things. Here we must admit that history does not offer an equal interest through the whole extent of time which it covers; there are remote generations whose traces are no longer visible in the world as it now is; for the purpose of explaining the political constitution of contemporary England, for example, the study of the Anglo-Saxon witangemot is without value, that of the events of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is all-important. The evolution of the civilised societies has within the last hundred years been accelerated to such a degree that, for the understanding of their present form, the history of these hundred years is more important than that of the ten preceding centuries. As an explanation of the present, history would almost reduce to the study of the contemporary period.
History is also indispensable for the completion of the political and social sciences, which are still in process of formation; for the direct observation of social phenomena (in a state of rest) is not a sufficient foundation for these sciences—there must be added a study of the development of these phenomena in time, that is, their history. This is why all the sciences which deal with man (linguistic, law, science of religions, political economy, and so on) have in this century assumed the form of historical sciences.
But the chief merit of history is that of being an instrument of intellectual culture; it is so in several ways. Firstly, the practice of the historical method of investigation, of which the principles have been sketched in the present volume, is very hygienic for the mind, which it cures of credulity. Secondly, history, by exhibiting to us a great number of differing societies, prepares us to understand