With any direct intervention of God in the normal development of
Man, he will have nothing to do: still less with any idea of
chance as a factor in the phenomena of life. Chance and miracles,
he says, are mere expressions for our ignorance of rational causes.
The spirit of rationalism which we recognised in Herodotus as a
vague uncertain attitude and which appears in Thucydides as a
consistent attitude of mind never argued about or even explained,
is by Polybius analysed and formulated as the great instrument of
historical research.
Herodotus, while believing on principle in the supernatural, yet
was sceptical at times. Thucydides simply ignored the
supernatural. He did not discuss it, but he annihilated it by
explaining history without it. Polybius enters at length into the
whole question and explains its origin and the method of treating
it. Herodotus would have believed in Scipio's dream. Thucydides
would have ignored it entirely. Polybius explains it. He is the
culmination of the rational progression of Dialectic. 'Nothing,'
he says, 'shows a foolish mind more than the attempt to account for
any phenomena on the principle of chance or supernatural
intervention.
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