THE NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM OF THE GOOD FAITH AND ACCURACY OF
AUTHORS
I. Analysis and positive interpretative criticism only penetrate as far
as the inward workings of the mind of the author of a document, 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 document, which is
equivalent to assuming 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 circumstance of their finding documents 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 hitherto
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 documents 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 documents, 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 constituted 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
documents; 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 assume 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
document, 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 documents, on the other suspected authors and bad
documents. Having thus exhausted our powers of distrust, we proceed to
reproduce without discussion all the statements contained in the "good
document." 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 document 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 document 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 document
(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
document as a whole; each of the statements in it must be examined
separately; _criticism_ is impossible without _analysis_.
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 constitute a sufficient reason for
belief.
(2) The criticism of a document is not to be performed _en bloc_. The
rule will be to _analyse_ the document 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 analysis are performed simultaneously, and,
except in the case of texts in a difficult language, may proceed _pari
passu_ with interpretative analysis and criticism. As soon as we
understand a phrase we analyse 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 apprenticeship, before the
habit is acquired, we are obliged to think of each act separately before
performing it, and to analyse 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
circumstantial 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 document 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 authorship 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 document, taking particular pains to
look in the habits, sentiments, and personal situation of the author, or
in the circumstances 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 document 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 documents 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
circumstances 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 document, 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
document in general and each statement in particular; and as they are
the same for all documents, 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 document 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 document 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 document, 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 document, 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 documents. Even in documents 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 document as a whole; and again, what can
have been his particular purpose in making each of the separate
statements which compose the document. 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 class 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 document in conformity
with rule or custom, while the actual circumstances 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 documents relating to the past.
The _authentic_ character of the documents contributes to the illusion;
we instinctively make _authentic_ a synonym of _sincere_. The rigid
rules which govern the composition of every authentic document seem to
guarantee sincerity; they are, on the contrary, an incentive to falsify,
not the main facts, but the accessory circumstances. 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 assemblage of
doctrines or institutions (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
Massacre 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 fashion of his public; he has distorted facts in order
to adapt them to the passions 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 documents,
especially those belonging to an age from which few documents have come
down to us. No one would think of looking for the real sentiments of a
man in the assurances 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 passages 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 noble attitudes, 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 assume
noble attitudes or manifest great intensity of feeling.
This first series of questions will yield the _provisional_ result of
enabling us to note the statements which have a _chance_ of being
mendacious.
V. The second series of questions will be of use in determining whether
there is any reason to distrust the accuracy of a statement. Was the
author in one of those situations which cause a man to make mistakes? As
in dealing with good faith, we must look for these conditions both as
affecting the document as a whole, and as affecting each of the
particular statements in it.
The practice of the established sciences teaches us the conditions of an
exact knowledge of facts. There is only one scientific procedure for
gaining knowledge of a fact, namely, _observation_; every statement,
therefore, must rest, directly or indirectly, upon an observation, and
this observation must have been made correctly.
The set of questions by the aid of which we investigate the
probabilities of error may be drawn up in the light of experience, which
brings before us the most common cases of error.
(1) The author was in a situation to observe the fact, and supposed he
really had observed it; he was, however, prevented from doing so by some
interior force of which he was unconscious, an hallucination, an
illusion, or a mere prejudice. It would be useless, as well as
impossible, to determine which of these agencies was at work; it is
enough to ascertain whether the author had a tendency to observe badly.
It is scarcely possible in the case of a particular statement to
recognise that it was the result of an hallucination or an illusion. At
the most we may learn, either from information derived from other
sources or by comparison, that an author had a _general_ propensity to
this kind of error.
There is a better chance of recognising whether a statement was due to
prejudice. In the life or the works of an author we may find the traces
of his dominant prejudices. With reference to each of his particular
statements, we ought to ask whether it is not the result of a
preconceived idea of the author on a class of men or a kind of facts.
