January 25, 1906] 



NA TURE 



307 



sistent, thickest, purest, and most massive limestone in 

 the series, is extensively quarried for furnace flux at 

 Newcastle (Fig. 2). 



In Bulletin No. 238 Messrs. G. I. Adams, E. Haworth, 

 and W. R. Crane give detailed information concerning the 



geology of the 

 lola Quadrangle, 

 K a n s a s, a 



rapidly develop- 

 ing petroleum 

 and natural gas 

 field. At the end 

 of 1903 there- 

 were 1596 pro- 

 ducing wells in 

 Kansas, and of 

 these 549 were 

 at Chanute (Fig. 

 3) and 339 at 

 Humboldt in the 

 area under con- 

 sideration. 

 Natural gas is 

 abundant in the 

 vicinity, and is 

 largely used in 

 zinc smelting. 



Indeed, more 

 than half the 

 zinc made in the 

 United States is 

 smelted by 

 Kansas gas, and 

 more than half 

 of this is pro- 

 duced at works 

 within the lola 

 quadrangle. 



Bulletin No. 

 264, by Messrs. 

 M. U. Fuller, 

 E. F. Lines, and 

 A. C. Veatch, 

 gives a record of deep-well drilling for 1904, and is the 

 first of a proposed series of annual publications. The re- 

 port embodies the records of a large number of wells, for 

 many of which sets of samples are preserved. 



3. -Golden Oil Company's Well N 



THE APPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC 

 METHODS TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY.' 

 "THE remarkable change which during the last fifty years 

 has passed over most subjects of study owing to the 

 growing dominance of the scientific spirit has not left 

 history unaffected. The leading historians of the present 

 day are essentially men of science. They are diligent in 

 their pursuit of truth and skilled in the special methods 

 of research which their subject demands. They are 

 strikingly impartial in their judgments, constantly on their 

 guard against the prepossessions so liable in matters of 

 past politics to bias opinion. Thev are ever on the alert 

 to discover unifying principles, general laws, large uni- 

 formities, without which no body of historic facts, however 

 accurately ascertained and however impassionately selected, 

 can justify the claim of history to be regarded as- a science, 

 or can make history worthy of the serious attention of 

 intelligent men. 



All the writers enumerated at the foot of this column 

 deal in some shape or form with this transference of 

 history from the domain of literature to the domain of 



1 (1) "Frhebune der Geschichte zum Rang einer Wissenscbaft " By 

 J. G. Drovsen. (1862.) 



(2) "The Science of History." By I- A. Froude. (1864.) 



(3) " Grundriss der Historik " By I. G. Droysen. 



(4) " 1 he Science of Hi-lory " By Principal lohn Caird. (i88fi ) 



(5) " Introduction aux litudes Historiques. " By Langlois and Seienobos. 

 <i8u 7 .) 



(6) An Inaugural Leciure. Bv Prof T. B. Bn y. (1903.) 



(7) "A Plea for the Historical Teaching of History." By Prof. C. H 

 Firth. '1904) 



(8) "The Methodical Study of Man " By Dr. Percy Gardner. (1904.) 



no. 1 89 1, \oi.. -y 



science. None states the fact of the transference more 

 clearly than does Prof. Bury, who says (p. 16) : — " I may 

 remind you that history is not a branch of literature. The 

 facts of history, like the facts of geology or astronomy, 

 can supply material for literary art . . .but to clothe the 

 story of a human society in a literary dress is no more 

 the part of a historian as a historian, than it is the part 

 of an astronomer as an astronomer to present in an artistic 

 shape the story of the stars "; and again (pp. 7 and 42) 

 he emphatically asserts that " History is a science, no less 

 and no more." But though this statement is perhaps more 

 explicit than any other in the works before us, yet the 

 idea which it expresses is common to all. 



It is not enough, however, to assert that a subject, long 

 regarded as a branch of literature, is really a science. It 

 is necessary to define its scope, to expound its method, and 

 to show its relation to other sciences. This our authors 

 do in varying degrees of fulness, and it would be a profit- 

 able, and I think not uninteresting, task to take them one 

 by one and to analyse their views. But in an article like 

 the present it is not possible to undertake this detailed 

 examination, and I must content myself with giving a 

 summary statement of the way in which scientific method 

 has been applied to history, and of some of the results 

 which have been attained. 



It is a curious and remarkable fact that the earliest of 

 the above-named exponents of the science of history, 

 Drovsen and Froude, were called upon to cast their first 

 clear utterances upon the subject into the form of a severe 

 castigation of a too zealous champion of their own view, 

 H. T. Buckle. Buckle had become possessed of the great 

 idea commonly associated with the name of Comte, viz. 

 that " all phenomena without exception are governed by 

 invariable laws with which no volitions natural or super- 

 natural interfere," and in his "History of Civilisation" 

 (1858-61) he had endeavoured with wonderful ingenuity 

 and vast learning, not so much to elevate historv to the 

 rank of a science as to reduce it to the level of a physical 

 science, with laws of the same rigidity and of the same 

 universal applicability as the laws of motion or the laws 

 of chemical affinity. This was going further than either 

 the most advanced historians or the least exclusive philo- 

 sophers would allow, and a keen controversy ensued, out 

 of which at length emerged into general recognition the 

 important fact that history differs from the natural sciences 

 in at least two respects, first, that, with regard to its 

 method, it is a science, not of observation or of experiment, 

 but of criticism ; secondly, that with respect to its general- 

 isations, since they deal with a realm, not of matter, but 

 of mind, in which motive and not force is supreme — a 

 realm of consciousness and freedom — they can never have 

 that fixity and universality which are connoted by the term 

 " law-." 



On the other hand, historical phenomena are not per- 

 manent, but evanescent. Events happen once, and then 

 fade beyond recall into the past. Observations made at 

 the moment of their happening can never be repeated, and 

 historians are dependent for all their knowledge of bygone 

 events upon such records as may chance to have been made 

 and to have been preserved. These records are the only 

 present and concrete facts with which historians come into 

 contact. These are the basal material of their science. 

 But they are valuable and important, not at all for their 

 own sake, but only for what they reveal. Thev reveal 

 past facts, yet even these not directly, but past facts as seen 

 through the refracting medium of the human mind. And 

 when the historian has eliminated, so far as he can, the 

 personal factors for his records and has extracted such 

 pure and unadulterated fact as remains, even then he has 

 not come to the end of his research, har beyond and 

 beneath all events there lie the thoughts, the acts of will, 

 the emotions of which thev were the realisations and 

 manifestations — ultimate facts of the human spirit wholly 

 beyond the observation even of those in whose midst the 

 events transpired. It is these for which in the last resort 

 he seeks. Thus, as has been remarked, history is a 

 science, not of observation, still less of experiment : it is 

 a science of criticism. 



On the other hand, with regard to generalisation and 

 law, the fundamental truth to be recognised is that history 

 never repeats itself. The phenomena of historv are not 



