[83] When the modifications of the primitive text are the work of the author himself, they are "alterations." Internal analysis, and the comparison of different editions, bring them to light.

[84] See F. Blass, ibid., pp. 254 sqq.

[85] As a rule it matters little whether the name of the author has or has not been discovered. We read, however, in the Histoire litteraire de la France (xxvi. p. 388): "We have ignored anonymous sermons: writings of this facile character are of no importance for literary history when their authors are unknown." Are they of any more importance when we know the authors' names?

[86] In very favourable cases the examination of the plagiarist's mistakes has made it possible to determine even this style of handwriting, the size, and the manner of arrangement of the manuscript source. The deductions of the investigation of sources, like those of textual criticism, are sometimes supported by obvious palaeographical considerations.

[87] The Investigations of Julien Havet (Questions merovingiennes, Paris, 1896, 8vo) are regarded as models. Very difficult problems are there solved with faultless elegance. It is also well worth while to read the memoirs in which M. L. Delisle has discussed questions of origin. It is in the treatment of these questions that the most accomplished scholars win their triumphs.

[88] See the edition of H. R. Luard (vol. i., London, 1890, 8vo) in the Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores. Matthew of Westminster's Flores historiarum figure in the Roman "Index," because of the passages borrowed from the Chronica majora of Matthew of Paris, while the Chronica majora themselves have escaped censure.

[89] It would be instructive to draw up a list of the celebrated historical works, such as Augustin Thierry's Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angleterre par les Normands, whose authority has been completely destroyed after the authorship of their sources has been studied. Nothing amuses the gallery more than to see an historian convicted of having built a theory on falsified documents. Nothing is more calculated to cover an historian with confusion than to find that he has fallen into the error of treating seriously documents which are no documents at all.

[90] One of the crudest (and commonest) forms of "uncritical method" is that which consists in employing as if they were documents, and placing on the same footing as documents, the utterances of modern authors on the subject of documents. Novices do not make a sufficient distinction, in the works of modern authors, between what is added to the original source and what is taken from it.

[91] See a list of examples in Bernheim's Handbuch, pp. 283, 289.

[92] It is because it is necessary to subject documents of mediaeval and ancient history to the most searching criticism in respect of authorship that the study of antiquity and the middle ages passes for more "scientific" than that of modern times. The truth is, that it is merely hampered by more preliminary difficulties.

[93] Revue philosophique, 1887, ii. p. 170.

[94] The theory of the critical investigation of authorship is now settled, ne varietur; it is given in detail in Bernheim's Lehrbuch, pp. 242-340. For this reason we have had no scruple in dismissing it with a short sketch. In French, the introduction of M. G. Monod to his Etudes critiques sur les sources de l'histoire merovingienne (Paris, 1872, 8vo) contains elementary considerations on the subject. Cf. Revue Critique, 1873, i. p. 308.

[95] Renan, Feuilles detachees, p. 103.

[96] It would be very interesting to have information on the methods of work of the great scholars, particularly those who undertook long tasks of collection and classification. Some information of this kind is to be found in their papers, and occasionally in their correspondence. On the methods of Du Cange, see L. Feugere, Etude sur la vie et les ouvrages de Du Cange (Paris, 1858, 8vo), pp. 62 sqq.

[97] See J. G. Droysen, Grundriss der Historik, p. 19: "Critical classification does not exclusively adopt the chronological point of view.... The more varied the points of view which criticism uses to group materials, the more solid are the results yielded by converging lines of inquiry."

The system has now been abandoned of grouping documents in a Corpus or in regesta, as was done formerly, because they have the common characteristic of being unedited, or possibly for the exactly opposite reason. At one time the compilers of Analecta, Reliquiae manuscriptorum, "treasuries of anecdota," spicilegia, and so on, used to publish all the documents of a certain class which had the common feature of being unedited and of appearing interesting to them; on the other hand, Georgisch (Regesta Chronologico-diplomatica), Brequigny (Table chronologique des diplomes, chartes et actes imprimes concernant l'histoire de France), Wauters (Table chronologique des chartes et diplomes imprimes concernant l'histoire de Belgique), have grouped together all the documents of a certain species which had the common character of having been printed.

[98] J. P. Waltzing, Recueil general des inscriptions latines (Louvain, 1892, 8vo), p. 41.

[99] Ibid. When the geographical order is adopted, a difficulty arises from the fact that the origin of certain documents is unknown; many inscriptions preserved in museums have been brought there no one knows whence. The difficulty is analogous to that which results, for chronological regesta, from documents without date.

[100] Here the only difficulty arises in the case of documents whose incipit has been lost. In the eighteenth century Seguier devoted a great part of his life to the construction of a catalogue, in the alphabetical order of the incipit, of the Latin inscriptions, to the number of 50,000, which had at that time been published: he searched through some twelve thousand works. This vast compilation has remained unpublished and useless. Before undertaking work of such magnitude it is well to make sure that it is on a rational plan, and that the labour—the hard and thankless labour—will not be wasted.

