[1] W. B. Boyce, "Introduction to the Study of History, Civil,
Ecclesiastical, and Literary," London, 1894, 8vo.
[2] For example, P. J. B. Buches, in his Introduction à la
science de l'histoire, Paris, 1842, 2 vols. 8vo.
[3] The history of the attempts which have been made to
understand and explain philosophically the history of humanity has been
undertaken, as is well known, by Robert Flint. Mr. Flint has already
given the history of the Philosophy of History in French-speaking
countries: "Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and
Switzerland," Edinburgh and London, 1893, 8vo. It is the first volume of
the expanded re-edition of his "History of the Philosophy of History in
Europe," published twenty-five years ago. Compare the retrospective (or
historical) part of the work of N. Marselli, La scienza della storia,
i., Torino, 1873.
The most important original work which has appeared in France since the
publication of the analytical repertory of R. Flint is that of P.
Lacombe, De l'histoire considérée comme science, Paris, 1894, 8vo. Cf.
Revue Critique, 1895, i. p. 132.
[4]Revue Critique d'histoire et de littérature, 1892, i. p.
164.
[5]Revue Critique d'histoire et de littérature, 1888, ii. p.
295. Cf. Le Moyen Age, x. (1897), p. 91: "These books [treatises on
historical method] are seldom read by those to whom they might be
useful, amateurs who devote their leisure to historical research; and as
to professed scholars, it is from their masters' lessons that they have
learnt to know and handle the tools of their trade, leaving out of
consideration the fact that the method of history is the same as that of
the other sciences of observation, the gist of which can be stated in a
few words.
[6] In accordance with the principle that historical method can
only be taught by example, L. Mariani has given the humorous title
Corso pratico di metodologia della storia to a dissertation on a
detail in the history of Fermo. See the Archivio della Società romana
di storia patria, xiii. (1890), p. 211.
[7] See an account of Freeman's work, "The Methods of
Historical Study," in the Revue Critique, 1887, i. p. 376. This work,
says the critic, is empty and commonplace. We learn from it "that
history is not so easy a study as many fondly imagine, that it has
points of contact with all the sciences, and that the historian truly
worthy of the name ought to know everything; that historical certitude
is unattainable, and that, in order to make the nearest approach to it,
it is necessary to have constant recourse to the original sources; that
it is necessary to know and use the best modern historians, but never to
take their word for gospel. That is all." He concludes: Freeman "without
a doubt taught historical method far better by example than he ever
succeeded in doing by precept."
Compare Bouvard et Pécuchet, by G. Flaubert. Here we have two
simpletons who, among other projects, propose to write history. In order
to help them, one of their friends sends them (p. 156) "rules of
criticism taken from the Cours of Daunou," such as: "It is no proof to
appeal to rumour and common opinion; the witnesses cannot appear. Reject
impossibilities: Pausanias was shown the stone swallowed by Saturn. Keep
in mind the skill of forgers, the interest of apologists and
calumniators." Daunou's work contains a number of truisms quite as
obvious, and still more comic than the above.
[8] Flint (ibid. p. 15) congratulates himself on not having to
study the literature of Historic, for "a very large portion of it is
so trivial and superficial that it can hardly ever have been of use even
to persons of the humblest capacity, and may certainly now be safely
confined to kindly oblivion." Nevertheless, Flint has given in his book
a summary list of the principal works of this kind published in
French-speaking countries from the earliest times. A more general and
complete account (though still a summary one) of the literature of this
subject in all countries is furnished by the Lehrbuch der historischen
Methode of E. Bernheim (Leipzig, 1894, 8vo), pp. 143 sqq. Flint (who
was acquainted with several works unknown to Bernheim) stops at 1893,
Bernheim at 1894. Since 1889 the Jahresberichte der
Geschichtswissenschaft have contained a periodical account of recent
works on historical methodology.
[9] This seventh volume was published in 1844. But Daunou's
celebrated Cours was delivered at the Collège de France in the years
1819-30.
[10] The Italians of the Renaissance (Mylæns, Francesco
Patrizzi, and others), and after them the writers of the last two
centuries, ask what is the relation of history to dialectic and
rhetoric; to how many laws the historical branch of literature is
subject; whether it is right for the historian to relate treasons, acts
of cowardice, crimes, disorders; whether history is entitled to use any
style other than the sublime; and so on. The only books on Historic,
published before the nineteenth century, which give evidence of any
original effort to attack the real difficulties, are those of Lenglet de
Fresnoy (Méthode pour étudier l'histoire, Paris, 1713), and of J. M.