This inquiry partly coincides with the search for motives of falsehood:
interest, vanity, sympathy, and antipathy give rise to prejudices which
alter the truth in the same manner as wilful falsehood. We therefore
employ the questions already formulated for the purpose of testing good
faith. But there is one to be added. In putting forward a statement has
the author been led to distort it unconsciously by the circumstance that
he was answering a question? This is the case of all statements obtained
by interrogating witnesses. Even apart from the cases where the person
interrogated seeks to please the proposer of the question by giving an
answer which he thinks will be agreeable to him, every question suggests
its own answer, or at least its form, and this form is dictated
beforehand by some one unacquainted with the facts. It is therefore
necessary to apply a special criticism to every statement obtained by
interrogation; we must ask what was the question put, and what were the
preconceptions to which it may have given rise in the mind of the person
interrogated.
(2) The author was badly situated for observing. The practice of the
sciences teaches us what are the conditions for correct observation. The
observer ought to be placed where he can see correctly, and should have
no practical interest, no desire to obtain a particular result, no
preconceived idea about the result. He ought to record the observation
immediately, in a precise system of notation; he ought to give a precise
indication of his method. These conditions, which are insisted on in the
sciences of observation, are never completely fulfilled by the authors
of documents.
It would be useless, therefore, to ask whether there have been chances
of inaccuracy; _there always have been_, and it is just this that
distinguishes a _document_ from an _observation_. It only remains to
look for the obvious causes of error in the conditions of observation:
to inquire whether the observer was in a place where he could not see or
hear well, as would be the case, for example, with a subordinate who
should presume to narrate the secret deliberations of a council of
dignitaries; whether his attention was greatly distracted by the
necessity for action, as it would be on the field of battle, for
example; whether he was inattentive because the facts had little
interest for him; whether he lacked the special experience or general
intelligence necessary for understanding the facts; whether he analysed
his impressions badly, or confused different events. Above all, we must
ask when he _wrote down_ what he saw or heard. This is the most
important point: the only exact observation is the one which is
recorded immediately it is made; such is the constant procedure in the
established sciences; an impression committed to writing later on is
only a recollection, liable to be confused in the memory with other
recollections. _Memoirs_ written several years after the facts, often at
the very end of the author's career, have introduced innumerable errors
into history. It must be made a rule to treat _memoirs_ with special
distrust as second-hand documents, in spite of their appearance of being
contemporary testimony.
(3) The author states facts which he could have observed, but to which
he did not take the trouble to attend. From idleness or negligence he
reported details which he has merely inferred, or even imagined at
random, and which turn out to be false. This is a common source of
error, though it does not readily occur to one, and is to be suspected
wherever the author was obliged to procure information in which he took
little interest, in order to fill up a blank form. Of this kind are
answers to questions put by an authority (it is enough to observe how
most official inquiries are conducted in our own day), and detailed
accounts of ceremonies or public functions. There is too strong a
temptation to write the account from the programme, or in agreement with
the usual order of the proceedings. How many accounts of meetings of all
kinds have been published by reporters who were not present at them!
Similar efforts of imagination are suspected--sometimes, it is thought,
clearly recognised--in the writings of mediaeval chroniclers.[154] The
rule, then, will be to distrust all narratives conforming too closely to
a set formula.
(4) The fact stated is of such a nature that it could not have been
learnt by observation alone. It may be a hidden fact--a private secret,
for example. It may be a fact relating to a collectivity, and applying
to an extensive area or a long period of time; for example, the common
act of a whole army, a custom common to a whole people or a whole age, a
statistical total obtained by the addition of numerous items. It may be
a comprehensive judgment on the character of a man, a group, a custom,
an event. Here we have to do with propositions derived from observations
by synthesis or inference: the author can only have arrived at them
indirectly; he began with data furnished by observation, and elaborated
them by the logical processes of abstraction, generalisation, reasoning,
calculation. Two questions arise. Does it appear that the author had
sufficient data to work upon? Was he accurate, or the reverse, in his
use of the data he had?
