Outline of historical method

Contents

CHAPTER. PAGE.

I. Introduction 5

II. Sources, Bibliography, and Auxiliary Sciences 15

Introduction

WE shall have better history teaching when we have better trained teachers; and we shall have the trained teachers when the teachers themselves, and those who employ them, realize that history can be taught only by those who have been prepared for the work.

As the matter stands to-day, it is the popular belief that any intelligent person may teach a class in history without special training, or, with no other knowledge than general information, may participate in a discussion upon methods of teaching history and what the object of historical study is. It is not an uncommon thing for a college graduate, who has devoted all his time to Greek and Latin, or to science, to have a class in history assigned to him. He may not be particularly pleased with the assignment, but it does not strike him as at all incongruous. While, on the other hand, no good high school principal would assign a class in Greek to a man who had not been trained for that work. What is the reason for this distinction ? It is not far to seek. As history has been taught, and is still taught, in the high school, no special training is necessary. Any bright man can read over the lesson and hear the class recite it. The large majority of history teachers never engaged in a bit of original research and have no more idea of what constitutes history a science than has the intelligent public outside the school room.

This unscientific spirit crops out of all the discussions in teachers' associations and of most of the articles in educational papers.

The reasons so commonly given to justify the study of history can be traced to the same source. Instead of studying history for the same reason that we study botany or chemistry, that is, for its own sake, we must study it for the ethical training it gives, for its power of forming character, and so on ad infinitum. Now, history is not ethics, and it claims a right to an independent existence. It deals with the evolution of man in society, and no further reason need be given to justify the study of history than the necessity of knowing how that evolution has taken place. If the teachers of history can be induced to see how rational this view of their work is, one long step will have been taken toward improving the work.

But what is this training that the teacher must have, if better work is to be done and if history is to take its place by the side of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and the sciences as a disciplinary study? She must learn what the process is by which an historical narrative is constructed, and she must go through that process herself. She can no more become a satisfactory teacher of history without this training than she could become a successful teacher of chemistry without laboring with her own hands in the laboratorv- It is difficult to make the teachers realize this, but if the crusade for better history teaching is to succeed, they must realize it.

This subject of how history is written, I have treated in a general manner elsewhere; it is my intention to treat it now more in detail. But before taking up the successive steps in the construction of an historical narrative, I wish to point out the differences between the historical method and the method employed in the natural sciences.

In the natural sciences, the so-called method of direct observation is made use of. The object itself is studied directly either with the naked eye or with the microscope. Not one observation but many are made and under the most favorable circumstances. The observations thus made are recorded at once, and in exact, scientific language, the meaning of which is not ambiguous. But scientific truth is not established by the work of one man. Other scientists must make similar observations and obtain like results before these results can be accepted as fully demonstrated. It is only necessary to recall the controversy over the supposed discovery of a cure for consumption by Dr. Koch, of Berlin, to make clear how exacting the scientists are, and how difficult it is to establish a new truth beyond the possibility of doubt.

Is the historical process similar to this? Not at all. It is quite different. History deals with the past. It may be the pasthof this morning, of the war with Spain, or of the Persian wars

HISTORICAL METHOD.

of Greek history, but it is always the past. Yet it is not with the past in an indefinite way that history has to do. It is with the past in which human society has developed and the problem with which it deals is this: How has the present complex, world-society been evolved from the primitive, disconnected beginnings of four or five thousand years ago ? It is its business to reconstruct the process and to describe the successive steps. When it has done that, it has done its whole duty.

But how does it perform this duty ? What is its method? It -cannot be the method of direct observation, the method of the natural sciences, and the reason is very plain; the objects are not here to be observed. The past can be known to us only through its records, technically called the sources. These sources are of two kinds; material remains and traditions. The remains are all of those things that were actually part and parcel of the life of past generations; bodies of men, clothing, weapons, houses, roads, bridges, newspapers, letters, coins, etc. This subdivision of the sources will be better appreciated if a list be made of the material objects that will form the sources for the history of our own society. One of the characteristics of modern historical method is the increase in the variety of the source material. Some of our most valuable information is drawn from material that past generations never thought of putting to such a use.

