e Germans are habitual offenders:
consider Mommsen, Droysen, Curtius, and Lamprecht. The reason is that
these authors, when they address the public, wish to produce an effect
upon it. Their desire to make a strong impression leads them to a
certain relaxation of scientific rigour, and to the old rejected habits
of ancient historiography. These men, scrupulous and minute as they are
when they are engaged in establishing details, abandon themselves, in
their exposition of general questions, to their natural impulses, like
the common run of men. They take sides, they censure, they extol; they
colour, they embellish; they allow themselves to be influenced by
personal, patriotic, moral, or metaphysical considerations. And, over
and above all this, they apply themselves, with their several degrees of
talent, to the task of producing works of art; in this endeavour those
who have no talent make themselves ridiculous, and the talent of those
who have any is spoilt by their preoccupation with the effect they wish
to produce.

Not, let it be well understood, that "form" is of no importance, or
that, provided he makes himself intelligible, the historian has a right
to employ incorrect, vulgar, slovenly, or clumsy language. A contempt
for rhetoric, for paste diamonds and paper flowers, does not exclude a
taste for a pure and strong, a terse and pregnant style. Fustel de
Coulanges was a good writer, although throughout his life he recommended
and practised the avoidance of metaphor. On the contrary we see no harm
in repeating[230] that the historian, considering the extreme complexity
of the phenomena he undertakes to describe, is under an obligation not
to write badly. But he should write _consistently_ well, and never
bedeck himself with finery.

CONCLUSION

I. History is only the utilisation of documents. But it is a matter of
chance whether documents are preserved or lost. Hence the predominant
part played by chance in the formation of history.

The quantity of documents in existence, if not of known documents, is
given; time, in spite of all the precautions which are taken nowadays,
is continually diminishing it; it will never increase. History has at
its disposal a limited stock of documents; this very circumstance limits
the possible progress of historical science. When all the documents are
known, and have gone through the operations which fit them for use, the
work of critical scholarship will be finished. In th