Part 6 (1/2)
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 expressions 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; cla.s.ses of men (_miles_, _colonus_, _servus_); inst.i.tutions (_conventus_, _just.i.tia_, _judex_); usages (_alleu_, _benefice_, _election_); feelings, common objects. In the case of all words of such cla.s.ses it would be imprudent to a.s.sume 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.”[139] And, in fact, simply by a methodical application of interpretative criticism to a hundred words or so, he succeeded in revolutionising the study of the Merovingian epoch.
IV. When we have a.n.a.lysed the doc.u.ment 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.[140] 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 embarra.s.sing: 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 doc.u.ments, in charters, and in historical narratives. In all these cases the general form of the doc.u.ment permits us to a.s.sume that it is written in the literal sense of the words.
On the other hand, we must be prepared for 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 doc.u.ments on antiquity. Thus the art of recognising and determining hidden meanings in texts has always occupied a large s.p.a.ce in the theory of _hermeneutic_[141] (which is Greek for interpretative criticism), and in the _exegesis_ of the sacred texts and of cla.s.sical authors.
The different modes of introducing an oblique sense behind the literal sense are too varied, and depend too much on special circ.u.mstances, 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 contradiction 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 pa.s.sages in which the expressions occur in which we suspect an oblique sense, and look to see whether there is not one where the meaning may be guessed from the context. 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 everywhere, 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 a.n.a.logous 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 information belongs to a very important branch of knowledge, out of which is const.i.tuted a whole group of historical sciences:[142] the history of the ill.u.s.trative arts and of literature, the history of science, the 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 inst.i.tutions (so far as we do not inquire how they were applied in practice), the a.s.semblage of popular legends, traditions, opinions, conceptions (inexactly called beliefs) which are comprised under the name of folk-lore.
All these studies need only the external criticism which investigates authors.h.i.+p and origin and interpretative criticism; they require one degree less elaboration than the history of objective facts, and accordingly they have been earlier established on a methodical basis.
CHAPTER VII
THE NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM OF THE GOOD FAITH AND ACCURACY OF AUTHORS
I. a.n.a.lysis and positive interpretative criticism only penetrate as far as the inward workings of the mind of the author of a doc.u.ment, 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 necessarily 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 doc.u.ment, which is equivalent to a.s.suming 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 mendacity which daily experience brings before us.
Reflection has been forced on historians in the course of their work by the circ.u.mstance of their finding doc.u.ments which contradicted each other; in such cases they have been obliged to doubt, and, 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 instinct of confidence is so indestructible that it has. .h.i.therto prevented even those professionally concerned from systematising the internal criticism of statements in the same way as the external criticism which deals with the origin of doc.u.ments has been systematised. Historians, in their works, and even theoretical writers on historical method,[143] have been satisfied with common notions and vague formulae in striking contrast with the precise terminology 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--summing 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 incontestable superiority. But it is only a halfway-house between common credulity and scientific method. Here, as in every science, the starting-point must be methodical doubt.[144] All that has not been proved must be temporarily regarded as doubtful; no proposition is to be affirmed unless reasons can be adduced in favour of its truth.
Applied to the statements contained in doc.u.ments, 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 const.i.tuted that this step is often taken unconsciously (cf. book ii. chap. i.). Against this dangerous tendency criticism has only one means of defence. We must not postpone doubt till it is forced upon us by conflicting statements in doc.u.ments; 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 a.s.sume 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 doc.u.ment, in the lump; to divide authorities into two categories, the sheep on the right, the goats on the left; on the one side trustworthy authors and good doc.u.ments, on the other suspected authors and bad doc.u.ments. Having thus exhausted our powers of distrust, we proceed to reproduce without discussion all the statements contained in the ”good doc.u.ment.” 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.[145] 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. Instinctively 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.[146]
The confusion is still further increased by the use of the word _authentic_, borrowed from judicial language. It has reference to the origin only, not to the contents; to say that a doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment (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 _bona fide_ and accurate, or conversely, since each statement is the outcome of a mental operation which may have been incorrectly performed, while others were performed correctly. It is not, therefore, enough to examine a doc.u.ment as a whole; each of the statements in it must be examined separately; _criticism_ is impossible without _a.n.a.lysis_.
Thus internal criticism conducts us to two general rules.
(1) A scientific truth is not established by _testimony_. In order to affirm a proposition we must 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 const.i.tute a sufficient reason for belief.
(2) The criticism of a doc.u.ment is not to be performed _en bloc_. The rule will be to _a.n.a.lyse_ the doc.u.ment into its elements, in order to isolate the different statements of which it is composed and to examine each of them separately. Sometimes a single sentence contains several statements; they must be separated and criticised one by one. In a 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 a.n.a.lysis are performed simultaneously, and, except in the case of texts in a difficult language, may proceed _pari pa.s.su_ with interpretative a.n.a.lysis and criticism. As soon as we understand a phrase we a.n.a.lyse it and criticise each of its elements.
It thus appears that _logically_ criticism comprises an enormous number of operations. In describing them, with all the details necessary for the understanding of their mechanism and the reasons for their employment, we are likely to give the impression 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 fencing with that required to execute it; compare the tedium of the grammar and dictionary with the rapidity of reading. Like every practical art, criticism consists in the habit of performing certain acts. In the period of apprentices.h.i.+p, before the habit is acquired, we are obliged to think of each act separately before performing it, and to a.n.a.lyse the movements; 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 performed; 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. Criticism therefore does not advance beyond indirect and provisional solutions, and does no more than furnish data which require a final elaboration.