Third Part — Paris
When we are in possession of a few more local monographs—then, and only then, by grouping their data, by minutely confronting and comparing them, we shall be able to re-consider the subject as a whole, and take a new and decisive step forward. To proceed otherwise, would be merely to start, armed with two or three rough and simple ideas, on a kind of rapid excursion. It would be, in most cases, to pass by everything that is particular, individual, irregular—that is to say, everything, on the whole, that is most interesting.
LUCIEN FÈBVRE: La Terre et L’Evolution Humaine.