Part 2 (1/2)

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 apprentices.h.i.+p_. 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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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 apprentices.h.i.+p 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 professors.h.i.+ps ”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 apprentices.h.i.+p.

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.