Introduction to the study of history

by Charles Victor Langlois; Charles Seignobos

By drawing up the list of the fundamental phenomena which we may expect to find in the life of every individual and every people, we shall have suggested to us a set of general questions which will be summary, but still sufficient to enable us to arrange the bulk of historical facts in a certain number of natural groups, each of which will form a special branch of history. This scheme of general classification will supply the scaffolding of historical construction.

The set of general questions will only apply to phenomena of constant occurrence: it cannot anticipate the thousands of local or accidental events which enter into the life of an individual or a nation; it will, therefore, not contain all the questions which the historian must answer before he can give a complete picture of the past. The detailed study of the facts will require the use of lists of questions entering more into detail, and differing according to the nature of the events, the men, or the societies studied. In order to frame these lists, we begin by setting down those questions or matters of detail which are suggested by the mere reading of the documents; but for the purpose of arranging these questions, often indeed for the purpose of making the list complete, recourse must be had to the systematic a priori method. Among the classes of facts, the persons, and the societies with which we are well acquainted (either from direct observation or from history), we look for those which resemble the facts, the persons, or the societies which we wish to study. By analysing the scheme of arrangement used in the scientific treatment of these familiar cases we shall learn what questions ought to be asked in reference to the analogous cases which we propose to investigate. Of course the model must be chosen intelligently; we must not apply to a barbarous society a list of questions framed on the study of a civilised nation, and ask with regard to a feudal domain what agents corresponded to each of our ministers of state—as Boutaric did in his study of the administration of Alphonse of Poitiers.

This method of drawing up lists of questions which bases all historical construction on an a priori procedure, would be objectionable if history really were a science of observation; and perhaps some will think it compares very unfavourably with the a posteriori methods of the natural sciences. But its justification is simple: it is the only method which it is possible to employ, and the only method which, as a matter of fact, ever has been employed. The moment an historian attempts to put in order the facts contained in documents, he constructs out of the knowledge he has (or thinks he has) of human affairs a scheme of arrangement which is the equivalent of a list of questions—unless, perhaps, he adopts a scheme which one of his predecessors has constructed in a similar manner. But when this work has been performed unconsciously, the scheme of arrangement remains incomplete and confused. Thus it is not a case of deciding whether to work with or without an a priori set of questions—we must work with such a set in any case—the choice merely lies between the unconscious use of an incomplete and confused set of questions and the conscious use of a precise and complete set.

VI. We can now sketch the plan of historical construction in a way which will determine the series of synthetic operations necessary to raise the edifice.

The critical analysis of the documents has supplied the materials—historical facts still in a state of dispersion. We begin by imagining these facts on the model of what we suppose to be the analogous facts of the present; by combining elements taken from reality at different points, we endeavour to form a mental image which shall resemble as nearly as possible that which would have been produced by direct observation of the past event. This is the first operation, inseparable in practice from the reading of the documents. Considering that it will be enough to have indicated its nature here,[184] we have refrained from devoting a special chapter to it.

The facts having been thus imagined, we group them according to schemes of classification devised on the model of a body of facts which we have observed directly, and which we suppose analogous to the body of past facts under consideration. This is the second operation; it is performed by the aid of systematic questions, and its result is to divide the mass of historical facts into homogeneous portions which we afterwards form into groups until the entire history of the past has been systematically arranged according to a general scheme.

When we have arranged in this scheme the facts taken from the documents, there remain gaps whose extent is always considerable, and is enormous for those parts of history in regard to which documents are scanty. We endeavour to fill some of these gaps by reasoning based on the facts which are known. This is (or should be) the third operation; it increases the sum of historical knowledge by an application of logic.

We still possess nothing but a mass of facts placed side by side in a scheme of classification. We have to condense them into formulæ, in order to deduce their general characteristics and their relation to each other. This is the fourth operation; it leads to the final conclusions of history, and crowns the work of historical construction from the scientific point of view.

But as historical knowledge, which is by nature complex and unwieldy, is exceptionally difficult to communicate, we still have to look for the methods of expounding historical results in appropriate form.

VII. This series of operations, easy to conceive in the mind, has never been more than imperfectly performed. It is beset by material difficulties which theories of methodology do not take into account, but which it would be better to face, with the purpose of discovering whether they are after all insurmountable.