Introduction to the Study of History Part 6

All words are not equally subject to variations of meaning; most of them keep a fairly uniform meaning in all authors and in all periods. We may therefore be satisfied to study specially those expressions which, from their nature, are liable to take different meanings: first, ready-made expressions which, being fixed, do not follow the evolution of the words of which they are composed; secondly, and chiefly, words denoting things which are in their nature subject to evolution; cla.s.ses of men (_miles_, _colonus_, _servus_); inst.i.tutions (_conventus_, _just.i.tia_, _judex_); usages (_alleu_, _benefice_, _election_); feelings, common objects. In the case of all words of such cla.s.ses it would be imprudent to a.s.sume a fixed meaning; it is an absolutely necessary precaution to ascertain what is the sense in which they are used in the text to be interpreted.

"These studies of words," said Fustel de Coulanges, "have a great importance in historical science. A badly interpreted term may be the source of serious error."[139] And, in fact, simply by a methodical application of interpretative criticism to a hundred words or so, he succeeded in revolutionising the study of the Merovingian epoch.

IV. When we have a.n.a.lysed the doc.u.ment and determined the literal meaning of its phrases, we cannot even yet be sure that we have reached the real thoughts of the author. It is possible that he may have used some expressions in an oblique sense; there are several kinds of cases where this occurs: allegory and symbolism, jests and hoaxes, allusion and implication, even the ordinary figures of speech, metaphor, hyperbole, litotes.[140] In all these cases it is necessary to pierce through the literal meaning to the real meaning, which the author has purposely disguised under an inexact form.

Logically the problem is very embarra.s.sing: there is no fixed external criterion by which we can make sure of detecting an oblique sense; in the case of the hoax, which in the present century has become a branch of literature, it is an essential part of the author's plan to leave no indication which would betray the jest. In practice we may be morally certain that an author is not using an oblique sense wherever his prime object is to be understood; we are therefore not likely to meet with difficulties of this kind in official doc.u.ments, in charters, and in historical narratives. In all these cases the general form of the doc.u.ment permits us to a.s.sume that it is written in the literal sense of the words.

On the other hand, we must be prepared for oblique senses when the author had other interests than that of being understood, or when he wrote for a public which could understand his allusions and read between the lines, or when his readers, in virtue of a religious or literary initiation, might be expected to understand his symbolisms and figures of speech. This is the case with religious texts, private letters, and all those literary works which form so large a part of the doc.u.ments on antiquity. Thus the art of recognising and determining hidden meanings in texts has always occupied a large s.p.a.ce in the theory of _hermeneutic_[141] (which is Greek for interpretative criticism), and in the _exegesis_ of the sacred texts and of cla.s.sical authors.

The different modes of introducing an oblique sense behind the literal sense are too varied, and depend too much on special circ.u.mstances, for it to be possible to reduce the art of detecting them to definite rules.

Only one general principle can be laid down, and that is, that when the literal sense is absurd, incoherent, or obscure, or in contradiction with the ideas of the author or the facts known to him, then we ought to presume an oblique sense.

In order to determine this sense, the procedure is the same as for studying the language of an author: we compare the pa.s.sages in which the expressions occur in which we suspect an oblique sense, and look to see whether there is not one where the meaning may be guessed from the context. A celebrated instance of this procedure is the discovery of the allegorical meaning of the Beast in the Apocalypse. But as there is no certain method of solving these problems, we never have a right to say we have discovered all the hidden meanings or seized all the allusions contained in a text; and even when we think we have found the sense, we shall do well to draw no inferences from a necessarily conjectural interpretation.

On the other hand, it is necessary to guard against the temptation to look for allegorical meanings everywhere, as the neo-Platonists did in Plato's works and the Swedenborgians in the Bible. This attack of _hyper-hermeneutic_ is now over, but we are not yet safe from the a.n.a.logous tendency to look for allusions everywhere. Investigations of this kind are always conjectural, and are better calculated to flatter the vanity of the interpreter than to furnish results of which history can make use.

