earisome at school. "I believe," says M. L. Havet, "that the
teaching of history [in schools] is not organised in such a manner as to
provide sufficient nourishment for the scientific spirit.... Of all the
studies comprised in our school curricula, history is the only one in
which the pupil is not being continually called upon to verify
something. When he is learning Latin or German, every sentence in a
translation requires him to verify a dozen different rules. In the
various branches of mathematics the results are never divorced from
their proofs; the _problems_, too, compel the pupil to think through the
whole for himself. Where are the _problems_ in history, and what
schoolboy is ever trained to gain by independent effort an insight into
the interconnection of events?" (_Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des chartes_,
1896, p. 84).

[21] M. Langlois wrote Book I., Book II. as far at Chapter VI., the
second Appendix, and this Preface; M. Seignobos the end of Book II.,
Book III., and the first Appendix. Chapter I. in the second book,
Chapter V. of the third book, and the Conclusion, were written in
common.

[22] In practice one does not as a rule resolve to treat a point of
history before knowing whether there are or are not documents in
existence which enable it to be studied. On the contrary, it is the
accidental discovery of a document which suggests the idea of thoroughly
elucidating the point of history to which it relates, and thus leads to
the collection, for this purpose, of other documents of the same class.

[23] It is pitiable to see how the best of the early scholars struggled
bravely, but vainly, to solve problems which would not even have existed
for them if their collections had not been so incomplete. This lack of
material was a disadvantage for which the most brilliant ingenuity could
not compensate.

[24] "How hard it is to gain the means whereby we mount to the sources"
(Goethe, _Faust_, i. 3).

[25] See C. V. Langlois, _H. H. Bancroft et Cie._, in the _Revue
universitaire_, 1894, i. p. 233.

[26] The earlier scholars were conscious of the unfavourable character
of the conditions under which they worked. They suffered keenly from the
insufficiency of the instruments of research and the means of
comparison. Most of them made great efforts to obtain information. Hence
these voluminous correspondences between scholars of the last few
centuries, of which our libraries preserve so many precious fragments,