TFTE FTISTORIANT'SCRAFT

' Ma,rc Bloch'0yINTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH R. STRAYER

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCI BY PETER PUTNAM

NE\M YORK . ALFRED ,{. KNOPF1953

50

sonally compiied. As a student of the present instant,I apply myself to the task of sounding public opinionon the important issues of the day. I ask questions' Inote, compare, and compute the answers. What do Ithen have but the rather awkwardly expressed ideaswhich my communicants have formulated as to whatthey believe they believe, or what they are willing toreual. These are the subiects of my experiments, but,whereas the physiologist who dissects a guinea pig seeswith his own eyes the lesion or abnormality which hasbeen the object of his search, I know the rnood of my"man in the street" only through the chart of it whichhe himself agrees to draw for me. Because the indi-vidual, narrowly restricted by his senses and power ofconcentration, never perceives more than a tiny patchof the vast tapestry of events, deeds, and words whichform the destinies of a group. and because, moreover'he possesses an irnmediate awareness of only his ownmentai state, all knowledge of mankind, to whatevertime it applies, will always derive a latge part of itsevidence from others. In this respect, the student ofthe present is scarcely any better off than the historianof the past.

The Historianls Craft.,,- . cause they think of hitory primarily in terms of events,,.'r 'sysr r ep!q_o--d.gs-gf a hisiory which, rightly or wrongly

(and it is immaterial at the moment) attaches an ex_treme importance to the exact reconstruction of theactions, words, or attitudes of a few personages,brought together for a relatively brief scene, in which,as in a classic tragedy, are marshaled all the forces ofthe critical moment: the day of a revolution, a battle,or a diplomatic interview. It is related that on Septem-ber z, t7gz, the head of the princess de Lamballe wasparaded on the end of a pike under the windows ofthe royal family. Is this true or false? M. pierre Caron,who has written an admirably honest book on theSeptember Massacres, does not venture an opinion.Had he been permitted to watch the ghastly ortegein person from a tower in the Temple, he would haveknown what to think-at least if, preserving his schol_arly detachment in these circumstances (as might beexpected), and properly mistrustful of his own mem_ory, he had further taken the precaution of making anote of his observations on the spot. Unquestionably,in such cases, the historian is mortified by comparinghis position with that of a reliable witness of n preserr"t: vnt. He is as if at the rear of a column, in which thene\rys travels from the head back through the ranks.It is not a good vantage-point from which to gathercorrect information. Not so very long ago, during a re-Iief march at night, I saw the word passed down the, length of a column in this manner: ilook out! Shell' holes to the,left!" The last man leceived it in the

But there is more. Is it certain that the observationof the past, even of the very remote past, is always "in-direct"?

H ist or i,cal O b s ero atio n

It is easy to see why this remoteness of the scholarfrom the object of his knowledge makes so strong animpression upon many historical theorists. It is be-

51

as far back as the third millennium before Christ, thecities of the lower Euphrates maintained trading re-lations with some very distant lands. The inferencemay be either true or false. However that may be, it isundeniable that it is an induction of the most classictype; it is founded upon the observation of a fact andthe word of another Person has absolutely nothing todo with it. But physit objects are far from being theonly ones which can be thus readily apprehended atfirsthand. A linguistic characteristic, a point of lawembodied in a text, a rite, as defined by a book of '.,ceremonial or rePtesented on a stele, are realities just las much as the flint, hewn of yore by the artisan of the ;,stone age-realities which we ourselves apprehend and ielaborate by a strictly personal effort of the intelli"

> gence. There is no need to appeal to any other humanmind as an interpreter. To revert to our analogy of amoment ago, it is not true that the historian can seewhat goes on in his laboratory only through the eyesof another pemon. To be sure, he never arrives untilafter the experiment has been concluded. But, underfavorable circumstances, the experiment leaves behindcertain residues which he can see with his own eyes.

