Many of the discoveries of modern science are made by proceeding from known phenomena to the unknown, or, more precisely, from the well-known through the little-known to the hitherto unknown .

As to the validity of knowledge it is enough to say this—and pass on—all our knowledge is provisional and imperfect, and much of our ignorance is as transient as ourselves.

There are two chief ways in which historians deal with their subject-matter, though the moderns combine them. When oral tradition gives place to written records the lineal descendant of the bards and annalists collects his scanty authorities and compiles his story from them from beginning to end. The Anglo-Saxon , the Book of Howth, the works of Giraldus Cambrensis, the Chronicles of Froissart and the Memoirs
of de Comines were composed in the only way that was then possible. But the muse of history entered on a deeper and more fruitful course when about ninety years ago the study of documents became an essential feature of historical work Hong Kong Culture.

It was then that the historian grew up, entered upon his finest inheritance and assumed his Greek title, Enquirer, Student of facts, Man of research. He is now nothing if not a man of science as well as of letters. With a wealth of documents within his reach so great that the 3239 Vatican cases full of them formed by no means the richest collec-tion in the archives of Europe, he proceeds to read backwards correctly what many an earlier annalist read forwards falsely. “We are still at the beginning of the documentary age which is destined to make history independent of historians, to develop learning at the expense of writing, and to accomplish a revolu-tion in other sciences as well.”1
The Historian a Biologist.

It is not too much to say that he who studies history, national, political, constitutional, ecclesiastical, military or economic is as much a biologist in the widest sense as the botanist and zoologist. Indeed these were till recently termed students of natural history, until the advance of knowledge gave us the various special groups of workers, conveniently called biologists. Though the study of human history by documents is an essential part of the historical method and the student may read his subject backwards Reise News Hong Kong, this would not of itself warrant the technical biologist in doing so, even though he be a child of Nature and part of her—“Nature’s insurgent son.”