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
typographically 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 palæographical instinct,
but also to the correctness, 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 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 conjectural
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 valuable than a faulty
and retouched copy made in the 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. Suppose 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
intrinsically better or worse than the reading B.

It has been recognised that the only rational procedure 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 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 intermediaries having been lost,
or from ancient copyists having arbitrarily blended the texts of
different traditions, the operation becomes extremely laborious or
impracticable. Besides, in these extreme cases there is no new method
involved: the comparison of corresponding 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 traditions. If these agree and give a satisfactory text, there
is no difficulty. If they differ, we decide between 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
comparison of the different readings is often enough to remove
obscurities which the uncertain light of conjectural criticism would
never have illuminated. However, an abundance of manuscripts is an
embarrassment 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 mediæval 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.[74]

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 possible, 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 Æneid had not been destroyed, centuries
of collation and conjecture would have been saved, and the text of the
Æneid would have been better than it is. This is intended for those who
excel at the "emendation game,"[75] 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 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 improve 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 criticised,[76] and the minute care required
by the operations of verbal criticism,[77] prevent the work of
publication and restoration from advancing at any but a slow pace.
Before all the texts which are of interest for mediæval and modern
history shall have been edited or re-edited _secundum artem_, a long
period must elapse, even supposing that the relatively rapid pace of the
last few years should be still further accelerated.[78]

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
questions, 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 [Greek: hakrishia] 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 indication of their authorship:
in our days, books, newspaper articles, official papers, and even
private writings, are, in general, dated and signed. Many ancient
documents, on the other hand, are anonymous, 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 authorship, when there are any. On the cover and in the
preface of the _Châtiments_, Victor Hugo is named as the author;
therefore Victor Hugo is the author of the _Châtiments_. 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 _Extraits des poètes chrétiens_, in most editions of Saint
Bonaventura's "works," and in a great number of mediæval manuscripts;
therefore _Philomena_ was written by Saint Bonaventura, and "we may
gather thence much precious knowledge of the very soul" of this holy
man.[79] Vrain-Lucas offered to M. Chasles autographs of Vercingetorix,
Cleopatra, and Saint Mary Magdalene, duly signed, and with the
flourishes complete:[80] here, thought M. Chasles, are autographs 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 necessity 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 mediæval scribes now to
Saint Bonaventura, now to Louis of Granada, now to John Hoveden, now to
John Peckham, is perhaps by none 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 _Châtiments_. 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:[81]
the "pseudepigraphic" literature of antiquity and the middle ages is
enormous. There are, in addition, documents which are forged from
beginning to end; the forgers have naturally furnished them with very
precise indications 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 is the same in both cases, it is not necessary to
distinguish further between them.

I. The chief instrument used in the investigation of authorship is the
_internal analysis_ of the document 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 manuscripts executed in the eleventh century, we have in this
circumstance an excellent proof that the attribution 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 themselves by
ignorance of facts of this kind; they let slip modern words or phrases.
It has been possible to establish the fact that certain Phoenician
inscriptions, found in South America, were earlier than a certain German
dissertation on a point of Phoenician syntax. In the case of official
instruments we examine the formulæ. If a document which purports to be a
Merovingian charter does not exhibit the ordinary formulæ 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 _bonâ 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. Arguments 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
environment, and the character of the author.

When the internal analysis of a document is carefully 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 corresponding elements of
similar documents whose authorship was known with certainty, the
detection of many a forgery[82] has been rendered possible, and
additional information acquired about the circumstances under which most
genuine documents have been produced.

The results obtained by internal analysis are supplemented 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 there is a significant absence of any such information:
the fact that an alleged Merovingian charter has not been quoted by
anybody before the seventeenth century, and has only been seen by a
seventeenth-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.[83] There are two kinds of
additions--interpolations and continuations. To interpolate is to insert
into the text words or sentences which were not in the author's
manuscript.[84] 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 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 contained 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 interpolators 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.[85] Here is a book: we wish to ascertain the origin of the
information contained 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
dishonourable; 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
occasionally 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 discovered? 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 discover, as far as
possible, the _sources_ 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 standpoint, nor will they say the same things in
exactly the same language. The great complexity of historical 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 candidates 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,
abstracts, 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
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 plagiarist, whether he
abridges or expands, nearly always betrays himself sooner or later.[86]

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 independent. When B depends on C, or _vice versâ_, 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
combinations increases with great rapidity. However, if too many
intermediate links have not been lost, criticism 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 Merovingian hagiography) have
recently constructed, by the use of this method, precise genealogies of
the utmost solidity.[87] The results of the critical investigation of
authorship, as applied to the filiation of documents, are of two kinds.
Firstly, lost documents 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 documents 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 historiarum_ of the self-styled Matthew of Westminster,
perhaps the most popular of the English mediæval chronicles, are almost
entirely taken from original works by Wendover and Matthew of Paris.[88]

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 conditions of
production of documents which had been defaced by time, and by
connecting them with their sources,[89] 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.[90]

This view is perfectly just. We must not, however, be satisfied with
this form of criticism, and we must not abuse it.