It is therefore advisable to define the indisputablepeculiarities of historical observation in terms whichare both less ambiguous and more comPrehensive-

Its primary characteristic is the fact that knowledgeof all human activities in the past, as weli as of the

The Hi,storirs Craftgreater part of those in the present, is, as FranoisSimiand aptly phrased it, a knowledge of their tracks.Whether it is the bones immured in the Syrian forti-fications, a word whose form or use reveals a custom,.anarrative written by the witness of some scene, ancientor modern, what do we really mean by documenf,"If. itis not a "tack," as it were-the mark, perceptible tothe senses, which some pheno*"rrorr, irr-itsetf inacces-sibie, has left behind?

H t orical O b s ens ti,o n

It matters little whether the original object is by itsvery nature inaccessible to the senses, like an atomwhose trajectory is rendered visible in a Crookes tube,or whether through the effect of time it has only be_come so in the present, like the fern, rotting for thou_sands of years, whose imprint is left upon a lump ofcoal, or like those long-abandoned ceremonials whichare painted and explained upon the walls of Egyptiantemples. In either case, the process of reconstruction ,is the same, and every science ofiers a variety of ex_..amples of it.

&.

However, the fact that many explorers in every fieldare able to understand certain central phenomena onlyby means of other phenomena derived from them inthis manner by no means signifies that they all sharea perfect equality of methods. Like the physicists, theymay themselves be able to produce the appearance ofthese "tracks." On the other hand, they my be com_pelled to wait upon the caprice of forces over whichthey have no influence whatsoever. Depending on

,ri.li:t;.::l.n:ill

rr:

:l.ii

r:l::tt

58

lern of method. Still, the difierence is important, andit is only proper to examine the consequences.

The past is, by definition, a datum which nothingin the future will change. But the knowledge of thepast is something progressive which is constantly trans-forming and perfecting itself. Anyone who doubts thisneed only recall how much it has improved under our

The Hi,storiads Craft

^. very eyes in little more than a century. Vast areas ofmankind have emerged from the shadows. Egypt andChaldea have shaken ofi their shrouds. The lost citiesof central Asia have disclosed their now-unspoken lan-guages and long-extinct religions. A civilization, allunsuspected, has but lately risen from its grave uponthe banks of the Indus. That is not all, and the in-genuity of the scholars in further ransacking the li-braries or in opening new excavations on ancient sitesis neither the sole nor, perhaps, even the most effectivemeans of enriching our picture of the past. Hitherto-unknown techniques of investigation have also cometo light. We are more skillful than our predecessors inexamining languages for the evidence of customs andtools for the evidence of techniques. Above all, wehave learned how to probe more deeply in the analy-sis of social developments. The study of popular ritesand beliefs is barely sketching its first outlines. Eco-nomic history, which, not so long ago, Cournot didnot even think to incl.ude in his listing of the variousaspects of historical research, is only beginning to es-tablish itself.

i:.'rlili

lri!r:i-l::la

:ril',!.tli

ll,1

ln:r,fl.l

All this is certain. All of it ofiers us the most el:ten-sive hopes, but they are not unlimited hopes.'iThissense of virtually unlimited progress, granted to a sci-ence like chemistry, which is capable of_ creating evenits own subject matter, is refused to us. Ex-plorers ofthq'patare19.y9rquitefr.ee.Thep.4stiqtheirtyrant.It f orbi ds th em to kn ow .agy!h1 g. w-hich..it.has..not, iL,seli consci"ity -i otherwise, yielded to rhem. Weshail never establish a statistical table of prices for theMerovingian epoch, for there are no documents whichrecord these prices in sufficient number. We shallnever be able to get inside the minds of the men ofeleventh-century Europe, for example, as well as 'wecan those of the contemporaries of Pascal or Voltaire,because, in place of their private letters or confessions, 'we have only a few bad biographies, written in a con-ventional style, Owing to this gap, one entire segmentof our history necessarily assumes the rather anemic raspect of a world without individuals. Bu.t we mustnot grumble too much. We poor adepts of the yung'sciences of man are often laughed at, but, in our strictsubmission to an inflexible fate, we are no worse offthan many of our confreres in the older and safer disci-plines. Such is the common lot of ali studies calling forthe examination of past phenomena. The prehistorianwho lacks written records is no more incapable of re-constructing the rituals of the stone age than is thepaleontologist (I suppose) of reconstructing the glandsof internal secretion of the plesiosaurus whose skele-ton alone still remains. It is always disagreeable to

