PRES?*DENT Work LIBRARY CORNELL UNIVERSITY. Cornell University Library Introduction to the study of histor INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY Authorised Translation All Rights Reserved INTRODUCTION STUDY OF HISTORY BY CH. V. LANGLOIS & CH. SEIGNOBOS OF THE SORBONNE TRANSLATED By G. G. BERRY WITH A PREFACE BY F. YORK POWELL NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1898 TO THE READER Ir is a pleasure to recommend this useful and well- written little book to English readers. It will both interest and help. There are, for instance, a few pages devoted to the question of evidence that will be an aid to every one desirous of getting at the truth respecting any series of facts, as well as to the student of history. No one can read it without find- ing out that to the historian history is not merely a pretty but rather difficult branch of literature, and that a history book is not necessarily good if it appears to the literary critic ‘readable and interest- ing, nor bad because it seems to him ‘hard or heavy reading. The literary critic, in fact, is beginning to find out that he reads a history as he might read a treatise on mathematics or linguistics, at his peril, and that he is no judge of its value or lack of value. Only the expert can judge that. It will probably surprise some people to find that in the opinion of our authors (who agree with Mr. Morse Stephens and with the majority of scholars here) the formation and expression of ethical judgments, the approval or condemnation of Caius Julius Cesar, or of Cesar Borgia, is not a thing within the historian’s province. His business is to find out what can be known about the characters and situations with which he is en- Vv To THE READER gaged, to put what he can ascertain before his readers in a clear form, and lastly to consider and attempt to ascertain what scientific use can be made of these facts he has ascertained. Ethic on its didactic side is outside his business altogether. In fact MM. Langlois and Seignobos write for those “ who propose to deal with documents [especially written docu- ments] with a view to preparing or accomplishing historic work in a scientific way.” They have the temerity to view history as a scientific pursuit, and they are endeavouring to explain to the student who intends to pursue this branch of anthropologic science the best and safest methods of observation open to him, hence they modestly term their little book “an essay on the method of historic sciences.” They are bold enough to look forward to a day, as not far distant, when a sensible or honest man will no more dare to write history unscientifically than he would to-day be willing to waste his time and that of others on observing the heavens unscientifically, and registering as trustworthy his unchecked and untimed observations. Whether we like it or not, history has got to be scientifically studied, and it is not a question of style but of accuracy, of fulness of observation, and cor- rectness of reasoning, that is before the student. Huxley and Darwin and Clifford have shown that a book may be good science and yet good reading. Truth has not always been found repulsive although she was not bedizened with rhetorical adornments; indeed, the very pursuit of her has long been recog- nised as arduous but extremely fascinating. Toute vi To THE READER trowvaille, as our authors aptly remark, procure une jowissance, It will be a positive gain to have the road cleared of a mass of rubbish, that has hindered the advance of knowledge. History must be worked at in a scientific spirit, as biology or chemistry is worked at. As M. Seignobos says, “ On ne s’arréte plus guére aujourd’hui & discuter, sous sa forme théologique la théorie de la Providence dans |’Histoire. Mais la tendence & expli- quer les faits historiques par les causes transcendantes persiste dans des théories plus modernes ot la meta- physique se déguise sous des formes scientifiques.” We should certainly get rid in time of those curious Hegelianisms “ under which in lay disguise lurks the old theologic theory of final causes”; or the pseudo- patriotic supposition of the “historic mission (Beruf) attributed to certain people or persons.” The study of historic facts does not even make for the popular newspaper theory of the continuous and necessary progress of humanity, it shows only “partial and intermittent advances, and gives us no reason to attribute them to a permanent cause inherent in collective humanity rather than to a series of local accidents.” But the historian’s path is still like that of Bunyan’s hero, bordered by pitfalls and haunted by hobgoblins, though certain of his giant adversaries are crippled and one or two slain. He has also his own faults to master, or at least to check, as MM. Langlois and Seignobos not infrequently hint, eg. “Nearly all beginners have a vexatious tendency to go off into superfluous digressions, heaping up re- flexion and information that have no bearing on the Vil To THE READER main subject. They will recognise, if they think over it, that the causes of this leaning are bad taste,a kind of naive vanity, sometimes a disordered mind.” Again: “The faults of historic works intended for the general public . . . are the results of the insutticient prepara- tionfof the bad literary training of the popularisers.” What an admirable criticism there is too of that peculiarly German shortcoming (one not, however, unknown elsewhere), which results in men “whose learning is ample, whose monographs destined for scholars are highly praiseworthy, showing theinselves capable, when they write for the public, of sinning heavily against scientific methods,” so that, in their determination to stir their public, “they who are so scrupulous and particular when it is a question of dealing with minutiz, abandon themselves like the mass of mankind to their natural inclinations when they come to set forth general questions. They take sides, they blame, they praise, they colour, they em- bellish, they allow themselves to take account of personal, patriotic, ethical, or metaphysical considera- tions. Above all, they apply themselves with what talent has fallen to their lot to the task of creating a work of art, and, so applying themselves, those of them who lack talent become ridiculous, and the talent of those who possess it is spoilt by their anxiety for effect.” On the other hand, while the student is rejoicing at the smart raps bestowed upon the Teutonic offender, he is warned against the error of thinking that “ pro- vided he can make himself understood, the historian has the right to use a faulty, low, careless, or clogged Vili To THE READER style. . . . Seeing the extreme complexity of the phenomena he must endeavour to describe, he has not the privilege of writing badly. But he ought always to write well, and not to bedizen his prose with extra finery once a week.” Of course much that is said in this book has been said before, but I do not know any book wherein the student of history will find such an organised collec- tion of practical and helpful instructions. There are several points on which one is unable to find one- self in agreement with MM. Langlois and Seignobos, but these occur mainly where they are dealing with theory; as far as practical work goes, one finds one- self in almost perfect concurrence with them. That they know little of the way in which history is taught and studied in England or Canada or the United States is not at all an hindrance to the use of their book. The student may enjoy the pleasure of making his own examples out of English books to the rules they lay down. He may compare their cautions against false reasoning and instances of fallacy with those set forth in that excellent and concise essay of Bentham’s, which is apparently unknown to them. He will not fail to see that we in England have much to learn in this subject of history from the French. The French archives are not so fine as ours, but they take care to preserve their local and _pro- vincial documents, as well as their national and central records; they give their archivists a regular training, they calendar and make accessible all that time and fate have spared of pre-revolutionary documents. We have not got farther than the pro- ix To THE READER vision of a fine central Record Office furnished with very inadequate means for calendaring the masses of documents already stored and monthly accumulating there, though we have lately set up at Oxford, Cam- bridge, and London the regular courses of palso- graphy, diplomatic, and bibliography, that constitute the preliminary training of the archivist or historical researcher. We want more: we must have county archives, kept by trained archivists. We must have more trained archivists at the disposal of the Deputy Keeper of the Rolls, we must have such means as the Bibliotéque de Ecole des Chartes for full reports of special and minute investigations and discoveries, for hand-lists and the like, before we can be con- sidered as doing as much for history as the heavily taxed French nation does cheerfully, and with a sound confidence that the money it spends wisely in science is in the truest sense money saved. For those interested in the teaching of history, this book is one of the most suggestive helps that has yet appeared. With a blackboard, a text (such as are now cheap), or a text-book (such as Stubbs or Prothero or Gardiner), an atlas, and access to a decent public library and an average local museum, the teacher who has mastered its intent should never be at a loss for an interesting catechetical lecture or exposition to a class, whether of adults or of younger folk. Not the least practical part of the work of MM. Langlois and Seignobos has been the consideration they have given to such every-day issues as the teacher is constantly called upon to face. History x To THE READER cannot safely be neglected in schools, though it is by no means necessary that the Universities should turn out large bodies of trained historians. It is possible indeed that the serious study of history might gain were there fewer external inducements at the Univer- sities to lead to the popularity of the History Schools. But in this very popularity there lies a great op- portunity for concerted efforts, not only to better the processes of study, but also to clear off the vast arrears of classification and examination of the erroneous historic material at our disposition in this country. The historian has been (ag our authors hint) too much the ally of the politician; he has used his knowledge as material for preaching democracy in the United States, absolutism in Prussia, Orleanist opposition in France, and so on (English readers will easily recall examples from their own countrymen’s work): in the century to come he will have to ally himself with the students of physical science, with whose methods his own have so much in common, It is not patriotism, nor religion, nor art, but the attainment of truth that is and must be the historian’s single aim. But it is also to be borne in mind that history is an excellent instrument of culture, for, as our authors point out, “the practice and method of historic in- vestigation is a pursuit extremely healthful for the mind, freeing it from the disease of credulity,” and fortifying it in other ways as a discipline, though precisely how to best use history for this purpose is still in some ways uncertain, and after all it is a xi To THE READER matter which concerns Pedagogic and Ethic more than the student of history, though it is plain that MM. Langlois and Seignobos have not neglected to consider it. One can hardly help thinking, too, that, in schools and places where the young are trained, something might be gained by treating such books as Plutarch’s Lives not as history (for which they were never in- tended) but as text-books of ethic, as examples of conduct, public or private. The historian very pro- perly furnishes the ethical student with material, though it is not right to reckon the ethical student’s judgment upon the historian’s facts as history in any sense. It is not an historian’s question, for instance, whether Napoleon was right or wrong in his conduct at Jatta, or Nelson in his behaviour at Naples; that is a matter for the student of ethic or the religious dogmatist to decide: all that the historian has to do is to get what conclusion he can out of the conflict of evidence, and to decide whether Napoleon or Nelson actually did that of which their enemies accused them, or, if he cannot arrive at fact, to state probability, and the reasons that incline him to lean to the affirmative or negative. As to the possibility of a “philosophy of history,” a real one, not the mockeries that have long been discredited by scientific students, the reader will find some pregnant remarks here in the epilogue and the chapters that precede it. There is an absence of un- reasonable optimism in our authors’ views. “It is probable that hereditary differences have contributed to determine events; so that in part historic evolution Xil To THE READER is produced by physiological and anthropologic causes. But history furnishes no trustworthy process by which it may be possible to determine the action of those hereditary differences between man and man,” ie. she starts with races ‘endowed’ each with peculi- arities that make them ‘disposed to act’ somewhat differently under similar pressure. “History is only able to grasp the conditions of their existence.” And what M. Seignobos calls the final problem—Zs evolu- tion produced merely by changed conditions ?—must according to him remain insoluble by the legitimate processes of history. The student may accept or reject this view as his notions of evidence prompt him to do. M. Seignobos has at all events laid down a basis for discussion in sutticiently clear terms. As to the composition of the joint work we are told that M. Seignobos has been especially con- cerned with the chapters that touch theory, and M. Langlois with those that deal with practice. Both authors have already proved their competence—M. Seignobos’ labours on Modern History have been widely appreciated, while M. Langlois’ “ Hand-book of Historic Bibliography” is already a standard text- book, and bids fair to remain so. We are grateful to both of them for the pains they have taken to be clear and definite, and for their determination to shirk none of the difficulties that have met them. They have produced a hand-book that students will use and value in proportion to their use of it, a book that will save much muddle of thought and much loss of time, a book written in the right spirit to inspire its readers. We are not bound to agree with Xill To THE READER all M. Seignobos’ dogmas, and can hardly accept, for instance, M. Langlois’ apology for the brutal methods of controversy that are an evil legacy from the theo- logian and the grammarian, and are apt to darken truth and to cripple the powers of those who engage in them. For though itis possible that the secondary effect of these barbarous scuffles may sometimes have been salutary in deterring impostors from ‘taking up’ history, I am not aware of any positive examples to justify this opinion. There is this, however, to be said, that fully conscious of their own fallibility, M. Langlois and his excellent collaborator have supplied in their canons of criticism and maxims the best corrections of any mistakes into which they may have fallen by the way. Is not the House of Fame, as the poet tells us, a more wonderful and quaintly wrought habitation than Domus Dedali itself? And may not honest historians be pardoned if they are sometimes confused for a brief moment by the never- ending noise and marvellous motion of that deceptive mint and treasury, and fatigued by the continual trial and examination of the material that issues therefrom? The student will, at least, learn from MM. Langlois and Seignobos to have no mercy on his own shortcomings, to spare no pains, to grudge no expenditure of time or energy in the investigation of a carefully chosen and important historical problem, to aim at doing the bit of work in hand so thoroughly that it will not need to be done again. It would be unjust to omit here to mention Dr. Bernheim’s “Exposition of Historic Method,” or Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, so justly praised XiV To THE READER and used by our authors, but I believe that as an introduction to the subject, intended for the use of English or North American students, this little volume will be found the handier and more practical work. Of its value to English workers I can speak from experience, and I know many teachers to whom it will be welcome in its present form. It would have been easy to ‘adapt’ this book by altering its examples, by modifying its excellent plan, by cutting here and carving there to the supposed convenience of an imaginary public, but the better part has been chosen of giving English readers this manual precisely as it appeared in French. And surely one would rather read what M. Langlois, an experienced teacher and a tried scholar, thought on a moot point, than be presented with the views of some English ‘adaptor’ who had read his book, as to what he would have said had he been an Englishman lecturing to English students. That the present translator has taken much pains to faithfully report his authors, I know (though I have not compared English and French throughout every page), so that I can commend his honest work to the reader as I have already commended the excellent matter that he has been concerned in preparing for a wider public than the French original could command. F. YORK POWELL. ORIEL COLLEGE, OxFoRD, July 1898. XV ier CONTENTS To THE READER AUTHORS’ PREFACE What this work is not meant to be—Works on the aaa of History ‘ © What it zs meant to be Existing works on Historical Methedé—Dreysen, Freeman, Daunon, &c. . Reasons why the study of method i is casetel Bernheim’s Lehrbuch—In what way it leaves room for ghtier book Need of warning to stndehite The general public ‘ Distribution of the work between ale two aratthers ‘ BOOK I PRELIMINARY STUDIES CHAPTER I THE SEARCH FOR DOCUMENTS Documents : their nature, use, necessity . Utility of L/euristic, or the art of discovering Agcements The difficulties of Heuristic—Ancient times—H. H. Bancroft —State of things at the Renaissance . ‘ ‘ xvii b PAGE 10 II 13 13 17 18 19 CoNTENTS Growth of libraries — Collectors — Effects of revolutionary confiscation in promoting the concentration and the accessibility of documents . 3 Possible future progress—Need for the Gataloguitig and fnitex ing of documents Students and bibliographical knowledge—Effect et erst conditions in deterring men from historical work The remedies—Ofiicial cataloguing of libraries—Activity of learned societies—of governments : Different kinds of bibliographical works weeded by sidenta : Different degrees of difficulty of Heuristic in different parts of History—to be kept in view when choosing a subject of research CHAPTER II “AUXILIARY SCIENCES ”’ Documents are raw material, and need a preliminary elabora- tion : Obsolete views on the histérian’ s ‘apnranticediig Mably, Daunou . Commonplace and Seapporation on ‘his ibe ne— Various futilities ; The scientific conception of ise historian’ 8 appeniaeetin— Paleography—Epigraphy—Philology—Diplomatic . History of Literature—Archzology . Criticism of phrase “ auxiliary sciences "The | edbjeets not alll sctences—None of them auxiliary to the whole of History . This scientific conception is of recent growth—The Ecole des Chartes—Modern manuals of aro ee &c.—List of the chief of them XViil PAGE 20 27 32 34 37 38 42 43 45 48 St 52 55 CONTENTS BOOK II ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS CHAPTER I GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE irect and indirect knowledge of facts ‘ : History not a science of direct observation —Its dita obtained by chains of reasoning Twofold division of Historical Oriticism: Balers, fees iets ing the transmission and origin of documents and the statements in them; Internal, dealing with the content of the statements and their probability Complexity of Historical Criticism F é cessity of Criticism—The human mind abtarally aupyitleal SECTION L—EXTERNAL CRITICISM CHAPTER IT TEXTUAL CRITICISM Errors in the reproduction of documents : their frequency under the most favourable conditions—Mistakes of copyists—‘“‘ Sound” and “corrupt” texts . Necessity of emendation—The method subject to fixed ales Methods of textual criticism: (a) original preserved; (b) a single copy preserved, conjectural emendation; (c) several copies preserved, comparison of errors, families of manu- scripts. . F . Different degrees of difficulty of dexvaall ee er results negative—The “emendation game ”—What still remains to be done . . ‘ i. F . ‘ . XIX PAGE 63 64 66 67 68 71 73 75 83 CONTENTS CHAPTER ITI CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP Natural tendency to accept indications of authorship— Examples of false attributions—Necessity of verification —Application of internal criticism 5 Interpolations and continuations—Evidence of style : Plagiarism and borrowings by authors from each other—The filiation of statements—The investigation of sources Importance of investigations of authorship—The extreme of distrust to be avoided—Criticism only a means to an end CHAPTER IV CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES Importance of classification—The first impulse wrong—The note-book system not the best—Nor the ledger-system— Nor the “system ” of trusting the memory The system of slips the best-—Its drawbacks — Means . obviating them—The advantage of good “private librarian- ship” Methods of — vary apenvdiris to the ghieot ined atthe compiling of Regesta or of a Corpus—Classification by time, place, species, and form Chronological arrangement to be used when posdtble Gsome- phical arrangement best for inscriptions — When these fail, alphabetical order of “incipit ”—Logical order useful for some special purposes—Not for a Corpus or for Regesta CHAPTER V CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS Different opinions on the importance and dignity of external criticism—It is justified by its necessity—But is only preliminary to the higher part of historical work :, XX PAGE 87 92 93 98 101 103 105 107 112 CoNTENTS Distinction between “historians ” and “ critical scholars ” [Fr. “ érudits’’]|—Expediency, within limits, of the division of labour in this respect—The exceptional skill acquired by specialists—Difference of work the corollary of difference of natural aptitudes The natural aptitudes required for external criticiem—Tond: ness for the work, which is distasteful to the creative genius—The puzzle-solving instinct—Accuracy and its opposite—‘‘ Froude’s Disease ’’—Patience, order, persever- ance The mental defects produved by devotion to external oriticiem —lIts paralysing effect on the over-scrupulous—Hyper- criticism—Dilettantism The ‘‘ organisation of scientific lebour” . The harshness of judgment attributed to scholars, Bae wage rightly—Much of it a proper jealousy for historic truth— Bad work nowadays soon detected F : ; SECTION II—INTERNAL CRITICISM CHAPTER VI INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM (HERMENEUTIC) Internal criticism deals with the mental operations which begin with the observation of a fact and end with the writing of words in a document—It is divided into two stages : the first concerned with what the author meant, the second with the value of his statements _ Necessity of separating the two operations—Danger of repdiinp opinions into a text The analysis of documents—The wtiethod of slipe-Conpletes ness necessary Necessity of linguistic etudy’—Genoral inowiedee of a laisiaee not enough—Particular variety of a language as used at a given time, in a given sae by a given author—The tule of context Different degrees of difficulty in 1 interpretation XX1 PaGE IIS 121 128 135 136 141 143 145 146 149 CONTENTS CHAPTER III CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP Natural tendency to accept indications of authorship— Examples of false attributions—Necessity of verification —Application of internal criticism Interpolations and continuations—Evidence of sigle Plagiarism and borrowings by authors from each other—The filiation of statements—The investigation of sources Importance of investigations of authorship—The extreme of distrust to be avoided—Criticism only a means to an end CHAPTER IV CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES Importance of classification—The first impulse wrong—The note-book system not the best—Nor the ledger-system— Nor the “system” of trusting the memory The system of slips the best-—Its drawbacks — Means of obviating them—The advantage of good “private librarian- ship” Methods of enti vary aeperding to ne ebiedt oie othe. compiling of Reyesta or of a Corpus—Classification by time, place, species, and form . Chronological arrangement to be used when postibieSGengeea phical arrangement best for inscriptions — When these fail, alphabetical order of “incipit ”—Logical order useful for some special purposes—Not for a Corpus or for Regesta CHAPTER V CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS Different opinions on the importance and dignity of external criticism—It is justified by its necessity—But is only preliminary to the higher part of historical work ;. XX PAGE 87 92 93 98 101 103 105 107 112 CoNTENTS Distinction between “historians” and “ critical scholars” [Fr. “ érudits’’|—Expediency, within limits, of the division of labour in this respect—The exceptional skill acquired by specialists—Difference of work the corollary of difference of natural aptitudes The natural aptitudes required for exter ovitieienena. ness for the work, which is distasteful to the creative genius—The puzzle-solving instinct—Accuracy and its opposite—‘‘ Froude’s Disease ’—Patience, order, persever- ance é The mental defects produced by devotion to external criticism —lIts paralysing effect on the over-scrupulous—Hyper- criticism—Dilettantism . é ‘ The ‘‘ organisation of scientific labour” . The harshness of judgment attributed to scholars, not always rightly—Much of it a proper jealousy for historic truth— Bad work nowadays soon detected i SECTION IL—INTERNAL CRITICISM CHAPTER VI INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM (HERMENEUTIC) Internal criticism deals with the mental operations which begin with the observation of a fact and end with the writing of words in a document—It is divided into two stages: the first concerned with what the author meant, the second with the value of his statements ‘ Necessity of separating the two operations— Danger of raeding opinions into a text The analysis of documents—The ietlied, of dips Gonmplate. ness necessary Necessity of linguistic study—General imowledpe ap a nvigtane not enough—Particular variety of a language as used at a given time, in a given iis by a given author—The tule of context Different degrees of difficulty in 1 interpretation XX1 PaGE 115 121 128 135 136 141 143 145 146 149 CONTENTS Oblique senses : allegory, metaphor, &c.—How to detect them —Former tendency to find symbolism everywhere — Modern tendency to find allusion everywhere Results of interpretation—Subjective inquiries CHAPTER VII PAGE St 153 THE NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM OF THE GOOD FAITH AND ACCURACY OF AUTHORS Natural tendency to trust documents—Criticism originally due to contradictions—The rule of methodical doubt— Defec- tive modes of criticism Documents to be analysed, and the ieducible sleniants criticised separately a The “accent of sincerity ”—No trust to be viewed: in impres- sions produced by the form of statements 3 Criticism examines the conditions affecting (1) the composition of the document as a whole; (2) the making of each par- ticular statement—In both cases using a previously made list of possible reasons for distrust or confidence Reasons for doubting good faith: (1) the author’s Sahavest: (2) the force of circumstances, official reports; (3) sym- pathy and antipathy ; (4) vanity; (5) deference to public opinion ; (6) literary distortion . Reasons for doubting accuracy: (1) the euthar a bad Sbeceney, hallucinations, illusions, prejudices; (2) the author not well situated for observing ; (3) negligence and indiffer- ence ; (4) fact not of nature to be directly observed . Cases where the author is not the original observer of the fact—Tradition, written and Pe? neon ore Anonymous statements Special reasons without which aionyious etatements are not to be accepted: (1) falsehood improbable because (a) the fact is opposed to interest or vanity of author, (b) the fact was generally known, (c) the fact was indifferent to the author:; (2) error improbable because the fact was too big to mistake ; (3) the fact seemed improbable or unintel- ligible to the author How critical operations are dhortensalt in piyeties XX1i 155 159 161 162 166 172 177 185 189 CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII THE DETERMINATION OF PARTICULAR FACTS PAGE The conceptions of authors, whether well or ill founded, are the subject-matter of certain studies—They necessarily contain elements of truth, which, under certain restric- tions, may sometimes be inferred fromthem . : 191 The statements of authors, taken singly, do not rise dhove probability—The only sure results of criticism are negative —To establish facts it is necessary to compare different statements . i - 194 Contradictions between dintements: vent atl apparent 0 198 Agreement of statements—Necessity of proving them to be independent — Perfect agreement not so conclusive as occasional coincidence — Cases where different observa- tions of the same fact are not independent—General facts the easiest to prove. 4 199 Different facts, each imperfectly aveeea devrahonate ‘Yash other when they harmonise 204 Disagreement between documents and thie sources eee know. ledge—Improbable statements—Miracles—When science and history conflict, history should give way . . 205 BOOK III SYNTHETIC OPERATIONS CHAPTER I GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION The materials of Historical Construction are isolated facts, of very different kinds, of very different degrees of generality, each belonging to a definite time and place, of different degrees of certainty : : z . 211 Subjectivity of History . F : . : ; . 214 XXill — CONTENTS The facts learnt from documents relate to (1) living beings and material objects; (2) actions, individual and collec- tive ; (3) motives and conceptions The facts of the past must be imagined on the model of ‘those of the present—Danger of error i aaa in regard to mental facts = Some of the conditions of hima life are pentarient—The study of these provides a framework into which details taken from documents are to be fitted—For this purpose systematic lists of questions are to be used, drawn up beforehand, and relating to the universal conditions of life Outline of Historical Construction—The division of labour— Historians must use the works of their colleagues and predecessors, but not without critical precautions CHAPTER IT THE GROUPING OF FACTS Historical facts may be classified and arranged either accord- ing to their time and place, or according to their nature— Scheme for the logical classification of general historical facts The selection of facts ive irentmment—The history of civilisation and “ battle-history’—Both needed . The determination of groups of men—Precantions to be observed—The notion of ‘‘ race’ A The study of institutions—Danger of being misled by meta. phors—The questions which should be asked Evolutions: operations involved in the study of them—The place of particular facts (events) in evolution—Important and unimportant facts . Periods—How they should be defined CHAPTER III CONSTRUCTIVE REASONING Incompleteness of the facts yielded by documents—Cautions to be observed in filling up the gaps by reasoning XX1V PAGE 217 219 224 228 232 236 238 241 244 249 252 CONTENTS The argument from silence—When admissible Positive reasoning based on documents—The general amastates employed must enter into details, and the particular facts to which they are applied must not be taken in isolation CHAPTER IV THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENERAL FORMULZE History, like every science, needs formule by which the facts acquired may be condensed into manageable form Descriptive formule—Should retain characteristic features— Should be as concrete as possible ‘ Formule describing general facts—How soustrincted—Con. ventional forms and realities—Mode of formulating an evolution F 3 Formule describing unique fadie—Banoiile of dhoite— “Character” of persons—Precautions in sini them—Formule describing events Quantitative formule—Operations by which they “ay be obtained: measurement, enumeration, valuation, sampling, generalisation—Precautions to be observed in generalising Formule expressing relations—General conclusions—Estima- tion of the extent and value of the knowledge acquired— Imperfection of data not to be forgotten in construction Groups and their classification . The “solidarity” of social phenotiénaa JN Eeoueiy of staagaie causes—Metaphysical hypothesis—Providence—Concep- tion of events as ‘‘rational”—The Hegelian “ideas ”— The historical ‘‘ mission” — The theory of the general progress of humanity . The conception of society as an geese poems method — Statistics — Causes cannot be investigated directly, as in other sciences—Causation as exhibited in the sequence of particular events The study of the causes of social evolution ange look bovend abstractions to the concrete, acting and thinking men— The place of hereditary characteristics in determining evolution . ‘ XXV PAGS 254 256 262 264 266 270 274 279 282 285 288 292 CONTENTS CHAPTER V EXPOSITION {Former conceptions of history-writing—The ancient and medieval ideal— The ‘‘history of civilisation’”—The modern historical “manual”—The romantic ideal at the beginning of the century—History regarded as a branch of literature up to 1850 The modern scientific ideal— Mcnoprapha—Ripht “ehoice ot subject—References—Chronological order— Unambiguous titles—Economy of erudition General works—4A. meant for students and anedialtete= Works of reference or “repertories” and scientific manuals of special branches of history — Their form and style— Collaboration in their production — Scientific general histories \ B. Works intended for the. public—The best kind of pepelant- sation—The inferior kind—Specialists who lower their standard when they write for the public—The literary style suitable for history CONCLUSION Summary description of the methods of history—The future of history ‘ The utility of isioiss No. diveutty appliouble to wide con- ditions—Affords an explanation of the present—Helps (and is helped by) the social sciences—A means of intel- lectual culture APPENDIX I THE SECONDARY TEACHING OF HISTORY IN FRANCE Late introduction of history as a subject of secondary instruc- tion—Defective methods coeu up to the end of the Second Empire XXV1 PAGE 311 316 319 325 CoNTENTS The reform movement—Questions involved relating to general organisation—Choice of subjects—Order of teaching— Methods of instruction—These questions to be answered in the way that will make history most useful as a means of social culture . Material sids—Rngraringe —Books— Methods af teaGding APPENDIX II THE HIGHER TEACHING OF HISTORY IN FRANCE The different institutions— The Collége de France —The Faculties of Letters—The Ecole Normale—The Ecole des Chartes—The Ecole pratique des hautes Etudes ; Reform of the Faculties—Preparation for degrees—The Examination question—Principles on which it is to be solved—The Dipléme @ tudes supérieures : Influence of the movement on the other inliations —i0e- operation of the institutions INDEX OF PROPER NAMES XXVIi PAGE 328 332 335 340 345 347 AUTHORS’ PREFACE THE title of this work is clear. However, it is necessary to state succinctly both what our inten- tion has, and what it has not been; for under this same title, “ Introduction to the Study of History,” very different books have already been published. It has not been our intention to give, as Mr. W. B. Boyce’ has done, a summary of universal history for the use of beginners and readers of scanty leisure. Nor has it been our intention to add a new item to the abundant literature of what is ordinarily called the “ Philosophy of History.” Thinkers, for the most part not professed historians, have made history the subject of their meditations; they have sought for its “ analogies” and its “laws.” Some have supposed themselves to have discovered “ the laws which have governed the development of humanity,” and thus to have “raised history to the rank of a positive science.” * These vast abstract constructions inspire with an invincible a priori mistrust, not the general public only, but superior minds as well. Fustel de Coulanges, as his latest biographer tells us, was severe 1 W. B. Boyce, “Introduction to the Study of History, Civil, Ecclesiastical, and Literary,” London, 1894, 8vo. 2 For example, P. J. B. Buchez, in his Introduction a la science de Uhistoire, Paris, 1842, 2 vols. 8vo. A AuTHORS PREFACE on the Philosophy of History ; these systems were as repugnant to him as metaphysics to the positivists. Rightly or wrongly (without doubt wrongly), the Philosophy of History, not having been cultivated ex- clusively by well-informed, cautious men of vigorous and sound judgment, has fallen into disrepute. The reader will be reassured—or disappointed, as the case may be—to learn that this subject will find no place in the present work." We propose to examine the conditions and the methods, to indicate the character and the limits, of historical knowledge. How do we ascertain, in respect of the past, what part of it it is possible, what part of it it is important, to know? What is a document ? How are documents to be treated with a view to historical work? What are historical facts ? How are they to be grouped to make history ? Who- ever occupies himself with history performs, more or less unconsciously, complicated operations of criti- cism and construction, of analysis and synthesis. But beginners, and the majority of those who have never reflected on the principles of historical methodology, 1 The history of the attempts which have been made to under- stand 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 Uhistoire considérée comme science, Paris, 1894, 8vo. Cf. Revue Critique, 1895, i. p. 132. 2 AUTHORS’ PREFACE make use, in the performance of these operations, of instinctive methods which, not being, in general, rational methods, do not usually lead to scientific truth. It is, therefore, useful to make known and logically justify the theory of the truly rational methods—a theory which is now settled in some parts, though still incomplete in some points of capital importance. The present “Introduction to the Study of History” is thus intended, not as a summary of ascertained facts or a system of general ideas on universal history, but as an essay on the method of the historical sciences. We proceed to state the reasons why we have thought such a work opportune, and to explain the spirit in which we have undertaken to write it. I The books which treat of the methodology of the historical sciences are scarcely less numerous, and at the same time not in much better favour, than the books on the Philosophy of History. Specialists despise them. A widespread opinion is expressed in the words attributed to a certain scholar: “ You wish to write a book on philology; you will do much better to produce a book with some good philology in it. When I am asked to define philo- logy, I always answer that it is what I work at,”? Again, in reference to J. G. Droysen’s Précis of the Science of History, a certain critic expressed an opinion which was meant to be, and was, a common- place: “Generally speaking, treatises of this kind 1 Revue Critique dhistoire et de littérature, 1892, i. p. 164. 