help thinking, too, that, in schools and places where the
young are trained, something might be gained by treating such books as
Plutarch's Lives not as history (for which they were never intended) but
as text-books of ethic, as examples of conduct, public or private. The
historian very properly furnishes the ethical student with material,
though it is not right to reckon the ethical student's judgment upon the
historian's facts as history in any sense. It is not an historian's
question, for instance, whether Napoleon was right or wrong in his
conduct at Jaffa, or Nelson in his behaviour at Naples; that is a matter
for the student of ethic or the religious dogmatist to decide: all that
the historian has to do is to get what conclusion he can out of the
conflict of evidence, and to decide whether Napoleon or Nelson actually
did that of which their enemies accused them, or, if he cannot arrive at
fact, to state probability, and the reasons that incline him to lean to
the affirmative or negative.

As to the possibility of a "philosophy of history," a real one, not the
mockeries that have long been discredited by scientific students, the
reader will find some pregnant remarks here in the epilogue and the
chapters that precede it. There is an absence of unreasonable optimism
in our authors' views. "It is probable that hereditary differences have
contributed to determine events; so that in part historic evolution is
produced by physiological and anthropologic causes. But history
furnishes no trustworthy process by which it may be possible to
determine the action of those hereditary differences between man and
man," _i.e._ she starts with races 'endowed' each with peculiarities
that make them 'disposed to act' somewhat differently under similar
pressure. "History is only able to grasp the conditions of their
existence." And what M. Seignobos calls the final problem--_Is evolution
produced merely by changed conditions?_--must according to him remain
insoluble by the legitimate processes of history. The student may accept
or reject this view as his notions of evidence prompt him to do. M.
Seignobos has at all events laid down a basis for discussion in
sufficiently clear terms.

As to the composition of the joint work we are told that M. Seignobos
has been especially concerned with the chapters that touch theory, and
M. Langlois with those that deal with practice. Both authors have
already proved their competence--M. Seignobos'