The negative argument is thus limited to a few clearly defined cases. (1) The author of the document in which the fact is not mentioned had the intention of systematically recording all the facts of the same class, and must have been acquainted with all of them. (Tacitus sought to enumerate the peoples of Germany; the Notitia dignitatum mentioned all the provinces of the Empire; the absence from these lists of a people or a province proves that it did not then exist.) (2) The fact, if it was such, must have affected the author's imagination so forcibly as necessarily to enter into his conceptions. (If there had been regular assemblies of the Frankish people, Gregory of Tours could not have conceived and described the life of the Frankish kings without mentioning them.)

III. The positive mode of reasoning begins with a fact established by the documents, and infers some other fact which the documents do not mention. It is an application of the fundamental principle of history, the analogy between present and past humanity. In the present we observe that the facts of humanity are connected together. Given one fact, another fact accompanies it, either because the first is the cause of the second, or because the second is the cause of the first, or because both are effects of a common cause. We assume that in the past similar facts were connected in a similar manner, and this assumption is corroborated by the direct study of the past in the documents. From a given fact, therefore, which we find in the past, we may infer the existence of the other facts which were connected with it.

This reasoning applies to facts of all kinds, usages, transformations, individual incidents. We may begin with any known fact and endeavour to infer unknown facts from it. Now the facts of humanity, having a common centre, man, are all connected together, not merely facts of the same class, but facts belonging to the most widely different classes. There are connections, not merely between the different facts relating to art, to religion, to manners, to politics, but between the facts of religion on the one hand and the facts of art, of politics, and of manners on the other; thus from a fact of one species we may infer facts of all the other species.

To examine those connections between facts on which reasonings may be founded would mean tabulating all the known relations between the facts of humanity, that is, giving a full account of all the empirical laws of social life. Such a labour would provide matter for a whole book.[201] Here we shall content ourselves with indicating the general rules governing this kind of reasoning, and the precautions to be taken against the most common errors.

The argument rests on two propositions: one is general, and is derived from experience of human affairs; the other is particular, and is derived from the documents. In practice, we begin with the particular proposition, the historical fact: Salamis bears a Phoenician name. We then look for a general proposition: the language of the name of a city is the language of the people which founded it. And we conclude: Salamis, bearing a Phoenician name, was founded by the Phoenicians.

In order that the conclusion may be certain, two conditions are necessary.

(1) The general proposition must be accurately true; the two facts which it declares to be connected must be connected in such a way that the one is never found without the other. If this condition were completely satisfied we should have a law, in the scientific sense of the word; but in dealing with the facts of humanity—apart from those physical conditions whose laws are established by the regular sciences—we can only work with empirical laws obtained by rough determinations of general facts which are not analysed in such a manner as to educe their true causes. These empirical laws are approximately true only when they relate to a numerous body of facts, for we can never quite know how far each is necessary to produce the result. The proposition relating to the language of the name of a city does not go enough into detail to be always true. Petersburg is a German name, Syracuse in America bears a Greek name. Other conditions must be fulfilled before we can be sure that the name is connected with the nationality of the founders. We should, therefore, only employ such propositions as go into detail.

(2) In order to employ a general proposition which goes into detail, we must have a detailed knowledge of the particular fact; for it is not till after this fact has been established that we look for an empirical general law on which to found an argument. We shall begin, then, by studying the particular conditions of the case (the situation of Salamis, the habits of the Greeks and Phoenicians); we shall not work on a single detail, but on an assemblage of details.

Thus, in historical reasoning it is necessary to have (1) an accurate general proposition; (2) a detailed knowledge of a past fact. It is bad workmanship to assume a false general proposition—to suppose, for example, as Augustin Thierry did, that every aristocracy had its origin in a conquest. It is bad workmanship, again, to found an argument on an isolated detail (the name of a city). The nature of these errors indicates the precautions to be taken.

(1) The spontaneous tendency is to take as a basis of reasoning those "common-sense truths" which form nearly the whole of our knowledge of social life. Now, the greater part of these are to some extent false, for the science of social life is still imperfect. And the chief danger in them lies in the circumstance that we use them unconsciously. The safest precaution will be always to formulate the supposed law on which we propose to base an argument. In every instance where such and such a fact occurs, it is certain that such and such another fact occurs also. If this proposition is obviously false, we shall at once see it to be so; if it is too general, we shall inquire what new conditions may be introduced to make it accurate.

(2) A second spontaneous impulse leads us to draw consequences from isolated facts, even of the slightest kind (or rather, the idea of each fact awakens in us, by association, the idea of other facts). This is the natural procedure in the history of literature. Each circumstance in the life of an author supplies material for reasoning; we construct by conjecture all the influences which could have acted upon him, and we assume that they did act upon him. All the branches of history which study a single species of facts, isolated from every other species (language, arts, private law, religion), are exposed to the same danger, because they deal with fragments of human life, not with comprehensive collections of phenomena. But few conclusions are firmly established except those which rest on a comprehensive body of data. We do not make a diagnosis from a single symptom, but from a number of concurrent symptoms. The precaution to be taken will be to avoid working with an isolated detail or an abstract fact. We must have before our minds actual men, as affected by the principal conditions under which they lived.

We must be prepared to realise but rarely the conditions of a certain inference; we are too little acquainted with the laws of social life, and too seldom know the precise details of an historical fact. Thus most of our reasonings will only afford presumptions, not certainties. But it is with reasonings as with documents.[202] When several presumptions all point in the same direction they confirm each other, and end by producing a legitimate certitude. History fills up some of its gaps by an accumulation of reasonings. Doubts remain as to the Phoenician origin of various Greek cities, but there is no doubt about the presence of the Phoenicians in Greece.



CHAPTER IV

THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENERAL FORMULAE

I. Suppose we had methodically arranged all the historical facts established by the analysis of documents, or by reasoning; we should possess a systematised inventory of the whole of history, and the work of construction would be complete. Ought history to stop at this point? The question is warmly debated, and we cannot avoid giving an answer, for it is a question with a practical bearing.

Critical scholars, who are accustomed to collect all the facts relating to their speciality, without any personal preference, are inclined to regard a complete, accurate, and objective collection of facts as the prime requisite. All historical facts have an equal right to a place in history; to retain some as being of greater importance, and reject the rest as comparatively unimportant, would be to introduce the subjective element of choice, variable according to individual fancy; history cannot sacrifice a single fact.

Against this very reasonable view there is nothing to be urged except a material difficulty; this, however, is enough, for it is the practical motive of all the sciences: we mean the impossibility of acquiring or communicating complete knowledge. A body of history in which no fact was sacrificed would have to contain all the actions, all the thoughts, all the adventures of all men at all times. It would form a total which no one could possibly make himself master of, not for want of materials, but for want of time. This, indeed, applies, as things are, to certain voluminous collections of documents: the collected reports of parliamentary debates contain the whole history of the various assemblies, but to learn their history from these sources would require more than a lifetime.

Every science must take into consideration the practical conditions of life, at least so far as it claims to be a real science, a science which it is possible to know. Any ideal which ends by making knowledge impossible impedes the establishment of the science.

Science is a saving of time and labour, effected by a process which provides a rapid means of learning and understanding facts; it consists in the slow collection of a quantity of details and their condensation into portable and incontrovertible formulae. History, which is more encumbered with details than any other science, has the choice between two alternatives: to be complete and unknowable, or to be knowable and incomplete. All the other sciences have chosen the second alternative; they abridge and they condense, preferring to take the risk of mutilating and arbitrarily combining the facts to the certainty of being unable either to understand or communicate them. Scholars have preferred to confine themselves to the periods of ancient history, where chance, which has destroyed nearly all the sources of information, has freed them from the responsibility of choosing between facts by depriving them of nearly all the means of knowing them.

History, in order to constitute itself a science, must elaborate the raw material of facts. It must condense them into manageable form by means of descriptive formulae, qualitative and quantitative. It must search for those connections between facts which form the ultimate conclusions of every science.

II. The facts of humanity, with their complex and varied character, cannot be reduced like chemical facts to a few simple formulae. Like the other sciences which deal with life, history needs descriptive formulae in order to express the nature of the different phenomena.

