Introduction to the Study of History Part 9

BOOK III

_SYNTHETIC OPERATIONS_

CHAPTER I

GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION

The criticism of doc.u.ments only yields isolated facts. In order to organise them into a body of science it is necessary to perform a series of synthetic operations. The study of these processes of historical construction forms the second half of Methodology.

The mode of construction cannot be regulated by the ideal plan of the science we desire to construct; it depends on the materials we have at our disposal. It would be chimerical to formulate a scheme which the materials would not allow us to carry out; it would be like proposing to construct an Eiffel tower with building-stones. The fundamental defect of philosophies of history is that they forget this practical necessity.

I. Let us begin by considering the materials of history. What is their form and their nature? How do they differ from the materials of other sciences?

Historical facts are derived from the critical a.n.a.lysis of the doc.u.ments. They issue from this process in the form to which a.n.a.lysis has reduced them, chopped small into individual statements; for a single sentence contains several statements: we have often accepted some and rejected others; each of these statements represents a fact.

Historical facts have the common characteristic of having been taken from doc.u.ments; but they differ greatly among themselves.

(1) They represent phenomena of very different nature. From the same doc.u.ment we derive facts bearing on handwriting, language, style, doctrines, customs, events. The Mesha inscription furnishes facts bearing on Moabite handwriting and language, the belief in the G.o.d Chemosh, the practices belonging to his cult, the war between the Moabites and Israel. Thus the facts reach us pell-mell, without distinction of nature. This mixture of heterogeneous facts is one of the characteristics which differentiate history from the other sciences. The sciences of direct observation choose the facts to be studied, and systematically limit themselves to the observation of facts of a single species. The doc.u.mentary sciences receive the facts, already observed, at the hands of authors of doc.u.ments, who supply them in disorder. For the purpose of remedying this disorder it is necessary to sort the facts and group them by species. But, for the purpose of sorting them, it is necessary to know precisely what it is that const.i.tutes a _species_ of historical facts; in order to group them we need a principle of cla.s.sification applicable to them. But on these two questions of capital importance historians have not as yet succeeded in formulating precise rules.

(2) Historical facts present themselves in very different degrees of generality, from the highly general facts which apply to a whole people and which lasted for centuries (inst.i.tutions, customs, beliefs), down to the most transient actions of a single man (a word, a movement). Here again history differs from the sciences of direct observation, which regularly start from particular facts and labour methodically to condense them into general facts. In order to form groups the facts must be reduced to a common degree of generality, which makes it necessary to inquire to what degree of generality we can and ought to reduce the different species of facts. And this is what historians do not agree about among themselves.

(3) Historical facts are localised; each belongs to a given time and a given country. If we suppress the time and place to which they belong, they lose their historical character; they now contribute only to the knowledge of universal humanity, as is the case with facts of folk-lore whose origin is unknown. This necessity of localisation is also foreign to the general sciences; it is confined to the descriptive sciences, which deal with the geographical distribution and with the evolution of phenomena. It obliges the historian to study separately the facts belonging to different countries and different epochs.

(4) The facts which have been extracted from doc.u.ments by critical a.n.a.lysis present themselves accompanied by a critical estimate of their probability.[178] In every case where we have not reached complete certainty, whenever the fact is merely probable--still more when it is open to suspicion--criticism supplies the fact to the historian accompanied by a label which he has no right to remove, and which prevents the fact from being definitively admitted into the science.

Even those facts which, after comparison with others, end by being established, are subject to temporary exclusion, like the clinical cases which acc.u.mulate in the medical reviews before they are considered sufficiently proved to be received as scientific facts.

Historical construction has thus to be performed with an incoherent ma.s.s of minute facts, with detail-knowledge reduced as it were to a powder.

It must utilise a heterogeneous medley of materials, relating to different subjects and places, differing in their degree of generality and certainty. No method of cla.s.sifying them is provided by the practice of historians; history, which began by being a form of literature, has remained the least methodical of the sciences.

