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. The important position which these two great thinkers
occupy in the progress of historical criticism can hardly be over-
estimated. I do not mean merely as regards their treatment of the
Greek Bible, and Plato's endeavours to purge sacred history of its
immorality by the application of ethical canons at the time when
Aristotle was beginning to undermine the basis of miracles by his
scientific conception of law, but with reference to these two wider
questions of the rise of civil institutions and the philosophy of
history.

And first, as regards the current theories of the primitive
condition of society, there was a wide divergence of opinion in