Note 181 — Chapter I

Fustel de Coulanges himself seems to have been misled by them: "History is a science; it does not imagine, it only sees" (Monarchie franque, p. 1). "History, like every science, consists in a process of discerning facts, analysing them, comparing them, and noting their connections.... The historian ... seeks facts and attains them by the minute observation of texts, as the chemist finds his in the course of experiments conducted with minute precision" (Ibid., p. 39).