Page:Inaugural lecture on The Study of History.djvu/31

 search, too, for what you do not find, you will often come upon material which will be invaluable to you in some later exploration ten years hence. Every queer comer explored, every abandoned shaft sunk into some unfruitful stratum, has really been part of our training. It is only what we have found for ourselves that really lives for us: second-hand knowledge is useful for the general enquirer, for the 'man in the Schools'—it can be taught and well taught. First-hand knowledge is unteachable—it must be learnt for oneself—not from the lecture of the man who has been there before'. I hate to hear the historical beginner whining that he cannot go out into the world of history and find everything already ticketed and docketed and done up into neat parcels, ready for his immediate use. His moan is merely like that of the stupid undergraduate who comes back to you to complain that he can find nowhere in print the comparison between the strategy of Napoleon Bonaparte and of Frederic the Great which you have set him for an essay. If history could be automatically constructed, by putting before the student perfect bibliographies, from which he could find every possible fact that he could require, it would be (to my mind) a dreary business. Fortunately this danger is solving itself—bibliographies on some subjects have grown so enormous that they have become a hindrance rather than a help: what good is it to have 700 titles of monographs, of all varieties of intrinsic value and accessibility, flung in your face?

In short, it seems to me that zeal, insatiable curiosity, a ready mind to shape hypotheses, a sound judgement to test them, above all a dogged determination to work at all times and in all places, are the real requisites of the historian rather than any array of technical trainings