READING 2

Introduction

History relies heavily on arguments. Historians construct arguments based on evidence (sources) and
through the process of questioning, reasoning and interrogation, they are able to develop or reconstruct
knowledge of the past. All good historical writing is a product of the historians' arguments and congruently,
the historians' sources are just as good as their arguments.

There are two mental processes that historians follow before they formulate their arguments namely;
authenticity and credibility. Authenticity is related to genuineness or external criticism of a historical
source. It answers questions related to the identity of the author in terms of personality, character, position,
and qualifications or disqualifications in writing the document. It also identifies when, where and how the
document was written and how does the content relate (similar or different) with other documents as well as
the evidential value of the source. On the other hand, credibility or internal criticism refers to the
trustworthiness of the contents of the source. This kind of criticism focuses on examining the believability
of the contents of the source, the natural and plausible connection between the document and the author and
the consistency of the document with the author's known level of gender, socio-economic background,
intelligence, political advocacy, religion, and the like.

To better understand authenticity and credibility of historical documents, the article on the "The Problem of
Authenticity and the Problem of Credibility" written by Louis Gottschalk is presented. The reading
emphasizes that historians employ two levels of historical criticism namely; external and internal criticism
which defines their historical scholarship. In both levels of criticisms, the historians execute their work with
professionalism by undertaking numerous activities that allow them to reconstruct the past with soundness
and objectivity.

Learning Objectives

After reading the text, each student will be able to:

1. Differentiate authenticity from credibility;

2. Discuss the role of internal and external criticism in the writing of history;
3. Determine measures to evaluate the authenticity and credibility of historical sources;
4. Explain the four tests in determining the credibility of a historical evidence; and
5. Discuss factors influencing the witness's ability to tell the truth and willingness to tell the truth.

Chapter VI

Excerpt from "The Problem of Authenticity, or External Criticism"

So far it has been assumed that the documents dealt with have been authentic. The problem of authenticity
seldom concerns the sociologist or psychologist or an anthropologist, who generally has a living subject
under his eye, can see him as he prepares his autobiography, and can cross-examine him about doubtful
points. Even in the law courts the question authenticity of documents becomes difficult problem only on
rare occasions, when the writer or witness to the writing cannot be produced.1But for historical documents
those occasions are not rare. They are in fact frequent for manuscript sources; and if doubt as to authenticity
arises less often for printed sources, it is because usually some skilled editor has already performed the task
of authenticating them.

Forged or Misleading Documents

Forgeries of documents in whole or in part without being usual are common enough to keep the careful
historian constantly on his guard. "Historical documents" are fabricated for several reasons. Sometimes
they are used to bolster a false claim or title. A well-known example is the Donation of Constantine, which
used to be cited on occasion to bolster a theory that popes had a wide territorial claim in the west. In 1440
Lorenzo Valla proved, chiefly by means of anachronisms of style and allusion, that it had been forged. At
other times documents are counterfeited for sale. Counterfeit letter of Queen Marie Antoinette used to turn
up frequently.2 A Philadelphia autograph dealer named Robert Spring once manufactured hundreds of
skilful forgeries in order to supply the demand of collectors. A recent notorious example of forgery was the
"correspondence" of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, palmed off on the Atlantic Monthly in 1928.

Sometimes fabrication is due to less mercenary considerations. Political propaganda largely accounts for
protocols of the Elders of Zion, a "document" pretending to reveal a ruthless Jewish conspiracy to rule the
world. 3 Sometimes historical "facts" are based only on some practical joke, as in the case of H.L.
Mencken's much cited article on the "history” of the bathtub, or of Alexander Woollcott's mocking letter of
endorsement of Dorothy Parker's husband (of which he never sent the original to the supposed addressee,
although he did send the carbon copy to the endorsee). 4 The Mémoires of Madame d'Epinay are a striking
example of fabrication of a whole book that has beguiled even respectable historians.5

Sometimes quite genuine documents are intended to mislead certain contemporaries and hence have misled
subsequent historians. A statement supposed to be that of Emperor Leopold Il's views on the French
Revolution misled Marie Antoinette and subsequently even the most careful historians until it was exposed
in 1984 as a wishful statement of some French émigrés. 6 In days when spies are expected to open mail in
the post, writers of letters would occasionally to outwit them by turning their curiosity to the advantage of
the one spied upon rather than to that of the spy or his employer. 7 And when censors might condemn books
to be burned and writers to be imprisoned, authors could hardly be blamed if they sometimes signed others'
names to their work. For instance, it is hard to tell whether some works actually written by Voltaire are not
still ascribed to others. It is thus possible to be too skeptical about a document which may be genuine
though not what it seems. Bernheim has provided a list of documents that were once hypercritically
considered unauthentic but are now accepted. 8 Perhaps it was hypercriticism of this kind that led Vincent
Starrett to write his verse entitled "After Much Striving for Fame":

It would be rather jolly, I think,

To be the original authority
On some obscure matter of literature or faith
Upon which, in one's leisure,
One had jotted down an inaccurate pamphlet;
And forever thereafter
To be quoted by all post-Vincentian borrowers
In a pertinacious footnote.