In order to be manageable, a formula must be short; in order to give an exact idea of the facts, it must be precise. Now, in the knowledge of human affairs, precision can only be obtained by attention to characteristic details, for these alone enable us to understand how one fact differed from others, and what there was in it peculiar to itself. There is thus a conflict between the need of brevity, which leads us to look for concrete formulae, and the necessity of being precise, which requires us to adopt detailed formulae. Formulae which are too short make science vague and illusory, formulae which are too long encumber it and make it useless. This dilemma can only be evaded by a perpetual compromise, the principle of which is to compress the facts by omitting all that is not necessary for the purpose of representing them to the mind, and to stop at the point where omission would suppress some characteristic feature.

This operation, which is difficult in itself, is still further complicated by the state in which the facts which are to be condensed into formulae present themselves. According to the nature of the documents from which they are derived, they come to us in all the different degrees of precision: from the detailed narrative which relates the smallest episodes (the battle of Waterloo) down to the barest mention in a couple of words (the victory of the Austrasians at Testry). On different facts of the same kind we possess an amount of details which is infinitely variable according as the documents give us a complete description or a mere mention. How are we to organise into a common whole, items of knowledge which differ so widely in point of precision? When facts are known to us from a vague word of general import, we cannot reduce them to a less degree of generality and a greater degree of precision; we do not know the details. If we add them conjecturally we shall produce an historical novel. This is what Augustin Thierry did in the case of his Recits merovingiens. When facts are known in detail, it is always easy to reduce them to a greater degree of generality by suppressing characteristic details; this is what is done by the authors of abridgements. But the result of this procedure would be to reduce history to a mass of vague generalities, uniform for the whole of time except for the proper names and the dates. It would be a dangerous method of introducing symmetry, to bring all facts to a common degree of generality by levelling them all to the condition of those which are the most imperfectly known. In those cases, therefore, where the documents give details, our descriptive formulae should always retain the characteristic features of the facts.

In order to construct these formulae we must return to the set of questions which we employed in grouping the facts, we must answer each question, and compare the answers. We shall then combine them into as condensed and as precise a formula as possible, taking care to keep a fixed sense for every word. This may appear to be a matter of style, but what we have in view here is not merely a principle of exposition, necessary for the sake of being intelligible to the reader, it is a precaution which the author ought to take on his own account. The facts of society are of an elusive nature, and for the purpose of seizing and expressing them, fixed and precise language is an indispensable instrument; no historian is complete without good language.

It will be well to make the greatest possible use of concrete and descriptive terms: their meaning is always clear. It will be prudent to designate collective groups only by collective, not by abstract names (royalty, State, democracy, Reformation, Revolution), and to avoid personifying abstractions. We think we are simply using metaphors, and then we are carried away by the force of the words. Certainly abstract terms have something very seductive about them, they give a scientific appearance to a proposition. But it is only an appearance, behind which scholasticism is apt to be concealed; the word, having no concrete meaning, becomes a purely verbal notion (like the soporific virtue of which Moliere speaks). As long as our notions on social phenomena have not been reduced to truly scientific formulae, the most scientific course will be to express them in terms of every-day experience.

In order to construct a formula, we should know beforehand what elements ought to enter into it. We must here make a distinction between general facts (habits and evolutions) and unique facts (events).

III. General facts consist in actions which are often repeated, and are common to a number of men. We have to determine their character, extent, and duration.

In order to formulate their character, we combine all the features which constitute a fact (habit, institution) and distinguish it from all others. We unite under the same formula all the individual cases which greatly resemble each other, by neglecting the individual differences.

This concentration is performed without effort in the case of habits which have to do with forms (language, handwriting), and in the case of all intellectual habits; those who practised these habits have already given them expression in formulae, which we have only to collect. The same holds of these institutions which are sanctioned by expressly formulated rules (regulations, laws, private statutes). Accordingly the special branches of history were the first to yield methodical formulae. On the other hand, these special branches do not go beyond superficial and conventional facts, they do not reach the real actions and thoughts of men: in language they deal with written words, not the real pronunciation; in religion with official dogmas and rites, not with the real beliefs of the mass of the people; in morals with avowed precepts, not with the effective ideals; in institutions with official rules, not with the real practice. On all these subjects the knowledge of conventional forms must some day be supplemented by a parallel study of the real habits.

It is much more difficult to embrace in a single formula a habit which is composed of real actions, as is the case with economic phenomena, private life, politics; for we have to find in the different actions those common characteristics which constitute the habit; or, if this work has already been done in the documents, and condensed into a formula (the most common case), we must criticise this formula in order to make sure that it really represents a homogeneous habit.

The same difficulty occurs in constructing the formula for a group; we have to describe the characteristic common to all the members of the group and to find a collective name which shall exactly designate it. In documents there is no lack of names of groups; but, as they have their origin in usage, many of them correspond but ill to the real groups; we have to criticise these names to fix their precise meaning, sometimes to correct their application.

This first operation should yield formulae expressive of the conventional and real characteristics of all the habits of the different groups.

In order to fix the precise extent of a habit we shall seek the most distant points where it appears (this will give the area of distribution), and the region where it is most common (the centre). Sometimes the operation takes the form of a map (for example the map of the tumuli and the dolmens of France). It will also be necessary to indicate the groups of men who practised each habit, and the sub-groups in which it was most pronounced.

The formula should also indicate the duration of the habit. We shall look for the extreme cases, the first and the last appearance of the form, the doctrine, the usage, the institution, the group. But it will not be enough to note the two isolated cases, the earliest and the most recent; we must ascertain the period in which it was really active.

The formula of an evolution ought to indicate the successive variations in the habit, giving in each case precise limits of extent and duration. Then, by comparing all the variations, it will be possible to determine the general course of the evolution. The general formula will indicate when and where the evolution began and ended, and the nature of the change which it effected. All evolutions present common features which enable them to be divided into stages. Every habit (usage or institution) begins by being the spontaneous act of several individuals; when others imitate them it becomes a usage. Similarly social functions are in the first instance performed by persons who undertake them spontaneously, when these persons are recognised by others they acquire an official status. This is the first stage; individual initiative followed by general imitation and recognition. The usage becomes traditional and is transformed into an obligatory custom or rule; the persons acquire a permanent status and are invested with powers of material or moral constraint. This is the stage of tradition and authority; very often it is the last stage, and continues till the society is destroyed. The usage is relaxed, the rules are violated, the persons in authority cease to be obeyed; this is the stage of revolt and decomposition. Finally, in certain civilised societies, the rule is criticised, the persons in authority are censured, by the action of a part of the subjects a rational change is effected in the composition of the governing body, which is subjected to supervision; this is the stage of reform and of checks.

IV. In the case of unique facts we cannot expect to bring several together under a common formula, for the nature of these facts is to occur but once. However, it is imperatively necessary to abridge, we cannot preserve all the acts of all the members of an assembly or of all the officers of a state. Many individuals and many facts must be sacrificed.

How are we to choose? Personal tastes and patriotism give rise to preferences for congenial characters and for local events; but the only principle of selection which can be employed by all historians in common is that which is based on the part played in the evolution of human affairs. We ought to retain those persons and those events which have visibly influenced the course of an evolution. We may recognise them by our inability to describe the evolution without mentioning them. The men are those who have modified the state of a society either by the creation or the introduction of a habit (artists, men of science, inventors, founders, apostles), or as directors of a movement, heads of states, of parties, of armies. The events are those which have brought about changes in the habits or the state of societies.

In order to construct a formula descriptive of an historical person, we must take particulars from his biography and his habits. From his biography we shall take those facts which determined his career, formed his habits, and occasioned the actions by which he influenced society. These comprise physiological conditions (physique, temperament, state of health),[203] the educational influences, the social conditions to which he was subject. The history of literature has accustomed us to researches of this kind.

Among the habits of a man it is necessary to determine his fundamental conceptions relating to the class of facts in which his influence was felt, his conception of life, his knowledge, his predominating tastes, his habitual occupations, his principles of conduct. From these details, in which there is infinite variety, an impression is formed of the man's "character," and the collection of these characteristic features constitutes his "portrait," or, to use a favourite phrase of the day, his "psychology." This exercise, which is still held in great esteem, dates from the time when history was still a branch of literature; it is doubtful whether it can ever become a scientific process. There is perhaps no sure method of summing up the character of a man, even in his lifetime, still less when we can only know him indirectly through the medium of documents. The controversies relative to the interpretation of the conduct of Alexander are a good example of this uncertainty.