The other main division of source material is tradition. It is of three kinds; oral, written, and pictorial. Pictorial tradition has attained a great significance in our generation and a great value that it did not formerly possess. This change is due to photography. For the historian of the Napoleonic era, the great war scenes by French contemporary artists are of little value; while for the historian of our war with Spain, the snap-shots taken by the camera of a war correspondent will form the most valuable source material.

Oral tradition is the least reliable of all. It is the account of an event that has passed from lip to lip and has been handed down from one generation to another. It soon becomes utterly unreliable and worthless, although it mav have been very valuable when it came from the lips of the eye witness.

The written tradition, upon which the historian chiefly relies for his knowledge of the thoughts and acts of men in the past, if it be a source, contains the record of what has been seen or heard by an eye or ear witness.

This is the material with which the historian works. He observes it directly, it is true, but what he observes is not the event, not the object, but the record of an observation made upon that object. And what an observation it often is! Made, perhaps, by an incompetent person, who, at the time, had no intention of recording it, it is onesided and incomplete, and written down so long after the event that what little value it originally had has been materially impaired, if not wholly destroyed. Add to this, the fact that it is expressed in unscientific

HISTORICAL METHOD.

language, and some of the difficulties of the problem will be clear. What .would be the value to the chemist of a series of experiments, if, — to borrow the illustration of a French writer, — his knowledge of them were based upon the accidental observations of the janitor of the laboratory ? Not only, then, is the historian of the remote past unable to observe the events directly, "but it is very rare that the documents of which he makes use contain exact observations. He cannot, moreover, make use of the records of observations scientifically established, that, in the other sciences, may, and often do, take the place of direct observation."

His method must be that of indirect observation. He starts with the record and attempts to work his way back to the fact, to see the fact as the observer saw it. The fact is the goal of his efforts, not the starting point, as in the work of the natural scientist. The documents that form the starting point for the historian are nothing more " than the traces of psychological operations." In order to infer from the document the fact that gave rise to it, the student of history must retrace the whole series of psychological operations that lay between the fact and the written record of the observation, retracing them in the inverse order, beginning with the document.

The object of the procedure is to establish the genuineness of the document and the value of the observations. If the document is not genuine, we need not take it into account; and

IIISTOEICAL METHOD.

an observation is practically useless until it has been localized, that is, until we know when it was made, whm*e it was made, and by whom it was made.

From this crucible of criticism, the contents of a document come forth separated into single affirmations, each affirmation bearing the mark of its value. This is the foundation work that places in the hands of the historian observations similar to those possessed by the scientist, but seldom, if ever, as exact or as valuable. The work of historical criticism is extremely difficult, out absolutely necessary.

It is, however, the portion of method to which the least attention is paid in our colleges, although it is the best developed part of method. The natural credulity of the human mind leads the student and the historian, too, for that matter, to accept with the faith of a child the evidence that comes to them, and to utilize observations without having first localized them. Here is where the reform must begin. The student must be taught that " historical work is critical work par excellence" and that he is sure to fail if he undertakes it without having been previously put on his guard against his natural instinct to accept without examination anonymous information and to utilize good, bad, and indifferent documents without distinction. This work should be done in the colleges; it is very seldom that it is done there.

In future papers I shall give a more detailed treatment of criticism. My purpose at this time is to bring out the characteristic feature of historical method, namely, that of indirect observation and to distinguish it from the direct observation of the natural sciences.

As the material with which the historian deals consists largely of " the traces of psychological operations," it is perfectly clear that the student of history must have at least a working knowledge of psychology. Much good history, it might be said, was written before such a science as psychology existed. True, but it was written by men who through introspection knew much about the workings of their own minds, and through experience much about the workings of their fellows' minds. They applied this to their work, sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously. To-day, in addition to his own introspective study and his experience, the student of history has at his disposal scientific treatises upon th£. operations of the human mind, and is taught to apply this knowledge consciously in his work. Without such a training, he is unable to trace the mental process by which an observation is made, and thus determine its value; without such a training, he is unable to control his own mental operations when he attempts to imagine the event described by the witness. The more conscious these processes become, the more likely are they to become exact and scientific.

The teacher of history, then, should be a constant student of herself, observing carefully every mental process that has any relation to historical method ; through reading and travel, she should enlarge her experience, and, finally, she should systematize her psychological knowledge by the careful study of some good work on psychology.

