PRESENT PROBLEMS OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 129 



reached a stage like this in very few fields of history is certainly 

 true. I wish to be distinctly understood to raise question whether 

 that stage has not been reached in the study of the period extending 

 from what we commonly call the fall of the Roman Empire to the 

 fall of Charlemagne's, and whether we ought not now to expect and 

 encourage as the next proper advance of our work attempts at a 

 final constructive history of this age. It is, to be sure, only a portion 

 of medieval history a fragment of a larger age, and in that sense 

 a continuous narrative of its history cannot be final. But that is in a 

 sense true of every period however long, and this has a unity of its 

 own a natural beginning and ending which makes appropriate 

 its treatment by itself at least as preliminary to a history of the 

 whole Middle Ages. 



This judgment which I have passed on the condition of our study 

 of the earliest period of medieval history demands that we should 

 recognize the fact that there is a very large body of historical happen- 

 ings without appreciable influence on the general result; that very 

 many events in the past,, of interest in themselves, might not have 

 occurred at all, or might have occurred in some quite different way, 

 and the final outcome, the decisive result, have been unmodified in 

 any essential matter. We may understand the really important 

 contributory work of an age or a generation without understanding 

 every detail about it. That this is so I cannot here stop to prove, 

 but I expect little disagreement with this view from students of his- 

 tory whose work has led them to consider the contributions of one 

 age to another, or to study carefully the larger movements of history. 



To those of us who have in our hands not merely the directing of 

 our own productive efforts, in which perhaps our interests are now 

 so fixed that change would be neither advisable nor desirable, but 

 also the work of directing by personal advice and the selection of 

 topics the forming interests of the scholars of the next generation, 

 the question is one of great responsibility. Training in constructive 

 work is not easy. The power of comprehensive vision combined 

 with that keen insight which detects the true historical perspective 

 is the gift of the gods rather than the creation of the teacher. Nor 

 would I overlook the fact that final constructive work is to be ex- 

 pected only from the man who has been thoroughly trained in the 

 methods of scientific investigation, and whose critical judgment has 

 been sharply aroused and disciplined in the process. For however 

 brilliant the constructive imagination or however keen the historical 

 insight, if they be not guided and limited by a thoroughly disciplined 

 critical judgment within the limits of known facts, they will prove 

 to be snares and their results delusions only. We must also add 

 the fact that from the limited number and character of the sources 

 at its command and its consequent ability to create in many cases 



