possessed nuns of Loudun. But history cannot
aid the progress of the direct sciences. It is kept at a distance from
reality by its indirect means of information, and must accept the laws
that are established by those sciences which come into immediate contact
with reality. In order to reject one of these laws new direct
observations are necessary. Such revolutions are possible, but they must
be brought about from within. History has no power to take the
initiative in them.

The solution is not so clear in the case of facts which do not harmonise
with a body of historical knowledge or with the sciences, still in the
embryonic stage, which deal with man. It depends on the opinion we form
as to the value of such knowledge. We can at least lay down the
practical rule that in order to contradict history, psychology, or
sociology, we must have very strong documents, and this is a case which
hardly ever occurs.

BOOK III

_SYNTHETIC OPERATIONS_

CHAPTER I

GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION

The criticism of documents only yields isolated facts. In order to
organise them into a body of science it is necessary to perform a series
of synthetic operations. The study of these processes of historical
construction forms the second half of Methodology.

The mode of construction cannot be regulated by the ideal plan of the
science we desire to construct; it depends on the materials we have at
our disposal. It would be chimerical to formulate a scheme which the
materials would not allow us to carry out; it would be like proposing to
construct an Eiffel tower with building-stones. The fundamental defect
of philosophies of history is that they forget this practical necessity.

I. Let us begin by considering the materials of history. What is their
form and their nature? How do they differ from the materials of other
sciences?

Historical facts are derived from the critical analysis of the
documents. They issue from this process in the form to which analysis
has reduced them, chopped small into individual statements; for a
single sentence contains several statements: we have often accepted some
and rejected others; each of these statements represents a fact.

Historical facts have the common characteristic of having been taken
from documents; but they differ greatly among themselves.

(1) They represent phenomena of very different nature. From the same
document we derive facts bearing on handwriting