rrors of fact arising from
inattention, but it is more exposed than any other study to errors due
to that mental confusion which produces incomplete analyses and
fallacious reasonings.... Historians would advance fewer affirmations
without proof if they had to analyse each one of their affirmations;
they would commit themselves to fewer false principles if they made it a
rule to formulate all their principles; they would be guilty of fewer
fallacies if they were obliged to set out all their arguments in logical
form."[64]

_SECTION I.--EXTERNAL CRITICISM_

CHAPTER II

TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Let us suppose that an author of our own day has written a book: he
sends his manuscript to the printer; with his own hand he corrects the
proofs, and marks them "Press." A book which is printed under these
conditions comes into our hands in what is, for a document, a very good
condition. Whoever the author may be, and whatever his sentiments and
intentions, we can be certain--and this is the only point that concerns
us at present--that we have before us a fairly accurate reproduction of
the text which he wrote. We are obliged to say "fairly accurate," for if
the author has corrected his proofs badly, or if the printers have not
paid proper attention to his corrections, the reproduction of the
original text is imperfect, even in this specially favourable case.
Printers not unfrequently make a man say something which he never meant
to say, and which he does not notice till too late.

Sometimes it is required to reproduce a work the author of which is
dead, and the autograph manuscript of which cannot be sent to the
printer. This was the case with the _Memoires d'outre-tombe_ of
Chateaubriand, for example; it is of daily occurrence in regard to the
familiar correspondence of well-known persons which is printed in haste
to satisfy the curiosity of the public, and of which the original
manuscript is very fragile. First the text is copied; it is then set up
by the compositor from the copy, which comes to the same thing as
copying it again; this second copy is lastly, or ought to be, collated
(in the proofs) with the first copy, or, better still, with the
original, by some one who takes the place of the deceased author. The
guarantees of accuracy are fewer in this case than in the first; for
between the original and the ultimate reproduction there is one
intermediary the more (the manuscript copy), and it may be that the
o