If, however, we take the risk of seeking a formula to describe a character, there are two natural temptations against which we must guard: (I) We must not construct the formula out of the person's assertions in regard to himself. (2) The study of imaginary personages (dramas and novels) has accustomed us to seek a logical connection between the various sentiments and the various acts of a man; a character, in literature, is constructed logically. This search for coherency must not be transferred to the study of real men. We are less likely to do so in the case of those whom we observe in their lifetime, because we see too many characteristics in them which could not enter into a coherent formula. But the absence of documents, by suppressing those characteristics which would have checked us, encourages us to arrange the very small number of those which remain in the form of a stage-character. This is why the great men of antiquity seem to us to have been much more logical than our contemporaries are.

How are we to construct a formula for an event? The imperative need of simplification causes us to combine under a single name an enormous mass of minute facts which are perceived in the lump, and between which we vaguely feel that there is a connection (a battle, a war, a reform). The facts which are thus combined are such facts as have conduced to a common result. That is how the common notion of an event arises, and there is no more scientific conception to put in its place. Facts, then, are to be grouped according to their consequences; those which have had no visible consequences disappear, the others are fused into a certain number of aggregates which we call events.

In order to describe an event, it is necessary to give precise indications (I) of its character, (2) of its extent.

(I) By the character of an event we mean the features which distinguish it from every other event, not merely the external conditions of date and place, but the manner in which it occurred, and its immediate causes. The following are the items of information which the formula should contain. One or more men, in such and such mental states (conceptions, motives of the action), working under such and such material conditions (locality, instrument), performed such and such actions, which had for their result such and such a modification. For the determination of the motives of the actions, the only method is to compare the actions, firstly, with the declarations of those who performed them; secondly, with the interpretation of those who witnessed their performance. There is often a doubt remaining: this is the field of party polemics; every one attributes noble motives to the actions of his own party and discreditable motives to those of the opposite party. But actions described without any indication of motive would be unintelligible.

(2) The extension of the event will be indicated both in space (the place where it happened, and the region in which its immediate effects were felt) and in time, the moment when its realisation began, and the moment when the result was brought about.

V. Descriptive formulae relating to characters, being merely qualitative, only give an abstract idea of the facts; in order to realise the place they occupied in reality, quantity is necessary. It is not a matter of indifference whether a given usage was practised by a hundred men or by millions.

For the purpose of introducing quantity into formulae we have at our disposal several methods, of various degrees of imperfection, which help us to attain the end in view with various degrees of precision. Arranged in descending order of precision they are as follows:—

(1) Measurement is a perfectly scientific procedure, for equal numbers represent absolutely identical values. But a common unit is necessary, and that can only be had for time and for physical phenomena (lengths, surfaces, weights). Figures relating to production and sums of money are the essential elements in the statement of economic and financial facts. But facts of the psychological order remain inaccessible to measurement.

(2) Enumeration, which is the process employed in statistics,[204] is applicable to all the facts which have in common a definite characteristic which can be made use of for counting them. The facts which are thus comprehended under a single number do not all belong to the same species, they may have in common but a single characteristic, abstract (crime, lawsuit) or conventional (workman, lodging); the figures merely indicate the number of cases in which a given characteristic is met with; they do not represent a homogeneous whole. A natural tendency is to confuse number with measurement, and to suppose that facts are known with scientific precision because it has been possible to apply number to them; this is an illusion to be guarded against, we must not take the figures which give the number of a population or an army for the measure of its importance.[205] Still, enumeration yields results which are necessary for the construction of formulae relating to groups. But the operation is restricted to those cases in which it is possible to know all the units of a given species lying within given limits, for it is performed by first ticking off, then adding. Before undertaking a retrospective enumeration, therefore, it will be well to make sure that the documents are complete enough to exhibit all the units which are to be enumerated. As to figures given in documents, they are to be distrusted.

(3) Valuation is a kind of incomplete enumeration applying to a portion of the field, and made on the supposition that the same proportions hold good through the whole of the field. It is an expedient to which, in history, it is often necessary to have recourse when documents are unequally abundant for the different divisions of the subject. The result is open to doubt, unless we are sure that the portion to which enumeration was applied was exactly similar to the remainder.

(4) Sampling is a process of enumeration restricted to a few units taken at different points in the field of investigation; we calculate the proportion of cases (say 90 per cent.) where a given characteristic occurs, we assume that the same proportion holds throughout, and if there are several categories we obtain the proportion between them. In history this procedure is applicable to facts of every kind, for the purpose of determining either the proportion between the different forms or usages which occur within a given region or period, or the proportion which obtains, within a heterogeneous group, between members belonging to different classes. This procedure gives us an approximate idea of the frequency of facts and the proportion between the different elements of a society; it can even show what species of facts are most commonly found together, and are therefore probably connected. But in order that the method may be employed correctly it is necessary that the samples should be representative of the whole, and not of a part which might possibly be exceptional in character. They should therefore be chosen at very different points, and under very different conditions, in order that the exceptions may compensate each other. It is not enough to take them at points which are distant from each other; for example, on the different frontiers of a country, for the very circumstance of situation on a frontier is an exceptional condition. Verification may be had by following the methods by which anthropologists obtain averages.

(5) Generalisation is only an instinctive process of simplification. As soon as we perceive a certain characteristic in an object, we extend this characteristic to all other objects which at all resemble it. In all human concerns, where the facts are always complex, we make generalisations unconsciously; we attribute to a whole people the habits of a few individuals, or those of the first group forming part of the people which comes within our knowledge; we extend to a whole period habits which are ascertained to have existed at a given moment. This is the most active of all the causes of historical error, and one whose influence is felt in every department, in the study of usages and of institutions, even in the appreciation of the morality of a people.[206] Generalisation rests on a vague idea that all facts which are contiguous to each other, or which resemble each other in some point, are similar at all points. It is an unconscious and ill-performed process of sampling. It may therefore be made correct by being subjected to the conditions of a well-performed process of sampling. We must examine the cases on which we propose to found a generalisation and ask ourselves. What right have we to generalise? That is, what reason have we for assuming that the characteristic discovered in these cases will occur in the remaining thousands of cases? that the cases chosen resemble the average? The only valid reason would be that these cases are representative of the whole. We are thus brought back to the process of methodical sampling.

The right method of conducting the operation is as follows: (1) We must fix the precise limits of the field within which we intend to generalise (that is, to assume the similarity of all the cases), we must determine the country, the group, the class, the period as to which we are to generalise. Care must be taken not to make the field too large by confusing a part with the whole (a Greek or Germanic people with the whole Greek or Germanic race). (2) We must make sure that the facts lying within the field resemble each other in the points on which we wish to generalise, and therefore we have to distrust those vague names under which are comprehended groups of very different character (Christians, French, Aryans, Romans). (3) We must make sure that the facts from which we propose to generalise are representative samples, that they really belong to the field of investigation, for it does happen sometimes that men or facts are taken as specimens of one group when they really belong to another. Nor must they be exceptional, as is to be presumed in all cases when the conditions are exceptional; authors of documents tend to record by preference those facts which surprise them, hence exceptional cases occupy in documents a space which is out of proportion to their real number; this is one of the chief sources of error. (4) The number of samples necessary to support a generalisation is the greater the less ground there is for supposing a resemblance between all the cases occurring within the field of investigation. A small number may suffice in treating of points in which men tend to bear a strong resemblance to each other, either by imitation and convention (language, rites, ceremonies), or from the influence of custom and obligatory regulations (social institutions, political institutions in countries where the authorities are obeyed). A large number is requisite for facts where individual initiative plays a more important part (art, science, morality), and sometimes, as in respect of private conduct, all generalisation is as a rule impossible.

VI. Descriptive formulae are in no science the final result of the work. It still remains to group the facts in such a way as to bring out their collective import, it still remains to search for their mutual relations; these are the general conclusions. History, by reason of the imperfection of its mode of acquiring knowledge, needs, in addition, a preliminary operation for determining the bearing of the knowledge acquired.[207]

The work of criticism has supplied us with nothing but a number of isolated remarks on the value of the knowledge which the documents have permitted us to acquire. These must be combined. We shall therefore take a whole group of facts entered under a common heading—a particular class of facts, a country, a period, an event—and we shall summarise the results yielded by the criticism of particular facts so as to obtain a general formula. We shall have to take into consideration: (1) the extent, (2) the value of our knowledge.

