regards his attitude towards the truth of these ancient legends.

Agamemnon and Atreus, Theseus and Eurystheus, even Minos, about
whom Herodotus has some doubts, are to him as real personages as

Alcibiades or Gylippus. The points in his historicalcriticism of
the past are, first, his rejection of all extra-natural

interference, and, secondly, the attributing to these ancient
heroes the motives and modes of thought of his own day. The

present was to him the key to the explanation of the past, as it
was to the prediction of the future.

Now, as regards his attitude towards the supernatural he is at one
with modern science. We too know that, just as the primeval coal-

beds reveal to us the traces of rain-drops and other atmospheric
phenomena similar to those of our own day, so, in estimating the

history of the past, the introduction of no force must be allowed
whose workings we cannot observe among the phenomena around us. To

lay down canons of ultra-historical credibility for the explanation
of events which happen to have preceded us by a few thousand years,

is as thoroughly unscientific as it is to intermingle preternatural
in geological theories.

Whatever the canons of art may be, no difficulty in history is so
great as to warrant the introduction of a spirit of spirit [Greek

text which cannot be reproduced], in the sense of a violation of
the laws of nature.

Upon the other point, however, Thucydides falls into an
anachronism. To refuse to allow the workings of chivalrous and

self-denying motives among the knights of the Trojan crusade,
because he saw none in the faction-loving Athenian of his own day,

is to show an entire ignorance of the various characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristics of
human nature developing under different circumstances, and to deny

to a primitivechieftain like Agamemnon that authority founded on
opinion, to which we give the name of divine right, is to fall into

an historical error quite as gross as attributing to Atreus the
courting of the populace ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced])

with a view to the Mycenean throne.
The general method of historicalcriticism pursued by Thucydides

having been thus indicated, it remains to proceed more into detail
as regards those particular points where he claims for himself a

more rational method of estimating evidence than either the public
or his predecessors possessed.

'So little pains,' he remarks, 'do the vulgar take in the
investigation of truth, satisfied with their preconceived

opinions,' that the majority of the Greeks believe in a Pitanate
cohort of the Spartan army and in a double vote being the

prerogative of the Spartan kings, neither of which opinions has any
foundation in fact. But the chief point on which he lays stress as

evincing the 'uncritical way with which men receive legends, even
the legends of their own country,' is the entire baselessness of

the common Athenian tradition in which Harmodios and Aristogeiton
were represented as the patriotic liberators of Athens from the

Peisistratid tyranny. So far, he points out, from the love of
freedom being their motive, both of them were influenced by merely

personal considerations, Aristogeiton being jealous of Hipparchos'
attention to Harmodios, then a beautiful boy in the flower of Greek

loveliness, while the latter's indignation was aroused by an insult
offered to his sister by the prince.

Their motives, then, were personal revenge, while the result of
their conspiracy served only to rivet more tightly the chains of

servitude which bound Athens to the Peisistratid house, for
Hipparchos, whom they killed, was only the tyrant's younger

brother, and not the tyrant himself.
To prove his theory that Hippias was the elder, he appeals to the

evidence afforded by a public inscription in which his name occurs
immediately after that of his father, a point which he thinks shows

that he was the eldest, and so the heir. This view he further
corroborates by another inscription, on the altar of Apollo, which

mentions the children of Hippias and not those of his brothers;
'for it was natural for the eldest to be married first'; and

besides this, on the score of general probability he points out
that, had Hippias been the younger, he would not have so easily

obtained the tyranny on the death of Hipparchos.
Now, what is important in Thucydides, as evinced in the treatment

of legend generally, is not the results he arrived at, but the
method by which he works. The first great rationalistic historian,

he may be said to have paved the way for all those who followed
after him, though it must always be remembered that, while the

total absence in his pages of all the mystical paraphernalia of the
supernatural theory of life is an advance in the progress of

rationalism, and an era in scientific history, whose importance
could never be over-estimated, yet we find along with it a total

absence of any mention of those various social and economical
forces which form such important factors in the evolution of the

world, and to which Herodotus rightly gave great prominence in his
immortal work. The history of Thucydides is essentially one-sided

and incomplete. The intricate details of sieges and battles,
subjects with which the historian proper has really nothing to do

except so far as they may throw light on the spirit of the age, we
would readily exchange for some notice of the condition of private

society in Athens, or the influence and position of women.
There is an advance in the method of historicalcriticism; there is

an advance in the conception and motive of history itself; for in
Thucydides we may discern that natural reaction against the

intrusion of didactic and theologicalconsiderations into the
sphere of the pure intellect, the spirit of which may be found in

the Euripidean treatment of tragedy and the later schools of art,
as well as in the Platonic conception of science.

History, no doubt, has splendid lessons for our instruction, just
as all good art comes to us as the herald of the noblest truth.

But, to set before either the painter or the historian the
inculcation of moral lessons as an aim to be consciously pursued,

is to miss entirely the true motive and characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic both of art
and history, which is in the one case the creation of beauty, in

the other the discovery of the laws of the evolution of progress:
IL NE FAUT DEMANDER DE L'ART QUE L'ART, DU PASSE QUE LE PASSE.

Herodotus wrote to illustrate the wonderful ways of Providence and
the nemesis that falls on sin, and his work is a good example of

the truth that nothing can dispense with criticism so much as a
moral aim. Thucydides has no creed to preach, no doctrine to

prove. He analyses the results which follow inevitably from
certain antecedents, in order that on a recurrence of the same

crisis men may know how to act.
His object was to discover the laws of the past so as to serve as a

light to illumine the future. We must not confuse the recognition
of the utility of history with any ideas of a didactic aim. Two

points more in Thucydides remain for our consideration: his
treatment of the rise of Greek civilisation, and of the primitive

condition of Hellas, as well as the question how far can he be said
really to have recognised the existence of laws regulating the

complex phenomena of life.
CHAPTER III

THE investigation into the two great problems of the origin of
society and the philosophy of history occupies such an important

position in the evolution of Greek thought that, to obtain any
clear view of the workings of the critical spirit, it will be

necessary to trace at some length their rise and scientific
development as evinced not merely in the works of historians

proper, but also in the philosophical treatises of Plato and
Aristotle. The important position which these two great thinkers

occupy in the progress of historicalcriticism can hardly be over-
estimated. I do not mean merely as regards their treatment of the

Greek Bible, and Plato's endeavours to purge sacred history of its
immorality by the application of ethical canons at the time when

Aristotle was beginning to undermine the basis of miracles by his
scientificconception of law, but with reference to these two wider

questions of the rise of civil institutions and the philosophy of
history.

And first, as regards the current theories of the primitive
condition of society, there was a wide divergence of opinion in

Hellenic society, just as there is now. For while the majority of
the orthodox public, of whom Hesiod may be taken as the