THE INDUSTRIAL AND SCIENTIFIC REVOLU TIONS AND THE LEADING TENDENCIES IN MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY.
1. The Persistence and Development of Earlier Trends.— While the major portion of the progress in historiography since Ranke has consisted in rise of new and sounder tendencies there have been important improvements in the earlier and traditional lines of development.
In the first place, while little .has been achieved that was not implicit in the methodo logical system of Ranke, there have been some important improvements in both the critique and the technique of historical methodology since Ranke's time. The fundamental principles of historical criticism have been refined and systematized in the admirable works of Bern heim and Langlois and Seignobos, so that the beginner may now have at his disposal a more extended discussion of all phases of historical method than Ranke was ever acquainted with. There has also been a great improvement in the mechanical accessories of historical scholar ship. Elaborate bibliographies of the historiog raphy of the various countries have been pre pared, of which those by Langlois, Molinier, Monod, Dahlmann-Waitz and Gross are the more notable. These are supplemented by cur rent lists of the new works which appear, pub lished in the various technical historical jour nals, and the student is enabled to keep thor oughly abreast of the literature in his field Remarkably thorough and accurate guides to the vast collections of sources of national and ecclesiastical history which were gathered dur ing the 19th century have been provided, and the modern student may locate in a few minutes in any great library sources which might have occupied any earlier generation in months of fruitless searching. Of this invaluable type of aid the monumental works of Potthast and Chevalier are most worthy of mention. Again, archives, public and private, have been opened more freely to the historical scholar, though he is still excluded from the more recent material. Nor should one neglect to point out the great contribution to efficiency, expedition and accu racy in historical investigation which has come about from the general introduction of card catalogues, filing systems, loose-leaf note books and elaborate schemes for indexing and cross reference. This important type of innovation and improvement has been chiefly the work of American scholars. As important as the ad vances in bibliographical and other mechanical aids has been the great extension and im provement of the teaching profession in the department of history. Under the guidance of trained scholars, the members of historical seminars, though of mediocre literary talent may contribute more exact knowledge to the field of history in their dissertations than was contained in many volumes of the older and popular literary history. Finally, historical
science has, after two centuries of delay, followed the lead of natural science and be come co-operative in the true sense of the word. National historical societies have been formed in all the leading countries, each sup porting one or more technical journals. It is also rare now that a single authoritative his torian 'attempts a comprehensive survey of a wide field of history; it has rather come to be the general practice to produce extensive his tories on the co-operative plan in order to utilize to the full the ability of specialists. It would seem that historiography can make little more progress in the refinement of critical methodology. It only remains to bring modern history as far as possible under the control of the same exact apparatus of research that has already been proVided for mediaeval and church history.
A less salutary type of persistence of older tendencies has been the perpetuation of the political fetish of Ranke and his school. A number of causes have accounted for this rather curious survival of a strange distortion of historical interests. In the first place, a great impulse was given to the political orienta don through the students and disciples of Ranke who held steadfastly to the tenets of their master. This was superseded in Germany by the more violent nationalism and political pre dilection of Droysen, Treitschke, Von Sybel and the others of the Prussian school. The rise of nationalism and political interests in France under the Third Republic kept alive the earlier nationalistic political history that had before been stimulated by the interest in the episodes of the French Revolution and the conquests of Napoleon. In England the univer sal conviction as to the supreme political capacity of the Anglo-Saxon seemingly im posed a moral obligation upon English his torians to concentrate their attention upon the proofs of this superiority. In America the political and episodical historiography was stimulated by the thrills of a great and success ful war in behalf of national unity and was perpetuated by the introduction of the tenets of Ranke and Droysen by their returning pupils, who became the leaders and organizers of his torical study in this country. Finally, this type of history received a last source of inspiration from the recrudescence of nationalism through out the world as an inevitable accompaniment of the imperialism or (neo-mercantilism* which developed more or less universally in the period of the °seventies° and the following years. That the adherents of this form of history will gain at least momentary strength and encourage ment from the revived importance of national ism and militarism growing out of the present World War is scarcely to be doubted.