s? How
are they to be grouped to make history? Whoever occupies himself with
history performs, more or less unconsciously, complicated operations of
criticism and construction, of analysis and synthesis. But beginners,
and the majority of those who have never reflected on the principles of
historical methodology, make use, in the performance of these
operations, of instinctive methods which, not being, in general,
rational methods, do not usually lead to scientific truth. It is,
therefore, useful to make known and logically justify the theory of the
truly rational methods--a theory which is now settled in some parts,
though still incomplete in some points of capital importance.

The present "Introduction to the Study of History" is thus intended, not
as a summary of ascertained facts or a system of general ideas on
universal history, but as an essay on the method of the historical
sciences.

We proceed to state the reasons why we have thought such a work
opportune, and to explain the spirit in which we have undertaken to
write it.

I

The books which treat of the methodology of the historical sciences are
scarcely less numerous, and at the same time not in much better favour,
than the books on the Philosophy of History. Specialists despise them. A
widespread opinion is expressed in the words attributed to a certain
scholar: "You wish to write a book on philology; you will do much better
to produce a book with some good philology in it. When I am asked to
define philology, I always answer that it is what I work at."[4] Again,
in reference to J. G. Droysen's _Precis of the Science of History_, a
certain critic expressed an opinion which was meant to be, and was, a
commonplace: "Generally speaking, treatises of this kind are of
necessity both obscure and useless: obscure, because there is nothing
more vague than their object; useless, because it is possible to be an
historian without troubling oneself about the principles of historical
methodology which they claim to exhibit."[5] The arguments used by these
despisers of methodology are strong enough in all appearance. They
reduce to the following. As a matter of fact, there are men who
manifestly follow good methods, and are universally recognised as
scholars or historians of the first order, without having ever studied
the principles of method; conversely, it does not appear that those who
have written on historical method from the logical point of view have in
co