191 1.] ROBINSON— THE NEW HISTORY. 185 



like all other forms of scientific research, should be pursued first and 

 foremost for its own sake. The facts must be verified and classified 

 by the expert, without regard to any possible bearing which his 

 discoveries may have upon our attitude toward life and the proper 

 way of conducting it. Attempts to draw lessons from the past have, 

 it is plausibly maintained, produced so reckless a disregard of scien- 

 tific accuracy and criticism, that the prudent, historian will coniine 

 himself to determining " how it really was "-—an absorbing and deli- 

 cate task which will tax his best powers. 



Along with more exacting criticism and the repudiation of super- 

 natural considerations and explanations came a revulsion against the 

 older epic or dramatic interest in the past. The essential interest 

 and importance of the normal and homely elements in human 

 life became apparent. The scientific historian no longer dwells 

 by preference on the heroic, spectacular, and romantic episodes, 

 but strives to reconstruct past conditions. This last point is of such 

 importance that we must stop over it a moment. History is not 

 infrequently still defined as a record of past events and the public 

 still expect from the historian a story of the past. But the conscien- 

 tious historian has come to realize that he cannot aspire to be a good 

 story teller for the simple reason that if he tells no more than he 

 has good reasons for believing to be true his story is usually very 

 fragmentary and uncertain. Fiction and drama are perfectly free 

 to conceive and adjust detail so as to meet the demands of art, but 

 the historian should always be conscious of the rigid limitations 

 placed upon him. If he confines himself to an honest and critical 

 statement of a series of events as described in his sources it is usu- 

 ally too deficient in vivid authentic detail to make a presentable 

 story. The historian is coming to see that his task is essentially dif- 

 ferent from that of the man of letters. His place is among the scien- 

 tists. He is at liberty to use only his scientific imagination, which is 

 surely different from a literary imagination. It is his business to 

 make those contributions to our general understanding of mankind 

 in the past which his training in the investigation of the records of 

 past human events especially fit him to make. He esteems the 

 events he finds recorded not for their dramatic interest but for the 

 light that they cast on the normal and prevalent conditions which 



