The Idea Of Progress | Page 9

ways, the most wonderful achievement of Greek thought, but it had a
small range of influence in Greece, and would have had less if it had
not convinced the brilliant mind of Epicurus. The Epicureans
developed it, and it may be that the views which they put forward as to
the history of the human race are mainly their own superstructure.
These philosophers rejected entirely the doctrine of a Golden Age and a
subsequent degeneration, which was manifestly incompatible with their
theory that the world was mechanically formed from atoms without the
intervention of a Deity. For them, the earliest condition of men
resembled that of the beasts, and from this primitive and miserable
condition they laboriously reached the existing state of civilisation, not
by external guidance or as a consequence of some initial design, but
simply by the exercise of human intelligence throughout a long period.
[Footnote: Lucretius v. 1448 sqq. (where the word PROGRESS is
pronounced):
Usus et impigrae simul experientia mentis Paulatim docuit pedetemtim
progredientis. Sic unum quicquid paulatim protrahit aetas In medium
ratioque in luminis erigit oras. Namque alid ex alio clarescere et ordine
debet Artibus, ad summum donee uenere cacumen.]
The gradual amelioration of their existence was marked by the
discovery of fire and the use of metals, the invention of language, the
invention of weaving, the growth of arts and industries, navigation, the
development of family life, the establishment of social order by means
of kings, magistrates, laws, the foundation of cities. The last great step
in the amelioration of life, according to Lucretius, was the illuminating
philosophy of Epicurus, who dispelled the fear of invisible powers and
guided man from intellectual darkness to light.
But Lucretius and the school to which he belonged did not look
forward to a steady and continuous process of further amelioration in
the future. They believed that a time would come when the universe
would fall into ruins, [Footnote: Ib. 95.] but the intervening period did
not interest them. Like many other philosophers, they thought that their

own philosophy was the final word on the universe, and they did not
contemplate the possibility that important advances in knowledge
might be achieved by subsequent generations. And, in any case, their
scope was entirely individualistic; all their speculations were subsidiary
to the aim of rendering the life of the individual as tolerable as possible
here and now. Their philosophy, like Stoicism, was a philosophy of
resignation; it was thoroughly pessimistic and therefore incompatible
with the idea of Progress. Lucretius himself allows an underlying
feeling of scepticism as to the value of civilisation occasionally to
escape. [Footnote: His eadem sunt omnia semper (iii. 945) is the
constant refrain of Marcus Aurelius.]
Indeed, it might be said that in the mentality of the ancient Greeks there
was a strain which would have rendered them indisposed to take such
an idea seriously, if it had been propounded. No period of their history
could be described as an age of optimism. They were never, by their
achievements in art or literature, in mathematics or philosophy, exalted
into self-complacency or lured into setting high hopes on human
capacity. Man has resourcefulness to meet everything- -[words in
Greek],--they did not go further than that.
This instinctive pessimism of the Greeks had a religious tinge which
perhaps even the Epicureans found it hard entirely to expunge. They
always felt that they were in the presence of unknown incalculable
powers, and that subtle dangers lurked in human achievements and
gains. Horace has taken this feeling as the motif of a criticism on man's
inventive powers. A voyage of Virgil suggests the reflection that his
friend's life would not be exposed to hazards on the high seas if the art
of navigation had never been discovered--if man had submissively
respected the limits imposed by nature. But man is audacious:
Nequiquam deus abscidit Prudens oceano dissociabili Terras.
In vain a wise god sever'd lands By the dissociating sea.
Daedalus violated the air, as Hercules invaded hell. The discovery of
fire put us in possession of a forbidden secret. Is this unnatural
conquest of nature safe or wise? Nil mortalibus ardui est:
Man finds no feat too hard or high; Heaven is not safe from man's
desire. Our rash designs move Jove to ire, He dares not lay his thunder
by.
The thought of this ode [Footnote: i. 3.] roughly expresses what would

have been the instinctive sense of thoughtful Greeks if the idea of
Progress had been presented to them. It would have struck them as
audacious, the theory of men unduly elated and perilously at ease in the
presence of unknown incalculable powers.
This feeling or attitude was connected with the idea of Moira. If we
were to name any single idea as generally controlling or pervading
Greek thought from Homer