Orientals (Chaldeans and Egyptians) to the Greeks; when it was
nearly extinguished in Greece it began to shine afresh among the
Romans; and having been put out by the barbarians for the space of a
thousand years it was relit by Petrarch and his contemporaries. In
stating this view of "circular progress," Hakewill comes perilously
near to the doctrine of Ricorsi or Returns which had been severely
denounced by Bacon.

In one point indeed Hakewill goes far beyond Bodin. It was
suggested, as we saw, by the French thinker that in some respects
the modern age is superior in conduct and morals to antiquity, but
he said little on the matter. Hakewill develops the suggestion at
great length into a severe and partial impeachment of ancient
manners and morals. Unjust and unconvincing though his arguments
are, and inspired by theological motives, his thesis nevertheless
deserves to be noted as an assertion of the progress of man in
social morality. Bacon, and the thinkers of the seventeenth century
generally, confined their views of progress in the past to the
intellectual field. Hakewill, though he overshot the mark and said
nothing actually worth remembering, nevertheless anticipated the
larger problem of social progress which was to come to the front in
the eighteenth century.

4.

During the forty years that followed the appearance of Hakewill's
book much had happened in the world of ideas, and when we take up
Glanvill's Plus ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge
since the days of Aristotle, [Footnote: The title is evidently
suggested by a passage in Bacon quoted above, p. 55.] we breathe a