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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: out new methods of inquiry, of which historical criticism is one.
The Alexandrines combined a great love of learning with an
ignorance of the true principles of research, an enthusiastic
spirit for accumulating materials with a wonderful incapacity to
use them. Not among the hot sands of Egypt, or the Sophists of
Athens, but from the very heart of Greece rises the man of genius
on whose influence in the evolution of the philosophy of history I
have a short time ago dwelt. Born in the serene and pure air of
the clear uplands of Arcadia, Polybius may be said to reproduce in
his work the character of the place which gave him birth. For, of
all the historians - I do not say of antiquity but of all time -
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