(1) We shall ask ourselves what are the blanks left by the documents. By working through the scheme used for the grouping of facts it is easy to discover what are the classes of facts on which we lack information. In the case of evolution, we notice which links are missing in the chain of successive modifications; in the case of events, what episodes, what groups of actors are still unknown to us; what facts enter or disappear from the field of our knowledge without our being able to trace their beginning or end. We ought to construct, mentally at any rate, a tabulated scheme of the points on which we are ignorant, in order to keep before our minds the distance separating the knowledge we have from a perfect knowledge.

(2) The value of our knowledge depends on the value of our documents. Criticism has given us indications on this point in each separate case, these indications, so far as relating to a given body of facts, must be summarised under a few heads. Does our knowledge come originally from direct observation, from written tradition, or from oral tradition? Do we possess several traditions of different bias, or a single tradition? Do we possess documents of different classes or of one single class? Is our information vague or precise, detailed or summary, literary or positive, official or confidential?

The natural tendency is to forget, in construction, the results yielded by criticism, to forget the incompleteness of our knowledge and the elements of doubt in it. An eager desire to increase to the greatest possible extent the amount of our information and the number of our conclusions impels us to seek emancipation from all negative restrictions. We thus run a great risk of using fragmentary and suspicious sources of information for the purpose of forming general impressions, just as if we were in possession of a complete record. It is easy to forget the existence of those facts which the documents do not describe (economic facts, slaves in antiquity), it is easy to exaggerate the space occupied by facts which are known to us (Greek art, Roman inscriptions, mediaeval monasteries). We instinctively estimate the importance of facts by the number of the documents which mention them. We forget the peculiar character of the documents, and, when they all have a common origin, we forget that they have all subjected the facts to the same distortions, and that their community of origin renders verification impossible; we submissively reproduce the bias of the tradition (Roman, orthodox, aristocratic).

In order to resist these natural tendencies, it is enough to pass in review the whole body of facts and the whole body of tradition, before attempting to draw any general conclusion.

VII. Descriptive formulae give the particular character of each small group of facts. In order to obtain a general conclusion, we must combine these detailed results into a general formula. We must not compare together isolated details or secondary characteristics,[208] but groups of facts which resemble each other in a whole set of characteristics.

We thus form an aggregate (of institutions, of groups of men, of events). Following the method indicated above, we determine its distinguishing characteristics, its extent, its duration, its quantity or importance.

As we form groups of greater and greater generality we drop, with each new degree of generality, those characteristics which vary, and retain those which are common to all the members of the new group. We must stop at the point where nothing is left except the characteristics common to the whole of humanity. The result is the condensation into a single formula of the general character of an order of facts, of a language, a religion, an art, an economic organisation, a society, a government, a complex event (such as the Invasion or the Reformation).

As long as these comprehensive formulae remain isolated the conclusion is incomplete. And as it is no longer possible to fuse them into higher generalisations, we feel the need of comparing them for the purpose of classification. This classification may be attempted by two methods.

(1) We may compare together similar categories of special facts, language, religions, arts, governments, taking them from the whole of humanity, and classifying together those which most resemble each other. We obtain families of languages, religions, and governments, which we may again classify and arrange among themselves. This is an abstract kind of classification; it isolates one species of facts from all the others, and thus renounces all claim to exhibit causes. It has the advantage of being rapidly performed and of yielding a technical vocabulary which is useful for designating facts.

(2) We may compare real groups of real individuals, we may take societies which figure in history and classify them according to their similarities. This is a concrete classification analogous to that of zoology, in which, not functions, but whole animals are classified. It is true that the groups are less clearly marked than in zoology; nor is there a general agreement as to the characteristics in respect of which we are to look for resemblances. Are we to choose the economic or the political organisation of the groups, or their intellectual condition? No principle of choice has as yet become obligatory.

History has not yet succeeded in establishing a scientific system of comprehensive classification. Possibly human groups are not sufficiently homogeneous to furnish a solid basis of comparison, and not sharply enough divided to be treated as comparable units.

VIII. The study of the relations between simultaneous facts consists in a search for the connections between all the facts of different species which occur in a given society. We have a vague consciousness that the different habits which are separated by abstraction and ranged under different categories (art, religion, political institutions), are not isolated in reality, that they have common characteristics, and that they are closely enough connected for a change in one of them to bring about a change in another. This is a fundamental idea of the Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu. This bond of connection, sometimes called consensus, has received the name of Zusammenhang from the German school. From this conception has arisen the theory of the Volksgeist (the mind of a people), a counterfeit of which has within the last few years been introduced into France under the name of "ame nationale." This conception is also at the bottom of the theory regarding the soul of society which Lamprecht has expounded.

After the rejection of these mystical conceptions there remains a vague but incontrovertible fact, the "solidarity" which exists between the different habits of one and the same people. In order to study it with precision it would be necessary to analyse it, and a connecting bond cannot be analysed. It is thus quite natural that this part of social science should have remained a refuge for mystery and obscurity.

By the comparison of different societies which resemble or differ from each other in a given department (religion or government), with the object of discovering in what other departments they resemble or differ from each other, it is possible that interesting empirical results might be obtained. But, in order to explain the consensus, it is necessary to work back to the facts which have produced it, the common causes of the various habits. We are thus obliged to undertake the investigation of causes, and we enter the province of what is called philosophical history, because it investigates what was formerly called the philosophy of facts—that is to say, their permanent relations.

IX. The necessity of rising above the simple determination of facts in order to explain them by their causes, a necessity which has governed the development of all the sciences, has at length been felt even in the study of history. Hence have arisen systematic philosophies of history, and attempts to discover historical laws and causes. We cannot here enter into a critical examination of these attempts, which the nineteenth century has produced in so great number; we shall merely indicate what are the ways in which the problem has been attacked, and what obstacles have prevented a scientific solution from being reached.

The most natural method of explanation consists in the assumption that a transcendental cause, Providence, guides the whole course of events towards an end which is known to God.[209] This explanation can be but a metaphysical doctrine, crowning the work of science; for the distinguishing feature of science is that it only studies efficient causes. The historian is not called upon to investigate the first cause or final causes any more than the chemist or the naturalist. And, in fact, few writers on history nowadays stop to discuss the theory of Providence in its theological form.

But the tendency to explain historical facts by transcendental causes survives in more modern theories in which metaphysic is disguised under scientific forms. The historians of the nineteenth century have been so strongly influenced by their philosophical education that most of them, sometimes unconsciously, introduce metaphysical formulae into the construction of history. It will be enough to enumerate these systems, and point out their metaphysical character, so that reflecting historians may be warned to distrust them.

The theory of the rational character of history rests on the notion that every real historical fact is at the same time "rational"—that is, in conformity with an intelligible comprehensive plan; ordinarily it is tacitly assumed that every social fact has its raison d'etre in the development of society—that is, that it ends by turning to the advantage of society; hence the cause of every institution is sought for in the social need it was originally meant to supply.[210] This is the fundamental idea of Hegelianism, if not with Hegel, at least with the historians who have been his disciples (Ranke, Mommsen, Droysen, in France Cousin, Taine, and Michelet). This is a lay disguise of the old theological theory of final causes which assumes the existence of a Providence occupied in guiding humanity in the direction of its interests. This is a consoling, but not a scientific a priori hypothesis; for the observation of historical facts does not indicate that things have always happened in the most rational way, or in the way most advantageous to men, nor that institutions have had any other cause than the interest of those who established them; the facts, indeed, point rather to the opposite conclusion.

From the same metaphysical source has also sprung the Hegelian theory of the ideas which are successively realised in history through the medium of successive peoples. This theory, which has been popularised in France by Cousin and Michelet, has had its day, even in Germany, but it has been revived, especially in Germany, in the form of the historical mission (Beruf) which is attributed to peoples and persons. It will here be enough to observe that the very metaphors of "idea" and "mission" imply a transcendental anthropomorphic cause.

