o deep an impression on his mind
that they may be permanently fixed in his memory."

These are the "positive" notions which, eighty years ago, were
considered indispensable to the general historian. At the same time
there was a confused idea that "in order to acquire a profound knowledge
of particular subjects" there were yet other useful branches of study.
"The subjects of which historians treat," says Daunou, "the details
which they occasionally light upon, require very extensive and varied
attainments." He goes on to particularise, observe in what terms: "very
often a knowledge of several languages, sometimes too some notion of
physics and mathematics." And he adds: "On these subjects, however, the
general education which we may assume to be common to all men of letters
is sufficient for the writer who devotes himself to historical
composition...."

All the authors who, like Daunou, have attempted to enumerate the
preliminary attainments, as well as the moral or intellectual aptitudes,
necessary for "writing history," have either fallen into commonplace or
pitched their requirements ridiculously high. According to Freeman, the
historian ought to know everything--philosophy, law, finance,
ethnography, geography, anthropology, natural science, and what not; is
not an historian, in point of fact, likely enough in the course of his
study of the past to meet with questions of philosophy, law, finance,
and the rest of the series? And if financial science, for example, is
necessary to a writer who treats of contemporary finance, is it less so
to the writer who claims to express an opinion on the financial
questions of the past? "The historian," Freeman declares, "may have
incidentally to deal with any subject whatever, and the more branches of
knowledge he is master of, the better prepared he is for his own work."
True, all branches of human knowledge are not equally useful; some of
them are only serviceable on rare occasions, and accidentally: "We could
hardly make it even a counsel of perfection to the historian to make
himself an accomplished chemist, on the chance of an occasion in which
chemistry might be of use to him in his study;" but other special
subjects are more closely related to history: "for example, geology and
a whole group of sciences which have a close connection with geology....
The historian will clearly do his own regular work better for being
master of them...."[46] The question has also been asked w