Social Life in the Days of Piers Plowman (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Social Life in the Days of Piers PlowmanThat history, as compared with the physical sciences, is neglected by the modern public. But historians have the remedy in their own hands, choosing problems of equal importance to those of the scientist, and treating them with equal accuracy, they will command equal attention. Those who insist that the proportion of accurately ascertainable facts is smaller in history, and therefore the room for speen lation wider, do not thereby establish any essential dis tinction between truth-seeking in history and truth-seeking in chemistry. The historian, whatever be his subject, is as definitely bound as the chemist to proclaim certainties as certain, falsehoods as false, and uncertainties as dubious. Those are the words, not of a modern scientist, but of the seventeenth century monk, Jean Mabillon, they sum up his literary profession of faith. Men will follow us in history as implicitly as they follow the chemist, if only we will form the chemist's habit of marking clearly where. Our facts end and our inferences begin. Then the public, so far from dis couraging our speculations, will most heartily encourage them, for the most positive man of science is always grateful to anyone who, by putting forward a working theory, stimu lates further discussion.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.