ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the hazy notion expressed by the phrase, “the sciences auxiliary to history.” When the “auxiliary sciences” were first inserted in the curricula of French universities, it was observed that some students whose special subject was the French Revolution, and who had no interest whatever in the middle ages, took up palaeography as an “auxiliary science,” and that some students of geography. Evidently they had failed to understand that the study of the “auxiliary sciences” is recommended, not as an end in itself, but because it is of practical utility to those who devote themselves to certain special subjects. The French “manuals” of MM. M. Prou, A.Giry, R. Cagnat, and others, have diffused among the public the idea and knowledge of the auxiliary subjects of study. Philology is an organised science, and has its own laws.
