liant civilisation had to pass away before the
first dawn of criticism was visible among the most intellectual peoples
in the world. Neither the orientals nor the middle ages ever formed a
definite conception of it.[62] Up to our own day there have been
enlightened men who, in employing documents for the purpose of writing
history, have neglected the most elementary precautions, and
unconsciously assumed false generalisations. Even now most young
students would, if left to themselves, fall into the old errors. For
criticism is antagonistic to the normal bent of the mind. The
spontaneous tendency of man is to yield assent to affirmations, and to
reproduce them, without even clearly distinguishing them from the
results of his own observation. In every-day life do we not accept
indiscriminately, without any kind of verification, hearsay reports,
anonymous and unguaranteed statements, "documents" of indifferent or
inferior authority? It takes a special reason to induce us to take the
trouble to examine into the origin and value of a document on the
history of yesterday; otherwise, if there is no outrageous improbability
in it, and as long as it is not contradicted, we swallow it whole, we
pin our faith to it, we hawk it about, and, if need be, embellish it in
the process. Every candid man must admit that it requires a violent
effort to shake off _ignavia critica_, that common form of intellectual
sloth, that this effort must be continually repeated, and is often
accompanied by real pain.

The natural instinct of a man in the water is to do precisely that which
will infallibly cause him to be drowned; learning to swim means
acquiring the habit of suppressing spontaneous movements and performing
others instead. Similarly, criticism is not a natural habit; it must be
inculcated, and only becomes organic by dint of continued practice.

Historical work is, then, pre-eminently critical; whoever enters upon it
without having first been put on his guard against his instinct is sure
to be drowned in it. In order to appreciate the danger it is well to
examine one's conscience and analyse the causes of that _ignavia_ which
must be fought against till it is replaced by a critical attitude of
mind.[63] It is also very salutary to familiarise oneself with the
principles of historical method, and to analyse the theory of them, one
by one, as we propose to do in the present volume. "History, like every
other study, is chiefly subject to e