HEXRY CHARLES LEA. xv 



type of mind and strengthened by a business training, may be the 

 clue to ]\Ir. Lea's adoption of so distinctly scientific a method in his 

 historical work. Scientific method is much the same to whatever 

 department of knowledge it is applied. It is simply the direct 

 method, going as immediately as possible to the phenomena which 

 it is intended to observe; the objective method, treating the phe- 

 nomena without subjective distortion or personal bias; the compara- 

 tive method, treating individual examples and occurrences as mate- 

 rial for classification and generalization ; the rigorous method, using 

 only facts that can be absolutely verified, or when this is impossible 

 discriminating clearly the different degrees of certitude of facts. 

 Allowing for certain difficulties in obtaining and interpreting the 

 material with which the historian has to deal, no biologist, chemist 

 or astronomer has been more true to these canons of scientific 

 method than has Air. Lea in his historical works. 



There is one corollary of this attitude toward history, however, 

 that Mr. Lea was not willing to accept. To most scientific his- 

 torians it seems no more within their province to express ethical 

 judgments on the men and institutions of the past, or to draw prac- 

 tical lessons for the present from them than it is part of the duty of 

 any other scientific investigators. They deem their work done if 

 they observe, explain, narrate. According to their view it is no 

 more the duty of the historian to draw moral lessons than it is that 

 of the geologist or of the botanist. Air. Lea did not feel so. In 

 the preface to his " History of the Inquisition of the Aliddle Ages," 

 w^ritten in 1887, he said: "' Xo serious historical work is worth the 

 writing or the reading unless it conveys a moral. ... I have not 

 paused to moralize, but I have missed my aim if the events nar- 

 rated are not so presented as to teach their appropriate lesson." His 

 practice already alluded to of bringing his stores of historical knowl- 

 edge to bear on present day questions in the form of occasional pam- 

 phlets or essays indicates the same belief, namely, that it is one of the 

 duties of the historical student to provide moral or practical teaching 

 for the community. Yet I am inclined to believe that the concep- 

 tion of the historian as also a moralist became less pronounced in 

 Air. Lea's mind as his life went on. In his " History of the Inquisi- 

 tion of Spain " his judgments of the church are less severe than in his 



