rt, if not the whole, of the documents bearing on a given
subject have been discovered and made available. Of two things one:
either these documents have been already subjected to critical
elaboration, or they are in the condition of raw material; this is a
point which must be settled by "bibliographical" researches, which also,
as we have already observed, form part of the inquiries which precede
the logical part of the work. In the first case, where the documents
have already gone through a process of elaboration, it is necessary to
be in a position to verify the accuracy of the critical work; in the
second case, where the documents are still raw material, the student
must do the critical work himself. In both cases certain antecedent and
auxiliary knowledge of a positive kind, _Vor-und Huelfskenntnisse_, as
they are called, are every whit as indispensable as the habit of
accurate reasoning; for if, in the course of critical work, it is
possible to go wrong through reasoning badly, it is also possible to go
wrong out of pure ignorance. The profession of a scholar or historian
is, moreover, similar in this respect to all other professions; it is
impossible to follow it without possessing a certain equipment of
technical notions, whose absence neither natural aptitude nor even
method can make good. In what, then, does the technical _apprenticeship_
of the scholar or the historian consist? Or, to employ language which,
though inappropriate, as we shall endeavour to show, is in more common
use: what, in addition to the knowledge of repertories, are the
"auxiliary sciences" of history?

Daunou, in his _Cours d'etudes historiques_,[45] has proposed a question
of the same kind. "What studies," says he, "will the intending historian
need to have gone through, what kinds of knowledge ought he to have
acquired, in order to begin writing a work with any hope of success?"
Before him, Mably, in his _Traite de l'etude de l'histoire_, had also
recognised that "there are preparatory studies with which no historian
can dispense." But on this subject Mably and Daunou entertained views
which nowadays seem singular enough. It is instructive to mark the exact
distance which separates their point of view from ours. "First of all,"
said Mably, "study the law of nature, public law, moral and political
science." Daunou, a man of great judgment, permanent secretary to the
Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, writing about 1820, divides