Thucydides has shown the causal connection between political
revolutions and the fertility of the soil, but goes a step farther
and points out the psychological influences on a people's character
exercised by the various extremes of climate - in both cases the
first appearance of a most valuable form of historical criticism.
To the development of Dialectic, as to God, intervals of time are
of no account. From Plato and Aristotle we pass direct to
Polybius.
The progress of thought from the philosopher of the Academe to the
Arcadian historian may be best illustrated by a comparison of the
method by which each of the three writers, whom I have selected as
the highest expression of the rationalism of his respective age,
attained to his ideal state: for the latter conception may be in a
measure regarded as representing the most spiritual principle which
they could discern in history.
Now, Plato created his on A PRIORI principles; Aristotle formed his
by an analysis of existing constitutions; Polybius found his
realised for him in the actual world of fact. Aristotle criticised
the deductive speculations of Plato by means of inductive negative
instances, but Polybius will not take the 'Cloud City' of the
REPUBLIC into account at all.
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