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INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY

customary to add, generally by way of supplement or appendix, a sketch of the "progress of the human mind." The expression "history of civilisation" appears before the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time German university professors, especially at Göttingen, were creating, in order to supply educational needs, the new form of the historical "manual," a methodical collection of carefully justified facts, with no literary or other pretensions. Collections of historical facts, made with a view to aid in the interpretation of literary texts, or out of mere curiosity in regard to the things of the past, had existed from ancient times; but the medleys of Athenæus and Aulus Gellius, or the vaster and better arranged compilations of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, are by no means to be compared with the "scientific manuals" of which the German professors then gave the models. These professors, moreover, contributed towards the clearing up of the vague, general notion which the philosophers had of "civilisation," for they applied themselves to the organisation of the history of languages, of literatures, of the arts, of religions, of law, of economic phenomena, and so on, as so many separate branches of study. Thus the domain of history was greatly enlarged, and scientific, that is, simple and objective, exposition began to compete with the rhetorical or sententious, patriotic or philosophical ideals of antiquity.

This competition was at first timid and obscure, for the beginning of the nineteenth century was marked by a literary renaissance which renovated historical literature. Under the influence of the romantic movement historians sought for more vivid methods of exposition than those employed by their predecessors, methods better adapted to strike the imagination and rouse the emotions of

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