Occasionally misrepresentations of the nature of printed works result from editor's tricks. It is still a matter
of dispute which of many writings attributed to Cardinal Richelieu were in fact written or dictated by him;
and little of the so-called Mémoires de Jean de Witt and Testament politique de Colbert were in fact by
John de Witt and Colbert. The memoirs attributed to Condorcet and to Weber, foster-brother of Marie
Antoinette, and several works ascribed to Napoleon I are by others than their alleged authors. Even issues
of daily newspapers have been manufactured long after the dates they bear. The Moniteur furnishes some
good examples (see page 107 above). Several Diaries of Napoleon have been made up by others from his
writings. The circumstances of the forgery or misrepresentation of historical documents may often
themselves reveal important political, cultural, and biographical information — but not about the same
events or persons as if they were genuine.
Tests of Authenticity

To distinguish a hoax or misrepresentation from genuine document, the historian has to use tests that are common
also in police and legal detection. Making the best guess he can of the date of the document (see below pp. 138 and
147-148), he examines the materials to see whether they are not anachronistic: paper was rare in Europe before the
fifteenth century, and printing was unknown; pencils did not exist there before the sixteenth century; typewriting was
not invented until the nineteenth century; and India paper came only at the end of that century. The historian also
examines the ink for signs of age or for anachronistic chemical composition. Making his best guess of the possible
author of the document (see below pp. 144-147), he sees if he can identify the handwriting, signature, seal, letterhead,
or watermark. Even when the handwriting is unfamiliar, it can be compared with authenticated specimens. One of the
unfulfilled needs of the historian is more of what the French call "isographies" — dictionaries of biography giving
examples of handwriting. For some period of history, experts using techniques known as paleography and
diplomatics, first systematized by Mabillon in the seventeenth century (see p. 127 below), have long known that in
certain regions at certain times handwriting and the style and form of official documents were more or less
conventionalized. Seals have been the subject of special study by sigillographers, and experts can detect faked ones
(see below, p. 128). Anachronistic style (idiom, orthography or punctuation) can be detected by specialists who are
familiar with contemporary writing. 10 Often spelling, particularly of proper names and signatures (because too good
or too bad or anachronistic), reveals a forgery, as would also unhistoric grammar. Anachronistic references to events
(too early or too late or too remote) or the dating of the document at a time when the alleged writer could not possibly
have been at the place designated (the alibi) uncovers fraud. Sometimes the skilful forger has all too carefully
followed the best historical sources and his product becomes too obviously a copy in certain passages; or where, by
skilful paraphrase and invention, he is shrewd enough to avoid detection in that fashion, he is given away by the
absence of trivia and otherwise unknown details from his manufactured account. ll Usually, however, if the document
is where it ought to be — for example, in a family's archives, or among a business firm's or lawyer's papers, or in
governmental bureau's records (but not merely because it is in a library or in an amateur's autograph collection) — its
provenance (or its custody, as the lawyers call it), 12 creates a presumption of its genuineness.

Garbled Documents

A document that in its entirety or in large part is the result of a deliberate effort to deceive may often be hard to
evaluate, but it sometimes causes less trouble than does the document that is unauthentic only in small part. For such
parts are usually the results, not of studied falsehood, but of unintentional error. They occur most frequently in copies
of documents whose originals have disappeared, and are generally due to that kind of error of omission, repetition, or
addition with which anyone who have ever made copies soon becomes familiar. Sometimes they are the result,
however, not of carelessness but of deliberate intention to modify, supplement, or continue the original. Such a
change may be made in good faith in the first instance; cares being exerted to indicate the differences between the
original text and the glossary or continuations, but future copyists are often less careful or more confused and make
no such distinctions.

