two things one: either the author can give the reasons for his
impression, and then we can judge them, or he cannot give them, and we
may assume that he has none of serious value.

[226] This difference has a tendency to disappear. The most recent
alphabetical collections of historical facts (the _Realencyclopaedie der
classischen Altertumswissenschaft_ of Pauly-Wissowa, the _Dictionnaire
des antiquites_ of Daremberg and Saglio, the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ of Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee) are furnished with a
sufficiently ample apparatus. It is principally in biographical
dictionaries that the custom of giving no proofs tends to persist; see
the _Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_, &c.

[227] _Revue Critique_, 1874, i. p. 327.

[228] The custom of appending to "histories," that is to narratives of
political events, summaries of the results obtained by the special
historians of art, literature, &c., still persists. A "History of
France" would not be considered complete if it did not contain chapters
on the history of art, literature, manners, &c., in France. However, it
is not the summary account of special evolutions, described at second
hand from the works of specialists, which is in its proper place in a
scientific "History"; it is the study of those general facts which have
dominated the special evolutions in their entirety.

[229] It is hard to imagine what it is possible for the most interesting
and best established results of modern criticism to become, in the hands
of negligent and unskilful popularisers. The persons who know most of
these possibilities are those who have occasion to read the improvised
"compositions" of candidates in history examinations: the ordinary
defects of inferior popularisation are here pushed sometimes to an
absurd length.

[230] Cf. _supra_, p. 266.

[231] We have spoken above of the element of subjectivity which it is
impossible to eliminate from historical construction, and which has been
misinterpreted to the extent of denying history the character of a
science: this element of subjectivity which troubled Pecuchet (G.
Flaubert, _Bouvard et Pecuchet_, p. 157) and Sylvestre Bonnard (A.
France, _Le crime de Silvestre Bonnard_, p. 310), and which causes Faust
to say:

"Die Zeiten der Vergangenheit
Sind uns ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln.
Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst,
Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist,
In dem die Zeiten sich bespie