On the probable inaccuracies of an author, general indications may be
obtained from an examination of his writings. This examination will show
us how he worked: whether he was capable of abstraction, reasoning,
generalisation, and what were the mistakes he was in the habit of
making. In order to determine the value of the data, we must criticise
each statement separately; we must imagine the conditions under which
the author observed, and ask ourselves whether he was able to procure
the necessary data for his statement. This is an indispensable
precaution in dealing with large totals in statistics and descriptions
of popular usages; for it is possible that the author may have obtained
the total he gives by a process of conjectural valuation (this is the
ordinary practice in stating the number of combatants or killed in a
battle), or by combining subsidiary totals, all of which were not
accurate; it is possible that he may have extended to a whole people, a
whole country, a whole period, that which was true only of a small group
known to him.[155]
VI. These two first series of questions bearing on the good faith and
the accuracy of the statements in the document are based on the
supposition that the author has observed the fact himself. This is a
feature common to all reports of observations in the established
sciences. But in history there is so great a dearth of direct
_observations_, of even moderate value, that we are obliged to turn to
account documents which every other science would reject.[156] Take any
narrative at random, even if it be the work of a contemporary, it will
be found that the facts observed by the author are never more than a
part of the whole number. In nearly every document the majority of the
statements do not come from the author at first hand, but are
reproductions of the statements of others. Even where a general relates
a battle in which he commanded, he does not communicate his own
observations, but those of his officers; his narrative is in a large
measure a "second-hand document."[157]
In order to criticise a second-hand statement it is no longer enough to
examine the conditions under which the author of the document worked:
this author is, in such a case, a mere agent of transmission; the true
author is the person who supplied him the information. The critic,
therefore, must change his ground, and ask whether the informant
observed and reported correctly; and if he too had the information from
some one else (the commonest case), the chase must be pursued from one
intermediary to another, till the person is found who first launched the
statement on its career, and with regard to him the question must be
asked: Was he an accurate observer?
Logically such a search is not inconceivable; ancient collections of
Arab traditions give lists of their successive guarantors. But, in
practice, lack of documents nearly always prevents us from getting as
far as the observer of a fact; the observation remains anonymous. A
general question then presents itself: How are we to criticise an
anonymous statement? It is not only "anonymous documents" with which we
are concerned, where the composition as a whole is the work of an
unknown author; even when the author is known, this question arises with
respect to each statement of his drawn from an unknown source.
Criticism works by reproducing the conditions under which an author
wrote, and has hardly anything to take hold of where a statement is
anonymous. The only method left is to examine the general conditions of
the document. We may inquire whether there is any feature common to all
the statements of a document indicating that they all proceed from
persons having the same prejudices or passions: in this case the
tradition followed by the author is biassed; the tradition followed by
Herodotus has both an Athenian bias and a Delphic bias. In respect of
each fact derived from such a tradition we must ask whether it has not
been distorted by the interest, the vanity, or the prejudices of the
group concerned. We may even ignore the author, and ask whether there
was anything likely to make for or against correct observation, common
to all the men of the time and country in which the observation must
have been made: for example, what means of information, and what
prejudices, had the Greeks of Herodotus' time with respect to the
Scythians.
The most useful of all these general inquiries has reference to that
mode of transmitting anonymous statements which is called _tradition_.
No second-hand statement has any value except in so far as it reproduces
its source; every addition is an alteration, and ought to be eliminated.
Similarly, all the intermediary sources are valueless except as copies
of the original statement founded directly on observation. The critic
needs to know whether this transmission from hand to hand has preserved
or distorted the original statement; above all, whether the tradition
embodied in the document was _written_ or _oral_. Writing fixes a
statement, and ensures its being transmitted faithfully; when a
statement is communicated orally, the impression in the mind of the
hearer is apt to be modified by confusion with other impressions; in
passing from one intermediary to another the statement is modified at
every step,[158] and as these modifications arise from different causes,
there is no possibility of measuring or correcting them.
