I have been asked to write an article explaining “just how a source book is to be used, its relation to the text-book, the kind of information and the kind of training a careful teacher can impart through it and the advantage it offers over the exclusive use of secondary material.” Instead of answering the whole question and treating of all the uses of the source book, it seemed wise to treat but one, the most characteristic use to which the sources could be put, namely, the critical study of sources as evidence, for the purpose of training the pupil in the methods of historical proof. The importance that I attach to this matter of method is due to my conception of educational theory and of the logic of historical science. About this broader basis upon which the teaching of history must rest, it may be well to say a word by way of preface.
Method the Object Sought.
Personally I am in hearty sympathy with the new educational theory that attributes more importance to method than to matter. Professor Lanson, of the University of Paris, the distinguished historian of French literature, has given so satisfactory a formulation of the aims of this theory in its application to secondary education that I cannot do better than reproduce his statement.[1]
“Now it is necessary,” he writes, “to prove that what we need to-day is minds scientifically trained. Let us understand by this word (scientifically) that sounds so ambitious, minds that have the taste or the sense for the true, that carry into all their actions a serious desire for clear and exact knowledge, that are conscious of the difficulties and dangers that one encounters in the pursuit of or in the elaboration of truth, that distrusting everybody, themselves as well as others, take all the precautions indicated in each case in order not to deceive themselves or to be deceived: these precautions are what we call methods. The methodical search for truth? There, in a word, is what the scientific spirit means and to make it dominate in secondary education is to subordinate all studies to the idea that their common end, their convergent directions ought to be to fashion minds that all their lives, in all things will know how to practice the methodical search for truth.... In every study and exercise, the aim of the master ought to be to develop in the minds of his pupils the sense and the taste for truth, to cause them to note how in each subject the truth is found or missed, to put them, finally, in possession of a certain method or discipline appropriate to a certain object. It is not a matter of having them learn a large number of laws or facts, but, by well-chosen examples, to learn what a mathematical truth is and how it is elaborated; likewise a chemical truth, a physiological truth, an astronomical truth and a historical truth. How does each of these truths of different orders come into existence? By what means does it separate itself from other truths? What are the signs by which we recognize it as truth? There is the knowledge that ought to be the principal result of their studies. The young people ought to leave the high school having learned well what the principal methods are by which human knowledge is formed and to what objects, for what results, each method is applied. They ought, on leaving school, to be trained to do nothing without method, without a method chosen with discernment, according to the object to be known or the end to be attained.”
This appeals to me as the application to education of the best recent thought in philosophy and logic. Now the interesting thing is that in this country, where the mass of the teachers would probably reject the theory and where supreme emphasis is being laid on the acquisition of information as the goal of educational effort, the teachers of natural science are doing the very thing the theory demands, namely, teaching methods or processes by which one can get at the truth or test what is supposed to be the truth in natural science, and giving along with the knowledge of these processes but a modicum of information. The information acquired in a laboratory course is not sufficient to justify the time given to the course. But it is not necessary to justify it on any such ground. M. Lanson has given the theory of which this natural science laboratory work is the application. It only remains to become conscious of what it means, to extend the same method to other studies and a great revolution has been wrought in education, perhaps the greatest in the history of pedagogy.
The Historical Method.
No subject would be more transformed in its teaching by the introduction of method work than history. But what is history? What are the materials with which the student works and what the method by which he arrives at historical truth? What is proof in historical study? The teacher of history must be able to give an answer to these questions, if he would do his work intelligently and effectively.
What is history? How does it differ in its aims and methods from natural science, from political and economic science, from sociology? According to the new logic, the differences are fundamental. History concerns itself with the unique evolution of man in his activities as a social being. It deals with human potentialities in their teleological connections. Out of past social facts it selects the unique facts that have a value for the period that is being studied and groups these facts in complex, evolving wholes. History does not seek for what is common to the social facts of the past; it does not attempt to generalize, to establish laws. It could not if it would, for it deals with facts that have occurred but once, that will not occur again, and a generalization assumes repetition. The natural sciences, on the other hand, including economics, political science and sociology, deal with substances and causal law. They select for their syntheses what is common to a group of facts; they generalize, they aim to establish laws, to formulate the conditions under which a thing will repeat itself. Their ideal is the organization of reality under the point of view of the general. There is, of course, but one reality and natural science and history are simply two logical methods evolved by the human mind for the purpose of organizing it that it may be comprehended. The ends of the two methods are different, and their methods of getting at the truth are different. The student trained in the one method is not necessarily acquainted with the other.
The Historian’s Work.
The natural science method consists of a direct study of the facts, and, as it is not concerned with the unique as unique, it may create situations and conditions, thus securing abundant data for generalization. For the historian this is impossible. He studies not the fact, as the natural scientist studies plants, animals and chemicals in the laboratory; he has only the record of the fact, the fact itself having gone never to return. His knowledge of the fact will depend upon the abundance and value of the records the fact has left behind it. Such records we call sources. Sources, then, are the remains of man’s social activities. They fall naturally into two groups: remains and tradition. Remains consist of objects that were parts of the past event, and have survived the destructive action of time; tradition embraces the impressions of the event recorded by witnesses, and may be oral, written or pictorial in form. The historical reconstruction, found in the narrative text, is based, in a large majority of cases, upon written tradition.