THE SCIENCE IN HISTORY 491 



annalist and demand of every historical source proof of the truth within 

 it. We must know which of our sources we can trust and how far we 

 can admit them as witnesses of the fact and what was the fact. 



Every period of the past offers difficulties and obscurities peculiar to 

 itself. The sources are either too meager for the precise determination 

 of the event, or as in the modern epoch, so multitudinous that the his- 

 torian is bewildered by the reports of special commissions and the pub- 

 lished and unpublished documents, so that he can only hew a pathway 

 through the wilderness. Further the very personality of the writers 

 makes his task more difficult. If they are ignorant, can he trust them ? 

 Are they prejudiced, will he not be deceived? Are they learned, can 

 he give due allowance to the ideas and ideals, social, political and reli- 

 gious, with which they weight their narrative? Thus at the very 

 beginning of the science, in seeking to get at the phenomena, there is 

 endless research to obtain information more or less questionable. For 

 this purpose there has been elaborated a method which is scientific 

 both in spirit and in the results obtained. Yet at this point, however 

 cautious the examination of the sources, there enters an element of 

 doubt into our knowledge of what occurred in the past. On such 

 foundations historians should not seek to build too imposing an edifice. 

 A careful study of the means of construction should be made in order 

 to raise a superstructure whose form and weight have been carefully 

 adjusted to the weakness of the substructure. 



The historical problem must, therefore, be stated with a full con- 

 sciousness of the peculiarities of the phenomena. Now a scientist may 

 attempt to analyze his phenomena and disclose their constituents; he 

 may seek to discover the essential laws of their being ; or he may simply 

 trace their growth. This last is unquestionably the point of view of 

 historians. As Dr. Bernheim says: 



History is the science of the evolution of man in his activities as a social 

 being. 



The idea of evolution is peculiarly an historical one ; that events are 

 not isolated, but fit together as cause and effect of an ever-changing 

 whole, is the assumption which underlies all historical knowledge, with- 

 out which no progress can be made; every movement of the world's 

 history conditions the next, although the finite mind is unable to follow 

 the line of connection at all times. The fact that history traces an 

 evolution separates its problem definitely from that of sociology, with 

 which there is such danger of confusion, for the phenomena of the two 

 sciences are almost the same. Sociology is the science of social statics, 

 history of the social dynamics; the one studies the average of masses, 

 the other individual facts or events; sociology would explain the me- 

 chanics of society, history the development; the former seeks to dis- 

 cover the general laws underlying the particular phenomena, while the 

 latter is contented to trace the life history of the particular event. It 



