o the great majority of French
readers. This is enough to justify our undertaking to write a book of
our own, instead of simply recommending the book of Professor
Bernheim.[18]

II

This "Introduction to the Study of History" does not claim, like the
_Lehrbuch der historischen Methode_, to be a treatise on historical
methodology.[19] It is a sketch in outline. We undertook its
composition, at the beginning of the scholastic year 1896-97, in order
that the new students at the Sorbonne might be warned what the study of
history is and ought to be.

Long experience has taught us the necessity of such warnings. The
greater part of those who enter upon a career of historical study do so,
as a matter of fact, without knowing why, without having ever asked
themselves whether they are fitted for historical work, of the true
nature of which they are often ignorant. Generally their motives for
choosing an historical career are of the most futile character. One has
been successful in history at college;[20] another feels himself drawn
towards the past by the same kind of romantic attraction which, we are
told, determined the vocation of Augustin Thierry; some are misled by
the fancy that history is a comparatively easy subject. It is certainly
important that these irrational votaries should be enlightened and put
to the test as soon as possible.

Having given a course of lectures, to novices, by way of "Introduction
to the Study of History," we thought that, with a little revision, these
lectures might be made useful to others besides novices. Scholars and
professed historians will doubtless have nothing to learn from this
work; but if they should find in it a stimulus to personal reflection on
the craft which some of them practise in a mechanical fashion, that
would be something gained. As for the public, which reads the works of
historians, is it not desirable that it should know how these works are
produced, in order to be able to judge them better?

We do not, therefore, like Professor Bernheim, write exclusively for
present and future specialists, but also for the public interested in
history. We thus lay ourselves under an obligation to be as concise, as
clear, and as little technical as possible. But to be concise and clear
on subjects of this kind often means to appear superficial. Commonplace
on the one hand, obscurity on the other: these, as we have already seen,
are the evils between which we have the sorry privi