In hearing a report we are in the position of observers of a series of significant sounds, and we are subject to all the fallacies of observation already mentioned. In an aggravated degree, for words are harder to observe than visible things. Our attention is apt to be more listless than in presence of the actual events. Our minds dwell upon parts of the narrative to the neglect of other parts, and in the coherent story or description that we retain in our memories, sequences are apt to be altered and missing links supplied in accordance with what we were predisposed to hear. Thus hearsay evidence is subject to all the imperfections of the original observer, in addition to the still more insidious imperfections of the second observer.
How quickly in the course of a few such transmissions hearsay loses all evidentiary value is simply illustrated by the game known as Russian Scandal. One of a company, A, writes down a short tale or sketch, and reads it to B. B repeats it to C, C to D, and so on. When it has thus gone the round of the company, the last hearer writes down his version, and it is compared with the original. With every willingness to play fair, the changes are generally considerable and significant.
Sometimes it is possible to compare an oral tradition with a contemporary written record. In one of Mr. Hayward's Essays—"The Pearls and Mock Pearls of History"—there are some examples of this disenchanting process. There is, for instance, a pretty story of an exchange of courtesies between the leaders of the French and English Guards at the battle of Fontenoy. The tradition runs that Lord Charles Hay stepped in front of his men and invited the French Guards to fire, to which M. d'Auteroche with no less chivalry responded: "Monsieur, we never fire first; you fire". What really passed we learn from a letter from Lord Charles Hay to his mother, which happens to have been preserved. "I advanced before our regiment, and drank to the Frenchmen, and told them we were the English Guards, and hoped they would stand till we came, and not swim the Scheldt as they did the Maine at Dettingen." Tradition has changed this lively piece of buffoonery into an act of stately and romantic courtesy. The change was probably made quite unconsciously by some tenth or hundredth transmitter, who remembered only part of the story, and dressed the remainder to suit his own fancy.
The question has been raised, For how long can oral tradition be trusted? Newton was of opinion that it might be trusted for eighty years after the event. Others have named forty years. But if this means that we may believe a story that we find in circulation forty years after the alleged events, it is wildly extravagant. It does injustice to the Mythopœic Faculty of man. The period of time that suffices for the creation of a full-blown myth, must be measured by hours rather than by years. I will give an instance from my own observation, if that has not been entirely discredited by my previous confessions. The bazaars of the East are generally supposed to be the peculiar home of myth, hotbeds in which myths grow with the most amazing speed, but the locality of my myth is Aberdeen. In the summer of 1887 our town set up in one of its steeples a very fine carillon of Belgian bells. There was much public excitement over the event: the descriptions of enthusiastic promoters had prepared us to hear silvery music floating all over the town and filling the whole air. On the day fixed for the inauguration, four hours after the time announced for the first ceremonial peal, not having heard the bells, I was in a shop and asked if anything had happened to put off the ceremony. "Yes," I was told; "there had been an accident; they had not been properly hung, and when the wife of the Lord Provost had taken hold of a string to give the first pull, the whole machinery had come down." As a matter of fact all that had happened was that the sound of the bells was faint, barely audible a hundred yards from the belfry, and not at all like what had been expected. There were hundreds of people in the streets, and the myth had originated somehow among those who had not heard what they went out to hear. The shop where it was repeated circumstantially to me was in the main street, not more than a quarter of a mile from where the carillon had been played in the hearing of a large but disappointed crowd. I could not help reflecting that if I had been a mediæval chronicler, I should have gone home and recorded the story, which continued to circulate for some days in spite of the newspapers: and two hundred years hence no historian would have ventured to challenge the truth of the contemporary evidence.
III.—Method of Testing Traditional Evidence.
It is obvious that the tests applied to descriptive testimony in Courts of Law cannot be applied to the assertions of History. It is a supreme canon of historical evidence that only the statements of contemporaries can be admitted: but most even of their statements must rest on hearsay, and even when the historian professes to have been an eye-witness, the range of his observation is necessarily limited, and he cannot be put into the witness-box and cross-examined. Is there then no way of ascertaining historical fact? Must we reject history as altogether unworthy of credit?
The rational conclusion only is that very few facts can be established by descriptive testimony such as would satisfy a Court of Law. Those who look for such ascertainment are on a wrong track, and are doomed to disappointment. It is told of Sir Walter Raleigh that when he was writing his History of the World, he heard from his prison in the Tower a quarrel outside, tried to find out the rights and the wrongs and the course of it, and failing to satisfy himself after careful inquiry, asked in despair how he could pretend to write the history of the world when he could not find out the truth about what occurred under his own windows. But this was really to set up an impossible standard of historical evidence.
The method of testing historical evidence follows rather the lines of the Newtonian method of Explanation, which we shall afterwards describe. We must treat any historical record as being itself in the first place a fact to be explained. The statement at least is extant: our first question is, What is the most rational way of accounting for it? Can it be accounted for most probably by supposing the event stated to have really occurred with all the circumstances alleged? Or is it a more probable hypothesis that it was the result of an illusion of memory on the part of the original observer, if it professes to be the record of an eye-witness, or on the part of some intermediate transmitter, if it is the record of a tradition? To qualify ourselves to answer the latter kind of question with reasonable probability we must acquaint ourselves with the various tendencies to error in personal observation and in tradition, and examine how far any of them are likely to have operated in the given case. We must study the operation of these tendencies within our experience, and apply the knowledge thus gained. We must learn from actual observation of facts what the Mythopœic Faculty is capable of in the way of creation and transmutation, and what feats are beyond its powers, and then determine with as near a probability as we can how far it has been active in the particular case before us.
[Footnote 1:] The Invasion of the Crimea, iii. 124
[Footnote 2:] The truth is, that we see much less than is commonly supposed. Not every impression is attended to that is made on the retina, and unless we do attend we cannot, properly speaking, be said to see. Walking across to college one day, I was startled by seeing on the face of a clock in my way that it was ten minutes to twelve, whereas I generally passed that spot about twenty minutes to twelve. I hurried on, fearing to be late, and on my arrival found myself in very good time. On my way back, passing the clock again, I looked up to see how much it was fast. It marked ten minutes to eight. It had stopped at that time. When I passed before I had really seen only the minute hand. The whole dial must have been on my retina, but I had looked at or attended to only what I was in doubt about, taking the hour for granted. I am bound to add that my business friends hint that it is only absorbed students that are capable of such mistakes, and that alert men of business are more circumspect. That can only be because they are more alive to the danger of error.