hether
"history is one of those studies anciently called _umbratiles_, for
which all that is wanted is a quiet mind and habits of industry," or
whether it is a good thing for the historian to have mingled in the
turmoil of active life, and to have helped to make the history of his
own time before sitting down to write that of the past. Indeed, what
questions have not been asked? Floods of ink have been poured out over
these uninteresting and unanswerable questions, the long and fruitless
debating of which has done not a little to discredit works on
methodology. Our opinion is that nothing relevant can be added to the
dictates of mere common sense on the subject of the apprenticeship to
the "art of writing history," unless perhaps that this apprenticeship
should consist, above everything, in the study, hitherto so generally
neglected, of the principles of historical method.

Besides, it is not the "literary historian," the moralising and
quill-driving "historians," as conceived by Daunou and his school, that
we have had in view; we are here only concerned with those scholars and
historians who intend to deal with documents in order to facilitate or
actually perform the scientific work of history. These stand in need of
a _technical apprenticeship_. What meaning are we to attach to this
term?

Let us suppose we have before us a written document. What use can we
make of it if we cannot read it? Up to the time of Francois Champollion,
Egyptian documents, being written in hieroglyphics, were, without
metaphor, a dead-letter. It will be readily admitted that in order to
deal with ancient Assyrian history it is necessary to have learnt to
decipher cuneiform inscriptions. Similarly, whoever desires to do
original work from the sources, in ancient or mediaeval history, will, if
he is prudent, learn to decipher inscriptions and manuscripts. We thus
see why Greek and Latin epigraphy and mediaeval palaeography--that is, the
sum of the various kinds of knowledge required for the deciphering of
ancient and mediaeval manuscripts and inscriptions--are considered as
"auxiliary sciences" to history, or rather, the historical study of
antiquity and the middle ages. It is evident that mediaeval Latin
palaeography forms part of the necessary outfit of the mediaevalist, just
as the palaeography of hieroglyphics is essential to the Egyptologist.
There is, however, a difference to be observed. No one will ever think
of devoting himself to Eg