V. When we have at length reached the real sense of the text, the operation of positive a.n.a.lysis is concluded. Its result is to make us acquainted with the author's conceptions, the images he had in his mind, the general notions in terms of which he represented the world to himself. This information belongs to a very important branch of knowledge, out of which is const.i.tuted a whole group of historical sciences:[142] the history of the ill.u.s.trative arts and of literature, the history of science, the history of philosophical and moral doctrine, mythology and the history of dogmas (wrongly called religious beliefs, because here we are studying official doctrines without inquiring whether they are believed), the history of law, the history of official inst.i.tutions (so far as we do not inquire how they were applied in practice), the a.s.semblage of popular legends, traditions, opinions, conceptions (inexactly called beliefs) which are comprised under the name of folk-lore.

All these studies need only the external criticism which investigates authors.h.i.+p and origin and interpretative criticism; they require one degree less elaboration than the history of objective facts, and accordingly they have been earlier established on a methodical basis.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM OF THE GOOD FAITH AND ACCURACY OF AUTHORS

I. a.n.a.lysis and positive interpretative criticism only penetrate as far as the inward workings of the mind of the author of a doc.u.ment, and only help us to know his ideas. They give no direct information about external facts. Even when the author was able to observe them, his text only indicates how he wished to represent them, not how he really saw them, still less how they really happened. What an author expresses is not always what he believed, for he may have lied; what he believed is not necessarily what happened, for he may have been mistaken. These propositions are obvious. And yet a first and natural impulse leads us to accept as true every statement contained in a doc.u.ment, which is equivalent to a.s.suming that no author ever lied or was deceived; and this spontaneous credulity seems to possess a high degree of vitality, for it persists in spite of the innumerable instances of error and mendacity which daily experience brings before us.

Reflection has been forced on historians in the course of their work by the circ.u.mstance of their finding doc.u.ments which contradicted each other; in such cases they have been obliged to doubt, and, after examination, to admit the existence of error or mendacity; thus negative criticism has appeared as a practical necessity for the purpose of eliminating statements which are obviously false or erroneous. But the instinct of confidence is so indestructible that it has. .h.i.therto prevented even those professionally concerned from systematising the internal criticism of statements in the same way as the external criticism which deals with the origin of doc.u.ments has been systematised. Historians, in their works, and even theoretical writers on historical method,[143] have been satisfied with common notions and vague formulae in striking contrast with the precise terminology of the critical investigation of sources. They are content to examine whether the author was roughly _contemporary_ with the events, whether he was an ocular _witness_, whether he was _sincere_ and _well-informed_, whether he knew the truth and desired to tell it, or even--summing up the whole question in a single formula--whether he was _trustworthy_.

This superficial criticism is certainly better than no criticism at all, and has sufficed to give those who have applied it the consciousness of incontestable superiority. But it is only a halfway-house between common credulity and scientific method. Here, as in every science, the starting-point must be methodical doubt.[144] All that has not been proved must be temporarily regarded as doubtful; no proposition is to be affirmed unless reasons can be adduced in favour of its truth.

Applied to the statements contained in doc.u.ments, methodical doubt becomes _methodical distrust_.

The historian ought to distrust _a priori_ every statement of an author, for he cannot be sure that it is not mendacious or mistaken. At the best it affords a presumption. For the historian to adopt it and affirm it afresh on his own account implies that he regards it as a scientific truth. To take this decisive step is what he has no right to do without good reasons. But the human mind is so const.i.tuted that this step is often taken unconsciously (cf. book ii. chap. i.). Against this dangerous tendency criticism has only one means of defence. We must not postpone doubt till it is forced upon us by conflicting statements in doc.u.ments; we must _begin_ by doubting. We must never forget the interval which separates a statement made by any author whatsoever from a scientifically established truth, so that we may continually keep in mind the responsibility which we a.s.sume when we reproduce a statement.