[101] See G. Waitz, Ueber die Herausgabe und Bearbeitung von Regesten, in the Historische Zeitschrift, xl. (1878), pp. 280-95.

[102] In the absence of a predetermined logical order, and when the chronological order is not suitable, it is sometimes an advantage to provisionally group the documents (that is, the slips) in the alphabetical order of the words chosen as headings (Schlagwoerter). This is what is called the "dictionary system."

[103] See Langlois, Manuel de bibliographie historique, i. p. 88.

[104] This argument is easy to develop, and often has been, recently by M. J. Bedier, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, February 15, 1894, pp. 932 sqq.

There are some who willingly admit that the labours of erudition are useful, but ask impatiently whether "the editing of a text" or "the deciphering of a Gothic parchment" is "the supreme effort of the human mind," and whether the intellectual ability implied by the practice of external criticism does or does not justify "all the fuss made over those who possess it." On this question, obviously devoid of importance, a controversy was held between M. Brunetiere, who recommended scholars to be modest, and M. Boucherie, who insisted on their reasons for being proud, in the pages of the Revue des langues romanes, 1880, vols. i and ii.

[105] There have been men who were critics of the first water where external criticism alone was concerned, but who never rose to the conception of higher criticism, or to a true understanding of history.

[106] Renan, Essais de morale et de critique, p. 36.

[107] "If it were only for the sake of the severe mental discipline, I should not think very highly of the philosopher who had not, at least once in his life, worked at the elucidation of some special point" (L'Avenir de la science, p. 136).

[108] On the question whether it is necessary for every one to do "all the preliminary grubbing for himself," cf. J. M. Robertson, "Buckle and His Critics" (London, 1895, 8vo), p. 299.

[109] Renan, L'Avenir de la science, p. 230.

[110] A university professor is in a very good position for discouraging and encouraging vocations; but "it is by personal effort that the goal (critical skill) must be attained by the students, as Waitz well said in an academic oration; the teacher's part in this work is small...." (Revue Critique, 1874, ii. p. 232).

[111] Quoted by Fr. X. von Wegele, Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie (Muenchen, 1885, 8vo), p. 653.

[112] Renan, ibid., p. 125.

[113] B. Haureau, Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits latins de la Bibliotheque nationale, i. (Paris, 1890, 8vo). p. v.

[114] Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des chartes, 1896, p. 88. Compare analogous traits in the interesting intellectual biography of the Hellenist, palaeographer, and bibliographer, Charles Graux, by E. Lavisse (Questions d'enseignement national, Paris, 1885, 18mo, pp. 265 sqq.).

[115] See H. A. L. Fisher in the Fortnightly Review, Dec. 1894, p. 815.

[116] Most of those who have a vocation for critical scholarship possess both the power of solving problems and the taste for collecting. It is, however, easy to divide them into two categories according as they show a marked preference for textual criticism and investigation of authorship on the one hand, or for the more absorbing and less intellectual labours of collection on the other. J. Havet, a past-master in the study of erudite problems, always declined to undertake a general collection of Merovingian royal charters, a work which his admirers expected from him. In this connection he readily admitted his "want of taste for feats of endurance" (Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des chartes, 1896, p. 222).

[117] It is common to hear the opposite of this maintained, namely, that the labours of critical scholarship (external criticism) have this advantage over other labours in the field of history that they are within the range of average ability, and that the most moderate intellects, after a suitable preliminary drilling, may be usefully employed in them. It is quite true that men with no elevation of soul or power of thought can make themselves useful in the field of criticism, but then they must have special qualities. The mistake is to think that with good will and a special drilling every one without exception can be fitted for the operations of external criticism. Among those who are incapable of these operations, as well as among those who are fitted for them, there are both men of sense and blockheads.

[118] A. Philippi, Einige Bemerkungen ueber den philologischen Unterricht, Giessen, 1890, 4to. Cf. Revue Critique, 1892, i. p. 25.

[119] J. von Pflugk-Harttung, Geschichtsbetrachtungen, Gotha, 1890, 8vo.

[120] Ibid., p. 21.

[121] Cf. supra, p. 99.

[122] Renan, L'Avenir de la science, p. xiv.

[123] Revue historique, lxiii. (1897), p. 320.

[124] Renan, ibid., pp. 122, 243. The same thought has been more than once expressed, in different language, by E. Lavisse, in his addresses to the students of Paris (Questions d'enseignement national, pp. 14, 86, &c.).

[125] One of us (M. Langlois) proposes to give elsewhere a detailed account of all that has been done in the last three hundred years, but especially in the nineteenth century, for the organisation of historical work in the principal countries of the world. Some information has already been collected on this subject by J. Franklin Jameson, "The Expenditures of Foreign Governments in behalf of History," in the "Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1891," pp. 38-61.

[126] L. Feugere, Etude sur la vie et les ouvrages de Du Cange, pp. 55, 58.