3 AuTHOoRS PREFACE are of necessity both obscure and useless: obscure, because there is nothing more vague than their object; useless, because it is possible to be an historian without troubling oneself about the prin- ciples of historical methodology which they claim to exhibit.”1 The arguments used by these de- spisers of methodology are strong enough in all appearance. They reduce to the following. As a matter of fact, there are men who manifestly follow good methods, and are universally recognised as scholars or historians of the first order, without having ever studied the principles of method; con- versely, it does not appear that those who have written on historical method from the logical point of view have in consequence attained any marked superiority as scholars or historians: some, indeed, have been known for their incompetence or medio- crity in these capacities. In this there is nothing that need surprise us. Who would think of post- poning original research in chemistry, mathematics, the sciences proper, until he had studied the methods employed in those sciences? Historical criticism ! Yes, but the best way to learn it is to apply it; practice teaches all that is wanted.2 Take, too, the 1 Revue Critique Whistoire 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. 2 In accordance with the principle that historical method can only be taught by example, L. Mariani has given the humorous 4 AUTHORS PREFACE extant works on historical method, even the most recent of them, those of J. G. Droysen, E. A. Freeman, A. Tardif, U. Chevalier, and others; the utmost diligence will extract from them nothing in the way of clear ideas beyond the most obvious and commonplace truisms. We willingly recognise that this manner of think- ing is not entirely wrong. The great majority of works on the method of pursuing historical inves- tigations and of writing history—what is called Historic in Germany and England—are superficial, insipid, unreadable, sometimes ridiculous.” To begin title Corso pratico di metodologia della storia to a dissertation on a detail in the history of Fermo. See the Archivio della Societa romana di storia patria, xiii. (1890), p. 211. 1 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 con- cludes: 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. 2 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 5 AUTHORS’ PREFACE with, those prior to the nineteenth century, a full analysis of which is given by P. C. F. Daunou in the seventh volume of his Cours études histo- riques; are nearly all of them mere treatises on rhetoric, in which the rhetoric is antiquated, and the problems discussed are the oddest imaginable.” Daunou makes merry over them, but he himself has shown good sense and nothing more in his monumental work, which at the present time seems little better, and certainly not more useful, than the earlier treatises.2 As to the modern ones, it is true 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. 1 This seventh volume was published in 1844. But Daunou’s celebrated Cours was delivered at the Collage de France in the years 1819-30. ° The Italians of the Renaissance (Myleus, 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 evi- dence of any original effort to attack the real difficulties, are those of Lenglet de Fresnoy (Méthode pour étudier Uhistoire, Paris, 1713), and of J. M. Chladenius (Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft, Leipzig, 1752). The work of Chladenius has been noticed by Bernheim (ibid. p. 166). 3 He has not always shown even good sense, for, in the Cours d'études historiques (vii. p. 105), where he treats of a work, De AUTHORS’ PREFACE that not all have been able to escape the two dangers to which works of this character are exposed—that of being obscure on the one hand, or commonplace on the other. J. G. Droysen’s Grundriss der Historik is heavy, pedantic, and confused beyond all imagina- tion.’ Freeman, Tardif, and Chevalier tell us nothing but what is elementary and obvious. Their followers may still be observed discussing at interminable length idle questions, such as: whether history is a science or an art; what are the duties of history ; what is the use of history; and so on. On the other hand, there is incontestable truth in the re- mark that nearly all the specialists and historians of to-day are, as far as method goes, self-taught, with no training except what they have gained by practice, or by imitating and associating with the older masters of the craft. But though many works on the principles of method justify the distrust with which such works are gene- rally regarded, and though most professed historians have been able, apparently with no ill results, to dispense with reflection upon historical method, it would, in our opinion, be a strained inference to conclude that specialists and historians (especially Uhistotre, published in 1670 by Pére 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.” Pere H. Chérot has given a sounder estimate of the treatise De [histoire in his Etude sur la vie et les cuvres du P. Le Moyne (Paris, 1887, 8vo), pp. 406 sqq. 1 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. 7 AUTHORS’ PREFACE those of the future) have no need to make themselves acquainted with the processes of historical work. The literature of methodology is, in fact, not without its value: gradually there has been formed a treasury of subtle observations and precise rules, suggested by experience, which are something more than mere common sense.’ And, admitting the existence of those who, without having ever learnt to reason, always reason well, by a gift of nature, it would be easy to set against these exceptions innumerable cases in which ignorance of logic, the use of irra- tional methods, want of reflection on the conditions of historical analysis and synthesis, have robbed the work of specialists and historians of much of its value. The truth is, that, of all branches of study, his- tory is without a doubt the one in which it is most necessary for students to have a clear consciousness of the methods they use. The reason is, that in history instinctive methods are, as we cannot too often repeat, irrational methods ; some preparation is therefore required to counteract the first impulse. Besides, the rational methods of obtaining historical knowledge differ so widely from the methods of all other sciences, that some perception of their distinc- tive features is necessary to avoid the temptation of applying to history the methods of those sciences. which have already been systematised. This explains why mathematicians and chemists can, more easily than historians, dispense with an “introduction” to 1 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, 8 AUTHORS PREFACE their subject. There is no need to insist at greater length on the utility of historical methodology, for there is evidently nothing very serious in the attacks which have been made on it. But it behoves us to explain the reasons which have led to the composi- tion of the present work. For the last fifty years a great number of intelligent and open-minded men have meditated on the methods of the historical sciences. Naturally we find among them many his- torians, university professors, whose position enables them to understand better than others the intellec- tual needs of the young; but at the same time professed logicians, and even novelists. In this connection, Fustel de Coulanges left a tradition behind him at the University of Paris. “He en- deavoured,” we are told, “to reduce the rules of method to very precise formule ...; in his view no task was more urgent than that of teaching students how to attain truth.” Among these men, some, like Renan, have been content to insert scattered observations in their general works or their occasional writings;* others, as Fustel de 1 By P. Guiraud, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, March 1896, Pp. 75- 2 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. 3 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 dhistoire 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.” ; 9 AUTHORS PREFACE Coulanges, Freeman, Droysen, Lewvenee, Stubbs, De Smedt, Von Pilugk-Harttung, and so on, have taken the trouble to express their thoughts on the subject in special treatises. There are many books, “in- augural lectures,” “ academic orations,” and review- articles, published in all countries, but especially in France, Germany, England, the United States, and Italy, both on the whole subject of methodology and on the different parts of it. It will occur to the reader that it would be a far from useless labour to collect and arrange the observations which are scattered, and, one might say, lost, in these numerous books and minor writings. But it is too late to undertake this pleasant task; it has been recently performed, and in the most painstaking manner. Professor Ernst Bernheim, of the University of Greifswald, has worked through nearly all the modern works on historical method, and the fruit of his labours is an arrangement under appropriate headings, most of them invented by himself, of a great number of reflections and selected references. His Lehrbuch der historischen Methode’* (Leipzig, 1894, 8vo) condenses, in the manner of German Lehrbiicher, the special literature of the subject of which it treats. It is not our intention to do over again what has already been done so well. But we are of opinion that even after this laborious and well- planned compilation something still remains to be said. In the first place, Professor Bernheim deals largely with metaphysical problems which we con- sider devoid of interest ; while, conversely, he entirely ignores certain considerations which appear to us to 1 The first edition of the Lehrbuch is dated 1889. Io AUTHORS PREFACE be, both theoretically and practically, of the greatest importance. In the second place, the teaching of the Lehrbuch is sound enough, but lacks vigour and originality. Lastly, the Lehrbuch is not addressed to the general public; both the language in which it is written and the form in which it is composed render it inaccessible to the great majority of French readers. This is enough to justify our undertak- ing to write a book of our own, instead of simply recommending the book of Professor Bernheim.* II This “Introduction to the Study of History” does not claim, like the Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, to be a treatise on historical methodology.” It is a sketch in outline. We undertook its composition, at the beginning of the scholastic year 1896-97, in order that the new students at the Sorbonne might be warned what the study of history is and ought to be. Long experience has taught us the necessity of such warnings. The greater part of those who enter upon a career of historical study do so, as a matter of fact, without knowing why, without having ever asked themselves whether they are fitted for his- torical work, of the true nature of which they are 1 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 Vhistoire (Paris, 1894, 8vo), 88 pp., extracted from vol. xx. of the Grande Encyclopédie. 2 One of us, M. Seignobos, proposes to publish later on a com- plete treatise of Historical Methodology, if there appears to be a public for this class of work. II AUTHORS PREFACE often ignorant. Generally their motives for choosing an historical career are of the most futile character. One has been successful in history at college ; * another feels himself drawn towards the past by the same kind of romantic attraction which, we are told, determined the vocation of Augustin Thierry ; some are misled by the fancy that history is a compara- tively easy subject. It is certainly important that these irrational votaries should be enlightened and put to the test as soon as possible. Having given a course of lectures, to novices, by way of “Introduction to the Study of History,” we thought that, with a little revision, these lectures might be made useful to others besides novices. Scholars and professed historians will doubtless have nothing to learn from this work; but if they should find in it a stimulus to personal reflection on the craft which some of them practise in a mechanical fashion, that would be something gained. 1 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 inter- connection of events?” (Bibliotheque de U'Ecole des chartes, 1896, p. 84). 12 AUTHORS’ PREFACE As for the public, which reads the works of histo- rians, is it not desirable that it should know how these works are produced, in order to be able to judge them better ? We do not, therefore, like Professor Bernheim, write exclusively for present and future specialists, but also for the public interested in history. We thus lay ourselves under an obligation to be as concise, as clear, and as little technical as possible. But to be concise and clear on subjects of this kind often means to appear superficial. Commonplace on the one hand, obscurity on the other: these, as we have already seen, are the evils between which we have the sorry privilege of choosing. We admit the difficulty. But we do not think it insurmount- able, and our endeavour has been to say what we had to say in the clearest possible manner. The first half of the book has been written by M. Langlois, the second by M. Seignobos; but the two collaborators have constantly aided, consulted, and checked each other.’ Paris, August 1897. 1M. Langlois wrote Book IJ., Book II. as far as 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. 13 BOOK I PRELIMINARY STUDIES 15 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY BOOK I PRELIMINARY STUDIES CHAPTER I THE SEARCH FOR DOCUMENTS (HEURISTIC) THE historian works with documents. Documents are the traces which have been left by the thoughts and actions of men of former times. Of these thoughts and actions, however, very few leave any visible traces, and these traces, when there are any, are seldom durable; an accident is enough to efface them. Now every thought and every action that has left no visible traces, or none but what have since disappeared, is lost for history; is as though it had never been. For want of documents the history of immense periods in the past of humanity is des- tined to remain for ever unknown. For there is no substitute for documents: no documents, no history. In order to draw legitimate inferences from a document to the fact of which it is the trace, numerous precautions are requisite which will be indicated in | B PRELIMINARY STUDIES the sequel. But it is clear that, prior to any critical examination or interpretation of documents, the question presents itself whether there are any docu- ments at all, how many there are, and where they are. If I undertake to deal with a point of history,! of what- ever nature, my first step will be to ascertain the place or places where the documents necessary for its treat- ment, if any such exist, are to be found. The search for and the collection of documents is thus a part, logically the first and most important part, of the his- torian’s craft. In Germany it has received the conve- nient, because short, name of Heuristik. Is there any need to prove the capital importance of Heuristic ? Assuredly not. It is obvious that if it is neglected, if the student does not, before he sets to work on a point of history, place himself in a position to com- mand all accessible sources of information, his risk (no small one at the best) of working upon insuffi- cient data is quite unnecessarily increased: works of erudition or history constructed in accordance with the rules of the most exact method have been vitiated, or even rendered worthless, by the accidental circum- stance that the author was unacquainted with the documents by which those which he had within reach, and with which he was content, might have been illustrated, supplemented, or discredited. The scholars and historians of to-day, standing, as they 1 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. 18 THE SEARCH FOR DocUMENTS do, in other respects on an equality with their pre- decessors of the last few centuries, are only enabled to surpass them by their possession of more abun- dant means of information. Heuristic is, in fact, easier to-day than it used to be, although the honest Wagner has still good grounds for saying: “ Wie schwer sind nicht die Mittel zu erwerben, Durch die man zu den Quellen steigt !”? Let us endeavour to explain why the collection of documents, once so laborious, is still no easy matter, in spite of the progress made in the last century ; and how this essential operation may, in the course of continued progress, be still further simplified. I. Those who first endeavoured to write history from the sources found themselves in an embarrassing situation. Were the events they proposed to relate recent, so that all the witnesses of them were not yet dead? They had the resource of interviewing the witnesses who survived. Thucydides, Froissart, and many others have followed this procedure. When Mr. H. H. Bancroft, the historian of the Pacific Coast of California, resolved to collect materials for the history of events many of the actors in which were still alive, he mobilised a whole army of reporters charged to extract conversations from them.’ But 1It 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 incom- plete. This lack of material was a disadvantage for which the most brilliant ingenuity could not compensate. 2 «How hard it is to gain the means whereby we mount to the sources” (Goethe, Faust, i. 3). 3 See C. V. Langlois, H. H. Bancroft et Cie., in the Revue univer- sitaire, 1894, 1. p. 233. 19 PRELIMINARY STUDIES when the events to be related were ancient, so that no man then living could have witnessed them, and no account of them had been preserved by oral tradi- tion, what then? Nothing was left but to collect documents of every kind, principally written ones, relating to the distant past which was to be studied. This was a difficult task at a time when libraries were rare, archives secret, and documents scattered. About the year 1860, Mr. Bancroft, in California, was in a situation analogous to that of the earlier researchers in our part of the world. His plan was as follows: He was rich; he cleared the market of all documents, printed or manuscript; he negotiated with financially embarrassed families and corporations for the purchase of their archives, or the permission to have them copied by his paid agents. This done, he housed his collection in premises built for the purpose, and classified it. Theoretically there could not be a more rational procedure. But this rapid, American method has only once been employed with sufficient resources and sufficient consistency to ensure its success; at any other time, and in any other place, it would have been out of the question. No- where else have the circumstances been so favour- able for it. At the epoch of the Renaissance the documents of ancient and modern history were scattered in in- numerable private libraries and in innumerable depo- sitories of archives, almost all of them inaccessible, not to mention those which lay hidden beneath the soil, their very existence as yet unsuspected. It was at that time a physical impossibility to procure a list of all the documents serving for the elucidation 20 THE SEARCH FOR DocUMENTS of a question (for example, a list of all the manu- scripts still preserved of an ancient work); and if, by a miracle, such a list was to be had, it was another impossibility to consult all these documents except at the cost of journeys, expenses, and negotiations without end. Consequences easy to foresee did, as a matter of fact, ensue. Firstly, the difficulties of Heuristic being insurmountable, the earliest scholars and historians—employing, as they did, not all the documents, nor the best documents, but those docu- ments on which they could lay their hands—were nearly always ill-informed ; and their works are now without interest except so far as they are founded on documents which have since been lost. Secondly, the first scholars and historians to be relatively well- informed were those who, in virtue of their profes- sion, had access to rich storehouses of documents— librarians, keepers of archives, monks, magistrates, whose order or whose corporation possessed libraries or archives of considerable extent.’ It is true that collectors soon arose who, by money payments, or by more questionable expedients, such as theft, formed, with more or less regard for the interests of scientific study, “cabinets” of collec- tions of original documents, and of copies. But these 1 The earlier scholars were conscious of the unfavourable char- acter 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 be- tween scholars of the last few centuries, of which our libraries pre- serve so many precious fragments, and these accounts of scientific searches, of journeys undertaken for the discovery of historical documents, which, under the name of Jter (Iter Ltalicwm, Iter Ger- manieum, &c.), were formerly fashionable. ae PRELIMINARY STUDIES European collectors, of whom there has been a great number since the fifteenth century, differ very notice- ably from Mr. Bancroft. The Californian, in fact, only collected documents relating to a particular subject (the history of certain Pacific states), and his aubition was to make his collection complete; most European collectors have acquired waifs and strays and fragments of every description, forming, when combined, totals which appear insignificant by the side of the huge mass of historical documents which existed at the time. Besides, it was not, in general, with any purpose of making them generally accessible that collectors like Peiresc, Gaignitres, Clairambault, Colbert, and many others, withdrew from circulation documents which were in danger of being lost ; they were content (and it was creditable to do as much as this) to share them, more or less freely, with their friends. But collectors (and their heirs) are fickle people, and sometimes eccentric in their notions. Certainly it is better that documents should be pre- served in private collections, than that they should be entirely unprotected and absolutely inaccessible to the scientific worker; but in order that Heuristic should be made really easier, the first condition is that all collections of documents should be public." 1 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 manifesta- tion, in a somewhat crude form, of a general tendency against which it is always necessary to guard: a man readily exaggerates the 22 THE SEARCH FOR DocUMENTS Now the finest private collections of documents— libraries and museums combined—were naturally, in the Europe of the Renaissance, those possessed by kings. And while other private collections were often dispersed upon the death of their founders, these, on the contrary, never ceased to grow; they were enriched, indeed, by the wreckage of all the others. The Cabinet des manuserits de France, for example, formed by the French kings, and by them thrown open to the public, had, at the end of the eighteenth century, absorbed the best part of the collections which had been the personal work of the amateurs and scholars of the two preceding centuries." Similarly in other countries. The concentration of a great number of historical documents in vast public (or semi-public) establishments was the fortunate result of this spontaneous evolution. The arbitrary proceedings of the Revolution were still more favourable, and still more effective in securing the amelioration of the material conditions of historical research. The Revolution of 1789 in France, analogous movements in other countries, led to the violent confiscation, for the profit of the state (that is, of everybody), of a host of private archives and collections—the archives, libraries, and museums of the crown, the archives and libraries of monas- teries and suppressed corporations, and so on. In importance of the documents he possesses, the documents he has discovered, the texts he has edited, the persons and the questions he has studied. 1 See L. Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque nation- ale, 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. 23 PRELIMINARY STUDIES France, in 1790, the Constituent Assembly thus placed the state in possession of a great number of depositories of historical documents, previously scat- tered, and guarded more or less jealously from the curiosity of scholars; these treasures have since been divided among four different national insti- tutions. The same phenomenon has been more recently observed, on a smaller scale, in Germany, Spain, and Italy. The confiscations of the revolutionary period, as well as the collections of the period which preceded it, have both been productive of serious damage. The collector is, or rather often was, a barbarian who did not hesitate, when he saw a chance of adding to his collection of specimens and rare remains, to mutilate monuments, to dissect manu- scripts, to break up whole archives, in order to possess himself of the fragments. On this score many acts of vandalism were perpetrated before the Revolution. Naturally, the revolutionary procedure of confiscation and transference was also productive of lamentable consequences ; besides the destruction which was the result of negligence and that which was due to the mere pleasure of destroying, the unfortunate idea arose that collections might be systematically weeded, those documents only to be preserved which were “interesting” or “useful,” the rest to be got rid of. The task of weeding was entrusted to well-meaning but incompetent and overworked men, who were thus led to commit irreparable havoc in our ancient archives. At the present day there are workers engaged in the task, one requiring an extraordinary amount of time, 24 Toe Searcy For Documents patience, and care, of restoring the dismembered collections, and replacing the fragments which were then isolated in so brutal a manner by these zealous but unreflecting manipulators of historical docu- ments. It must be recognised, moreover, that the mutilations due to revolutionary activity and the pre-revolutionary collectors are insignificant in com- parison with those which are the result of accident and the destructive work of time. But had they been ten times as serious, they would have been amply compensated by two advantages of the first importance, on which we cannot lay too much stress: (1) the concentration, in a relatively small number of depositories, of documents which were formerly scattered, and, as it were, lost, in a hundred different places; (2) the opening of these depositories to the public. The remnant of historical documents which has survived the destructive effects of accident and vandalism is now at last safely housed, classified, made accessible, and treated as public property. Ancient historical documents are now, as we have seen, collected and preserved chiefly in those public institutions which are called archives, libraries, and museums. It is true that this does not apply to all existing documents ; in spite of the unceasing acqui- sitions by purchase and gift which archives, libraries, and museums all over the world have been making every year for a long time past, there still exist private collections, dealers who supply them, and documents in circulation. But the exceptions, which in this case are negligeable, do not affect the general rule. Besides, all the ancient documents which, in limited quantity, still range at large, are destined 25 PRELIMINARY STUDIES sooner or later to find their way into the state in- stitutions, whose doors are always open to let in, but never to let out. It is to be desired, as a matter of principle, that the depositories of documents (archives, libraries, and museums) should not be too numerous; and we have pointed out that, fortunately, they are now beyond comparison less numerous than they were a hundred years ago. Could not the centralisation of documents, with its evident advantages for re- searchers, be carried still further? Are there not still collections of documents of which it would be hard to justify the separate existence? Perhaps ;” but the problem of the centralisation of documents is no longer urgent, now that the processes of re- 1 Many of the ancient documents still in circulation are the pro- ceeds 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, 2 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. 26 THE SEARCH FOR DocuMENTS production have been perfected, especially as the inconveniences arising from a multitude of deposi- tories are met by the expedient, now in general use, of allowing the documents to travel: it is now possible for the student to consult, without expense, in the public library of the city where he resides, documents belonging, say, to the libraries of St. Petersburg, Brussels, and Florence; we now rarely meet with institutions like the Archives Nationales at Paris, the British Museum at London, and the Méjanes Library at Aix-en-Provence, whose statutes absolutely prohibit all lending-out of their contents.’ IT. It being granted that the majority of historical documents are now preserved in public institutions (archives, libraries, and museums), Heuristic would be very easy if only good descriptive catalogues had been drawn up of all the existing collections of documents, if these catalogues were furnished with indexes, or if general repertories (alphabetical, systematic, &c.) had been made relating to them, lastly, if there were some place where it was pos- sible to consult the complete collection of all these catalogues and their indexes. But Heuristic is still difficult, because these conditions are, unfortunately, still very far from being adequately realised. 1 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 some- times more rapid in its operation than the diplomatic system. The question of lending original documents for use outside the institu- tion 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. 27 ‘ PRELIMINARY STUDIES Firstly, there are depositories of documents (archives, libraries, and museums) whose contents have never been even partially catalogued, so that no one knows what is in them. ‘The depositories of which we possess complete descriptive catalogues are rare; there are many collections preserved in cele- brated institutions which have only been catalogued in part, and the bulk of which still remains to be described! In the second place, what a variety there is among existing catalogues! There are some old ones which do not now correspond to the present classification of documents, and which cannot be used without reference-tables; there are new ones which are equally based on obsolete systems, too detailed or too summary; some are printed, others in manuscript, on registers or slips; some are care- fully executed and clear, many are scamped, in- adequate, and provisional. Taking printed catalogues alone, it requires a whole apprenticeship to learn to distinguish, in this enormous mass of confusion, between what is trustworthy and what is not; in other words, to make any use of them at all. Lastly, where are the existing catalogues to be consulted ? Most of the great libraries only possess incomplete collections of them; there is no general guide to them anywhere. This is a deplorable state of things. In fact, the documents contained in uncatalogued -depositories 1 These are sometimes large collections of formidable bulk ; it is more natural to undertake the cataloguing of small accumulations which demand less labour. 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. 28 * THE SEARCH FOR DocuMENTS and collections are practically non-existent for re- searchers who have no leisure to work through the whole of their contents for themselves. We have said before: no documents, no history. But to have no good descriptive catalogues of collections of documents means, in practice, to be unable to ascertain the existence of documents otherwise than by chance. We infer that the progress of history depends in great measure on the progress of the general catalogue of historical documents which is still fragmentary and imperfect. On this point there is general agreement. Pére Bernard de Montfaucon considered his Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscriptarum nova, a collection of library cata- logues, as “the most useful and most . interesting work he had produced in his whole life.”* “In the present state of science,” wrote Renan in 1848, “nothing is wanted more urgently than a critical catalogue of the manuscripts in the different libraries . a humble task to all appearance; ... and yet the researches of scholars are hampered and in- complete pending its definitive completion.” “We should have better books on our ancient literature,” says M. P. Meyer,® “if the predecessors of M. Delisle [in his capacity of administrator of the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris] had applied themselves with equal ardour and diligence to the cataloguing of the treasures committed to their care.” It will be well to indicate briefly the causes and state the exact consequences of a state of things 1 See his autobibliography, published by E. de Broglie, Bernard de Montfaucon et les Bernardins, ii. (Paris, 1891, 8vo0), p. 323. 2H. Renan, L’ Avenir de la science, p. 217. 3 Romania, xxi. (1892), p. 625. 29 PRELIMINARY STUDIES which has been deplored as long as scholars have existed, and which is improving, though slowly. “I assure you,” said Renan,’ “that the few hundred thousand francs a Minister of Public Instruction might apply to the purpose [of preparing catalogues] would be better employed than three-quarters of the sum now devoted to literature.” It is rare to find a minister, in France or elsewhere, convinced of this truth, and resolute enough to act accordingly. Besides, it has not always been true that, in order to obtain good catalogues, it is sufficient, as well as necessary, to make a pecuniary sacrifice: it is only recently that the best methods of describing docu- ments have been authoritatively fixed; the task of recruiting competent workers—no great difficulty nowadays—would have been neither easy nor free from anxiety at an epoch when competent workers were rarer than they are now. So much for the material obstacles—want of money and want of men. A cause of another kind has not been without its influence. The functionaries charged with the administration of depositories of documents have not always displayed the zeal which they now display for making their collections accessible by means of accurate catalogues. To prepare a cata- logue (in the exact and at the same time summary form which is now used) is a laborious task, a task without joy and without reward. It has often happened that such a functionary, living, in virtue of his office, in the midst of documents which he is at liberty to consult at any moment, and placed in a much more favourable position than the general 1 In the passage quoted above. 30 THE SEARCH FOR DocuMENTS public for utilismg the collection without the aid of a catalogue, and making discoveries in the process, has preferred to work for himself rather than for others, and made the tedious construction of a catalogue a secondary matter compared with his personal researches. Who are the persons that in our own day have discovered, published, and annotated the greatest number of documents? The functionaries attached to the depositories of documents. Without a doubt this circumstance has retarded the progress of the general catalogue of historical documents. The situa- tion has been this: the persons who were the best able to dispense with catalogues were precisely the persons whose duty it was to make them. The imperfection of descriptive catalogues has con- sequences which deserve our attention. On the one hand, we can never be sure that we have exhausted all the sources of information ; who knows what may be held in reserve by the uncatalogued collections ?4 1 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 re- search. 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 exhaust- ing 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 Cali- fornian history; being a sane man, he has never dreamed of searching them from beginning to end: he has turned over a few 31 PRELIMINARY STUDIES On the other hand, in order to obtain the maximum amount of information, it is necessary to be thoroughly acquainted with the resources furnished by the exist- ing literature of Heuristic, and to devote a great deal of time to preliminary researches. In point of fact, every one who proposes to collect documents for the treatment of a point of history begins by consulting indexes and catalogues Novices set about this im- portant operation so slowly, with so little skill, and with so much effort, as to move more experienced workers to mirth or pity, according to their dis- position. Those who find amusement in watching novices stumble and strain and waste their time in. the labyrinth of catalogues, neglecting those which are valuable, and thoroughly exploring those which are useless, remember that they also have passed 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 pro- cure in the course of twenty-five years of industrious research. 1 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, con- ducted by the functionaries instead of by the public. Of, Bouvard et Pécuchet, p. 158. Bouvard and Pécuchet resolve to write the life of the Duke of Angouléme ; 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... .” 