Oral tradition is by its nature a process of continual alteration; hence
in the established sciences only written transmission is accepted.
Historians have no avowable motive for proceeding differently, at any
rate when it is a case of establishing a particular fact. We must
therefore search documents for statements derived from oral tradition in
order that we may suspect them. We rarely have direct information as to
statements being thus derived; authors who borrow from oral tradition
are not anxious to proclaim the fact.[159] There is thus only an
indirect method, and that is to ascertain that written transmission was
impossible; we may then be sure that the fact reached the author only by
oral tradition. We have therefore to ask the question: In this period
and in this group of men was it customary to commit to writing facts of
this kind? If the answer is negative, the fact considered rests on oral
tradition alone.
The most striking form of oral tradition is _legend_. It arises among
groups of men with whom the spoken word is the only means of
transmission, in barbarous societies, or in classes of little culture,
such as peasants or soldiers. In this case it is the whole group of
facts which is transmitted orally and assumes the legendary form. There
is a legendary period in the early history of every people: in Greece,
at Rome, among the Germanic and Slavonic races, the most ancient
memories of the people form a stratum of legend. In periods of
civilisation popular legends continue to exist in reference to events
which strike the imagination of the people.[160] Legend is exclusively
oral tradition.
When a people has emerged from the legendary period and begun to commit
its history to writing, oral tradition does not come to an end, but only
applies to a narrower sphere; it is now restricted to facts which are
not registered, whether because they are by their nature secret, or
because no one takes the trouble to record them, such as private
actions, words, the details of events. Thus arise _anecdotes_, which
have been named "the legends of civilised society." Like legends they
have their origin in confused recollections, allusions, mistaken
interpretations, imaginings of all kinds which fasten upon particular
persons and events.
Legends and anecdotes are at bottom mere popular beliefs, arbitrarily
attached to historical personages; they belong to folk-lore, not to
history.[161] We must therefore guard against the temptation to treat
legend as an alloy of accurate facts and errors out of which it is
possible by analysis to extract grains of historical truth. A legend is
a conglomerate in which there may be some grains of truth, and which may
even be capable of being analysed into its elements; but there is no
means of distinguishing the elements taken from reality from those which
are the work of imagination. To use Niebuhr's expression, a legend is "a
mirage produced by an invisible object according to an unknown law of
refraction."
The crudest analytical procedure consists in rejecting those details in
the legendary narrative which appear impossible, miraculous,
contradictory, or absurd, and retaining the rational residue as
historical. This is how the Protestant rationalists of the eighteenth
century treated biblical narratives. One might as well amputate the
marvellous part of a fairy tale, suppress Puss in Boots, and keep the
Marquis of Carabas as an historical character. A more refined but no
less dangerous method is to compare different legends in order to deduce
their common historical basis. Grote[162] has shown, with reference to
Greek tradition, that it is impossible to extract any trustworthy
information from legend by any process whatever.[163] We must make up
our minds to treat legend as a product of imagination; we may look in it
for a people's conceptions, not for the external facts in that people's
history. The rule will be to reject every statement of legendary origin;
nor does this apply only to narratives in legendary form: a narrative
which has an historical appearance, but is founded on the data of
legend, the opening chapters of Thucydides for example, ought equally to
be discarded.
In the case of written transmission it remains to inquire whether the
author reproduced his source without altering it. This inquiry forms
part of the critical investigation of the sources,[164] so far as it can
be pursued by a comparison of texts. But when the source has disappeared
we are reduced to internal criticism. We ask, first of all, whether the
author can have had exact information, otherwise his statement is
valueless. We next put to ourselves the general question: Was the author
in the habit of altering his sources, and in what manner? And in regard
to each separate second-hand statement we ask whether it has the
appearance of being an exact reproduction or an arrangement. We judge by
the form: when we meet with a passage whose style is out of harmony with
the main body of the composition, we have before us a fragment of an
earlier document; the more servile the reproduction the more valuable is
the passage, for it can contain no exact information beyond what was
already in the source.
