HISTORY. 107 HISTORY. becomes so large an element of the problem as to make it essentially ditfereni from the problems of the physical world, and for this reason history can never be an exact science. History depends upon human evidence, and its investigation must follow the laws jroverning the reception of human evidence. These are found to a considerable extent in the body of principles developed by jurisprudence for the re- ception of evidence in the courts. The historical material is contained in .several categories: (a) Remains — such as buildings, walls, roads, statues, pictures, medals, coins, implements — whatever, indeed, man has made and used and which may thus throw light upon his civilization and his deeds. These may be studied directly, when ac- cessible, or through the reproductions easily ob- tainable by means of modern processes. (b) Documents. Under this head are included oflicial and business papers and letters written with an immediate practical purpose. (c) Literatures. This class includes a great body of material of the highest value — the writ- ings through which are expressed the ideas of the peoples, their philosophy, poetry, science, and religion. (d) Traditions. Much of this class is pre- served in the literatures; much of it must be gathered from other sources. (e) Laws. These, especially public law, are found in codes and treatises, and are of great value in determining many questions. (f) ContCTuporary writings with historical purpose — annals, chronicles, biographies. Under these heads can be classified the original material on which secondary historical work, the written history of a nation or an age, is based and by examination of which its accuracy must be tested. This material may also be divided into two great classes of evidence — conscious and uncon- scious. It will be seen that some of this material must have been prepared consciously to influence the opinion of contemporary or succeeding genera- tions. In this class are proclamations, state- ments, writings, narratives, told with intention concerning events within the narrator's own knowledge, or reported to him by others. Such evidence must be taken with qualifications attach- ing to all ex-parte testimony. On the other hand, the evidence may be given unconsciously, as in documents of record, writings or other remains, prepared with no other purpose beyond that of direct utility. A striking example of this class of evidence is fomid in the little cylinders and tablets of clay, prcsen'ing in the business records, impressed upon them in cuneiform char- acters, so much of the social history of the Babylonians of thousands of years before the Christian Era. All these materials of human history must be sibjected to searching inquiry as to their original purpose, and the circum- stances under which they were made. The devel- opment of history into scientific form has been the work of .ages, and owes its final impulse to the great improvements in methods in the physical sciences during the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries, although it developed along with the development of the human society whose life it records. The historical idea re- quires for its existence a background and a con- sciousness on the part of society of itself and of its continuity; of its relations to a past Vol. X.— 8. and a present. The growth of this social self- con.sciousness has liecn a nuitter of time. It is interesting to notice, on the other hand, how the study of their history has sometimes aroused in a people the consciousness of their own national life, which before was dormant. An example of this may be found in the Balkan States, which were roused not many years ago into determined revolt against Turkish rule by the teaching of their national history through the efforts of a few patriotic scholars. The new outlook upon the natural world given by the physical sciences and the change in his- torical methods gave rise to a controversy in the last century, in which certain philosophical thinkers of the highest ability undertook to maintain that "human actions are governed by laws as fixed and regular as those which rule in the physical world." Auguste Comte, Henry Thomas Buckle, and Herbert Spencer are the distinguished sponsors of this theory. Buckle, in his History of CiviUzation in Enrjlnnd. the first volume of which was published in 1,S57, elaborated this idea with a profundity of learn- ing, but with much inconsistency of reasoning. Such literary historians as Charles Kingsley and James Anthony Froude entered the discussion on the other side, and .John Stuart Mill, in bis System of Logic, made a very sane and able contribution to it. The strongest and most ex- treme presentation of the opposite side of the controversy is, perhaps, that made by Froude in his lecture of 1864 on "The Science of History." He maintained with great eloquence that thd determination of human movements upon any basis of scientific accuracy wns impossible. Thi< old controversy is closed now in the light of a better understanding of what the science and scientific method really are. but it is of interest historically as marking one stage in the develop- ment of the science of history. The development of history down to the nine- teenth century may be traced through the work of a very few writers and scholars. The first of all historians was the Greek Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century B.C. He was, however, only a narrative writer, recording with great ac- curacy those events which came within the scope of his personal knowledge, but mingling with his narratives much which came to him only by hearsay, and to which he applied no critical canons. Thucydides, the next of the great his- torians, is justly estimated as one of the greatest historians of all time. He recorded events with remarkable conciseness, and first applied philo- sopliical reasoning to the historical narrative. Among narrative historians the accomplished Xenophon deserves a place. Polybius, with a wider outlook, followed in the footsteps of Thucyd- ides. Of the Romans, Cifsar, Livy, and Tacitus show a high development of the historical sense, the two former confining themselves to the nar- rative field, and the last claiming a place in the class of historians like Tliucydides, who en- deavored to find the meaning of history beneath the mere sequence of events. The historians of the later Roman Empire were, for the most part, apologists for, or eulogists of, the emperors who were their masters, and establish no landmark of importance. During the Middle Ages there was no historical writing worthy of the name in Europe. The historical writing of the time is contained in the annals and chronicles preserved
