most scientific of modern methods, he points out how in early
states of civilisation immense fertility of the soil tends to
favour the personal aggrandisement of individuals, and so to stop
the normal progress of the country through 'the rise of factions,
that endless source of ruin'; and also by the allurements it offers
to a foreign invader, to necessitate a continual change of
population, one immigration following on another. He exemplifies
his theory by pointing to the endless political revolutions that
characterised Arcadia, Thessaly and Boeotia, the three richest
spots in Greece, as well as by the negative instance of the
undisturbed state in primitive time of Attica, which was always
remarkable for the dryness and poverty of its soil.

Now, while undoubtedly in these passages we may recognise the first
anticipation of many of the most modern principles of research, we
must remember how essentially limited is the range of the
ARCHAEOLOGIA, and how no theory at all is offered on the wider
questions of the general conditions of the rise and progress of
humanity, a problem which is first scientifically discussed in the
REPUBLIC of Plato.

And at the outset it must be premised that, while the study of
primitive man is an essentially inductive science, resting rather
on the accumulation of evidence than on speculation, among the
Greeks it was prosecuted rather on deductive principles.
Thucydides did, indeed, avail himself of the opportunities afforded
by the unequal development of civilisation in his own day in
Greece, and in the places I have pointed out seems to have
anticipated the comparative method. But we do not find later
writers availing themselves of the wonderfully accurate and