danger
of having to work a second time through materials already dealt with.
The regular observance of these maxims goes a great way towards making
scientific historical work easier and more solid. The possession of a
well-arranged, though incomplete, collection of slips has enabled M. B.
Haureau to exhibit to the end of his life an undeniable mastery over the
very special class of historical problems which he studied.[103]

CHAPTER V

CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND SCHOLARS

The sum of the operations described in the preceding chapters
(restoration of texts, investigation of authorship, collection and
classification of verified documents) constitutes the vast domain of
external criticism, or critical scholarship.

The public at large, with its vulgar and superficial standards, has
nothing but disdain for the whole of critical scholarship. Some of its
votaries, on the other hand, are inclined to exalt it unduly. But there
is a happy medium between these extremes of over-appreciation and
contempt.

The crude opinion of those who pity and despise the minute analysis of
external criticism hardly deserves refutation. There is only one
argument for the legitimacy and honourable character of the obscure
labours of erudition, but it is a decisive argument: it rests on their
indispensability. No erudition, no history. "_Non sunt contemnenda quasi
parva_," says St. Jerome, "_sine quibus magna constare non
possunt_."[104]

On the other hand, scholars by profession, in their zeal to justify
their pride in their work, are not content with maintaining its
necessity; they allow themselves to be carried away into an exaggeration
of its merit and importance. It has been said that the sure methods of
external criticism have raised history to the dignity of a science, "of
an exact science;" that critical investigations of authorship "enable
us, better than any other study, to gain a profound insight into past
ages;" that the habit of criticising texts refines or even confers the
"historical sense." It has been tacitly assumed that external criticism
is the whole of historical criticism, and that beyond the purgation,
emendation, and classification of documents there is nothing left to do.
This illusion, common enough among specialists, is too crude to need
express refutation; the fact is, that it is the psychological criticism
which deals with interpretation and examines into the good faith and
accuracy of authors that has, bet