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 historical criticism; 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 theological considerations 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 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.
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