Introduction to the Study of History Part 2

Besides, it is not the "literary historian," the moralising and quill-driving "historians," as conceived by Daunou and his school, that we have had in view; we are here only concerned with those scholars and historians who intend to deal with doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ment. What use can we make of it if we cannot read it? Up to the time of Francois Champollion, Egyptian doc.u.ments, being written in hieroglyphics, were, without metaphor, a dead-letter. It will be readily admitted that in order to deal with ancient a.s.syrian history it is necessary to have learnt to decipher cuneiform inscriptions. Similarly, whoever desires to do original work from the sources, in ancient or mediaeval history, will, if he is prudent, learn to decipher inscriptions and ma.n.u.scripts. We thus see why Greek and Latin epigraphy and mediaeval palaeography--that is, the sum of the various kinds of knowledge required for the deciphering of ancient and mediaeval ma.n.u.scripts and inscriptions--are considered as "auxiliary sciences" to history, or rather, the historical study of antiquity and the middle ages. It is evident that mediaeval Latin palaeography forms part of the necessary outfit of the mediaevalist, just as the palaeography 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 appropriate palaeography. On the other hand, it is not very rare for a man to undertake the study of local doc.u.ments of the middle ages without having learnt to date their forms approximately, and to decipher their abbreviations correctly. The resemblance which most mediaeval 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 palaeographical 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 palaeographic initiation which they have missed would at least have saved them much groping in the dark, long hours of labour, and many a disappointment.

Suppose a doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ments 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 mediaeval French and Latin think they know them because they understand cla.s.sical Latin and modern French, and they attempt the interpretation of texts whose literal meaning escapes them, or appears to be obscure when in reality perfectly plain. Innumerable 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 doc.u.ments to be employed are not to be had in a modern language, and in a form in which they can be easily understood.

Suppose a doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment two things are required--reasoning 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 cla.s.s. He would be obliged to do what the first scholars did--ascertain for himself, by the comparison of a great number of similar doc.u.ments, what features distinguish the admittedly genuine doc.u.ments from the others, before allowing himself to p.r.o.nounce judgment in any special instance. Will not his task be enormously simplified if there is in existence a body of doctrine, a treasury of acc.u.mulated observations, a system of results obtained by workers who have already made, repeated, and checked the minute comparisons he would otherwise have been obliged to make for himself? This body of doctrines, observations, and results, calculated to a.s.sist the criticism of diplomas and charters, does exist; it is called Diplomatic. We shall, therefore, a.s.sign to Diplomatic, along with Epigraphy, Palaeography, and Philology, the character of a subject auxiliary to historical research.

Epigraphy and Palaeography, Philology, and Diplomatic 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments of the same cla.s.s: the sum of these results forms a department to itself, which has a name--the History of Literature.[47] The critical treatment of ill.u.s.trative doc.u.ments, such as the productions of architecture, sculpture, and painting, objects of all kinds (arms, dress, utensils, coins, medals, armorial bearings, and so forth), presupposes a thorough acquaintance with the rules and observations which const.i.tute Archaeology properly so 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 satisfactory.

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 acc.u.mulations of facts, acquired by criticism, which are of a nature to facilitate the application of critical methods to doc.u.ments. .h.i.therto untouched. On the other hand, Philology is an organised science, and has its own laws.

In the second place, among the branches of knowledge auxiliary--properly speaking, not to history, but to historical research--we must distinguish between 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 information which he may be content to possess only in potentiality. A mediaevalist should _know_ how to read and understand mediaeval texts; he would gain no advantage by acc.u.mulating in his memory the ma.s.s 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 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.[48] 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 palaeography is quite useless for the purpose of investigating the history of the French Revolution, and a knowledge of Greek is equally useless for the treatment of a question in mediaeval French history.[49] 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 discovery, the understanding, and the criticism of doc.u.ments. 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 mediaeval history.

This reform of the historian's technical apprenticeship which consists in subst.i.tuting the acquisition of positive knowledge, truly auxiliary to historical research, for the study of the "great models," literary 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 ill.u.s.trious exceptions, the best of them never rose to be more than distinguished men of letters, incapable 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 mediaeval 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) inst.i.tutions of higher education; excellent workers were there trained who contributed many new results, while elsewhere people were idly discussing problems.[50] To-day it is still at the ecole des chartes that the mediaevalist has the opportunity of going through his technical apprenticeship in the best and most complete manner, thanks to the combined and progressive three-years courses of Romance philology, palaeography, archaeology, historiography, and mediaeval 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, palaeography, diplomatic, and so forth, have multiplied 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 instruction on these subjects; since the establishment of professorships "manuals" have appeared[51] which 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 inst.i.tution 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.[52]

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 doc.u.ments, 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 bibliography, palaeography, 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 doc.u.ments of a given cla.s.s 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 doc.u.ments which they may meet with of the same cla.s.s or period; nothing can replace the "special erudition" which is the specialist's reward for hard work.[53] And secondly, specialists themselves make mistakes: palaeographers 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 unedited texts which had already been published, and have neglected doc.u.ments 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 not prevent us from maintaining our hypothesis. Only let it be understood that in practice we do not postpone work upon doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments supposing one has successfully pa.s.sed through the preliminary apprenticeship.