Chladenius (Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft, Leipzig, 1752). The
work of Chladenius has been noticed by Bernheim (ibid. p. 166).
[11] He has not always shown even good sense, for, in the
Cours d'études historiques (vii. p. 105), where he treats of a work,
Del'histoire, published in 1670 by Père Le Moyne, a feeble
production, to say the least, bearing evident traces of senility, he
expresses himself as follows: "I cannot adopt all the maxims and
precepts contained in this treatise; but I believe that, after that of
Lucian, it is the best we have yet seen, and I greatly doubt whether any
of those whose acquaintance we have still to make has risen to the same
height of philosophy and originality." Père H. Chérot has given a
sounder estimate of the treatise De l'histoire in his Étude sur la
vie et les œuvres du P. Le Moyne (Paris, 1887, 8vo), pp. 406 sqq.
[12] Bernheim declares, however (ibid. p. 177), that this
little work is, in his opinion, the only one which stands at the present
level of science.
[13] Flint says very well (ibid. p. 15): "The course of
Historic has been, on the whole, one of advance from commonplace
reflection on history towards a philosophical comprehension of the
conditions and processes on which the formation of historical science
depends.
[14] By P. Guiraud, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, March 1896,
p. 75.
[15] Renan has said some of the truest and best things that
have ever been said on the historical sciences in L'Avenir de la
science (Paris, 1890, 8vo), written in 1848.
[16] Some of the most ingenious, some of the most logical, and
some of the most widely applicable observations, on the method of the
historical sciences, have so far appeared, not in books on methodology,
but in the reviews—of which the Revue Critique d'histoire et de
littérature is the type—devoted to the criticism of new works of
history and erudition. It is a very useful exercise to run through the
file of the Revue Critique, founded, at Paris, in 1867, "to enforce
respect for method, to execute justice upon bad books, to check
misdirected and superfluous work."
[17] The first edition of the Lehrbuch is dated 1889.
[18] The best work that has hitherto been published (in French)
on historical method is a pamphlet by MM. Ch. and V. Mortet, La Science
de l'histoire (Paris, 1894, 8vo), 88 pp., extracted from vol. xx. of
the Grande Encyclopédie.
[19] One of us, M. Seignobos, proposes to publish later on a
complete treatise of Historical Methodology, if there appears to be a
public for this class of work.
[20] It cannot be too often stated that the study of history,
as it is prosecuted at school, does not presuppose the same aptitudes as
the same study when prosecuted at the university or in after life.
Julien Havet, who afterwards devoted himself to the (critical) study of
history, found history wearisome at school. "I believe," says M. L.
Havet, "that the teaching of history [in schools] is not organised in
such a manner as to provide sufficient nourishment for the scientific
spirit.... Of all the studies comprised in our school curricula, history
is the only one in which the pupil is not being continually called upon
to verify something. When he is learning Latin or German, every sentence
in a translation requires him to verify a dozen different rules. In the
various branches of mathematics the results are never divorced from
their proofs; the problems, too, compel the pupil to think through the
whole for himself. Where are the problems in history, and what
schoolboy is ever trained to gain by independent effort an insight into
the interconnection of events?" (Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes,
1896, p. 84).
[21] M. Langlois wrote Book I., Book II. as far at Chapter VI.,
the second Appendix, and this Preface; M. Seignobos the end of Book II.,
Book III., and the first Appendix. Chapter I. in the second book,
Chapter V. of the third book, and the Conclusion, were written in
common.
[22] In practice one does not as a rule resolve to treat a
point of history before knowing whether there are or are not documents
in existence which enable it to be studied. On the contrary, it is the
accidental discovery of a document which suggests the idea of thoroughly
elucidating the point of history to which it relates, and thus leads to
the collection, for this purpose, of other documents of the same class.
[23] It is pitiable to see how the best of the early scholars
struggled bravely, but vainly, to solve problems which would not even
have existed for them if their collections had not been so incomplete.
This lack of material was a disadvantage for which the most brilliant
ingenuity could not compensate.
[24] "How hard it is to gain the means whereby we mount to the
sources" (Goethe, Faust, i. 3).
