336 RAYMOND J. NOGAR 



guage, then, is literary and not scientific. Fact, theory and 

 interpretation form a closely knit complex in the historical 

 narrative so that there are very few " simon-pure " historical 

 facts without some interpretation. 



Historical method is a combination of scientific evidence and 

 inference with imagination, insight, and empathy. History 

 employs causal and even teleological explanations, shows trends 

 and illuminates events, but is not causal in the strict scientific 

 sense. The meaning of the series of contingent events and 

 their patterns depends upon the theological or philosophical 

 assumptions of the historian. Upon most of these statements, 

 contemporary historians agree."- Of course, the accent in mus- 

 tering evidence and inference will differ with each philosophy 

 of history, but we can easily perceive that the historian's 

 " facts " are not the facts of common usage. His facts are 

 affirmations on record, or inferences from records, that some- 

 thing has happened."^ 



We must pass over the debate among contemporary scientific 

 historians about the knotty problem concerning the certainty 

 or probability of historical evidence and inference."* This we 

 know, that the laws of observation and logic obtain in history 

 as in every science, and the degree of probability or the attain- 

 ment of certitude depend upon the trustworthiness of the 

 available witnesses. Obviously, since history cannot be re- 

 peated and therefore " tested out " like a scientific experiment, 

 the element of conjecture mounts up in this discipline. " His- 

 torical facts " lie more in the realm of actual events which 

 probably happened, than in the category of actual events which 

 certainly happened. The reason is simply that the historical 

 method depends so much upon indirect evidence, inferences 

 which depend entirely upon the relative trustworthiness of the 

 statements of the witnesses. 



If the element of uncertainty prevails in securing evidence 

 and making inferences in history, how much more is this the 



'■ Ibid. 



'^ Ibid., p. 124. 



24 



R. G. CoUingwood, The Idea of History (New York, 1957) p. 261. 



