information:classification
Indirect witnesses

Garraghan (1946) says that most information comes from " indirect witnesses ", people who were not present on the scene but heard of the events from someone else. Gottschalk says that a historian may sometimes use hearsay evidence when no primary texts are available. He writes, "In cases where he uses secondary witnesses...he asks: (1) On whose primary testimony does the secondary witness base his statements? (2) Did the secondary witness accurately report the primary testimony as a whole? (3) If not, in what details did he accurately report the primary testimony? Satisfactory answers to the second and third questions may provide the historian with the whole or the gist of the primary testimony upon which the secondary witness may be his only means of knowledge. In such cases the secondary source is the historian's 'original' source, in the sense of being the 'origin' of his knowledge. Insofar as this 'original' source is an accurate report of primary testimony, he tests its credibility as he would that of the primary testimony itself." Gottschalk adds, "Thus hearsay evidence would not be discarded by the historian, as it would be by a law court merely because it is hearsay."