122 Timehri. 



know well the difficulty of getting reliable evidence. This goes to show 

 what the historian has to do when it is quite impossible to examine wit- 

 nesses. The most he can try to do is to get as near as possible to what 

 is supposed to be meant. 



If the meaning of words is often misunderstood it can be easily seen 

 tbat habits and customs are even more difficult. The anthropologist has 

 come to the front in quite r» cent years and his assistance to the historian 

 is of the utmost importance. In some cases important results have 

 followed the breach of an old custom, the meaning of which is even yet 

 unknown. Much has been written about slavery and yet hardly one of 

 the writers knew anything of its value to Africa, of the meaning 

 of the trade, and of its importance to the welfare of the continent. 

 As slaves were the only merchandise in the larger portion there could 

 have been no traffic without them. A man's riches consisted of slaves — 

 they were sold, exchanged and even used as standards of value, e.g., 

 " Pieces d'India " meant healthy working men, equivalent to a piece of 

 money. It is only of late years that we are beginning to get peeps into 

 the minds of primitive peoples, who however can hardly be considered 

 rational. This is a common failing even among those more civilived for 

 we may safely state that no man is rational at all times. 



Wrong deductions are often made because the writer assumes that 

 other people act as he would under similar circumstances. The student 

 knows that people do not respond in the same way and therefore the same 

 cause acting on a number of personalities may produce almost as many 

 effects. Even in a family the members do not respond in quite the same 

 way, one gets angry, another is frightened, a third makes an alarm and so 

 on. With other nations and races we often have no criterion from which 

 we can judge of their actions when excited or disturbed. Women do not 

 act in the same way as men, and children have their own ways of showing 

 fear, anger, malice, spite and revenge Then we have the difference be- 

 tween the drunken and the sober, the healthy and the weak, the sanguine 

 and the phlegmatic. If we are fairly acquainted with a man's character we 

 can sometimes be nearly correct in judging of his probable actions under 

 certain circumstances. If therefore something inconsistent is reported we 

 must be very cautious in sifting the evidence. Some rulers have been 

 credited with false characters by their enemies or their friends ; sometimes 

 these are so contradictory that both must be ignored. Cases are known 

 where actions have been ascribed that were practically impossible. 

 Novelists offend in many ways, one of the most common is the anachronism 

 where a weapon or utensil is put in the hands of a character, who is sup- 

 posed to live at a time when it was not invented. One writer makes his 

 hero put a percussion cap on a pistol in the time of Charles the second. 

 We may of course say that this is not history, but even romance must 

 not put things entirely out of place. 



The great fault of old histories is ignoring the life of the people 

 The characters are few and exceptional, the consequence being that we 

 get nothing to put us in real touch with the period. Much has been 



