162 MODERN HISTORY OF EUROPE 



is all that could be desired, whose monographs intended for special- 

 ists are full of merit, sometimes show themselves capable, when they 

 write for the public, of grave offenses against scientific method. 

 The Germans are habitual offenders: consider Mommsen, Droysen, 

 Curtius, and Lamprecht. The reason is that these authors, when they 

 address the public, wish to produce an effect upon it. Their desire to 

 make a strong impression leads them to a certain relaxation of sci- 

 entific rigor, and to the old rejected habits of ancient historiography. 

 These men, scrupulous and minute as they are when they are engaged 

 in establishing details, abandon themselves, in their exposition of 

 general questions, to their natural impulses like the common run 

 of men. They take sides, they censure, they extol; they color, they 

 embellish; they allow themselves to be influenced by personal, 

 patriotic, moral, or metaphysical considerations. And over and 

 above all this they apply themselves, with their several degrees of 

 talent, to the task of producing works of art; in this endeavor those 

 who have no talent make themselves ridiculous, and the talent of 

 those who have any is spoilt by their preoccupation with the effect 

 they wish to produce." l 



I quote the foregoing strictures, not because they have the inter- 

 est which belongs to writings of a slightly polemical character, but 

 because the passage makes a sharp distinction between monographs 

 well done and popular histories badly done. The monographs are 

 concerned chiefly with the establishment of particular facts. The 

 popular treatise is designed to give order, connection, and some de- 

 gree, at least, of meaning to those facts. Perhaps, as MM. Langlois 

 and Seignobos suggest, the Germans are less successful in the latter 

 than in the former field; but even allowing that their performance is 

 open to criticism on the ground of personal and patriotic prejudice, 

 they, like other human beings, cannot exclude convictions and 

 even opinions from histories of this type. There is reason in every- 

 thing. If a writer, however learned, suffers his judgment to be 

 warped by prejudice of any kind, he will be found out and his learn- 

 ing will not save him. Nevertheless, the historian whose views are 

 something more than prejudices will carry conviction, if his facts 

 are undeniable and his argument seems sound. Nor is this result 

 less likely to be secured in the field of general history than in that 

 of monograph. In his autobiography Darwin calls the Origin of 

 Species one long argument, and on analysis it may prove that 

 many a book is good history though decidedly tinged with the 

 author's opinions. 



MM. Langlois and Seignobos direct their attention to the short- 

 comings of German historians, but the Histoire Generate itself is not 

 without touches which reveal the presence of personal feeling or 

 1 Introduction to the Study of History (English translation), pp. 313-314. 



