the world's end remain unaccomplished-the subversion of Rome and the
conversion of the Jews. And when they shall be accomplished God only
knows, as yet in man's judgment there being little appearance of the
one or the other."

It was well to be assured that nature is not decaying or man
degenerating. But was the doctrine that the end of the world does
not "depend upon the law of nature," and that the growth of human
civilisation may be cut off at any moment by a fiat of the Deity,
less calculated to "quail the hopes and blunt the edge of men's
endeavours?" Hakewill asserted with confidence that the universe
will be suddenly wrecked by fire. Una dies dabit exitio. Was the
prospect of an arrest which might come the day after to-morrow
likely to induce men to exert themselves to make provision for
posterity?

The significance of Hakewill lies in the fact that he made the
current theory of degeneration, which stood in the way of all
possible theories of progress, the object of a special inquiry. And
his book illustrates the close connection between that theory and
the dispute over the Ancients and Moderns. It cannot be said that he
has added anything valuable to what may be found in Bodin and Bacon
on the development of civilisation. The general synthesis of history
which he attempts is equivalent to theirs. He describes the history
of knowledge and arts, and all things besides, as exhibiting "a kind
of circular progress," by which he means that they have a birth,
growth, nourishing, failing and fading, and then within a while
after a resurrection and reflourishing. [Footnote: Book iii. chap.
6, Section i, p. 259.] In this method of progress the lamp of
learning passed from one people to another. It passed from the