[127] Even the specialists in external criticism themselves, when they do not take the line of despising all synthesis a priori, are almost as easily dazzled as anybody else by incorrect syntheses, by a show of "general ideas," or by literary artifices, in spite of their clear-sightedness where works of critical scholarship are concerned.

[128] The sciences of observation do, however, need a species of criticism. We do not accept without verification results obtained by anybody, but only results obtained by those who know how to work. But this criticism is made once for all, and applies to the author, not to his works; historical criticism, on the contrary, is obliged to deal separately with every part of a document.

[129] Cf. supra, book ii. chap. i. p. 67.

[130] Cf. supra, p. 122.

[131] Taine appears to have proceeded thus in vol. ii, La Revolution, of his Origines de la France contemporaine. He had made extracts from unpublished documents and inserted a great number of them in his work, but it would seem that he did not first methodically analyse them in order to determine their meaning.

[132] Fustel de Coulanges explains very clearly the danger of this method: "Some students begin by forming an opinion ... and it is not till afterwards that they begin to read the texts. They run a great risk of not understanding them at all, or of understanding them wrongly. What happens is that a kind of tacit contest goes on between the text and the preconceived opinions of the reader; the mind refuses to grasp what is contrary to its idea, and the issue of the contest commonly is, not that the mind surrenders to the evidence of the text, but that the text yields, bends, and accommodates itself to the preconceived opinion.... To bring one's personal ideas into the study of texts is the subjective method. A man thinks he is contemplating an object, and it is his own idea that he is contemplating. He thinks he is observing a fact, and the fact at once assumes the colour, and the significance his mind wishes it to have. He thinks he is reading a text, and the words of the text take a particular meaning to suit a ready-made opinion. It is this subjective method which has done most harm to the history of the Merovingian epoch.... To read the texts was not enough; what was required was to read them before forming any convictions...." (Monarchie franque, p. 31). For the same reason Fustel de Coulanges deprecated the reading of one document in the light of another; he protested against the custom of explaining the Germania of Tacitus by the barbaric laws. In the Revue des questions historiques, 1897, vol. i, a lesson on method, De l'analyse des textes historiques, is given apropos of a commentary by M. Monod on Gregory of Tours: "The historian ought to begin his work with an exact analysis of each document.... The analysis of a text ... consists in determining the sense of each word and eliciting the true meaning of the writer.... Instead of searching for the sense of each of the historian's words, and for the thought he has expressed in them, he [M. Monod] comments on each sentence in the light of what is found in Tacitus or the Salic law.... We should understand what analysis really is. Many talk about it, few use it.... The use of analysis is, by an attentive study of every detail, to elicit from a text all that is in it; not to introduce into the text what is not there."

After reading this excellent advice it will be instructive to read M. Monod's reply (in the Revue historique); it will be seen that Fustel de Coulanges himself did not always practise the method he recommended.

[133] Cf. supra, p. 103.

[134] The work of analysis may be entrusted to a second person; this is what happens in the case of regesta and catalogues of records; if the analysis has been correctly performed by the compiler of regesta, there is no need to do it over again.

[135] Practical examples of this procedure will be found in Deloche, La Trustis et l'antrustion royal (Paris, 1873, 8vo), and, above all, in Fustel de Coulanges. See especially the study of the words marca (Recherches sur quelques problemes d'histoire, pp. 322-56), mallus (ibid., 372-402), alleu (L'Alleu et le domaine rural, pp. 149-70), portio (ibid., pp. 239-52).

[136] The theory and an example of this procedure will be found in Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problemes d'histoire (pp. 189-289), with reference to the statements of Tacitus about the Germans. See especially pp. 263-89, the discussion of the celebrated passage on the German mode of culture.

[137] Fustel de Coulanges formulates it thus: "It is never safe to separate two words from their context; this is just the way to mistake their meaning" (Monarchie franque, p. 228, note I).

[138] This is how Fustel de Coulanges condemns this practice: "I am not speaking of pretenders to learning who quote second-hand, and at most take the trouble to verify whether the phrase they have seen quoted really occurs in the passage indicated. To verify quotations is one thing and to read texts quite another, and the two often lead to opposite results" (Revue des questions historiques, 1887, vol. i.). See also (L'Alleu et le domaine rural, pp. 171-98) the lesson given to M. Glasson on the theory of the community of land: forty-five quotations are studied in the light of their context, with the object of proving that none of them bears the meaning M. Glasson attributed to it. We may also compare the reply: Glasson, Les Communaux et le domaine rural a l'epoque franque, Paris, 1890.

[139] All that is original in Fustel de Coulanges rests on his interpretative criticism; he never did personally any work in external criticism, and his critical examination of authors' good faith and accuracy was hampered by a respect for the statements of ancient authors which amounted to credulity.

