On another plane, the work is intended as a rigorous critique of french historiography, the history of mentalites in particular, Darton offer two reproaches, both here and in other works, that a French historian is sure to find unsettling. First, he considers the very notion of mentalites woolly, Vague, and imprecise : " despite a spate of prolegomena and discourses on mathod, however, the French have not developed a coherent conception of mentalites as a field of study. They tend to load the term with notions of representations collectives derived from Durkheim and the outillage mental that Lucien Febvre picked up from the psychology of his day. Whether mentalite will bear the load remains to be seen. " Second, he strongly objects to the program and the practice of history of mentalites in its serial and quantitative form, defined by Pierre Chaunu as histoire serielle au troisiene niveau