ABSTRACT
The greatest problem in historical scholarship, theoretically and practically, is the relation between the historian and his subject matter. The past is gone, and the historian can study only its remnants. The concept of a climate of opinion is central to our purpose and needs to be defined, however loosely, at the outset. Historians are apt to derive their understanding of human nature and of what constitutes social significance in part from the climate of opinion in which they live. Climate of opinion, like other similar phrases which are sometimes used such as the spirit of an age, refers to the fundamental assumptions and attitudes shared by significant elements of a population at a given time. A single intellectual climate does not necessarily, of course, envelop every group or individual in a society at any particular time, and often there are competing basic outlooks.