Even after we have accepted the principle and resolved to apply this unnatural distrust in practice, we tend instinctively to free ourselves from it as soon as possible. The natural impulse is to perform the criticism of the whole of an author, or at least of the whole of a doc.u.ment, in the lump; to divide authorities into two categories, the sheep on the right, the goats on the left; on the one side trustworthy authors and good doc.u.ments, on the other suspected authors and bad doc.u.ments. Having thus exhausted our powers of distrust, we proceed to reproduce without discussion all the statements contained in the "good doc.u.ment." We consent to distrust suspected authors such as Suidas or Aimo, but we affirm as established truth everything that has been said by Thucydides or Gregory of Tours.[145] We apply to authors that judicial procedure which divides witnesses into admissible and inadmissible: having once accepted a witness, we feel ourselves bound to admit all his testimony; we dare not doubt any of his statements without a special reason. Instinctively we take sides with the author on whom we have bestowed our approval, and we go so far as to say, as in the law courts, that the burden of proof rests with those who reject valid testimony.[146]

The confusion is still further increased by the use of the word _authentic_, borrowed from judicial language. It has reference to the origin only, not to the contents; to say that a doc.u.ment is authentic is merely to say that its origin is certain, not that its contents are free from error. But authenticity inspires a degree of respect which disposes us to accept the contents without discussion. To doubt the statements of an authentic doc.u.ment would seem presumptuous, or at least we think ourselves bound to wait for overwhelming proof before we impeach the testimony of the author.

II. These natural instincts must be methodically resisted. A doc.u.ment (still more a literary work) is not all of a piece; it is composed of a great number of independent statements, any one of which may be intentionally or unintentionally false, while the others are _bona fide_ and accurate, or conversely, since each statement is the outcome of a mental operation which may have been incorrectly performed, while others were performed correctly. It is not, therefore, enough to examine a doc.u.ment as a whole; each of the statements in it must be examined separately; _criticism_ is impossible without _a.n.a.lysis_.

Thus internal criticism conducts us to two general rules.

(1) A scientific truth is not established by _testimony_. In order to affirm a proposition we must have special reasons for believing it true. It may happen in certain cases that an author's statement is a sufficient reason for belief; but we cannot know that beforehand. The rule, then, will be to examine each separate statement in order to make sure whether it is of a nature to const.i.tute a sufficient reason for belief.

(2) The criticism of a doc.u.ment is not to be performed _en bloc_. The rule will be to _a.n.a.lyse_ the doc.u.ment into its elements, in order to isolate the different statements of which it is composed and to examine each of them separately. Sometimes a single sentence contains several statements; they must be separated and criticised one by one. In a sale, for example, we distinguish the date, the place, the vendor, the purchaser, the object, the price, and each one of the conditions.

In practice, criticism and a.n.a.lysis are performed simultaneously, and, except in the case of texts in a difficult language, may proceed _pari pa.s.su_ with interpretative a.n.a.lysis and criticism. As soon as we understand a phrase we a.n.a.lyse it and criticise each of its elements.

It thus appears that _logically_ criticism comprises an enormous number of operations. In describing them, with all the details necessary for the understanding of their mechanism and the reasons for their employment, we are likely to give the impression of a procedure too slow to be practicable. Such an impression is inevitably produced by every verbal description of a complicated process. Compare the time occupied in describing a movement in fencing with that required to execute it; compare the tedium of the grammar and dictionary with the rapidity of reading. Like every practical art, criticism consists in the habit of performing certain acts. In the period of apprentices.h.i.+p, before the habit is acquired, we are obliged to think of each act separately before performing it, and to a.n.a.lyse the movements; accordingly we perform them all slowly and with difficulty; but the habit once acquired, the acts, which have now become instinctive and unconscious, are performed with ease and rapidity. The reader must therefore not be uneasy about the slowness of the critical processes; he will see later on how they are abridged in practice.

