[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 wearisome 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?" (_Bibliothèque de l'École 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, and these accounts of scientific searches, of journeys undertaken for the discovery of historical documents, which, under the name of _Iter_ (_Iter Italicum_, _Iter Germanicum_, &c.), were formerly fashionable.