ess some
characteristic feature.

This operation, which is difficult in itself, is still further
complicated by the state in which the facts which are to be condensed
into formulae present themselves. According to the nature of the
documents from which they are derived, they come to us in all the
different degrees of precision: from the detailed narrative which
relates the smallest episodes (the battle of Waterloo) down to the
barest mention in a couple of words (the victory of the Austrasians at
Testry). On different facts of the same kind we possess an amount of
details which is infinitely variable according as the documents give us
a complete description or a mere mention. How are we to organise into a
common whole, items of knowledge which differ so widely in point of
precision? When facts are known to us from a vague word of general
import, we cannot reduce them to a less degree of generality and a
greater degree of precision; we do not know the details. If we add them
conjecturally we shall produce an historical novel. This is what
Augustin Thierry did in the case of his _Recits merovingiens_. When
facts are known in detail, it is always easy to reduce them to a greater
degree of generality by suppressing characteristic details; this is what
is done by the authors of abridgements. But the result of this procedure
would be to reduce history to a mass of vague generalities, uniform for
the whole of time except for the proper names and the dates. It would be
a dangerous method of introducing symmetry, to bring all facts to a
common degree of generality by levelling them all to the condition of
those which are the most imperfectly known. In those cases, therefore,
where the documents give details, our descriptive formulae should always
retain the characteristic features of the facts.

In order to construct these formulae we must return to the set of
questions which we employed in grouping the facts, we must answer each
question, and compare the answers. We shall then combine them into as
condensed and as precise a formula as possible, taking care to keep a
fixed sense for every word. This may appear to be a matter of style, but
what we have in view here is not merely a principle of exposition,
necessary for the sake of being intelligible to the reader, it is a
precaution which the author ought to take on his own account. The facts
of society are of an elusive nature, and for the purpose of seizing and
expressing the