the great men of antiquity seem to us to
have been much more logical than our contemporaries are.

How are we to construct a formula for an event? The imperative need of
simplification causes us to combine under a single name an enormous mass
of minute facts which are perceived in the lump, and between which we
vaguely feel that there is a connection (a battle, a war, a reform).
The facts which are thus combined are such facts as have conduced to a
common result. That is how the common notion of an event arises, and
there is no more scientific conception to put in its place. Facts, then,
are to be grouped according to their consequences; those which have had
no visible consequences disappear, the others are fused into a certain
number of aggregates which we call events.

In order to describe an event, it is necessary to give precise
indications (I) of its character, (2) of its extent.

(I) By the character of an event we mean the features which distinguish
it from every other event, not merely the external conditions of date
and place, but the manner in which it occurred, and its immediate
causes. The following are the items of information which the formula
should contain. One or more men, in such and such mental states
(conceptions, motives of the action), working under such and such
material conditions (locality, instrument), performed such and such
actions, which had for their result such and such a modification. For
the determination of the motives of the actions, the only method is to
compare the actions, firstly, with the declarations of those who
performed them; secondly, with the interpretation of those who witnessed
their performance. There is often a doubt remaining: this is the field
of party polemics; every one attributes noble motives to the actions of
his own party and discreditable motives to those of the opposite party.
But actions described without any indication of motive would be
unintelligible.

(2) The extension of the event will be indicated both in space (the
place where it happened, and the region in which its immediate effects
were felt) and in time, the moment when its realisation began, and the
moment when the result was brought about.

V. Descriptive formulae relating to characters, being merely qualitative,
only give an abstract idea of the facts; in order to realise the place
they occupied in reality, quantity is necessary. It is not a matter of
indifference whether a given usage was