Htorical Obseraation 59

62

even that of Niebuhr with any of those short sum_maries we read today. The former draw the heart oftheir matter from Livy, Suetonius, or Florus. The lat-ter are constructed in large measure out of inscriptions,papy, and coins. Only in this way could whole sec_tions of the past have been reconstructed. This is trueof all prehistory, as well as of aknost ail economic his-tory and almost all history of social structures. Even inthe present, who among us would not prefer to get holdof a few secret chancellery papers or some confidentialmilitary reports, to having all the newspapers of r93gor 1939?

The Historian's Craft

It is not that this sort of document is any less sub_ject to errors or falsehoods than the others. There areplenty of fraudulent bulls, and neither all ambassa-dorial accounts nor all business letters tell the truth.But this kind of distortion, if it exists, at least, has notbeen especially designed to deceive posterity. More_over, these tracks which the past unwittingly leavesall along its trail do more than simply permit us to fillin the narrative where it is missing and to check itwhere its truthfulness is suspected. They protect ourstudies from a peril more deadly then eithei ignoranceor inaccuracy: that of an incurable sclerosis. Indeed,without their aid, every time the historian turned hisattention to the generations gone by, he would be_come the inevitable prey of the same prejudices, falseinhibitions, and myopias which had plagued the visionof those same generations. For example, the medieval_

ists would accord but a trivial significance to commu-nal development, under the pretext that the writersof the Middle Ages did not discuss it freely with theirpublic, or would disregard the mighty force of religiouslife for the good reason that it occupied a much lessimportant place in contemporary narrative iiteraturethan the wars of the barons. In a word, to resort to afavorite figure of Michelet's, history would becomeless the ever-daring explorer of the ages past than theeternally unmoving pupii of their "chronicles."

Moreover, even when most anxious to bear witness,that which the text tells us expressly has ceased to be,the primary object of our attention today. Ordinarily,jwe prick up our ears far more eagerly when 'ffe re

i permitted to overhear what vvas never intended to be\", said. What do we find most instructive in the works

of Saint-Simon? Is it their frequently fictitious news ofthe events of the reign, or the remarkable light whichthe Memoirs throw upon the mentality of a greatnoble at the court of the Sun King? At least threefourths of the lives of the saints of the high MiddleAges can teach us nothing concrete about those piouspersonages whose careers they pretend to describe. If,on the other hand, we consult them as to the way oflif9

. o.r- th o,u g !,p"".q1!ef -_tg, "t g*gpo ch in wh ich th eyry1e written (all thing. wich th-e bio.gi'fi'i-f the

saint had not the least intention of revealing), weshall find them invaluabie. Despite our inevitable sub-oidination to the past, we have freed ourselves attreast to the extent that, eternally condemned to know

-.r'

Htorical Obseraation

,..,

66 The Historian's Craftary, the explorer is weil a'ware that he will not follow itexactly. Without it, however, he would risk wander'ing perpetually at random.

The variety of historical evidence is nearly infinite'Everything that man says or writes, everything that he*aks, evrything he touches can and ought to teach

,us about him. It is curious to note how many people,,r unacquainted with our wotk, underestimate the true!.extent of its possibilities. It is because they persist in

an idea of our science which dates back to the timewhen we scarceiy knew how to read even the inten-tional evdence. In reproaching "traditional history,"Paul Valry has cited "the conquest of the earth" byelectricity, as an exampie of one of those "notablephenomena" which it neglects, despite the fact thatihey have "more meanng and greater possibilities ofshaping our immediate future than all the politicalevents combined." For this, he deserves our heartiestapplause. It is unfortunate, but all too true that thisvast subject has still received no serious treatment'However, apparently led astray by an excess of severityto excuse the very fault which he has iust condemned,Valry adds that this phenomenon must of necessityelude the historian because, he argues, there are nodocuments which refer to it specifically. This time,shifting from the scholar to the science, he lodges hiscomplaint at the wrong door' Who believes that theelecirical companies have no archives, no records ofconsumption, no charts of the enlargement of their

networks? The truth is that the historians until nowhave simply neglected to question these documenis.!e1a1nly, they are very rnuch to blame, unless thefault lies with the custodians of the archives, possiblytoo jealous of their precious treasures. Have ptierrce.History is not yet what it ought to be. That is no rea_son to make history as it can be the scapegoat for thesins which belong to Ua history alone.

