m, fixed and precise language is an indispensable
instrument; no historian is complete without good language.

It will be well to make the greatest possible use of concrete and
descriptive terms: their meaning is always clear. It will be prudent to
designate collective groups only by collective, not by abstract names
(royalty, State, democracy, Reformation, Revolution), and to avoid
personifying abstractions. We think we are simply using metaphors, and
then we are carried away by the force of the words. Certainly abstract
terms have something very seductive about them, they give a scientific
appearance to a proposition. But it is only an appearance, behind which
scholasticism is apt to be concealed; the word, having no concrete
meaning, becomes a purely verbal notion (like the soporific virtue of
which Moliere speaks). As long as our notions on social phenomena have
not been reduced to truly scientific formulae, the most scientific course
will be to express them in terms of every-day experience.

In order to construct a formula, we should know beforehand what elements
ought to enter into it. We must here make a distinction between general
facts (habits and evolutions) and unique facts (events).

III. General facts consist in actions which are often repeated, and are
common to a number of men. We have to determine their _character_,
_extent_, and _duration_.

In order to formulate their character, we combine all the features which
constitute a fact (habit, institution) and distinguish it from all
others. We unite under the same formula all the individual cases which
greatly resemble each other, by neglecting the individual differences.

This concentration is performed without effort in the case of habits
which have to do with forms (language, handwriting), and in the case of
all intellectual habits; those who practised these habits have already
given them expression in formulae, which we have only to collect. The
same holds of these institutions which are sanctioned by expressly
formulated rules (regulations, laws, private statutes). Accordingly the
special branches of history were the first to yield methodical formulae.
On the other hand, these special branches do not go beyond superficial
and conventional facts, they do not reach the real actions and thoughts
of men: in language they deal with written words, not the real
pronunciation; in religion with official dogmas and rites, not with the
real beliefs of the m