[25] See C. V. Langlois, H. H. Bancroft et Cie., in the
Revue universitaire, 1894, i. p. 233.
[26] The earlier scholars were conscious of the unfavourable
character of the conditions under which they worked. They suffered
keenly from the insufficiency of the instruments of research and the
means of comparison. Most of them made great efforts to obtain
information. Hence these voluminous correspondences between scholars of
the last few centuries, of which our libraries preserve so many precious
fragments, and these accounts of scientific searches, of journeys
undertaken for the discovery of historical documents, which, under the
name of Iter (Iter Italicum, Iter Germanicum, &c.), were formerly
fashionable.
[27] We may remark, in passing, a delusion which is childish
enough but very natural, and very common among collectors: they all tend
to exaggerate the intrinsic value of the documents they possess, simply
because they themselves are the possessors. Documents have been
published with a sumptuous array of commentaries by persons who had
accidentally acquired them, and who would, quite rightly, have attached
no importance to them if they had met with them in public collections.
This is, we may add, merely a manifestation, in a somewhat crude form,
of a general tendency against which it is always necessary to guard: a
man readily exaggerates the importance of the documents he possesses,
the documents he has discovered, the texts he has edited, the persons
and the questions he has studied.
[28] See L. Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la
Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1868-81, 3 vols. 4to. The histories of
ancient depositories of documents, which have been recently published in
considerable number, have been modelled on this admirable work.
[29] Many of the ancient documents still in circulation are the
proceeds of ancient thefts from state institutions. The precautions now
taken against a recurrence of such depredations are stringent, and, in
nearly every instance, as effective as could be desired.
As to modern (printed) documents, the rule of legal deposit [compulsory
presentation of copies to specified libraries], which has now been
adopted by nearly all civilised countries, guarantees their preservation
in public institutions.
[30] It is known that Napoleon I. entertained the chimerical
design of concentrating at Paris the archives of the whole of Europe,
and that, for a beginning, he conveyed to that city the archives of the
Vatican, the Holy Roman Empire, the crown of Castile, and others, which
later on the French were compelled to restore. Confiscation is now out
of the question. But the ancient archives of the notaries might be
centralised everywhere, as in some countries they are already, in public
institutions. It is not easy to explain why at Paris the departments of
Foreign Affairs, of War, and of Marine preserve ancient papers whose
natural place would be at the Archives Nationales. A great many more
anomalies of this kind might be mentioned, which in certain cases
impede, where they do not altogether preclude, research; for the small
collections, whose existence is not required, are precisely those whose
regulations are the most oppressive.
[31] The international exchange of documents is worked in
Europe (without charge to the public) by the agency of the various
Foreign Offices. Besides this, most of the great institutions have
agreements with each other for mutual loans; this system is as sure and
sometimes more rapid in its operation than the diplomatic system. The
question of lending original documents for use outside the institution
where they are preserved has of late years been frequently mooted at
congresses of historians and librarians. The results so far obtained are
eminently satisfactory.
[32] These are sometimes large collections of formidable bulk;
it is more natural to undertake the cataloguing of small accumulations
which demand less labor. It is for the same reason that many
insignificant but short cartularies have been published, while several
cartularies of the highest importance, being voluminous, have still to
be edited.
[33] See his autobibliography, published by E. de Broglie,
Bernard de Montfaucon et les Bernardins, ii. (Paris, 1891, 8vo), p.
323.
[37] Mr. H. H. Bancroft, in his Memoirs, entitled "Literary
Industries" (New York, 1891, 16mo), analyses with sufficient minuteness
some practical consequences of the imperfection of the methods of
research. He considers the case of an industrious writer proposing to
write the history of California. He easily procures a few books, reads
them, takes notes; these books refer him to others, which he consults in
the public libraries of the city where he resides. Several years are
passed in this manner, at the end of which he perceives that he has not
a tenth part of the resources in his hands; he travels, maintains
correspondences, but, finally despairing of exhausting the subject, he
comforts his conscience and pride with the reflection that he has done
much, and that many of the works he has not seen, like many of those he
has, are probably of very slight historic value. As to newspapers and
the myriads of United States government reports, all of them containing
facts bearing on Californian history; being a sane man, he has never
dreamed of searching them from beginning to end: he has turned over a
few of them, that is all; he knows that each of these fields of research
would afford a labour of several years, and that all of them would fill
the better part of his life with drudgery. As for oral testimony and
manuscripts, he will gather a few unpublished anecdotes in chance
conversations; he will obtain access to a few family papers; all this
will appear in his book as notes and authorities. Now and again he will
get hold of a few documentary curiosities among the state archives, but
as it would take fifteen years to master the whole collection, he will
naturally be content to glean a little here and there. Then he begins to
write. He does not feel called upon to inform the public that he has not
seen all the documents; on the contrary, he makes the most of what he
has been able to procure in the course of twenty-five years of
industrious research.