[140] A parallel difficulty occurs in the interpretation of illustrative monuments; the representations are not always to be taken literally. In the Behistun monument Darius tramples the vanquished chiefs under foot: this is a metaphor. Mediaeval miniatures show us persons lying in bed with crowns on their heads: this is to symbolise their royal rank; the painter did not mean that they wore their crowns to sleep in.

[141] A. Boeckh, in the Encyclopaedie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften, second edition (1886), has given a theory of hermeneutic to which Bernheim has been content to refer.

[142] The method of extracting information on external facts from a writer's conceptions forms part of the theory of constructive reasoning. See book iii.

[143] For example, Pere de Smedt, Tardif, Droysen, and even Bernheim.

[144] Descartes, who came at a time when history still consisted in the reproduction of pre-existing narratives, did not see how to apply methodical doubt to the subject; he therefore refused to allow it a place among the sciences.

[145] Fustel de Coulanges himself did not rise above this kind of timidity. With reference to a speech attributed to Clovis by Gregory of Tours, he says: "Doubtless we are unable to affirm that these words were ever pronounced. But, all the same, we ought not to affirm, in contradiction to Gregory of Tours, that they were not.... The wisest course is to accept Gregory's text" (Monarchie franque, p. 66). The wisest, or rather the only scientific course, is to admit that we know nothing about the words of Clovis, for Gregory himself had no knowledge of them.

[146] Quite recently, E. Meyer, one of the most critically expert historians of antiquity, has in his work, Die Entstehung des Judenthums (Halle, 1896, 8vo), revived this strange juridical argument in favour of the narrative of Nehemiah. M. Bouche-Leclercq, in a remarkable study on "The Reign of Seleucus II. (Callinicus) and Historical Criticism" (Revue des Universites du Midi, April-June 1897), seems, by way of reaction against the hypercriticism of Niebuhr and Droysen, to incline towards an analogous theory: "Historical criticism, if it is not to degenerate into agnosticism—which would be suicidal—or into individual caprice, must place a certain amount of trust in testimony which it cannot verify, as long as it is not flatly contradicted by other testimony of equal value." M. Bouche-Leclercq is right as against the historian who, "after having discredited all his witnesses, claims to put himself in their place, and sees with their eyes something quite different from what they themselves saw." But when the "testimony" is insufficient to give us the scientific knowledge of a fact, the only correct attitude is "agnosticism," that is, a confession of ignorance; we have no right to shirk this confession because chance has permitted the destruction of the documents which might have contradicted the testimony.

[147] The "Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz" furnish a conclusive instance: the anecdote of the ghosts met by Retz and Turenne. A. Feillet, who edited Retz in the Collection des Grands Ecrivains de la France, has shown (vol. i. p. 192) that this story, so vividly narrated, is false from beginning to end.

[148] A good example of the fascination exerted by a circumstantial narrative is the legend respecting the origin of the League of the three primitive Swiss cantons (Gessler and the Gruetli conspirators), which was fabricated by Tschudi in the sixteenth century, became classical on the production of Schiller's "William Tell," and has only been extirpated with the greatest difficulty. (See Rilliet, Origines de la Confederation suisse, Geneva, 1869, 8vo.)

[149] Striking example of falsehoods due to vanity are to be found in abundance in the Economies royales of Sully and the Memoires of Retz.

[150] Fustel de Coulanges himself went to the formulae of the inscriptions in honour of the emperors for a proof that the peoples liked the imperial regime. "If we read the inscriptions, the sentiment which they exhibit is always one of satisfaction and gratitude.... See the collection of Orelli, the most frequent expressions are...." And the enumeration of the titles of respect given to the emperors ends with this strange aphorism: "It would show ignorance of human nature to see nothing but flattery in all this." There is not even flattery here; there is nothing but formulae.

[151] Suger, in his life of Louis VI., is a model of this type.

[152] The Chronicon Helveticum of Tschudi is a striking instance.

[153] Aristophanes and Demosthenes are two striking examples of the power great writers have of paralysing critics and obscuring facts. Not till the close of the nineteenth century has any one ventured to recognise frankly their lack of good faith.

[154] For example, the account of the election of Otto I. in the Gesta Ottonis of Wittekind.

[155] For example, the statistics on the population, the commerce, and the wealth of European countries given by the Venetian ambassadors of the sixteenth century, and the descriptions of the usages of the Germans in the Germania of Tacitus.

[156] It would be interesting to examine how much of Roman or Merovingian history would be left if we rejected all documents but those which represent direct observation.

[157] It will be seen why we have not separately defined and studied "first-hand documents." The question has not been raised in the proper manner in historical practice. The distinction ought to apply to statements, not to documents. It is not the document which comes to us at first, second, or third hand; it is the statement. What is called a "first-hand document" is nearly always composed in part of second-hand statements about facts of which the author had no personal knowledge. The name "second-hand document" is given to those which, like the work of Livy, contain nothing first-hand; but the distinction is too crude to serve as a guide in the critical examination of statements.

[158] There is much less modification where the oral tradition assumes a regular or striking form, as is the case with verses, maxims, proverbs.