We must not abuse it. The extreme of distrust, in these matters, is
almost as mischievous as the extreme of credulity. Père Hardouin, who
attributed the works of Vergil and Horace to mediæval 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,
indiscriminately, 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_,[91] 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 contemporary 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 _virtuosi_
of criticism are accustomed to display their skill.[92]

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."[93] It is not the whole of
"historical criticism;" it is only one stone in the edifice.[94]

CHAPTER IV

CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES

By the help of the preceding operations the documents, 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 preparatory 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 materials before making use of them, is an apparently humble,
but really very important, part of the historian'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
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, note-books,
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
note-books, 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
ultimate 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
note-books 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 additions 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 universally 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 presumption 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
indications 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 combinations; 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,
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 references to the source from which its contents
have been derived; consequently, if a document has been analysed upon
fifty different slips, the same references 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 note-book 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 opportunity 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 of private librarianship
which make up the half of scientific work."[95] 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.[96]

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 formulæ to govern them all.
However, we may give a few 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 researchers 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 date, according to their
place of origin, according to their contents, according to their
form.[97] 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 illustration, the existence of a _Corpus Inscriptionum
Græcarum_, of a _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, of a _Corpus
Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum_, the _Regesta Imperii_ of J. F.
Böhmer and his continuators, the _Regesta Pontificum Romanorum_ of P.
Jaffé and A. Potthast.

Whatever the division chosen, there are two 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. Nothing 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 chronological 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 inscriptions 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, military, 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 Inscriptionum
Græcarum_, was of opinion that 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 Inscriptionum Latinarum_, that, grown wise by
experience, he rejected 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."[98] And yet,
considering the nature of epigraphic documents, the arrangement
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 subjects 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 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."[99]

The alphabetical arrangement is very convenient when the chronological
and geographical arrangements 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.[100]

The systematic order, or arrangement by subjects, is not to be
recommended for the compilation of a _Corpus_ or of _regesta_. It is
always arbitrary, and leads to inevitable repetition and confusion.
Besides, 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 arrangement. 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,[101] 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 _incipit_, 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 professional compilers have
learnt the value by experience: to write at the head of every slip its
date, if there is occasion for it, and a heading[102] 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 possession 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.[103]

CHAPTER V

CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS

The sum of the operations described in the preceding 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 superficial 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 decisive argument: it rests on their
indispensability. No erudition, no history. "_Non sunt contemnenda quasi
parva_," says St. Jerome, "_sine quibus magna constare non
possunt_."[104]

On the other hand, scholars by profession, in their zeal to justify
their pride in their work, are not content with maintaining its
necessity; they allow themselves 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,
emendation, 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 profound insight into past ages, not external criticism.[105] An
historian who should be fortunate enough to find all the documents
bearing on his studies already edited correctly, classified, and
critically 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 operations 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."[106] This is to be
understood as simply referring to the habit of going direct to the
sources, and treating definite problems.[107] Without doubt a day will
come when all the documents relating to the history of classical
antiquity shall have been edited and treated critically. 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 conditions for the
treatment of general ancient history, or special parts of it, will be
then eminently favourable. 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 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
preparatory 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.[108] Would it not be preferable that workers in the field of
history should specialise? On the one class--the specialists--would
devolve the absorbing 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 construction. 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 "history," 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, they took no interest in history, and
understood the past no better than did the mass of their contemporaries.
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 property. 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 performed when they are performed by the same
person; that though the characters of historian and scholar may be
combined, there is nothing illegitimate 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. Whatever 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 passing, that there is naturally no proportion
between the intrinsic importance of the subject and the amount of
preliminary work which must be done before it can be treated: there are
some subjects 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 Revolution, another subject of
the first rank, gave much less trouble; and there are comparatively
unimportant problems in mediæval 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 operations 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
therefore 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
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 mechanical 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 sureness; those who
devote themselves exclusively to investigations of authorship and
sources have intuitions which would not occur to others less versed in
this difficult and highly specialised branch; those 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 "historian" 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 external 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 particularly
"critics" (purifiers, restorers, and editors of texts), and others who
are pre-eminently compilers of _regesta_. "The moment it is admitted
that erudition is only valuable for the sake of its results, it becomes
impossible to carry the division of scientific labour too far;"[109] 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 inquiry, 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 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 distribution 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 different tasks. One of
the chief justifications of the institution of higher historical
teaching is, in our opinion, the opportunity afforded the teachers
(presumably men of experience) of discerning in the students, in the
course of their university career, either the germ of a vocation for
critical scholarship, or fundamental unfitness for critical work, as the
case may be.[110] _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 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 produced 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 adapting
themselves to the technical drudgery of preparatory 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 themselves 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 documents relating to the history of
the law of nations; "I 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 to a shrew? For to engage a man in a
lifelong work is much the same as to find him a wife."[111] 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 performed these labours], should now
accomplish such an act of abnegation, would be a hero...."[112] Although
Renan directed the publication of the _Corpus Inscriptionum
Semiticarum_, and Leibnitz was the editor of the _Scriptores rerum
Brunsvicensium_, 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 infinitely 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 satisfaction in
the minutiæ 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 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 difficulties. 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 cry Eureka."[113]
Julien Havet, when he was "already known to the learned men of Europe,"
used to divert himself "by apparently frivolous amusements, such as
guessing square words or deciphering cryptograms."[114] 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 rudimentary forms, of the scientific
spirit. Those who are devoid of them have no place in the world of
critical scholarship. But those who aspire to be critical scholars will
always be numerous; for the labours of interpretation, construction, and
exposition 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 possess 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 _a priori_ repugnance 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 perplexing 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 editions, their _regesta_, their monographs swarm with
imperfections, and never inspire confidence; try as they may, they
never attain, I do not say absolute accuracy, but any decent degree of
accuracy. They are subject to "chronic inaccuracy," 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
suffering from a famine at the time. And more of the same kind.[115]
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 murdered 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.