Psychology is as likely to throw as much light upon the problems of history teaching as it has already thrown upon those of historical method. It teaches the student of history that " the eye sees in an object what the eye brings power of seeing," and the student of history, become the teacher of history, knows that the boys and girls in her classes can acquire a knowledge of past society from the sources just so far as their knowledge of present society has given the eye 'power to see, and no further. We know that this mass of knowledge has been acquired unconsciously and to a very large extent has been used unconsciously. One of the innovations of the future in history teaching will be the care for the systematic acquisition through direct observation of such knowledge of existing society as will enable the young student to understand the past. This work must be done in the early years and lay the foundation for the study of ancient society. It has long been a question as to whether history study should begin with ancient history or with the history of the locality in which the child lives. Psychology would seem to have answered this question once for all. It says the child can begin in but one way^ and that is by the direct observation of the society in which it lives. When through tbfts direct observation the eye has acquired the " power of seeing," the attention may then be turned to the societies of the past that may be studied only indirectly and by the light of the knowledge that has been acquired. Some excellent suggestions for this direct observation of society will be found in one of the chapters of Professor Mace's book on Method. It is, to my mind, the most important chapter in the book.

If this chapter, and those that follow, accomplish what I hope they may accomplish, the teacher that reads them and needs their help will not accept on trust the statements that I have made, but will proceed to test them, and by so doing make the truths they contain her own property. Let her satisfy herself by dealing with source material (accounts of the battle of Manila by eye witnesses— August Century) that the method of the historian must be that of indirect observation; let her see, at the same time, how necessary to her work a knowledge of psychology is, and if she has not already done so, let her take up the -study of the subject; and last of all let her convince herself of the need of a systematic study of existing society by her young pupils, and learn from the examination of the life of the village or city in which she lives what fascinating material for direct observation lies unused around her. Such effort will give her a new insight into the nature of historical work, and will enable her to become a valued helper in the crusade for the better teaching of history.

Chapter II. Sources, Bibliography, And Auxiliary Sciences

IN the preceding chapter, I emphasized the fact that to teach history successfully one must know how to study history scientifically. It is then with the subject of Historical Method— the method of studying and not the method of teaching history— that this and the following chapters will have to do.

There has always been more or less method in the way in which history has been studied and written, but for a long time this method was largely unconscious. This is established by the fact that only in our generation has a literature of any size, containing treatises upon method of considerable length, come into existence. But one work has come down to us from the Greeks, Lucian's "How Should History be Written," and this treatise deals, for the most part, with the artistic form of the historical narrative. Rome and the Middle Ages contributed practically nothing to method. In fact, the period of the Middle Ages represented a reaction in historical writing. A new era began with the Renaissance.

The awakening of interest in the past, that was one of the characteristics of the Renaissance, contributed largely to the development of historical method.. Men must gather material and experiment with it for generations before the data for a work on method can be gathered. Now the first modern treatises on method were preceded by many generations of practical work; by the publication of great collections of sources, with critical notes and aids of various kinds. Then appeared the first attempt to describe the method by which the work was done. But before our day the works were few.; they appeared at long intervals and were incomplete in their treatment of method. Each work, however, contributed something, and every time the attempt to formulate the rules of historical science was renewed, there was a broader base to build upon, as each man studied the work of his predecessors before doing his own. "

Of the works produced in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, there are a few that stand out from among the rest: those of the Frenchman Bodin, "Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem" (1566); of the German Voss, "Ars historica" (1623); of the Frenchman Mabillon, "De re diplomatica" (1681); of the Frenchman Du Fresnoy, "M6- thode pour etudier Thistoire" (1713); of the Italian Vico, "Principi della scienza nuova" (1725).

In our century, the quality of work has increased and the quality improved. The Germans were the leaders, and the most important works are those of Wachsmuth, 4 ' Entwurf einer Theorie der Geschichte " (1820); of Droysen uGrundriss der Historik" (1867)— published in this country in a translation by Andrews;

HISTORICAL MKTIIOD.

Gervinus, "Grundziige der Historik " (18)7);, Lorenz "Die Geschichtswissenschaf t " (1886, 1891); of Dolci, the Italian, "gintesi di scienza storica" (1887); and of the Englishman Freeman, uThe Methods of Historical Study" (1886).