This problem is most familiar to classical philologists and Bible critics. For they seldom have copies less than eight
centuries and several stages of reproduction removed from the original — that is to say, copies of copies of copies
and sometimes copies of translations of copies of translations of copies, and so on. The philologists give to this
problem of establishing an accurate text the name textual criticism, and in Biblical studies it is also called lower
criticism. The historian has borrowed his technique from philologist and Bible critics.

The Restoration of Texts

The technique is complicated but can be briefly described. The first task is to collect as many copies of the
dubious text as diligent search will reveal. Then they are compared. It is found that some contain words or
phrases or whole passages that are not contained in others. The question then arises: Are those words,
phrases or passages additions to the original text that have found their way into some copies, or are they
omissions from the others? To answer that question it is necessary to divide the available copies into one or
more "families" — that is, groups of texts which closely resemble each other and therefore seem to be
derived, directly or indirectly, from the same master copy. Then by a comparison of the texts within each
family an effort is made to establish the comparative age of each in relation to the others. If the members of
the same family are largely copied from each other, as this arrangement in families frequently shows, the
oldest one is all probability (but not necessarily) the one nearest the original. This process is continued for
all the families. When the copy nearest the original in each family is discovered, a comparison of all of
these "father" copies will usually then reveal words and passages that are in some but not in others. Again
the question arises: Are those words and passages additions to the copies that have them or omissions from
the copies that do not? The most accurate available wordings of the passages added or omitted by the
respective copyists are then prepared. Changes in handwritings, anachronisms in style, grammar,
orthography, or factual detail, and opinions or errors unlikely to have been those of the original author
frequently reveal additions by a later hand. When the style and contents of passages under discussion may
be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were parts of his original manuscript but were
omitted by later copyist; and when they cannot be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they
were not parts of his original manuscript. In some cases, a final decision has to await the discovery of still
more copies. In many instances the original text can be approximately or entirely restored.

By a similar method one can even guess the contents, at least in part, of a "father" manuscript even when no
full copy of it is in existence. The historian Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, a student of Ranke, attempted to
reconstruct a text that he reasoned must be the ancestor of several eleventh-century chronicles in which he
had noted striking similarities. By adding together the passages that appeared to be "descended" from an
unknown chronicle, he made a guess as to its contents. Over a quarter of a century later the ancestor
chronicle was in fact found and proved to be extensively like Giesebrecht's guess.

Identification of Author and of Date

Some guess of the approximate date of the document and some identification of its supposed author (or, at
least, a surmise as to his location in time and space and as to his habits, attitudes, character, learning,
associates, etc.) obviously form an essential part of external criticism. Otherwise it would be impossible to
prove or disprove authenticity by anachronisms, handwriting, style, alibi, or other tests that are associated
with the author's milieu, personality, and actions. But similar knowledge or guesses are also necessary for
internal criticism, and therefore the problem of author-identification has been left for the next chapter (pp.
144-148).

Having established an authentic text and discovered what its author really intended to say, the historian has
only established what the witness's testimony is. He has yet to determine whether that testimony is at all
credible, and if so, to what extent. That is the problem of internal criticism.

Chapter VII
The Problem of Credibility, or Internal Criticism

The historian first aims in the examination of testimony to obtain a set of particulars relevant to the topic or
question that he has in mind. Isolated particulars have little meaning by themselves, and unless they have a
context or fit into a hypothesis they are of doubtful value. But that is a problem of synthesis, which will be
discussed later.1 What we are now concerned with, is the analysis of documents for credible details to be
fitted into a hypothesis or context.

What is Historical Fact?

In the process of analysis, the historian should constantly keep in mind the relevant particulars within the
document rather than the document as a whole. Regarding each particular he asks: Is it credible? It might be well to
point to point out again that what is meant by calling a particular credible is not that it is actually what happened, but
that it is as close to what actually what happened as we can learn from a critical examination of the best available
sources.2 This means verisimilar at a high level. It connotes something more than merely not being preposterous in
itself or even than plausible and yet is short of meaning accurately descriptive of past actuality. In other words, the
historian establishes verisimilitude rather than objective truth. Though there is a high correlation between the two,
they are not necessarily identical. As far as mere particulars are concerned, historians disagree relatively seldom
regarding whatis credible in this special sense of “conforming to a critical examination of the sources”. It is not
inconceivable that in dealing with the same document, two historians of equal ability and training would extract the
same isolated “fact” and agree with each other’s findings. In that way, the elementary data of history are subject to
proof.

