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nydus/Introduction to the Study of HistoryPublic
Page 382 of 400
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY

  1. [168] Primitive Greece has been studied in the Homeric poems. Mediæval private life has been reconstructed principally from the chansons de gestes. (See C. V. Langlois, Les Traditions sur l'histoire de la société française au moyen âge d'après les sources littéraires, in the Revue historique, March-April, 1897.)
  2. [169] Most historians refrain from rejecting a legend till its falsity has been proved, and if by chance no document has been preserved to contradict it, they adopt it provisionally. This is how the first five centuries of Rome are still dealt with. This method, unfortunately still too general, helps to prevent history from being established as a science.
  3. [170] For the logical justification of this principle in history see C. Seignobos, Revue Philosophique, July-August 1887. Complete scientific certitude is only produced by an agreement between observations made on different methods; it is to be found at the junction of two different paths of research.
  4. [171] This case is studied and a good example given by Bernheim, Lehrbuch, p. 421.
  5. [172] It is hardly necessary to enter a caution against the childish method of counting the documents on each side of a question and deciding by the majority. The statement of a single author who was acquainted with a fact is evidently worth more than a hundred statements made by persons who knew nothing about it. The rule has been formulated long ago: Ne numerentur, sed ponderentur.
  6. [173] Cf. supra, p. 94.
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