wn out some observations which amount to a
rough synthesis. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. 1, 6; Nov. Org. i. 78,
79, 85.] Like Bodin, he divided, history into three periods--(1) the
antiquities of the world; (2) the middle part of time which comprised
two sections, the Greek and the Roman; (3) "modern history," which
included what we now call the Middle Ages. In this sequence three
particular epochs stand out as fertile in science and favourable to
progress--the Greek, the Roman, and our own--"and scarcely two centuries
can with justice be assigned to each." The other periods of time are
deserts, so far as philosophy and science are concerned. Rome and Greece
are "two exemplar States of the world for arms, learning, moral virtue,
policy, and laws." But even in those two great epochs little progress
was made in natural philosophy. For in Greece moral and political
speculation absorbed men's minds; in Rome, meditation and labour were
wasted on moral philosophy, and the greatest intellects were devoted to
civil affairs. Afterwards, in the third period, the study of theology
was the chief occupation of the Western European nations. It was
actually in the earliest period that the most useful discoveries for
the comfort of human life were made, "so that, to say the truth, when
contemplation and doctrinal science began, the discovery of useful works
ceased."

So much for the past history of mankind, during which many things
conspired to make progress in the subjugation of nature slow, fitful,
and fortuitous. What of the future? Bacon's answer is: if the errors
of the past are understood and avoided there is every hope of steady
progress in the modern age.

But it might be asked. Is there not something in the constitution of
things which determines epochs of stagnation and vigour, some force
against which man's understanding and will are impotent? Is it not
true that in the revolutions of ages there are floods and ebbs of the
sciences, which flourish now and then decline, and that when they have
reached a certain point they can proceed no further? This doctrine of
Returns or ricorsi [Footnote: Bodin's conversiones.] is denounced
by Bacon as the greatest obstacle to the advancement of knowledge,
creating, as it does, diffidence or despair. He does not formally
refute it, but he marshals the reasons for an optimistic view, and these
reasons supply the disproof The facts on which the fatalistic doctrine
of Returns is based can be