A historical “fact” thus may be defined as a particular derived directly from historical documents and regarded as
credible after careful testing in accordance with the canons of historical method (see below p. !50). An infinity and a
multiple variety of facts of this kind are accepted by all historians: e.g., that Socrates really existed:, that Alexander
invaded India; that the Romans built the Pantheon; that the Chinese have an ancient literature (but here we introduce
a complexity with the word ancient, which needs definition before its factual quality can be considered certain); the
Pope Innocent III excommunicated King John if England; that Michael Angelo sculptured “Moses”; that Bismarick
modified the dispatch from Ems of King William’s secretary; that banks in the United States 1933 were closed for
four days by presidential proclamation; and that “the Yankees” won the “World Series” in 1949. Simple and fully
attested “facts” of this kind are rarely disputed. They are easily observed, easily recorded (if not self-evident, like the
Pantheon and Chinese literature), involve no judgements of value (except with the regard to the antiquity of Chinese
literature), contradict no other knowledge available to us, seem otherwise logically acceptable, and avoiding
generalization, deal with single instances.

Even some apparently simple and concrete statements, however, are subject to question. If no one disputes the
historicity of Socrates, there is less agreement regarding Moses and earlier figures of Hebrew folklore. If no one
doubts that Michael Angelo sculptured his “Moses”. A few still think that Shakespeare’s plays were in fact written by
Francis Bacon. Doubt regarding concrete particulars is likely to be due, however, to lack of testimony based on first-
hand observation rather than disagreement among the witnesses. In general, on simple and concrete matters where
testimony of direct observation is available, the testimony can usually that will be submitted to tests of reliability that
will be convincing either pro or con to most competent and impartial historians. As soon as abstractions, vale
judgement, generalizations, and other complexities enter into the testimony, the possibility of contradiction and
debate enters with them. Hence, alongside the multitude of fats generally accepted by historians, exists another
multitudes debated (or at least debatable) by them.

The Interrogative Hypothesis

In analyzing a document for its isolated “facts”, the historians should approach it with a question r a set of questions
in mind. The questions may be relatively noncommittal, (e.g., Did Saul try to assassinate David? What were the
details of Catiline’s life? Who were the crusading companions of Tancred? What was the date of Erasmus’ birth?
How many men were aboard De Grasse’s fleet in 1781? What is the correct spelling of Sièyes? Was Hung Hsui-
chu’an a Christian?) It will be noted that one cannot ask even simple questions like these without knowing enough
about some problem in history to ask a question about it, and if no one knows enough to ask even the simplest
question, one already has some idea and probably some hypothesis regarding it, whether implicit or explicit, whether
tentative and flexible or formulated and fixed. Or the hypothesis may be full-fledged, though still implicit and in
interrogative form. (E.g. Can the Jews be held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus? Did the medieval city develop
from the fair? Why did Anabaptists believe in religious liberty? How did participation in the American Revolution
contribute to the spread of liberal ideas among the French aristocracy? Why did Woodrow Wilson deny knowledge
of the “secret treaties”?) In each of these questions, a certain implication is assumed to be true and further
clarification is sought on an additional working assumption.

Putting the hypothesis in interrogative form is more judicious than putting it in a declarative form if for no other
reason than that it is more noncommittal before all the evidence has been examined. It may also help in some small
way to solve the delicate problem of relevance of subject matter (see Chapter 10 below), since only those materials
are relevant which lead directly to an answer to the question or indicate that there is no satisfactory answer.

The Quest for Particular Details of Testimony

As has already been pointed out, every historical subject has four aspects – the biographical, the geographical, the
chronological, and the occupational or functional. With a set of names, dates, and key-words in mind for each of
these aspects, the historical investigator combs his document for relevant particulars (or “notes,” as he is more likely
to call them). It is generally wise to take notes on relevant matter whether or not it at first appears to be credible. It
may turn out to that even the false or mistaken testimony has relevance to an understanding of one’s problem.

Having accumulated his notes, the investigator must now separate credible from the incredible. Even from his
“notes” he has sometimes to extract still small details, for even a single name may reveal a companion of Tancred, as
single letter the correct spelling of Sièyes, a single digit the exact number of De Grasse’s crew, or a single phrase as
the motives of Wilson’s denial. In detailed investigations, few documents are significant as a whole; they serve most
often mines from which to extract historical ore. Each bit of ore, however, may contain flaws on its own.; the general
reliability of an author, in other words, the significance only as establishing the probable credibility of his particular
statements. From that process pf scrupulous analysis emerges an important general rule: for each particular of a
document, the process of establishing credibility should be separately undertaken regardless of the general credibility
of the author.

