its history fully, down to the end of the eighteenth century. His
Histoire de l'idee de progres (1910) is planned on a large scale; he
is erudite and has read extensively. But his treatment is lacking in
the power of discrimination. He strikes one as anxious to bring
within his net, as theoriciens du progres, as many distinguished
thinkers as possible; and so, along with a great deal that is useful
and relevant, we also find in his book much that is irrelevant. He
has not clearly seen that the distinctive idea of Progress was not
conceived in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, or even in the
Renaissance period; and when he comes to modern times he fails to
bring out clearly the decisive steps of its growth. And he does not
seem to realise that a man might be "progressive" without believing
in, or even thinking about, the doctrine of Progress. Leonardo da
Vinci and Berkeley are examples. In my Ancient Greek Historians
(1909) I dwelt on the modern origin of the idea (p. 253 sqq.).
Recently Mr. R. H. Murray, in a learned appendix to his Erasmus and
Luther, has developed the thesis that Progress was not grasped in
antiquity (though he makes an exception of Seneca),--a welcome
confirmation.]

I

It may, in particular, seem surprising that the Greeks, who were so
fertile in their speculations on human life, did not hit upon an
idea which seems so simple and obvious to us as the idea of
Progress. But if we try to realise their experience and the general
character of their thought we shall cease to wonder. Their recorded
history did not go back far, and so far as it did go there had been
no impressive series of new discoveries suggesting either an
indefinite increase of knowledge or a growing mastery of the forces