II. In every science the next step after observing the facts is to formulate a series of questions according to some methodical system;[179] every science is composed of the answers to such a series of questions. In all the sciences of direct observation, even if the questions to be answered have not been put down in advance, the facts which are observed suggest questions, and require them to be formulated precisely. But historians have no discipline of this kind; many of them are accustomed to imitate artists, and do not even think of asking themselves what they are looking for. They take from their doc.u.ments those parts which strike them, often for purely personal reasons, and reproduce them, changing the language and adding any miscellaneous reflections which come into their minds.

If history is not to be lost in the confusion of its materials, it must be made a rule to proceed here, as in the other sciences, by way of question and answer.[180] But how are the questions to be chosen in a science so different from the others? This is the fundamental problem of method. The only way to solve it is to begin by determining the essential characteristic of historical facts by which they are differentiated from the facts of the other sciences.

The sciences of direct observation deal with _realities_, taken in their entirety. The science which borders most closely on history in respect of its subject-matter, descriptive zoology, proceeds by the examination of a real and complete animal. This animal is first observed, as a whole, by actual vision; it is then dissected into its parts; this dissection is _a.n.a.lysis_ in the original sense of the word ([Greek: ha.n.a.lhyein], to break up into parts). It is then possible to put the parts together again in such a way as to exhibit the structure of the whole; this is _real_ synthesis. It is possible to watch the _real_ movements which are the functions of the organs in such a way as to observe the mutual actions and reactions of the different parts of the organism. It is possible to compare _real_ wholes and see what are the parts in which they resemble each other, so as to be able to cla.s.sify them according to real points of resemblance. The science is a body of objective knowledge founded on _real_ a.n.a.lysis, synthesis, and comparison; actual sight of the things studied guides the scientific researcher and dictates the questions he is to ask himself.

In history there is nothing like this. One is apt to say that history is the "vision" of past events, and that it proceeds by "a.n.a.lysis": these are two metaphors, dangerous if we suffer ourselves to be misled by them.[181] In history we see nothing real except paper with writing on it--and sometimes monuments or the products of art or industry. The historian has nothing before him which he can a.n.a.lyse physically, nothing which he can destroy and reconstruct. "Historical a.n.a.lysis" is no more real than is the vision of historical facts; it is an abstract process, a purely intellectual operation. The a.n.a.lysis of a doc.u.ment consists in a _mental_ search for the items of information it contains, with the object of criticising them one by one. The a.n.a.lysis of a fact consists in the process of distinguishing _mentally_ between its different details (the various episodes of an event, the characteristics of an inst.i.tution), with the object of paying special attention to each detail in turn; that is what is called examining the different "aspects"

of a fact,--another metaphor. The human mind is vague by nature, and spontaneously revives only vague collective impressions; to impart clearness to these it is necessary to ask what individual impressions go to form a given collective impression, in order that precision may be attained by a successive consideration of them. This is an indispensable operation but we must not exaggerate its scope. It is not an objective method which yields a knowledge of real objects; it is only a subjective method which aims at detecting those abstract elements which compose our impressions.[182] From the very nature of its materials history is necessarily a subjective science. It would be illegitimate to extend to this intellectual a.n.a.lysis of subjective impressions the rules which govern the real a.n.a.lysis of real objects.

History, then, must guard against the temptation to imitate the method of the biological sciences. Historical facts are so different from the facts of the other sciences that their study requires a different method.

III. Doc.u.ments, the sole source of historical knowledge, give information on three categories of facts:

(1) _Living beings and material objects._ Doc.u.ments make us acquainted with the existence of human beings, physical conditions, products of art and industry. In all these cases physical facts have been brought before the author by physical perception. But we have before us nothing but intellectual phenomena, facts seen "through the author's imagination," or, to speak accurately, mental images representative of the author's impressions--images which we form on the _a.n.a.logy_ of the images which were in his mind. The Temple at Jerusalem was a material object which men saw, but we cannot see it now; all we can now do is to form a mental image of it, a.n.a.logous to that which existed in the minds of those who saw and described it.

