ed
by patriotic and other considerations. Against Polybius himself no such
accusation can be made. He indeed of all men is able, as from some lofty
tower, to discern the whole tendency of the ancient world, the triumph of
Roman institutions and of Greek thought which is the last message of the
old world and, in a more spiritual sense, has become the Gospel of the
new.

One thing indeed he did not see, or if he saw it, he thought but little
of it--how from the East there was spreading over the world, as a wave
spreads, a spiritual inroad of new religions from the time when the
Pessinuntine mother of the gods, a shapeless mass of stone, was brought
to the eternal city by her holiest citizen, to the day when the ship
Castor and Pollux stood in at Puteoli, and St. Paul turned his face
towards martyrdom and victory at Rome. Polybius was able to predict,
from his knowledge of the causes of revolutions and the tendencies of the
various forms of governments, the uprising of that democratic tone of
thought which, as soon as a seed is sown in the murder of the Gracchi and
the exile of Marius, culminated as all democratic movements do culminate,
in the supreme authority of one man, the lordship of the world under the
world's rightful lord, Caius Julius Caesar. This, indeed, he saw in no
uncertain way. But the turning of all men's hearts to the East, the
first glimmering of that splendid dawn which broke over the hills of
Galilee and flooded the earth like wine, was hidden from his eyes.

There are many points in the description of the ideal historian which one
may compare to the picture which Plato has given us of the ideal
philosopher. They are both 'spectators of all time and all existence.'
Nothing is contemptible in their eyes, for all things have a meaning, and
they both walk in august reasonableness before all men, conscious of the
workings of God yet free from all terror of mendicant priest or vagrant
miracle-worker. But the parallel ends here. For the one stands aloof
from the world-storm of sleet and hail, his eyes fixed on distant and
sunlit heights, loving knowledge for the sake of knowledge and wisdom for
the joy of wisdom, while the other is an eager actor in the world ever
seeking to apply his knowledge to useful things. Both equally desire
truth, but the one because of its utility, the other for its beauty. The
historian regards it as the rational principle of all true history, and
no more. To the other