ABSTRACT
In historical reasoning it is necessary to have an accurate general proposition; a detailed knowledge of a past fact. To examine the connections between facts on which reasonings may be founded would mean tabulating all the known relations between the facts of humanity, that is, giving a full account of all the empirical laws of social life. The spontaneous tendency is to take as a basis of reasoning the “common-sense truths” which form nearly the whole of our knowledge of social life. History fills up some of its gaps by an accumulation of reasonings. Doubts remain as to the Phœnician origin of various Greek cities, but there is no doubt about the presence of the Phœnicians in Greece.