(2) _Actions of men._ Doc.u.ments relate the actions (and words) of men of former times. Here, too, are physical facts which were known to the authors by sight and hearing, but which are now for us no more than the author's recollections, subjective images which are reproduced in our minds. When Caesar was stabbed the dagger-thrusts were seen, the words of the murderers were heard; we have nothing but mental images. Actions and words all have this characteristic, that each was the action or the word of an individual; the imagination can only represent to itself _individual_ acts, copied from those which are brought before us by direct physical observation. As these are the actions of men living in a society, most of them are performed simultaneously by several individuals, or are directed to some common end. These are collective acts; but, in the imagination as in direct observation, they always reduce to a sum of individual actions. The "social fact," as recognised by certain sociologists, is a philosophical construction, not an historical fact.

(3) Motives and conceptions. Human actions do not contain their own cause within themselves; they have _motives_. This vague word denotes both the stimulus which occasions the performance of an action, and the _representation_ of the action which is in the mind of a man at the moment when he performs it. We can imagine motives only as existing in a man's mind, and in the form of vague interior representations, a.n.a.logous to those which we have of our own inward states; we can express them only by words, generally metaphorical. Here we have _psychic_ facts, generally called feelings and ideas. Doc.u.ments exhibit three kinds of such facts: (_a_) motives and conceptions in the authors' minds and expressed by them; (_b_) motives and ideas attributed by the authors to contemporaries of theirs whose actions they have seen; (_c_) motives which we ourselves may suppose to have influenced the actions related in the doc.u.ments, and which we represent to ourselves on the model of our own motives.

Physical facts, human actions (both individual and collective), psychic facts--these form the objects of historical knowledge; they are none of them observed directly, they are all _imagined_. Historians--nearly all of them unconsciously and under the impression that they are observing realities--are occupied solely with images.

IV. How, then, is it possible to imagine facts without their being wholly imaginary? The facts, as they exist in the historian's mind, are necessarily subjective; that is one of the reasons given for refusing to recognise history as a science. But subjective is not a synonym of unreal. A recollection is only an image; but it is not therefore a chimera, it is the representation of a vanished reality. It is true that the historian who works with doc.u.ments has no personal recollections of which he can make direct use; but he forms mental images on the model of his own recollections. He a.s.sumes that realities (objects, actions, motives), which have now disappeared, but were formerly observed by the authors of the doc.u.ments, resembled the realities of his own day which he has himself seen and which he retains in his memory. This is the postulate of all the doc.u.mentary sciences. If former humanity did not resemble the humanity of to-day, doc.u.ments would be unintelligible.

Starting from this a.s.sumed resemblance, the historian forms a mental representation of the bygone facts of history similar to his own recollection of the facts he has witnessed.

This operation, which is performed unconsciously, is one of the princ.i.p.al sources of error in history. The things of the past which are to be pictured in imagination were not wholly similar to the things of the present which we have seen; we have never seen a man like Caesar or Clovis, and we have never experienced the same mental states as they. In the established sciences it is equally true that one man will work on facts which another has observed, and which he must therefore represent to himself by a.n.a.logy; but these facts are defined by precise terms which indicate what invariable elements ought to appear in the image.

Even in physiology the notions which occur are sufficiently clear and fixed for the same word to evoke in the minds of all naturalists similar images of an organ or a movement. The reason is that each notion which has a name has been formed by a method of observation and abstraction in the course of which all the characteristics which belong to the notion have been precisely determined and described.