From the same optimistic conception of a rational guidance of the world is derived the theory of the continuous and necessary progress of humanity. Although it has been adopted by the positivists, this is merely a metaphysical hypothesis. In the ordinary sense of the word, "progress" is merely a subjective expression denoting those changes which follow the direction of our preferences. But, even taking the word in the objective sense given to it by Spencer (an increase in the variety and coordination of social phenomena), the study of historical facts does not point to a single universal and continuous progress of humanity, it brings before us a number of partial and intermittent progressive movements, and it gives us no reason to attribute them to a permanent cause inherent in humanity as a whole rather than to a series of local accidents.[211]

Attempts at a more scientific form of explanation have had their origin in the special branches of history (of languages, religion, law). By the separate study of the succession of facts of a single species, specialists have been enabled to ascertain the regular recurrence of the same successions of facts, and these results have been expressed in formulae which are sometimes called laws (for example, the law of the tonic accent); these are never more than empirical laws which merely indicate successions of facts without explaining them, for they do not reveal the efficient cause. But specialists, influenced by a natural metaphor, and struck by the regularity of these successions, have regarded the evolution of usages (of a word, a rite, a dogma, a rule of law), as if it were an organic development analogous to the growth of a plant; we hear of the "life of words," of the "death of dogmas," of the "growth of myths." Then, in forgetfulness of the fact that all these things are pure abstractions, it has been tacitly assumed that there is a force inhering in the word, the rite, the rule, which produces its evolution. This is the theory of the development (Entwickelung) of usages and institutions; it was started in Germany by the "historical" school, and has dominated all the special branches of history. The history of languages alone has succeeded in shaking off its influence.[212] Just as usages have been treated as if they were existences possessing a separate life of their own, so the succession of individuals composing the various bodies within a society (royalty, church, senate, parliament) has been personified by the attribution to it of a will, which is treated as an active cause. A world of imaginary beings has thus been created behind the historical facts, and has replaced Providence in the explanation of them. For our defence against this deceptive mythology a single rule will suffice: Never seek the causes of an historical fact without having first expressed it concretely in terms of acting and thinking individuals. If abstractions are used, every metaphor must be avoided which would make them play the part of living beings.

By a comparison of the evolutions of the different species of facts which coexist in one and the same society, the "historical" school was led to the discovery of solidarity (Zusammenhang).[213] But, before attempting to discover its causes by analysis, the adherents of this school assumed the existence of a permanent general cause residing in the society itself. And, as it was customary to personify society, a special temperament was attributed to it, the peculiar genius of the nation or the race, manifesting itself in the different social activities and explaining their solidarity.[214] This was simply an hypothesis suggested by the animal world, in which each species has permanent characteristics. It would have been inadequate, for in order to explain how a given society comes to change its character from one epoch to another (the Greeks between the seventh and the fourth centuries, the English between the fifteenth and the nineteenth), it would have been necessary to invoke the aid of external causes. And the theory is untenable, for all the societies known to history are groups of men without anthropological unity and without common hereditary characteristics.

In addition to these metaphysical or metaphorical explanations, attempts have been made to apply to the investigation of causes in history the classical procedure of the natural sciences: the comparison of parallel series of successive phenomena in order to discover those which always appear together. The "comparative method" has assumed several different forms. Sometimes the subject of study has been a detail of social life (a usage, an institution, a belief, a rule), defined in abstract terms; its evolutions in different societies have been compared with a view to determine the common evolution which is to be attributed to one and the same general cause. Thus have arisen comparative philology, mythology, and law. It has been proposed (in England) to give precision to the comparative method by applying "statistics"; this would mean the systematic comparison of all known societies and the enumeration of all the cases where two usages are found together. This is the principle of Bacon's tables of agreement; it is to be feared that it will be no more fertile in results. The defect of all such methods is that they apply to abstract and partly arbitrary notions, sometimes merely to verbal resemblances, and do not rest on a knowledge of the whole of the conditions under which the facts occur.

We can conceive a more concrete method which, instead of comparing fragments, should compare wholes, that is entire societies, either the same society at different stages of its evolution (England in the sixteenth, and again in the nineteenth century), or else the general evolution of several societies, contemporary with each other (England and France), or existing at different epochs (Rome and England). Such a method might be useful negatively, for the purpose of ascertaining that a given fact is not the necessary effect of another, since they are not always found together (for example, the emancipation of women and Christianity). But positive results are hardly to be expected of it, for the concomitance of two facts in several series does not show whether one is the cause of the other, or whether both are joint effects of a single cause.

The methodical investigation of the causes of a fact requires an analysis of the conditions under which the fact occurs, performed so as to isolate the necessary condition which is its cause; it presupposes, therefore, the complete knowledge of these conditions. But this is precisely what we never have in history. We must therefore renounce the idea of arriving at causes by direct methods such as are used in the other sciences.

As a matter of fact, however, historians often do employ the notion of cause, which, as we have shown above, is indispensable for the purpose of formulating events and constructing periods. They know causes partly from the authors of documents who observed the facts, partly from the analogy of the causes which we all observe at the present day. The whole history of events is a chain of obviously and incontrovertibly connected incidents, each one of which is the determining cause of another. The lance-thrust of Montgomery is the cause of the death of Henry II.; this death is the cause of the accession to power of the Guises, which again is the cause of the rising of the Protestants.

The observation of causes by the authors of documents is limited to the interconnection of the accidental facts observed by them; these are, in truth, the causes which are known with the greatest certainty. Thus history, unlike the other sciences, is better able to ascertain the causes of particular incidents than those of general transformations, for the work is found already done in the documents.

In the investigation of the causes of general facts, historical construction is reduced to the analogy between the past and the present. Whatever chance there is of finding the causes which explain the evolution of past societies must lie in the direct observation of the transformations of present societies.

This is a branch of study which is not yet firmly established; here we can only state the principles of it.

(1) In order to ascertain the causes of the solidarity between the different habits of one and the same society, it is necessary to look beyond the abstract and conventional form which the facts assume in language (dogma, rule, rite, institution), and attend to the real concrete centres, which are always thinking and acting men. Here only are found together the different species of activity which language separates by abstraction. Their solidarity is to be sought for in some dominating feature in the character or the environment of the men which influences all the different manifestations of their activity. We must not expect the same degrees of solidarity in all the species of activity; there will be most of it in those species where each individual is in close dependence on the actions of the mass (economic, social, political life); there will be less of it in the intellectual activities (arts, sciences), where individual initiative has freer play.[215] Documents mention most habits (beliefs, customs, institutions) in the lump, without distinguishing individuals; and yet, in one and the same society, habits vary considerably from one man to another. It is necessary to take account of these differences, otherwise there is a danger of explaining the actions of artists and men of science by the beliefs and the habits of their prince or their tradesmen.

(2) In order to ascertain the causes of an evolution, it is necessary to study the only beings which can evolve—men. Every evolution has for its cause a change in the material conditions or in the habits of certain men. Observation shows us two kinds of change. In the one case, the men remain the same, but change their manner of acting or thinking, either voluntarily through imitation, or by compulsion. In the other, the men who practised the old usage disappear and are replaced by others who do not practise it; these may be strangers, or they may be the descendants of the first set of men, but educated in a different manner. This renewing of the generations seems, in our day, to be the most active cause of evolution. It is natural to suppose that the same holds good of the past; evolution has been slower, the more exclusively each generation has been formed by the imitation of its forerunners.

There is still one more question to ask. Are men all alike, differing merely in the conditions under which they live (education, resources, government), and is evolution produced solely by changes in these conditions? Or are there groups of men with hereditary differences, born with tendencies to different activities and with aptitudes leading to different evolutions, so that evolution may be the product, in part at least, of the increase, the diminution, and the displacement of these groups? Taking the extreme cases, the white, black, and yellow races of mankind, the differences in aptitude are obvious; no black people has ever developed a civilisation. It is thus probable that smaller hereditary differences may have had their share in the determination of events. If so, historical evolution would be partly produced by physiological and anthropological causes. But history provides us with no sure means of determining the action of these hereditary differences between men; it goes no further than the conditions of their existence. The last question of history remains insoluble by historical methods.



CHAPTER V

EXPOSITION

We have still to study a question whose practical interest is obvious: What are the forms in which historical works present themselves? These forms are, in fact, very numerous. Some of them are antiquated; not all are legitimate; the best have their drawbacks. We should ask, therefore, not only what are the forms in which historical works appear, but also which of these represent truly rational types of exposition.