III. The problem of criticism may be stated as follows. Given a statement made by a man of whose mental operations we have no experience, and the value of the statement depending exclusively on the manner in which these operations were performed; to ascertain whether these operations were performed correctly. The mere statement of the problem shows that we cannot hope for any direct or definitive solution of it; we lack the essential datum, namely, the manner in which the author performed the mental operations concerned. Criticism therefore does not advance beyond indirect and provisional solutions, and does no more than furnish data which require a final elaboration.

A natural instinct leads us to judge of the value of statements by their form. We think we can tell at a glance whether an author is sincere or a narrative accurate. We seek for what is called "the accent of sincerity," or "an impression of truth." This impression is almost irresistible, but it is none the less an illusion. There is no external criterion either of good faith or of accuracy. "The accent of sincerity"

is the appearance of conviction; an orator, an actor, an habitual liar will put more of it into his lies than an undecided man into his statement of what he believes to be the truth. Energy of affirmation does not always mean strength of conviction, but sometimes only cleverness or effrontery.[147] Similarly, abundance and precision of detail, though they produce a vivid impression on unexperienced readers, do not guarantee the accuracy of the facts;[148] they give us no information about anything but the imagination of the author when he is sincere, or his impudence when he is the reverse. We are apt to say of a circ.u.mstantial narrative: "Things of this kind are not invented." They are not invented, but they are very easy to transfer from one person, country, or time to another. There is thus no external characteristic of a doc.u.ment which can relieve us of the obligation to criticise it.

The value of an author's statement depends solely on the conditions under which he performed certain mental operations. Criticism has no other resource than the examination of these conditions. But it is not a case of reconstructing all of them; it is enough to answer a single question: did the author perform these operations correctly or not? The question may be approached on two sides.

(1) The critical investigation of authors.h.i.+p has often taught us the _general_ conditions under which the author operated. It is probable that some of these influenced each one of the operations. We ought therefore to begin by studying the information we possess about the author and the composition of the doc.u.ment, taking particular pains to look in the habits, sentiments, and personal situation of the author, or in the circ.u.mstances in which he composed, for all the reasons which could have existed for incorrectness on the one hand, or exceptional accuracy on the other. In order to perceive these reasons it is necessary to be on the lookout for them beforehand. The only method, therefore, is to draw up a general set of questions having reference to the possible causes of inaccuracy. We shall then apply it to the general conditions under which the doc.u.ment was composed, in order to discover those causes which may have rendered the author's mental operations incorrect and vitiated the results. But all that we shall thus obtain--even in the exceptionally favourable cases in which the conditions of origin are well known--will be _general_ indications, which will be insufficient for the purposes of criticism, for criticism must always deal with each separate statement.

(2) The criticism of particular statements is confined to the use of a single method, which, by a curious paradox, is the study of the _universal_ conditions under which doc.u.ments are composed. The information which is not furnished by the general study of the author may be sought for by a consideration of the necessary processes of the human mind; for, since these are universal, they must appear in each particular case. We know what are the cases in which men in general are inclined to alter or distort facts. What we have to do in the case of each statement is to examine whether it was made under such circ.u.mstances as to lead us to suspect, from our knowledge of the habits of normal humanity, that the operations implied in the making of it were incorrectly performed. The practical procedure will be to draw up a set of questions relating to the habitual causes of inaccuracy.

The whole of criticism thus reduces to the drawing up and answering of two sets of questions: one for the purpose of bringing before our minds those general conditions affecting the composition of the doc.u.ment, from which we may deduce general motives for distrust or confidence; the other for the purpose of realising the special conditions of each statement, from which special motives may be drawn for distrust or confidence. These two sets of questions ought to be drawn up beforehand in such a form as may enable us to examine methodically both the doc.u.ment in general and each statement in particular; and as they are the same for all doc.u.ments, it is useful to formulate them once for all.

IV. The critical process comprises two series of questions, which correspond to the two series of operations by which the doc.u.ment was produced. All that interpretative criticism tells us is what the author meant; it remains to determine (1) what he really believed, for he may not have been sincere; (2) what he really knew, for he may have been mistaken. We may therefore distinguish a _critical examination of the author's good faith_, by which we seek to determine whether the author of the doc.u.ment lied or not, and a _critical examination_ of his _accuracy_, by which we seek to determine whether he was or was not mistaken.