32 Tur SearcH ror DocuMENTS through similar experiences: let every one have his j turn. Those who observe with regret this waste of — time and strength consider that, while inevitable up to a certain port it serves no good purpose; they ask whether something might not be done to miti- gate the severity of this apprenticeship to Heuristic, which at one time cost them so dear. Besides, is not research, in the present condition of its material aids, difficult enough whatever the experience of the researcher? There are scholars and historians who devote the best part of their powers to material searches. Certain branches of historical work, re- lating chiefly to medizeval and modern subjects (the documents of ancient history are fewer, have been more studied, and are better catalogued than the others), imply not merely the assiduous use of catalogues, not all furnished with indexes, but also the personal inspection of the whole contents of immense collections which are either badly cata- logued or not catalogued at all. Experience proves beyond a doubt that the prospect of these long searches, which must be performed before the more intellectual part of the work can be begun, has deterred, and continues to deter, men of excellent abilities from undertaking historical work. They are, in fact, confronted with a dilemma: either they must work on a supply of documents which is in all probability incomplete, or they must spend themselves in unlimited searches, often fruitless, the results of which seldom appear worth the time they have cost. It goes against the grain to spend a great part of one’s life in turning over catalogues without indexes, or in passing under review, one 33 c PRELIMINARY STUDIES after another, all the items which go to form accumulations of uncatalogued miscellanea, in order to obtain information (positive or negative) which might have been obtained easily and instantane- ously if the collections had been catalogued and if the catalogues had been indexed. The most serious consequence of the present imperfection of the material aids to Heuristic is the discourage- ment which is sure to be felt by many able men who know their worth, and have some sense of the due proportion of effort and reward.t If it lay in the nature of things that the search for historical documents, in public depositories, must necessarily be as laborious as it still is, we might resign ourselves to the inconvenience: no one thinks of regretting the inevitable expenditure of time and labour which is demanded by archzeo- logical research, whatever the results may prove to be. But the imperfection of the modern instru- ments of Heuristic is quite unnecessary. The state of things which existed for some centuries has now been reformed indifferently; there is no valid reason why it should not some day be reformed altogether. We are thus led, after treating of the causes and the effects, to say a few words about the remedies. The instruments of Heuristic are being con- tinually perfected, before our eyes, in two ways. Every year witnesses an increase in the number of descriptive catalogues of archives, libraries, and museums, prepared by the functionaries attached to these institutions. In addition to this, powerful 1 These considerations have already been presented and deve- loped in the Revue universitaire, 1894, 1. p. 321 sqq. 34 THE SEARCH FOR DocUMENTS learned societies employ experts to pass from one depository to another cataloguing the documents there, in order to pick out all the documents of a particular class, or relating to a special subject: thus the society of Bollandists caused a general catalogue of hagiographical documents to be prepared by its emissaries, and the Imperial Academy of Vienna catalogued in a similar manner the monuments of patristic literature. The society of the Monwmenta Germanic Historica has for a long time been con- ducting vast searches of the same kind; and it was by the same process of exploring the museums and libraries of the whole of Europe that the construc- tion of the Corpus Inscriptionwm Latinarum was lately rendered possible. Lastly, several govern- ments have taken the initiative in sending abroad persons charged to catalogue, on their behalf, docu- ments in which they are interested: thus England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States, and other governments, grant regular subsidies to agents of theirs occupied in cataloguing and tran- scribing, in the great depositories of Europe, the documents which relate to the history of England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United States, and the rest... With what rapidity and with what 1 It is well known that, since the opening of the Papal Archives, several governments and learned societies have established In- stitutes 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 “ Goerresgesell- schaft,” Belgian, Danish, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and other scholars, have performed, and are performing, cataloguing work of considerable extent in the archives of the Vatican, 35 PRELIMINARY STUDIES perfection these useful labours can be conducted, provided that a competent staff, suitably directed, can be had as well as the money to pay it, is shown by the history of the general catalogue of the manuscripts in the public libraries of France. This excellent descriptive catalogue was begun in 1885, and now, in 1897, it extends to nearly fifty volumes, and will soon be completed. The Corpus Inserip- tionum Latinarum will have been produced in less than fifty years. The results obtained by the Bollandists and the Imperial Academy of Vienna are not less conclusive. Assuredly nothing is now lacking, except funds, to secure the speedy en- dowment of historical study with the indispensable instruments of research. The methods employed in the construction of these instruments are now permanently fixed, and it is an easy matter to recruit a trained staff. Such a staff must evidently be largely composed of keepers of archives and professional librarians, but it would also contain unattached workers with a decided vocation for the construction of catalogues and indexes. Such workers are more numerous than one would at first be inclined to think. Not that cataloguing is easy: it requires patience, the most scrupulous attention, and the most varied learning; but many minds are attracted by tasks which, like this, are at once determinate, capable of being definitely com- pleted, and of manifest utility. In the large and heterogeneous family of those who labour to pro- mote the progress of historical study, the makers of descriptive catalogues and indexes form a section to themselves. When they devote themselves ex- 36 THE SearcH ror DocumENTS clusively to their art they acquire by practice, as one might expect, a high degree of dexterity. While waiting for the fact to be clearly recognised that the time is opportune for pushing vigorously in every country the construction of a general catalogue of historical documents, we may indicate a palliative : it is important that scholars and historians, especially novices, should be accurately informed of the state of the instruments of research which are at their disposal, and be regularly apprised of any improve- ments that from time to time may be made in them. Experience and accident have been for a long time trusted to supply this information; but empirical knowledge, besides being costly, as we have already pointed out, is almost always imper- fect. Recently the task has been undertaken of constructing catalogues of catalogues—critical and systematic lists of all the catalogues in existence. There can be no doubt that few bibliographical enterprises have possessed, in so great a degree, the character of general utility. But scholars and historians often need, in respect of documents, information not usually supplied by descriptive catalogues; they wish, for example, to know whether such and such a document is known or not, whether it has already been critically dealt with, annotated, or utilised.1. This information can only be found in the works of former scholars and 1 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 in every instance where he is ignorant of it. 37 PRELIMINARY STUDIES historians. In order to become acquainted with these works, recourse must be had to those “ biblio- graphical repertories,” properly so called, of all kinds, compiled from very different points of view, which have already been published. Among the indis- pensable instruments of Heuristic must thus be reckoned bibliographical repertories of historical literature, as well as repertories of catalogues of original documents. To supply the classified list of all those repertories (repertories of catalogues, bibliographical repertories, properly so called), together with other appropriate information, in order to save students from mistakes and waste of time, is the object of what we are at liberty to call the “science of repertories,” or “ his- torical bibliography.” Professor Bernheim has pub- lished a preliminary sketch’ of it, which we have endeavoured to expand.” The expanded sketch bears date April 1896: numerous additions, not to speak of revision, would already be necessary, for the biblio- graphical apparatus of the historical sciences is being renewed, at the present time, with astonishing rapidity. A book on the repertories for the use of scholars and historians is, as a general rule, out of date the day after it has been completed. Ill. The knowledge of repertories is useful to all; the preliminary search for documents is laborious to all; but not in the same degree. Certain parts of history, which have been long cultivated, now enjoy ? EB. Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, 2nd ed., pp. 196-202. 2 C. V. Langlois, Manuel de Bibliographie historique: I. Instru- ments Libliographiques, Paris, 1896, 16mo. 38 THE SEaRcH FOR DocuUMENTS the advantage of having all their documents described, collected, and classified in large publications devoted to the purpose, so that, in dealing with these sub- jects, the historian can do all that need be done at his desk. The study of local history does not gene- rally require more than local search. Some important monographs are based on a small number of docu- ments, all belonging to the same collection, and of such a nature that it would be superfluous to look for others elsewhere. On the other hand, a humble piece of work, such as a modest edition of a text of which the ancient copies are not rare, and are to be found scattered in several libraries of Europe, may have involved inquiries, negotiations, and journeys without end. Since the majority of the documents of medieval and modern history are still unedited, or badly edited, it may be laid down as a general principle that, in order to write a really new chapter of medizval or modern history, it is necessary to have long haunted the great depositories of original documents, and to have, if we may use the expres- sion, worried their catalogues. It is thus incumbent on every one to choose the subject of his labours with the greatest care, instead of leaving it to be determined by pure chance. There are some subjects which, in the present state of the instruments of research, cannot be treated except at the cost of enormous searches in which life and intellect are consumed without profit. These subjects are not necessarily more interesting than others, and some day, perhaps to-morrow, im- provements in the aids to research will make them easily manageable. It is necessary for the student 39 PRELIMINARY STUDIES consciously and deliberately to make his choice between different historical subjects depend on the existence or non-existence of particular catalogues of documents and bibliographical repertories; on his relative inclination for desk work on the one hand, and the labour of exploring depositories on the other; even on the facilities he has for making use of particular collections. “Is it possible to do work in the provinces?” Renan asked at the con- gress of learned societies at the Sorbonne in 1889; and gave a very good answer to his own question : “ At least half one’s scientific work can be done at one’s own desk. ... Take comparative philology, for example: with an initial outlay of some thou- sands of francs, and subscriptions to three or four special publications, a student would command all the tools of his trade... . The same applies to universal philosophy. . . . Many branches of study can thus be prosecuted quite privately, and in the closest retirement.’! Doubtless, but there are “rarities, specialities, researches which require the aid of powerful machinery.” One half of historical work may now be done in private, with limited resources, but only half; the other half still pre- supposes the employment of such resources, in the way of repertories and documents, as can only be found in the great centres of study; often, indeed, it is necessary to visit several of these centres in succession. In short, the case stands with history much as it does with geography: in respect of some portions of the globe, we possess documents pub- lished in manageable form sufficiently complete and ’ KE. Renan, Feuilles détachées (Paris, 1892, 8vo), pp. 96 sqq. 40 THE SEarcH FoR DocuMENTS sufficiently well classified to enable us to reason about them to good purpose without leaving our fireside; while in the case of an unexplored or badly explored region, the slightest monograph implies a considerable expenditure of time and physical strength. It is dangerous to choose a subject of study, as many do, without having first realised the nature and extent of the preliminary researches: which it demands; there are instances of men struggling for years with such researches, who might have been occupied to better advantage in work of another character. As precautions against this danger, which is the more formidable to novices the more active and zealous they are, an examination of the present conditions of Heuristic in general, and positive notions of Historical Biblio- graphy, are certainly to be warmly recommended. 41 CHAPTER II “AUXILIARY SCIENCES” Let us suppose that the preliminary searches, treated of in the preceding chapter, have been made methodically and successfully; the greater part, if not the whole, of the documents bearing on a given subject have been discovered and made available. Of two things one: either these docu- ments have been already subjected to critical elaboration, or they are in the condition of raw material; this is a point which must be settled by “bibliographical” researches, which also, as we have already observed, form part of the inquiries which precede the logical part of the work. In the first case, where the documents have already gone through a process of elaboration, it is necessary to be in a position to verify the accuracy of the critical work; in the second case, where the documents are still raw material, the student must do the critical work himself. In both cases certain antecedent and auxiliary knowledge of a positive kind, Vor- und LHiilfskenntnisse, as they are called, are every whit as indispensable as the habit of accurate rea- soning; for if, in the course of critical work, it is possible to go wrong through reasoning badly, it is also possible to go wrong out of pure ignorance. 42 “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES” The profession of a scholar or historian is, moreover, similar in this respect to all other professions; it is impossible to follow it without possessing a certain equipment of technical notions, whose absence neither natural aptitude nor even method can make good. In what, then, does the technical apprenticeship of the scholar or the historian consist? Or, to employ language which, though inappropriate, as we shall endeavour to show, is in more common use: what, in addition to the knowledge of repertories, are, the “auxiliary sciences” of history ? Daunou, in his Cours d'études historiques,' has proposed a question of the same kind. “What studies,” says he, “ will the intending historian need to have gone through, what kinds of knowledge ought he to have acquired, in order to begin writing a work with any hope of success?” Before him, Mably, in his Traité de [étude de Vhistoire, had also recognised that “there are preparatory studies with which no historian can dispense.” But on this subject Mably and Daunou entertained views which nowadays seem singular enough. It is instructive to mark the exact distance which separates their point of view from ours. “First of all,” said Mably, “study the law of nature, public law, moral and political science.” Daunou, a man of great judgment, permanent secre- tary to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles- Lettres, writing about 1820, divides the studies which, in his opinion, constitute “the apprentice- ship of the historian,’ into three classes—literary, philosophical, historical. On the “literary” studies he expatiates at great length: to begin with, the 1 vii. p. 228 sqq. 43 PRELIMINARY STUDIES historian must “have read with attention the great models.” Which great models? Daunou “ does not hesitate” to place in the front rank “the master- pieces of epic poetry ;” for “it is the poets who have created the art of narrative, and whoever has not learnt it from them cannot have more than an im- perfect knowledge of it.” He further recommends the reading of modern novels; “they will teach the method of giving an artistic pose to persons and events, of distributing details, of skilfully carrying on the thread of the narrative, of interrupting it, of resuming it, of sustaining the attention and _pro- voking the curiosity of the reader.” Finally, good historical works should be read: “ Herodotus, Thucy- dides, Xenophon, Polybius, and Plutarch among the Greeks; Cesar, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus among the Latins; and among the moderns, Macchiavelli, Guicciardini, Giannone, Hume, Robertson, Gibbon, the Cardinal de Retz, Vertot, Voltaire, Raynal, and Rulhiére. Not that I would exclude the others, but these will suffice to provide all the styles which are suitable for history; for a great diversity of form is to be met with in the works of these writers.” In the second place come philosophical studies; a thorough mastery of “ideology, morals, and politics” is re- quired. “As to the works from which knowledge of this kind is to be obtained, Daguesseau has in- stanced Aristotle, Cicero, Grotius: I should add the best ancient and modern moralists, treatises on poli- tical economy published since the middle of the last century, the writings on political science in general, and on its details and application, of Macchiavelli, Bodin, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Mably, and the 44 “AUXILIARY SCIENCES ” most enlightened of their disciples and commenta- tors.” In the third place, before writing history, “it is evidently necessary to know it.” “A writer will not give the world new information on a subject like this unless he begins by making himself master of what is already known of it.” The future historian has already made the acquaintance of the best his- torical works, and studied them as models of style; “it will be to his advantage to read them a second time, but endeavouring more particularly to grasp all the facts which they contain, and to let them make so deep an impression on his mind that they may be permanently fixed in his memory.” These are the “positive” notions which, eighty years ago, were considered indispensable to the general historian. At the same time there was a confused idea that “in order to acquire a profound knowledge of particular subjects” there were yet other useful branches of study. “The subjects of which historians treat,’ says Daunou, “the details which they occasionally light upon, require very extensive and varied attainments.” He goes on to particularise, observe in what terms: “very often a knowledge of several languages, sometimes too some notion of physics and mathematics.” And he adds: “On these subjects, however, the general education which we may assume to be common to all men of letters is sufficient for the writer who devotes himself to historical composition. . . .” All the authors who, like Daunou, have attempted to enumerate the preliminary attainments, as well as the moral or intellectual aptitudes, necessary for “writing history,” have either fallen into common- 45 PRELIMINARY STUDIES place or pitched their requirements ridiculously high. According to Freeman, the historian ought to know everything—philosophy, law, finance, ethnography, geography, anthropology, natural science, and what not; is not an historian, in point of fact, likely enough in the course of his study of the past to meet with questions of philosophy, law, finance, and the rest of the series? And if financial science, for example, is necessary to a writer who treats of con- temporary finance, is it less so to the writer who claims to express an opinion on the financial questions of the past? “The historian,” Freeman declares, “may have incidentally to deal with any subject whatever, and the more branches of knowledge he is master of, the better prepared he is for his own work.” True, all branches of human knowledge are not equally useful; some of them are only service- able on rare occasions, and accidentally: “We could hardly make it even a counsel of perfection to the historian to make himself an accomplished chemist, on the chance of an occasion in which chemistry might be of use to him in his study;” but other special subjects are more closely related to history : “for example, geology and a whole group of sciences which have a close connection with geology ... The historian will clearly do his own regular work better for being master of them ...” 1 The question has 1 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 46 “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES ” also been asked whether “history is one of those studies anciently called wmbratiles, for which all that is wanted is a quiet mind and habits of industry,” or whether it is a good thing for the historian to have mingled in the turmoil of active life, and to have helped to make the history of his own time before sitting down to write that of the past. Indeed, what questions have not been asked? Floods of ink have been poured out over these uninteresting and un- answerable questions, the long and fruitless debating of which has done not a little to discredit works on methodology. Our opinion is that nothing relevant can be added to the dictates of mere common sense on the subject of the apprenticeship to the “art of writing history,” unless perhaps that this apprentice- ship should consist, above everything, in the study, hitherto so generally neglected, of the principles of historical method. Besides, it is not the “literary historian,” the moralising and quill-driving “historians,” as con- ceived by Daunou and his school, that we have had in view; we are here only concerned with 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 PRELIMINARY STUDIES those scholars and historians who intend to deal with documents in order to facilitate or actually perform the scientific work of history. These stand in need of a technical apprenticeship. What meaning are we to attach to this term ? Let us suppose we have before us a written docu- ment. What use can we make of it if we cannot read it? Up to the time of Frangois Champollion, Egyptian documents, being written in hieroglyphics, were, without metaphor, a dead-letter. It will be readily admitted that in order to deal with ancient Assyrian history it is necessary to have learnt to decipher cuneiform inscriptions. Similarly, whoever desires to do original work from the sources, in ancient or medieval history, will, if he is prudent, learn to decipher inscriptions and manuscripts. We thus see why Greek and Latin epigraphy and medieval paleography—that is, the sum of the various kinds of knowledge required for the deci- phering of ancient and medieval manuscripts and inscriptions—are considered as “ auxiliary sciences” to history, or rather, the historical study of antiquity and the middle ages. It is evident that medieval Latin paleography forms part of the necessary outfit of the medizevalist, just as the paleography of hieroglyphics is essential to the Egyptologist. There is, however, a difference to be observed. No one will ever think of devoting himself to Egyptology without having first studied the appro- priate paleography. On the other hand, it is not very rare for a man to undertake the study of local docuinents of the middle ages without having learnt to date their forms approximately, and to decipher 48 “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES” their abbreviations correctly. The resemblance which most medieval writing bears to modern writing is sufficiently close to foster the illusion that ingenuity and practice will be enough to carry him through. This illusion is dangerous. Scholars who have received no regular paleographical initiation can almost always be recognised by the gross errors which they commit from time to time in deciphering— errors which are sometimes enough to completely ruin the subsequent operations of criticism and interpretation. As for the self-taught experts who acquire their skill by dint of practice, the orthodox paleographic initiation which they have missed would at least have saved them much groping in the dark, long hours of labour, and many a dis- appointment. Suppose a document has been deciphered. How is it to be turned to account, unless it be first understood? Inscriptions in Etruscan and the ancient language of Cambodia have been read, but no one understands them. As long as this is the case they must remain useless. It is clear that in order to deal with Greek history it is necessary to consult documents in the Greek language, and therefore necessary to know Greek. Rank truism, the reader will say. Yes, but many proceed as if it had never occurred to them. Young students attack ancient history with only a superficial tincture of Greek and Latin. Many who have never studied medieval French and Latin think they know them because they understand classical Latin and modern French, and they attempt the interpretation of texts whose literal meaning escapes them, or appears to 49 D PRELIMINARY STUDIES be obscure when in reality perfectly plain. Innu- merable historical errors owe their origin to false or inexact interpretations of quite straightforward texts, perpetrated by men who were insufficiently acquainted with the grammar, the vocabulary, or the niceties of ancient languages. Solid philological study ought logically to precede historical research in every instance where the documents to be employed are not to be had in a modern lan- guage, and in a form in which they can be easily understood. Suppose a document is intelligible. It would not be legitimate to take it into consideration without having verified its authenticity, if its authenticity has not been already settled beyond a doubt. Now in order to verify the authenticity or ascertain the origin of a document two things are required—reason- ing power and knowledge. In other words, it is necessary to reason from certain positive data which represent the condensed results of previous research, which cannot be improvised, and must, therefore, be learnt. To distinguish a genuine from a spurious charter would, in fact, be often an impossible task for the best trained logician, if he were unacquainted with the practice of such and such a chancery, at such and such a date, or with the features common to all the admittedly genuine charters of a particular class. He would be obliged to do what the first scholars did—ascertain for himself, by the comparison of a great number of similar documents, what features distinguish the admittedly genuine documents from the others, before allowing himself to pronounce judg- ment in any special instance. Will not his task be 50 “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES ” enormously simplified if there is in existence a body of doctrine, a treasury of accumulated observations, a system of results obtained by workers who have already made, repeated, and checked the minute com- parisons he would otherwise have been obliged to make for himself? This body of doctrines, observa- tions, and results, calculated to assist the criticism of diplomas and charters, does exist; it is called Diplomatic. We shall, therefore, assign to Diplomatic, along with Epigraphy, Paleeography, and Philology, the character of a subject auxiliary to historical research, Epigraphy and Palzeography, Philology, and Diplo- matic with its adjuncts (technical Chronology and Sphragistic) are not the only subjects of study which subserve historical research. It would be extremely injudicious to undertake to deal critically with literary documents on which no critical work has as yet been done without making oneself familiar with the results obtained by those who have already dealt critically with documents of the same class: the sum of these results forms a department to itself, which has a name—the History of Literature.’ The critical treatment of illustrative documents, such as the productions of architecture, sculpture, and painting, objects of all kinds (arms, dress, utensils, coins, medals, armorial bearings, and so forth), pre- supposes a thorough acquaintance with the rules and observations which constitute Archeology properly so 1 « 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, me- moirs, chronicles, biographies, and so forth. 51 PRELIMINARY STUDIES called and its detached branches—Numismatic and Heraldry. We are now in a position to examine to some purpose the hazy notion expressed by the phrase, “the sciences auxiliary to history.” We also read of “ancillary sciences,” and, in French, “sciences satellites.” None of these expressions is really satis- factory. First of all, the so-called “auxiliary sciences” are not all of them sciences. Diplomatic, for example, and the History of Literature are only systematised accumulations of facts, acquired by criticism, which are of a nature to facilitate the application of critical methods to documents hitherto untouched. On the other hand, Philology is an organised science, and has its own laws. In the second place, among the branches of know- ledge auxiliary—properly speaking, not to history, but to historical research—we must distinguish be- tween those which every worker in the field ought to master, and those in respect of which he needs only to know where to look when he has occasion to make use of them; between knowledge which ought to become part of a man’s self, and informa- tion which he may be content to possess only in potentiality. A medizvalist should know how to read and understand medieval texts; he would gain no advantage by accumulating in his memory the mass of particular facts pertaining to the History of Literature and Diplomatic which are to be found, in their proper place, in well-constructed works of reference. Lastly, there are no branches of knowledge which g2- “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES ” are auxiliary to History (or even historical research) in general—that is, which are useful to all students irrespectively of the particular part of history on which they are engaged.’ It appears, then, that there is no general answer possible to the question raised at the beginning of this chapter: in what should the technical apprenticeship of the scholar or historian consist? In what does it consist ? That depends. It depends on the part of history he proposes to study. A knowledge of palmo- graphy is quite useless for the purpose of investi- 1 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 pro- blems, the same problems, are being studied everywhere simul- taneously. 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 53 PRELIMINARY STUDIES gating the history of the French Revolution, and a knowledge of Greek is equally useless for the treat- ment of a question in medieval French history.’ But we may go so far as to say that the preliminary outfit of every one who wishes to do original work in history should consist (in addition to the “common education,” that is, general culture, of which Daunou writes) in the knowledge calculated to aid in the modern scientific work will henceforth cause to press with increas- ing 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 com- pared 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. 1 When the ‘‘ auxiliary sciences” were first inserted in the curri- cula 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 paleography as an “auxiliary science,” and that some students of geography, who were in no way interested in antiquity, took up epigraphy. Evi- dently they had failed to understand that the study of the “auxi- liary 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. * 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 Phenix, sew nuntius latinus universalis (London, 1891, 4to). 54 “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES” discovery, the understanding, and the criticism of documents. The exact nature of this knowledge varies from case to case according as the student specialises in one or another part of universal history. The technical apprenticeship is relatively short and easy for those who occupy themselves with modern or contemporary history, long and laborious for those who occupy themselves with ancient and medieval history. This reform of the historian’s technical apprentice- ship, which consists in substituting the acquisition of positive knowledge, truly auxiliary to historical research, for the study of the “great models,” lite- rary and philosophical, is of quite recent date. In France, for the greater part of the present century, students of history received none but a literary education, after Daunou’s pattern. Almost all of them were contented with such a preparation, and did not look beyond it; some few perceived and regretted, when it was too late for a remedy, the insufficiency of their early training; with a few illustrious exceptions, the best of them never rose to be more than distinguished men of letters, in- capable of scientific work. There was at that time no organisation for teaching the “ auxiliary sciences ” and the technique of research except in the case of French medieval history, and that in a special school, the Ecole des chartes. This simple fact, moreover, secured for this school during a period of fifty years a marked superiority over all the other French (or even foreign) institutions of higher education; ex- cellent workers were there trained who contributed many new results, while elsewhere people were idly 55 PRELIMINARY STUDIES discussing problems.’ To-day it is still at the Ecole des chartes that the medievalist has the opportunity of going through his technical apprenticeship in the best and most complete manner, thanks to the com- bined and progressive three-years courses of Romance philology, paleography, archeology, historiography, and medieval law. But the “auxiliary sciences” are now taught everywhere more or less adequately ; they have been introduced into the university curricula. On the other hand, students’ handbooks of epigraphy, paleeography, diplomatic, and so forth, have multi- plied during the last twenty-five years. Twenty-five years ago it would have been vain to look for a good book which should supply the want of oral in- struction on these subjects; since the establishment of professorships “manuals” have appeared ? which 1 On this point note the opinions of T. von Sickel and J. Havet, quoted in the Bibliotheque de U Ecole des chartes, 1896, p. 87. In 1854 the Austrian Institute “fiir dsterreichische Geschichtsfor- schung” was organised on the model of the French Ecole 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 Ecole des chartes ” (Quar- terly Review, July 1896, p. 122). 2 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 sqg. We will only refer to the great ‘‘manuals” of ‘ Philology” (in the com- prehensive sense of the German “ Philologie,” which includes the history of language and literature, epigraphy, paleography, and all that pertains to textual criticism) now in course of publication : the Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde, edited by G. Buhler ; the Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, edited by W. Geiger and E. Kuhn; the Handbuch der classischen Altertumswis- senschaft, edited by I. von Miiller; the Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, edited by H. Paul, the second edition of which began to appear in 1896; the Grundriss o romanischen Philologie, edited 5 “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES” would almost make them superfluous were it not that oral instruction, based on practical exercises, has here an exceptional value. Whether a student does or does not enjoy the advantage of a regular drilling in an institution for higher education, he has henceforth no excuse for remaining in ignorance of those things which he ought to know before entering upon historical work. There is, in fact, less of this kind of neglect than there used to be. On this head, the success of the above-mentioned “ manuals,” with their rapid succession of editions, is very significant. Here, then, we have the future historian armed with the preliminary knowledge, the neglect of which would have condemned him to powerlessness or to continual mistakes. We suppose him protected from the errors without number which have their origin in an imperfect knowledge of the writing and the language of documents, in ignorance of previous work and the results obtained by textual criticism; he has an irreproachable cognitio cogniti et cognoscendi. A very optimistic supposition, by the way, as we are bound to admit. We know but too well that to have gone through a regular course of “ auxiliary sciences,” or to have read attentively the best treatises on by G. Gréber. In these vast repertories there will be found, along with a short presentment of the subject, complete bibliographical references, direct as well as indirect. 1 The French “manuals” of MM. Prou (Paleography), 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 sub- jects, though now settled in the main, are being enriched and made more precise every day, Cf. supra, p. 38. 57 PRELIMINARY STUDIES bibliography, paleography, philology, and so on, or even to have acquired some personal experience by practical exercises, is not enough to ensure that a man shall always be well informed, still less to make him infallible. In the first place, those who have for a long time studied documents of a given class or of a given period possess, in regard to these, incommunicable knowledge in virtue of which they are able to deal better than others with new docu- ments which they may meet with of the same class or period ; nothing can replace the “special erudition ” which is the specialist’s reward for hard work." And secondly, specialists themselves make mistakes: paleographers must be perpetually on their guard not to decipher falsely; is there a philologist who has not some faults of construing on his conscience ? Scholars usually well informed have printed as un- edited texts which had already been published, and have neglected documents it was their business to know. Scholars spend their lives in incessantly perfecting their “ auxiliary” knowledge, which they rightly regard as never perfect. But all this does 1 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. 58 “ AUXILIARY SCIENCES” not prevent us from maintaining our hypothesis. : Only let it be understood that in practice we do — not postpone work upon documents till we shall | have gained a serene and absolute mastery over — all the “auxiliary branches of knowledge:” we should never dare to begin. It remains to know how to treat documents supposing one has successfully passed through the preliminary apprenticeship. 59 BOOK II ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS BOOK II ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS CHAPTER I GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE WE have already stated that history is studied from documents, and that documents are the traces of past events." This is the place to indicate the consequences involved in this statement and this definition. Events can be empirically known in two ways only: by direct observation while they are in pro- gress; and indirectly, by the study of the traces which they leave behind them. Take an earth- quake, for example. I have a direct knowledge of it if I am present when the phenomenon occurs; an indirect knowledge if, without having been thus present, I observe its physical effects (crevices, ruins), or if, after these effects have disappeared, I read a description written by some one who has himself witnessed the phenomenon or its effects, Now, the peculiarity of “historical facts”’ is this, 1 Supra, p. 17. 2 This expression, which frequently occurs, needs explanation. It is not to be taken to apply to a species of facts. There are no 63 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS that they are only known indirectly by the help of their traces. Historical knowledge is essentially indirect knowledge. The methods of historical science ought, therefore, to be radically different from those of the direct sciences; that is to say, of all the other sciences, except geology, which are founded on direct observation. Historical science, whatever may be said,’ is not a science of observa- tion at all. The facts of the past are only known to us by the traces of them which have been preserved. These traces, it is true, are directly observed by the his- torian, but, after that, he has nothing more to observe; what remains is the work of reasoning, in which he endeavours to infer, with the greatest possible exactness, the facts from the traces. The document is his starting-point, the fact his goal.” Between this starting-point and this goal he has to pass through a complicated series of inferences, closely interwoven with each other, in which there are innumerable chances of error; while the least error, whether committed at the beginning, middle, or end of the work, may vitiate all his conclusions. 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. 1 Fustel de Coulanges has said it. Cf. supra, p. 4, note 1. 2 In the sciences of observation it is the fact itself, observed directly, which is the starting-point. 64 GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE The “historical,” or indirect, method is thus ob- viously inferior to the method of direct observation ; but historians have no choice: it is the only method of arriving at past facts, and we shall see later on’ how, in spite of these disadvantages, it is possible for this method to lead to scientific knowledge. The detailed analysis of the reasonings which lead from the inspection of documents to the knowledge of facts is one of the chief parts of Historical Methodology. It is the domain of criticism. The seven following chapters will be devoted to it. We shall endeavour, first of all, to give a very summary sketch of the general lines and main divisions of the subject. I. We may distinguish two species of documents. Sometimes the past event has left a material trace (a monument, a fabricated article). Sometimes, and more commonly, the trace is of the psychological order—a written description or narrative. The first case is much simpler than the second. For there is a fixed relation between certain physical appear- ances and the causes which produced them; and this relation, governed by physical laws, is known to us? But a psychological trace, on the other hand, is purely symbolic: it is not the fact itself; it is not even the immediate impression made by the fact upon the witness’s mind, but only a con- ventional symbol of that impression. Written documents, then, are not, as material documents 1 Infra, ch. vii. 2 We shall not treat specially of the criticism of material docu- ments (objects, monuments, &c.) where it differs from the criticism of written documents. 