which seems unintelligible to him; whether it is a saying whose
import transcends his intelligence, such as the sayings of Christ
reported in the Gospels, or the answers made by Joan of Arc to questions
put to her in the course of her trial. But we must guard against judging
of the author's ideas by our own standards: when men who are accustomed
to believe in the marvellous speak of monsters, of miracles, of wizards,
there is nothing in these to contradict their expectations, and the
criterion does not apply.

VIII. We have at last reached the end of this description of the
critical operations; its length is due to the necessity of describing
successively operations which are performed simultaneously. We will now
consider how these methods are applied in practice.

If the text be one whose interpretation is debatable, the examination is
divided into two stages: the first comprises the reading of the text
with a view to the determination of the meaning, without attempting to
draw any information from it; the second comprises the critical study of
the facts contained in the document. In the case of documents whose
meaning is clear, we may begin the critical examination on the first
reading, reserving for separate study any individual passages of
doubtful meaning.

We begin by collecting the _general_ information we possess about the
document and the author, with the special purpose of discovering the
conditions which may have influenced the production of the document--the
epoch, the place, the purpose, the circumstances of its composition; the
author's social status, country, party, sect, family, interests,
passions, prejudices, linguistic habits, methods of work, means of
information, culture, abilities, and mental defects; the nature of the
facts and the mode of their transmission. Information on all these
points is supplied by the preparatory critical investigation of
authorship and sources. We now combine the different heads, mentally
applying the set of general critical questions; this should be done at
the outset, and the results impressed on the memory, for they will need
to be present to the mind during the remainder of the operations.

Thus prepared, we attack the document. As we read we mentally analyse
it, destroying all the author's combinations, discarding all his
literary devices, in order to arrive at the facts, which we formulate in
simple and precise language. We thus free ourselves from the deference