[38] Some dispense with personal search by invoking the
assistance of the functionaries charged with the administration of
depositories of documents; the indispensable search is, in these cases,
conducted by the functionaries instead of by the public. Cf. Bouvard et
Pécuchet, p. 158. Bouvard and Pécuchet resolve to write the life of the
Duke of Angoulême; for this purpose "they determined to spend several
days at the municipal library of Caen to make researches. The librarian
placed general histories and pamphlets at their disposal...."
[39] These considerations have already been presented and
developed in the Revue universitaire, 1894, i. p. 321 sqq.
[40] It is well known that, since the opening of the Papal
Archives, several governments and learned societies have established
Institutes at Rome, the members of which are, for the most part,
occupied in cataloguing and making known the documents of these
archives, in co-operation with the functionaries of the Vatican. The
French School at Rome, the Austrian Institute, the Prussian Institute,
the Polish Mission, the Institute of the "Goerresgesellschaft," Belgian,
Danish, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and other scholars, have
performed, and are performing, cataloguing work of considerable extent
in the archives of the Vatican.
[41] Catalogues of documents sometimes, but not always, mention
the fact that such and such a document has been edited, dealt with
critically, utilised. The generally received rule is that the compiler
mentions circumstances of this kind when he is aware of them, without
imposing on himself the enormous task of ascertaining the truth on this
head[sic] in every instance where he is ignorant of it.
[42] E. Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, 2nd ed.,
pp. 196-202.
[43] C. V. Langlois, Manuel de Bibliographie historique: I.
Instruments bibliographiques, Paris, 1896, 16mo.
[44] E. Renan, Feuilles détachées (Paris, 1892, 8vo), pp. 96
sqq.
[46] E. A. Freeman, The Methods of Historical Study (London,
1885, 8vo), p. 45.
In France geography has long been regarded as a science closely related
to history. An Agrégation, which combines history and geography,
exists at the present day, and in the lycées history and geography are
taught by the same professors. Many people persist in asserting the
legitimacy of this combination, and even take umbrage when it is
proposed to separate two branches of knowledge united, as they say, by
many essential connecting links. But it would be hard to find any good
reason, or any facts of experience, to prove that a professor of
history, or an historian, is so much the better the more he knows of
geology, oceanography, climatology, and the whole group of geographical
sciences. In fact, it is with some impatience, and to no immediate
advantage, that students of history work through the courses of
geography which their curricula force upon them; and those students who
have a real taste for geography would be very glad to throw history
overboard. The artificial union of history with geography dates back, in
France, to an epoch when geography was an ill-defined and ill-arranged
subject, regarded by all as a negligeable branch of study. It is a relic
of antiquity that we ought to get rid of at once.
[47] "Historiography" is a branch of the "History of
Literature;" it is the sum of the results obtained by the critics who
have hitherto studied ancient historical writings, such as annals,
memoirs, chronicles, biographies, and so forth.
[48] This is only true under reservation; there is an
instrument of research which is indispensable to all historians, to all
students, whatever be the subject of their special study. History,
moreover, is here in the same situation as the majority of the other
sciences: all who prosecute original research, of whatever kind, need to
know several living languages, those of countries where men think and
work, of countries which, from the point of view of science, stand in
the forefront of contemporary civilisation.
In our days the cultivation of the sciences is not confined to any
single country, or even to Europe. It is international. All problems,
the same problems, are being studied everywhere simultaneously. It is
difficult to-day, and to-morrow it will be impossible, to find a subject
which can be treated without taking cognisance of works in a foreign
language. Henceforth, for ancient history, Greek and Roman, a knowledge
of German will be as imperative as a knowledge of Greek and Latin.
Questions of strictly local history are the only ones still accessible
to those who do not possess the key to foreign literatures. The great
problems are beyond their reach, for the wretched and ridiculous reason
that works on these problems in any language but their own are sealed
books to them.