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
persevering efforts to be exact. Probably this phenomenon is connected
with weakness of the attention and excessive activity of the involuntary
(or subconscious) 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 innumerable 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
pronounce, but not to be followed in practice by any but persons of
calm temperament. There are nervous, 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 employment 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 convince 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 corrupt 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 combine 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 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
perseverance.[116] 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 themselves 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.[117]

II. As critical and preparatory tasks are remarkably well suited to the
temperament of a very large number of Germans, and as the activity of
German erudition during the present century has been enormous, it is to
Germany that we must go for the best cases of those mental deformations
which are produced, 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 minutiæ; scholars collate for the mere pleasure of
collating; infinite precautions are employed 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."[118] In the same year the same note was sounded, at the
University of Bâle, by Herr J. v. Pflugk-Harttung. "The highest branches
of historical science are despised," says this author in his
_Geschichtsbetrachtungen_[119]: "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
malevolent 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.'"[120] 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 documents, 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 suffering. They reach at length a state of morbid
anxiety 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 _apparatus 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 subtilise on them till they make them doubtful, under the pretext of
freeing them from imaginary corruptions. 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.[121]
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 call 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 Renan,
"is that as soon as they have attained their relative perfection they
begin to destroy themselves."[122] Hypercriticism is the cause of this.

_Dilettantism._--Scholars by profession and vocation have a tendency to
treat the external criticism 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 condition 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 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."[123]
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 priori_
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 foreground by a change of
standpoint or by new discoveries? "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
operations of nature, "to work in broad outlines, with a wide margin of
what is superfluous."

We shall not undertake to refute these arguments 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 knowledge 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
consciousness of the end to be pursued."[124]

Dilettantism is incompatible with a certain elevation 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 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 "concentrating
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 supervision of competent men presents great
mechanical difficulties. The problem of the "organisation of scientific
labour" is still the order of the day.[125]

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," especially by persons whose attempts
have been severely judged. In reality there do exist modest and kindly
scholars: it is a question of character; professional "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."[126] It is, however, true that most scholars have no
compunction 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 scientific 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 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 themselves 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 subject of historical work. Bad books of
historical erudition were published with impunity, and sometimes even
procured undeserved rewards for their authors. It was then that the
founders of the _Revue Critique d'histoire et de littérature_ undertook
to combat a state of things which they lightly deemed demoralising.
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 performed sundry notable
executions, not for the pleasure of it, but with the firm resolve to
establish a censorship 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 matter 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 established, the number
of specialists thoroughly versed in them is now so great in every
country, that, with rare exceptions, descriptive catalogues of
documents, editions, _regesta_, monographs, are scrutinised, 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 possible to make it
unassailable; otherwise it will immediately, 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 scholarship 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 engrossed
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 undesirable 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 synthesis is still performed
haphazard. Mental confusion, ignorance, negligence--faults which stand
out so clearly in works of critical scholarship--may 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.[127] In short, there is still, in this department, a certain
chance of impunity. This chance, however, is diminishing, and a day will
come, before so very long, when the superficial writers who make
incorrect syntheses will be treated with as little consideration as is
now received by those who show themselves unscrupulous or unskilful in
the technique of preparatory criticism. The works of the most celebrated
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.

_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.[128]
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 preliminary operation is required.[129] This operation is
internal criticism.

