What is history? Every historian would agree, I think, that history is a kind of research or inquiry. Generically it belongs to what we call the sciences: that is, the forms of thought whereby we ask questions and try to realize, does not consist in collecting what we already know and arranging it in this or that kind of pattern. It consists in fastening upon something we do not know, and trying to discover it. Playing patience with things we already know may be a useful means towards this end, but it is not the end itself. It is at best only the means. It is scientifically valuable only in so far as the new arrangement gives us the answer to questions we have already decided to ask. That is why all science begins from the knowledge of our own ignorance of some definite thing--the origin of life, the cause of cancer, the chemical composition of the sun. Science is finding things out: and in that sense history is a science. History is a science in that ______.