revolutions, now they seek new lands, explore, conquer, exploit; again
they perfect arts and industries, enlarge commerce, cultivate
the earth with greater assiduity; and yet again, in the ages more
laborious, like ours, they do all these things at the same time--an
activity immense and continuous. But its motive force is always the
need of the new generations, that, starting from the point at which
their predecessors had arrived, desire to advance yet farther--to
enjoy, to know, to possess yet more.

The ancient writers understood this thoroughly: what they called
"corruption" was but the change in customs and wants, proceeding from
generation to generation, and in its essence the same as that which
takes place about us to-day. The _avaritia_ of which they complained
so much, was the greed and impatience to make money that we see to-day
setting all classes beside themselves, from noble to day-labourer; the
_ambitio_ that appeared to the ancients to animate so frantically
even the classes that ought to have been most immune, was what we call
_getting there_--the craze to rise at any cost to a condition higher
than that in which one was born, which so many writers, moralists,
statesmen, judge, rightly or wrongly, to be one of the most dangerous
maladies of the modern world. _Luxuria_ was the desire to augment
personal conveniences, luxuries, pleasures--the same passion that
stirs Europe and America to-day from top to bottom, in city and
country. Without doubt, wealth grew in ancient Rome and grows to-day;
men were bent on making money in the last two centuries of the
Republic, and to-day they rush headlong into the delirious struggle
for gold; for reasons and motives, however, and with arms and
accoutrements, far diverse.

As I have already said, ancient civilisation was narrower, poorer,