VII. In spite of all these investigations, criticism never succeeds in
determining the parentage of all the statements to the extent of finding
out who it was that observed, or even recorded, each fact. In most cases
the inquiry ends in leaving the statement anonymous.
We are thus confronted with a fact, observed we know not by whom nor
how, recorded we know not when nor how. No other science accepts facts
which come in such a condition, without possibility of verification,
subject to incalculable chances of error. But history can turn them to
account, because it does not, like the other sciences, need a supply of
facts which are difficult to ascertain.
The notion of a _fact_, when we come to examine it precisely, reduces to
an affirmative judgment having reference to external reality. The
operations by which we arrive at such a judgment are more or less
difficult, and the risk of error is greater or smaller according to the
nature of the realities investigated and the degree of precision with
which we wish to formulate them. Chemistry and biology need to discern
facts of a delicate order, rapid movements, transient states, and to
measure them in exact figures. History can work with facts of a much
coarser kind, spread over a large extent of space or time, such as the
existence of a custom, of a man, of a group, even of a people; and these
facts may be roughly expressed in vague words conveying no idea of
accurate measurement. With such easily observed facts as these to deal
with, history can afford to be much less exacting with regard to the
conditions of observation. The imperfection of the means of information
is compensated by a natural faculty of being satisfied with information
which can easily be obtained.
Documents supply little else besides ill-verified facts, subject to many
risks of falsehood or error. But there are some facts in respect of
which it is very difficult to lie or be mistaken. The last series of
questions which the critic should ask is intended to distinguish, in the
mass of alleged facts, those which by their nature are little subject to
the risk of alteration, and which are therefore very probably correct.
We know what, in general, are the classes of facts which enjoy this
privilege; we are thus enabled to draw up a list of questions for
general use, and in applying them to any particular case we ask whether
the fact in question comes under any of the heads specified in advance.
(1) The fact is of a nature to render falsehood improbable. A man lies
in order to produce an impression, and has no motive to lie in a case
where he believes that the false impression would be of no use, or that
the falsehood would be ineffectual. In order to determine whether the
author was in such a situation there are several questions to be asked.
(_a_) Is the fact stated manifestly prejudicial to the effect which the
author wished to produce? Does it run counter to the interest, the
vanity, the sentiments, the literary tastes of the author and his group;
or to the opinions which he made a point of not offending? In such a
case there is a probability of good faith. But in the application of
this criterion there is danger; it has often been wrongly used, and in
two ways. One of these is to take for a confession what was meant for a
boast, as the declaration of Charles IX. that he was responsible for the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Or again, we trust without examination an
Athenian who speaks ill of the Athenians, or a Protestant who accuses
other Protestants. But it is quite possible the author's notions of his
interest or honour were very different from ours;[165] or he may have
wished to calumniate fellow-citizens who did not belong to his own
party, or co-religionists who did not belong to his own sect. This
criterion must therefore be restricted to cases where we know exactly
what _effect_ he wished to produce, and in what _group_ he was mainly
interested.
(_b_) Was the fact stated so obviously known to the public that the
author, even if tempted to falsehood, would have been restrained by the
certainty of being detected? This is the case with facts which are easy
to verify, which are not remote in point of time or space, which apply
to a wide area or a long period, especially if the public had any
interest in verifying them. But the fear of detection is only an
intermittent check, opposed by interest whenever the author has any
motive for deceiving. It acts unequally on different minds--strongly on
men of culture and self-control who understand their public, feebly in
barbarous ages and on passionate men.[166] This criterion, therefore, is
to be restricted to cases where we know what idea the author had of his
readers, and whether he was dispassionate enough to keep them in mind.
(_c_) Was the fact stated _indifferent_ to the author, so that he had no
temptation to misrepresent it? This is the case with facts of a general
kind, usages, institutions, objects, persons, which the author mentions
incidentally. A narrative, even a false one, cannot be composed
exclusively of falsehoods; the author must localise his facts, and needs
to surround them with a framework of truth. The facts which form this
framework had no interest for him; at that time every one knew them. But
for us they are instructive, and we can depend on them, for the author
had no intention of deceiving us.
