311 



no difficulty in believing in a miracle, but such a belief is most in accordance 



with our belief in a personal God, Hence we have only to consider what 



end miracles are intended to serve, and our moral nature and reason easily 



recognize the fact that there have been certain purposes for which it is in 



accordance with our belief in a personal God that He should have interrupted 



the order and course of nature. This seems to me to lay ^side altogether the 



supposed resemblance between extraordinary occurrences and miracles. As 



to the other point on which the main purpose of the paper rests, namely, the 



consideration of the nature of historical evidence, and the province of the 



historian, I must fairly say that I differ from Mr. Eow, if I rightly apprehend 



his arguments. In fact, I think that the views enunciated in this 



part of the paper leave us in a most hopeless condition ; for if we lay 



aside altogether the use of conjecture and hypothesis, we lay aside 



the noblest province of the historian. It is true that history is not a 



mathematical science, and we have not the same means of verification that 



• . . . 



we have in such a science. But it seems to me to be the duty of the historian, 



as well as of the mathematician, to make use of hypothesis, in order to 

 bring together isolated phenomena or isolated facts under one general theory. 

 Work of that description, as illustrated in the department of history, is par- 

 ticularly exemplified in the case of the great historian whose labours have 

 recently been undervalued by some authors, and, among others, by the author 

 of this paper — I refer to Niebuhr. When Niebuhr first began to write his 

 history, he was vehemently assailed for believing too little, but, of late years, 

 the attack has been directed against him on the ground that he believed too 

 much, and those things which he accepted as facts and truths, he has been 

 assailed for accepting at all ; and it has been said that many, if not most of 

 the supposed facts which he has picked out from legendary history, are of no 

 value at all. Some indeed go so far as to maintain that hypothesis itself 

 is not within the province of the historian. But this would destroy 

 one of the great charms of the study of history. It is true that a hypothesis 

 may be wrong, and that Niebuhr may have made mistakes ; but it does not 

 follow that the method is wrong, and that his labours were in vain. Because 

 he made some mistakes, it does not follow that he had not a great work to 

 perform, and that he did not perform it. Let us consider what he did. In 

 striking out that noble hypothesis with regard to the Roman Constitutio^, 

 which runs through his whole work, he has thrown altogether a new light on 

 the history of the Roman Commonwealth, though probably, in his ardour for 

 that hypothesis, he may have laid stress on small matters, and unduly pressed 

 them to support his theory and plan. Some of the details may be shown to 

 be errors ; but is his great hypothesis an error ? — that hypothesis accord- 

 ing to which he demonstrated the relations of the commonalty of Rome to 

 the Patrician houses — a perfectly new idea, that still remains as a possession 

 for future historians and students : Niebuhr's main points are, I think, estab- 

 lished beyond doubt, but, of course, it is possible for a man to rise up and 

 put forward another hypothesis ; and when that is done we must examine it, 

 and see which is most likely to be true. Even in science, and in the present 



