[bowman] fundamental PROCESSES IN HISTORICAL SCIENCE 499 



For nearly the whole of history Seignobos' scepticism is thus 

 practically complete; and on the same basis the steady recession of 

 recent and contemporary history into the past, in so far as there may 

 be an accompanying diminution of records now available, will project 

 into the future a like scepticism concerning the history that now is 

 contemporary. The grounds of this scepticism are noted above 

 (p. 494). He pressed them further in a subsequent work {La Méthode 

 Historique appliquée aux Sciences Sociales, 1901) , of which he is the 

 sole author. 



Bernheim, the other representative writer under consideration, 

 states (pp. 197-198) that recently in the very wake of the keenest 

 critical investigation the blunt French scepticism of the 17th and 18th 

 centuries which declared that "history is only a fable agreed upon," 

 has reappeared anew, and in finer but all the more wide-spread form 

 it seeks often to "steal with its doubts upon the historian at his work." 

 Before this danger Bernheim assumes a superb confidence. "We are 

 in^'a position," he declares (pp. 199, 206) "to repel sceptical attacks 

 upon the certainty of historical knowledge, from whatever quarter 

 they may come. They only lead us to deal methodically with the 

 various sources each according to its character, and to apply the 

 methodical rules and precautions, in order to penetrate through all 

 the confusion to the actual truth. The ways and means to this end 

 are supplied in the Kapitel der Kritik." 



This "Kapitel der Kritik" or chapter on criticism in Bernheim's 

 own manual, expounding at length (238 pages in the edition of 1908) 

 the characteristic features of the prevailing method, has been before 

 the public since the year 1889. The manual thus commended by its 

 own author as an unfailing specific against the ills of a "despondent 

 scepticism" is more esteemed in America than in the country of its 

 origin,^ and therefore the good results which he anticipates from its use 

 should be more in evidence here than there. Nevertheless, in Decem- 

 ber, 1913, Professor Dunning, speaking not in an ordinary connexion 

 but as the official head of the national organization of the historical 

 profession in the United States and principal historical body in all 

 the Americas, the members of which body received the address with 

 manifest appreciation {American Historical Review, April, 1914, 

 p. 479), made the following three statements: — 



1. " 'Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth?' Thus ends the 



report of one of the most famous conversations ever recorded. That 



the colloquy should have terminated without an answer to the question 



1 Bernheim's work is a bulky volume of 852 large octavo pages (edition of 1908), 

 but the standard German annual review of historical publications Die Jahresberichte 

 der Ceschichtswissenschaften rated it, on its first appearance, as of much less value 

 than J. G. Droysen's slender booklet Grundriss der Historik. 



