SCIENTIFIC PRESENTATION OF HISTORY 181 



with scientific exactness, he will make perfectly clear the material avail- 

 able and utilized for the solution of the problem, and will inform us 

 of the plan b}- which that material will be exploited. Then will follow 

 naturally the subjection of that material to these methods and the 

 consequent results, positive or negative, partial or complete. Presenta- 

 tion will follow investigation step b} r step. 



Moreover, since investigation will be so completely a matter of 

 accurate measurement and of accurate conclusion therefrom, the method 

 of presentation will probably somewhat resemble that employed by 

 mathematics and the sciences. We shall come, not merely to the his- 

 torical terminology which Eobinson desires, but also to standards of 

 historical measurement, modes of historical reckoning, historical sym- 

 bols, curves, charts and other graphic means of presenting briefly and 

 accurately what prose could compass only in many pages or fail to 

 express with requisite precision and discrimination. Thus, while his- 

 torians will present proof as well as results, this greater detail than is 

 at present given will be so put that it can be looked over in less time. 

 Historians will no longer be handicapped as were the medieval alge- 

 braists who wrote out their equations in words. Other sciences of 

 human life, psychology, economics, sociology, have already turned to 

 such methods; history alone remains backward and awkward. Yet 

 the scantiness of the material at its disposal, in comparison with the 

 abundant opportunity for experiment and observation possessed by the 

 others, requires from it even more accurate inspection, calculus and 

 presentation. 



Even in historical manuals, text-books, general treatments of coun- 

 tries and ages, and other works of too pretentious scope and abbreviated 

 form to be based directly on the source material and use of scientific 

 processes, there will be no reason why scientific propositions may not in 

 increasing measure constitute the contents, the field be definite, 

 the form in accord with the true spirit of history. Possibly fewer 

 persons would study the reformed presentation than read histories at 

 present, but they would learn more truth of value, gain a deeper insight 

 into the true nature of history, and have a greater respect for it. One 

 could not then dismiss it as "a branch of literature." Its utterances 

 would rest neither on vague consensus of opinion, nor on the reputation, 

 nor on the footnotes of this and that individual; but upon a common 

 method, open to the scrutiny of all and worked out in its fullness by 

 generations of scholars, though applied in each particular investigation 

 bv an individual mind. 



