Important New Historical Works A NOTABLE CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICANA. HENNEPIN'S "A NEW DISCOVERY" An Exact Reprint of the Edition of 1698. In two vol Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. With introduction, notes, and an analytical index by Mr. Thwaites. umes, with fascimiles of original title-pages, maps, and illustrations. Library edition, square 8vo, in box, net $6.00; delivered, $6.35. Large paper edition (limited), on Broum's hand-made paper, 71⁄2 x 10 inches, in box, net $18.00. Every collection of Americana should contain at least one of Father Hennepin's famous books. It is believed that "A New Discovery"—especially the second issue of 1698, which has been chosen for reproduction — is the most representative and readable product of his pen. Moreover, it is the only one of the Hennepin books now upon the market. There seems to be no doubt that this beautiful, well-appointed, and well-edited edition of "Nouvelle Découverte" will at once be accepted as an interesting and valuable addition to American historical sources. (Ready October 3.) Note: This reprint is uniform with McClurg's edition of “Lewis and Clark.” HOW GEORGE ROGERS CLARK WON THE NORTHWEST And Other Essays in Western History By REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Illustrated. 12mo, net $1.20; delivered, $1.31. His extended researches and his natural sympathy with the subject have brought Mr. Thwaites to a first place among historians of the West. The several authoritative volumes that he has already published are recognized as standard, but in this book he has relaxed somewhat into a more popular vein. The majority of the eight papers contained in the volume were first delivered as lectures and were later accorded magazine publication. For the present publication they have been radically revised and brought down to date, and comprise an exceptionally interesting collection of papers covering a wide range of topics under the one general head. (Ready October 3.) A. C. McCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO. SCRIBNER'S NEW BOOKS Important Biographical and Historical Reminiscences of the Civil War By GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON These reminiscences, which are destined to take the place on the $3.00 net pestage extra). Autobiography of Seventy Years By SENATOR GEORGE F. HOAR Not only for its political importance, but for the unusual personal, 2 voli., large 8vo. With portrait. $7.50 net ‹ postage additional). The United States in our Own Time A History from Reconstruction to Expansion The great popularity and authority of this standard work has led to One thousand pages with nearly five hundred illustrations, The Story of the Revolution By HENRY CABOT LODGE A new edition in one volume, with all the illustrations, 178 in number, of the original two-volume edition. 8:0, $3.00. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York The American Historical Review HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS OME forty years ago Thomas Buckle published the famous SOME work in which he denounced the historical method then in use and attributed the failure of historians to raise history to the rank of the natural sciences to intellectual inferiority on their part. Of the zeal displayed in research and "of the immense value of that vast body of facts" that had been brought together Buckle had only words of praise. "But if, on the other hand," he went on, we are to describe the use that has been made of these materials, we must draw a very different picture. The unfortunate peculiarity of the history of man is, that although its separate parts have been examined with considerable ability, hardly any one has attempted to combine them into a whole and ascertain the way in which they are connected with each other. In all the other great fields of inquiry the necessity of generalization is universally admitted, and noble efforts are being made to rise from particular facts in order to discover the laws by which those facts are governed. So far, however, is this from being the usual course of historians, that among them a strange idea prevails, that their business is merely to relate events, which they may occasionally enliven by such moral and political reflections as seem likely to be useful."1 Buckle believed that "the establishment of this narrow standard" had led to results "very prejudicial to the progress of our knowledge." He acknowledged that "since the early part of the eighteenth century, a few great thinkers" had indeed arisen, who had deplored "the backwardness of history," and had done everything in their power to remedy it. These instances had, however, been extremely rare, and it seemed desirable to him that something 1 Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England (2 vols., New York, 1871), I. 3. should be done "on a scale far larger than had hitherto been attempted, "and that a strenuous effort should be made to bring this great department of inquiry to a level with other departments, in order that we may maintain the balance and harmony of our knowledge." He hoped "to accomplish for the history of man something equivalent, or at all events analogous," to what had been effected by other inquirers for the different branches of natural science. In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been explained and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal laws. This has been done because men of ability, and above all, men of patient, untiring thought, have studied natural events with the view of discovering their regularity; and if human events were subjected to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results. . . . This expectation of discovering regularity in the midst of confusion is so familiar to scientific men, that among the most eminent of them it becomes an article of faith; and if the expectation is not generally found among historians, it must be ascribed partly to their being of inferior ability to the investigators of nature, and partly to the greater complexity of those social phenomena with which their studies are concerned." He claimed that "the most celebrated historians are manifestly inferior to the most successful cultivators of physical science: no one having devoted himself to history who in point of intellect is at all to be compared with Kepler, Newton, or many others that might be named." He added, in a foot-note, that he spoke "merely of those that made history their main pursuit. Bacon wrote on it, but only as a subordinate object; and it evidently cost him nothing like the thought which he devoted to other subjects," The idea of raising history to the rank of a science by generalizing upon the social facts and by establishing laws did not originate with Buckle. He had been preceded by Comte, to whom he refers as "a living writer who has done more than any other to raise the standard of history." Comte, Buckle tells us, "contemptuously notices 'l'incohérente compilation de faits déjà improprement qualifice d'histoire,'*** It is well known that the work of Buckle created a sensation. The discussion that it called forth has engaged the attention of a generation of scholars. To scientists the claim made by Buckle, that history could be made a science only by applying to social phenomena the method that had accomplished so much in investi gating physical phenomena, appeared almost if not quite axiomatic; to historians it was rank heresy. They not only denied that they had anything to do with historical laws, but asserted that such things could not be. The arguments made by the historians were not convincing. Droysen, in his defense of the historical method,' acknowledged that "our science has not yet set its theory and system on a firm footing." "The recognition will not be denied to historical studies," he said, "that even they have some part in the intellectual movement of our age, that they are active in discovering the new, in investigating anew what has been transmitted, and in presenting results in appropriate form. But when asked their scientific justification and their relation to the other circles of human knowledge, when asked what is the foundation of their procedure, what the connection of their means and their problems, they are, up to date, in no condition to give satisfactory information." These questions Droysen did not answer in a convincing manner. When he asked, "Is there, then, never more than one way, one method of knowledge? Do not its methods incessantly vary according to their objects ?", he was touching the root of the whole discussion; but he did not make clear what these methods are that give us respectively natural science or history. He claimed that the mind "apprehends spatial manifestations as nature and temporal occurrences as history; not because they are so and so distinguished objectively, but in order to be able to grasp and think them "; but he offered no satisfactory discussion of the logical difference between the synthesis of the natural sciences and of history. He even rendered the problem more complicated by treating history as a science of the moral 'world. The real point at issue- although not fully understood by either side in the debate — was a question of synthesis, of what form should be given to the facts that had been established as the result of the critical work. To improve the work of criticism, to lay down axioms for the establishment of the historical facts, would in no wise meet the objections of the natural scientist to the method-or the absence of method, as he considered it of the historian. This was, however, exactly what Rhomberg hoped to do in his monograph entitled Die Erhebung der Geschichte zum Range einer Wissenschaft. While the work was a valuable contribution to the litera 1 The discussion of the subject by Droysen is found in the two articles entitled "The Elevation of History to the Rank of a Science" and "Nature and History," translations of which are appended to the translation, by Dr. Andrews, of Droysen's Grundriss, under the title Outline of the Principles of History (Boston, 1893). 2 Adolf Rhomberg, Die Erhebung der Geschichte zum Range einer Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1883). Rhomberg chose for the motto of his book, "Erst die Gewissheit |