ABSTRACT
The application of critical method to the primary sources along the lines described in the previous chapter generally results in the validation of a large number of facts about the past with a bearing on one particular issue, or a group of related issues, but the signicance of this material can only be fully grasped when the individual items are related to each other in a coherent exposition. There is nothing obvious or predetermined about the way in which the pieces t together, and the feat is usually accomplished only as a result of much trial and error. Many historians who have a air for working on primary sources nd the process of composition excruciatingly laborious and frustrating. The temptation is to continue amassing material so that the time of reckoning can be put off indenitely.
