1] Pessimism was in the myths. While things went well the life
policy of joyous carelessness overbore the pessimism, but when things
began to go ill the conviction arose that life is not worth living. The
abuses of democracy in the cities took away all the joy of success. It
was wisdom just to take things as they came. Life was not worth having,
for itself. If circumstances turned the balance of joy and pain so that
the latter predominated a little, suicide was a rational relief.
Religion did not cause this pessimism, but also it did not oppose it.
Suicide was no offense to the gods, because they did not give life.[132]
The Greeks held their doctrine of pessimism, the envy of the gods, etc.,
to be a correct induction from observation of life. Herodotus brought
back a conviction of it from his travels.[133] Tradition ascribed to
Solon the saying that "there is not a single happy mortal to be found
amongst all the sun shines on."[134]

+109. Greek degeneracy.+ The decline of the Greeks in the three
centuries before our era is so great and sudden that it is very
difficult to understand it. The best estimate of the population of the
Peloponnesus in the second century B.C. puts it at one hundred and nine
per square mile.[135] Yet the population was emigrating, and population
was restricted. A pair would have but one or two children. The cities
were empty and the land was uncultivated.[136] There was neither war
nor pestilence to account for this. It may be that the land was
exhausted. There must have been a loss of economic power so that labor
was unrewarded. The mores all sank together. There can be no achievement
in the struggle for existence without an adequate force. Our
civilization is built on steam. The Greek and Roman civilization was
built on slavery, that is, on an aggregation of human power. The result
produced was, at first, very great, but the exploitation of men entailed
other consequences besides quantities of useful products. It was these
consequences which issued in the mores, for, in a society built on
slavery as the form of productive industry, all the mores, obeying the
strain of consistency, must conform to that as the chief of the
folkways. It was at the beginning of the empire that the Romans began to
breed slaves because wars no longer brought in new supplies.[137] Sex,
vice, laziness, decline of energy and enterprise, cowardice, and
contempt for labor were consequences of slavery, for the free.[138] T