The term 'history' is very ancient, so ancient that sometimes one has felt the weight of it and even if rarely, one has gone so far as to want to completely remove it from the vocabulary. [...] Sometimes it has been said: "History is the science of the past". This means to express oneself in an imposing way. Because first of all, the very idea that the past as such can be the object of science is absurd. [...] At the origins of historiography, the ancient annalists recounted, in bulk, events whose only common trait was that they occurred at the same time: eclipses, hailstorms, the appearance of marvelous meteors, with battles, treaties, the deaths of heroes and kings. But, in this first memory of humanity, confused as the perception of a small child, a sustained effort of analysis has made, little by little, the necessary classification. It is true: the language, fundamental traditionalist, persists in willingly giving the name of history to every study of a change in duration. The habit is without danger, because it does not deceive anyone. [...] Montesquieu speaks of an "infinite chain of causes that multiply and combine from century to century".
[...] From 1830 on, history is political or rather, we can say that it is sociology or, with less consideration: "it is journalism. So, if we want to give credit to this word, we can say that history is the science of men in time, given by the research work, testimonies and ardor of those whose Mestiere is the historian.
Excerpts from Marc Bloch, Apologia of History.