65 E ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS are, valuable by themselves; they are only valuable as signs of psychological operations, which are often complicated and hard to unravel. The immense majority of the documents which furnish the historian with starting-points for his reasonings are nothing else than traces of psychological opera- tions. This granted, in order to conclude from a written document to the fact which was its remote cause —that is, in order to ascertain the relation which connects the document with the fact—it is necessary to reproduce the whole series of intermediate causes which have given rise to the document. It is necessary to revive in imagination the whole of that series of acts performed by the author of the document which begins with the fact observed by him and ends with the manuscript (or printed volume), in order to arrive at the original event. Such is the aim and such the process of critical analysis.’ First of all we observe the document. Is it now in the same state as when it was produced? Has it deteriorated since? We endeavour to find out how it was made in order to restore it, if need be, to its original form, and to ascertain its origin. The first group of preliminary investigations, bear- ing upon the writing, the language, the form, the source, constitutes the special domain of ExTERNAL Crigicism, or critical scholarship. Next comes INTERNAL CRITICISM: it endeavours, by the help of 1 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. 66 GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HisToRIcAL KNOWLEDGE analogies mostly borrowed from general psychology, to reproduce the mental states through which the author of the document passed. Knowing what the author of the document has said, we ask (1) What did he mean? (2) Did he believe what he said? (3) Was he justified in believing what- ever he did believe? This last step brings the document to a point where it resembles the data of the objective sciences: it becomes an observa- tion; it only remains to treat it by the methods of the objective sciences. Every document is valu- able precisely to the extent to which, by the study of its origin, it has been reduced to a well-made observation. II. Two conclusions may be drawn from what we have just said: the extreme complexity and the absolute necessity of Historical Criticism. Compared with other students the historian is in a very disagreeable situation. It is not merely that he cannot, as the chemist does, observe his facts directly ; it very rarely happens that the documents which he is obliged to use represent precise observa- tions. He has at his disposal none of those systematic records of observations which, in the established sciences, can and do replace direct observation. He is in the situation of a chemist who should know a series of experiments only from the report of his laboratory-boy. The historian is compelled to turn to account rough and ready reports, such as no man of science would be content with.’ All the more 1 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 67 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS necessary are the precautions to be taken in utilising these documents, the only materials of historical science. It is evidently most important to elimi- nate those which are worthless, and to ascertain the amount of correct observation represented by those which are left. All the more necessary, too, are cautions on this subject, because the natural inclination of the human mind is to take no precautions at all, and to treat these matters, which really demand the utmost obtainable precision, with careless laxity. It is true that every one admits the utility of criticism in theory; but this is just one of those principles which are more easily admitted than put into practice. Many centuries and whole eras of brilliant civilisation had to pass away before the first dawn of criticism was visible among the most intellectual peoples in the world. Neither the orientals nor the middle ages ever formed a definite conception of it.’ Up to our own day there have been enlightened men who, in employing documents for the purpose of writing history, have neglected the most elemen- tary precautions, and unconsciously assumed false of witness has been borrowed from the procedure of the law-courts ; reduced to scientific terms, it becomes that of an observer. A testi- mony is an observation. But, in point of fact, historical testimony differs materially from scientific observation. The observer pro- ceeds 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, 1 See B. Lasch, Das Erwachen und die Entwickelung der historischen Kritik im Mittelalter (Breslau, 1887, 8vo). 6 GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HistorRICAL KNOWLEDGE generalisations. Even now most young students would, if left to themselves, fall into the old errors. For criticism is antagonistic to the normal bent of the mind. The spontaneous tendency of man is to yield assent to affirmations, and to reproduce them, without even clearly distinguishing them from the results of his own observation. In everyday life do we not accept indiscriminately, without any kind of verification, hearsay reports, anonymous and un- guaranteed statements, “documents” of indifferent or inferior authority? It takes a special reason to induce us to take the trouble to examine into the origin and value of a document on the history of yesterday ; otherwise, if there is no outrageous im- probability in it, and as long as it is not contradicted, we swallow it whole, we pin our faith to it, we hawk it about, and, if need be, embellish it in the process. Every candid man must admit that it requires a violent effort to shake off ignavia critica, that common form of intellectual sloth, that this effort must be continually repeated, and is often accom- panied by real pain. The natural instinct of a man in the water is to do precisely that which will infallibly cause him to be drowned; learning to swim means acquiring the habit of suppressing spontaneous movements and performing others instead, Similarly, criticism is not a natural habit; it must be inculcated, and only becomes organic by dint of continued practice. Historical work is, then, pre-eminently critical ; whoever enters upon it without having first been put on his guard against his instinct is sure to be drowned in it. In order to appreciate the danger it 69 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS is well to examine one’s conscience and analyse the causes of that ignavia which must be fought against till it is replaced by a critical attitude of mind’ It is also very salutary to familiarise oneself with the principles of historical method, and to analyse the theory of them, one by one, as we propose to do in the present volume. “History, like every other study, is chiefly subject to errors of fact arising from inattention, but it is more exposed than any other study to errors due to that mental confusion which produces incomplete analyses and fallacious reason- ings. . . . Historians would advance fewer aftirma- tions without proof if they had to analyse each one of their affirmations; they would commit themselves to fewer false principles if they made it a rule to formulate all their principles; they would be guilty of fewer fallacies if they were obliged to set out all their arguments in logical form.” * ) 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. * Revue philosophique, le., p. 178. 7O SECTION IL—EXTERNAL CRITICISM CHAPTER IT TEXTUAL CRITICISM Let us suppose that an author of our own day has written a book: he sends his manuscript to the printer; with his own hand he corrects the proofs, and marks them “ Press.” A book which is printed under these conditions comes into our hands in what is, for a document, a very good condition. Whoever the author may be, and whatever his sentiments and intentions, we can be certain—and this is the only point that concerns us at present—that we have before us a fairly accurate reproduction of the text which he wrote. We are obliged to say “ fairly accurate,” for if the author has corrected his proofs badly, or if the printers have not paid proper atten- tion to his corrections, the reproduction of the original text is imperfect, even in this specially favourable case. Printers not unfrequently make a man say something which he never meant to say, and which he does not notice till too late. Sometimes it is required to reproduce a work the author of which is dead, and the autograph manu- script of which cannot be sent to the printer. This was the case with the Mémoires doutre-tombe of 71 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS Chateaubriand, for example; it is of daily occurrence in regard to the familiar correspondence of well- known persons which is printed in haste to satisfy the curiosity of the public, and of which the original manuscript is very fragile. First the text is copied ; it is then set up by the compositor from the copy, which comes to the same thing as copying it again ; this second copy is lastly, or ought to be, collated (in the proofs) with the first copy, or, better still, with the original, by some one who takes the place of the deceased author. The guarantees of accuracy are fewer in this case than in the first; for between the original and the ultimate reproduction there is one intermediary the more (the manuscript copy), and it may be that the original is hard for anybody but the author to decipher. And, in fact, the text of memoirs and posthumous correspondence is often disfigured by errors of transcription and punctuation occurring in editions which at first sight give the impression of having been carefully executed.? Turning now to ancient documents, let us ask in what state they have been preserved. In nearly every case the originals have been lost, and we have nothing but copies. Have these copies been made directly from the originals? No; they are copies of copies. The scribes who executed them were not by any means all of them capable and conscientious 1 A member of the Société des humanistes francais (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 doutre-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. 72 TEXTUAL CRITICISM men; they often transcribed texts which they did not understand at all, or which they understood incorrectly, and it was not always the fashion, as it was in the time of the Carlovingian Renaissance, to compare the copies with the originals.’ If our printed books, after the successive revisions of author and printer's reader, are still but imperfect reproductions, it is only to be expected that ancient documents, copied and recopied as they have been for centuries with very little care, and exposed at every fresh transcription to new risk of alteration, should have reached us full of inaccuracies. There is thus an obvious precaution to be taken. Before using a document we must find out whether its text is “sound ”—that is, in as close agreement as possible with the original manuscript of the author ; and when the text is “corrupt” we must emend it. In using a text which has been corrupted in transmission, we run the risk of attributing to the author what really comes from the copyists. There are actual cases of theories which were based on passages falsified in transmission, and which collapsed as soon as the true readings were discovered or re- stored. Printers’ errors and mistakes in copying are not always innocuous or merely diverting; they are sometimes insidious and capable of misleading the reader.’ One would naturally suppose that historians of 1 On the habits of the medizval 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). 2 See, for example, the Coquilles lexicoyraphiques which have been collected by A. Thomas, in Romania, xx. (1891), pp. 464 sqq. 73 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS repute would always make it a rule to procure “sound” texts, properly emended and restored, of the texts they have to consult. That is a mistake. For a long time historians simply used the texts which they had within easy reach, without verifying their accuracy. And, what is more, the very scholars * whose business it is to edit texts did not discover the art of restoring them all at once; not so very long ago, documents were commonly edited from the first copies, good or bad, that came to hand, com- bined and corrected at random. Editions of ancient texts are nowadays mostly “critical ;” but it is not yet thirty years since the publication of the first “critical editions” of the great works of the middle ages, and the critical text of some ancient classics (Pausanias, for example) has still to be constructed. Not all historical documents have as yet been published in a form calculated to give historians the security they need, and some historians still act as if they had not realised that an unsettled text, as such, requires cautious handling. Still, considerable progress has been made. From the experience accumulated by several generations of scholars there has been evolved a recognised method of purifying and restoring texts. No part of historical method has a more solid foundation, or is more generally known. It is clearly explained in several works of popular philology.* For this reason we shall here be content to give a general view of its essential principles, and to indicate its results. 1 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 Miiller, I., 2nd ed. (1892), pp. 74 TEXTUAL CRITICISM I. We will suppose a document has not been edited in conformity with critical rules. How are we to proceed in order to construct the best possible text? Three cases present themselves. (a) Phe most simple case is that in which we pos- sess the original, the author’s autograph itself. There is then nothing to do but to reproduce the text of it with absolute fidelity." Theoretically nothing can be easier; in practice this elementary operation demands a sustained attention of which not every one is capable. If any one doubts it, let him try. Copyists who never make mistakes and never allow their attention to be distracted are rare even among scholars. (6) Second case. The original has been lost; only 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, Intro- duction a Vétude des classiques scolaires grecs et latins, by J. Gow and 8. 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. 1 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 Whistoire de Belgique, 5th series, vi. (1896) ; and the Grundsiitze fiir die Herausgube von Actenstiicken zur neueren Geschichte, laboriously discussed by the second and third Congresses of German historians, in 1894 and 1895, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift fiir 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 diffi- cult than is imagined by those who are not professionally concerned with it. 75 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS a single copy of it is known. It is necessary to be cautious, for the probability is that this copy con- tains errors. Texts degenerate in accordance with certain laws. A great deal of pains has been taken to discover and classify the causes and the ordinary forms of the differences which are observed between originals and copies; and hence rules have been deduced which may be applied to the conjectural restoration of those passages in a unique copy of a lost original which are certainly corrupt (because unintelligible), or are so in all probability. Alterations of an original occurring in a copy— “traditional variants,” as they are called—are due either to fraud or to error. Some copyists have deliberately modified or suppressed passages.’ Nearly all copyists have committed errors of judgment or accidental errors. Errors of judgment when half- educated and not wholly intelligent copyists have thought it their duty to correct passages and words in the original which they could not understand. Accidental errors when they misread while copying, or misheard while writing from dictation, or when they involuntarily made slips of the pen. Modifications arising from fraud or errors of judg- ment are often very difficult to rectify, or even to discover. Some accidental errors (the omission of several lines, for example) are irreparable in the 1 Interpolations will be treated of in chapter iii. p, 92. 2? 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. 76 TEXTUAL CRITICISM case we are considering, that of a unique copy. But most accidental errors can be detected by any one who knows the ordinary forms: confusions of sense, letters, and words, transpositions of words, letters, and syllables, dittography (unmeaning repetition of letters or syllables), haplography (syllables or words written once only where they should have been written twice), false divisions between words, badly punctuated sentences, and other mistakes of the same kind. Errors of these various types have been made by the scribes of every country and every age, irrespectively of the handwriting and language of the originals. But some confusions of letters occur fre- quently in copies of uncial originals, and others in copies of minuscule originals. Confusions of sense and of words are explained by analogies of vocabulary or pronunciation, which naturally vary from language to language and from epoch to epoch. The general theory of conjectural emendation reduces to the sketch we have just given; there is no general apprentice- ship to the art. What a man learns is not to restore any text that may be put before him, but Greek texts, Latin texts, French texts, and so on, as the case may be; for the conjectural emendation of a text presupposes, besides general notions on the processes by which texts degenerate, a profound knowledge of (1) a special language; (2) a special handwriting ; (3) the confusions (of sense, letters, and words) which were habitual to those who copied texts of that language written in that style of handwriting. To aid in the apprenticeship to the conjectural emenda- tion of Greek and Latin texts, tabulated lists (alpha- betical and systematic) of various readings, frequent 77 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS confusions, and probable corrections, have been drawn up.’ It is true that they cannot take the place of practical work, done under the guidance of experts, but they are of very great use to the experts themselves.” It would be easy to give a list of happy emen- dations. The most satisfactory are those whose correctness is obvious palzographically, as is the case with the classical emendation by Madvig of the text of Seneca’s Letters (89, 4). The old read- ing was: “ Philosophia unde dicta sit, apparet; ipso enim nomine fatetur. Quidam et sapientiam ita quidam finierunt, ut dicerent divinorum et human- orum sapientiam . . .”—which does not make sense. It used to be supposed that words had dropped out between ita and guidam. Madvig pictured to himself the text of the lost archetype, which was written in capitals, and in which, as was usual before the eighth century, the words were not separated (scriptio continua), nor the sentences punc- tuated; he asked himself whether the copyist, with such an archetype before him, had not divided the words at random, and he had no difficulty 1 The principal of these are, for the classical languages, besides the above-mentioned work of Blass (supra, p. 74, note), the Adver- saria critica of Madvig (Copenhagen, 1871-74, 3 vols. 8vo). For Greek, the celebrated Commentatio palwographica of F. J. Bast, pub- lished as an appendix to an edition of the grammarian Gregory of Corinth (Leipzig, 1811, 8vo), and the Varie 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 francais has expressed, in this publication, a wish that a similar collection might be compiled for modern French. 2 CE, Revue Critique, 1895, ii. p. 358. 78 TEXTUAL CRITICISM in reading: “. . . ipso enim nomine fatetur quid amet. Sapientiam ita quidam finierunt ...” Blass, Reinach, and Lindsay, in the works referred to in the note, mention several other masterly and elegant emendations. Nor have the Hellenists and Latinists any monopoly; equally brilliant emendations might be culled from the works of Orientalists, Romancists, and Germanists, now that texts of Oriental, Romance, and Germanic languages have been subjected to verbal criticism. We have already stated that scholarly corrections are possible even in the text of quite modern documents, reproduced typographi- cally under the most favourable conditions. Perhaps no one, in our day, has equalled Madvig in the art of conjectural emendation. But Madvig himself had no high opinion of the work of modern scholarship. He thought that the humanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were, in this respect, better trained than modern scholars. The conjectural emendation of Greek and Latin texts is, in fact, a branch of sport success in which is proportionate not only to a man’s ingenuity and palzographical instinct, but also to the corrrectness, rapidity, and delicacy of his appreciation of the niceties of the classical languages. Now, the early scholars were undoubtedly too bold, but they were more intimately familiar with the classical languages than our modern scholars are. However that may be, there can be no doubt that numerous texts which have been preserved, in corrupt form, in unique copies, have resisted, and will continue to resist, the efforts of criticism. Very often criticism ascertains the fact of the text having 79 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS been altered, states what the sense requires, and then prudently stops, every trace of the original reading having been obscured by a confused tangle of successive corrections and errors which it is hopeless to attempt to unravel. The scholars who devote themselves to the fascinating pursuit of con- jectural criticism are liable, in their ardour, to suspect perfectly innocent readings, and, in desperate passages, to propose adventurous hypotheses. They are well aware of this, and therefore make it a rule to draw a very clear distinction, in their editions, between readings found in manuscripts and their own restorations of the text. (c) Third case. We possess several copies, which differ from each other, of a document whose original is lost. Here modern scholars have a marked advantage over their predecessors: besides being better informed, they set about the comparison of copies more methodically. The object is, as in the preceding case, to reconstruct the archetype as exactly as possible. The scholars of earlier days had to struggle, as novices have to struggle now, in a case of this kind, against a very natural and a very reprehensible impulse—to use the first copy that comes to hand, whatever its character may happen to be. The second impulse is not much better—to use the oldest copy out of several of different date. In theory, and very often in practice, the relative age of the copies is of no importance; a sixteenth- century manuscript which reproduces a good lost copy of the eleventh century is much more valu- able than a faulty and retouched copy made in the 80 TextTuaL Ortricism twelfth or thirteenth century. The third impulse is still far from being good; it is to count the attested readings and decide by the majority. Sup- pose there are twenty copies of a text; the reading A is attested eighteen times, the reading B twice. To make this a reason for choosing A is to make the gratuitous assumption that all the manuscripts have the same authority. This is an error of judgment ; for if seventeen of the eighteen manuscripts which give the reading A have been copied from the eighteenth, the reading A is in reality attested only once; and the only question is whether it is intrinsi- cally better or worse than the reading B. * It has been recognised that the only rational pro- cedure is to begin by determining in what relation the copies stand to each other. For this purpose we adopt as our starting-point the incontrovertible axiom that all the copies which contain the same mistakes in the same passages must have been either copied from each other or all derived from a copy containing those mistakes. It is inconceivable that several copyists, independently reproducing an original free from errors, should all introduce exactly the same errors; identity of errors attests community of origin. We shall cast aside without scruple all the copies derived from a single manuscript which has been preserved. Evidently they can have no value beyond what is possessed by their common source ; if they differ from it, it can only be in virtue of new errors; it would be waste of time to study their variations. Having eliminated these, we have before us none but independent copies, which have been made directly from the archetype, or secondary 81 F ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS copies whose source (a copy taken directly from the archetype) has been lost. In order to group the secondary copies into families, each of which shall represent what is substantially the same tradition, we again have recourse to the comparison of errors. By this method we can generally draw up without too much trouble a complete genealogical table (stemma codicum) of the preserved copies, which will bring out very clearly their relative importance. This is not the place to discuss the difficult cases where, in consequence of too great a number of inter- mediaries having been lost, or from ancient copyists having arbitrarily blended the texts of different tradi- tions, the operation becomes extremely laborious or impracticable. Besides, in these extreme cases there is no new method involved : the comparison of corre- sponding passages is a powerful instrument, but it is the only one which criticism has at its disposal for this task. When the genealogical tree of the manuscripts has been drawn up, we endeavour to restore the text of the archetype by comparing the different tradi- tions. If these agree and give a satisfactory text, there is no difficulty. If they differ, we decide be- tween them. If they accidentally agree in giving a defective text, we have recourse to conjectural emendation, as if there were only one copy. It is, theoretically, much more advantageous to have several independent copies of a lost original than to have only one, for the mere mechanical com- parison of the different readings is often enough to remove obscurities which the uncertain light of conjectural criticism would never have illuminated. 82 TEXTUAL CRITICISM However, an abundance of manuscripts is an em- barrassment rather than a help when the work of grouping them has been left undone or done badly ; nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the arbitrary and hybrid restorations which are founded on copies whose relations to each other and to the archetype have not been ascertained beforehand. On the other hand, the application of rational methods requires, in some cases, a formidable expenditure of time and labour. Some works are preserved in hundreds of copies all differing from each other; sometimes (as in the case of the Gospels) the variants of a text of quite moderate extent are to be counted by thousands; several years of assiduous labour are necessary for the preparation of a critical edition of some medieval romances. And after all this labour, all these collations and comparisons, can we be sure that the text of the romance is sensibly better than it would have been if there had been only two or three manuscripts to work upon? No, Some critical editions, owing to the apparent wealth of material applicable to the work, demand a mechanical effort which is altogether out of proportion to the positive results which are its reward. “ Critical editions” founded on several copies of a lost original ought to supply the public with the means of verifying the “stemma codicum” which the editor has drawn up, and should give the rejected variants in the notes. By this means competent readers are, at the worst, put in possession, if not of the best possible text, at least of the materials for constructing it.’ 1 Quite recently our scholars used to neglect this elementary precaution, in order, as they said, to avoid an “air of pedantry.” 83 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS II. The results of textual criticism—a kind of cleaning and mending—are purely negative. By the aid of conjecture, or by the aid of conjecture and comparison combined, we are enabled to construct, not necessarily a good text, but the best text pos- sible, of documents whose original is lost. What we thus effect is the elimination of corrupt and adventitious readings likely to cause error, and the recognition of suspected passages as such. But it is obvious that no new information is supplied by this process. The text of a document which «has: been restored at the cost of infinite pains is not worth more than that of a document whose original has been preserved; on the contrary, it is worth less. If the autograph manuscript of the Aineid had not been destroyed, centuries of collation and conjecture would have been saved, and the text of the Aineid would have been better than it is. This is intended for those who excel at the “emendation game,”? who are in consequence fond of it, and would really be sorry to have no occasion to play it. III. There will, however, be abundant scope for textual criticism as long as we do not possess the oS M. B. Hauréau has published, in his Notices et extraits de quelques manuserits latins de la Bibliotheque 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 must be conceded, are neither of them faultless. ...” The edition follows, with no variants. Verification is impossible. 1 “ 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), 84 TEXTUAL CRITICISM exact text of every historical document. In the present state of science few labours are more useful than those which bring new texts to light or im- prove texts already known. It is a real service to the study of history to publish unedited or badly edited texts in a manner conformable to the rules of criticism. In every country learned societies without number are devoting the greater part of their resources and activity to this important work. But the immense number of the texts to be criti- cised,' and the minute care required by the opera- tions of verbal criticism,’ prevent the work of 1 Tt 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 medizval 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 ex- haustive, 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 our- selves, Every document will be analysed some day, but many documents will never be published. 2 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 dis- pense with all annotation which does not belong to the ‘‘ apparatus criticus” proper. See, on this point, T. Lindner, Veber die Heraus- 85 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS publication and restoration from advancing at any but a slow pace. Before all the texts which are of interest for medizval and modern history shall have been edited or re-edited secundum artem, a long period must elapse, even supposing that the rela- tively rapid pace of the last few years should be still further accclerated.* gabe von geschichtlichen Quellen, in the Mittheilungen des Instituts fiir dsterreichische Geschichtsforschung, xvi., 1895, pp. 501 sqq. 1 To realise this it is enough to compare what has hitherto been done by the most active societies, such as the Society of the Monu- menta Germanizx 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 satis- factory condition, But an immense amount of mechanical work has still to be done. 86 CHAPTER HI CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP It would be absurd to look for information about a fact in the papers of some one who knew nothing, and could know nothing, about it. The first ques- tions, then, which we ask when we are confronted with a document is: Where does it come from ? who is the author of it? what is its date? A document in respect of which we necessarily are in total ignorance of the author, the place, and the date is good for nothing. This truth, which seems elementary, has only been adequately recognised in our own day. Such is the natural axpicia of man, that those who were the first to make a habit of inquiring into the authorship of documents prided themselves, and justly, on the advance they had made. Most modern documents contain a precise indica- tion of their authorship: in our days, books, news- paper articles, official papers, and even private writings, are, in general, dated and signed. Many ancient documents, on the other hand, are anony- mous, without date, and have no sufficient indication of their place of origin. The spontaneous tendency of the human mind is to place confidence in the indications of author- ship, when there are any. On the cover and in the 87 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS preface of the Chdtiments, Victor Hugo is named as the author; therefore Victor Hugo is the author of the Chdtiments. In such and such a picture gallery we see an unsigned picture whose frame has been furnished by the management with a tablet bearing the name of Leonardo da Vinci; therefore Leonardo da Vinci painted this picture. A poem with the title Philomena is found under the name of Saint Bonaventura in M. Clément’s Fatraits des poetes chrétiens, in most editions of Saint Bonaventura’s “works,” and in a great number of medieval manu- scripts; therefore Philomena was written by Saint Bonaventura, and “we may gather thence much precious knowledge of the very soul” of this holy man.’ Vrain-Lucas offered to M. Chasles auto- graphs of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Saint Mary Magdalene, duly signed, and with the flourishes complete:* here, thought M. Chasles, are auto- graphs of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Saint Mary Magdalene. This is one of the most universal, and at the same time indestructible, forms of public credulity. Experience and reflection have shown the neces- sity of methodically checking these instinctive impulses of confiding trust. The autographs of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene had been manufactured by Vrain-Lucas. The Philomena, attributed by medieval scribes now to Saint Bona- ventura, now to Louis of Granada, now to John Hoveden, now to John Peckham, is perhaps by none ? R. de Gourmont, Le Latin mystique (Paris, 1891, 8vo), p. 258. * See these alleged autographs in the Bibliotheque nationale, nouv. acq. fr., No. 709. 88 CriticAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP of these authors, and certainly not by the first- named. Paintings in which there is not the least gleam of talent have, in the most celebrated galleries of Italy, been tricked out, without the least shadow of proof, with the glorious name of Leonardo, On the other hand, it is perfectly true that Victor Hugo is the author of the Chdtiments. The conclusion is, that the most precise indications of authorship are never sufficient by themselves. They only afford a presumption, strong or weak—very strong, in general, where modern documents are concerned, often very weak in the case of ancient documents. False indications of authorship exist, some foisted upon insignificant works in order to enhance their value, some appended to works of merit in order to serve the reputation of a particular person, or to mystify posterity; and there are a hundred other motives which may easily be imagined, and of which a list has been drawn up:* the “ pseudepigraphic ” literature of antiquity and the middle ages is enor- mous. There are, in addition, documents which are forged from beginning to end; the forgers have naturally furnished them with very precise indica- tions of their alleged authorship. Verification is therefore necessary. But how is it to be had? When the apparent authorship of a document is suspected, we use for its verification the same method which serves to fix, as far as possible, the origin of documents which are furnished with no indications at all on this head. As the procedure 1 F, Blass has enumerated the chief of these motives with refer- ence to the pseudepigraphic literature of antiquity (pp. 269 sqg. in the work already quoted). 89 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS is the same in both cases, it is not necessary to dis- tinguish further between them. I. The chief instrument used in the investigation of authorship is the internal analysis of the docu- ment under consideration, performed with a view to bring out any indications it may contain of a nature to supply information about the author, and the time and place in which he lived. First of all we examine the handwriting of the document. Saint Bonaventura was born in 1221; if poems attributed to him are contained in manu- scripts executed in the eleventh century, we have in this circumstance an excellent proof that the attri- bution is ill-founded: no document of which there exists a copy in eleventh-century handwriting can be posterior in date to the eleventh century. Then we examine the language. It is known that certain forms have only been used in certain places and at certain dates. Most forgers have betrayed them- selves by ignorance of facts of this kind; they let slip modern words or phrases. It has been possible to establish the fact that certain Phcenician inscrip- tions, found in South America, were earlier than a certain German dissertation on a point of Pheenician syntax. In the case of official instruments we examine the formule. If a document which pur- ports to be a Merovingian charter does not exhibit the ordinary formule of genuine Merovingian charters it must be spurious. Lastly, we note all the positive data which occur in the document— the facts which are mentioned or alluded to. When these facts are otherwise known, from sources which a forger could not have had at his disposal, the go CriticAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP bona fides of the document is established, and the date fixed approximately between the most recent event of which the author shows knowledge, and the next following event which he does not mention but would have done if he had known of it. Argu- ments may also be founded on the circumstance that particular facts are mentioned with approval, or particular opinions expressed, and help us to make a conjectural estimate of the status, the environ- ment, and the character of the author. When the internal analysis of a document is care- fully performed, it generally gives us a tolerably accurate notion of its authorship. By means of a methodical comparison, instituted between the various elements of the documents analysed and the cor- responding elements of similar documents whose authorship was known with certainty, the detection of many a forgery’ has been rendered possible, and additional information acquired about the circum- stances under which most genuine documents have been produced. The results obtained by internal analysis are sup- plemented and verified by collecting all the external evidence relative to the document under criticism which can be found scattered over the documents of the same or later epochs—quotations, biographical details about the author, and so on. Sometimes 1H. 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 Neuchatel (Neuchatel, 1896, 8vo). gI ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS there is a significant absence of any such informa- tion: the fact that an alleged Merovingian charter has not been quoted by anybody before the seven- teenth century, and has only been seen by a seven- teenth-century scholar who has been convicted of fraud, suggests the thought that it is modern, II. Hitherto we have considered only the simplest case, in which the document under examination is the work of a single author. But many documents have, at different times, received additions which it is important to distinguish from the original text, in order that we may not attribute to X, the author of the text, what really belongs to Y or Z, his unforeseen collaborators." There are two kinds of additions—interpolations and continuations. To in- terpolate is to insert into the text words or sen- tences which were not in the author’s manuscript.? Usually interpolations are accidental, due to the negligence of the copyist, and explicable as the introduction into the text of interlinear glosses or marginal notes; but there are cases where some one has deliberately added to (or substituted for) the author’s text words or sentences out of his own head, for the sake of completeness, ornament, or emphasis. If we had before us the manuscript in which the deliberate interpolation was made, the appearance of the added matter and the traces of -erasure would make the case clear at once. But the first interpolated copy has nearly always been 1 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. 