Identification of Author

As has already been pointed out (p. 138), some identification of the author is necessary to test a document’s
authenticity. In the subsequent process of determining the credibility of its particulars, even the most genuine of
documents should be regarded as guilty of deceit until proven innocent, the importance of first establishing the
author’s general reliability is therefore obvious. Where the name of the author can be determined and he is a person
about whom biographical data are available, identification is a relatively easy task. Because in most legal and social
science investigations, the witness or the author of a document, is personally known and available to the investigator.
that question generally presents no insurmountable difficulties to lawyers and social scientists.

The historian, however, is frequently obliged to use documents Mitten by persons about whom nothing or
relatively little is known. Even the hundreds of biographical dictionaries md encyclopaedias already in
existence may be of no help because the author's name is unknown or, if known, not to be found in the
reference works. The historian must therefore depend upon the document itself to teach him what it can
about the author. A single brief document may teach him much if he asks the right questions. It may, Of
course, contain explicit biographical details, but to assume that would be begging the question. Even where
it is relatively free from first-person allusions, much may be learned of the author's mental processes and
personal attitudes from it alone.
Let us use the usual text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and assume for the same of example that we have no
knowledge of it except for what its own contents may reveal:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion
of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world
will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honoured
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth.

Even a hasty examination will suffice to make clear that the author, at the time of writing, was planning to
use it as a speech (“we are met,” “what we say here”), that he wrote English well, that his address was a
funeral oration (“we have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place”), that he was
probably a prominent citizen, that he presumably was an American (“our fathers,” “this continent,” “new
nation,” “four score and seven years ago”), that he was an advocate of liberty and equality (or at least
desired his hearer to think so), that he lived during the American Civil War, that he was speaking at
Gettysburg, or possibly Vicksburg (“great battlefield,” “four score and seven years ago”), and that he
wanted his side in the war to be thought of as fighting for democracy ("government of the people, by the
people, for the people"). If we forget the controversy among historians as to whether the words under God
were actually delivered or were only afterward inserted, we may assume that he subscribed, or wished to
appear to subscribe, to the belief in Supreme Being.

From a short document, it would thus appear, it is possible to learn much about the author without knowing
who he was. In the case of the Gettysburg Address a trained historian would probably soon detect Lincoln's
authorship, if it were unknown. But even if he had never heard of Lincoln, he would be able to tell that, in
attempting to judge the truth of the particulars stated in that address, he would have to consider it as
probably a public exhortation by a prominent antislavery Northerner after a major victory over the
Confederate States in the American Civil War. Many documents, being less modest and less economical of
words than the Gettysburg Address, give their authors away more readily.

Determination of Approximate Date

It would be relatively easy, even if the Gettysburg Address were a totally strange document, to establish its
approximate date. It was obviously composed “four-score and seven years” after the Declaration of Independence,
hence in 1863. But few strange documents are so easily dated. One has frequently to resort to the conjectures known
to the historian as the terminus non-post quem (“the point not after which”). These termini, or points, have to be
established by internal evidence — by clues given within the document itself. If the date 1863 were not implicit in
the Gettysburg Address, other references within the speech could point obviously to the beginning of the American
Civil War as its terminus non ante quem, and since the war was obviously still going on when the document was
composed, its terminus non post quem would be the end of the Civil War. Hence its date could be fixed
approximately, even if the first sentence had been lost, as somewhere between 1861 and 1865; and if we were
enabled by other data to guess at “the great battlefield," we might even narrow that margin. Some documents might
not permit even a remote guess of their termini, but where the author is known, one has at least the dates of his birth
and death go by.

The Personal Equation

This analysis of the Gettysburg Address (under the false assumption that its authorship is unknown)
indicates the type of question the historian asks of both anonymous and avowed documents. Was the author
an eyewitness of the events he narrates? If not, what were his sources of information? When did he write
the document? How much time elapsed between the event and the record? What was his purpose in writing
or speaking? Who were his audience and why? Such questions enable the historian to answer the still more
important questions: Was the author of the documents able to tell the math; and if able, was he willing to do
so? The ability and the willingness of a witness to give dependable testimony are determined by a number
of factors in his personality and social situation that together are sometimes called his “personal equation,"
a term applied to the correction required in astronomical observations to allow for the habitual inaccuracy
of individual observers. The personal equation of a historian is sometimes also called "his frame of
reference," but it probably will be found more expedient to the latter term to his conscious philosophy or
philosophies of life in so far as they can be divorced from personality traits and biases of which he may or
may not be aware.