In practice we rarely need to know what an author believed, unless we are making a special study of his character. We have no direct interest in the author; he is merely the medium through which we reach the external facts he reports. The aim of criticism is to determine whether the author has reported the facts correctly. If he has given inexact information, it is indifferent whether he did so intentionally or not; to draw a distinction would complicate matters unnecessarily. There is thus little occasion to make a separate examination of an author's good faith, and we may shorten our labours by including in a single set of questions all the causes which lead to misstatement. But for the sake of clearness it will be well to discuss the questions to be asked in two separate series.

The questions in the first series will help us to inquire whether we have any reason to distrust the sincerity of a statement. We ask whether the author was in any of those situations which normally incline a man to be insincere. We must ask what these situations are, both as affecting the general composition of a doc.u.ment, and as affecting each particular statement. Experience supplies the answer. Every violation of truth, small or great, is due to a wish on the part of the author to produce a particular impression upon the reader. Our set of questions thus reduces to a list of the motives which may, in the general case, lead an author to violate truth. The following are the most important cases:--

(1) The author seeks to gain a practical advantage for himself; he wishes to deceive the reader of the doc.u.ment, in order to persuade him to an action, or to dissuade him from it; he knowingly gives false information: we then say the author has an interest in deceiving. This is the case with most official doc.u.ments. Even in doc.u.ments which have not been composed for a practical purpose, every interested statement has a chance of being mendacious. In order to determine which statements are to be suspected, we are to ask what _can_ have been the general aim of the author in writing the doc.u.ment as a whole; and again, what can have been his particular purpose in making each of the separate statements which compose the doc.u.ment. But there are two natural tendencies to be resisted. The first is, to ask what interest the author could have _had_ in lying, meaning what interest should _we_ have had in his place; we must ask instead what interest can he have _thought_ he had in lying, and we must look for the answer in his tastes and ideals.

The other tendency is to take sole account of the _individual_ interest of the author; we ought, however, to remember that the author may have given false information in order to serve a _collective_ interest. This is one of the difficulties of criticism. An author is a member at one and the same time of several different groups, a family, a province, a country, a religious denomination, a political party, a cla.s.s in society, whose interests often conflict; we have to discover the group in which he took most interest, and for which he worked.

(2) The author was placed in a situation which compelled him to violate truth. This happens whenever he has to draw up a doc.u.ment in conformity with rule or custom, while the actual circ.u.mstances are in some point or other in conflict with rule or custom; he is then obliged to state that the conditions were normal, and thus make a false declaration in respect of all the irregularities. In nearly every report of proceedings there is some slight deviation from truth as to the day, the hour, the place, the number or the names of those present. Most of us have observed, if not taken part in, some of these petty fictions. But we are too apt to forget them when we come to criticise doc.u.ments relating to the past.

The _authentic_ character of the doc.u.ments contributes to the illusion; we instinctively make _authentic_ a synonym of _sincere_. The rigid rules which govern the composition of every authentic doc.u.ment seem to guarantee sincerity; they are, on the contrary, an incentive to falsify, not the main facts, but the accessory circ.u.mstances. From the fact of a person having signed a report we may infer that he agreed to it, but not that he was actually present at the time when the report mentions him as having been present.

(3) The author viewed with sympathy or antipathy a group of men (nation, party, denomination, province, city, family), or an a.s.semblage of doctrines or inst.i.tutions (religion, school of philosophy, political theory), and was led to distort facts in such a manner as to represent his friends in a favourable and his opponents in an unfavourable light.

These are instances of a general bias which affects all the statements of an author, and they are so obvious that the ancients perceived them and gave them names (_studium_ and _odium_); from ancient times it has been a literary commonplace for historians to protest that they have steered clear of both.

