Carr begins by attacking the 19th-century "cult of facts." He rejects the Positivist view that facts speak for themselves. Instead, he suggests that a fact only becomes "historical" when a historian decides to use it. There are billions of facts available, but the historian performs a selective act, choosing which ones are significant based on their own perspective. Therefore, the "truth" of history is inextricably linked to the mind of the person writing it. To understand a work of history, Carr famously advises, one must first "study the historian" and their social and historical environment. Society and the Individual