I cannot adopt all the maxims and precepts
contained in this treatise; but I believe that, after that of Lucian, it
is the best we have yet seen, and I greatly doubt whether any of those
whose acquaintance we have still to make has risen to the same height of
philosophy and originality." Pere H. Cherot has given a sounder estimate
of the treatise _De l'histoire_ in his _Etude sur la vie et les
oeuvres du P. Le Moyne_ (Paris, 1887, 8vo), pp. 406 _sqq._

[12] Bernheim declares, however (ibid. p. 177), that this little work
is, in his opinion, the only one which stands at the present level of
science.

[13] Flint says very well (ibid. p. 15): "The course of Historic has
been, on the whole, one of advance from commonplace reflection on
history towards a philosophical comprehension of the conditions and
processes on which the formation of historical science depends.

[14] By P. Guiraud, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, March 1896, p. 75.

[15] Renan has said some of the truest and best things that have ever
been said on the historical sciences in _L'Avenir de la science_ (Paris,
1890, 8vo), written in 1848.

[16] Some of the most ingenious, some of the most logical, and some of
the most widely applicable observations, on the method of the historical
sciences, have so far appeared, not in books on methodology, but in the
reviews--of which the _Revue Critique d'histoire et de litterature_ is
the type--devoted to the criticism of new works of history and
erudition. It is a very useful exercise to run through the file of the
_Revue Critique_, founded, at Paris, in 1867, "to enforce respect for
method, to execute justice upon bad books, to check misdirected and
superfluous work."

[17] The first edition of the _Lehrbuch_ is dated 1889.

[18] The best work that has hitherto been published (in French) on
historical method is a pamphlet by MM. Ch. and V. Mortet, _La Science de
l'histoire_ (Paris, 1894, 8vo), 88 pp., extracted from vol. xx. of the
_Grande Encyclopedie_.

[19] One of us, M. Seignobos, proposes to publish later on a complete
treatise of Historical Methodology, if there appears to be a public for
this class of work.

[20] It cannot be too often stated that the study of history, as it is
prosecuted at school, does not presuppose the same aptitudes as the same
study when prosecuted at the university or in after life. Julien Havet,
who afterwards devoted himself to the (critical) study of history, found
history w