SCIENCE AND DEMONSTRATION 253 



261. HISTORICAL SCIENCE AND CERTITUDE: ITS CRITERIA 

 AND SOURCES. The writing of history has for its aim to give us 

 a faithful, vivid, and instructive picture of the past ; and this is 

 an art rather than a science. But it presupposes the accurate 

 determination of past events, the detection of the combined 

 agencies that culminated in those events, and the discovery and 

 illustration of the human forces, instincts, tendencies or &quot; laws&quot; 

 social, racial, religious, political, economic, etc. according to 

 which those various agencies have co-operated. Now all this 

 belongs to historical research, which is obviously a science, as being 

 concerned with the elucidation of such laws. And when the 

 historian seeks to synthesize these laws, to explain them de 

 ductively by connecting them with the more fundamental motives, 

 impulses, and instincts of man as a social being, he is labouring in 

 that domain which has been rightly called the philosophy of history. 



In the work of historical research, the investigator is assisted 

 by a body of practical canons or rules of method, the formulation 

 and study of which constitute the methodology of his science. 

 The part of logic which deals with general rules of method (Part 

 IV. of the present treatise), applicable to all branches of investi 

 gation, might be described as &quot;general methodology&quot;; the 

 supplementary canons arising from the special application of 

 these to the particular subject-matter of any individual science, 

 form the &quot; special methodology &quot; of that science. Since it is the 

 tendency of logic nowadays to expound the general rules of 

 method with somewhat too exclusive reference to the physical 

 sciences (201), a bare outline, at least, of the principal rules or 

 canons employed in arriving at truth on human testimony, cannot 

 be considered out of place here. 1 



what a preponderating share of our assents is due to authority, and how very little 

 is the ripe fruit of personal reflection. Not merely the prescriptions of domestic or 

 civil or religious authority, but the current ideas of the age and country in which we 

 live, the ever-changing phases of &quot; public opinion,&quot; the popular worship of some 

 hero of the hour, or some fashionable theory : all these influences envelop us in 

 a sort of &quot; psychological climate &quot; or &quot; atmosphere,&quot; which moulds and colours our 

 beliefs and convictions, and which none of us can possibly escape. 



1 For fuller treatment of the subject (under the Scholastic title &quot; De arte critica &quot;) 

 cf. ZIGLIARA, Log-tea, (60), (61) ; HICKEY, Summula Philosophiae Scholasticae, 

 i., pp. 257-75 (Editio altera, 1911); RICKABY, First Principles of Knowledge, 

 pp. 377-90. Among writers who deal ex professo with historical criticism, the fol 

 lowing may be consulted : DE SMEDT, Principles de la critique historique (Lidge, 

 1883) ; IDEM, Introductio generalis ad historian ecclesiasticam critice tractandam 

 (Ghent, 1876) ; LANGLOIS and SEIGNOBOS, Introduction aux etudes historiques (3rd 

 edit. Paris, 1905) ; FREEMAN, The Methods of Historical Studies (London, 1886) ; 

 DELEHAYE, Les legendes hagiographiques (2nd edit. Paris, 1906 ; English tr. also 