By "historical works" we mean here all those which are intended to communicate results obtained by the labour of historical construction, whatever may be the nature, the extent, and the bearing of these results. The critical elaboration of documents, which is treated of in Book II., and which is preparatory to historical construction, is naturally excluded.

Historians may differ, and up to the present have differed, on several essential points. They have not always had, nor have they all now, the same conception of the end aimed at by historical work; hence arise differences in the nature of the facts chosen, the manner of dividing the subject, that is, of co-ordinating the facts, the manner of presenting them, the manner of proving them. This would be the place to indicate how "the mode of writing history" has evolved from the beginning. But as the history of the modes of writing history has not yet been written well,[216] we shall here content ourselves with some very general remarks on the period prior to the second half of the nineteenth century, confining ourselves to what is strictly necessary for the understanding of the present situation.

I. History was first conceived as the narration of memorable events. To preserve the memory and propagate the knowledge of glorious deeds, or of events which were of importance to a man, a family, or a people; such was the aim of history in the tune of Thucydides and Livy. In addition, history was early considered as a collection of precedents, and the knowledge of history as a practical preparation for life, especially political life (military and civil). Polybius and Plutarch wrote to instruct, they claimed to give recipes for action. Hence in classical antiquity the subject-matter of history consisted chiefly of political incidents, wars, and revolutions. The ordinary framework of historical exposition (within which the facts were usually arranged in chronological order) was the life of a person, the whole life of a people, or a particular period in it; there were in antiquity but few essays in general history. As the aim of the historian was to please or to instruct, or to please and instruct at the same time, history was a branch of literature: there were not too many scruples on the score of proofs; those who worked from written documents took no care to distinguish the text of such documents from their own text; in reproducing the narratives of their predecessors they adorned them with details, and sometimes (under pretext of being precise) with numbers, with speeches, with reflections, and elegances. We can in a manner see them at work in every instance where it is possible to compare Greek and Roman historians, Ephorus and Livy, for example, with their sources.

The writers of the Renaissance directly imitated the ancients. For them, too, history was a literary art with apologetic aims or didactic pretensions. In Italy it was too often a means of gaining the favour of princes, or a theme for declamations. This state of affairs lasted a long time. Even in the seventeenth century we find, in Mezeray, an historian of the ancient classical pattern.

However, in the historical literature of the Renaissance, two novelties claim our attention, in which the mediaeval influence is incontrovertibly manifest. On the one hand we see the retention of a form of exposition which was unusual in antiquity, which was created by the Catholic historians of the later ages (Eusebius, Orosius), and which enjoyed great favour in the Middle Ages,—that which, instead of embracing only the history of a single man, family, or people, embraces universal history. On the other hand there was introduced a mechanical artifice of exposition, having its origin in a practice common in the mediaeval schools (the gloss), which had far-reaching consequences. The custom arose of adding notes to printed books of history.[217] Notes have made it possible to distinguish between the historical narrative and the documents which support it, to give references to sources, to disencumber and illustrate the text. It was in collections of documents, and in critical dissertations, that the artifice of annotation was first employed; thence it penetrated, slowly, into historical works of other classes.

A second period begins in the eighteenth century. The "philosophers" then began to conceive history as the study, not of events for their own sakes, but of the habits of men. They were thus led to take an interest, not only in facts of a political order, but in the evolution of the arts, the sciences, of industry, and in manners. Montesquieu and Voltaire personified these tendencies. The Essai sur les moeurs is the first sketch, and, in some respects, the masterpiece of history thus conceived. The detailed narration of political and military events was still regarded as the main work of history, but to this it now became customary to add, generally by way of supplement or appendix, a sketch of the "progress of the human mind." The expression "history of civilisation" appears before the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time German university professors, especially at Goettingen, were creating, in order to supply educational needs, the new form of the historical "manual," a methodical collection of carefully justified facts, with no literary or other pretensions. Collections of historical facts, made with a view to aid in the interpretation of literary texts, or out of mere curiosity in regard to the things of the past, had existed from ancient times; but the medleys of Athenaeus and Aulus Gellius, or the vaster and better arranged compilations of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, are by no means to be compared with the "scientific manuals" of which the German professors then gave the models. These professors, moreover, contributed towards the clearing up of the vague, general notion which the philosophers had of "civilisation," for they applied themselves to the organisation of the history of languages, of literatures, of the arts, of religions, of law, of economic phenomena, and so on, as so many separate branches of study. Thus the domain of history was greatly enlarged, and scientific, that is, simple and objective, exposition began to compete with the rhetorical or sententious, patriotic or philosophical ideals of antiquity.

This competition was at first timid and obscure, for the beginning of the nineteenth century was marked by a literary renaissance which renovated historical literature. Under the influence of the romantic movement historians sought for more vivid methods of exposition than those employed by their predecessors, methods better adapted to strike the imagination and rouse the emotions of the public, by filling the mind with poetical images of vanished realities. Some endeavoured to preserve the peculiar colouring of the original documents, which they adapted: "Charmed with the contemporary narratives," says Barante, "I have endeavoured to write a consecutive account which should borrow from them their animation and interest." This leads directly to the neglect of criticism, and to the reproduction of whatever is effective from the literary point of view. Others declared that the facts of the past ought to be recounted with all the emotions of a spectator. "Thierry," says Michelet, praising him, "in telling us the story of Klodowig, breathes the spirit and shows the emotion of recently invaded France...." Michelet "stated the problem of history as the resuscitation of integral life in the inmost parts of the organism." With the romantic historians the choice of subject, of plan, of the proofs, of the style, is dominated by an engrossing desire to produce an effect—a literary, not a scientific ambition. Some romantic historians have slid down this inclined plane to the level of the "historical novel." We know the nature of this species of literature, which flourished so vigorously from the Abbe Barthelemy and Chateaubriand down to Merimee and Ebers, and which some are now vainly attempting to rejuvenate. The object is to "make the scenes of the past live again" in dramatic pictures artistically constructed with "true" colours and details. The obvious object of the method is that it does not provide the reader with any means of distinguishing between the elements borrowed from the documents and the imaginary elements, not to mention the fact that generally the documents used are not all of the same origin, so that while the colour of each stone may be "true" that of the mosaic is false. Dezobry's Rome au siecle d'Auguste, Augustin Thierry's Recits merovingiens, and other "pictures" produced at the same epoch were constructed on the same principle, and are subject to the same drawbacks as the historical novels properly so-called.[218]

We may summarise what precedes by saying that, up to about 1850, history continued to be, both for historians and the public, a branch of literature. An excellent proof of this lies in the fact that up till then historians were accustomed to publish new editions of their works, at intervals of several years, without making any change in them, and that the public tolerated the practice. Now every scientific work needs to be continually recast, revised, brought up to date. Scientific workers do not claim to give their works an immutable form, they do not expect to be read by posterity or to achieve personal immortality; it is enough for them if the results of their researches, corrected, it may be, and possibly transformed by subsequent researches, should be incorporated in the fund of knowledge which forms the scientific heritage of mankind. No one reads Newton or Lavoisier; it is enough for their glory that their labours should have contributed to the production of works by which their own have been superseded, and which will be, sooner or later, superseded in their turn. It is only works of art that enjoy perpetual youth. And the public is well aware of the fact; no one would ever think of studying natural history in Buffon, whatever his opinion might be of the merits of this stylist. But the same public is quite ready to study history in Augustin Thierry, in Macaulay, in Carlyle, in Michelet, and the books of the great writers who have treated historical subjects are reprinted, fifty years after the author's death, in their original form, though they are manifestly no longer on a level with current knowledge. It is clear that, for many, form counts before matter in history, and that an historical work is primarily, if not exclusively, a work of art.[219]

II. It is within the last fifty years that the scientific forms of historical exposition have been evolved and settled, in accordance with the general principle that the aim of history is not to please, nor to give practical maxims of conduct, nor to arouse the emotions, but knowledge pure and simple.

We begin by distinguishing between (1) monographs and (2) works of a general character.

