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Such a lofty function the present work does not attempt. It aims me rely to s how how it actually took place." "Rigor- ous presentation of thVlScts, however conditional and lack- ing in beauty they may be, is without question the supreme law."i
Having defined the duty of the historian the next question was to show how it might be performed. Was it possible to get at the facts when two contemporary historians of accepted authority like Jovius and Guicciardini gave irreconcilable accounts of the same thing? Ranke's answer to this as well as to the other questions which confront the student of the multifarious sources of modern history was given in his Kritik der neuerer G-eschichtsschreiher. It was the sys- tematic application of what is now familiarly known as the " higher criticism " ^ to works written since the invention of printing. The perception of the necessity of applying these principles of historical criticism which have now become the common property of the learned world, to this new field and the brilliant success in so doing were Ranke's great contribu- tion to historical science.^
His thoroughgoing investigation for this work convinced him of the necessity of examining unprinted sources, to be able properly to continue.* Toward the end of 1824 we find him trying to secure the loan of manuscripts from Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Zurich, Bern, Paris, and Rome.^ "I am now studying," he writes his brother in February, 1825,
1 Gesch. der rom. und germ. Volker, vii.
2 The principles of internal criticism had been gradually developed in the parallel but relatively disconnected fields of the Old Testament literature and the Homeric poems. In Ranke's youth the two great masters in these respective fields were De Wette and Wolf. Ranke early tried his hand on the historical criticism of the Psalms and on Homeric analysis. Pages, 29 and 39.
- Ranke was not absolutely a pioneer in this. Munoz had pointed the way in
his Historia del Nuevo Mundo in 1 793, in the preface to which he criticises the earlier writers on the discovery of America and indicates the sources from which their narratives are derived. It does not appear, however, that Ranke was familiar with Munoz's work.
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