PRESENT PROBLEMS OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY 137 



service which these studies may render to our own if only the method 

 is historical when the problem is historical a service so great 

 that without the work of the economic historian and the sociologist, 

 the task of completing our scientific knowledge of medieval history 

 seems to me almost impossible. What their method should be in 

 the study of problems not historical, I do not presume to say. 



But from the work of the sociologist in two different fields at least, 

 lying at the two extremes of history, we have, I think, to expect light 

 on the difficulties of medieval history. The first we call the pre- 

 historic field, the study of primitive man, the earliest institutional 

 development of the race. The term prehistoric is, of course, in one 

 sense a misnomer. The investigation of primitive institutions is 

 really a study in history. It differs from the study of medieval 

 institutions only in the character of the material from which con- 

 clusions must be drawn, but as a field clearly distinct in itself it is 

 now generally recognized as the province of the sociologist, and to 

 this there can be no objection. Here is an ample opportunity for 

 truly scientific work, and much has already been made of it. From 

 its results light is to be expected on many details of medieval civil- 

 ization, manners, practices, and beliefs in daily life, in government, 

 law, and religion. Even modern society shows many survivals of 

 primitive ideas, and medieval many more. The investigation of these 

 subjects will fill out and enrich our knowledge of details, but they 

 are not likely to affect the more important conclusions of historians. 

 From the other field of sociological study, the study of present society, 

 we have, I think, far more of importance to expect. We may not agree 

 in full with the dictum that we can only know history by knowing 

 present society, but the value of such a knowledge is obvious. The 

 social reasons for things are far more easily discovered from a study 

 of present than from a study of past conditions, and social reasons 

 probably have a larger share in the explanation of results than we 

 historians have always been inclined to allow. At any rate light on 

 social organization, movements of population, the operation of race 

 as an active historical factor, the influence of sanitary conditions, 

 the sources of ideas of morality, religion, and law, and the methods 

 of their growth, and a dozen other equally important subjects will 

 be very welcome to us. The results of the sociologist's work, when 

 they are put in form for us, will assist us less in determining what the 

 fact was that is primarily our work than in understanding it 

 when known. They will be confirmatory and enlightening rather 

 than revolutionary, but no less important on that account. 



In conclusion, let me congratulate all workers in medieval history, 

 whether they are working directly or indirectly, whether they bear 

 the name of historian or not, on the great results which have been 

 achieved in our field in the last fifty years, and still more on the out- 