(1) A man writes a monograph when he proposes to elucidate a special point, a single fact, or a limited body of facts, for example the whole or a portion of the life of an individual, a single event or a series of events between two dates lying near together. The types of possible subjects of a monograph cannot be enumerated, for the subject-matter of history can be divided indefinitely, and in an infinite number of ways. But all modes of division are not equally judicious, and, though the reverse has been maintained, there are, in history as in all the sciences, subjects which it would be stupid to treat in monographs, and monographs which, though well executed, represent so much useless labour.[220] Persons of moderate ability and no great mental range, devoted to what is called "curious" learning, are very ready to occupy themselves with insignificant questions;[221] indeed, for the purpose of making a first estimate of an historian's intellectual power, a fairly good criterion may be had in the list of the monographs he has written.[222] It is the gift of seeing the important problems, and the taste for their treatment, as well as the power of solving them, which, in all the sciences, raise men to the first rank. But let us suppose the subject has been rationally chosen. Every monograph, in order to be useful—that is, capable of being fully turned to account—should conform to three rules: (1) in a monograph every historical fact derived from documents should only be presented accompanied by a reference to the documents from which it is taken, and an estimate of the value of these documents;[223] (2) chronological order should be followed as far as possible, because this is the order in which we know that the facts occurred, and by which we are guided in searching for causes and effects; (3) the title of the monograph must enable its subject to be known with exactitude: we cannot protest too strongly against those incomplete or fancy titles which so unnecessarily complicate bibliographical searches. A fourth rule has been laid down; it has been said "a monograph is useful only when it exhausts the subject"; but it is quite legitimate to do temporary work with documents which one has at one's disposal, even when there is reason to believe that others exist, provided always that precise notice is given as to what documents have been employed.

Any one who has tact will see that, in a monograph, the apparatus of demonstration, while needing to be complete, ought to be reduced to what is strictly necessary. Sobriety is imperative; all parading of erudition which might have been spared without inconvenience is odious.[224] In history it often happens that the best executed monographs furnish no other result than the proof that knowledge is impossible. It is necessary to resist the desire which leads some to round off with subjective, ambitious, and vague conclusions monographs which will not bear them.[225] The proper conclusion of a good monograph is the balance-sheet of the results obtained by it and the points left doubtful. A monograph made on these principles may grow antiquated, but it will not fall to pieces, and its author will never need to blush for it.

(2) Works of a general character are addressed either to students or to the general public.

A. General works intended principally for students and specialists now appear in the form of "repertories," "manuals," and "scientific histories." In a repertory a number of verified facts belonging to a given class are collected and arranged in an order which makes it easy to refer to them. If the facts thus collected have precise dates, chronological order is adopted: thus the task has been undertaken of compiling "Annals" of German history, in which the summary entry of the events, arranged by dates, is accompanied by the texts from which the events are known, with accurate references to the sources and the works of critics; the collection of the Jahrbuecher der deutschen Geschichte has for its object the elucidation, as far as is possible, of the facts of German history, including all that is susceptible of scientific discussion and proof, but omitting all that belongs to the domain of appreciation and general views. When the facts are badly dated, or are simultaneous, alphabetical arrangement must be employed; thus we have Dictionaries: dictionaries of institutions, biographical dictionaries, historical encyclopaedias, such as the Realencyclopaedie of Pauly-Wissowa. These alphabetical repertories are, in theory, just as the Jahrbuecher, collections of proved facts; if, in practice, the references in them are less rigorous, if the apparatus of texts supporting the statements is less complete, the difference is without justification.[226] Scientific manuals are also, properly speaking, repertories, since they are collections in which established facts are arranged in systematic order, and are exhibited objectively, with their proofs, and without any literary adornment. The authors of these "manuals," of which the most numerous and the most perfect specimens have been composed in our days in the German universities, have no object in view except to draw up minute inventories of the acquisitions made by knowledge, in order that workers may be enabled to assimilate the results of criticism with greater ease and rapidity, and may be furnished with starting-points for new researches. Manuals of this kind now exist for most of the special branches of the history of civilisation (languages, literature, religion, law, Alterthuemer, and so on), for the history of institutions, for the different parts of ecclesiastical history. It will suffice to mention the names of Schoemann, of Marquardt and Mommsen, of Gilbert, of Krumbacher, of Harnack, of Moeller. These works are not marked by the dryness of the majority of the primitive "manuals," which were published in Germany a hundred years ago, and which were little more than tables of subjects, with references to the books and documents to be consulted; in the modern type the exposition and discussion are no doubt terse and compact, but yet not abbreviated beyond a point at which they may be tolerated, even preferred by cultivated readers. They take away the taste for other books, as G. Paris very well says:[227] "When one has feasted on these substantial pages, so full of facts, which, with all their appearance of impersonality, yet contain, and above all suggest, so many thoughts, it is difficult to read books, even books of distinction, in which the subject is cut up symmetrically to fit in with a preconceived system, is coloured by fancy, and is, so to speak, presented to us in disguise, books in which the author continually comes between us and the spectacle which he claims to make intelligible to us, but which he never allows us to see." The great historical "manuals," uniform with the treatises and manuals of the other sciences (with the added complication of authorities and proofs), ought to be, and are, continually improved, emended, corrected, brought up to date: they are, by definition, works of science and not of art.

The earliest repertories and the earliest scientific "manuals" were composed by isolated individuals. But it was soon recognised that a single man cannot correctly arrange, or have the proper mastery over a vast collection of facts. The task has been divided. Repertories are executed, in our days, by collaborators in association (who are sometimes of different nationalities and write in different languages). The great manuals (of I. von Mueller, of G. Groeber, of H. Paul, and others) are collections of special treatises each written by a specialist. The principle of collaboration is excellent, but on condition (1) that the collective work is of a nature to be resolved into great independent, though co-ordinated, monographs; (2) that the section entrusted to each collaborator has a certain extent; if the number of collaborators is too great and the part of each too limited, the liberty and the responsibility of each are diminished or disappear.

Histories, intended to give a narrative of events which happened but once, and to state the general facts which dominate the whole course of special evolutions, still have a reason for existence, even after the multiplication of methodical manuals. But scientific methods of exposition have been introduced into them, as into monographs and manuals, and that by imitation. The reform has consisted, in every case, in the renunciation of literary ornaments and of statements without proof. Grote produced the first model of a "history" thus defined. At the same time certain forms which once had a vogue have now fallen into disuse: this is the case with the "Universal Histories" with continuous narrative, which were so much liked, for different reasons, in the Middle Ages and in the eighteenth century; in the present century Schlosser and Weber in Germany, Cantu in Italy, have produced the last specimens of them. This type has been abandoned for historical reasons, because we have ceased to regard humanity as a whole, bound together by a single evolution; and for practical reasons, because we have recognised the impossibility of collecting so overwhelming a mass of facts in a single work. The Universal Histories which are still published in collaboration (the Oncken collection is the best type of them), are, like the great manuals, composed of independent sections, each treated by a different author; they are publishers' combinations. Historians have in our days been led to adopt the division by states (national histories) and by epochs.[228]

B. There is in theory no reason why historical works intended principally for the public should not be conceived in the same spirit as works designed for students and specialists, nor why they should not be composed in the same manner, apart from simplifications and omissions which readily suggest themselves. And, in fact, there are in existence succinct, substantial, and readable summaries, in which no statement is advanced which is not tacitly supported by solid references, in which the acquisitions of science are precisely stated, judiciously explained, their significance and value clearly brought out. The French, thanks to their natural gifts of tact, dexterity, and accuracy of mind, excel, as a rule, in this department. There have been published in our country review-articles and works of higher popularisation in which the results of a number of original works have been cleverly condensed, in a way that has won the admiration of the very specialists who, by their heavy monographs, have rendered these works possible. Nothing, however, is more dangerous than popularisation. As a matter of fact, most works of popularisation do not conform to the modern ideal of historical exposition; we frequently find in them survivals of the ancient ideal, that of antiquity, the Renaissance, and the romantic school.

The explanation is easy. The defects of the historical works designed for the general public—defects which are sometimes enormous, and have, with many able minds, discredited popular works as a class—are the consequences of the insufficient preparation or of the inferior literary education of the "popularisers."

