4. Impartiality in History. Impartiality has always been considered as the most essential quality of the historian. All historians since Tacitus have assured us that they are impartial. In reality the writer sees events as the painter sees a landscape--that is, through his own temperament; through his character and the mind of the race. A number of artists, placed before the same landscape, would necessarily interpret it in as many different fashions. Some would lay stress upon details neglected by others. Each reproduction would thus be a personal work--that is to say, would be interpreted by a certain form of sensibility. It is the same with the writer. We can no more speak of the impartiality of the historian than we can speak of the impartiality of the painter. Certainly the historian may confine himself to the reproduction of documents, and this is the present tendency. But these documents, for periods as near us as the Revolution, are so abundant that a man's whole life would not suffice to go through them. Therefore the historian must make a choice. Consciously sometimes, but more often unconsciously, the author will select the material which best corresponds with his political, moral, and social opinions. It is therefore impossible, unless he contents himself with simple chronologies summing up each event with a few words and a date, to produce a truly impartial volume of history. No author could be impartial; and it is not to be regretted. The claim to impartiality, so common to-day, results in those flat, gloomy, and prodigiously wearisome works which render the comprehension of a period completely impossible. Should the historian, under a pretext of impartiality, abstain from judging men--that is, from speaking in tones of admiration or reprobation? This question, I admit, allows of two very different solutions, each of which is perfectly correct, according to the point of view assumed--that of the moralist or that of the psychologist. The moralist must think exclusively of the interest of society, and must judge men only according to that interest. By the very fact that it exists and wishes to continue to exist a society is obliged to admit a certain number of rules, to have an indestructible standard of good and evil, and consequently to create very definite distinctions between vice and virtue. It thus finally creates average types, to which the man of the period approaches more or less closely, and from which he cannot depart very widely without peril to society.