(2) The fact was of a kind to render error improbable. Numerous as the
chances of error are, still there are facts so "big" it is hard to be
mistaken about them. We have, then, to ask whether the alleged fact was
easy to ascertain: (_a_) Did it cover a long period of time, so that it
must have been frequently observed? Take, for example, the case of a
monument, a man, a custom, an event which was in progress for a
considerable time. (_b_) Did it cover a wide area, so that many people
observed it?--as, for example, a battle, a war, a custom common to a
whole people. (_c_) Is it expressed in such general terms that
superficial observation was enough to discover it?--as the mere
existence of a man, a city, a people, a custom. Facts of this large and
general kind make up the bulk of historical knowledge.
(3) The fact was of such a nature that it would not have been stated
unless it was true. A man does not declare that he has seen something
contrary to his expectations and habits of mind unless observation has
compelled him to admit it. A fact which seems very improbable to the man
who relates it has a good chance of being true. We have, then, to ask
whether the fact stated was in contradiction with the author's opinions,
whether it is a phenomenon of a kind unknown to him, an action or a
custom which seems unintelligible to him; whether it is a saying whose
import transcends his intelligence, such as the sayings of Christ
reported in the Gospels, or the answers made by Joan of Arc to questions
put to her in the course of her trial. But we must guard against judging
of the author's ideas by our own standards: when men who are accustomed
to believe in the marvellous speak of monsters, of miracles, of wizards,
there is nothing in these to contradict their expectations, and the
criterion does not apply.
VIII. We have at last reached the end of this description of the
critical operations; its length is due to the necessity of describing
successively operations which are performed simultaneously. We will now
consider how these methods are applied in practice.
If the text be one whose interpretation is debatable, the examination is
divided into two stages: the first comprises the reading of the text
with a view to the determination of the meaning, without attempting to
draw any information from it; the second comprises the critical study of
the facts contained in the document. In the case of documents whose
meaning is clear, we may begin the critical examination on the first
reading, reserving for separate study any individual passages of
doubtful meaning.
We begin by collecting the _general_ information we possess about the
document and the author, with the special purpose of discovering the
conditions which may have influenced the production of the document--the
epoch, the place, the purpose, the circumstances of its composition; the
author's social status, country, party, sect, family, interests,
passions, prejudices, linguistic habits, methods of work, means of
information, culture, abilities, and mental defects; the nature of the
facts and the mode of their transmission. Information on all these
points is supplied by the preparatory critical investigation of
authorship and sources. We now combine the different heads, mentally
applying the set of general critical questions; this should be done at
the outset, and the results impressed on the memory, for they will need
to be present to the mind during the remainder of the operations.
Thus prepared, we attack the document. As we read we mentally analyse
it, destroying all the author's combinations, discarding all his
literary devices, in order to arrive at the facts, which we formulate in
simple and precise language. We thus free ourselves from the deference
imposed by artistic form, and from all submission to the author's
ideas--an emancipation without which criticism is impossible.
The document thus analysed resolves into a long series of the author's
conceptions and statements as to facts.
With regard to each statement, we ask ourselves whether there is a
probability of their being false or erroneous, or whether, on the other
hand, there are exceptional chances in favour of good faith and
accuracy, working through the list of critical questions prepared for
particular cases. This list of questions must be always present to the
mind. At first it may seem cumbersome, perhaps pedantic; but as it will
be applied more than a hundred times in each page of the document, it
will in the end be used unconsciously. As we read a text, all the
reasons for distrust or confidence will occur to the mind
simultaneously, combined into a single impression.
Analysis and critical questioning will then have become a matter of
instinct, and we shall have acquired for ever that methodically
analytical, distrustful, not too respectful turn of mind which is often
mystically called "the critical sense," but which is nothing else than
an unconscious _habit_ of criticism.