49 o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY 



By Peofessoe CLARENCE WALWORTH ALVORD 



THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



"^VTAPOLEON'S cynical question, "What is history but a fiction 

 -LN agreed upon," suggests a criticism that nervous historians have 

 always felt the need of answering; and much investigation and many 

 speculations have been directed at the adverse critics in the hope of 

 placing the popular science in that favored class where are found such 

 unassailable sciences as chemistry and physics. The discussion of the 

 proposition, "Is history a science?" depends so completely on the 

 definition of the term " science" that one is tempted to take refuge with 

 Mr. Freeman behind the old English equivalent, "knowledge." The 

 failure to recognize the difference between the phenomena of history 

 and those which interest the natural scientists and the disinclination to 

 accept limitations not common to all sciences have always been the 

 stumbling blocks for those theorists who would lead history along the 

 path of objective certainty. History has its limitations and to ignore 

 them is not the way to create a science; but rather we must state 

 exactly what can and can not be known, so that we may escape the 

 will-o'-the-wisp kind of sport, a pastime much favored by the speculative 

 historian. It is, therefore, necessary to recognize the peculiarities of 

 the phenomena, of the problem presented by them, and of the method 

 which can be employed. 



For the purposes of this paper the phenomena of history, the activ- 

 ities of feeling, thinking, willing men associated in some kind of a 

 community for mutual protection and benefit, need not be dwelt upon, 

 nor is a discussion of the well-known complexity of such phenomena 

 demanded. Their most conspicuous characteristic is that they all 

 belong to. the past. Whereas in other sciences the facts are open imme- 

 diately to experiment or observation, the events of history are studied 

 mediately through the reports of them, except in so far as actual re- 

 mains have sporadically reached us. With a liberal interpretation, Mr. 

 Froude is right in saying : 



Historical facts are of two kinds, the veritable outward fact — whatever it 

 was which took place in the order of things — and the account of it, which has 

 been brought down to us by more or less competent persons. The first we must 

 set aside altogether. The eternal register of human action is not open to in- 

 spection. 



Yet the lack of faith in his witnesses, which is the conspicuous 

 characteristic of the modern historian, is the safeguard against decep- 

 tion. We have passed far beyond the na'ive credulity of the medieval 