But in proportion as a body of knowledge is more nearly concerned with the invisible facts of the mind, its notions become more confused and its language less precise. Even the most ordinary facts of human life, social conditions, actions, motives, feelings, can only be expressed by vague terms (_king_, _warrior_, _to fight_, _to elect_). In the case of more complex phenomena, language is so indefinite that there is no agreement even as to the essential elements of the phenomena. What are we to understand by a tribe, an army, an industry, a market, a revolution? Here history shares the vagueness common to all the sciences of humanity, psychological or social. But its indirect method of representation by mental images renders this vagueness still more dangerous. The historical images in our minds ought, then, to reproduce at least the essential features of the images which were in the minds of the direct observers of past facts; but the terms in which they expressed their mental images never tell us exactly what these essential elements were.

Facts which we did not see, described in language which does not permit us to represent them in our minds with exactness, form the data of history. The historian, however, is obliged to picture the facts in his imagination, and he should make it his constant endeavour to construct his mental images out of none but correct elements, so that he may imagine the facts as he would have seen them if he had been able to observe them personally.[183] But the formation of a mental image requires more elements than the doc.u.ments supply. Let any one endeavour to form a mental representation of a battle or a ceremony out of the data of a narrative, however detailed; he will see how many features he is compelled to add. This necessity becomes physically perceptible in attempts to restore monuments in accordance with descriptions (for example, the Temple at Jerusalem), in pictures which claim to be representations of historical scenes, in the drawings of ill.u.s.trated newspapers.

Every historical image contains a large part of fancy. The historian cannot get rid of it, but he can take stock of the real elements which enter into his images and confine his constructions to these; they are the elements which he has derived from the doc.u.ments. If, in order to understand the battle between Caesar and Ariovistus, he finds it necessary to make a mental picture of the two opposing armies, he will be careful to draw no conclusions from the general aspect under which he imagines them; he will base his reasonings exclusively on the real details furnished by the doc.u.ments.

V. The problem of historical method may be finally stated as follows.

Out of the different elements we find in doc.u.ments we form mental images. Some of these, relating entirely to physical objects, are furnished to us by ill.u.s.trative monuments, and they directly represent some of the physical aspects of the things of the past. Most of them, however, including all the images we form of psychic facts, are constructed on the model either of ancient representations, or, more frequently, of the facts we have observed in our own experience. Now, the things of the past were only partially similar to the things of the present, and it is precisely the points of difference which make history interesting. How are we to represent to ourselves these elements of difference for which we have no model? We have never seen a company of men resembling the Frankish warriors, and we have never personally experienced the feelings which Clovis had when setting out to fight against the Visigoths. How are we to make our imagination of facts of this kind harmonise with the reality?

Practically, what happens is as follows. Immediately on the reading of a sentence in a doc.u.ment an image is formed in our minds by a spontaneous operation beyond our control. This image is based on a superficial a.n.a.logy, and is, as a rule, grossly inaccurate. Any one who searches his memory may recall the absurd manner in which he first represented to himself the persons and scenes of the past. It is the task of history to rectify these images gradually, by eliminating the false elements one by one, and replacing them by true ones. We have seen red-haired people, bucklers, and Frankish battle-axes (or at least drawings of these objects); we bring these elements together, in order to correct our first mental image of the Frankish warriors. The historical image thus ends by becoming a combination of features borrowed from different experiences.

It is not enough to represent to oneself isolated persons, objects, and actions. Men and their actions form part of a whole, of a society and of a process of evolution. It is, therefore, further necessary to represent to oneself the relations between different men and different actions (nations, governments, laws, wars).

But in order to imagine relations it is necessary to have a conception of collectivities or wholes, and the doc.u.ments only give isolated elements. Here again the historian is obliged to use a subjective method. He imagines a society or a process of evolution, and in this imaginary framework he disposes the elements furnished by the doc.u.ments.

Thus, whereas biological cla.s.sification is guided by the objective observation of physical units, historical cla.s.sification can only be effected upon subjective units existing in the imagination.

