Munro—Some Tendencies in History. 709 
twenty years. After Mr. Lea had examined Langlois’ 
Manual of Bibliography , he said, “If I could have had such 
a book fifty years ago, it would have saved ten years of my 
life.” The catalogues of manuscripts which are being pub¬ 
lished by carefully trained archivists save many students 
months of useless searching. The work done for the Carne¬ 
gie Institute by Professor Fish in Rome, Professor Paxson 
in London and other workers in Spain, France, Germany, 
England, Holland, Mexico, and other countries has revealed 
the existence of much new material for the history of the 
United States. This work and the labors of Professor Burr 
as historical expert for the Venezuela commission have 
shown that a man may need a knowledge of philology, 
paleography, chronology, and diplomatics to study Ameri¬ 
can history. In the case of the Venezuela boundary dis¬ 
pute, the work of the trained expert was of the greatest 
utility in enabling the commission to reach a correct de¬ 
cision. (It may be of interest in this connection to recall 
that our own Tank library of Dutch history was exploited 
in connection with this question, although most of the work 
was done in the Dutch archives.) 
Training in historical method, in the rules of criticism, is 
indispensible. Ranke’s seminar with his three criteria of 
criticism, precision, and penetration, did much to establish 
standards of workmanship. Since his day, methods have 
greatly improved. Rules have been established which make 
it relatively easy to teach the art of criticism. But it is only 
by long practice that the art can be mastered, because our 
natural tendencies lead us astray. “For historical criticism 
is antagonistic to the normal bent of the mind.” “It is not 
a natural habit; it must be inculcated, and only becomes 
organic by dint of continued practice.” “Many centuries 
and whole eras of brilliant civilization had to pass away be¬ 
fore the first dawn of historical criticism was visible among 
the most intellectual peoples in the world.” Moreover, this 
criticism demands detachment; it has been peculiarly de¬ 
pressing in the present war to see how many eminent his¬ 
torians in different countries, even our own, have stultified 
themselves by neglecting the most ordinary rules of his¬ 
torical method. 
This last thought leads to a consideration of some of the 
present tendencies which are dangerous. First we may note 