Up to 1889, these were the most important treatises that had appeared on method. They dealt with the subject in a summary way— many of the works being only pamphlets— and often treated only parts of method instead of the whole. There was need of a work that should gather up these partial results, combine them, and ♦attempt to present them in a systematic and detailed manner. Such a work was published by Bernheim in 1889. The title is "Lehrbuch der historischen Methode." It contains six hundred pages and describes in detail all the steps in the construction of an historical narrative. The book marks an epoch. For the first time a real text-book on method had been produced. Jn 1897 a more popular work was published in France by Langlois arid Seignobos, entitled, " Introduction aux etudes historiques. " Although the work does not pretend to be an exhaustive treatise like that of Bernheim, yet certain divisions of the subject are dealt with in a much more satisfactory manner and really supplement the work of Bernheim.

Besides these two hand-books treating of the whole subject, many monographs, or partial studies, have been published, so that the literature upon method has become one of quite respectable size, and can not be neglected by any serious student of history.

HISTORICAL METHOD.

But what is the result of all this study by so many centuries of historians?

A conscious operation in the treatment of historical material, an understanding of what has already been accomplished, and a pretty fair appreciation of what remains to be done. As yet, the form in which the results are presented has not been fixed by tradition ; but there is a quite general agreement as to the subject matter and order of arrangement, although there is some disagreement as to the nomenclature to be employed.

Bernheim, after an introduction dealing with such questions as the definition of history, the relation of history to other sciences, and the possibility of attaining scientific certainty in historical study, divides his work into four parts:

(1) Quellenkunde, treating of bibliography, source collections, and the auxiliary sciences;

(2) Kritik, treating of the genuineness of the sources, their origin and value, of the establishment of historical fact, and the arrangement of the facts established; (3) Auffassung, dealing with the interpretation and grouping of facts, with their physical, psychical, and social environment, and with the philosophy of history; (4) Darstellung, or the formulation of the results obtained in the preceding investigation.

The grouping of Langlois and Seignobos is

somewhat simpler. Their work is divided into

three parts: (1) Les connaissances prbalables,

or preliminary knowledge, equivalent to Bern-

heim's Quellenkunde; (2) Operations analytiques, embracing criticism, interpretation, and establishment of the facts; (3) Operations synttetiques, or combination of the facts and constructive reasoning together with the presentation of results.

There is one important difference between the arrangement of Bernheim and that of Langrlois and Seignobos; in the first, interpretation follows the establishment of -the fact; in the last, it precedes it. With that exception, there is substantial agreement in the arrangement of the two works.

It would be safe to say then, that, whatever title may be given to the parts, a work on method naturally falls into three or four parts; four, if the narrative, or presentation of the results, forms an independent division.

A moment's thought will show that all this is nothing more than a careful description of the procedure of *the student of history from the time that he selects his subject for investigation until he commits the results of this investigation to paper. It is my intention in this chapter and the following to sketch rapidly the successive steps in this procedure as they are described in the works just referred to. I hope that it may be helpful to teachers that have not access to these works or who would be unable to read them. If they would draw the greatest benefit from this study, let them follow the process step by step, investigating some historical topic in accordance with the method. described. Let them repeat the process again and again, and careful scientific work will soon become second nature.

The rest of this chapter will be devoted to what Bernheim calls Quellenkunde and Langlois and Seignobos, Connaisance pr&aldbles.

Sources were defined in the preceding chapter, and Bernheim's classification of them under remains and tradition was given. It is clear that, if there are no sources, no history can be written. If a student is desirous, of investigating a subject, he asks himself the questions: "Are there any sources? What are they? Where are they ? " If there are no sources, the subject, however interesting, can not, of course, be investigated. Great masses of source material are being destroyed in various ways every day. On a recent tour of investigation in France, I learned in two places, at St. Martin, on the He de Re, and at Saintes, on the neighboring mainland, that valuable archives, containing sources for which I vras seeking, had recently been destroyed by fire. It is a common thing in the course of an investigation to run across traces of sources that once existed and perhaps exist to-day, but can not be found. Often sources are known to be hidden in private archives, to which access is denied.