The realities of the past are things which we do not observe, and which we can only know in virtue of their resemblance to the realities of the present. In order to realise the conditions under which past events happened, we must observe the humanity of to-day, and look for the conditions under which a.n.a.logous events happen now. History thus becomes an application of the descriptive sciences which deal with humanity, descriptive psychology, sociology or social science; but all these sciences are still but imperfectly established, and their defects r.e.t.a.r.d the establishment of a science of history.

Some of the conditions of human life are, however, so necessary and so obvious that the most superficial observation is enough to establish them. These are the conditions common to all humanity; they have their origin either in the physiological organisation which determines the material needs of men, or in the psychological organisation which determines their habits in matters of conduct. These conditions can therefore be provided for by the use of a set of general questions applicable to all the cases that may occur. It is with historical construction as with historical criticism--the impossibility of direct observation compels the use of prearranged sets of questions.

The human actions which form the subject-matter of history differ from age to age and from country to country, just as men and societies have differed from each other; and, indeed, it is the special aim of history to study these differences. If men had always had the same form of government or spoken the same language, there would be no occasion to write the history of forms of government or the history of languages.

But these differences are comprised within limits imposed by the general conditions of human life; they are but varieties of certain modes of being and doing which are common to the whole of humanity, or at least to the great majority of men. We cannot know _a priori_ what was the mode of government or the language of an historical people; it is the business of history to tell us. But that a given people had a language and had a form of government is something which we are ent.i.tled to a.s.sume, before examination, in every possible case.

By drawing up the list of the fundamental phenomena which we may expect to find in the life of every individual and every people, we shall have suggested to us a set of general questions which will be summary, but still sufficient to enable us to arrange the bulk of historical facts in a certain number of natural groups, each of which will form a special branch of history. This scheme of general cla.s.sification will supply the scaffolding of historical construction.

The set of general questions will only apply to phenomena of constant occurrence: it cannot antic.i.p.ate the thousands of local or accidental events which enter into the life of an individual or a nation; it will, therefore, not contain all the questions which the historian must answer before he can give a complete picture of the past. The detailed study of the facts will require the use of lists of questions entering more into detail, and differing according to the nature of the events, the men, or the societies studied. In order to frame these lists, we begin by setting down those questions or matters of detail which are suggested by the mere reading of the doc.u.ments; but for the purpose of arranging these questions, often indeed for the purpose of making the list complete, recourse must be had to the systematic _a priori_ method.

Among the cla.s.ses of facts, the persons, and the societies with which we are well acquainted (either from direct observation or from history), we look for those which resemble the facts, the persons, or the societies which we wish to study. By a.n.a.lysing the scheme of arrangement used in the scientific treatment of these familiar cases we shall learn what questions ought to be asked in reference to the a.n.a.logous cases which we propose to investigate. Of course the model must be chosen intelligently; we must not apply to a barbarous society a list of questions framed on the study of a civilised nation, and ask with regard to a feudal domain what agents corresponded to each of our ministers of state--as Boutaric did in his study of the administration of Alphonse of Poitiers.

This method of drawing up lists of questions which bases all historical construction on an _a priori_ procedure, would be objectionable if history really were a science of observation; and perhaps some will think it compares very unfavourably with the _a posteriori_ methods of the natural sciences. But its justification is simple: it is the only method which it is possible to employ, and the only method which, as a matter of fact, ever has been employed. The moment an historian attempts to put in order the facts contained in doc.u.ments, he constructs out of the knowledge he has (or thinks he has) of human affairs a scheme of arrangement which is the equivalent of a list of questions--unless, perhaps, he adopts a scheme which one of his predecessors has constructed in a similar manner. But when this work has been performed unconsciously, the scheme of arrangement remains incomplete and confused. Thus it is not a case of deciding whether to work with or without an _a priori_ set of questions--we must work with such a set in any case--the choice merely lies between the unconscious use of an incomplete and confused set of questions and the conscious use of a precise and complete set.

VI. We can now sketch the plan of historical construction in a way which will determine the series of synthetic operations necessary to raise the edifice.