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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: pointed out that it was to him essentially a search for causes, a
problem to be solved, not a picture to be painted, a scientific
investigation into laws and tendencies, not a mere romantic account
of startling incident and wondrous adventure. Thucydides, in the
opening of his great work, had sounded the first note of the
scientific conception of history. 'The absence of romance in my
pages,' he says, 'will, I fear, detract somewhat from its value,
but I have written my work not to be the exploit of a passing hour
but as the possession of all time.' (18) Polybius follows with
words almost entirely similar. If, he says, we banish from history
the consideration of causes, methods and motives ([Greek text which
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