Marvelous as is the diversiiy of our materials, it 1,rnevertheless creates a difficulty so serious as to rank ramong the three or four outstanding paradoxes of the .,,historical profession.It would be sheer fantasy to imagine that for eachhistorical problem there is a unique"type of documentwith a specific sort of use. On th co"trary, the deeperthe research, the more the light of the evidence must

converge from sources of many different kinds. Whatreligious historian would be stisfied by examini ng ^ u

few theological tracts or hymnals He knows full wellthat the painting and sculpture of sanctuary walls andthe arrangement and fumiihings of tombs have at leastas much to tell him about dead beliefs and feelings asathousand contemporary manuscripts. Our knowldgeof the Germanic invasions has derived as much fromthe archology of tombs and place-nmes as it h;; -'from the examination of chartrs and chronicles. As we approach our own times, the requirements change -without becoming less exacting. T; understand mod_ :ern society, is it enough merely to plunge into readingparliamentary debates or cabinet pp.rr"l Is it not alsoI

H st ori.c al Ob s ens atio n

il,:lt

liiii:!

70

are certainly lacking in romantic glamor. Let us sup-pose that I have become duly interested in the historyof the cult of the saints, but that I am ignorant of theBibtotheca Hagiagahica Latina of the BollandistFathers. It would be difficult for anyone who is not anexpert to imagine the amount of stupidly useless effortwhich this gap in my mental equipment would inevit-ably cost me. What is truly regrettable is not that wemust stock our iibraries with a considerable quantityof those tools, whose very enumeration, subject by sub-iect, belongs to special books of orientation- It israther that there are still not enough of them, especiallyfor the most recent periods; that their composition,particularly in France, has conformed only by excep-ton to a rational and comprehensive plan; and, finally,that the task of keeping them up to date has been toooften abandoned either to the caprice of individualsor to the ill-advised parsimony of a few publishinghouses. The first volume of mile Molinier's admirable

The Historiars Craft ,uil,!r

Sources de l'Histoire de Franc has not been revisedsince its first appearance in r9or. That simple fact is initself a severe indictment. Granted that instruments

'"o not create science, nevertheless a society which pre-tends to respect the sciences ought not to neglect their

.-instruments. Nor would it be wise to rely entirely uponacademic bodies for these instruments, for their meth'ods of recruiting, favoring seniority and orthodoxscholarship, do not particularly incline them to a

, spirit of enterprise. Our War College and Generallstrf are not the only institutions in France which have

preserved the mentality of the oxcart in the age of theautomobile..

Such guides, however well made, however abundant,would be of little aid to the worker who had no pre_liminary idea of the terrain to be explored. Desiitewhat the beginners sometimes seem to imagine, dcu-ments do not suddenly materialize, in one plr.. o, nrr-

'*olh.., as if by some mysterious decree o the gods.""Their presence or absence in the depths of this ar-chive or that library are due to human causes which

"''.by no means elude analysis. The.pro-_blems posed bythqi -transrnission, far from having impitance ontyfor the techlicl eirts, "r. *oit iniimately con_nected with the life of the past, for what is here atstake is nothing less than the passing down of memoryfrom one generation to another. In historical works oia serious nture, the author generally lists the files of

H istorical Ob seraati,on

,, archives he has examined and the printed collections,. .l: hr t_ us ed. That,.i-s-.. 4!!. .v,e-y,we. J1,, ^Uu-- 11 ;s not enough.i Every historical book worthy of the "a ught tol, .t|;j:trd. a_chapter, or if one prf.rr, a series of paragraphs- inse,rted at turning points in the developmnt, ncnmight almost be entitled: ..Ho\ry can I know what I

it"am about to say?" I am persuaded that even the lay:''t reader would experience an actual intellectual pleasrrre,:' in examining these "confessions.', The sight of an in-'.r vestigation, with its successes and reverses, is seldom. boring. It is the ready-made article which is cold and ,i:dull.

