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