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Essays and Lectures-Part8_OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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Abrupolis by Perseus, the expedition of the latter to Delphi, the



plot against Eumenes and the seizure of the ambassadors in Boeotia;

of these incidents the two former, Polybius points out, were merely



the pretexts, the two latter merely the occasions of the war. The

war was really a legacy left to Perseus by his father, who was



determined to fight it out with Rome. (19)

Here as elsewhere he is not originating any new idea. Thucydides



had pointed out the difference between the real and the alleged

cause, and the Aristotelian dictum about revolutions, [Greek text



which cannot be reproduced], draws the distinction between cause

and occasion with the brilliancy of an epigram. But the explicit



and rationalinvestigation of the difference between [Greek text

which cannot be reproduced], and [Greek text which cannot be



reproduced] was reserved for Polybius. No canon of historical

criticism can be said to be of more real value than that involved



in this distinction, and the overlooking of it has filled our

histories with the contemptibleaccounts of the intrigues of



courtiers and of kings and the petty plottings of backstairs

influence - particulars interesting, no doubt, to those who would



ascribe the Reformation to Anne Boleyn's pretty face, the Persian

war to the influence of a doctor or a curtain-lecture from Atossa,



or the French Revolution to Madame de Maintenon, but without any

value for those who aim at any scientifictreatment of history.



But the question of method, to which I am compelled always to

return, is not yet exhausted. There is another aspect in which it



may be regarded, and I shall now proceed to treat of it.

One of the greatest difficulties with which the modern historian



has to contend is the enormouscomplexity of the facts which come

under his notice: D'Alembert's suggestion that at the end of every



century a selection of facts should be made and the rest burned (if

it was really intended seriously) could not, of course, be



entertained for a moment. A problem loses all its value when it

becomes simplified, and the world would be all the poorer if the



Sibyl of History burned her volumes. Besides, as Gibbon pointed

out, 'a Montesquieu will detect in the most insignificant fact



relations which the vulgar overlook.'

Nor can the scientificinvestigator of history isolate the



particular elements, which he desires to examine, from disturbing

and extraneous causes, as the experimentalchemist can do (though



sometimes, as in the case of lunatic asylums and prisons, he is

enabled to observe phenomena in a certain degree of isolation). So



he is compelled either to use the deductive mode of arguing from

general laws or to employ the method of abstraction, which gives a



fictitious isolation to phenomena never so isolated in actual

existence. And this is exactly what Polybius has done as well as



Thucydides. For, as has been well remarked, there is in the works

of these two writers a certain plastic unity of type and motive;



whatever they write is penetrated through and through with a

specific quality, a singleness and concentration of purpose, which



we may contrast with the more comprehensive width as manifested not

merely in the modern mind, but also in Herodotus. Thucydides,



regarding society as influenced entirely by political motives, took

no account of forces of a different nature, and consequently his



results, like those of most modern political economists, have to be

modified largely (20) before they come to correspond with what we



know was the actual state of fact. Similarly, Polybius will deal

only with those forces which tended to bring the civilised world



under the dominion of Rome (ix. 1), and in the Thucydidean spirit

points out the want of picturesqueness and romance in his pages



which is the result of the abstract method ([Greek text which

cannot be reproduced]) being careful also to tell us that his



rejection of all other forces is essentiallydeliberate and the




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