te the possibility of history: for just as scientific and
chemical experiments would be either impossible or useless if exposed to
the chance of continued interference on the part of some foreign body, so
the laws and principles which govern history, the causes of phenomena,
the evolution of progress, the whole science, in a word, of man's
dealings with his own race and with nature, will remain a sealed book to
him who admits the possibility of extra-natural interference.

The stories of miracles, then, are to be rejected on a priori rational
grounds, but in the case of events which we know to have happened the
scientific historian will not rest till he has discovered their natural
causes which, for instance, in the case of the wonderful rise of the
Roman Empire--the most marvellous thing, Polybius says, which God ever
brought about {200a}--are to be found in the excellence of their
constitution ([Greek]), the wisdom of their advisers, their splendid
military arrangements, and their superstition ([Greek]). For while
Polybius regarded the revealed religion as, of course, objective reality
of truth, {200b} he laid great stress on its moral subjective influence,
going, in one passage on the subject, even so far as almost to excuse the
introduction of the supernatural in very small quantities into history on
account of the extremely good effect it would have on pious people.

But perhaps there is no passage in the whole of ancient and modern
history which breathes such a manly and splendid spirit of rationalism as
one preserved to us in the Vatican--strange resting-place for it!--in
which he treats of the terrible decay of population which had fallen on
his native land in his own day, and which by the general orthodox public
was regarded as a special judgment of God, sending childlessness on women
as a punishment for the sins of the people. For it was a disaster quite
without parallel in the history of the land, and entirely unforeseen by
any of its political-economy writers who, on the contrary, were always
anticipating that danger would arise from an excess of population
overrunning its means of subsistence, and becoming unmanageable through
its size. Polybius, however, will have nothing to do with either priest
or worker of miracles in this matter. He will not even seek that 'sacred
Heart of Greece,' Delphi, Apollo's shrine, whose inspiration even
Thucydides admitted and before whose wisdom Socrates bowed. How foolis