[bowman] fundamental PROCESSES IN HISTORICAL SCIENCE 585 



event only 80 years before his death. (Cf, it is now nearly 82 years 



since A K sailed from Hull to Quebec, and should the 



present writer attain to A K 's age, this span of trustworthy 



information will be greatly increased) . Pupils of a secondary school 

 5,000 miles from Athens and 2,300 years after the event, with- 

 out knowledge of Thucydides' sources and without sources of their 

 own, are able to arrive at a more valuable verdict than he, on the 

 basis of conjecture. Because we do not know his sources, or rather 

 because he could not as a narrator communicate that knowledge, the 

 ignorant guess of a fledging who a few years since played in the 

 kindergarten and now is able to read, write and cipher are to have 

 right of way over the scientific conclusions reached in the full light 

 of jthose sources by the "greatest mind that ever applied itself to 

 history." 



iv. What is the ground of the present attitude toward records? 

 The ground for refusing credit to a narrator however trustworthy 

 unless we know his sources, is given by Bernheim (p. 506) as follows: 

 "In ordinary life when we wish to confirm the truth of what we are told, 

 we have always known enough to ask our informant whether he saw 

 or heard the thing himself, or from what source he learned it ; and we 

 always base our conclusion on this original source. It is a signal 

 instance of man's mental slowness that so simple a principle in daily 

 use should have required centuries to find application as a rule of 

 scientific method. . . . Only by its systematic application in 

 history can . . . assured knowledge be attained." In this 

 statement two points should be noted: — 



1. It claims that a systematic application of the principle, and 

 only this, will produce assured historical knowledge. In the same 

 connection, however, Bernheim states that it is nearly one hundred 

 years since this principle was made the central feature of historical 

 criticism and became the fundamental rule of historical research. The 

 present method with this fundamental rule and central feature thus 

 has had a trial of a century ; but instead of the result claimed by Bern- 

 heim we have at the close of this period a pervading scepticism (which 

 is the negation of assured knowledge) and an increasing inability to 

 produce organized and synthetic narratives, i.e., historical activity in 

 respect of its principal object is coming to a stand-still. By actual 

 test, therefore, the above claim is negatived. 



2. The statement appeals to actual intercourse for justification 

 of the principle. Let this appeal also be decided by actual test. Let 

 the reader ask himself how many times this day he has put to a trust- 

 worthy informant (in history untrustworthy informants and records 



