Page:The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 17.djvu/170

146 The South Atlantic Quabtebly compromise. Most books give too many dogmatic conclusions and too little of the material on which the conclusions arc based. It is not the fashion for historical treatises to give many quotations to support their conclusions. They give ci- tations to the sources, but no one looks up these citations un- less he is going to write on some part of the same subject Citations serve few purposes — chiefly to show the erudition of the writer and to dare another to trace his steps and deny his conclusions. The great labor incident to such a tracing is usually a sufficient deterrent until another wishes to write on the subject. A good many quotations would add to the length of the book but would also make it more valuable for all pur- poses. In selecting books for undergraduate courses this point should be kept in mind, and books with many quotations should be chosen. The students should have every possible chance to test the conclusions of the authors they are studying and should be encouraged in this exercise. Assignments in most college history courses are too short. Fifteen to twenty-five pages of almost any primary or second- ary account is entirely too little, and the assignments should be forty to sixty pages. Of course, compact sources such as the constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence must be assigned in fewer pages. The only way for a student to begin to learn anything of any field of history is to read a great deal in the best books on the subject. One teacher of history assures his students that, after they have studied the five thousand pages of regular assigmneiits on American history they have only begun to know one not-tO<h well-marked road through a i^reat forest. It will be admitted without argument that Information is never so fully one's own. so entirely a part of his mcnuJ niake-^ up as when it is acqinred by his own efforts* Iti^t)iui[ly though not so generally believed, that more facts if they have to work n course than if they can sit up and method. And yet courses in jects are planned and condui not established or demonstral the student should digest hh Google