APPLIED TO HISTORY 241 



to eliminate the false ideas which lack of intelligence 

 and feeble imagination have developed around it 



The main functions of the historian may, I think, be 

 inferred from the general outline just given. The 

 historian, in his examination of the past, like the reader 

 of the newspaper in the present, has to deal with 

 witnesses ; but his witnesses are not persons whose 

 general character is easy to estimate, like the newspaper 

 reader's, but people, often long since dead, often anony- 

 mous, whose character and aims have to be painfully 

 ' restored ' out of a number of fragmentary remains. 

 That is, he has to criticize his authorities. And, again, 

 he has to form a picture of the whole historical environ- 

 ment in which his authorities lived and thought, else he 

 is continually liable, in dealing with them, to impose tests 

 which are anachronistic : and this means that he must 

 criticize very carefully all the documents which can be 

 said to bear upon the period. We are to-day trying to 

 think of history in abstracto as a scientific process, a 

 means of attaining truth. This is peculiarly difficult in 

 a matter in which details and particulars form so large a 

 part of the subject ; and I am aware that any treatment 

 of the question must leave much to be desired. It will 

 be impossible in the time at my disposal to go into all 

 the various elements of discussion which belong to a 

 complete treatment of historical science. But in this 

 connexion I would commend to your notice a work by 

 two French Professors at the Sorbonne, MM. Langlois 

 and Seignebos, An Introduction to the Study of History. 

 The work is translated into English, with a Preface 

 by our late Professor York Powell. I will content 

 myself with references to a few only of the points involved. 



Every form of scientific investigation must begin with 

 some facts or beliefs, assumed or proved to be certain. 



