the race is uncompromising. Human life on the earth is
periodically destroyed, alternately by fire and flood; and each period
begins with a golden age in which men live in rude simplicity,
innocent because they are ignorant not because they are wise. When they
degenerate from this state, arts and inventions promote deterioration by
ministering to luxury and vice.

Interesting, then, as Seneca's observations on the prospect of some
future scientific discoveries are, and they are unique in ancient
literature, [Footnote: They are general and definite. This distinguishes
them, for instance, from Plato's incidental hint in the Republic as to
the prospect of the future development of solid geometry.] they were
far from adumbrating a doctrine of the Progress of man. For him, as for
Plato and the older philosophers, time is the enemy of man. [Footnote:
The quotations and the references here will be found in Nat. Quaest. i.
Praef.; Epist. 104, Sec. 16 (cp. 110, Sec. 8; 117, Sec. 20, and the fine
passage in 65, Sec. 16-21); Nat. Quaest. iii. 28-30; and finally Epist.
90, Sec. 45, cp. Sec. 17. This last letter is a criticism on Posidonius,
who asserted that the arts invented in primitive times were due to
philosophers. Seneca repudiates this view: omnia enim ista sagacitas
hominum, non sapientia inuenit.

Seneca touches on the possibility of the discovery of new lands beyond
the ocean in a passage in his Medea (374 sqq.) which has been often
quoted:

uenient annis
secula seris, quibus oceanus
uincula rerum laxet et ingens
pateat tellus Tiphysque novos
detegat orbes,...
nec sit terris ultima Thule.]

4.

There was however a school of philosophical speculation, which might
have led to the foundation of a theory of Progress, if the historical
outlook of the Greeks had been larger and if their temper had been
different. The Atomic theory of Democritus seems to us now, in many
ways, the most wonderful achievement of Greek thought, but it had a
small range of influence in Greece, and would have had less if it had
not convinced the brilliant mind of Epicurus. The Epicureans developed
it, and it may be that the views which they put forward as to the
history of the human race are mainly their own superstructure. These
philosophers rejected entirely the doctrine of a Golden Age and a
subsequent degeneration, which was manifestly incompatible with their
theory that the world was mechanically formed from atoms without