7L

:.,, : S orn'etirnes I I teceive visits'r frorr : people,who -wish : towrite the history of their village. R.eguiarly, I,give'themthe : foll,owing I stan dar'd :adice; which' I shall here' sim -pli f y, only- ar little in, or.der to I avoid, the irrelevarit I shol'arly' 6"i1t.riiExcept i,n recent tires;' peasant com-munitiesr have r rareiy ha d any, archivesi, ilhe; seigrieureson the ;otherr , hand;, 's,, 'lel,ativeiy: :well-organized, , andlasting'enterprises,:'usual'kept ;their PaPers if rom ;earlytimes.:'Fol t11 16, petiod rpriol tor rr 789;therrefore', r,fl despeeally:for,ther,most ancient timeC"r the I principldocur,nents:whieh:you'can:hope,to ,user wiil ibe of , seirgneurialrorigin.,,The, reslt is'that ;the,fi rstr question youwill have to ranswel,' and,upon which almost everythinghinges; is thiSl,Who'was the seigneur.,of the'rtorn'int' 78g?.t l',( hctua,1ly,,it is not at all'irnprbable ;tha't therewere, sevral, seigeurs, aL the' sane r timer,saringl,thviltrage between thern;, :but.w;shall discard thisrsup-positioii r in ,the , interest ;of ;brevity.' ): ,ri'Three i eventali.ties.' are'conceivable. I The, seigneury :, could''have i beilonged to:a, church;, to a layman'who'emigratedldtrinithe, Revolution; I or,, . to:,-..rlayrta''. i who'did',not', emi'grate; The firstr instance is'by'all :odds' the mostr' favor:able j The,chairces .are,t'hat the recordsi are',both olderand, better,'.kept.r -They, were, certainly','confis cated' rint7 go,:,a\ong, with',the,'trand,,,unde,r, the.'Civil"Constitu'tion of,,th,:Cler,gy. Since'''the) '.wee rthe:icarried tos6e, publi,,place, we, have : teason rto, .hoper :thab theyre' sti'11., theie,today;:more: orI-less, intct,:'and .at: tlledisposal of scholars. The hypothesis of the emigr.risalso promising. In this instance, too, the records should

'The Historianis Crft1i',:.,:l

'r:li;l

rllrjl,l'::a,t

.::r,t-il

,ifrli;

tt.6t

,&,'..:l

lii.irPlJ

.,,?l:i3ili:tal!:ta.

rliitr::llli':illll:'.,l1l

i:r,il

:w:irul

:':ll:$trl::r..]*..:';t

have been seized and transferred, although the outsidechance of their willful destruction, as a vestige of ahatred regime, is rather more to be feared. The lastpossibility remains. It might prove infinitely trouble-some. The former nobles, if they dirl not leave France,or in some other way fall afoul the laws of public safety,were not at all disturbed in their property. Of course,they lost their seigneurial rights, because these hadbeen universally abolished, but they kept all their per-sonatr property and, consequently, their business papers.Since they were never confiscated by the state, thepapers we are seeking, in this third case, met the corn-mon fate of all family papers. Even if they have notbeen iost, eaten by rats, or scattered by the caprice ofsale or inheritance through the attics of three or fourhouses on different estates, there is nothing to obligetheir present owners to let you see them.',

I have cited this example, because it seems to meentirely typical of the conditions which frequentlv de-termine and limit documentation. A closer analysiswill not be without interest.

We have just witnessed the revoutionary confisca-tions playing the role of a deity who often favors thescholar: the goddess_ _a,strophe. Innumerable Ro-man munciiahave been transformed into banal littleItalian villages, from which the archologist unearthssome few vestiges of antiquity with difficulty. Only theeruption of Vesuvius preserved Pompeii.