Total ignorance of the languages which have hitherto been the ordinary
vehicles of science (German, English, French, Italian) is a disease
which age renders incurable. It would not be exacting too much to
require every candidate for a scientific profession to be at least
trilinguis—that is, to be able to understand, fairly easily, two
languages besides his mother-tongue. This is a requirement to which
scholars were not subject formerly, when Latin was still the common
language of learned men, but which the conditions of modern scientific
work will henceforth cause to press with increasing weight upon the
scholars of every country.[*]
The French scholars who are unable to read German and English are
thereby placed in a position of permanent inferiority as compared with
their better instructed colleagues in France and abroad; whatever their
merit, they are condemned to work with insufficient means of
information, to work badly. They know it. They do their best to hide
their infirmity, as something to be ashamed of, except when they make a
cynical parade of it and boast of it; but this boasting, as we can
easily see, is only shame showing itself in a different way. Too much
stress cannot be laid upon the fact that a practical knowledge of
foreign languages is auxiliary in the first degree to all historical
work, as indeed it is to scientific work in general.
[*]Perhaps a day will come when it will be necessary to know
the most important Slavonic language; there are already scholars who are
setting themselves to learn Russian. The idea of restoring Latin to its
old position of universal language is chimerical. See the file of the
Phœnix, seu nuntius latinus universalis (London, 1891, 4to).
[49] When the "auxiliary sciences" were first inserted in the
curricula of French universities, it was observed that some students
whose special subject was the French Revolution, and who had no interest
whatever in the middle ages, took up palæography as an "auxiliary
science," and that some students of geography, who were in no way
interested in antiquity, took up epigraphy. Evidently they had failed to
understand that the study of the "auxiliary sciences" is recommended,
not as an end in itself, but because it is of practical utility to those
who devote themselves to certain special subjects. See the Revue
universitaire, 1895, ii. p. 123.
[50] On this point note the opinions of T. von Sickel and J.
Havet, quoted in the Bibliothèque l'École des chartes, 1896, p. 87. In
1854 the Austrian Institute "für österreichische Geschichtsforschung"
was organised on the model of the French École des chartes. Another
institution of the same type has lately been created in the "Istituto di
studi superiori" at Florence. "We are accustomed," we read in England,
"to hear the complaint that there is not in this country any institution
resembling the École des chartes" (Quarterly Review, July 1896, p.
122).
[51] This is a suitable place to enumerate the principal
"manuals" published in the last twenty-five years. But a list of them,
ending at 1894, will be found in Bernheim's Lehrbuch, pp. 206 sqq. We
will only refer to the great "manuals" of "Philology" (in the
comprehensive sense of the German "Philologie," which includes the
history of language and literature, epigraphy, palæography, and all that
pertains to textual criticism) now in course of publication: the
Grundriss far indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde, edited by
G. Bühler; the Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, edited by W.
Geiger and E. Kuhn; the Handbuch der classichen Altertumswissenschaft,
edited by I. von Müller; the Grundriss der germanischen Philologie,
edited by H. Paul, the second edition of which began to appear in 1896;
the Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, edited y G. Gröber. In these
vast repertories there will be found, along with a short presentment of
the subject, complete bibliographical references, direct as well as
indirect.
[52] The French "manuals" of MM. Prou (Palæography), Giry
(Diplomatic), Cagnat (Latin Epigraphy), and others, have diffused among
the public the idea and knowledge of the auxiliary subjects of study.
New editions have enabled, and will enable, them to be kept up to
date—a very necessary operation, for most of these subjects, though now
settled in the main, are being enriched and made more precise every day.
Cf. supra, p. 38.
[53] What exactly are we to understand by this "incommunicable
knowledge," of which we speak? When a specialist is very familiar with
the documents of a given class or period, associations of ideas are
formed in his brain; and when he examines a new document of the same
class or species, analogies suddenly dawn upon him which would escape
any one of less experience, however well furnished he might be with the
most perfect repertories. The fact is, that not all the peculiarities of
documents can be isolated; there are some which cannot be classified
under any intelligible head, and which, therefore, cannot be found in
any tabulated list. But the human memory, when it is good, retains the
impression of these peculiarities, and even a faint and distant stimulus
suffices to revive the apprehension of them.
[55] This expression, which frequently occurs, needs
explanation. It is not to be taken to apply to a species of facts.
