[HUTTON] THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 235 
Is not this “trying to have it both ways” ? Who was it who said 
“to know everything was to do nothing’? Not merely the Athenian 
public, if we may read between the lines, but the historian himself 
also. What can his fantastic praise of Nicias mean, except that to his 
own mind also as well as to the popular mind, there seemed no help 
for the city from its best educated and most intelligent people, and more 
help from the stolid conservatism and stubborn unintelligence of 
Nicias ? And what does the brilliant speech of Cleon mean except 
the same thing? And if Thucydides feels the force of Cleon’s speech 
and the force of Nicias’ timid orthodoxy and of his blind obedience to 
customary virtues, why should he complain that the most intelligent 
and best educated were forced to the wall? On his own showing that 
was the only place for them. They were incompetent to help the State 
in acrisis. They had no beliefs or habits or sheet-anchors left and in 
the storm of the war sheet anchors were beyond all things necessary: 
and the man who had one—even a Nicias—was the best citizen of 
the State: and the man who deprecated high flown novelties and far- 
fetched sensibilities—even a Cleon—was a good citizen. 
I have tried to penetrate the ideas underlying this strange eulogy 
of Nicias. I have assumed that the tie uniting two men so different 
as Nicias and Thucydides was the political conservatism of each. 
I have assumed further that they represent between them the two 
schools of thought into which conservatism has ever been, still is, 
and perhaps will continue to be divided: the conservatism of unthink- 
ing loyalty to the past, conventionalism, traditionalism, or even mere 
class and economic interests: and, on the other hand, the conservatism 
of profound scepticism and doubt: doubt which reaches so far that it 
accepts the established always just because it is established; and feels 
that any change may be for the worse, and no change in politics can 
be demonstrated to be for the better, since politics is not yet a science, 
and since even beneficent changes open the door to unsettlement and 
discontent, and break down that sense of finality and settled order on 
which the contentment and therefore the happiness of a State depends. 
Sir Walter Scott, to take an illustration from our own history, 
or a greater man, Edmund Burke, represent more or less the romantic 
conservatism of the first kind. Gibbon, Hookham Frere, Canning, 
Mansel and all the Saturday Reviewers represent the conservatism 
of the doubters. Aristotle has given voice to the two spirits of con- 
servatism: one in his chapter on Hippodamus and one in his eulogy 
of Nicias. Thucydides has anticipated Aristotle in expressing them. 
I assume yet further that the conservatism of Thucydides has 
led him to give vivid and vital expression to that glorification of selfish 
commonsense and rough nationalism or national egotism which we 
