Essays and Lectures | Page 6

God. In what vain defence, the statue of Mary set
in the heart of the Pantheon can best tell us.
Religions, however, may be absorbed, but they never are disproved,
and the stories of the Greek mythology, spiritualised by the purifying
influence of Christianity, reappear in many of the southern parts of
Europe in our own day. The old fable that the Greek gods took service
with the new religion under assumed names has more truth in it than
the many care to discover.
Having now traced the progress of historical criticism in the special
treatment of myth and legend, I shall proceed to investigate the form in
which the same spirit manifested itself as regards what one may term

secular history and secular historians. The field traversed will be found
to be in some respects the same, but the mental attitude, the spirit, the
motive of investigation are all changed.
There were heroes before the son of Atreus and historians before
Herodotus, yet the latter is rightly hailed as the father of history, for in
him we discover not merely the empirical connection of cause and
effect, but that constant reference to Laws, which is the characteristic of
the historian proper.
For all history must be essentially universal; not in the sense of
comprising all the synchronous events of the past time, but through the
universality of the principles employed. And the great conceptions
which unify the work of Herodotus are such as even modern thought
has not yet rejected. The immediate government of the world by God,
the nemesis and punishment which sin and pride invariably bring with
them, the revealing of God's purpose to His people by signs and omens,
by miracles and by prophecy; these are to Herodotus the laws which
govern the phenomena of history. He is essentially the type of
supernatural historian; his eyes are ever strained to discern the Spirit of
God moving over the face of the waters of life; he is more concerned
with final than with efficient causes.
Yet we can discern in him the rise of that HISTORIC SENSE which is
the rational antecedent of the science of historical criticism, the [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced], to use the words of a Greek writer,
as opposed to that which comes either [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced].
He has passed through the valley of faith and has caught a glimpse of
the sunlit heights of Reason; but like all those who, while accepting the
supernatural, yet attempt to apply the canons of rationalism, he is
essentially inconsistent. For the better apprehension of the character of
this historic sense in Herodotus it will be necessary to examine at some
length the various forms of criticism in which it manifests itself.
Such fabulous stories as that of the Phoenix, of the goat-footed men, of
the headless beings with eyes in their breasts, of the men who slept six
months in the year ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced]), of the
wer-wolf of the Neuri, and the like, are entirely rejected by him as
being opposed to the ordinary experience of life, and to those natural
laws whose universal influence the early Greek physical philosophers

had already made known to the world of thought. Other legends, such
as the suckling of Cyrus by a bitch, or the feather-rain of northern
Europe, are rationalised and explained into a woman's name and a fall
of snow. The supernatural origin of the Scythian nation, from the union
of Hercules and the monstrous Echidna, is set aside by him for the
more probable account that they were a nomad tribe driven by the
Massagetae from Asia; and he appeals to the local names of their
country as proof of the fact that the Kimmerians were the original
possessors.
But in the case of Herodotus it will be more instructive to pass on from
points like these to those questions of general probability, the true
apprehension of which depends rather on a certain quality of mind than
on any possibility of formulated rules, questions which form no
unimportant part of scientific history; for it must be remembered
always that the canons of historical criticism are essentially different
from those of judicial evidence, for they cannot, like the latter, be made
plain to every ordinary mind, but appeal to a certain historical faculty
founded on the experience of life. Besides, the rules for the reception of
evidence in courts of law are purely stationary, while the science of
historical probability is essentially progressive, and changes with the
advancing spirit of each age.
Now, of all the speculative canons of historical criticism, none is more
important than that which rests on psychological probability.
Arguing from his knowledge of human nature, Herodotus rejects the
presence of Helen within the walls of