For in history, everything depends on turning narrative into problems. So long as you think of history as a mere chronological narrative, ...you are in the old literary groove which leads to no trustworthy knowledge....

Break the drowsy spell of narrative; ask yourself questions; set yourself problems; your mind will at once take up a new attitude; you will become an investigator.

- Sir J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, (London: Macmillan and Co, 1911), 202-3.