Certainly, the great disasters have not consistently

Htorical Obseroation

rti l

74

served history. The invaluable papers of the imperialRoman bureaucracy, as well as heaps of literary andhistoriographical manuscripts, were engulfed in thedisorder of the Invasion. Before our very eyes, twoworld wars have razed monuments and storehouses ofarchives from a soil steeped in a glorious tradition.'Nevermore shall we be able to leaf through the lettersof the merchants of ancient Ypres. During the rout, Isaw the order book of an army intentionally burnt.

Nevertheless, the peaceable continuitv of social ex-istence is much less favorable to the transmission ofmemory than is sometirnes supposed. Revoiutionsforce the doors of safes, and put ministers to flight be-fore they have had time to burn their secret papers.In early judicial archives, the bankruptcy records yieldup to us the pape of business concerns which, hadthey been permitted to live out a profitable and honor-able existence, would inevitably have turned over thecontents of their files to the pulp machines. Thanksto the admirable perrnanence of monastic institutions,the abbey of St. Denis still preserved in r789 the char-ters which had been granted to it by the Merovingiankings a thousand years before. Yet it is in the NationalArchives that we read them toclay. Had the monks of\St. Denis survived the revolution, is it certain that they llwould permit us to rummage through their coffers?'Not very certain, I fear, since the Company of fesusdoes not permit the profane an access to its collec-tions, without which so many problems of modernhistory will always remain hopelessly obscure, and the

The Historian's Craft

t'

Bank of France does not invite experts on the FirstEmpire to examine even its dustiest records. Indeed,thg tfilii ?l !t " secre! -9-c,i9!i i inherent in all cor-p,9-,rati9$:.Here it is that the hiitorian of the present ',,finds himself plainly at a disadvantage: he is almostt1liy {epiivd

" i- itrse -unlntnlio-nat confidences.For compensation, it is true, he has at his disposal theindiscretions which his friends whisper in his ear.Their intelligence, alas, is difficult to distingush fromgossip. A g9o-d c-alaclysm suits our business better. u,.''

So it will be, at least, untit soit/ bgins to organizea rational seif-knowledge by controlling its records, in_stead of depending on calamities for its information.To do so, it must come to grips with the two principlesresponsible for forgetfulness and ignorance: that neg_ r'ligence which loses documents; and, even more dan-gerous, that passiqn_for secrecy-diplomatic secrecy, ,business secrecy, familyicrecy-which hides or de- ''stroys them. It is natural that the notarv should be.for-bidden to reveal his client's transactions. But the laws

, . which permit him to shroud the contracts of his great-" grandfather's clients in the same impenetrableLys-tery-whereas, nothing strictly hinders his letting theirpapers turn to dust-are truly antediluvian. The mo-tives which prompt the majority of great corporationsto refuse to make public statistics absolutely indispen-sabtre for the sound conduct of the national ".orr*yare seldom respectable. Our civilization will take animmense forward stride on the day when concealment,raised to a rule of action and aimost to a bourgeois

H istorical Ob sera ati,on 75

tovirtue, shall give way to the desire for information,which is necessarily the desire to exchange informa-tion.

But let us get back to our village. The circumstanceswhich, in this particular instance, have determinedthe loss or the preservation, the accessibility or the in-accessbility of the evidences have their origins in his-torical forces of a general nature. They present no fea-ture which is not perfectly intelligible, but they arestripped of all logical connection with the object ofthe inquiry even though the result of that inquiry isfound to depend upon them. For it is not immediatelyclear why, for example, the study of a little rural com-munity in the Middle Ages should be more or lessinformative, according as its owner, several centuriesIater, should or should not have taken it into his headto join the forces assembling at Coblenz. Nothing ismore prevalent than this paradox. If we know infinitelymore about Roman Egypt than about Gaul in the sameperiod, it is not because we are more interested in theEgyptians than in the Gallo-Romans: rather, it is thatthe dryness, the sand, and the rites of mummificationhave there preserved writings which the climate andcustoms of the Occident condemned to rapid destruc-tion. The causes which make for success or failure nthe search for documents ordinarily have nothing incommon with the reasons which render these docu-ments desirable: this inevitable element of the irra-tional imparts to our research a tinge of that inner

The Historian's Craft

tragedy in which, perhaps, so many creations of themind discover not only their limitations but one ofthe secret reasons for their failure.