There are no historical facts in the sense in which we speak of chemical
facts. The same fact is or is not historical according to the manner in
which it is known. It is only the mode of acquiring knowledge that is
historical. A sitting of the Senate is a fact of direct observation for
one who takes part in it; it becomes historical for the man who reads
about it in a report. The eruption of Vesuvius in the time of Pliny is a
geological fact which is known historically. The historical character is
not in the facts, but in the manner of knowing them.
[56] Fustel de Coulanges has said it. Cf. supra, p. 4, note
1.
[57] In the sciences of observation it is the fact itself,
observed directly, which is the starting-point.
[59] We shall not treat specially of the criticism of material
documents (objects, monuments, &c.) where it differs from the criticism
of written documents.
[60] For the details and the logical justification of this
method see Seignobos, Les Conditions psychologiques de la connaissance
en histoire, in the Revue philosophique, 1887, ii. pp. 1, 168.
[61] The most favourable case, that in which the document has
been drawn up by what is called an ocular "witness," is still far short
of the ideal required for scientific knowledge. The notion of witness
has been borrowed from the procedure of the law-courts; reduced to
scientific terms, it becomes that of an observer. A testimony is an
observation. But, in point of fact, historical testimony differs
materially from scientific observation. The observer proceeds by fixed
rules, and clothes his report in language of rigorous precision. On the
other hand, the "witness" observes without method, and reports in
unprecise language; it is not known whether he has taken the necessary
precautions. It is an essential attribute of historical documents that
they come before us as the result of work which has been done without
method and without guarantee.
[62] See B. Lasch, Das Erwachen und die Entwickelung der
historischen Kritik im Mittelalter (Breslan, 1887, 8vo).
[63] Natural credulity is deeply rooted in indolence. It is
easier to believe than to discuss, to admit than to criticise, to
accumulate documents than to weigh them. It is also pleasanter; he who
criticises documents must sacrifice some of them, and such a sacrifice
seems a dead loss to the man who has discovered or acquired the
document.
[65] A member of the Société des humanistes français (founded
at Paris in 1894) amused himself by pointing out, in the Bulletin of
this society, certain errors amenable to verbal criticism which occur in
various editions of posthumous works, especially the Mémoires
d'outre-tombe. He showed that it is possible to remove obscurities in
the most modern documents by the same methods which are used in
restoring ancient texts.
[66] On the habits of the mediæval copyists, by whose
intermediate agency most of the literary works of antiquity have come
down to us, see the notices collected by W. Wattenbach, Das
Schriftwesen im Mittelalter, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1896, 8vo).
[67] See, for example, the Coquilles lexicographiques which
have been collected by A. Thomas, in Romania, xx. (1891), pp. 464
sqq.
[68] See E. Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, 2nd
ed., pp. 341-54. Also consult F. Blass, in the Handbuch der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft, edited by I. von Müller, I., 2nd ed. (1892), pp.
249-89 (with a detailed bibliography); A. Tobler, in the Grundriss der
romanischen Philologie, I. (1888), pp. 253-63; H. Paul, in the
Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, I., 2nd ed. (1896), pp. 184-96.
In French read the section Critique des textes, in Minerva,
Introduction à l'étude des classiques scolaires grecs et latins, by J.
Gow and S. Reinach (Paris, 1890, 16mo), pp. 50-65.
The work of J. Taylor, "History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to
Modern Times" (Liverpool, 1889, 16mo), is of no value.
[69] This rule is not absolute. The editor is generally
accorded the right of unifying the spelling of an autograph
document—provided that he informs the public of the fact—wherever, as
in most modern documents, the orthographical vagaries of the author
possess no philological interest. See the Instructions pour la
publication des textes historiques, in the Bulletin de la Commission
royale d'histoire de Belgique, 5th series, vi. (1896); and the
Grundsätze für die Herausgabe von Actenstücken zur neueren Geschichte,
laboriously discussed by the second and third Congresses of German
historians, in 1894 and 1895, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft, xi. p. 200, xii. p. 364. The last Congresses of
Italian historians, held at Genoa (1893) and at Rome (1895), have also
debated this question, but without result. What are the liberties which
it is legitimate to take in reproducing autograph texts? The question is
more difficult than is imagined by those who are not professionally
concerned with it.
[70] Interpolations will be treated of in chapter iii p. 92.