[159] Sometimes the form of the phrase tells its own tale, when, in the midst of a detailed narrative, obviously of legendary origin, we come across a curt, dry entry in annalistic style, obviously copied from a written document. That is what we find in Livy (see Nitzsch, Die roemische Annalistik, Leipzig, 1873, 8vo), and in Gregory of Tours (see Loebell, Gregor von Tours, Leipzig, 1868, 8vo).

[160] The events which strike the popular imagination and are transmitted by legend are not generally those which seem to us the most important. The heroes of the chansons de gestes are hardly known historically. The Breton epic songs relate, not to the great historical events, as Villemarque's collection led people to believe, but to obscure local episodes. The same holds of the Scandinavian sagas; for the most part they relate to quarrels among the villagers of Iceland or the Orkneys.

[161] The theory of legend is one of the most advanced parts of criticism. Bernheim (in his Lehrbuch, pp. 380-90) gives a good summary and a bibliography of it.

[162] "History of Greece," vols. i. and ii. Compare Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israel, vol. i. (Paris, 1887, 8vo), Introduction.

[163] And yet Niebuhr made use of the Roman legends to construct a theory, which it was afterwards necessary to demolish, of the struggle between the patricians and the plebeians; and Curtius, twenty years after Grote, looked for historical facts in the Greek legends.

[164] See supra, pp. 93 sqq.

[165] Cf. supra, p. 166.

[166] It is often said, "The author would not have dared to write this if it had not been true." This argument does not apply to societies in a low state of civilisation. Louis VIII. dared to write that John Lackland had been condemned by the verdict of his peers.

[167] See above, p. 153. Similarly, the particular facts which compose the history of forms (palaeography, linguistic science) are directly established by the analysis of the document.

[168] Primitive Greece has been studied in the Homeric poems. Mediaeval private life has been reconstructed principally from the chansons de gestes. (See C. V. Langlois, Les Traditions sur l'histoire de la societe francaise au moyen age d'apres les sources litteraires, in the Revue historique, March-April, 1897.)

[169] Most historians refrain from rejecting a legend till its falsity has been proved, and if by chance no document has been preserved to contradict it, they adopt it provisionally. This is how the first five centuries of Rome are still dealt with. This method, unfortunately still too general, helps to prevent history from being established as a science.

[170] For the logical justification of this principle in history see C. Seignobos, Revue Philosophique, July-August 1887. Complete scientific certitude is only produced by an agreement between observations made on different methods; it is to be found at the junction of two different paths of research.

[171] This case is studied and a good example given by Bernheim, Lehrbuch, p. 421.

[172] It is hardly necessary to enter a caution against the childish method of counting the documents on each side of a question and deciding by the majority. The statement of a single author who was acquainted with a fact is evidently worth more than a hundred statements made by persons who knew nothing about it. The rule has been formulated long ago: Ne numerentur, sed ponderentur.

[173] Cf. supra, p. 94.

[174] It is hardly possible to study here the special difficulties which arise in the application of these principles, as when the author, wishing to conceal his indebtedness, has introduced deviations in order to put his readers off the scent, or when the author has combined statements taken from different documents.

[175] Here we merely indicate the principle of the method of confirmation; its applications would require a very lengthy study.

[176] Pere de Smedt has devoted to this question a part of his Principes de la critique histoire (Paris, 1887, 12mo).

[177] The solution of the question is different in the case of the sciences of direct observation, especially the biological sciences. Science knows nothing of the possible and the impossible; it only recognises facts which have been correctly or incorrectly observed: facts which had been declared impossible, as the existence of aerolites, have been discovered to be genuine. The very notion of a miracle is metaphysical; it implies a conception of the universe as a whole which transcends the limits of observation. (See Wallace, "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism.")

[178] See above, p. 194.

[179] In the experimental sciences an hypothesis is a form of question accompanied by a provisional answer.

[180] Fustel de Coulanges saw the necessity of this. In the preface to his Recherches sur quelques problemes d'histoire (Paris, 1885, 8vo) he announces his intention of presenting his researches "in the form which all my works have, that is, in the form of questions which I ask myself, and on which I endeavour to throw light."

[181] Fustel de Coulanges himself seems to have been misled by them: "History is a science; it does not imagine, it only sees" (Monarchie franque, p. 1). "History, like every science, consists in a process of discerning facts, analysing them, comparing them, and noting their connections.... The historian ... seeks facts and attains them by the minute observation of texts, as the chemist finds his in the course of experiments conducted with minute precision" (Ibid., p. 39).

[182] The subjective character of history has been brought out into strong relief by the philosopher G. Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (Leipzig, 1892, 8vo).

[183] This has been eloquently put by Carlyle and Michelet. It is also the substance of the famous expression of Ranke: "I wish to state how that really was" (wie es eigentlich gewesen).

[184] Cf. pp. 219-23.