BOOK II

a.n.a.lYTICAL OPERATIONS

CHAPTER I

GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE

We have already stated that history is studied from doc.u.ments, and that doc.u.ments are the traces of past events.[54] 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 progress; and indirectly, by the study of the traces which they leave behind them. Take an earthquake, 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"[55] is this, 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,[56] is not a science of observation 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 historian, 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 doc.u.ment is his starting-point, the fact his goal.[57] Between this starting-point and this goal he has to pa.s.s 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. The "historical," or indirect, method is thus obviously 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[58] how, in spite of these disadvantages, it is possible for this method to lead to scientific knowledge.

The detailed a.n.a.lysis of the reasonings which lead from the inspection of doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments. 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 appearances and the causes which produced them; and this relation, governed by physical laws, is known to us.[59] 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 conventional symbol of that impression.

Written doc.u.ments, then, are not, as material doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments which furnish the historian with starting-points for his reasonings are nothing else than traces of psychological operations.

This granted, in order to conclude from a written doc.u.ment to the fact which was its remote cause--that is, in order to ascertain the relation which connects the doc.u.ment with the fact--it is necessary to reproduce the whole series of intermediate causes which have given rise to the doc.u.ment. It is necessary to revive in imagination the whole of that series of acts performed by the author of the doc.u.ment which begins with the fact observed by him and ends with the ma.n.u.script (or printed volume), in order to arrive at the original event. Such is the aim and such the process of critical a.n.a.lysis.[60]

First of all we observe the doc.u.ment. 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, bearing upon the writing, the language, the form, the source, const.i.tutes the special domain of EXTERNAL CRITICISM, or critical scholarship. Next comes INTERNAL CRITICISM: it endeavours, by the help of a.n.a.logies mostly borrowed from general psychology, to reproduce the mental states through which the author of the doc.u.ment pa.s.sed. Knowing what the author of the doc.u.ment has said, we ask (1) What did he mean? (2) Did he believe what he said? (3) Was he justified in believing whatever he did believe? This last step brings the doc.u.ment to a point where it resembles the data of the objective sciences: it becomes an observation; it only remains to treat it by the methods of the objective sciences. Every doc.u.ment is valuable 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 doc.u.ments which he is obliged to use represent precise observations. 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.[61] All the more necessary are the precautions to be taken in utilising these doc.u.ments, the only materials of historical science. It is evidently most important to eliminate 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 pa.s.s 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.[62] Up to our own day there have been enlightened men who, in employing doc.u.ments for the purpose of writing history, have neglected the most elementary precautions, and unconsciously a.s.sumed false 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 a.s.sent to affirmations, and to reproduce them, without even clearly distinguishing them from the results of his own observation. In every-day life do we not accept indiscriminately, without any kind of verification, hearsay reports, anonymous and unguaranteed statements, "doc.u.ments" 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 doc.u.ment on the history of yesterday; otherwise, if there is no outrageous improbability 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 accompanied 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 is well to examine one's conscience and a.n.a.lyse the causes of that _ignavia_ which must be fought against till it is replaced by a critical att.i.tude of mind.[63] It is also very salutary to familiarise oneself with the principles of historical method, and to a.n.a.lyse 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 a.n.a.lyses and fallacious reasonings.... Historians would advance fewer affirmations without proof if they had to a.n.a.lyse 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."[64]

_SECTION I.--EXTERNAL CRITICISM_

CHAPTER II

TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Let us suppose that an author of our own day has written a book: he sends his ma.n.u.script 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 doc.u.ment, 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 attention 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 ma.n.u.script of which cannot be sent to the printer. This was the case with the _Memoires d'outre-tombe_ of 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script 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.[65]

Turning now to ancient doc.u.ments, 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 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.[66]

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 doc.u.ments, 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 doc.u.ment we must find out whether its text is "sound"--that is, in as close agreement as possible with the original ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sages falsified in transmission, and which collapsed as soon as the true readings were discovered or restored. Printers' errors and mistakes in copying are not always innocuous or merely diverting; they are sometimes insidious and capable of misleading the reader.[67]

One would naturally suppose that historians of 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, doc.u.ments were commonly edited from the first copies, good or bad, that came to hand, combined 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 cla.s.sics (Pausanias, for example) has still to be constructed.

Not all historical doc.u.ments 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 acc.u.mulated 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.[68] For this reason we shall here be content to give a general view of its essential principles, and to indicate its results.

I. We will suppose a doc.u.ment 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_) The most simple case is that in which we possess the original, the author's autograph itself. There is then nothing to do but to reproduce the text of it with absolute fidelity.[69] 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.