SOURCE: "The Historian," in F. W. Maitland, Yale University Press, 1985, pp. 19-55.

In the following excerpt, Elton outlines Maitland's approach to writing history.

In Maitland's day historians, especially English historians, virtually never reflected on their activities. Most of them wrote history—or failed to commit their knowledge to paper—because they enjoyed doing so, and they did not feel called upon to philosophize about it; at most they would stake claims for the role their calling played in the formation of public men. Philosophers accepted the triumph of historical studies which had followed in the wake of the renewal of the methods of enquiry that in the course of the nineteenth century had spread from Germany to all of Europe. Sprung from the rise of romanticism and nationalism which had originated in the later eighteenth century, the dominance of historical studies as the best way to understand humanity...