[185] Curtius in his "History of Greece," Mommsen in his "History of Rome" (before the Empire), Lamprecht in his "History of Germany."

[186] It will be enough to mention Augustin Thierry, Michelet, and Carlyle.

[187] See P. Guiraud, Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 1896, 12mo), p. 164, for some very judicious observations on this subject.

[188] The classification of M. Lacombe (De l'histoire consideree comme science, chap. vi.), founded on the motives of actions and the wants they are intended to satisfy, is very judicious from the philosophical point of view, but does not meet the practical needs of historians; it rests on abstract psychological categories (economic, reproductive, sympathetic, ambitious, &c.), and ends by classing together very different species of phenomena (military institutions along with economics).

[189] Ecclesiastical institutions form part of the government; in German manuals of antiquities they are found among institutions, while religion is classed with the arts.

[190] Modes of transport, which are often put under commerce, form a species of industry.

[191] Property is an institution of mixed character, being at once economic, social, and political.

[192] For the history and biography of this movement see Bernheim, Lehrbuch, pp. 45-55.

[193] It is no longer necessary to demonstrate the nullity of the notion of race. It used to be applied to vague groups, formed by a nation or a language; for race as understood by historians (Greek, Roman, Germanic, Celtic, Slavonic races) has nothing but the name in common with race in the anthropological sense—that is, a group of men possessing the same hereditary characteristics. It has been reduced to an absurdity by the abuse Taine made of it. A very good criticism of it will be found in Lacombe (ibid., chap. xviii.), and in Robertson ("The Saxon and the Celt," London, 1897, 8vo).

[194] There is no general agreement on the proper place in history of retrograde changes, of those oscillations which bring things back to the point from which they started.

[195] The theory of chance as affecting history has been expounded in a masterly manner by M. Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des idees et des evenements dans les temps modernes (Paris, 1872, 2 vols. 8vo).

[196] Lamprecht, in a long article, Was ist Kulturgeschichte, published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift fuer Geschichtswissenschaft, New Series, vol. i., 1896, has attempted to base the history of civilisation on the theory of a collective soul of society producing "social-psychic" phenomena common to the whole society, and differing from period to period. This is a metaphysical hypothesis.

[197] The expression national history, introduced in the interests of patriotism, denotes the same thing. The history of the nation means practically the history of the State.

[198] See Cournot, ibid., i. p. iv.

[199] We have already (p. 143) treated of this fault of method.

[200] The discussion of this argument, which was formerly much used in religious history, was a favourite subject with the earlier writers who treated of methodology, and still occupies a considerable space in the Principes de la critique historique of Pere de Smedt.

[201] This is what Montesquieu attempted in his Esprit des Lois. In a course of lectures at the Sorbonne, I have endeavoured to give a sketch of such a comprehensive account.—[Ch. S.]

[202] See p. 204.

[203] Michelet has discredited the study of physiological influences by the abuse which he has made of it in the last part of his "History of France"; it is, however, indispensable for the understanding of a man's career.

[204] On the subject of statistics, a method which is now perfected, a good summary with a bibliography will be found in the Handwoerterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena, 1890-94, Ia. 8vo. and two good methodical treatises, J. von. Mayr, Theoretische Statistik and Bevoelkerungsstatistik, in the collection of Marquardsen and Seydel, Freiburg, 1895 and 1897, Ia. 8vo.

[205] As is done by Boardeau (l'Histoire et les Historiens, Paris, 1888, 8vo), who proposes to reduce the whole of history to a series of statistics.

[206] A good example will be found in Lacombe, De l'Histoire Consideree Comme Science, p. 146.

[207] We have thought it useless to discuss here the question whether history ought, in accordance with the ancient tradition, to fulfil yet another function, whether it ought to pass judgment on men and events, that is to supplement the description of facts by expressions of approbation or censure, either from the point of view of a moral ideal, general or particular (the ideal of a sect, a party, or a nation), or from the practical point of view, by examining, as Polybius did, whether historical actions were well or ill adapted to their purpose. An addition of this kind could be made to any descriptive study: the naturalist might express his sympathy with or his admiration for an animal, he might condemn the ferocity of the tiger, and praise the devotion of the hen to her chickens. But it is obvious that in history, as in every other subject, judgments of this kind are foreign to science.

[208] Comparison between two facts of detail belonging to very different aggregates (for example the comparison of Abd-el-Kader with Jagurtha, of Napoleon with Sforza) is a striking method of exposition, but not a means of reaching a scientific conclusion.

[209] This system is still followed by several contemporary authors, the Belgian jurist Laurent in his Etudes sur l'histoire de l'humanite, the German Rocholl, and even Flint, the English historian of the philosophy of history.

[210] Thus Taine, in Les origines de la France Contemporaine, explains the origin of the privileges of the ancien regime by the services formerly rendered by the privileged classes.

[211] A good criticism of the theory of progress will be found in P. Lacombe, De l'histoire Consideree Comme Science.