A populariser is excused from original research; but he ought to know everything of importance that has been published on his subject, he ought to be up to date, and to have thought out for himself the conclusions reached by the specialists. If he has not personally made a special study of the subject he proposes to treat, he must obviously read it up, and the task is long. For the professional populariser there is a strong temptation to study superficially a few recent monographs, to hastily string together or combine extracts from them, and, in order to render this medley more attractive, to deck it out, as far as is possible, with "general ideas" and external graces. The temptation is all the stronger from the circumstance that most specialists take no interest in works of popularisation, that these works are, in general, lucrative, and that the public at large is not in a position to distinguish clearly between honest and sham popularisation. In short, there are some, absurd as it may seem, who do not hesitate to summarise for others what they have not taken the trouble to learn for themselves, and to teach that of which they are ignorant. Hence, in most works of historical popularisation, there inevitably appear blemishes of every kind, which the well-informed always note with pleasure, but with a pleasure in which there is some touch of bitterness, because they alone can see these faults: unacknowledged borrowings, inexact references, mutilated names and texts, second-hand quotations, worthless hypotheses, imprudent assertions, puerile generalisations, and, in the enunciation of the most false or the most debatable opinions, an air of tranquil authority.[229]

On the other hand, men whose information is all that could be desired, whose monographs intended for specialists are full of merit, sometimes show themselves capable, when they write for the public, of grave offences against scientific method. The Germans are habitual offenders: consider Mommsen, Droysen, Curtius, and Lamprecht. The reason is that these authors, when they address the public, wish to produce an effect upon it. Their desire to make a strong impression leads them to a certain relaxation of scientific rigour, and to the old rejected habits of ancient historiography. These men, scrupulous and minute as they are when they are engaged in establishing details, abandon themselves, in their exposition of general questions, to their natural impulses, like the common run of men. They take sides, they censure, they extol; they colour, they embellish; they allow themselves to be influenced by personal, patriotic, moral, or metaphysical considerations. And, over and above all this, they apply themselves, with their several degrees of talent, to the task of producing works of art; in this endeavour those who have no talent make themselves ridiculous, and the talent of those who have any is spoilt by their preoccupation with the effect they wish to produce.

Not, let it be well understood, that "form" is of no importance, or that, provided he makes himself intelligible, the historian has a right to employ incorrect, vulgar, slovenly, or clumsy language. A contempt for rhetoric, for paste diamonds and paper flowers, does not exclude a taste for a pure and strong, a terse and pregnant style. Fustel de Coulanges was a good writer, although throughout his life he recommended and practised the avoidance of metaphor. On the contrary we see no harm in repeating[230] that the historian, considering the extreme complexity of the phenomena he undertakes to describe, is under an obligation not to write badly. But he should write consistently well, and never bedeck himself with finery.



CONCLUSION

I. History is only the utilisation of documents. But it is a matter of chance whether documents are preserved or lost. Hence the predominant part played by chance in the formation of history.

The quantity of documents in existence, if not of known documents, is given; time, in spite of all the precautions which are taken nowadays, is continually diminishing it; it will never increase. History has at its disposal a limited stock of documents; this very circumstance limits the possible progress of historical science. When all the documents are known, and have gone through the operations which fit them for use, the work of critical scholarship will be finished. In the case of some ancient periods, for which documents are rare, we can now see that in a generation or two it will be time to stop. Historians will then be obliged to take refuge more and more in modern periods. Thus history will not fulfil the dream which, in the nineteenth century, inspired the romantic school with so much enthusiasm for the study of history: it will not penetrate the mystery of the origin of societies; and, for want of documents, the beginnings of the evolution of humanity will always remain obscure.

The historian does not collect by his own observation the materials necessary for history as is done in the other sciences: he works on facts the knowledge of which has been transmitted by former observers. In history knowledge is not obtained, as in the other sciences, by direct methods, it is indirect. History is not, as has been said, a science of observation, but a science of reasoning.

In order to use facts which have been observed under unknown conditions, it is necessary to apply criticism to them, and criticism consists in a series of reasonings by analogy. The facts as furnished by criticism are isolated and scattered; in order to organise them into a structure it is necessary to imagine and group them in accordance with their resemblances to facts of the present day, an operation which also depends on the use of analogies. This necessity compels history to use an exceptional method. In order to frame its arguments from analogy, it must always combine the knowledge of the particular conditions under which the facts of the past occurred with an understanding of the general conditions under which the facts of humanity occur. Its method is to draw up special tables of the facts of an epoch in the past, and to apply to them sets of questions founded on the study of the present.

The operations which must necessarily be performed in order to pass from the inspection of documents to the knowledge of the facts and evolutions of the past are very numerous. Hence the necessity of the division and organisation of labour in history. It is requisite, on the one hand, that those specialists who occupy themselves with the search for documents, their restoration and preliminary classification, should co-ordinate their efforts, in order that the preparatory work of critical scholarship may be finished as soon as possible, under the best conditions as to accuracy and economy of labour. On the other hand, authors of partial syntheses (monographs) designed to serve as materials for more comprehensive syntheses ought to agree among themselves to work on a common method, in order that the results of each may be used by the others without preliminary investigations. Lastly, workers of experience should be found to renounce personal research and devote their whole time to the study of these partial syntheses, in order to combine them scientifically in comprehensive works of historical construction. And if the result of these labours were to bring out clear and certain conclusions as to the nature and the causes of social evolution, a truly scientific "philosophy of history" would have been created, which historians might acknowledge as legitimately crowning historical science.

Conceivably a day may come when, thanks to the organisation of labour, all existing documents will have been discovered, emended, arranged, and all the facts established of which the traces have not been destroyed. When that day comes, history will be established, but it will not be fixed: it will continue to be gradually modified in proportion as the direct study of existing societies becomes more scientific and permits a better understanding of social phenomena and their evolution; for the new ideas which will doubtless be acquired on the nature, the causes, and the relative importance of social facts will continue to transform the ideas which will be formed of the societies and events of the past.[231]

II. It is an obsolete illusion to suppose that history supplies information of practical utility in the conduct of life (Historia magistra vitae), lessons directly profitable to individuals and peoples; the conditions under which human actions are performed are rarely sufficiently similar at two different moments for the "lessons of history" to be directly applicable. But it is an error to say, by way of reaction, that "the distinguishing feature of history is to be good for nothing."[232] It has an indirect utility.

History enables us to understand the present in so far as it explains the origin of the existing state of things. Here we must admit that history does not offer an equal interest through the whole extent of time which it covers; there are remote generations whose traces are no longer visible in the world as it now is; for the purpose of explaining the political constitution of contemporary England, for example, the study of the Anglo-Saxon witangemot is without value, that of the events of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is all-important. The evolution of the civilised societies has within the last hundred years been accelerated to such a degree that, for the understanding of their present form, the history of these hundred years is more important than that of the ten preceding centuries. As an explanation of the present, history would almost reduce to the study of the contemporary period.

History is also indispensable for the completion of the political and social sciences, which are still in process of formation; for the direct observation of social phenomena (in a state of rest) is not a sufficient foundation for these sciences—there must be added a study of the development of these phenomena in time, that is, their history.[233] This is why all the sciences which deal with man (linguistic, law, science of religions, political economy, and so on) have in this century assumed the form of historical sciences.

But the chief merit of history is that of being an instrument of intellectual culture; it is so in several ways. Firstly, the practice of the historical method of investigation, of which the principles have been sketched in the present volume, is very hygienic for the mind, which it cures of credulity. Secondly, history, by exhibiting to us a great number of differing societies, prepares us to understand and tolerate a variety of usages; by showing us that societies have often been transformed, it familiarises us with variation in social forms, and cures us of a morbid dread of change. Lastly, the contemplation of past evolutions, which enables us to understand how the transformations of humanity are brought about by changes of habits and the renewal of generations, saves us from the temptation of applying biological analogies (selection, struggle for existence, inherited habits, and so on) to the explanation of social evolution, which is not produced by the operation of the same causes as animal evolution.



APPENDICES



APPENDIX I

THE SECONDARY TEACHING OF HISTORY IN FRANCE

I. The teaching of history is a recent addition to secondary education. Formerly history was taught to the sons of kings and great persons, in order to give them a preparation in the art of governing, according to the ancient tradition, but it was a sacred science reserved for the future rulers of states, a science for princes, not for subjects. The secondary schools which have been organised since the sixteenth century, ecclesiastical or secular, Catholic or Protestant, did not admit history into their plan of study, or only admitted it as an appendage to the study of the ancient languages. This was the tradition of the Jesuits in France; it was adopted by the University of Napoleon.