The object of criticism is to discover what in a document may be
accepted as true. Now the document is only the final result of a long
series of operations, on the details of which the author gives 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
_all_ 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
observed the fact which is its subject up to the movements 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;[130] 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 restricted to a
bare minimum. The most exacting historian is satisfied with an abridged
method which concentrates all the operations into two groups: (1) the
analysis of the contents of the document, and the positive
interpretative criticism which is necessary 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 statements. 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.[131] 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 interpretation. 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 understand 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,
and forms out of them an imaginary text which he puts in the place of
the real text of the author.[132]

II. 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 from it for
the purposes of history. We thus arrive at this general rule of method:
the study of every document 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,[133] 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
having _first_ made a comprehensive analysis[134] 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.

III. 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 understand a
text it is first necessary to know the language. 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, and by whatever author it may be used. But
ordinary 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 mediæval Latin the sense of _help_. We have, then, to learn to
resist the instinct which leads us to explain all the expressions of a
text by their classical or ordinary meanings. The grammatical
interpretation, based on the general rules of the language, must be
supplemented by an historical interpretation 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 _language of the
time_--that is, the meanings of words and forms of expression in use at
the time when the text was written. The meaning of a word is to be
determined 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 no doubt as to the meaning of the word in
question.[135] Information of this kind is given in historical
dictionaries, such as the _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_; or the glossaries
of Du Cange. In these compilations the article devoted to each word is a
collection of the passages in which the word occurs, accompanied 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.[136] This purpose is served by lexicons to a single author, as
Meusel's _Lexicon Cæsarianum_, in which are brought 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 therefore 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_,[137] a fundamental 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 prohibits
the stuffing of a modern work with _quotations_--that is, shreds of
phrases torn from passages without regard to the special sense given to
them by the context.[138]

These rules, if rigorously applied, would constitute 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 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
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; 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."[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 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.[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 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 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 determining hidden meanings
in texts has always occupied a large space in the theory of
_hermeneutic_[141] (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 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 passages 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
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 information belongs to a very important branch of
knowledge, out of which is constituted a whole group of historical
sciences:[142] the history of the illustrative 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 institutions (so far as we do not inquire how they were applied
in practice), the assemblage 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
authorship 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. 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 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 document, which is
equivalent 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
mendacity 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, 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 hitherto
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 documents has been
systematised. Historians, in their works, and even theoretical writers
on historical method,[143] have been satisfied with common notions and
vague formulæ 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 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 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
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 trustworthy
authors and good documents, on the other suspected authors and bad
documents. Having thus exhausted our powers of distrust, we proceed to
reproduce without discussion all the statements contained 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.[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 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 _bonâ 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
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 _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 constitute a sufficient reason for
belief.

(2) The criticism of a document is not to be performed _en bloc_. 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 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 analysis are performed simultaneously, and,
except in the case of texts in a difficult language, may proceed _pari
passu_ 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 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 apprenticeship, before the
habit is acquired, we are obliged to think of each act separately before
performing it, and to analyse 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.

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
narrative 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 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 affirmation
does not always mean strength of conviction, but sometimes only
cleverness or effrontery.[147] Similarly, abundance and precision of
detail, though they produce a vivid impression on unexperienced readers,
do not guarantee the accuracy of the facts;[148] 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 external 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 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 information we possess about the
author and the composition 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 inaccuracy. We shall then apply it to the general
conditions under which the document was composed, in order to discover
those causes which may have rendered the author's mental operations
incorrect and vitiated the results. But all that we shall thus
obtain--even in the exceptionally favourable 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 confined to the use of a
single method, which, by a curious paradox, is the study of the
_universal_ 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 performed. 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 drawing 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 beforehand
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 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 document lied or not, and a _critical 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 questions 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 these situations are, both as
affecting the general composition of a document, and as affecting each
particular 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 advantage 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 mendacious. 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 _had_ 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, however, to remember that the author may have
given false information in order to serve a _collective_ interest. 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 conformity
with rule or custom, while the actual circumstances 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_ character 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 sincerity; they are, on the contrary, an incentive to falsify,
not the main facts, but the accessory circumstances. 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.

(3) The author viewed with sympathy or antipathy a group of men (nation,
party, denomination, province, city, family), or an assemblage of
doctrines or institutions (religion, school of philosophy, political
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 (_studium_ and _odium_); 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 collective 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 consider
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 which attributes to the author or his group
a high place in the world.[149]

(5) The author desired to please the public, or at least to avoid
shocking it. He has expressed sentiments 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 formulæ, 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 contemporary formulæ 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 unworthy, 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-formulæ of
a prince for information as to his piety or his liberality.[150]

In order to recognise these conventional declarations 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
æsthetic 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 mediæval
chroniclers.[151] Epic distortion embellishes the narrative by adding
picturesque 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.[152]
Dramatic distortion consists in grouping the facts in such a way as to
enhance the dramatic effect by concentrating facts, which in reality