[212] See the very clear declarations of one of the principal representatives of linguistic science in France, V. Henry, Antinomies linguistiques, Paris, 1896, 8vo.

[213] See above, p. 284.

[214] Lamprecht, in the article quoted, p. 247, after having compared the artistic, religious, and economic evolutions of mediaeval Germany, and after having shown that they can all be divided into periods of the same duration, explains the simultaneous transformations of the different usages and institutions of a given society by the transformations of the collective "social soul." This is only another form of the same hypothesis.

[215] The historians of literature, who began by searching for the connection between the arts and the rest of social life, thus gave the first place to the most difficult question.

[216] For the earlier epochs, consult good histories of Greek, Roman, and mediaeval literature which contain chapters devoted to "historians." For the modern period, consult the Introduction of M. G. Monod to vol. i. of the Revue historique; the work by F. X. v. Wegde, Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie (1885), relates only to Germany, and is mediocre. Some "Notes on History in France in the Nineteenth Century" have been published by C. Jullian as an Introduction to his Extraits des historiens francais du xixe siecle (Paris, 1897, 12mo). The history of modern historiography has still to be written. See the partial attempt by E. Bernheim, Lehrbuch, pp. 13 sqq.

[217] It would be interesting to find out what are the earliest printed books furnished with notes in the modern fashion. Bibliophiles whom we have consulted are unable to say, their attention never having been drawn to the point.

[218] It is clear that the romantic methods which are used for the purpose of obtaining effects of local colour and "revising" the past, often puerile in the hands of the ablest writers, are altogether intolerable when they are employed by any others. See a good example (criticism of a book of M. Mourin by M. Monod) in the Revue Critique, 1874, ii. pp. 163 sqq.

[219] It is a commonplace, and an error all the same, to maintain the exact opposite of the above, namely, that the works of critical scholars live, while the works of historians grow antiquated, so that scholars gain a more solid reputation than historians do: "Pere Daniel is now read no longer, and Pere Anselme is always read." But the works of scholars become antiquated too, and the fact that not all the parts of the work of Pere Anselme have yet been superseded (that is why he is still read), ought not to deceive us: the great majority of the works written by scholars, like those of researchers in the sciences proper, are provisional and doomed to oblivion.

[220] "It is in vain that those professionally concerned try to deceive themselves on this point; not everything in the past is interesting." "Supposing we were to write the Life of the Duke of Angouleme," says Pecuchet. "But he was an imbecile!" answers Bouvard; "Never mind; personages of the second order often have an enormous influence, and perhaps he was able to control the march of events."—G. Flaubert, Bouvard et Pecuchet, p. 157.

[221] As persons of moderate ability have a tendency to prefer insignificant subjects, there is active competition in the treatment of such subjects. We often have occasion to note the simultaneous appearance of several monographs on the same subject. It is not rare for the subject to be altogether devoid of importance.

[222] Interesting subjects for monographs are not always capable of being treated: there are some which the state of the sources puts out of the question. This is why beginners, even those who have ability, experience so much embarrassment in choosing subjects for their first monographs, when they are not aided by good advice or good fortune, and often lose themselves in attempting the impossible. It would be very severe, and very unjust, to judge any one from the list of his first monographs.

[223] In practice it is proper to give at the beginning a list of the sources used in the whole of the monograph (with appropriate bibliographical information as to the printed works, and in the case of manuscripts, a mention of the nature of the documents and their shelf-marks); besides, each special statement should be accompanied by its proof: the exact text of the supporting document should be quoted, if possible, so that the reader may be in a position to verify the interpretation; otherwise an analysis of it should be given in a note, or, at the least, the title of the document, with its shelf-mark, or with a precise indication of the place where it was published. The general rule is to put the reader in a position to know the exact reasons for which such and such conclusions have been adopted at each stage of the analysis.

Beginners, resembling ancient authors in this respect, naturally do not observe all these rules. Frequently, instead of quoting the text or the titles of documents, they refer to these by their shelf-mark, or by the title of the general collection in which they are printed, from which the reader can learn nothing as to the nature of the text adduced. The following is another mistake of the crudest kind, and yet of frequent occurrence: Beginners, and persons of little experience, do not always understand why the custom has been introduced of inserting footnotes; at the bottom of the pages of the books they have they see a fringe of notes; they think themselves bound to fringe their own books in the same way, but their notes are adventitious and purely ornamental; they do not serve either to exhibit the proof or to enable the reader to verify the statements. All these methods are inadmissible, and should be vigorously denounced.

[224] Almost all beginners have an unfortunate tendency to wander off into superfluous digressions, to amass reflections and pieces of information which have no relevance to the main subject; they would recognise, if they reflected, that the causes of this tendency are bad taste, a kind of naive vanity, sometimes mental confusion.

[225] We meet with declarations like the following: "I have been long familiar with the documents of this period and this class. I have an impression that such and such conclusions, which I cannot prove, are true." Of two things one: either the author can give the reasons for his impression, and then we can judge them, or he cannot give them, and we may assume that he has none of serious value.

