SCIENTIFIC PRESENTATION OF HISTORY 173 



what does that mean ; how far should such indication go ? " Furnish 

 proof": — how is it to be got in order to be furnished? What consti- 

 tutes proof ? " As far as possible " : — surely a weak-kneed and half- 

 hearted phrase, but probably meant to leave way for the undemonstrable 

 results of intuition and divination. As for the third rule: — how shall 

 he make the sharp distinction, and further, ought he not rather to sup- 

 ply that which will make his readers certain or uncertain than merely 

 to state his own convictions and doubts. Professor James Harvey 

 Liobinson writes on this point, " The historian has no accurate means of 

 representing his own dubiety, strongly as he may be conscious of it. 

 Much less can he impart his doubts and uncertainties to his reader " 7 

 since history "possesses no special terminology adapted to its specific 

 uses and historical writers content themselves with vague and uncertain 

 expressions which are in their nature literary rather than scientific." 8 

 Robinson, it should be said, both in the article just cited and in a lecture 

 on "History" published in 1908 by the Columbia University Press, 

 makes several incidental suggestions stimulating to one interested in 

 scientific presentation, although his main aim is to expose the defects 

 of the literary method of presenting history and he does not go on to 

 attempt a theory of scientific presentation. 



The most recent noteworthy instance of discouragement of endeavor 

 to present history scientifically was the last annual address by a presi- 

 dent of the American Historical Association. Professor George Burton 

 Adams did not, like Bernheim and Winsor, disregard the possibility of 

 scientific history ; he clearly put the question, " In ascertaining and 

 classifying the objective facts with which history deals can methods 

 which are really scientific be employed . . . "?° But he went on to 

 say coolly, " History must remain one of the branches of literature " — a 

 servitude incompatible with scientific status. Then a little later, when 

 wisely discouraging present attempts to philosophize history, he tended 

 towards the opposite extreme and declared that, " The field of the his- 

 torian is and must long remain the discovery and recording of what 

 actually happened," ] " — thereby abandoning Monod's hope of attaining 

 to geneial truths and taking up a position not much more consoling to 

 scientist than to philosopher. 



On the other hand, there are tendencies toward scientific presenta- 

 tion outside the pages of writers on historical method. Even those who 

 would incontinently discover some one hypothesis — for instance, the 

 economic interpretation of history — to charm the "facts" of history 

 from a chaos into a system, have at least invoked the name of science. 



' " The Conception and Methods of History." Congress of Arts and Science, 

 Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904. Vol. II., p. 46. 



"Ibid., p. 41. 



9 " History and the Philosophy of History," American Historical Review, 

 January, 1909, p. 232. 



10 Ibid., p. 236. 



