e, the order is disturbed, and the second 36,000
years are a period of gradual decay and degeneration. At the end of this
time, the world left to itself would dissolve into chaos, but the Deity
again seizes the helm and restores the original conditions, and
the whole process begins anew. The first half of such a world-cycle
corresponds to the Golden Age of legend in which men lived happily and
simply; we have now unfortunately reached some point in the period of
decadence.

Plato applies the theory of degradation in his study of political
communities. [Footnote: Plato's philosophy of history. In the myth of
the Statesman and the last Books of the Republic. The best elucidation
of these difficult passages will be found in the notes and appendix to
Book viii. in J. Adam's edition of the Republic (1902).] He conceives
his own Utopian aristocracy as having existed somewhere towards the
beginning of the period of the world's relapse, when things were not so
bad, [Footnote: Similarly he places the ideal society which he describes
in the Critias 9000 years before Solon. The state which he plans in the
Laws is indeed imagined as a practicable project in his own day, but
then it is only a second-best. The ideal state of which Aristotle
sketched an outline (Politics, iv. v.) is not set either in time or in
place.] and exhibits its gradual deterioration, through the successive
stages of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and despotism. He explains
this deterioration as primarily caused by a degeneration of the race,
due to laxity and errors in the State regulation of marriages, and the
consequent birth of biologically inferior individuals.

The theories of Plato are only the most illustrious example of the
tendency characteristic of Greek philosophical thinkers to idealise
the immutable as possessing a higher value than that which varies. This
affected all their social speculations. They believed in the ideal of an
absolute order in society, from which, when it is once established, any
deviation must be for the worse. Aristotle, considering the subject
from a practical point of view, laid down that changes in an established
social order are undesirable, and should be as few and slight as
possible. [Footnote: Politics, ii. 5.] This prejudice against change
excluded the apprehension of civilisation as a progressive movement.
It did not occur to Plato or any one else that a perfect order might be
attainable by a long series of changes