.