But even when the student knows that sources exist and where they exist, his work is often rendered difficult by the fact that his sources are scattered and a use of them would oblige him to make long journeys. His work will be lightened if a government has acquired all of this material and placed it in a central depot. It will be lightened even more if this manu-

HISTORICAL METHOD.

script material has been published and he can study it comfortably by his own fireside. While the study of written tradition may thus be made eas}', there are certain kinds of source material that can be studied only upon the spot. An exact copy of a manuscript may be studied even more satisfactorily than the manuscript itself, but neither photographs of an historical spot, nor descriptions of it, nor both, will do for the student what direct observation will do. But whether he can only study at home or can also go abroad, it behooves the student of history to make the acquaintance of the great source collections that have been published by governments, associations, and individuals. The contemporary histories of Greece and Rome have been carefully edited in the original Greek or Latin, and also translated into English. The Greek and Roman inscriptions have been gathered up from every side, carefully restored and published. Hundreds of specialists are engaged in making public the Latin sources of the Middle Ages, and the sources of the later periods composed in the language of the various peoples. Some periods have been thoroughly worked, while others are still almost virgin soil. So difficult is much of this wTork, so nice and varied the skill required of the worker, that many men do nothing but this: they simply prepare the sources that others may make use of them. Historical work is becoming every year more differentiated, and to make it successful the heartiest co-operation must exist among the workers.

The source collections of which I have been writing are made up of complete documents, narratives, etc. There are other source collections of a more elementary character, composed of short typical documents and of extracts from narrative sources. These are for the use of beginners. The new method of history work has called into existence a large amount of this material. From Harvard University have come extracts and documents on United States History; from the University of Pennsylvania, ' ' Original Sources of European History;" from the University of Michigan, sources of English History; from the University of Indiana, sources of European History; and from the University of Nebraska, sources of European and American History.

But suppose that there are sources and that they are accessible, how does the student learn what they are and where they are? It is the work of bibliography to tell him this.

After the subject for investigation has been selected, his first step is to seek for a book that will answer these two questions for him. Such a work is not always to be found. Bibliography is not in an advanced stage of development. The larger number of works upon which the student must depend are out of date and others are thoroughly unscientific In many of them, no distinction is made between sources and narratives based upon the sources, and, for the most part, when the sources are enumerated there is nothing to indicate their contents nor the value of the contents. The most of this work the advanced student is obliged to do for himself. Historical study will be much easier when good bibliographies have been prepared.

Although he may have learned what the sources are that he needs, the student is often in ignorance of the whereabouts of his sources, especially if they consist of rare printed books or manuscripts. Here bibliography might help him, but it seldom does. The large and wealthy libraries ought to have the books and certain archives should contain the manuscripts. But books and manuscripts are not always where they should be, and even when they are they are very often not catalogued.

Yet however incomplete these bibliographical aids are, they are all we have and are improving rapidly each day. The student that does not know how to make use of them will find himself badly handicapped. A most helpful little book upon historical bibliography was recently published in Paris. The author is Langlois and the title Manuel de libliographie historique.

When the student, through the use of bibliography, has succeeded in reaching the sources, he finds that his work can not go on without the use of one or more auxiliary sciences. It may be a manuscript that he has before him, and it may be incumbent upon him to determine its genuineness before using it. The performance of such a task would call for a knowledge of palaeography, or the science of writing, of diplomatics, or the science of documents, and

24 HI TORTCAL METHOD.

perhaps several othzrs. If it is known that the document is genuine, the student must at least have a knowledge of the language in which it is written in order to interpret it. For some periods, such a knowledge is not easy to acquire. The investigator in the fields of Grecian, Eoman, or Mediaeval History must have a knowledge oi philology, or the science of language. He must be acquainted with all the changes that take place in the meaning of a word in order to understand how it is used at a particular time. When the student comes to criticise his sources, and to determine their value, he finds that a knowledge of psychology is necessary; in arranging his facts, he must make use of chronology,' in combining them, of logic; in forming the background, he is aided by geography, ethnology, economics, and sociology; and in searching for the deeper meanings of historical development, by philosophy. These are the most important of the auxiliary sciences. There are, of course, many others, determined by the peculiar nature of the subject investigated.