General Rules

In a law court it is frequently assumed that all the testimony of a witness, though under oath, is suspect if
the opposing lawyers can impugn his general character or by examination and cross-examination create
doubt of his veracity in some regard. Even in modem law courts the old maxim falsus in uno, falsus in
omnibus tends to be overemphasized. 3 In addition, hearsay evidence is as a general rule excluded; 4 certain
kinds of witnesses are “privileged” or “unqualified” and therefore are not obliged to testify or are kept from
testifying;5 and evidence obtained by certain means regarded as transgressing the citizen's rights — such as
“third degree,” drugs, wire-tapping, or lie-detector — are ruled out of some courts. The legal system of
evidence, says James Bradley Thayer, "is not concerned with nice definitions, or the exacter academic
operations of the logical faculty . . . . Its rules . . . are seeking to determine, not what is or is not, in its
nature, probative, but rather, passing by that inquiry, what among really probative matters, shall,
nevertheless, for this or that practical reason, be excluded, and not even heard by the jury.'' 6 Courts of law,
in the Anglo-Saxon system at least, go on the assumption that if one side presents all the permissible
testimony in its favor and if the other side presents all the permissible testimony in its, the truth will emerge
plainly enough for judge and jury from the conflict or harmony of the testimony, even if some kinds of
testimony are not permissible; and possibly where much and recent testimony is available, the innocent
suffer less often by such an assumption than the guilty escape.

The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge he
rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant. To him any single detail of testimony is credible — even if
it is contained in a document obtained by or fraud, or is otherwise impeachable, or is based on hearsay
evidence, or is from an interested witness — provided it can pass four tests:

1. Was the ultimate source of the detail (the primary witness) able to tell the truth?
2. Was the primary witness willing to tell the truth?
3. Is the primary witness accurately reported with regard to the detail under examination?
4. Is there any independent corroboration of the detail under examination?
Any detail (regardless of what the source or who author) that passes all four tests is credible historical evidence. It
will bear repetition that the primary witness and the detail are now the subjects of examination, not the source as a
whole.
Ability to Tell the Truth

(1) Ability to tell the b-uth rests in part upon the witness’s nearness to the event. Nearness is here used in
both a geographical and a chronological sense. The reliability of the witness’ testimony tends to vary
in proportion to (a) his own remoteness from the scene in time and space, and (b) the remoteness from
the event in time and space of his recording of it. There are three steps in historical testimony:
observation, recollection, and recording (not to mention the historian's own perception of the witness’
record). At each of these steps something of the possible testimony may be lost. Geographical as well
chronological closeness to the event affects all three steps and helps to determine both how much will
be lost and the accuracy of what is retained.

(2) Obviously all witnesses even if equally close to the event are not equally competent as witnesses.
Competence depends upon degree of expertness, state of mental and physical health, age, education,
memory, narrative skill, etc. the ability to estimate numbers is especially subject to suspicion. The size
of the army with which Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C. was said by Herodotus to have numbered
1,700,000 but it can be shown to have been considerably less by the simple computation of the length
of time it would have taken that many men to march through the Thermopylae Pass even unopposed.
More recently by a similar computation doubt was thrown upon the veracity of a newspaper report
from Moscow that one million men, women, and children paraded through tie Red Square in
celebration of the thirty-second anniversary of the October Revolution (November 7, 1949) in five and
one-half hour demonstration, for it would require more than fifty persons a second to march abreast
past a given point to complete a parade of one million in five and one-half hours.' With some notable
exceptions, such as the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror, historians have been warned
against using any source of numbers before the end of the Middle Ages. * The careful keeping of vital
statistics was a relatively late innovation of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Previous to that time tax rolls and incomplete parish records of baptisms,
marriages, and burials were the best indications. Even battle casualty statistics before the nineteenth
century are suspect, and historians still disagree on the cost in human life of wards up to and including
those of Napoleon I, and, in some instances, beyond.

(3) Degree of attention is also an important fact in the ability to tell the truth. A well-known story, no less
illustrative if it be apocryphal, tells of a psychology professor who deliberately staged a fight in his
classroom between two students, which led to a free-for-all. When peace was restored, the professor
asked each member of the class to write an account of what had happened. There were, of course,
conflicting statements among the accounts, but, what was most significant, no students had noticed
that the professor in the midst of the pandemonium had taken out a banana and had peeled and eaten it.
Obviously the entire meaning of the event rested upon the unnoticed act, it was an experiment in the
psychology of attention. Because each student’s interest had been fixed upon his own part in the
drama, each bad given an erroneous of what had occurred. Magicians similarly depend upon their
ability to divert attention from things they are doing to perpetuate some of their tricks. The common
human inability to see things clearly and whole makes even the best of witnesses suspect.