2 See F. Blass, ibid., pp. 254 sqq. g2 CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP lost, and in the copies derived from it every trace of addition or substitution has disappeared. There is no need to define “ continuations.” It is well known that many chronicles of the middle ages have been “ continued” by various writers, none of whom took the trouble to indicate where his own work began or ended. Sometimes interpolations and continuations can be very readily distinguished in the course of the operations for restoring a text of which there are several copies, when it so happens that some of these copies reproduce the primitive text as it was before any addition was made to it. But if all the copies are founded on previous copies which already con- tained the interpolations or continuations, recourse must be had to internal analysis. Is the style uniform throughout the document? Does the book breathe one and the same spirit from cover to cover ? Are there no contradictions, no gaps in the sequence of ideas? In practice, when the continuators or in- terpolators have been men of well-marked personality and decided views, analysis will separate the original from the additions as cleanly as a pair of scissors. When the whole is written in a level, colourless style, the lines of division are not so easy to see; it is then better to confess the fact than to multiply hypotheses. III. The critical investigation of authorship is not finished as soon as a document has been accurately or approximately localised in space and time, and as much information as possible obtained about the author or authors. Here is a book: we 1 As a rule it matters little whether the name of the author has or has not been discovered. We read, however, in the Histoire 93 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS wish to ascertain the origin of the information con- tained in it, that is, to be in a position to appreciate its value; is it enough to know that it was written in 1890, at Paris, by So-and-so? Perhaps So-and-so copied slavishly, without mentioning the fact, an earlier work, written in 1850. The responsible guarantor of the borrowed parts is not So-and-so, but the author of 1850. Plagiarism, it is true, is now rare, forbidden by the law, and considered dis- honourable; formerly it was common, tolerated, and unpunished. Many historical documents, with every appearance of originality, are nothing but unavowed repetitions of earlier documents, and historians occa- sionally experience, in this connection, remarkable disillusions. Certain passages in Eginhard, a ninth- century chronicler, are borrowed from Suetonius: they have nothing to do with the history of the ninth century; how if the fact had not been dis- covered? An event is attested three times, by three chroniclers; but these three attestations, which agree so admirably, are really only one if it is ascertained that two of the three chroniclers copied the third, or that the three parallel accounts have been drawn from one and the same source. Pontifical letters and Imperial charters of the middle ages contain eloquent passages which must not be taken seriously; they are part of the official style, and were copied word for word from chancery formularies. It belongs to the investigation of authorship to littéraire 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 ? 94 CriticaL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP discover, as far as possible, the sowrces utilised by the authors of documents. The problem thus presented to us has some resemblance to that of the restoration of texts of which we have already spoken. In both cases we proceed on the assumption that identical readings have a common source: a number of different scribes, in transcribing a text, will not make exactly the same mistakes in exactly the same places; a number of different writers, relating the same facts, will not have viewed them from exactly the same stand- point, nor will they say the same things in exactly the same language. The great complexity of his- torical events makes it extremely improbable that two independent observers should narrate them in the same manner. We endeavour to group the documents into families in the same way as we make families of manuscripts. Similarly, we are enabled in the result to draw up genealogical tables. The examiners who correct the compositions of can- didates for the bachelor’s degree sometimes notice that the papers of two candidates who sat next each other bear a family likeness. If they have a mind to find out which is derived from the other, they have no difficulty in doing so, in spite of the petty artifices (slight modifications, expansions, ab- stracts, additions, suppressions, transpositions) which the plagiarist multiplies in order to throw suspicion off the scent. The two guilty ones are sufficiently betrayed by their common errors; the more culpable of the two is detected by the slips he will have made, and especially by the errors in his own papers which are due to peculiarities in those of 95 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS his accommodating friend. Similarly when two ancient documents are in question: when the author of one has copied directly from the other, the filiation is generally easy to establish; the pla- giarist, whether he abridges or expands, nearly always betrays himself sooner or later.’ When there are three documents in a family their mutual relationships are sometimes harder to specify. Let A, B, and C be the documents. Suppose A is the common source: perhaps B and C copied it independently; perhaps C only knew A through the medium of B, or B knew it only through C. If B and C have abridged the common source in different ways, they are evidently inde- pendent. When B depends on C, or vice versd, we have the simplest case, treated in the preceding paragraph. But suppose the author of C combined A and B, while B had already used A: the genealogy begins to get complicated. It is more complicated still when there are four, five, or more documents in a family, for the number of possible combina- tions increases with great rapidity. However, if too many intermediate links have not been lost, criti- cism succeeds in disentangling the relationships by persistent and ingenious applications of the method of repeated comparisons. Modern scholars (Krusch, for example, who has made a speciality of Mero- vingian hagiography) have recently constructed, by 1 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 palzographical considerations, 96 Critica, INVESTIGATION or AUTHORSHIP the use of this method, precise genealogies of the utmost solidity." The results of the critical in- vestigation of authorship, as applied to the filiation of documents, are of two kinds. Firstly, lost. docu- ments are reconstructed. Suppose two chroniclers, B and C, have used, each in his own way, a common source X, which has now disappeared. We may form an idea of X by piecing together the fragments of it which occur imbedded in B and C, just as we form an idea of a lost manuscript by comparing the partial copies of it which have been preserved. On the other hand, criticism destroys the authority of a host of “authentic” documents—that is, documents which no one suspects of having been falsified—by showing that they are derivative, that they are worth whatever their sources may be worth, and that, when they embellish their sources with imaginary details and rhetorical flourishes, they are worth just nothing at all. In Germany and England editors of docu- ments have introduced the excellent system of printing borrowed passages in small characters, and original passages whose source is unknown in larger characters. Thanks to this system it is possible to see at a glance that celebrated chronicles, which are often (very wrongly) quoted, are mere compilations, of no value in themselves: thus the Flores historiarwm of the self-styled Matthew of Westminster, perhaps the most popular of the English medieval chronicles, 1 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. 97 G ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS are almost entirely taken from original works by Wendover and Matthew of Paris. IV. The critical investigation of authorship saves historians from huge blunders. Its results are striking. By eliminating spurious documents, by detecting false ascriptions, by determining the con- ditions of production of documents which had been defaced by time, and by connecting them with their sources,” it has rendered services of such magnitude that to-day it is regarded as having a special right to the name of “criticism.” It is usual to say of an historian that he “ fails in criticism” when he neglects to distinguish between documents, when he never mistrusts traditional ascriptions, and when he accepts, as if afraid to lose a single one, all the pieces of information, ancient or modern, good or bad, which come to him, from whatever quarter.’ This view is perfectly just. We must not, how- ever, be satisfied with this form of criticism, and we must not abuse it. 1 See the edition of H. R. Luard (vol. i, London, 1890, 8vo) in the Rerum Britannicarum medii evi scriptores. Matthew of West- minster’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. * It would be instructive to draw up a list of the celebrated his- torical works, such as Augustin Thierry’s Histoire de la Conquéte de 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. 3 One of the crudest (and commonest) forms of “uncritical method” is that which consists in employing as if they were docu- ments, and placing on the same footing as documents, the utterances 98 CriTicAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP We must not abuse it. The extreme of distrust, in these matters, is almost as mischievous as the extreme of credulity. Pére Hardouin, who attributed the works of Vergil and Horace to medieval monks, was every whit as ridiculous as the victim of Vrain- Lucas. It is an abuse of the methods of this species of criticism to apply them, as has been done, indis- criminately, for the mere pleasure of it. The bunglers who have used this species of criticism to brand as spurious perfectly genuine documents, such as the writings of Hroswitha, the Ligurinus, and the bull Unam Sanctam,' or to establish imaginary filiations between certain annals, on the strength of superficial indications, would have discredited criticism before now if that had been possible. It is praiseworthy, certainly, to react against those who never raise a doubt about the authorship of a document; but it is carrying the reaction too far to take an exclusive interest in periods of history which depend on documents of uncertain authorship. The only reason why the documents of modern and con- temporary history are found less interesting than those of antiquity and the early middle ages, is that the identity which nearly always obtains between their apparent and their real authorship leaves no room for those knotty problems of attribution in which the virtwosi of criticism are accustomed to dis- play their skill” 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. 1 See a list of examples in Bernheim’s Handbuch, pp. 283, 289. 2 It is because it is necessary to subject documents of medizval 99 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS Nor must we be content with it. The critical investigation of authorship, like textual criticism, is preparatory, and its results negative. Its final aim and crowning achievement is to get rid of documents which are not documents, and which would have misled us; that is all. “It teaches us not to use bad documents; it does not teach us how to turn good ones to account.”? It is not the whole of “ historical criticism ;” it is only one stone in the edifice.” 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. 1 Revue philosophique, 1887, ii. p. 170. 2 The theory of the critical investigation of authorship is now settled, ne varietur ; it is given in detail in Bernheim’s Lehrbuch, pp. 242-340, For this reason we have had no scruple in dismissing it with a short sketch. In French, the introduction of M. G. Monod to his Etudes critiques sur les sources de Uhistoire mérovingienne (Paris, 1872, 8vo) contains elementary considerations on the subject. Cf. Revue Critique, 1873, i. p. 308. I0o CHAPTER IV CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES By the help of the preceding operations the docu- ments, all the documents, let us suppose, of a given class, or relating to a given subject, have been found. We know where they are; the text of each has been restored, if necessary, and each has been critically examined in respect of authorship. We know where they have come from. It remains to combine and classify the materials thus verified. This is the last of the operations which may be called prepa- ratory to the work of higher (or internal) criticism and construction. Whoever studies a point of history is obliged, first of all, to classify his sources. To arrange, in a rational and convenient manner, the verified mate- rials before making use of them, is an apparently humble, but really very important, part of the his- torian’s profession. Those who have learnt how to do it possess, on that account alone, a marked advantage: they give themselves less trouble, and they obtain better results; the others waste their time and labour; they are smothered sometimes under the disorderly mass of notes, extracts, copies, scraps, which they themselves have accumulated. Who was it spoke of those busy people who spend their lives lifting building-stones without knowing IOI ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS where to place them, raising as they do so clouds of blinding dust ? I. Here, again, we have to confess that the first, the natural impulse, is not the right one. The first impulse of most men who have to utilise a number of texts is to make notes from them, one after another, in the order in which they study them. Many of the early scholars (whose papers we possess) worked on this system, and so do most beginners who are not warned beforehand ; the latter keep, as the former kept, notebooks, which they fill continuously and progressively with notes on the texts they are interested in. This method is utterly wrong. The materials collected must be classified sooner or later; otherwise it would be necessary, when occasion arose, to deal separately with the materials bearing on a given point, to read right through the whole series of notebooks, and this laborious process would have to be repeated every time a new detail was wanted. If this method seems attractive at first, it is because it appears to save time. But this is false economy; the ulti- mate result is, an enormous addition to the labour of search, and great difficulty in combining the materials, Others, well understanding the advantages of systematic classification, have proposed to fit their materials, as fast as collected, into their appropriate places in a prearranged scheme. For this purpose they use notebooks of which every page has first been provided with a heading. Thus all the entries of the same kind are close to one another. This system leaves something to be desired; for addi- 102 CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES tions will not always fit without inconvenience into their proper place; and the scheme of classification, once adopted, is rigid, and can only be modified with difficulty. Many librarians used to draw up their catalogues on this plan, which is now uni- versally condemned. There is a still more barbarous method, which need not receive more than passing mention. This is simply to register documents in the memory without taking written notes. This method has been used. Historians endowed with excellent memories, and lazy to boot, have indulged this whim, with the result that their quotations and references are mostly inexact. The human memory is a delicate piece of registering apparatus, but it is so little an instrument of precision that such pre- sumption is inexcusable. Every one admits nowadays that it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of paper. The notes from each document are entered upon a loose leaf furnished with the precisest possible in- dications of origin. The advantages of this artifice are obvious: the detachability of the slips enables us to group them at will in a host of different com- binations ; if necessary, to change their places: it is easy to bring texts of the same kind together, and to incorporate additions, as they are acquired, in the interior of the groups to which they belong. As for documents which are interesting from several points of view, and which ought to appear in several groups, it is sufficient to enter them several times over on different slips; or they may be represented, as often as may be required, on reference-slips. Moreover, 103 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS the method of slips is the only one mechanically possible for the purpose of forming, classifying, and utilising a collection of documents of any great extent. Statisticians, financiers, and men of letters who observe, have now discovered this as well as scholars. The method of slips is not without its drawbacks. Each slip ought to be furnished with precise refer- ences to the source from which its contents have been derived; consequently, if a document has been analysed upon fifty different slips, the same refer- ences must be repeated fifty times. Hence a slight increase in the amount of writing to be done. It is certainly on account of this trivial complication that some obstinately cling to the inferior notebook system. Again, in virtue of their very detachability, the slips, or loose leaves, are liable to go astray; and when a slip is lost how is it to be replaced? To begin with, its disappearance is not perceived, and, if it were, the only remedy would be to go right through all the work already done from beginning to end. But the truth is, experience has suggested a variety of very simple precautions, which we need not here explain in detail, by which the drawbacks of the system are reduced to a minimum. It is recommended to use slips of uniform size and tough material, and to arrange them at the earliest oppor- tunity in covers or drawers or otherwise. Every one is free to form his own habits in these matters. But it is well to realise beforehand that these habits, according as they are more or less rational and practical, have a direct influence on the results of scientific work. Renan speaks of “these points 104 CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES of private librarianship which make up the half of scientific work.”' This is not too strong. One scholar will owe a good part of his well-deserved reputation to his method of collecting, while another will be, so to speak, paralysed by his clumsiness in that particular.’ After having collected the documents, whether copied in extenso or abridged, on slips or loose leaves, we classify them. On what scheme? In what order ? Clearly different cases must be treated differently, and it would not be reasonable to lay down precise formule to govern them all. However, we may give afew general considerations, II. We distinguish between the historian who classifies verified documents for the purposes of historical work, and the scholar who compiles “ Regesta.” By the words “ Regesta” and “ Corpus” we understand methodically classified collections of historical documents. In a “Corpus” documents are reproduced in extenso; in “ Regesta” they are analysed and described. The use of these compilations is to assist re- searchers in collecting documents. Scholars set themselves to perform, once for all, tasks of search and classification from which, thanks to them, the public will henceforth be free. Documents may be grouped according to their 1 Renan, Feuilles détachées, p. 103, 2 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. Feugére, Etude sur la vie et les ouvrages de Du Camge (Paris, 1858, 8v0), pp. 62 sgq. 105 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS date, according to their place of origin, according to their contents, according to their form." Here we have the four categories of time, place, species, and form; by superposing, then, we obtain divisions of smaller extent. We may undertake, for example, to make a group of all the documents having a given form, of a given country, and lying between two given dates (French royal charters of the reign of Philip Augustus); or of all the documents of a given form (Latin inscriptions); or of a given species (Latin hymns); of a given epoch (antiquity, the middle ages). We may recall, by way of illustra- tion, the existence of a Corpus Inseriptionum Gre- carum, of a Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, of a Corpus Scriptorum Lcclesiasticorum Latinorum, the Regesta Imperii of J. F. Bohmer and his continuators, the Regesta Pontificum Romanorum of P. Jaffé and A. Potthast. Whatever the division chosen, there are two 1 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 ina 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, Reliquie manuscriptorum, “treasuries of anecdota,” spicilegia, and so on, used to publish all the documents of a certain class which had the com- mon feature of being unedited and of appearing interesting to them ; on the other hand, Georgisch (Regesta Chronologico-diplomatica), Bré- quigny (Table chronologique des diplémes, chartes et actes imprimés concernant Vhistoire de France), Wauters (Table chronologique des chartes et diplémes imprimés concernant Vhistoire de Belgique), have grouped together all the documents of a certain species which had the common character of having been printed. 106 CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES alternatives: either the documents to be placed in this division are dated or they are not. If they are dated, as is the case, for example, with the charters issued from the chancery of a prince, care will have been taken to place at the head of each slip the date (expressed in modern reckoning) of the document entered upon it. No- thing is then easier than to group in chronological order all the slips, that is, all the documents, which have been collected. The rule is to use chrono- logical classification whenever possible. There is only one difficulty, and that is of a practical order. Even in the most favourable circumstances some of the documents will have accidentally lost their dates; these dates the compiler is bound to restore, or at least to attempt to restore; long and patient research is necessary for the purpose. If the documents are not dated, a choice must be made between the alphabetical, the geographical, and the systematic order. The history of the Corpus of Latin inscriptions bears witness to the difficulty of this choice. “The arrangement according to date was impossible, seeing that most of the inscrip- tions are not dated. From the time of Smetius it was usual to divide them into classes, that is, a distinction was made, resting solely on the contents of the inscription, and having no regard to their place of origin, between religious, sepulchral, mili- tary, and poetical inscriptions, those which have a public character, and those which only concern private persons, and so on. Boeckh, although he had preferred the geographical arrangement for his Corpus Inscriptionwm Grecarum, was of opinion that 107 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS the arrangement by subjects, which had been hitherto employed, was the only possible one for a Latin Corpus... .” [Even those who, in France, proposed the geographical arrangement] “wished to make an exception of texts relating to the general history of a country, certainly, at any rate, in the case of the Empire; in 1845 Zumpt defended a very complicated eclectic system of this kind. In 1847 Mommsen still rejected the geographical arrangement except for municipal inscriptions, and in 1852, when he published the Inscriptions of the Kingdom of Naples, he had not entirely changed his opinion. It was only on being charged by the Academy of Berlin with the publication of the Corpus Inseriptionwm Latinarum, that, grown wise by experience, he re- jected even the exceptions proposed by Egger in the case of the general history of a province, and thought it his duty to keep to the geographical arrangement pure and simple.”’ And yet, consider- ing the nature of epigraphic documents, the arrange- ment according to place was the only rational one. This has been amply demonstrated for more than fifty years; but collectors of inscriptions did not come to an agreement on the subject till after two centuries of tentative efforts in different directions. For two centuries collections of Latin inscriptions have been made without any perception of the fact that “to group inscriptions according to their sub- jects is much the same thing as to publish an edition of Cicero in which his speeches, treatises, and letters should be cut up and the fragments 1 J. P. Waltzing, Recueil général des inscriptions latines (Louvain, 1892, 8vo), p. 41. 108 CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES arranged according to their subject-matter ;” that “epigraphic monuments belonging to the same territory mutually explain each other when placed side by side;” and, lastly, that “ while it is all but impossible to range in order of subject-matter a hundred thousand inscriptions nearly all of which belong to several categories; on the other hand, each monument has but one place, and a very definite place, in the geographical order.” * The alphabetical arrangement is very convenient when the chronological and geographical arrange- ments are unsuitable. There are documents, such as the sermons, the hymns, and the secular songs of the middle ages, which are not precisely dated or localised. They are arranged in the alphabetical order of their incipit—that is, the words with which they begin.” The systematic order, or arrangement by sub- jects, is not to be recommended for the compilation of a Corpus or of regesta. It is always arbitrary, and 1 Ibid. When the geographical order is adopted, a difficulty arises from the fact that the origin of certain documents is un- known ; 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. 2 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 compila- tion 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. 109 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS leads to inevitable repetition and confusion. Be- sides, given collections arranged in chronological, geographical, or alphabetical order, nothing more than the addition of a good table of contents is needed to make them available for all the purposes which would be served by a systematic arrange- ment. One of the chief rules of the art of Corpus and regesta-making, that great art which has been carried to such perfection in the second half of the nineteenth century,’ is to provide these collections, whatever the grouping adopted, with a variety of tables and indexes of a kind to facilitate the use of them: incipit tables in chronological regesta which lend themselves to such treatment, indexes of names and dates in regesta arranged by order of ineipit, and so on, Corpus and regesta-makers collect and classify for the use of others documents in which, at any rate in all of which, they have no direct interest, and are absorbed in this labour. Ordinary workers, on the other hand, only collect and classify materials useful for their individual studies. Hence certain differences arise. For example, the arrangement by subjects, on a predetermined system, which is so little to be recommended for great collections, often provides those who are composing monographs on their own account with a scheme of classification preferable to any other. But it will always be well to cultivate the mechanical habits of which pro- fessional compilers have learnt the value by experi- ence: to write at the head of every slip its date, 1 See G. Waitz, Veber die Herausgabe und Bearbeituny von Regesten, in the Historische Zeitschrift, xl, (1878), pp. 280-95. IIo CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES if there is occasion for it, and a heading’ in any case; to multiply cross-references and indices; to keep a record, on a separate set of slips, of all the sources utilised, in order to avoid the danger of having to work a second time through materials already dealt with. The regular observance of these maxims goes a great way towards making scientific historical work easier and more solid. The posses- sion of a well-arranged, though incomplete, collection of slips has enabled M. B. Hauréau to exhibit to the end of his life an undeniable mastery over the very special class of historical problems which he studied.” 1 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 alpha- betical order of the words chosen as headings (Schlagwérter). This is what is called the “‘ dictionary system.” ? See Langlois, Manuel de bibliographie historique, i. p. 88. CHAPTER V CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS THE sum of the operations described in the pre- ceding chapters (restoration of texts, investigation of authorship, collection and classification of verified documents) constitutes the vast domain of external criticism, or critical scholarship. The public at large, with its vulgar and super- ficial standards, has nothing but disdain for the whole of critical scholarship. Some of its votaries, on the other hand, are inclined to exalt it unduly. But there is a happy medium between these extremes of over-appreciation and contempt. The crude opinion of those who pity and despise the minute analysis of external criticism hardly deserves refutation. There is only one argument for the legitimacy and honourable character of the obscure labours of erudition, but it is a de- cisive argument: it rests on their indispensability. No erudition, no history. “Non sunt contemnenda quasi parva,” says St. Jerome, “sine quibus magna constare non possunt,” 1 On the other hand, scholars by profession, in their zeal to justify their pride in their work, are not con- 1 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. 932 899. ; There are some who willingly admit that the labours of erudition II2 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS tent with maintaining its necessity; they allow them- selves to be carried away into an exaggeration of its merit and importance. It has been said that the sure methods of external criticism have raised history to the dignity of a science, “of an exact science ;” that critical investigations of authorship “enable us, better than any other study, to gain a profound insight into past ages;” that the habit of criticising texts refines or even confers the “historical sense.” It has been tacitly assumed that external criticism is the whole of historical criticism, and that beyond the purgation, emenda- tion, and classification of documents there is nothing left to do. This illusion, common enough among specialists, is too crude to need express refutation ; the fact is, that it is the psychological criticism which deals with interpretation and examines into the good faith and accuracy of authors that has, better than any other study, enabled us to gain a pro- found insight into past ages, not external criticism.’ An historian who should be fortunate enough to find all the documents bearing on his studies already edited correctly, classified, and critically 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. Brunetiére, 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. 1 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. 113 H ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS examined as to authorship, would be in just as good a position to use them for writing history as if he had performed all the preliminary opera- tions himself. It is quite possible, whatever may be said, to have the historical sense in full measure without having ever, both literally and figuratively, wiped away the dust from original documents—that is, without having discovered and restored them for oneself. We need not interpret in the Jewish or etymological sense the dictum of Renan: “I do not think it possible for any one to acquire a clear notion of history, its limits, and the amount of confidence to be placed in the different categories of historical investigation, unless he is in the habit of handling original documents.”! This is to be understood as simply referring to the habit of going direct to the sources, and treating definite problems.” Without doubt a day will come when all the documents relating to the history of classical antiquity shall have been edited and treated criti- cally. There will then be no more room, in this department of study, for textual criticism or the investigation of sources; but, for all that, the condi- tions for the treatment of general ancient. history, or special parts of it, will be then eminently favour- able. External criticism, as we cannot too often repeat, is entirely preparatory; it is a means, not an end; the ideal state of things would be that it should have been already sufficiently practised 1 Renan, Essais de morale et de critique, p. 36. 2 “Tf 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). 114 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS that we might dispense with it for the future; it is only a temporary necessity. Theoretically, not only is it unnecessary for those who wish to make historical syntheses to do for themselves the pre- paratory work on the materials which they use, but we have a right to ask, as has been often asked, whether there is any advantage in their doing it." Would it not be preferable that workers in the field of history should specialise? On the one class—the specialists—would devolve the ab- sorbing tasks of external or erudite criticism; the others, relieved of the weight of these tasks, would have greater liberty to devote themselves to the work of higher criticism, of combination and con- struction. Such was the opinion of Mark Pattison, who said, History cannot be written from manuscripts, which is as much as to say: “It is impossible for a man to write history from documents which he is obliged to put for himself into a condition in which they can be used.” Formerly the professions of “critical scholar” and “historian” were, in fact, clearly distinguished. The “historians” cultivated the empty and pompous species of literature which then was known as “ his- tory,” without considering themselves bound to keep in touch with the work of the scholars. The latter, for their part, determined by their critical researches the conditions under which history must be written, but were at no pains to write it themselves. Content to collect, emend, and classify historical documents, 1 On the question whether it is necessary for every one to do ‘tall the preliminary grubbing for himself,” cf. J. M. Robertson, *‘ Buckle and His Critics” (London, 1895, 8vo), p. 299. II5 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS they took no interest in history, and understood the past no better than did the mass of their contem- poraries. The scholars acted as though erudition were an end in itself, and the historians as if they had been able to reconstruct vanished realities by the mere force of reflection and ingenuity applied to the inferior documents, which were common pro- perty. So complete a divorce between erudition and history seems to-day almost inexplicable, and it was in truth mischievous enough. We need not say that the present advocates of the division of labour in history have nothing of the kind in view. It is admittedly necessary that close relations should obtain between the world of historians and that of critical scholars, for the work of the latter has no reason for existence beyond its utility to the former. All that is meant is, that certain analytical and all synthetic operations are not necessarily better per- formed when they are performed by the same person; that though the characters of historian and scholar may be combined, there is nothing illegi- timate in their separation; and that perhaps this separation is desirable in theory, as, in practice, it is often a necessity. In practice, what happens is as follows. What- ever part of history a man undertakes to study, there are only three possible cases. In the first the sources have already been emended and classified ; in the second the preliminary work on the sources, which has been only partially done, or not at all, offers no great difficulty; in the third the sources are in a very bad state, and require a great deal of labour to fit them for use. We may observe, in 116 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS passing, that there is naturally no proportion be- tween the intrinsic importance of the subject and the amount of preliminary work which must be done before it can be treated: there are some sub- jects of the highest interest, for example the history of the origin and early development of Christianity, which could not be properly attacked till after the completion of investigations which occupied several generations of scholars; but the material criticism of the sources of the history of the French Revolu- tion, another subject of the first rank, gave much less trouble; and there are comparatively unimpor- tant problems in medizval history which will not be solved till after an immense amount of external criticism shall have been performed. In the two first cases the expediency of a division of labour does not come in question. But take the third case. A man of ability discovers that the documents which are necessary for the treatment of a point of history are in a very bad condition ; they are scattered, corrupt, and untrustworthy. He must take his choice; either he must abandon the subject, having no taste for the mechanical opera- tions which he knows to be necessary, but which, as he foresees, would absorb the whole of his energy ; or else he resolves to enter upon the preparatory critical work, without concealing from himself that in all probability he will never have time to utilise the materials he has verified, and that he will there- fore be working for those who will come after him. If he adopts the second alternative he becomes a critical scholar by profession, as it were in spite of himself. A priori, it is true, there is nothing to Ley ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS prevent those who make great collections of texts and publish critical editions from using their own compilations and editions for the writing of history ; and we see, as a matter of fact, that several men have divided themselves between the preparatory tasks of external criticism and the more exalted labours of historical construction: it is enough to mention the names of Waitz, Mommsen, and Hauréau. But this combination is very rare, for several reasons. The first is the shortness of life; there are catalogues, editions, regesta on a great scale, the construction of which entails so much mecha- nical labour as to exhaust the strength of the most zealous worker. The second is the fact that, for many persons, the tasks of critical scholarship are not without their charm; nearly every one finds in them a singular satisfaction in the long run; and some have confined themselves to these tasks who might, strictly speaking, have aspired to higher things. Is it a good thing in itself that some workers should, voluntarily or not, confine themselves to the researches of critical scholarship? Yes, without a doubt. In the study of history, the results of the division of labour are the same as in the industrial arts, and highly satisfactory—more abundant, more successful, better regulated production. Critics who have been long habituated to the restoration of texts restore them with incomparable dexterity and sure- ness; those who devote themselves exclusively to investigations of authorship and sources have in- tuitions which would not occur to others less versed in this difficult and highly specialised branch ; those 118 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS who have spent their lives in the construction of catalogues and the compilation of regesta construct and compile them more easily, more quickly, and better than the man in the street. Thus, not only is there no special reason for requiring every “ his- torian” to be at the same time an active worker in the field of critical scholarship, but even those scholars who are engaged in the operations of ex- ternal criticism come under different categories. Similarly, in a stoneyard there is no point in the architect being at the same time a workman, nor have all the workmen the same functions. Although most critical scholars have not rigorously specialised so far, and although they vary their pleasures by voluntarily executing different kinds of critical work, it would be easy to name some who are specialists in descriptive catalogues and indexes (archivists, librarians, and the like), others who are more parti- cularly “critics” (purifiers, restorers, and editors of texts), and others who are pre-eminently compilers of regesta. “The moment it is admitted that erudi- tion is only valuable for the sake of its results, it becomes impossible to carry the division of scientific labour too far;”* and the progress of the historical sciences corresponds to the narrower and narrower specialisation of the workers. It was possible, not very long ago, for the same man to devote himself successively to all the operations of historical in- quiry, but that was because he appealed to a not very exacting public: nowadays we require of those who criticise documents a minute accuracy and an absolute perfection which presuppose real professional 1 Renan, L’ Avenir de la science, p. 230. 