Different degrees of difficulty of Heuristic in different parts of History--to be kept in view when choosing a subject of research 38 CHAPTER II "AUXILIARY SCIENCES" Documents are raw material, and need a preliminary elaboration 42 Obsolete views on the historian's apprenticeship--Mably, Daunou 43 Commonplace and exaggeration on this subject--Freeman--Various futilities 45 The scientific conception of the historian's apprenticeship--Palæography--Epigraphy--Philology--Diplomatic 48 History of Literature--Archæology 51 Criticism of phrase "auxiliary sciences"--The subjects not all _sciences_--None of them auxiliary to the _whole_ of History 52 This scientific conception is of recent growth--The École des Chartes--Modern manuals of Palæography, Epigraphy, &c.--List of the chief of them 55 BOOK II _ANALYTICAL OPERATIONS_ CHAPTER I GENERAL CONDITIONS OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE Direct and indirect knowledge of facts 63 History not a science of direct observation--Its data obtained by chains of reasoning 64 Twofold division of Historical Criticism: _External_, investigating the transmission and origin of documents and the statements in them; _Internal_, dealing with the content of the statements and their probability 66 Complexity of Historical Criticism 67 Necessity of Criticism--The human mind naturally uncritical 68 SECTION I.--EXTERNAL CRITICISM CHAPTER II TEXTUAL CRITICISM Errors in the reproduction of documents: their frequency under the most favourable conditions--Mistakes of copyists--"Sound" and "corrupt" texts 71 Necessity of emendation--The method subject to fixed rules 73 Methods of textual criticism: (_a_) original preserved; (_b_) a single copy preserved, conjectural emendation; (_c_) several copies preserved, comparison of errors, families of manuscripts 75 Different degrees of difficulty of textual criticism: its results negative--The "emendation game"--What still remains to be done 83 CHAPTER III CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP PAGE Natural tendency to accept indications of authorship--Examples of false attributions--Necessity of verification--Application of internal criticism 87 Interpolations and continuations--Evidence of style 92