(4) We have already discussed the danger of the leading question (p. 104). Such questions, by implying
the expected answer, make it difficult to tell the whole truth. Lawyers also count the hypothetical
question ("Supposing you did agree with me, would you act as I?"), and the argumentative or "loaded"
question ("Have you stopped beating your wife?") and the coached answer as belonging to kindred
categories.9 Such questions are especially liable to be misleading if they have to be answered "Yes" or
"No." Allport gives a striking illustration of the kind of misinformation that can be derived from the
witness whose narrative is circumscribed by the questioner. He mentions an investigator who "secured
fifty topical autobiographies, forcing all writers to tell about radicalism and conservatism in their
lives," and who from those biographies almost (but fortunately not quite) came to the conclusion that
“radicalism-conservatism” constitutes one of those first-order variables of which all personalities are
compounded."10

(5) In the last instance the investigator barteely missed reasoning in a circle — from premise back to
premise again. It has been contended also that one of the reasons why religious problems and events
receive so much attention in the history of the Middle Ages is that its principal sources were written by
clergymen. If medieval architects, landowners, soldiers, or merchants had written more, they might
have asked and answered different kinds of questions and given a different picture of medieval life.
Possibly, if the writings of our own intellectuals should prove to be the major source for future
accounts of our age, future historians will be misled into thinking that intellectuals had a greater
influence upon human affairs in our time than they actually have. This sort of circular argument must
be especially guarded against when effort is being made to ascribe unsigned writings to a supposed
author, for it is easy to assume that the ideas of the writings are characteristic of the supposed author if
those very articles are the basis of the assumptions regarding the author's characteristics.

(6) One almost inescapable shortcoming of the personal document is its egocentrism. It is to be expected
that even a modest observer will tell what he himself heard and what he himself did as if those details
were the most important things that were said and done. Often it is impossible for him to tell his story
in any other terms, since that is the only way he knows it. This observation is a more or less inevitable
corollary of the caution with regard to attention discussed above. The famous speech of the Comte de
Mirabeau after Louis XVI's Royal Session of June 23, 1789, provides a pat illustration of how easily
such egocentrism may mislead the historian. Mirabeau (though speaking in the third person) told how
he has said something about the necessity of force: "For we shall leave our seats only by the power of
the bayonet." He failed to mention that several others were expressing a similar determination at about
the same time, though probably in more moderate language. Therefore, historians trusting too
confidently to Mirabeau's testimony have sometimes made him the heroic center of a desperate crisis;
still it is more probable that he was not so conspicuous or the situation so dramatic as he implied. ll

In general, inability to tell the auth leads to errors of omission, rather than commission, because of lack of
completeness or lack of balance in observation, recollection, or narrative. Such errors may give a picture
that is out of perspective because it or fails to include some important things and overemphasizes those it
does include.

Willingness to Tell the Truth

The historian also has to deal with documents whose authors, though otherwise competent to tell the 611th,
consciously or unconsciously tell falsehoods. There are several condition8 that tend especially toward
tmtruthfulness and against which the experience of mankind has armed lawyers, historians, and others who
deal with testimony. 12

One ofthe most elementary rules in the analysis of testimony is that which requires the exercise of caution
against the interested witness. A witness’s interest is obvious when he himself may benefit from perveßion
of the math or may thereby benefit some one of some cause dear to him. Cenain kinds ofpropaganda are
perhaps the worst examples of delibnte perversion of Euth out of a desire to benefit a cause. In the
seventeenth century the word propganda was applied to Catholic missionary word without dispuagement.
Since nineteenth centum however, it has been used more or less derogatorily to desipate any kind of
concerted movement to persuade and the inmments of such persuasion. The word may be modem, but
propaganda and its methods have been familiar since efforts were first made to influence public opinion.

Often die benefit to be derived from a perversion of the m•th is subtle and may not be realized by the
wimess himself. In such a case the cause of prevarication probably is bias. If the wimess's bias is favorable
to the subject of his testimony, it is frequently designated studium. If it is unfavorable, it may be designted
odium or ira. The Latin words are derived from a declaration by Tacitus that he would write history since
irastudion (thereby setting a standard that few historians, including Tacitus, have been able to achieve).
Studium and odium, bias for uld bias against, frequently depend upon the wimesses's social circumstances
and may operate in a fashion of which he himself may not be aware. It becomes important to the historian
to know what the wimess's Weltanschauung (or "frame of reference") may be, as well as his religious,
political, social, economic, racial, national, regional, local, family, personal, and other ties (or equation").
Any ofthese factors may dictate a predilection or a prejudice that will shade his testimony with nuances that
otherwise might have been absent.