[226] This difference has a tendency to disappear. The most recent alphabetical collections of historical facts (the Realencyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft of Pauly-Wissowa, the Dictionnaire des antiquites of Daremberg and Saglio, the Dictionary of National Biography of Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee) are furnished with a sufficiently ample apparatus. It is principally in biographical dictionaries that the custom of giving no proofs tends to persist; see the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, &c.

[227] Revue Critique, 1874, i. p. 327.

[228] The custom of appending to "histories," that is to narratives of political events, summaries of the results obtained by the special historians of art, literature, &c., still persists. A "History of France" would not be considered complete if it did not contain chapters on the history of art, literature, manners, &c., in France. However, it is not the summary account of special evolutions, described at second hand from the works of specialists, which is in its proper place in a scientific "History"; it is the study of those general facts which have dominated the special evolutions in their entirety.

[229] It is hard to imagine what it is possible for the most interesting and best established results of modern criticism to become, in the hands of negligent and unskilful popularisers. The persons who know most of these possibilities are those who have occasion to read the improvised "compositions" of candidates in history examinations: the ordinary defects of inferior popularisation are here pushed sometimes to an absurd length.

[230] Cf. supra, p. 266.

[231] We have spoken above of the element of subjectivity which it is impossible to eliminate from historical construction, and which has been misinterpreted to the extent of denying history the character of a science: this element of subjectivity which troubled Pecuchet (G. Flaubert, Bouvard et Pecuchet, p. 157) and Sylvestre Bonnard (A. France, Le crime de Silvestre Bonnard, p. 310), and which causes Faust to say:

"Die Zeiten der Vergangenheit Sind uns ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln. Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst, Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist, In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln."

["Past times are to us a book with seven seals. What you call the spirit of the times is at bottom your own spirit, in which the times are mirrored."—Goethe, Faust, i. 3.]

[232] A saying attributed to a "Sorbonne professor" by M. de la Blanchere (Revue Critique, 1895, i. p. 176). Others have declaimed on the theme that the knowledge of history is mischievous and paralyses. See F. Nietzsche, Unzeitgemaesse Betrachtungen, II. Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie fuer das Leben, Leipzig, 1874, 8vo.

[233] History and the social sciences are mutually dependent on each other; they progress in parallel lines by a continual interchange of services. The social sciences furnish a knowledge of the present, required by history for the purpose of making representations of the facts and reasoning from documents. History gives the information about evolutions which is necessary in order to understand the present.

[234] The same institution has been adopted in German-speaking countries under the name of Leitfaden (guiding-thread), and in English-speaking countries under the name of Text-book.

[235] We must make an exception of Michelet's Precis de l'histoire moderne, and do Duruy the justice to acknowledge that in his school-books, even in the first editions, he has endeavoured, often successfully, to make his narratives both interesting and instructive.

[236] For a criticism of this method, see above, p. 265.

[237] The most complete, and probably the most accurate, account of the state of the secondary teaching of history after the reforms has been given by a Spaniard, R. Altamira, La Ensenanza de la historia, 2nd edition, Madrid, 1895, 8vo.

[238] We are here treating only of France. But, in order to dispel an illusion of the French public, we may remark that historical pedagogy is still less advanced in English-speaking countries, where the methods used are still mechanical, and even in German-speaking countries, where it is hampered by the conception of patriotic teaching.

[239] I have endeavoured, in a course of lectures at the Sorbonne, to do a part of this work.—[Ch. S.]

[240] Let it be noted, however, that to the question put to the candidates for the modern Baccalaureate in July 1897, "What purpose is served by the teaching of history?" eighty per cent. of the candidates answered, in effect, either because they believed it, or because they thought it would please, "To promote patriotism."—[C. V. L.]

[241] This is what has been produced in Germany under the name of Quellenbuch.

[242] The same pedagogic theory will be found in the preface to my Histoire narrative et descriptive des anciens peuples de l'Orient, Supplement for the use of professors, Paris, 1890, 8vo.—[Ch. S.]

[243] I have treated this question in the Revue universitaire, 1896, vol. i.—[Ch. S.]

[244] On the organisation of higher education in France at this epoch and on the first reforms, see the excellent work of M. L. Liard, l'Enseignement superieur en France, Paris, 1888-94, 2 vols. 8vo.

[245] E. Lavisse, Questions d'enseignement national, p. 12.

[246] Cf. supra, p. 55.

[247] Revue historique, lxiii. (1897), p. 96.

[248] See the Revue internationale d'enseignement, Feb. 1893; the Revue universitaire, June 1892, Oct. and Nov. 1894, July 1895; and the Political Science Quarterly, Sept 1894.

[249] Revue historique, l.c. p. 98. I have developed elsewhere what I have here contented myself with stating. See the Revue internationale de l'enseignement, Nov. 1897.—[C. V. L.]

THE END