Nor did the ancients know
anything of the doctrine of averages or of crucial instances, both
of which methods have proved of such importance in modern
criticism, the one adding a most important proof of the statical
elements of history, and exemplifying the influences of all
physical surroundings on the life of man; the other, as in the
single instance of the Moulin Quignon skull, serving to create a
whole new science of prehistoric archaeology and to bring us back
to a time when man was coeval with the stone age, the mammoth and
the woolly rhinoceros. But, except these, we have added no new
canon or method to the science of historical criticism. Across the
drear waste of a thousand years the Greek and the modern spirit
join hands.
In the torch race which the Greek boys ran from the Cerameician
field of death to the home of the goddess of Wisdom, not merely he
who first reached the goal but he also who first started with the
torch aflame received a prize.
