the position of
science in the eyes of every one, and of the greatly increased respect
naturally resulting for scientific methods, has been a certain
tendency for scientific students to encroach on other fields. This is
particularly true of the field of historical study. Not only have
scientific men insisted upon the necessity of considering the history
of man, especially in its early stages, in connection with what
biology shows to be the history of life, but furthermore there has
arisen a demand that history shall itself be treated as a science.
Both positions are in their essence right; but as regards each
position the more arrogant among the invaders of the new realm of
knowledge take an attitude to which it is not necessary to assent. As
regards the latter of the two positions, that which would treat
history henceforth merely as one branch of scientific study, we must
of course cordially agree that accuracy in recording facts and
appreciation of their relative worth and inter-relationship are just
as necessary in historical study as in any other kind of study. The
fact that a book, though interesting, is untrue, of course removes it
at once from the category of history, however much it may still
deserve to retain a place in the always desirable group of volumes
which deal with entertaining fiction. But the converse also holds, at
least to the extent of permitting us to insist upon what would seem to
be the elementary fact that a book which is written to be read should
be readable. This rather obvious truth seems to have been forgotten by
some of the more zealous scientific historians, who apparently hold
that the worth of a historical book is directly in proportion to the
impossibility of reading it, save as a painful duty. Now I am willing
that history shall be treated as a branch of science, but only on
condition that it also remains a branch of literature; and,
furthermore, I believe that as the field of science encroaches on the
field of literature there should be a corresponding encroachment of
literature upon science; and I hold that one of the great needs, which
can only be met by very able men whose culture is broad enough to
include literature as well as science, is the need of books for
scientific laymen. We need a literature of science which shall be
readable. So far from doing away with the school of great historians,
the school of Polybius and Tacitus, Gibbon and Macaulay, we need
merely that the futur