The intended hearers or readers of a document, it has already been remarked (p. 90), play an Important part
in determining the fruthfulness of a statement. The desire to please or to displease may lead to the coloring
or the avoidance of the uuth. Speakers at political rallies and at banquets, witers of wartime dispatches and
communiqués, makers of polite letters and conversation are among the numerous producers of documents
that may subtly pervert fact for that reason. Akin to and onen associated with interest and bias, which are
onen socially determined, this motive is nevertheless different from them, being usually personal and
individual. It may occasionally stand alone as an explanation ofprevarication.

Literary style sometimes dictates the sacrifice of &uth. Epigrams and — notoriously slowns of war and
politics ("L'étatc'est mop'; 'The Old Guard dies but never surrenders"),13 Ifproperly discredited in the
interests ofaccuracy and fruthful reporting, would be robbed pithiness and color. Authors of autobiogaphies
and letters, especially when they write for private amusement, may feel tempted to state as fact what is only
hearsay or tradition or even fiction; and frequently narrators and reporters (especially ofåey hope for large
audiences) seek to appear omniscient rather than to use the less vigorous word, the less striking phrase, the
ifs and buts, the there-is-some-reason-tobelieve and the it is perhaps-safe-to-say ofmore precise discourse.

The anecdote is especially suspect. Much too often it is a subsequent invention to throw into humorous or
striking relief some spectacular figure or episode. mue more apposite the anecdote, the mode dubious it is
likely to be without corroboration. And yet the existence of an especially pat anecdote has a historical
significance of its own — as showing the sort of thing believed of or imputed to the subject. A wem-hlown
Italian proverb describes such anecdotes as felicitous (ben trovato) even if unuue.

Laws and conventions sometimes oblige wimesses to depart from strict veracity. The same laws of libel and
of good taste that have encouraged the hiding of the "resemblance to persons now living or dead" in fiction
and moving pictures have precluded complete accuracy in some works of history. Some of the notorious
inaccuracies of Jared Aparks as a historian were due to his writing of living characters from testimony by
living witnesses who requested him not to use certain data. 14 Etiquette in letters and conversation,
conventions and formalities in &eaties and public documents require politeness and expressions of esteem
that are obviously false or empty. A successful comedy, James Montgomery's Mothin but the Truth (1916),
was written around the valiant effort of a young man to go through a whole day without saying anything
that was untme•, it nearly cost him all his friends. Religious concepts like the Christian Scientist's
interpretation of the ideas of evil, disease, and death may lead to misunderstanding. Corporations,
commission, and societies are sometimes requtred by their articles of incorporation or constitutions to meet
periodically, but when their numbers are small, the minutes of their meetings may be much more formal
than the actual meetings.

Closely akin to this category are the many instances of inexact dating of historical documents because of
the conventions and formalities involved. For example, the omcial text of the Declaration of Independence
is dated "In Congess, July 4, 1776." To the unwary reader it would appear that those who si&led it were
present and did so on that day. In fact, the fomal signing took place on August 2, 1776, some members did
not sign until a still later date. 15 Some medieval rulers used to date documene as of certain towns though
they were not at those towns on the dates indicated. The modem official's and businessman's habit of
sending letters on omce stationery regardless of where they may be or of dictating but not reading their
letters, which are signed by a rubber stamp or a secretary, may make it very diffcult for future biogaphers to
&ace their itineraries. Bank checks, having the city of the bank's location printed on them, may also prove
misleading as to the sigier's whereabouts.

Expectation or anticipation frequently leads a wimess astray. Those who count on revolutionaries to be
bloodthirsty and conservatives gentlemanly, those who expect the young to be irreverent and the old
crabbed. those who h10W Germans to be ruthless and Englishmen to lack humor generally find
bloodthirsty Germans and humorless Englishmen. A certain lack of precision is found in such wimesses
because their eyes and ears are closed to fair observation; or because, seeking, they find; or because in
recollection, they tend to forget or minimize examples that do not confirm their prejudices and hypotheses.
(This sort ofattitude is only a special kind ofbias and might be regarded merely as a subdivision of
Paragraph 2 above.)