119g ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS skill. The historical sciences have now reached a stage in their evolution at which the main lines have been traced, the great discoveries made, and nothing remains but a more precise treatment of details. We feel instinctively that any further advance must be by dint of investigations of such extent, and analyses of such depth, as none but specialists are capable of. But the best justification of the division of workers into “scholars” and “historians” (and of the distri- bution of the former among the various branches of external criticism) is to be found in the fact that different persons have a natural vocation for dif- ferent tasks. One of the chief justifications of the institution of higher historical teaching is, in our opinion, the opportunity afforded the teachers (pre- sumably men of experience) of discerning in the students, in the course of their university career, either the germ of a vocation for critical scholar- ship, or fundamental unfitness for critical work, as the case may be.’ Criticus non fit, sed nascitur. For one who is not endowed by nature with certain aptitudes, a career of technical erudition has nothing but disappointments in store: the greatest service that can be rendered to young men hesitating whether to adopt such a career or not is to warn them of the fact. Those who hitherto have devoted themselves to the preparatory tasks of criticism have either chosen them in preference to others because 1 A university professor isin 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). 120 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS they had a taste for them, or else have submitted to them because they knew they were necessary ; those who engaged in them by choice have less merit, from the ethical point of view, than those who submitted to them, but, for all that, they have mostly obtained better results, because they have worked, not as a matter of duty, but joyfully and whole-heartedly. It is important that every one should realise the situation, and, in his own as well as the general interest, embrace the special work which suits him best. We now propose to examine the natural aptitudes which fit, and the truly prohibitory defects which disqualify, for the labours of external criticism. We shall, then, devote a few words to the effects pro- duced on the character by professional habituation to the labours of critical scholarship. The chief condition of success in these labours is to like them. Those who are exceptionally gifted as poets or thinkers—that is, those who are endowed with creative power—have much difficulty in adapt- ing themselves to the technical drudgery of prepara- tory criticism: they are far from despising it; on the contrary, they hold it in honour, if they are clear-sighted ; but they shrink from devoting them- selves to it, for fear of using a razor, as is said, to cut stones. “I have no mind,” wrote Leibnitz to Basnage, who had exhorted him to compile an immense Corpus of unpublished and printed docu- ments relating to the history of the law of nations; “TJ have no mind to turn transcriber. .. . Does it not occur to you that the advice you give me resembles that of a man who should wish to marry his friend 121 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS to a shrew? For to engage a man in a lifelong work is much the same as to find him a wife.” And Renan, speaking of those immense preliminary labours “ which have rendered possible the researches of the higher criticism” and attempts at historical construction, says: “The man who, with livelier intellectual needs [than those of the men who per- formed these labours], should now accomplish such an act of abnegation, would be a hero... .’? Al- though Renan directed the publication of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, and Leibnitz was the editor of the Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensiwm, neither Leibnitz, nor Renan, nor their peers have, fortunately, had the heroism to sacrifice their higher faculties to purely critical learning. Outside the class of superior men (and the in- finitely more numerous class of those who wrongly think themselves such), nearly every one, as we have already said, finds in the long run a kind of satisfac- tion in the minutiz of preparatory criticism. The reason is, that the practice of this criticism appeals to and develops two very widespread tastes—the taste for collecting and the taste for puzzles. The pleasure of collecting is one which is felt not by children only, but by adults as well, no matter whether the collection be one of various readings or of postage-stamps. The deciphering of rebuses, the solution of small problems of strictly definite scope, are occupations which attract many able minds. Every find brings pleasure, and in the 1 Quoted by Fr. X. von Wegele, Geschichte der deutschen Historio- graphie (Miinchen, 1885, 8vo), p. 653. 2 Renan, ibid., p. 125. I22 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS field of erudition there are innumerable finds—some lying exposed and obvious, some guarded by all but impenetrable barriers—to reward both those who do and those who do not delight in surmounting diffi- culties. All the scholars of any distinction have possessed in an eminent degree the instincts of the collector and the puzzle-solver, and some of them have been quite conscious of the fact. “The more difficulties we encountered in our chosen path,” says M. Hauréau, “the more the enterprise pleased us. This species of labour, which is called bibliography [investigations of authorship, principally from the point of view of pseudepigraphy], could not aspire to the homage of the public, but it has a great attraction for those who devote themselves to it. Yes, it is doubtless a humble study, but how many others are there which so often compensate the trouble they give by affording us opportunity to ery Eureka.”* Julien Havet, when he was “ already known to the learned men of Europe,” used to divert himself “by apparently frivolous amuse- meats, such as guessing square words or decipher- ing cryptograms.”” Profound instincts, and, for all the childish or ridiculous perversions which they may exhibit in certain individuals, of the highest utility! After all, these are forms, the most rudi- mentary forms, of the scientific spirit. Those who are devoid of them have no place in the world of 1 B. Hauréau, Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits latins de la Bibliotheque nationale, i. (Paris, 1890, 8vo), p. v. 2 Bibliotheque de U Ecole des chartes, 1896, p. 88. Compare analogous traits in the interesting intellectual biography of the Hellenist, paleographer, and bibliographer, Charles Graux, by E. Lavisse (Questions d’enseignement national, Paris, 1885, 18mo, pp. 265 sqq.). 123 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS critical scholarship. But those who aspire to be critical scholars will always be numerous; for the labours of interpretation, construction, and exposi- tion require the rarest gifts: all those whom chance has thrown into the study of history, who desire to do useful work in that department, but are wanting in psychological tact, or find composition irksome, will always allow themselves to be fascinated by the simple and calm pleasures of the preliminary tasks. But in order to succeed in critical labours it is not enough to like them. It is necessary to pos- sess qualifications “for which zeal is no substitute.” What qualifications? Those who have asked this question have answered vaguely: “Qualifications of the moral rather than the intellectual order, patience, intellectual honesty....” Is it not possible to be more precise ? There are young students with no @ priori repug- nance for the labours of external criticism, who perhaps are even disposed to like them, who yet are—experience has shown it—totally incapable of performing them. There would be nothing perplex- ing in this if these persons were intellectually feeble ; this incapacity would then be but one manifestation of their general weakness; nor yet if they had gone through no technical apprenticeship. But we are concerned with men of education and intelligence, sometimes of exceptional ability, who do not labour under the above disadvantages. These are the people of whom we hear: “He works badly, he has the genius of inaccuracy.” Their catalogues, their edi- tions, their regesta, their monographs swarm with imperfections, and never inspire confidence; try as 124 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS they may, they never attain, I do not say abso- lute accuracy, but any decent degree of accuracy. They are subject to “chronic imaccuracy,” a disease of which the English historian Froude is a typical and celebrated case. Froude was a gifted writer, but destined never to advance any statement that was not disfigured by error; it has been said of him that he was constitutionally inaccurate. For example, he had visited the city of Adelaide in Australia: “We saw,” says he, “below us, in a basin with a river winding through it, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, none of whom has ever known or will ever know one moment’s anxiety as to the recurring regularity of his three meals a day.” Thus Froude, now for the facts: Adelaide is built on an eminence ; no river runs through it; when Froude visited it the population did not exceed 75,000, and it was suffer- ing from a famine at the time. And more of the same kind.’ Froude was perfectly aware of the utility of criticism, and he was even one of the first in England to base the study of history on that of original documents, as well unpublished as published ; but his mental conformation rendered him altogether unfit for the emendation of texts; indeed, he mur- dered them, unintentionally, whenever he touched them. Just as Daltonism (an affection of the organs of sight which prevents a man from distinguishing correctly between red and green signals) incapacitates for employment on a railway, so chronic inaccuracy, or “ Froude’s Disease” (a malady not very difficult to diagnose) ought to be regarded as incompatible with the professional practice of critical scholarship. 1 See H. A. L. Fisher in the Fortnightly Review, Dec. 1894, p. 815. 125 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS Froude’s Disease does not appear to have ever been studied by the psychologists, nor, indeed, is it to be considered as a separate pathological entity. Every one makes mistakes “out of carelessness,” “through inadvertence,’ and in many other ways. What is abnormal is to make many mistakes, to be always making them, in spite of the most persever- ing efforts to be exact. Probably this phenomenon is connected with weakness of the attention and excessive activity of the involuntary (or subcon- scious) imagination which the will of the patient, lacking strength and stability, is unable sufficiently to control, The involuntary imagination intrudes upon intellectual operations only to vitiate them ; its part is to fill up the gaps of memory by conjecture, to magnify and attenuate realities, and to confuse them with the products of pure invention. Most children distort everything by inexactitude of this kind, and it is only after a hard struggle that they ever attain to a scrupulous accuracy—that is, learn to master their imagination. Many men remain children, in this respect, the whole of their lives. But, let the psychological causes of Froude’s Disease be what they may, another point claims our attention. The man of the sanest and best-balanced mind is liable to bungle the simplest kinds of critical work if he does not allow them the necessary time. In these matters precipitancy is the source of in- numerable errors. It is rightly said that patience is the cardinal virtue of the scholar. Do not work too fast, act as if there were always something to be gained by waiting, leave work undone rather than spoil it: these are maxims easy enough to pro- 126 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS nounce, but not to be followed in practice by any but persons of calm temperament. There are ner- vous, excitable persons, who are always in a hurry to get to the end, always seeking variety in their occupations, and always anxious to dazzle and astonish: these may possibly find honourable em- ployment in other careers; but if they embrace erudition, they are doomed to pile up a mass of provisional work, which is likely to do more harm than good, and is sure in the long run to cause them many a vexation. The true scholar is cool, reserved, circumspect. In the midst of the turmoil of life, which flows past him like a torrent, he never hurries. Why should he hurry? The important thing is, that the work he does should be solid, definitive, imperishable. Better “spend weeks polishing a masterpiece of a score of pages” in order to con- vince two or three among the scholars of Europe that a particular charter is spurious, or take ten years to construct the best possible text of a cor- rupt document, than give to the press in the same interval volumes of moderately accurate anecdota which future scholars will some day have to put through the mill again from beginning to end. Whatever special branch of critical scholarship a man may choose, he ought to be gifted with prudence, an exceptionally powerful attention and will, and, moreover, to counbine a speculative turn of mind with complete disinterestedness and little taste for action ; for he must make up his mind to work for distant and uncertain results, and, in nearly every case, for the benefit of others. For textual criticism and the investigation of sources, it is, moreover, very useful 127 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS to have the puzzle-solving instinct—that is, a nimble, ingenious mind, fertile in hypotheses, prompt to seize and even to guess the relations of things. For tasks of description and compilation (the preparation of inventories and catalogues, corpus and regesta-making) it is absolutely necessary to possess the collector’s instinct, together with an exceptional appetite for work, and the qualities of order, industry, and perse- verance.' These are the aptitudes required. The labours of external criticism are so distasteful to those who lack these aptitudes, and the results obtained are, in their case, so small in comparison with the time expended, that it is impossible for a man to make too sure of his vocation before entering upon a career of critical scholarship. It is pitiful to see those who, for want of a wise word spoken in due season, lose their way and vainly exhaust them- selves in such a career, especially when they have good reason for believing that they might have employed their talents to better advantage in other directions.” II. As critical and preparatory tasks are remark- ably well suited to the temperament of a very large ' Most of those who have a vocation for critical scholarship possess both the power of solving problems and the taste for collecting. It is, however, easy to divide them into two categories according as they show a marked preference for textual criticism and investigation of authorship on the one hand, or for the more absorbing and less intellectual labours of collection on the other. J. Havet, a past-master in the study of erudite problems, always declined to undertake a general collection of Merovingian royal charters, a work which his admirers expected from him. In this connection he readily admitted his “want of taste for feats of endurance” (Bibliotheque de l’eole des chartes, 1896, p. 222). ? It is common to hear the opposite of this maintained, namely, that the labours of critical scholarship (external criticism) have this 128 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS number of Germans, and as the activity of German erudition during the present century has been enor- mous, it is to Germany that we must go for the best cases of those mental deformations which are pro- duced, in the long run, by the habitual practice of external criticism. Hardly a year passes but complaints are heard, in and about the German universities, of the ill effects produced on scholars by the tasks of criticism. In 1890, Herr Philippi, as Rector of the University of Giessen, forcibly deplored the chasm which, as he said, is opening between preparatory criticism and general culture: textual criticism loses itself in insignificant minutiz ; scholars collate for the mere pleasure of collating; infinite precautions are em- ployed in the restoration of worthless documents ; it is thus evident that “ more importance is attached to the materials of study than to its intellectual results.” The Rector of Giessen sees in the diffuse style of German scholars and in the bitterness of their polemical writings an effect of the habit they have contracted of “excessive preoccupation with little things.”’ In the same year the same note 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. 1 A, Philippi, Hinige Bemerkungen tiber den philologischen Unter- richt, Giessen, 1890, 4to, Of. Revue Critique, 1892, i. p. 25. 129 I ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS was sounded, at the University of Bale, by Herr J. v. Pflugk-Harttung. “'The highest branches of historical science are despised,” says this author in his Geschichts- betrachtungen1: “all that is valued is microscopic observations and absolute accuracy in unimportant details. The criticism of texts and sources has become a branch of sport: the least breach of the rules of the game is considered unpardonable, while conformity to them is enough to assure the approval of connoisseurs, irrespectively of the intrinsic value of the results obtained. Scholars are mostly male- volent and discourteous towards each other; they make molehills and call them mountains; their vanity is as comic as that of the citizen of Frankfort who used complacently to observe, ‘ All that you can see through yonder archway is Frankfort territory.’”” We, for our part, are inclined to draw a distinction between three professional risks to which scholars are subject: dilettantism, hypercriticism, and loss of the power to work. To take the last first: the habit of critical analysis has a relaxing and paralysing action on certain intelligences. Men, of naturally timid dispositions, discover that whatever pains they take with their critical work, their editing or classifying of docu- ments, they are very apt to make slight mistakes, and these slight mistakes, as a result of their critical education, fill them with horror and dread. To discover blunders in their signed work when the time for correction is past, causes them acute suffer- ing. They reach at length a state of morbid anxiety 1 J. von Pflugk-Harttung, Geschichtsbetrachtungen, Gotha, 1890, 8vo ° Ibid., p. 21. 130 CriTIcAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS and scrupulosity which prevents them from doing anything at all, for fear of possible imperfections. The examen rigorosum to which they are continually subjecting themselves brings them to a standstill. They give the same measure to the productions of others, and in the end they see in historical works nothing but the authorities and the notes, the appa- ratus criticus, and in the apparatus criticus they see nothing but the faults in it which require correction. Hypercriticism—The excess of criticism, just as much as the crudest ignorance, leads to error. It consists in the application of critical canons to cases outside their jurisdiction. It is related to criticism as logic-chopping is to logic. There are persons who scent enigmas everywhere, even where there are none. They take perfectly clear texts and sub- tilise on them till they make them doubtful, under the pretext of freeing them from imaginary corrup- tions. They discover traces of forgery in authentic documents. A strange state of mind! By constantly guarding against the instinct of credulity they come to suspect everything.’ It is to be observed that in proportion as the criticism of texts and sources makes positive progress, the danger of hypercriticism increases. When all the sources of history have been properly criticised (for certain parts of ancient history this is no distant prospect), good sense will eall a halt. But scholars will refuse to halt; they will refine, as they do already on the best established texts, and those who refine will inevitably fall into hypercriticism. “The peculiarity of the study of history and its auxiliary philological sciences,” says 1 Cf. supra, p. 99. 131 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS Renan, “is that as soon as they have attained their relative perfection they begin to destroy themselves.”* Hypercriticism is the cause of this. Dilettantism.—Scholars by profession and voca- tion have a tendency to treat the external criti- cism of documents as a game of skill, difficult, but deriving an interest, much as chess does, from the very complication of its rules. Some of them are indifferent to the larger questions—to history itself, in fact. They criticise for the sake of criticism, and, in their view, the elegance of the method of investigation is much more important than the results, whatever they may be. These virtuosi are not concerned to connect their labours with some general idea—to criticise systematically, for example, all the documents relating to a question, in order to understand it; they criticise indiscriminately texts relating to all manner of subjects, on the one con- dition of being sufficiently corrupt. Armed with their critical skill, they range over the whole of the domain of history, and stop wherever a knotty problem invites their services; this problem solved, or at least discussed, they go elsewhere to look for others. They leave behind them no coherent work, but a heterogeneous collection of memoirs on every conceivable subject, which resembles, as Carlyle says, a curiosity shop or an archipelago of small islands. Dilettanti defend their dilettantism by sufficiently plausible arguments. To begin with, say they, everything is important; in history there is no document which has not its value: “ No scientific ’ Renan, L’ Avenir de la science, p. xiv. 132 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS work is barren, no truth is without its use for science . . .; in history there is no such thing as a trivial subject;” consequently, “it is not the nature of the subject which makes work valuable, but the method employed.”* The important thing in history is not “the ideas one accumulates; it is the mental gymnastics, the intellectual training—in short, the scientific spirit.” Even supposing that there are degrees of importance among the data of history, no one has a right to maintain a prior that a document is “useless.” What, pray, is the criterion of utility in these matters? How many documents are there not which, after being long despised, have been suddenly placed in the fore- ground by a change of standpoint or by new dis- coveries? “All exclusion is rash; there is no research which it is possible to brand beforehand as necessarily sterile. That which has no value in itself may become valuable as a necessary means.” Perhaps a day may come when, science being in a sense complete, indifferent documents and facts may be safely thrown overboard; but we are not at present in a position to distinguish the superfluous from the necessary, and in all probability the line of demarcation will never be easy to trace. This justifies the most special researches and the most futile in all appearance. And, if it come to the worst, what does it matter if there is a certain amount of work wasted? “It is a law in science, as in all human effort,” and indeed in all the opera- tions of nature, “to work in broad outlines, with a wide margin of what is superfluous.” 1 Revue historique, 1xiii. (1897), p. 320. 133 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS We shall not undertake to refute these argu- ments to the full extent in which this is possible. Besides, Renan, who has put the case for both sides of the question with equal vigour, definitively closed the debate in the following words: “It may be said that some researches are useless in the sense of taking up time which would have been better spent on more serious questions. . . . Although it is not necessary for an artisan to have a complete know- ledge of the work he is employed to execute, it is still to be desired that those who devote themselves to special labours should have some notion of the more general considerations which alone give value to their researches. If all the industrious workers to whom modern science owes its progress had had a philosophical comprehension of what they were doing, how much precious time would have been saved! ... It is deeply to be regretted that there should be such an immense waste of human effort, merely for want of guidance, and a clear conscious- ness of the end to be pursued.” * Dilettantism is incompatible with a certain eleva- tion of mind, and with a certain degree of “moral perfection,” but not with technical proficiency. Some of the most accomplished critics merely make a trade of their skill, and have never reflected on the ends to which their art is a means. It would, however, be wrong to infer that science itself has nothing to fear from dilettantism. The dilettanti 1 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.). 134 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS of criticism who work as fancy or curiosity bids them, who are attracted to problems not by their intrinsic importance, but by their difficulty, do not supply historians (those whose work it is to combine materials and use them for the main purposes of history) with the materials of which the latter have the most pressing need, but with others which might have waited. If the activity of specialists in external criticism were exclusively directed to questions whose solution is important, and if it were regulated and guided from above, it would be more fruitful. The idea of providing against the dangers of dilettantism by a rational “organisation of labour” is already ancient. Fifty years ago it was common to hear people talking of “supervision,” of “ con- centrating scattered forces;” dreams were rife of “vast workshops” organised on the model of those of modern industry, in which the preparatory labours of critical scholarship were to be performed on a great scale, in the interests of science. In nearly all countries, in fact, governments (through the medium of historical committees and commissions), academies, and learned societies have endeavoured in our day, much as monastic congregations did of old, to group professed scholars for the purposes of vast collective enterprises, and to co-ordinate their efforts. But this banding of specialists in external criticism for the service and under the supervi- sion of competent men presents great mechanical difficulties. The problem of the “organisation of scientific labour ” is still the order of the day.’ 1 One of us (M. Langlois) sioposes to give elsewhere a detailed account of all that has been done in the last three hundred years, 135 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS III. Scholars are often censured for pride and excessive harshness in the judgments which they pass on the labours of their colleagues; and these faults, as we have seen, are often attributed to their excessive “preoccupation with little things,” espe- cially by persons whose attempts have been severely judged. In reality there do exist modest and kindly scholars: it is a question of character; pro- fessional “ preoccupation with little things” is not enough to change natural disposition in this respect. “Ce bon monsieur Du Cange,” as the Benedictines said, was modest to excess. “Nothing more is required,” says he, in speaking of his labours, “but eyes and fingers in order to do as much and more ;” he never blamed any one, on principle. “ If I study it is for the pleasure of studying, and not to give pain to any one else, any more than to myself.”? It is, however, true that most scholars have no com- punction in exposing each other’s mistakes, and that their austere zeal sometimes finds expression in harsh and overbearing language. Barring the harshness they are quite right. Like physicians, chemists, and other members of learned and scien- tific professions, they have a keen appreciation of the value of scientific truth, and it is for this reason that they make a point of calling offenders 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 His- torical Association for 1891,” pp. 38-61. lL. Feugére, Ltude sur la vie et les ouvrages de Du Cange, pp. 55; 58. 136 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS to account. They are thus enabled to bar the door against the tribe of incapables and charlatans who once infested their profession. Among the youths who propose to devote them- selves to the study of history there are some in whom the commercial spirit and vulgar ambition are stronger than the love of science. These are apt to say to themselves: “ Historical work, if it is to be done according to the rules of method, requires an infinite amount of labour and caution. But do we not see historical writings whose authors have more or less seriously violated the rules? Are these authors thought any the less of on this account? Is it always the most conscientious writer who enjoys the highest consideration ? Cannot tact supply the place of knowledge?” If tact really could supply the place of knowledge, then, as it is easier to do bad work than good, and as the important thing with these people is success, they might be tempted to conclude that it does not matter how badly they work as long as they succeed. Why should not things go in these matters as they do in life, where it is not necessarily the best men that get on best ? Well, it is due to the pitiless severity of the critics that calculations of this kind would be as disastrous as they are despicable. Towards the end of the Second Empire there was in France no enlightened public opinion on the sub- ject of historical work. Bad books of historical erudition were published with impunity, and some- times even procured undeserved rewards for their authors. It was then that the founders of the Revue Critique @histotre et de littérature undertook to combat 137 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS a state of things which they rightly deemed demo- ralising. With this object they administered public chastisement to those scholars who showed lack of conscience or method, in a manner calculated to disgust them with erudition for ever. They per- formed sundry notable executions, not for the pleasure of it, but with the firm resolve to establish a censor- ship and a wholesome dread of justice, in the domain of historical study. Bad workers henceforth received no quarter, and though the Revue did not exert any great influence on the public at large, its police- operations covered a wide enough radius to impress most of those concerned with the necessity of sincerity and respect for method. During the last twenty- five years the impulse thus given has spread beyond all expectation. It is now a inatter of great difficulty to impose on the world of scholars, in matters connected with their studies, or at least to keep up the deception for any length of time. In the case of the historical sciences, as well as the sciences proper, it is now too late to found a new error or to discredit an old truth. It may be a few months, possibly a few years, before a bungled experiment in chemistry or a scamped edition is recognised as such; but inexact results, though temporarily accepted under reserve, are always sooner or later, and generally very soon, discovered, denounced, and eliminated. The theory of the operations of external criticism is now so well estab- lished, the number of specialists thoroughly versed in them is now so great in every country, that, with rare exceptions, descriptive catalogues of docu- ments, editions, reyesta, monographs, are scrutinised, 138 CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS dissected, and judged as soon as they appear. It is well to be warned. It will for the future be the height of imprudence to risk publishing a work of erudition without having first done everything pos- sible to make it unassailable; otherwise it will im- mediately, or after brief delay, be attacked and demolished. Not knowing this, certain well-meaning persons still show themselves, from time to time, simple enough to enter the lists of critical scholar- ship insufficiently prepared; they are filled with a desire to be useful, and are apparently convinced that here, as in politics and elsewhere, it is possible to work by extemporised and approximate methods without any “special knowledge.” They are sorry afterwards. The knowing ones do not take the risk ; the tasks of critical scholarship have no seductions for them, for they are aware that the labour is great and the glory moderate, and that the field is en- grossed by clever specialists not too well disposed towards intruders. They see plainly there is no room for them here. The blunt uncompromising honesty of the scholars thus delivers them from un- desirable company of a kind which the “ historians ” proper have still occasionally to put up with. Bad workers, in fact, on the hunt for a public less closely critical than the scholars, are very ready to take refuge in historical exposition. The rules of method are here less obvious, or, rather, not so well known. While the criticism of texts and sources has been placed on a scientific basis, historical syn- thesis is still performed haphazard. Mental con- fusion, ignorance, negligence — faults which stand out so clearly in works of critical scholarship—may 139 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS in historical works be disguised up to a certain point by literary artifices, and the public at large, which is not well educated in this respect, is not shocked.’ In short, there is still, in this department, a cer- tain chance of impunity. This chance, however, is diminishing, and a day will come, before so very long, when the superficial writers who make incorrect syn- theses will be treated with as little consideration as is now received by those who show themselves unscrupulous or unskilful in the technique of pre- paratory criticism. The works of the most cele- brated historians of the nineteenth century, those who died but yesterday, Augustin Thierry, Ranke, Fustel de Coulanges, Taine, and others, are already battered and riddled with criticism. The faults of their methods have already been seen, defined, and condemned. Those who are insensible to other considerations ought to be moved to honesty in historical work by the reflection that the time is now past, or nearly so, when it was possible to do bad work without having to suffer for it. 1 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. 140 SECTION II—INTERNAL CRITICISM CHAPTER VI INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM (HERMENEUTIC) I. WHEN a zoologist describes the form and situation of a muscle, when a physiologist gives the curve of a movement, we are able to accept their results without reserve, because we know by what method, by what instruments, by what system of notation they have obtained them.’ But when Tacitus says of the Germans, Arva per annos mutant, we do not know beforehand whether he took the right method to inform himself, nor even in what sense he used the words arva and mutant ; to ascertain this a pre- liminary operation is required.” This operation is internal criticism. The object of criticism is to discover what in a document may be accepted as true. Now the docu- ment is only the final result of a long series of operations, on the details of which the author gives 1 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. 2 Cf. supra, book ii. chap. i. p. 67. 141 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS us no information. He had to observe or collect facts, to frame sentences, to write down words; and these operations, which are perfectly distinct one from another, may not all have been performed with the same accuracy. It is therefore necessary to analyse the product of the author’s labour in order to distinguish which operations have been incorrectly performed, and reject their results. Analysis is thus necessary to criticism; all criticism begins with analysis. In order to be logically complete, the analysis ought to reconstruct al] the operations which the author must have performed, and to examine them one by one, to see whether each has been performed correctly. It would be necessary to pass in review all the successive acts by which the document was produced, from the moment when the author ob- served the fact which is its subject. up to the move- ments of his hand by which he traced the letters of the document; or, rather, it would be necessary to proceed in the opposite direction, step by step, from the movements of the hand back to the observation. This method would be so long and so tedious that no one would ever have the time or the patience to apply it. Internal criticism is not, like external criticism, an instrument used for the mere pleasure of using it;’ it yields no immediate satisfaction, because it does not definitively solve any problem. It is only applied because it is necessary, and its use is re- stricted to a bare minimum. The most exacting historian is satisfied with an abridged method which 1 Cf. supra, p. 122. 142 INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM concentrates all the operations into two groups: (1) the analysis of the contents of the document, and the positive interpretative criticism which is neces- sary for ascertaining what the author meant; (2) the analysis of the conditions under which the document was produced, and its negative criticism, necessary for the verification of the author’s state- ments. This twofold division of the labour of criticism is, moreover, only employed by a select few. The natural tendency, even of historians who work methodically, is to read the text with the object of extracting information directly from it, without any thought of first ascertaining what exactly was in the author’s mind.’ This procedure is excusable at most in the case of nineteenth-century documents, written by men whose language and mode of thought are familiar to us, and then only when there is not more than one possible inter- pretation. It becomes dangerous as soon as the author’s habits of language or thought begin to differ from those of the historian who reads him, or when the meaning of the text is not obvious and indisputable. Whoever, in reading a text, is not exclusively occupied with the effort to under- stand it, is sure to read impressions of his own into it; he is struck by phrases or words in the document which correspond to his own ideas, or agree with his own a priori notion of the facts ; unconsciously he detaches these phrases or words, 1 Taine appears to have proceeded thus in vol. ii., Za 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. 143 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS and forms out of them an imaginary text which he puts in the place of the real text of the author.’ 1 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 understand- ing 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 sen- tence 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 « text all that is in it; not to intro- duce 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. 144 INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM Il. Here, as always in history, method consists in repressing the first impulse. It is necessary to be penetrated by the principle, sufficiently obvious but often forgotten, that a document only contains the ideas of the man who wrote it, and to make it a rule to begin by understanding the text by itself, before asking what can be extracted froin it for the purposes of history. We thus arrive at this general rule of method: the study of every docu- ment should begin with an analysis of its contents, made with the sole aim of determining the real meaning of the author. This analysis is a preliminary operation, distinct and independent. Experience here, as in the tasks of critical scholarship,’ has decided in favour of the system of slips. Each slip will contain the analysis of a document, of a separate part of a document, or of an episode in a narrative; the analysis ought to indicate not only the general sense of the text, but also, as far as possible, the object and views of the author. It will be well to reproduce verbally any expressions which may seem characteristic of the author's thought. Sometimes it will be enough to have analysed the text mentally: it is not always necessary to put down in black and white the whole contents of a document; in such cases we simply enter the points of which we intend to make use. But against the ever-present danger of substituting one’s personal impressions for the text there is only one real safeguard; it should be made an invariable rule never on any account to make an extract from a document, or a partial analysis of it, without 1 Cf. supra, ps 103. 145 K ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS having first made a comprehensive analysis’ of it mentally, if not on paper. To analyse a document is to discern and isolate all the ideas expressed by the author. Analysis thus reduces to interpretative criticism. Interpretation passes through two stages ; the first is concerned with the literal, the second with the real meaning. Ill. The determination of the literal meaning of a document is a linguistic operation; accordingly, Philology (in the narrow sense) has been reckoned among the auxiliary sciences of history. To under- stand a text it is first necessary to know the lan- guage. But a general knowledge of the language is not enough. In order to interpret Gregory of Tours, it is not enough to know Latin in a general way; it is necessary to add a special study of the particular kind of Latin written by Gregory of Tours. The natural tendency is to attribute the same meaning to the same word wherever it occurs. We instinctively treat a language as if it were a fixed system of signs. Fixity, indeed, is a characteristic of the signs which have been expressly invented for scientific use, such as algebraical notation or the nomenclature of chemistry. Here every expression has a single precise meaning, which is absolute and invariable ; it expresses an accurately analysed and defined idea, only one such idea, and that always the same in whatever context the expression may occur, 1 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 com- piler of regesta, there is no need to do it over again. 146 INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM and by whatever author it may be used. But ordi- nary language, in which documents are written, fluctuates: each word expresses a complex and ill- defined idea; its meanings are manifold, relative, and variable ; the same word may stand for several different things, and is used in different senses by the same author according to the context; lastly, the meaning of a word varies from author to author, and is modified in the course of time. Vel, which in classical Latin only has the meanings or and even, means and in certain epochs of the middle ages; suffragium, which is classical Latin for suffrage, takes in medieval Latin the sense of help. We have, then, to learn to resist the instinct which leads us to ex- plain all the expressions of a text by their classical or ordinary meanings. The grammatical interpre- tation, based on the general rules of the language, must be supplemented by an historical interpreta- tion founded on an examination of the particular case. The method consists in determining the special meaning of the words in the document; it rests on a few very simple principles. (1) Language changes by continuous evolution. Each epoch has a language of its own, which must be treated as a separate system of signs. In order to understand a document we must know the Jan- guage of the time—that is, the ineanings of words and forms of expression in use at the time when the text was written. The meaning of a word is to be deter- mined by bringing together the passages where it is employed : it will generally be found that in one or other of these the remainder of the sentence leaves 147 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS no doubt as to the meaning of the word in ques- tion.’ Information of this kind is given in historical dictionaries, such as the Thesaurus Lingue Latine ; or the glossaries of Du Cange. In these compila- tions the article devoted to each word is a collection of the passages in which the word occurs, accom- panied by indications of authorship which fix the epoch. When the author wrote in a dead language which he had learnt out of books—this is the case with the Latin texts of the earlier middle ages—we must be on our guard against words used in an arbitrary sense, or selected for the sake of elegance: for example, consul (count, earl), capite census (censitary), agellus (grand domain). (2) Linguistic usage may vary from one region to another; we have, then, to know the language of the country where the document was written—that is, the peculiar meanings current in the country. (3) Each author has his own manner of writing ; we have, then, to study the language of the author, the peculiar senses in which he used words.” This purpose is served by lexicons to a single author, as Meusel’s Lexicon Cesarianum, in which are brought 1 Practical examples of this procedure will be found in Deloche, La Trustis ct Vantrustion royal (Paris, 1873, 8vo), and, above all, in Fustel de Coulanges. See especially the study of the words marca (Recherches sur quelques problémes d’histoire, pp. 322-56), mallus (ibid., 372-402), alleu (L’ Allew et le domaine rural, pp. 149-70), portio (ibid., Pp. 239-52). ? The theory and an example of this procedure will be found in Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problémes 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. 148 INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM together all the passages in which the author used each word. (4) An expression changes its meaning according to the passage in which it occurs; we must there- fore interpret each word and sentence not as if it stood isolated, but with an eye to the general sense of the context. This is the rule of context,’ a funda- mental rule of interpretation. Its meaning is that, before making use of a phrase taken from a text, we must have read the text in its entirety; it pro- hibits the stuffing of a modern work with quota- tions—that is, shreds of phrases torn from passages without regard to the special sense given to them by the context.” These rules, if rigorously applied, would con- stitute an exact method of interpretation which would hardly leave any chance of error, but would require an enormous expenditure of time. What an immense amount of labour would be necessary if, in the case of each word, we had to determine by a special operation its meaning in the language of 1 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 1). ? 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’Allew ct 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. Glas- son attributed to it. We may also compare the reply: Glasson, Les Communausx et le domaine rural a l’époque franque, Paris, 1890. 149 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS the time, of the country, of the author, and in the context! Yet this is the labour demanded by a well-made translation: in the case of some ancient works of great literary value it has been submitted to; for the mass of historical documents we content ourselves, in practice, with an abridged method. All words are not equally subject to variations of meaning; most of them keep a fairly uniform meaning in all authors and in all periods. We may therefore be satisfied to study specially those expressions which, from their nature, are liable to take different meanings: first, ready-made expres- sions which, being fixed, do not follow the evolution of the words of which they are composed ; secondly, and chiefly, words denoting things which are in their nature subject to evolution; classes of men (miles, colonus, servus); institutions (conventus, justitia, judex),; usages (alleu, bénéfice, élection); feelings, common objects. In the case of all words of such classes it would be imprudent to assume a fixed meaning ; it is an absolutely necessary precaution to ascertain what is the sense in which they are used in the text to be interpreted. “These studies of words,” said Fustel de Coulanges, “have a great importance in historical science. A badly interpreted term may be the source of serious error.”* And, in fact, simply by a methodical application of interpretative criti- cism to a hundred words or so, he succeeded in revolutionising the study of the Merovingian epoch. 1 All that is original in Fustel de Coulanges rests on his inter- pretative 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. 150 INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM IV. When we have analysed the document and determined the literal meaning of its phrases, we cannot even yet be sure that we have reached the real thoughts of the author. It is possible that he may have used some expressions in an oblique sense ; there are several kinds of cases where this occurs: allegory and symbolism, jests and hoaxes, allusion and implication, even the ordinary figures of speech, metaphor, hyperbole, litotes.' In all these cases it is necessary to pierce through the literal meaning to the real meaning, which the author has purposely disguised under an inexact form. Logically the problem is very embarrassing: there is no fixed external criterion by which we can make sure of detecting an oblique sense; in the case of the hoax, which in the present century has become a branch of literature, it is an essential part of the author’s plan to leave no indication which would betray the jest. In practice we may be morally certain that an author is not using an oblique sense wherever his prime object is to be understood; we are therefore not likely to meet with difficulties of this kind in official documents, in charters, and in historical narratives. In all these cases the general form of the document permits us to assume that it is written in the literal sense of the words. On the other hand, we must be prepared for 1A parallel difficulty occurs in the interpretation of illustra- tive monuments; the representations are not always to be taken literally. In the Behistun monument Darius tramples the van- quished chiefs under foot: thisisa metaphor. Medizval 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. 151 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS oblique senses when the author had other interests than that of being understood, or when he wrote for a public which could understand his allusions and read between the lines, or when his readers, in virtue of a religious or literary initiation, might be expected to understand his symbolisms and figures of speech. This is the case with religious texts, private letters, and all those literary works which form so large a part of the documents on antiquity. Thus the art of recognising and deter- mining hidden meanings in texts has always occu- pied a large space in the theory of hermeneutic? (which is Greek for interpretative criticism), and in the exegesis of the sacred texts and of classical authors. The different modes of introducing an oblique sense behind the literal sense are too varied, and depend too much on special circumstances, for it to be possible to reduce the art of detecting them to definite rules. Only one general principle can be laid down, and that is, that when the literal sense is absurd, incoherent, or obscure, or in con- tradiction with the ideas of the author or the facts known to him, then we ought to presume an oblique sense. In order to determine this sense, the procedure is the same as for studying the language of an author: we compare the passages in which the expressions occur in which we suspect an oblique sense, and look to see whether there is not one } A. Boeckh, in the Lneyclopedie und Methodologie der philolo- gischen Wissenschaften, second edition (1886), has given a theory of hermeneutic to which Bernheim has been content to refer. Lea INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM where the meaning may be guessed from the con- text. A celebrated instance of this procedure is the discovery of the allegorical meaning of the Beast in the Apocalypse. But as there is no certain method of solving these problems, we never have a right to say we have discovered all the hidden meanings or seized all the allusions contained in a text; and even when we think we have found the sense, we shall do well to draw no inferences from a necessarily conjectural interpretation. On the other hand, it is necessary to guard against the temptation to look for allegorical meanings every- where, as the neo-Platonists did in Plato’s works and the Swedenborgians in the Bible. This attack of hyper-hermeneutic is now over, but we are not yet safe from the analogous tendency to look for allusions everywhere. Investigations of this kind are always conjectural, and are better calculated to flatter the vanity of the interpreter than to furnish results of which history can make use. V When we have at length reached the real sense of the text, the operation of positive analysis is concluded. Its result is to make us acquainted with the author’s conceptions, the images he had in his mind, the general notions in terms of which he represented the world to himself. This informa- tion belongs to a very important branch of know- ledge, out of which is constituted a whole group of historical sciences:’ the history of the illustrative arts and of literature, the history of science, the 1 The method of extracting information on external facts from a writer’s conceptions forms part of the theory of constructive reasoning. See book iii. es ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS history of philosophical and moral doctrine,mythology and the history of dogmas (wrongly called religious beliefs, because here we are studying official doctrines without inquiring whether they are believed), the history of law, the history of official institutions (so far as we do not inquire how they were applied in practice), the assemblage of popular legends, tradi- tions, opinions, conceptions (inexactly called beliefs) which are comprised under the name of folk-lore. All these studies need only the external criticism which investigates authorship and origin and inter- pretative criticism; they require one degree less elaboration than the history of objective facts, and accordingly they have been earlier established on a methodical basis. 154 CHAPTER VII THE NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM OF THE GOOD FAITH AND ACCURACY OF AUTHORS I. ANALYsIs and positive interpretative criticism only penetrate as far as the inward workings of the mind of the author of a document, and only help us to know his ideas. They give no direct information about external facts. Even when the author was able to observe them, his text only indicates how he wished to represent them, not how he really saw them, still less how they really happened. What an author expresses is not always what he believed, for he may have lied; what he believed is not neces- sarily what happened, for he may have been mistaken. These propositions are obvious. And yet a first and natural impulse leads us to accept as true every statement contained in a document, which is equi- valent to assuming that no author ever lied or was deceived; and this spontaneous credulity seems to possess a high degree of vitality, for it persists in spite of the innumerable instances of error and men- dacity which daily experience brings before us. Reflection has been forced on historians in the course of their work by the circumstance of their finding documents which contradicted each other ; in such cases they have been obliged to doubt, and, 15S ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS after examination, to admit the existence of error or mendacity ; thus negative criticism has appeared as a practical necessity for the purpose of eliminating statements which are obviously false or erroneous. But the mstinct of confidence is so indestructible that it has hitherto prevented even those profession- ally concerned from systematising the internal criti- cism of statements in the same way as the external criticism which deals with the origin of documents has been systematised. Historians, in their works, and even theoretical writers on historical method,’ have been satisfied with common notions and vague formule in striking contrast with the precise ter- minology of the critical investigation of sources. They are content to examine whether the author was roughly contemporary with the events, whether he was an ocular witness, whether he was sincere and well-informed, whether he knew the truth and desired to tell it, or even—sumining up the whole question in a single formula—whether he was trustworthy. This superficial criticism is certainly better than no criticism at all, and has sufficed to give those who have applied it the consciousness of incontest- able superiority. But it is only a halfway-house between common credulity and scientific method. Here, as in every science, the starting-point must be inethodical doubt.” All that has not been proved must be temporarily regarded as doubtful; no pro- 1 For example, Pére de Smedt, Tardif, Droysen, and even Bernheim. * 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. 156 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM position is to be afttirmed unless reasons can be adduced in favour of its truth. Applied to the statements contained in documents, methodical doubt becomes methodical distrust. The historian ought to distrust a priori every statement of an author, for he cannot be sure that it is not mendacious or mistaken. At the best it affords a presumption. For the historian to adopt it and affirm it afresh on his own account implies that he regards it as a scientific truth. ‘To take this decisive step is what he has no right to do without good reasons. But the human mind is so constituted that this step is often taken unconsciously (cf. book 11. chap. i). Against this dangerous ten- dency criticism has only one means of defence. We must not postpone doubt till it is forced upon us by conflicting statements in documents; we must begin by doubting. We must never forget the interval which separates a statement made by any author whatsoever from a scientifically established truth, so that we may continually keep in mind the responsibility which we assume when we reproduce a statement. Even after we have accepted the principle and resolved to apply this unnatural distrust in practice, we tend instinctively to free ourselves from it as soon as possible. The natural impulse is to perform the criticism of the whole of an author, or at least, of the whole of a document, in the lump; to divide authorities into two categories, the sheep on the right, the goats on the left; on the one side trust- worthy authors and good documents, on the other suspected authors and bad documents. Having thus 157 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS exhausted our powers of distrust, we proceed to reproduce without discussion all the statements con- tained in the “good document.” We consent to distrust suspected authors such as Suidas or Aimo, but we affirm as established truth everything that has been said by Thucydides or Gregory of Tours.’ We apply to authors that judicial procedure which divides witnesses into admissible and inadmissible : having once accepted a witness, we feel ourselves bound to admit all his testimony; we dare not doubt any of his statements without a special reason. In- stinctively we take sides with the author on whom we have bestowed our approval, and we go so far as to say, as in the law courts, that the burden of proof rests with those who reject valid testimony.” 1 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” (Monarchic 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. 2 Quite recently, E. Meyer, one of the most critically expert his- torians of antiquity, has in his work, Die Entstchung des Judenthums (Halle, 1896, 8vo), revived this strange juridical argument in favour of the narrative of Nehemiah. M. Bouché-Leclercgq, 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 contra- dicted 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 158 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM The confusion is still further increased by the use of the word authentic, borrowed from judicial lan- guage. It has reference to the origin only, not to the contents; to say that a document is authentic is merely to say that its origin is certain, not that its contents are free from error. But authenticity inspires a degree of respect which disposes us to accept the contents without discussion. To doubt the statements of an authentic document would seem presumptuous, or at least we think ourselves bound to wait for overwhelming proof before we impeach the testimony of the author. II. These natural instincts must be methodically resisted. A document (still more a literary work) is not all of a piece; it is composed of a great number of independent statements, any one of which may be intentionally or unintentionally false, while the others are bond fide and accurate, or conversely, since each statement is the outcome of a mental operation which may have been incorrectly per- formed, while others were performed correctly. It is not, therefore, enough to examine a document as a whole; each of the statements in it must be examined separately ; criticism is impossible without analysis. Thus internal criticism conducts us to two general rules. (1) A scientific truth is not established by testz- mony. In order to affirm a proposition we must 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. 149 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS have special reasons for believing it true. It may happen in certain cases that an author’s statement is a sufficient reason for belief; but we cannot know that beforehand. The rule, then, will be to examine each separate statement in order to make sure whether it is of a nature to constitute a sufficient reason for belief. (2) The criticism of a document is not to be per- formed en blor. The rule will be to analyse the document into its elements, in order to isolate the different statements of which it is composed and to exainine each of them separately. Sometimes a single sentence contains several statements; they must be separated and criticised one by one. Ina sale, for example, we distinguish the date, the place, the vendor, the purchaser, the object, the price, and each one of the conditions. In practice, criticism and analysis are performed simultaneously, and, except in the case of texts in a difficult language, may proceed pari passw with interpretative analysis and criticism. As soon as we understand a phrase we analyse it and criticise each of its elements. It thus appears that logically criticism comprises an enormous nimnber of operations. In describing them, with all the details necessary for the under- standing of their mechanisin and the reasons for their employment, we are likely to give the impres- sion of a procedure too slow to be practicable. Such an impression is inevitably produced by every verbal description of a complicated process. Compare the time occupied in describing a movement in fenc- ing with that required to execute it; compare the 160 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM tedium of the grammar and dictionary with the rapidity of reading. Like every practical art, criti- cism consists in the habit of performing certain acts. In the period of apprenticeship, before the habit is acquired, we are obliged to think of each act separ- ately before performing it, and to analyse the move- ments; accordingly we perform them all slowly and with difficulty ; but the habit once acquired, the acts, which have now become instinctive and unconscious, are performed with ease and rapidity. The reader must therefore not be uneasy about the slowness of the critical processes; he will see later on how they are abridged in practice. III. The problem of criticism may be stated as follows. Given a statement made by a man of whose mental operations we have no experience, and the value of the statement depending exclusively on the manner in which these operations were per- formed ; to ascertain whether these operations were performed correctly. The mere statement of the problem shows that we cannot hope for any direct or definitive solution of it; we lack the essential datum, namely, the manner in which the author performed the mental operations concerned. Criti- cism therefore does not advance beyond indirect and provisional solutions, and does no more than furnish data which require a final elaboration. A natural instinct leads us to judge of the value of statements by their form. We think we can tell at a glance whether an author is sincere or a narra- tive accurate. We seek for what is called “the accent of sincerity,” or “an impression of truth.” This impression is almost irresistible, but it is none 161 I ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS the less an illusion. There is no external criterion either of good faith or of accuracy. “The accent of sincerity ” is the appearance of conviction ; an orator, an actor, an habitual liar will put more of it into his lies than an undecided man into his statement of what he believes to be the truth. Energy of affiirma- tion does not always mean strength of conviction, but sometimes only cleverness or effrontery.' Simi- larly, abundance and precision of detail, though they produce a vivid impression on unexperienced readers, do not guarantee the accuracy of the facts;* they give us no information about anything but the imagination of the author when he is sincere, or his impudence when he is the reverse. We are apt to say of a circumstantial narrative: “Things of this kind are not invented.” They are not invented, but they are very easy to transfer from one person, country, or time to another. There is thus no ex- ternal characteristic of a document which can relieve us of the obligation to criticise it. The value of an author’s statement depends solely on the conditions under which he performed certain mental operations. Criticism has no other resource 1 The “Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz” furnish a conclusive in- stance: the anecdote of the ghosts met by Retz and Turenne. A. Feillet, who edited Retz in the Collection des Grands Ecrivains de la France, has shown (vol. i. p. 192) that this story, so vividly nar- rated, is false from beginning to end. 2 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 Griitli 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.) 162 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM than the examination of these conditions. But it is not a case of reconstructing all of them ; it is enough to answer a single question: did the author perform these operations correctly or not? The question may be approached on two sides. (1) The critical investigation of authorship has often taught us the general conditions under which the author operated. It is probable that some of these influenced each one of the operations. We ought therefore to begin by studying the informa- tion we possess about the author and the com- position of the document, taking particular pains to look in the habits, sentiments, and personal situation of the author, or in the circumstances in which he composed, for all the reasons which could have existed for incorrectness on the one hand, or exceptional accuracy on the other. In order to perceive these reasons it is necessary to be on the lookout for them beforehand. The only method, therefore, is to draw up a general set of questions having reference to the possible causes of in- accuracy. We shall then apply it to the general conditions under which the document was com- posed, in order to discover those causes which may have rendered the author’s mental operations in- correct and vitiated the results. But all that we shall thus obtain—even in the exceptionally favour- able cases in which the conditions of origin are well known—will be general indications, which will be insufficient for the purposes of criticism, for criticism must always deal with each separate statement. (2) The criticism of particular statements is con- fined to the use of a single method, which, by a 163 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS curious paradox, is the study of the wniversal conditions under which documents are composed. The information which is not furnished by the general study of the author may be sought for by a consideration of the necessary processes of the human mind; for, since these are universal, they must appear in each particular case. We know what are the cases in which men in general are inclined to alter or distort facts). What we have to do in the case of each statement is to examine whether it was made under such circumstances as to lead us to suspect, from our knowledge of the habits of normal humanity, that the operations implied in the making of it were incorrectly per- formed. The practical procedure will be to draw up a set of questions relating to the habitual causes of inaccuracy. The whole of criticism thus reduces to the draw- ing up and answering of two sets of questions: one for the purpose of bringing before our minds those general conditions affecting the composition of the document, from which we may deduce general motives for distrust or confidence; the other for the purpose of realising the special conditions of each statement, from which special motives may be drawn for distrust or confidence. These two sets of questions ought to be drawn up before- hand in such a form as may enable us to examine methodically both the document in general and each statement in particular; and as they are the same for all documents, it is useful to formulate them once for all. IV. The critical process comprises two series of 164 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM questions, which correspond to the two series of operations by which the document was produced. All that interpretative criticism tells us is what the author meant; it remains to determine (1) what he really believed, for he may not have been sincere ; (2) what he really knew, for he may have been mistaken. We may therefore distinguish a critical examination of the author's good faith, by which we seek to determine whether the author of the docu- ment lied or not, and a eritical examination of his accuracy, by which we seek to determine whether he was or was not mistaken. In practice we rarely need to know what an author believed, unless we are making a special study of his character. We have no direct interest in the author; he is merely the medium through which we reach the external facts he reports. The aim of criticism is to determine whether the author has reported the facts correctly. If he has given inexact information, it is indifferent whether he did so intentionally or not; to draw a distinction would complicate matters unnecessarily. There is thus little occasion to make a separate examination of an author's good faith, and we may shorten our labours by including in a single set of questions all the causes which lead to misstatement. But for the sake of clearness it will be well to discuss the ques- tions to be asked in two separate series. The questions in the first series will help us to inquire whether we have any reason to distrust the sincerity of a statement. We ask whether the author was in any of those situations which normally incline a man to be insincere. We must ask what 165 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS these situations are, both as affecting the general com- position of a document, and as affecting each par- ticular statement. Experience supplies the answer. Every violation of truth, small or great, is due to a wish on the part of the author to produce a particular impression upon the reader. Our set of questions thus reduces to a list of the motives which may, in the general case, lead an author to violate truth. The following are the most important cases :— (1) The author seeks to gain a practical advan- tage for himself; he wishes to deceive the reader of the document, in order to persuade him to an action, or to dissuade him from it; he knowingly gives false information: we then say the author has an interest in deceiving. This is the case with most official documents. Even in documents which have not been composed for a practical purpose, every interested statement has a chance of being men- dacious. In order to determine which statements are to be suspected, we are to ask what can have been the general aim of the author in writing the document as a whole; and again, what can have been his particular purpose in making each of the separate statements which compose the document. But there are two natural tendencies to be resisted. The first is, to ask what interest the author could have fad in lying, meaning what interest should we have had in his place; we must ask instead what interest can he have thought he had in lying, and we must look for the answer in his tastes and ideals. The other tendency is to take sole account of the individual interest of the author; we ought, how- ever, to remember that the author may have given 166 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM false information in order to serve a collective in- terest. This is one of the difficulties of criticism. An author is a member at one and the same time of several different groups, a family, a province, a country, a religious denomination, a political party, a class in society, whose interests often conflict ; we have to discover the group in which he took most interest, and for which he worked. (2) The author was placed in a situation which compelled him to violate truth. This happens whenever he has to draw up a document in con- formity with rule or custom, while the actual cir- cumstances are in some point or other in conflict with rule or custom; he is then obliged to state that the conditions were normal, and thus make a false declaration in respect of all the irregularities. In nearly every report of proceedings there is some slight deviation from truth as to the day, the hour, the place, the number or the names of those present. Most of us have observed, if not taken part in, some of these petty fictions. But we are too apt to forget them when we come to criticise documents relating to the past. The authentic char- acter of the documents contributes to the illusion; we instinctively make authentic a synonym of sincere. The rigid rules which govern the composition of every authentic document seem to guarantee sin- cerity; they are, on the contrary, an incentive to falsify, not the main facts, but the accessory circum- stances. From the fact of a person having signed a report we may infer that he agreed to it, but not that he was actually present at the time when the report mentions him as having been present. 167 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS (3) The author viewed with sympathy or anti- pathy a group of men (nation, party, denomination, province, city, family), or an assemblage of doctrines or institutions (religion, school of philosophy, poli- tical theory), and was led to distort facts in such a manner as to represent his friends in a favourable and his opponents in an unfavourable light. These are instances of a general bias which affects all the statements of an author, and they are so obvious that the ancients perceived them and gave them names (studiwm and odiwm); from ancient times it has been a literary commonplace for historians to protest that they have steered clear of both. (4) The author was induced by private or collec- tive vanity to violate truth for the purpose of exalting himself or his group. He made such statements as he thought likely to give the reader the impression that he and his possessed qualities deserving of esteem. We have therefore to inquire whether a given statement may not be influenced by vanity. But we must take care not to represent the author’s vanity to ourselves as being exactly like our own vanity or that of our contemporaries. Different people are vain for different reasons; we must inquire what was our author's particular vanity; he may have lied in order to attribute to himself or his friends actions which we should con- sider dishonourable. Charles IX. falsely boasted of having organised the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. There is, however, a kind of vanity which is universal, and that is, the desire to appear to be a person of exalted rank playing an important part in affairs. We must, therefore, always distrust a statement 168 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM which attributes to the author or his group a high place in the world (5) The author desired to please the public, or at least to avoid shocking it. He has expressed senti- ments and ideas in harmony with the morality or the fashion of his public; he has distorted facts in order to adapt them to the passions and prejudices of his time, even those which he did not share. The purest types of this kind of falsehood are found in ceremonial forms, official formuls, declarations prescribed by etiquette, set speeches, polite phrases. The statements which come under this head are so open to suspicion that we are unable to derive from them any information about the facts stated. We are all aware of this so far as relates to the contem- porary formule of which we see instances every day, but we often forget it in the criticism of documents, especially those belonging to an age from which few documents have come down to us. No one would think of looking for the real sentiments of a man in the assurances of respect with which he ends his letters. But people believed for a long time in the humility of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries of the middle ages, because, on the day of their election, they began by refusing an office of which they declared themselves un- worthy, till at last comparison showed that this refusal was a mere conventional form. And there are still scholars who, like the Benedictines of the eighteenth century, look in the chancery-formule ! Striking examples of falsehoods due to vanity are to be found in abundance in the Economies royales of Sully and the Mémoires of Retz. 169 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS of a prince for information as to his piety or his liberality.' In order to recognise these conventional declara- tions there are two lines of general study to be pursued: the one is directed to the author, and seeks to discover what was the public he addressed, for in one and the same country there are usually several different publics, each of which has its own code of morals or propriety; the other is directed towards the public, and seeks to determine its morals or its manners. (6) The author endeavoured to please the public by literary artifices. He distorted facts in order to embellish them according to his own zesthetic notions. We have therefore to look for the ideal of the author or of his time, in order to be on our guard against passages distorted to suit that ideal. But without special study we may calculate on the common kinds of literary distortion. Rhetorical distortion consists in attributing to persons noble attitudes, acts, sentiments, and, above all, words: this is a natural tendency in young boys who are beginning to practise the art of composition, and in writers still in a semi-barbarous stage; it is the common defect of the medieval chroniclers.” Epic " Fustel de Coulanges himself went to the formule of the inscrip- tions 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 formule. ? Suger, in his life of Louis VI., is a model of this type. 170 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM distortion embellishes the narrative by adding pic- turesque details, speeches delivered by the persons concerned, numbers, sometimes names of persons; it is dangerous, because the precision of the details produces an illusive appearance of truth. Dramatic distortion consists in grouping the facts in such a way as to enhance the dramatic effect by concen- trating facts, which in reality were separate, upon a single moment, a single person, or a single group. Writing of this kind is what we call “truer than the truth.” It is the most dangerous form of distortion, the form employed by artistic historians, by Hero- dotus, Tacitus, the Italians of the Renaissance. Lyrical distortion exaggerates the intensity of the sentiments and the emotions of the author and his friends: we should remember this when we attempt to reconstruct “the psychology” of a person. Literary distortion does not much affect archives (though instances of it are found in most charters of the eleventh century); but it profoundly modifies all literary texts, including the narratives of historians. Now, the natural tendency is to trust writers more readily when they have talent, and to admit state- ments with less difficulty when they are presented in good literary form. Criticism must counteract this tendency by the application of the paradoxical rule, that the more interesting a statement is from the artistic point of view,? the more it ought to be suspected. We must distrust every narrative which 1 The Chronicon Helveticum of Tschudi is a striking instance. 