there has been, through the series of oscillations, a gradual
ascent. In the ages which have been foolishly designated as gold and
silver men lived like the wild beasts; and from that state they have
slowly reached the humanity of manners and the social order which
prevail to-day. [Footnote: Ib. p. 356.]

Thus Bodin recognises a general progress in the past. That is
nothing new; it was the view, for instance, of the Epicureans. But
much had passed in the world since the philosophy of Epicurus was
alive, and Bodin had to consider twelve hundred years of new
vicissitudes. Could the Epicurean theory be brought up to date?

2.

Bodin deals with the question almost entirely in respect to human
knowledge. In definitely denying the degeneration of man, Bodin was
only expressing what many thinkers of the sixteenth century had been
coming to feel, though timidly and obscurely. The philosophers and
men of science, who criticised the ancients in special departments,
did not formulate any general view on the privileged position of
antiquity. Bodin was the first to do so.

Knowledge, letters, and arts have their vicissitudes, he says; they
rise, increase, and nourish, and then languish and die. After the
decay of Rome there was a long fallow period; but this was followed
by a splendid revival of knowledge and an intellectual productivity
which no other age has exceeded. The scientific discoveries of the
ancients deserve high praise; but the moderns have not only thrown
new light on phenomena which they had incompletely explained, they
have made new discoveries of equal or indeed greater importance.