new discovery.]

I have said that Bodin rejected the theory of the degeneration of
man, along with the tradition of a previous age of virtue and
felicity. [Footnote: See especially Methodus, cap. v. pp. 124, 130,
136.] The reason which he alleged against it is important. The
powers of nature have always been uniform. It is illegitimate to
suppose that she could at one time produce the men and conditions
postulated by the theory of the golden age, and not produce them at
another. In other words, Bodin asserts the principle of the
permanent and undiminishing capacities of nature, and, as we shall
see in the sequel, this principle was significant. It is not to be
confounded with the doctrine of the immutability of human things
assumed by Machiavelli. The human scene has vastly changed since the
primitive age of man; "if that so-called golden age could be revoked
and compared with our own, we should consider it iron." [Footnote:
Methodus, cap. VII. p. 353.] For history largely depends on the will
of men, which is always changing; every day new laws, new customs,
new institutions, both secular and religious, come into being, and
new errors. [Footnote: Ib. cap. I. p. 12.]

But in this changing scene we can observe a certain regularity, a
law of oscillation. Rise is followed by fall, and fall by rise; it
is a mistake to think that the human race is always deteriorating.
[Footnote: Ib. cap. VII. p. 361: "cum aeterna quadam lege naturae
conversio rerum omnium velut in orbem redire videatur, ut aeque
vitia virtutibus, ignoratio scientiae, turpe honesto consequens sit,
atque tenebrae luci, fallunt qui genus hominum semper deterius
seipso evadere putant."] If that were so, we should long ago have
reached the lowest stage of vice and iniquity. On the contrary,