2 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. 171 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS is very picturesque or very dramatic, in which the personages assume noble attitudes or manifest great intensity of feeling. This first series of questions will yield the pro- visional result of enabling us to note the statements which have a chance of being mendacious. V. The second series of questions will be of use in determining whether there is any reason to dis- trust the accuracy of a statement. Was the author in one of those situations which cause a man to make mistakes? As in dealing with good faith, we must look for these conditions both as affecting the document as a whole, and as affecting each of the particular statements in it. The practice of the established sciences teaches us the conditions of an exact knowledge of facts. There is only one scientific procedure for gaining knowledge of a fact, namely, observation ; every state- ment, therefore, must rest, directly or indirectly, upon an observation, and this observation must have been made correctly. The set of questions by the aid of which we investigate the probabilities of error may be drawn up in the light of experience, which brings before us the most common cases of error. (1) The author was in a situation to observe the fact, and supposed he really had observed it; he was, however, prevented from doing so by some interior force of which he was unconscious, an hallucination, an illusion, or a mere prejudice. It would be useless, as well as impossible, to determine which of these agencies was at work; it is enough to ascertain whether the author had a tendency to 172 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM observe badly. It is scarcely possible in the case of a particular statement to recognise that it was the result of an hallucination or an illusion. At the most we may learn, either from information derived from other sources or by comparison, that an author had a general propensity to this kind of error. There is a better chance of recognising whether a statement was due to prejudice. In the life or the works of an author we may find the traces of his dominant prejudices. With reference to each of his particular statements, we ought to ask whether it is not the result of a preconceived idea of the author on a class of men or a kind of facts. This inquiry partly coincides with the search for motives of false- hood : interest, vanity, sympathy, and antipathy give rise to prejudices which alter the truth in the same manner as wilful falsehood. We therefore employ the questions already formulated for the purpose of testing good faith. But there is one to be added. In putting forward a statement has the author been led to distort it unconsciously by the circumstance that he was answering a question? This is the case of all statements obtained by interrogating witnesses. Even apart from the cases where the person interro- gated seeks to please the proposer of the question by giving an answer which he thinks will be agreeable to him, every question suggests its own answer, or at least its form, and this form is dictated before- hand by some one unacquainted with the facts. It is therefore necessary to apply a special criticism to every statement obtained by interrogation; we must ask what was the question put, and what were the 173 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS preconceptions to which it may have given rise in the mind of the person interrogated. (2) The author was badly situated for observing. The practice of the sciences teaches us what are the conditions for correct observation. The observer ought to be placed where he can see correctly, and should have no practical interest, no desire to obtain a particular result, no preconceived idea about the result. He ought to record the observation im- mediately, in a precise system of notation; he ought to give a precise indication of his method. These conditions, which are insisted on in the sciences of observation, are never completely fulfilled by the authors of documents. It would be useless, therefore, to ask whether there have been chances of inaccuracy; there always have been, and it is just this that distinguishes a document from an observation. It only remains to look for the obvious causes of error in the conditions of observation: to inquire whether the observer was in a place where he could not see or hear well, as would be the case, for example, with a subordinate who should presume to narrate the secret delibera- tions of a council of dignitaries; whether his atten- tion was greatly distracted by the necessity for action, as it would be on the field of battle, for example; whether he was inattentive because the facts had little interest for him; whether he lacked the special experience or general intelligence necessary for understanding the facts; whether he analysed his impressions badly, or confused different events. Above all, we must ask when he wrote down what he saw or heard. This is the most important point: 174 . NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM the only exact observation is the one which is re- corded immediately it is made; such is the constant procedure in the established sciences; an impression committed to writing later on is only a recollection, liable to be confused in the memory with other recollections. Memoirs written several years after the facts, often at the very end of the author's career, have introduced innumerable errors into his- tory. It must be made a rule to treat memoirs with special distrust, as second-hand documents, in spite of their appearance of being contemporary testimony. (3) The author states facts which he could have observed, but to which he did not take the trouble to attend. From idleness or negligence he reported details which he has merely inferred, or even imagined at random, and which turn out to be false. This is a common source of error, though it does not readily occur to one, and is to be suspected wherever the author was obliged to procure information in which he took little interest, in order to fill up a blank form. Of this kind are answers to questions put by an authority (it is enough to observe how most official inquiries are conducted in our own day), and detailed accounts of ceremonies or public functions. There is too strong a temptation to write the account from the programme, or in agreement with the usual order of the proceedings. How many accounts of meetings of all kinds have been published by reporters who were not present at them! Similar efforts of imagina- tion are suspected—sometimes, it is thought, clearly recognised—in the writings of medieval chroniclers.’ 1 For example, the account of the election of Otto I. in the Gesta Ottonis of Wittekind, 175 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS The rule, then, will be to distrust all narratives conforming too closely to a set formula. (4) The fact stated is of such a nature that it could not have been learnt by observation alone. It may be a hidden fact—a private secret, for ex- ample. It may be a fact relating to a collectivity, and applying to an extensive area or a long period of time; for example, the common act of a whole army, a custom common to a whole people or a whole age, a statistical total obtained by the addition of numerous items. It may be a comprehensive judg- ment on the character of a man, a group, a custom, an event. Here we have to do with propositions derived from observations by synthesis or inference : the author can only have arrived at them indirectly ; he began with data furnished by observation, and elaborated them by the logical processes of abstraction, generalisation, reasoning, calculation. Two questions arise. Does it appear that the author had sufficient data to work upon? Was he accurate, or the reverse, in his use of the data he had ? On the probable inaccuracies of an author, general indications may be obtained from an examination of his writings. This examination will show us how he worked: whether he was capable of abstraction, reasoning, generalisation, and what were the mis- takes he was in the habit of making. In order to determine the value of the data, we must criticise each statement separately; we must imagine the conditions under which the author observed, and ask ourselves whether he was able to procure the necessary data for his statement. This is an in- dispensable precaution in dealing with large totals 176 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM in statistics and descriptions of popular usages; for it is possible that the author may have obtained the total he gives by a process of conjectural valuation (this is the ordinary practice in stating the number of combatants or killed in a battle), or by combining subsidiary totals, all of which were not accurate; it is possible that he may have extended to a whole people, a whole country, a whole period, that which was true only of a small group known to him.’ VI. These two first series of questions bearing on the good faith and the accuracy of the statements in the document are based on the supposition that the author has observed the fact himself. This is a feature common to all reports of observations in the established sciences. But in history there is so great a dearth of direct observations, of even moderate value, that we are obliged to turn to account docu- ments which every other science would reject. Take any narrative at random, even if it be the work of a contemporary, it will be found that the facts observed by the author are never more than a part of the whole number. In nearly every docu- ment the majority of the statements do not come from the author at first hand, but are reproductions of the statements of others. Even where a general relates a battle in which he commanded, he does not communicate his own observations, but those of ’ 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. 2 Tt 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. LI M ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS his officers; his narrative is in a large measure a “second-hand document.” } In order to criticise a second-hand statement it is no longer enough to examine the conditions under which the author of the document worked: this author is, in such a case, a mere agent of trans- mission; the true author is the person who supplied him the information. The critic, therefore, must change his ground, and ask whether the informant observed and reported correctly; and if he too had the information from some one else (the commonest case), the chase must be pursued from one inter- mediary to another, till the person is found who first launched the statement on its career, and with regard to him the question must be asked: Was he an accurate observer ? Logically such a search is not inconceivable ; ancient collections of Arab traditions give lists of their successive guarantors. But, in practice, lack of documents nearly always prevents us from getting as far as the observer of a fact; the observation remains anonymous. A general question then pre- sents itself: How are we to criticise an anonymous statement? It is not only “anonymous documents” 1 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 state- ment. 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. 178 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM with which we are concerned, where the composition as a whole is the work of an unknown author; even when the author is known, this question arises with respect to each statement of his drawn from an unknown source. Criticism works by reproducing the conditions under which an author wrote, and has hardly any- thing to take hold of where a statement is anony- mous. The only method left is to examine the general conditions of the document. We may in- quire whether there is any feature common to all the statements of a document indicating that they all proceed from persons having the same prejudices or passions: in this case the tradition followed by the author is biassed; the tradition followed by Herodotus has both an Athenian bias and a Delphic bias. In respect of each fact derived from such a tradition we must ask whether it has not been distorted by the interest, the vanity, or the prejudices of the group concerned. We may even ignore the author, and ask whether there was any- thing likely to make for or against correct observa- tion, common to all the men of the time and country in which the observation must have been made: for example, what means of information, and what prejudices, had the Greeks of Herodotus’ time with respect to the Scythians. The most useful of all these general inquiries has reference to that mode of transmitting anonymous statements which is called tradition. No second- hand statement has any value except in so far as it reproduces its source ; every addition is an alteration, and ought to be eliminated. Similarly, all the inter- 179 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS mediary sources are valueless except as copies of the original statement founded directly on observation. The critic needs to know whether this transmission from hand to hand has preserved or distorted the original statement; above all, whether the tradition embodied in the document was written or oral. Writing fixes a statement, and ensures its being transmitted faithfully; when a statement is com- municated orally, the impression in the mind of the hearer is apt to be modified by confusion with other impressions; in passing from one intermediary to another the statement is modified at every step,* and as these modifications arise from different causes, there is no possibility of measuring or cor- recting them. Oral tradition is by its nature a process of con- tinual alteration; hence in the established sciences only written transmission is accepted. Historians have no avowable motive for proceeding differently, at any rate when it is a case of establishing a parti- cular fact. We must therefore search documents for statements derived from oral tradition in order that we may suspect them. We rarely have direct information as to statements being thus derived ; authors who borrow from oral tradition are not anxious to proclaiin the fact.” There is thus only 1 There is much less modification where the oral tradition assumes a regular or striking form, as is the case with verses, maxims, proverbs. 2 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 froma written document. That is what we find in Livy (see Nitzsch, Die rimische Annalistik, Leipzig, 1873, 8vo), andin Gregory of Tours (see Loebell, Gregor von Tours, Leipzig, 1868, Svo). 180 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM an indirect method, and that is to ascertain that written transmission was impossible ; we may then be sure that the fact reached the author only by oral tradition. We have therefore to ask the question: In this period and in this group of men was it custo- mary to commit to writing facts of this kind? If the answer is negative, the fact considered rests on oral tradition alone. The most striking form of oral tradition is legend. It arises among groups of men with whom the spoken word is the only means of transmission, in barbarous societies, or in classes of little culture, such as pea- sants or soldiers. In this case it is the whole group of facts which is transmitted orally and assumes the legendary form. There is a legendary period in the early history of every people: in Greece, at Rome, among the Germanic and Slavonic races, the most ancient memories of the people form a stratum of legend. In periods of civilisation popular legends continue to exist in reference to events which strike the imagination of the people.’ Legend is exclusively oral tradition. When a people has emerged from the legendary period and begun to commit its history to writing, oral tradition does not come to an end, but only applies to a narrower sphere; it is now restricted to 1 The events which strike the popular imagination and are trans- mitted 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 histo- rical 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. 181 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS facts which are not registered, whether because they are by their nature secret, or because no one takes the trouble to record them, such as private actions, words, the details of events. Thus arise anecdotes, which have been named “the legends of civilised society.” Like legends they have their origin in confused recollections, allusions, mistaken interpreta- tions, imaginings of all kinds which fasten upon particular persons and events. Legends and anecdotes are at bottom mere popular beliefs, arbitrarily attached to historical personages ; they belong to folk-lore, not to history.’ We must therefore guard against the temptation to treat legend as an alloy of accurate facts and errors out of which it is possible by analysis to extract grains of historical truth. A legend is a conglome- rate in which there may be some grains of truth, and which may even be capable of being analysed into its elements; but there is no means of dis- tinguishing the elements taken from reality from those which are the work of imagination. To use Niebuhr’s expression, a legend is “a mirage produced by an invisible object according to an unknown law of refraction.” The crudest analytical procedure consists in rejecting those details in the legendary narrative which appear impossible, miraculous, contradictory, or absurd, and retaining the rational residue as his- torical. This is how the Protestant rationalists of the eighteenth century treated biblical narratives, } 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. 182 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM One might as well amputate the marvellous part of a fairy tale, suppress Puss in Boots, and keep the Marquis of Carabas as an historical character. A more refined but no less dangerous method is to compare different legends in order to deduce their common historical basis. Grote! has shown, with reference to Greek tradition, that it is impossible to extract any trustworthy information from legend by any process whatever.” We must make up our minds to treat legend as a product of imagination ; we may look in it for a people’s conceptions, not for the external facts in that people’s history. The rule will be to reject every statement of legendary origin ; nor does this apply only to narratives in legendary form: a narrative which has an historical appear- ance, but is founded on the data of legend, the opening chapters of Thucydides for example, ought equally to be discarded. In the case of written transmission it remains to inquire whether the author reproduced his source without altering it. This inquiry forms part of the critical investigation of the sources,® so far as it can be pursued by a comparison of texts. But when the source has disappeared we are reduced to internal criticism. We ask, first of all, whether the author can have had exact information, otherwise his state- 1 «History of Greece,” vols. i. and ii. Compare Renan, Histoire du peuple d’Israél, vol. i. (Paris, 1887, 8vo), Introduction. 2 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. 3 See supra, pp. 93 3qq. ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS ment is valueless. We next put to ourselves the general question: Was the author in the habit of altering his sources, and in what manner? And in regard to each separate second-hand statement we ask whether it has the appearance of being an exact reproduction or an arrangement. We judge by the form: when we meet with a passage whose style is out of harmony with the main body of the com- position, we have before us a fragment of an earlier document; the more servile the reproduction the more valuable is the passage, for it can contain no exact information beyond what was already in the source, VII. In spite of all these investigations, criticism never succeeds in determining the parentage of all the statements to the extent of finding out who it was that observed, or even recorded, each fact. In most cases the inquiry ends in leaving the state- ment anonymous. We are thus confronted with a fact, observed we know not by whom nor how, recorded we know not when nor how. No other sciencé accepts facts which come in such a condition, without possibi- lity of verification, subject to incalculable chances of error. But history can turn them to account, because it does not, like the other sciences, need a supply of facts which are difficult to ascertain. The notion of a fact, when we come to examine it precisely, reduces to an affirmative judgment having reference to external reality. The operations by which we arrive at such a judgment are more or less difficult, and the risk of error is greater or smaller according to the nature of the realities 184 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM investigated and the degree of precision with which we wish to formulate them. Chemistry and biology need to discern facts of a delicate order, rapid move- ments, transient states, and to measure them in exact figures. History can work with facts of a rouch coarser kind, spread over a large extent of space or time, such as the existence of a custom, of a man, of a group, even of a people; and these facts may be roughly expressed in vague words conveying no idea of accurate measurement. With such easily observed facts as these to deal with, history can afford to be much less exacting with regard to the conditions of observation. The im- perfection of the means of information is compen- sated by a natural faculty of being satisfied with information which can easily be obtained. Documents supply little else besides ill-verified facts, subject to many risks of falsehood or error. But there are some facts in respect of which it is very difficult to lie or be mistaken. The last series of questions which the critic should ask is intended to distinguish, in the mass of alleged facts, those which by their nature are little subject to the risk of alteration, and which are therefore very probably correct. We know what, in general, are the classes of facts which enjoy this privilege; we are thus enabled to draw up a list of questions for general use, and in applying them to any particular case we ask whether the fact in question comes under any of the heads specified in advance. (1) The fact is of a nature to render falsehood improbable. A man lies in order to produce an impression, and has no motive to lie in a case 185 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS where he believes that the false impression would be of no use, or that the falsehood would be in- effectual. In order to determine whether the author was in such a situation there are several questions to be asked. (a) Is the fact stated manifestly prejudicial to the effect which the author wished to produce? Does it run counter to the interest, the vanity, the senti- ments, the literary tastes of the author and his group; or to the opinions which he made a point of not offending? In such a case there is a pro- bability of good faith. But in the application of this criterion there is danger; it has often been wrongly used, and in two ways. One of these is to take for a confession what was meant for a boast, as the declaration of Charles TX. that he was re- sponsible for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Or again, we trust without examination an Athenian who speaks ill of the Athenians, or a Protestant who accuses other Protestants. But it is quite possible the author’s notions of his interest or honour were very different from ours;! or he may have wished to calumniate fellow-citizens who did not belong to his own party, or co-religionists who did not belong to his own sect. This criterion must therefore be restricted to cases where we know exactly what effect he wished to produce, and in what group he was mainly interested. (b) Was the fact stated so obviously known to the public that the author, even if tempted to falsehood, would have been restrained by the certainty of being detected? This is the case with facts which are 1 Cf. supra, p. 166, 186 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM easy to verify, which are not remote in point of time or space, which apply to a wide area or a long period, especially if the public had any interest in verifying them. But the fear of detection is only an intermittent check, opposed by interest whenever the author has any motive for deceiving. It acts unequally on different minds—strongly on men of culture and self-control who understand their public, feebly in barbarous ages and on passionate men.’ This criterion, therefore, is to be restricted to cases where we know what idea the author had of his readers, and whether he was dispassionate enough to keep them in mind. (c) Was the fact stated indifferent to the author, so that he had no temptation to misrepresent it ? This is the case with facts of a general kind, usages, institutions, objects, persons, which the author men- tions incidentally. A narrative, even a false one, cannot be composed exclusively of falsehoods; the author must localise his facts, and needs to surround them with a framework of truth. The facts which form this framework had no interest for him; at that time every one knew them. But for us they are instructive, and we can depend on them, for the author had no intention of deceiving us. (2) The fact was of a kind to render error improbable. Numerous as the chances of error are, still there are facts so “big” it is hard to be mistaken about them. We have, then, to ask 1 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. 187 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS whether the alleged fact was easy to ascertain: (a) Did it cover a long period of time, so that it must have been frequently observed? Take, for example, the case of a monument, a man, a custom, an event which was in progress for a considerable time. (b) Did it cover a wide area, so that many people observed it ?—as, for example, a battle, a war, a custom common to a whole people. (c) Is it expressed in such general terms that superficial observation was enough to discover it?—as the mere existence of a man, a city, a people, a custom. Facts of this large and general kind make up the bulk of historical knowledge. (3) The fact was of such a nature that it would not have been stated unless it was true. A man does not declare that he has seen something con- trary to his expectations and habits of mind unless observation has compelled him to admit it. A fact which seems very improbable to the man who relates it has a good chance of being true. We have, then, to ask whether the fact stated was in contradiction with the author’s opinions, whether it is a phenomenon of a kind unknown to him, an action or a custom which seems unintelligible to him; whether it is a saying whose import transcends his intelligence, such as the sayings of Christ reported in the Gospels, or the answers made by Joan of Are to questions put to her in the course of her trial. But we must guard against judging of the author’s ideas by our own standards: when men who are accustomed to believe in the marvellous speak of monsters, of miracles, of wizards, there is nothing in these to contradict their expectations, and the criterion does not apply. 188 NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM VIII. We have at last reached the end of this description of the critical operations ; its length is due to the necessity of describing successively operations which are performed simultaneously. We will now consider how these methods are applied in practice. If the text be one whose interpretation is debat- able, the examination is divided into two stages: the first comprises the reading of the text with a view to the determination of the meaning, without at- tempting to draw any information from it ; the second comprises the critical study of the facts contained in the document. In the case of documents whose meaning is clear, we may begin the critical examina- tion on the first reading, reserving for separate study any individual passages of doubtful meaning. We begin by collecting the general information we possess about the document and the author, with the special purpose of discovering the conditions which may have influenced the production of the docu- ment—the epoch, the place, the purpose, the cir- cumstances of its composition; the author’s social status, country, party, sect, family, interests, passions, prejudices, linguistic habits, methods of work, means of information, culture, abilities, and mental defects ; the nature of the facts and the mode of their trans- mission. Information on all these points is supplied by the preparatory critical investigation of author- ship and sources. We now combine the different heads, mentally applying the set of general critical questions; this should be done at the outset, and the results impressed on the memory, for they will need to be present to the mind during the remainder of the operations. 189 ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS Thus prepared, we attack the document. As we read we mentally analyse it, destroying all the author’s combinations, discarding all his literary devices, in order to arrive at the facts, which we formulate in simple and precise language. We thus free ourselves from the deference imposed by artistic form, and from all submission to the author’s ideas —an emancipation without which criticism is im- possible. i-=The document thus analysed resolves into a long ‘series of the author’s conceptions and statements as to facts. With regard to each statement, we ask ourselves whether there is a probability of their being false or erroneous, or whether, on the other hand, there are exceptional chances in favour of good faith and accuracy, working through the list of critical ques- tions prepared for particular cases. This list of questions must be always present to the mind. At first it may seem cumbersome, perhaps pedantic ; but as it will be applied more than a hundred times in each page of the document, it will in the end be used unconsciously. As we read a text, all the reasons for distrust or confidence will occur to the mind simultaneously, combined into a single impression. Analysis and critical questioning will then have become a matter of instinct, and we shall have acquired for ever that methodically analytical, dis- trustful, not too respectful turn of mind which is often mystically called “the critical sense,” but which is nothing else than an unconscious habit of criticism. 190 CHAPTER VIII THE DETERMINATION OF PARTICULAR FACTS CriTIcaL analysis yields in the result a number of conceptions and statements, accompanied by com- ments on the probability of the facts stated being accurate. It remains to examine how we can deduce from these materials those particular his- torical facts which are to form the basis of scientific knowledge. Conceptions and statements are two different kinds of results, and must be treated by different methods. I. Every conception which is expressed in writing or by any illustrative representation is in itself a definite, unimpeachable fact. That which is ex- pressed must have first been present in the mind of some one—if not in that of the author, who may have reproduced a formula he did not understand, then in the mind of the man who originated the formula. The existence of a conception may be learnt from a single instance and proved from a single document. Analysis and interpretation are thus sufficient for the purpose of drawing up the complete list of those facts which form the basis of the history of the arts, the sciences, or of doctrines.’ 1 See above, p. 153. Similarly, the particular facts which com- pose the history of forms (paleography, linguistic science) are directly established by the analysis of the document. 1gI ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS 4% is the task of external criticism to localise these facts by determining the epoch, the country, the author of each conception. The duration, geo- graphical distribution, origin, and filiation of con- ceptions belong to historical synthesis. Internal criticism has nothing to do here; the fact is taken directly from the document. We may advance a step farther. In themselves conceptions are nothing but facts in psychology ; but imagination does not create its objects, it takes the elements of them from reality. Descriptions of imaginary facts are constructed out of the real facts which the author has observed in his experience. These elements of knowledge, the raw material of the imaginary description, may be sought for and isolated. In dealing with periods and with classes of facts for which documents are rare —antiquity, for example, and the usages of private life—the attempt has been made to lay under contribution works of literature, epic poems, novels, plays The method is legitimate, but only within the limits of certain restrictions which one is very apt to forget. (1) It does not apply to social facts of a psy- chological order, the moral or artistic standards of a society; the moral and esthetic conceptions in a document give at most the individual stan- dards of the author ; we have no right to conclude from these to the morals or the esthetic tastes of the age. We must at least wait till we have 1 Primitive Greece has been studied in the Homeric poems. Medizval private life has been reconstructed principally from the chansons de gestes. (See C. V. Langlois, Les Traditions sur lV’ histoire de la société francaise au moyen dye d’aprés les sources littéraires, in the Revue historique, March-April, 1897.) 192 THe DETERMINATION oF ParticuLaR Facts compared several different authors of the same period. (2) Descriptions even of physical facts and objects may be products of the author’s imagination. It is only the elements of them which we know to be certainly real; all that we can assert is the separate existence of the irreducible elements, form, material, colour, number. When the poet speaks of golden gates or silver bucklers, we cannot infer that golden gates and silver bucklers ever existed in reality; nothing is certain beyond the separate existence of gates, bucklers, gold, and silver. The analysis must therefore be carried to the point of distin- guishing those elements which the author must necessarily have taken from experience: objects, their purpose, ordinary actions. (3) The conception of an object or an action proves that it existed, but not that it was common ; the object or action may have been unique, or re- stricted to a very small circle; poets and novelists are fond of taking their models from an exceptional world. (4) The facts yielded by this method are not localised in space or time; the author may have taken them from a time or country not his own. All these restrictions may be summarised as fol- lows: before drawing any inference from a work of literature as to the state of the society in which the author lived, we should ask ourselves what would be the worth of a similar inference as to con- temporary manners drawn from a modern novel. With the facts yielded by conceptions we may join those indifferent facts of an obvious and elementary 193 N ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS character which the author has stated almost with- out thinking. Logically we have no right to call them certain, for we do sometimes meet with men who make mistakes about obvious and elementary facts, and others who lie even on indifferent matters. But such cases are so rare that there is not much danger in admitting as certain facts of this kind which are supported by a single document, and this is how we deal, in practice, with periods of which little is known. The institutions of the Gauls and Germans are described from the unique texts of Cesar and Tacitus. Facts so easy to discover are forced upon the authors of descriptions much as realities are forced upon poets. II. On the other hand, a statement in a document as to an objective fact is never enough to establish that fact. The chances of falsehood or error are so many, the conditions which gave rise to the statement are so little known, that we cannot be sure that none of these chances has taken effect. The critical examination provides no definitive solu- tion; it is indispensable if we are to avoid error, but it is insufficient to conduct us to truth. Criticism can prove no fact; it only yields proba- bilities. Its end and result is to decompose docu- ments into statements, each labelled with an estimate of its value—worthless statement, statement open to suspicion (strong or weak), statement probably (or, very probably) true, statement of unknown value, Of all these different kinds of results one only is definitive—the statement of an author who can have had no information on the fact he states is null and void ; 194 THE DETERMINATION OF PARTICULAR Facts it is to be rejected as we reject an apocryphal docu- ment. But criticism here merely destroys illusory sources of information ; it supplies nothing certain to take their place. The only sure results of criticism / are negative. All the positive results are subject to doubt; they reduce to propositions of the form: “There are chances for or against the truth of such and such a statement.” Chances only.