Excerpt from The Popular Science Monthly: Supplement; Observation in Social Science

This significant change may be seen in the researches which have for their end to unearth extinct civilizations, and to trace to its source the life of nations. Only the other day M. Villemain, in one of his most piquant lectures, while enumerating the qualities necessary for an historian, very coolly placed in the background truthfulness and exactitude, and gave prominence only to the art of literary composition. In his opinion, writing history means skillfully constructing an emotional drama, attending to the stage perspectives, and so ordering the action of the piece as to produce the most striking effect.

Great masters, no doubt, have been able by the inspiration of genius to divine, so to speak, the physiognomy of the past, and with exquisite skill to recall to life all unchanged worlds that have perished. Thus, in the narrative of Augustin Thierry, we have pictured the gloomy period of the Merovingians; in the romances of Walter Scott, the struggles of Saxon and Norman; in the sparkling pages of Michelet, one or another aspect of the middle ages. Still, how dangerous a thing it is to blend fables with truth, and how faint is the distinction between the dramaturgist and the historian! One writer, sharpening his fine irony to gratify the wits, yields to the temptation of portraying the men of his time in the transparent colors of an antique picture, and thus more or less sacrifices to the enticing mirage of allusions either the likeness of the past or the exactitude of the present. Another excels as a composer of eloquent speeches, and in his eyes the annals of a people contain nothing but jousts of oratory: the fate of empires, according to him, depends on the harangue of a general on the battle-field, or of a tribune in the public place of some little borough. They both forget the mass of the people, and personify in a small number of individuals the societies they describe. Besides, they look at these societies only from the outside, from the point of view of their public life; they are like travelers who judge of a strange country from their observations during a flying visit to a few of its seaports. In man, "fluctuating and variable" as he is, they observe only that which changes least - his virtues, his vices, his caprices; and it is their delight to excite emotion by over and over again describing the strife of the selfsame passions; but the inner life, the unambitious life, the homes of the past, they do not notice at all. They hardly ever step beyond the threshold of the palace, or halt before the artisan's workshop or the laboring-man's hut; still it is here that we get at the very conditions of national life - the organization of the family, the institution of property, the laws of labor, the private ethics and the moral habits of a people. Fortunately, we can restore sundry traits of the effaced picture, thanks to patient research. A monument turns up which, after much ingenious discussion, enables us to understand the sacred uses of fire in ancient states, or the importance of luxury in the ancient mother-cities of Asia; again, some charter or some inventory gives plain evidence of the harmony and well-being of the rural classes in the middle ages; or some lirre de raison (book of accounts) gives us an insight into the inner life of some obscure family in the past.

Still these are only the too rare pages of a damaged book, the leaves of which will never be all found. But if we must make up our minds to remain in ignorance of much of the past, can we not at least collect all needed information regarding the present? Something more than vain curiosity should stimulate us here; indeed, may we not expect to find in this kind of researches the solution of the difficulties which weigh most heavily on modern civilization? Humanity, even on the privileged shores of Greece and Italy, is not intended for the luxu.