i74 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



True, these makers of hypotheses may be in too great haste to reach their 

 goal and base their results on dubious and insufficient data rather than 

 undertake a thorough examination of the source material. They may 

 resemble the Ionian philosophers with their single world grounds rather 

 than the slow, painstaking observers and experimenters of modern sci- 

 ence. But, like the Greek sages, those who would conquer history 

 at a blow have not led their forlorn hope quite in vain. However faulty 

 their execution, they have at least corrected the assumption of Bern- 

 heim and Winsor that history is merely something to narrate and have 

 held it to be something to study, to classify, to evaluate. 



Nor does present orthodox historical practise lag behind with his- 

 torical theory as sketched above. Original research of to-day would 

 generally scorn intuitive methods, and the presentation of the results of 

 such research is seldom primarily literaiy. But unfortunately, since 

 the methods of research employed are seldom fully exposed, even if we 

 take their validity for granted so far as the particular results are con- 

 cerned, we are still left without the needed data for a theory of scien- 

 tific presentation. No common and accepted methods have been formu- 

 lated. Moreover, while such preliminary work as the editing of the 

 sources is painstaking and while original research is done more or less 

 scientifically, there is a marked tendency to limit the sphere of scientific 

 investigation to the bare " facts," to " what actually happened " — to 

 use Adams's phrase — and to look at least for the present upon further 

 analysis and synthesis, upon the composition of history for the public, 

 upon the manufacture of the final product, as an art either not needing 

 or not permitting regulation, and as sufficiently scientific if it employs 

 the results of the two earlier processes, no matter how it may use them. 

 Thus is built on rock a house of sand. But that is not all. The flimsy 

 superstructure is two-storied, for there are no bare " facts " of history. 



The first step towards a correct theory of scientific investigation and 

 presentation is then to show that there are no separate and particular 

 objective facts of history; that consequently investigation having them 

 as its object must be fruitless; and that methods of writing history 

 based — as were all those which have been outlined — upon the assump- 

 tion that they exist are wrong. When this is done, we shall be in a 

 position to see much better what is the task of historical investigation 

 and hence what is its fitting method. Only when we understand that 

 "ascertaining and classifying objective facts" is not history's true 

 business, may we with hope of success put the question, " Can methods 

 which are really scientific be employed?" 



What then are meant by the "facts" of history? Is there in the 

 field of history any such definite and fundamental unit as the cell in 

 biology? Are facts indivisible, elemental entities, found hanging ripe 

 as it were on the branches of the sources and needing only to be plucked 

 and picked over according to their essentiality and then to be canned in 

 works of particular research until the day when all fruit shall have 



