Here our difficulty is to understand the social conditions, so unlike those with which we are acquainted, and as society is greater than man, so we feel that society, and not individual men, should occupy the chief place in the picture.

Not that individuals are to be suppressed or neglected, but their subordination to the large historic background must be well maintained.

The social, religious, and philosophic conditions amid which they played their parts should dominate the scene, and dwarf by their grandeur and importance the human actors who move across it.

The higher historical style now demands what may be called compound narrative, that is narrative having reference to two sets of phenomena--one the obvious surface events, the other the larger and wider, but less obvious, sociological condition.

A better example could hardly be given than Grote's account of the mutilation of the Hermae.