34 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



studied in the light of laws and institutions, and in the proportions 

 of each part, that determines the relative values of scenes and events, 

 that fixes the style and structural concepts of historical description 

 and reconstruction. When Froude's wild theory as to Henry VIII's 

 extraordinary matrimonial conduct was questioned by the critics, he 

 replied in these very words: "The precipitancy with which Henry 

 acted is to me a proof that he looked on matrimony as an indijperent 

 official act which his duty required at the moment, and if this be 

 thought a novel interpretation of his motives I have merely to say 

 that I find it in the statute book! " Ranke had quite another notion of 

 how official documents were to be used, and with their use his name 

 is associated, as is the name of scarcely another. 



Macaulay's ultimate criterion w r as not found in the edicts and 

 statutes of rulers, not in the correspondence of princes seeking to 

 deceive each other and to falsify the record; but in the consonance 

 of facts with the great events which, linked one with the other and 

 known by the common sense of mankind, form the chain of history. 

 Though he made a judicious use of documents he had not the blind 

 faith in them which makes their devotees ridiculous. Nor had Ranke, 

 though above all else he was a student of diplomatic correspondence. 

 It was he who brought the archives of foreign offices into the vogue 

 they have since enjoyed among historians, his success being due, of 

 course, to his critical faculties and his sanity; for sane he was, 

 moderate, modest, and disciplined in the highest degree. Ranke 's 

 great renown was firmly founded on his use of a remarkable series of 

 papers, the hitherto unconsidered series of reports addressed to the 

 Council of Ten by the ambassadors of the Venetian Republic. He 

 might easily have been dazzled by so unique a find and have exag- 

 gerated its importance out of all proportion; but he knew thoroughly 

 the times antecedent and the times consequent to those he was mak- 

 ing his own, and he fell into no errors. The papers in hand fixed dates, 

 places, and circumstances, unerringly: they exhibited the quality, 

 language, and character of the public business so as to permit im- 

 portant deductions; they illuminated their age in the contemporary 

 judgments of very shrewd observers. But Ranke never dreamed that 

 they revealed motives, except by induction: nor that they deter- 

 mined the great central channel of events. With the plodding indus- 

 try of an antiquary he felt, groped, peered around and in the obscure 

 corners of his material and brought forth little particles of fact which, 

 when properly assembled with the great facts, made possible the 

 tracing of sequence and the revelation of design. 



Philosophically Ranke was inclined to Hegelianism. To the rela- 

 tions of a people with its habitat he paid less attention than his famous 

 contemporary Curtius; the work of Buckle and the physical side of 

 history were indifferent to him. It was the cosmic process with 