[71] The scribes of the Carlovingian Renaissance and of the
Renaissance proper of the fifteenth century endeavoured to furnish
intelligible texts. They therefore corrected everything they did not
understand. Several ancient works have been in this manner irretrievably
ruined.
[72] The principal of these are, for the classical languages,
besides the above-mentioned work of Blass (supra, p. 74, note), the
Adversaria critica of Madvig (Copenhagen, 1871-74, 3 vols. 8vo). For
Greek, the celebrated Commentatio palæographica of F. J. Bast,
published as an appendix to an edition of the grammarian Gregory of
Corinth (Leipzig, 1811, 8vo), and the Variæ lectiones of Cobet
(Leiden, 1873, 8vo). For Latin, H. Hagen, Gradus ad criticen (Leipzig,
1879, 8vo), and W. M. Lindsay, "An Introduction to Latin Textual
Emendation based on the Text of Plautus" (London, 1896, 16mo). A
contributor to the Bulletin de la Société des humanistes français has
expressed, in this publication, a wish that a similar collection might
be compiled for modern French.
[74] Quite recently our scholars used to neglect this
elementary precaution, in order, as they said, to avoid an "air of
pedantry." M. B. Hauréau has published, in his Notices et extraits de
quelques manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque nationale (vi. p. 310), a
piece of rhythmic verse, "De presbytero et logico." "It is not
unedited," says he; "Thomas Wright has already published it.... But this
edition is very defective; the text is occasionally quite
unintelligible. We have, therefore, considerably amended it, making use,
for this purpose, of two copies, which, it most be conceded, are neither
of them faultless...." The edition follows, with no variants.
Verification is impossible.
[75] "Textual emendation too often misses the mark through want
of knowledge of what may be called the rules of the game" (W. M.
Lindsay, p.v. in the work referred to above).
[76] It has often been asked whether all texts are worth the
trouble of "establishing" and publishing them. "Among our ancient
texts," says M. J. Bédier, referring to French mediæval literature,
"which ought we to publish? Every one. But, it will be asked, are we not
already staggering under the weight of documents?... The following is
the reason why publication should be exhaustive. As long as we are
confronted by this mass of sealed and mysterious manuscripts, they will
appeal to us as if they contained the answer to every riddle; every
candid mind will be hampered by them in its flights of induction. It is
desirable to publish them, if only to get rid of them and to be able,
for the future, to work as if they did not exist...." (Revue des Deux
Mondes, February 15, 1894, p. 910). All documents ought to be
catalogued, as we have already pointed out (p. 31), in order that
researchers may be relieved of the fear that there may be documents,
useful for their purposes, of which they know nothing. But in every case
where a summary analysis of a document can give a sufficient idea of its
contents, and its form is of no special interest, there is nothing
gained by publishing it in extenso. We need not overburden ourselves.
Every document will be analysed some day, but many documents will never
be published.
[77] Editors of texts often render their task still longer and
more difficult than it need be by undertaking the additional duty of
commentators, under the pretext of explaining the text. It would be to
their advantage to spare themselves this labour, and to dispense with
all annotation which does not belong to the "apparatus criticus" proper.
See, on this point, T. Lindner, Ueber die Herausgabe von
geschichtlichen Quellen, in the Mittheilungen des Instituts für
österreichische Geschichtsforschung, xvi., 1895, pp. 501 sqq.
[78] To realise this it is enough to compare what has hitherto
been done by the most active societies, such as the Society of the
Monumenta Germaniæ historica and the Istituto storico italiano, with
what still remains for them to do. The greater part of the most ancient
documents and the hardest to restore, which have long taxed the
ingenuity of scholars, have now been placed in a relatively satisfactory
condition. But an immense amount of mechanical work has still to be
done.
[79] R. de Gourmont, Le Latin mystique (Paris, 1891, 8vo), p.
258.
[80] See these alleged autographs in the Bibliothèque
nationale, nouv. acq. fr., No. 709.
[81] F. Blass has enumerated the chief of these motives with
reference to the pseudepigraphic literature of antiquity (pp. 269 sqq.
in the work already quoted).
[82] E. Bernheim (Lehrbuch, pp. 243 sqq.) gives a somewhat
lengthy list of spurious documents, now recognised as such. Here it will
be enough to recall a few famous hoaxes: Sarchoniathon, Clotilde de
Surville, Ossian. Since the publication of Bernheim's book several
celebrated documents, hitherto exempt from suspicion, have been struck
off the list of authorities. See especially A. Piaget, La Chronique des
chanoines de Neuchâtel (Neuchâtel, 1896, 8vo).