(4) The author was induced by private or collective vanity to violate truth for the purpose of exalting himself or his group. He made such statements as he thought likely to give the reader the impression that he and his possessed qualities deserving of esteem. We have therefore to inquire whether a given statement may not be influenced by vanity. But we must take care not to represent the author's vanity to ourselves as being exactly like our own vanity or that of our contemporaries.

Different people are vain for different reasons; we must inquire what was our author's particular vanity; he may have lied in order to attribute to himself or his friends actions which we should consider dishonourable. Charles IX. falsely boasted of having organised the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew. There is, however, a kind of vanity which is universal, and that is, the desire to appear to be a person of exalted rank playing an important part in affairs. We must, therefore, always distrust a statement which attributes to the author or his group a high place in the world.[149]

(5) The author desired to please the public, or at least to avoid shocking it. He has expressed sentiments and ideas in harmony with the morality or the fas.h.i.+on of his public; he has distorted facts in order to adapt them to the pa.s.sions and prejudices of his time, even those which he did not share. The purest types of this kind of falsehood are found in ceremonial forms, official formulae, declarations prescribed by etiquette, set speeches, polite phrases. The statements which come under this head are so open to suspicion that we are unable to derive from them any information about the facts stated. We are all aware of this so far as relates to the contemporary formulae of which we see instances every day, but we often forget it in the criticism of doc.u.ments, especially those belonging to an age from which few doc.u.ments have come down to us. No one would think of looking for the real sentiments of a man in the a.s.surances of respect with which he ends his letters. But people believed for a long time in the humility of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries of the middle ages, because, on the day of their election, they began by refusing an office of which they declared themselves unworthy, till at last comparison showed that this refusal was a mere conventional form. And there are still scholars who, like the Benedictines of the eighteenth century, look in the chancery-formulae of a prince for information as to his piety or his liberality.[150]

In order to recognise these conventional declarations there are two lines of general study to be pursued: the one is directed to the author, and seeks to discover what was the public he addressed, for in one and the same country there are usually several different publics, each of which has its own code of morals or propriety; the other is directed towards the public, and seeks to determine its morals or its manners.

(6) The author endeavoured to please the public by literary artifices.

He distorted facts in order to embellish them according to his own aesthetic notions. We have therefore to look for the ideal of the author or of his time, in order to be on our guard against pa.s.sages distorted to suit that ideal. But without special study we may calculate on the common kinds of literary distortion. Rhetorical distortion consists in attributing to persons n.o.ble att.i.tudes, acts, sentiments, and, above all, words: this is a natural tendency in young boys who are beginning to practise the art of composition, and in writers still in a semi-barbarous stage; it is the common defect of the mediaeval chroniclers.[151] Epic distortion embellishes the narrative by adding picturesque details, speeches delivered by the persons concerned, numbers, sometimes names of persons; it is dangerous, because the precision of the details produces an illusive appearance of truth.[152]

Dramatic distortion consists in grouping the facts in such a way as to enhance the dramatic effect by concentrating facts, which in reality were separate, upon a single moment, a single person, or a single group.

Writing of this kind is what we call "truer than the truth." It is the most dangerous form of distortion, the form employed by artistic historians, by Herodotus, Tacitus, the Italians of the Renaissance.

Lyrical distortion exaggerates the intensity of the sentiments and the emotions of the author and his friends: we should remember this when we attempt to reconstruct "the psychology" of a person.

Literary distortion does not much affect archives (though instances of it are found in most charters of the eleventh century); but it profoundly modifies all literary texts, including the narratives of historians. Now, the natural tendency is to trust writers more readily when they have talent, and to admit statements with less difficulty when they are presented in good literary form. Criticism must counteract this tendency by the application of the paradoxical rule, that the more interesting a statement is from the artistic point of view,[153] the more it ought to be suspected. We must distrust every narrative which is very picturesque or very dramatic, in which the personages a.s.sume n.o.ble att.i.tudes or manifest great intensity of feeling.