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.

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