[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.
[85] As a rule it matters little whether the name of the
author has or has not been discovered. We read, however, in the
Histoirelittéraire 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
palæographical considerations.
[87] The Investigations of Julien Havet (Questions
mérovingiennes, 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 ævi 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
Conquête 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
mediæval 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.
[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 Études critiques sur les sources de l'histoire
mérovingienne (Paris, 1872, 8vo) contains elementary considerations on
the subject. Cf. Revue Critique, 1873, i. p. 308.
[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. Feugère, Étude 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, Reliquiæ
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),
Bréquigny (Table chronologique des diplômes, chartes et actes imprimés
concernant l'histoire de France), Wauters (Table chronologique des
chartes et diplômes imprimés 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 général 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 Séguier 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 (Schlagwörter).
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. Bédier, 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. Brunetière, 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.
[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 (München, 1885, 8vo), p. 653.
[113] B. Hauréau, Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits
latins de la Bibliothèque nationale, i. (Paris, 1890, 8vo). p. v.
[114]Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes, 1896, p. 88.
Compare analogous traits in the interesting intellectual biography of
the Hellenist, palæographer, 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" (Bibliothèque de
l'École 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 über den philologischen
Unterricht, Giessen, 1890, 4to. Cf. Revue Critique, 1892, i. p. 25.
[119] J. von Pflugk-Harttung, Geschichtsbetrachtungen, Gotha,
1890, 8vo.
[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. Feugère, Étude 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.
[131] Taine appears to have proceeded thus in vol. ii, La
Révolution, 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.
[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 problêmes 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 problêmes 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'époque 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. Mediæval 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 Encyclopædie 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, Père 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. Bouché-Leclercq, in a
remarkable study on "The Reign of Seleucus II. (Callinicus) and
Historical Criticism" (Revue des Universités 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. Bouché-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 Écrivains 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 Grütli
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 Conféderation suisse, Geneva, 1869, 8vo.)
[149] Striking example of falsehoods due to vanity are to be
found in abundance in the Économies royales of Sully and the
Mémoires of Retz.
[150] Fustel de Coulanges himself went to the formulæ of the
inscriptions in honour of the emperors for a proof that the peoples
liked the imperial régime. "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 formulæ.
[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 römische 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 Villemarqué'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'Israël, 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.
[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 (palæography, linguistic science) are
directly established by the analysis of the document.
[168] Primitive Greece has been studied in the Homeric poems.
Mediæval private life has been reconstructed principally from the
chansons de gestes. (See C. V. Langlois, Les Traditions sur
l'histoire de la société française au moyen âge d'après les sources
littéraires, 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.
[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] Père 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.")
[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 problêmes 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).
[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
considérée 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, Considérations sur la
marche des idées et des événements dans les temps modernes (Paris,
1872, 2 vols. 8vo).
[196] Lamprecht, in a long article, Was ist Kulturgeschichte,
published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für 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.
[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 Père 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.]
[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
Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena, 1890-94, Ia. 8vo. and
two good methodical treatises, J. von. Mayr, Theoretische Statistik
and Bevölkerungsstatistik, 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
Considérée 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 Études sur l'histoire de
l'humanité, 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 régime 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 Considérée 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.
[214] Lamprecht, in the article quoted, p. 247, after having
compared the artistic, religious, and economic evolutions of mediæval
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 mediæval 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 français du xixe siècle (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: "Père
Daniel is now read no longer, and Père Anselme is always read." But the
works of scholars become antiquated too, and the fact that not all the
parts of the work of Père 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
Angoulême," says Pécuchet. "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 Pécuchet, 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 naïve 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
Realencyclopædie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft of
Pauly-Wissowa, the Dictionnaire des antiquités 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.
[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.
[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 Pécuchet (G.
Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, 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
Blanchère (Revue Critique, 1895, i. p. 176). Others have declaimed on
the theme that the knowledge of history is mischievous and paralyses.
See F. Nietzsche, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, II. Nutzen und
Nachtheil der Historie für 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 Précis 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 Enseñanza 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 supérieur en France, Paris, 1888-94, 2 vols. 8vo.
[245] E. Lavisse, Questions d'enseignement national, p. 12.
[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.]