Here as elsewhere he is not originating any new idea. Thucydides
had pointed out the difference between the real and the alleged
cause, and the Aristotelian dictum about revolutions, [Greek text
which cannot be reproduced], draws the distinction between cause
and occasion with the brilliancy of an epigram. But the explicit
and rational investigation of the difference between [Greek text
which cannot be reproduced], and [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] was reserved for Polybius. No canon of historical
criticism can be said to be of more real value than that involved
in this distinction, and the overlooking of it has filled our
histories with the contemptible accounts of the intrigues of
courtiers and of kings and the petty plottings of backstairs
influence - particulars interesting, no doubt, to those who would
ascribe the Reformation to Anne Boleyn's pretty face, the Persian
war to the influence of a doctor or a curtain-lecture from Atossa,
or the French Revolution to Madame de Maintenon, but without any
value for those who aim at any scientific treatment of history.

But the question of method, to which I am compelled always to
return, is not yet exhausted. There is another aspect in which it
may be regarded, and I shall now proceed to treat of it.

One of the greatest difficulties with which the modern historian
has to contend is the enormous complexity of the facts which come
under his notice: D'Alembert's suggestion that at the end of every
century a selection of facts should be made and the rest burned (if
it was really intended seriously) could not, of course, be
entertained for a moment. A problem loses all its value when it
becomes simplified, and the world would be all the poorer if the