for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all, there is in human
nature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate craze of this nature.
Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have asserted or even
assumed the downward tendency of the human race in all that regards
_moral_ qualities. For the _physical_ degeneration of man there really
were some apparent (though erroneous) arguments; but, for the moral
degeneration, no argument at all, small or great. Yet a bigotry of belief
in this idle notion has always prevailed amongst moralists, pagan alike
and Christian. Horace, for example, informs us that

"Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores--mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem."

The last generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as the
present is worst than the last. We, however, of the present, bad as we
may be, shall be kept in countenance by the coming generation, which will
prove much worse than ourselves. On the same precedent, all the sermons
through the last three centuries, if traced back through decennial
periods, so as to form thirty successive strata, will be found regularly
claiming the precedency in wickedness for the immediate period of the
writer. Upon which theories, as men ought physically to have dwindled
long ago into pygmies, so, on the other hand, morally they must by this
time have left Sodom and Gomorrah far behind. What a strange animal must
man upon this scheme offer to our contemplation; shrinking in size, by
graduated process, through every century, until at last he would not rise
an inch from the ground; and, on the other hand, as regards villany,
towering evermore and more up to the heavens. What a dwarf! what a giant!
Why, the very crows would combine to destroy such a little monster.