160 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE 



The general inference which I would seek to draw from the above 

 passages might run somewhat in this wise. The truth-loving and other 

 qualities necessary for the equipment of an ideal scientific historian 

 are extremely rare; so rare, indeed, that most of those who, like 

 Fustel, consider themselves the living voices of historical verity 

 are self-deceived. While they keep within the field of pure chrono- 

 logy all may be well, but when following the instinct of an open 

 mind they would mount to those higher levels where abide the souls 

 of great men, the seeds of great movements, and the mysteries of 

 racial development, they lose contact with what is certain and 

 enter a region where the sole criterion is probability. If one feels 

 this in dealing with individuals, he will feel it still more in dealing 

 with movements or races: and that the careful historian feels it in 

 dealing with individuals may be inferred from Mr. Rose's words con- 

 cerning Napoleon's policy in 1805. "The question," he says, "has 

 often been asked whether Napoleon seriously intended the invasion 

 of England "; and after a long discussion of this point, he concludes: 

 " But indeed Napoleon is often unfathomable. Herein lies much of 

 the charm of Napoleonic studies. He is at once the Achilles, the 

 Mercury, and the Proteus of the modern world. The ease with which 

 his mind grasped all problems and suddenly concentrated its force 

 on some new plan may well perplex posterity as it dazed his con- 

 temporaries." * Should the best opinion of scholars ever decide that 

 history means chronology alone, that is, the determination of 

 particular and isolated facts, the critical, scientific method might 

 well succeed in dominating this region, unchallenged and secure. 

 Nor would it be a petty realm. But hitherto, in practice if not by 

 exact definition, history has embraced the manifold relations and 

 interdependencies of these facts, some apparently simple but many 

 conjectural and obscure. Conceiving of history under this form, one 

 is emboldened to hazard the opinion that in the synthetic process the 

 writer's personality should not be obliterated, but that it should be 

 present, frankly revealed where necessary, and not covered up from 

 any nervous dread of deposing history from her scientific throne. 

 Then a man like Fustel, scholar and artist in one, would refrain 

 from saying (at any rate if his subject were the origins of feudalism), 

 "It is history which speaks through me"; but he might let it be 

 known in some way that the text of his work was simply an inter- 

 pretation of what in his judgment and to the best of his knowledge 

 were the essential facts. After one has pushed thoroughness to its 

 limits, exhausted the material available to him, and brought his 

 matured thought to bear upon the results, he must leave the finished 

 product, whether scientific or not, upon the knees of the gods 

 anglice to the mercy of his severest critic, the lapse of time. 

 1 The Life of Napokon, by J. H. Rose, vol. I, p. 466. 