Again, in the example cited above, the fate of thedocuments, village by village, once the decisive factswere known, became almost predictable. Such is notalways the case. Sometimes the result depends on thefinal intertwining of so many independent lines ofcausation that all prediction proves impossible. I knowthat four successive conflagratiorrr, nnd th.r, a plunder_ing, devastated the archives of the ancient aUUey otSaint Benot-sur-Loire. How, on this basis, .ouid Iguess in advance what sort of papers these ravages havechosen to spare? What has been called the mlgrationof_ manuscripts is, in itself, an extremely inteiestingsubiect of study. The progress of a literary worf,through the libraries, the execution of copies, nd thecare or negligence of librarians and copyists fully cor-respond to the vicissitudes and interplay of the cuituralmain streams of real life. But could even the best-in-formed scholar have predicted, prior to the discovery,that the sole manuscript of Tacitus' Cermana *ooidcome up high and dry in the sixteenth century in themonastery of Herzfeld? In a word, at the bottom of{nearly every search for documents there is a residue ofthe unexpected and, hence, of the fortuitous. A fellow -worker, whom I knew well, once told me this story:On a shell-torn beach at Dunkerque, he was awaitingadoubtful rescue without betraying too much imfa-tience when one of his comrades addresseC him with a

Historical Ob sercati,on

78 The Hi,storian's Craftlook of arnazement. "Extraordinary! You don't evenseem to mind this awful uncertainty!" My friendcould have answered that, despite the popular prej-udice, the mental climate of researcir is not so un-sympathetic to ready acceptance of the lottery of fate.

A whle ago \,ve asked whether there is an antithesisof technique between knowledge of the past and ofthe present. The answer has already been given. Cer-tainly, the explorers of the present and those of remotertimes have each their particuar way of handling theirtools. Moreover, both liave their advantages, depend-ing on the particular case. The forrner have a moretangible grasp of life; but the latter in their investiga-tions command means which are often denied to thefirst. Thus, the dissection of a cadaver discloses to thebiologist many secrets which the study of a living sub-ject would fail to reveal, but is mute about many otherswhich are evident only in the iiving body. But, towhatever age of mankind the scholar turns, the meth-ods of observation remain almost unifonnly dependentupon "tracks," and are, therefore, fundamentaily the

" same. So, too, as we shall see, are those critical ruleswhich observation must obey if it is to be fruitfutr.

,, [79], CTTAPTER III

l. An Outline of the Elistory of the Critical,,, Il[ethod,T4r ruosr naTve,,poligg-mgl .!Lo-yl. t,at a witness' st'm; i"ys be taken."r hir.*;; ;"" -if^;;: does not always take full advantage of this theoretical,t knowledge. Similarly, it has been many a day since: men first took it into their heads not to accept all his_' torical evidence blindly. An experience almost as old,-l as mankind has taught us that more than one manu-

.,,, script has falsified its date or origin, that all the ac-:r counts are not true, and that even the physical evi_-. _

dences can be faked. In the Middle ages, in the face,., of an abundance of forgeries, doubt was frequently a.', latural defensive reflex. "With ink, anyone can write

anything." Thus exclaimed an eleventh-centurv coun-try squrre of Lorraih in feffeC t Some monks who,, had armed themselves in a lawsuit against him withdocumentary proofs. The Donation of Constantine_l,r that extraordinary literary concoction which a Roman

,,,, cleric of the eighth century ascribed to the first Chris-r. tian emperor-was contested, three centuries later, in,'; the circle of the eminently pious Otto III. False relics

:ii;

:t:lill..rrl.,t*

:at.:,a-/tl

.li':*

*i.,l..;

*t,t:],l

)a:::!iiL

,filil

fl::lii:

have been hunted down almost from the first.However, skepticism on principle is neither a more

):ta

ta\