Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/181

Rh seek to demonstrate scientific propositions immediately from the sources. Surely we have questions to put to the past, problems whose solution will be of scientific value far beyond any epic recital. Anything approaching a complete philosophy of history is and long will be out of the question, but none the less we may even now deal in a small and humble and tentative way with generalizations and hypotheses, provided we never make them except to test them by the source material at our disposal and by rigorous scientific methods, and make them only of such extent as our original investigation can compass.

There is another reason why the historical investigator must take the initiative and address inquiries to the source material rather than count upon it for indication of "the logic of events" or for other direction and guidance. It is the scantiness and fragmentary character of the source material. If we had fairly complete records we might from a mere reading of them, from mere "study and reflection"—to use Monod's phrase—get a fairly complete picture, provided the mind could comprehend and digest so great a mass of data. But with things as they are a different method than that of mere open-mindedness and absorption is practically forced upon us. Hypothesis and analysis are called for. The fragments by themselves often suggest little or nothing; it is, at least as yet, impossible to reconstruct from them the original complex whole; it accordingly remains to take up point after point which we wish to know about man and the world and see how far the fragments will contribute to the solution of these simpler and partial problems. This is not to say that we shall take no hints from the source material as to the themes of our investigation. Where the fragments suggest some generalization, some hypothesis of value, the historian may well follow it up; where they do not, let him be the aggressor.

With such the aim of historical investigation, what shall be its method? Is present historical presentation adequate to portray this method? If not, what will be the new scientific presentation that will effect this? These are the questions that remain to be considered.

Since the historian is to ask definite questions of the past instead of indiscriminately collecting "facts," his method both in investigation and presentation will gain greatly in definiteness and unity. He will know what source material is essential and what not, since his inquiry furnishes a standard; Bernheim's historian had only the source material to tell him what source material was essential. The historian will not be at a loss for a plan by which he may conduct his investigation and order the presentation of his work, since he has a definite subject and also a definite method—to prove or to disprove. He will not be left to grapple with a theme as it may chance to present itself, to discover this or that phase or fragment, and to present these discoveries to his readers according to any plan that hits his fancy. He will