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.
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